"Budget & Planning for the Future of GIPS" - The GIPS Cast, Ep. 062

"We're going to continue to work towards being conservatively responsible with the funds that we have, and, develop long range plans that hopefully are going to put Grand Island as a school district and as a community in a great place."

The start of the school year also brings a new fiscal year.  Which means, GIPS is in the midst of budget season. 

Mr. Matt Fisher, GIPS Superintendent, joins 'The GIPS Cast' to give on overview on the financial health of the district.

Along the way, Mr. Fisher looks ahead to what GIPS has planned for the 2025-26 school year budget, how the district is able to lower its tax levy for a third year in a row, and why now is an important time for to start planning ahead for future growth and facility needs.

Because it's about casting a vision on how best to partner with our community to take care of our students. 

Listen to the latest episode above or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.

(Transcript may be found below the episode player.)

#WeAreGIPS  

--

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: 

Podcast Intro  00:00

This is Grand Island Public Schools podcast, and these are our stories. We are learners. We are educators in teaching hearts as well as minds. We are 10,000 diverse voices, and we're changing the world together, one classroom at a time. These are our stories. We are GIPS. We are GIPS. Somos que efe ese. We are GIPS. Somos, GIPS. We are GIPS. And this is 'The GIPS Cast'!

 

Mitchell Roush  00:30

Welcome back to 'The GIPS Cast', a conversation based podcast exploring the voices of Grand Island Public Schools in Nebraska. I'm your host, Mitchell Roush, the Communications Director here at GIPS, and I'm grateful to bring to you new stories from all corners of our district, because here we're driven by our mission of every student every day, a success.

 

Mitchell Roush  00:59

Now, the start of the school year means a lot of things. Staff and students return to our schools. Learning kicks off in our classrooms. Activities are in full swing, and a whole lot more. The start of the school year also means a new fiscal year in September each year in Nebraska, school districts enter into their new fiscal years, setting up the operating budgets for their districts, and that's what we're going to be chatting about today. We are in budget season at Grand Island Public Schools right now, so I sat down with our superintendent, Matt Fisher. He's been with the district for a few years now, and in that time, he and our district leadership team have been hard at work these last few years to help ensure that the GIPS financial future is healthy, and so now we look ahead to what GIPS has planned financially for this current school year, 2526 how we are able to lower Our tax levy for an unprecedented third year in a row, and why now is an important time for us to start planning ahead for the future growth and facility needs in our district. Here's our conversation.

 

Matt Fisher  02:22

Matt Fisher, Superintendent Grand Island Public Schools.

 

Mitchell Roush  02:25

So Mr. Fisher, thank you for being here. Appreciate you always being willing to jump on the mic with me. No, no problem. All right, so we're gonna talk budget. Everyone's favorite, exciting topic, for sure, but it is a key piece of what we do here and how we operate and how we take care of our kids and our staff. So how is the financial health of GIPS?

 

Matt Fisher  02:46

Well, I think we're in a really good place right now. Obviously, we went through the cost cutting measures. We actually two years ago, we talked about what they were going to be. Last year, we implemented all of those cost saving measures and, and I think as we came out of last year, we really are in a good place financially. We're solid in terms of, you know, the staff that we have, and our ability to be able to pay that staff and, and, you know, being able to have money to upkeep our facilities. So those are all things that are, you know, really important in terms of determining our overall financial health. We've got decent reserves. We had to, you know, part of what we needed to do is to rebuild our our reserves so that we knew that from one month to the next, we can make payroll. That's right, which is pretty important, kind of a big deal. So, yeah, I think right now, we're, we're in a good place.

 

Mitchell Roush  03:49

That's awesome. That's exactly what we want to hear when we're talking about finances. You want to, you want to hear that we're in a good place?

 

Matt Fisher  03:54

Yeah. And, you know, and I Virgil Harden, our Chief Financial Officer, you know, he does a great job of really analyzing where we are and making sure that, you know, he keeps us focused on what what we truly need and how to make sure that the dollars are there to address those needs.

 

Mitchell Roush  04:17

And so as we talk about it, we talk about it at this time, because every year, part of our requirement, and part of our reporting requirement is that there's a budget workshop, the board has to adopt the budget that whole process, right?

 

Matt Fisher  04:29

Yep, that is all part of the cycle. Our our fiscal year runs from the the end of August, actually, September one through the end of August. So we just finished out our 2425 fiscal year, and we've just started into our 2526 physical year. And now that we're into that, we need to adopt a budget that's right, 25-26 school year.

 

Mitchell Roush  04:53

And there are a couple of components about the budget that are fairly predictable. You know, when we talk about our general fund, we. Usually hover around the 80% of our general fund goes towards taking care of our people, who are the folks that take care of our students. Is that what we're kind of looking at again this year?

 

Matt Fisher  05:10

Yeah, you know, certainly the cost of personnel is the biggest cost that we have in in the overall budget, and that has grown a little bit over the, you know, the last few years, obviously, you know, as teachers and para educators and custodians and secretaries and every everyone that we're hiring is harder and harder to hire. We've had to substantially increase what we're paying people, just like every other business has That's right, got to be competitive. So as as those costs have gone up, our overall percentage that we're paying for personnel is actually higher now than it it has been in the past.

 

Mitchell Roush  05:50

And again, that's that's out of the best interest of wanting to take care of the people that we have and to be an attractive place for people to come here and work, for sure.

 

Matt Fisher  05:56

I think that that is really important, you know. And when you're in a competitive environment, and there's, you know, you just think about the teacher shortage situation. And if we're going to compete with our neighbors down the road to hire the best teachers, then we have to be very competitive in terms of what we're offering for pay.

 

Mitchell Roush  06:19

Let's talk about the adjustments that we're going to see in the upcoming fiscal year, 2526 so would you, would you be willing just to break down for me and for our listeners a little bit, what are we looking at in terms of Levy and any adjustments we're making going into the new year?

 

Matt Fisher  06:37

Sure. You know, one of the things that that happens every year that that really figures into our levy, our tax asking is, is the valuation? Yep, obviously we have nothing to do with setting valuation. We do not control the valuation. No, we are. We are simply a consumer of whatever valuations are set. And you know, until we know what the valuations are, we really can't finalize our budget. But once we got that, we get that at the end of August, and this year, our overall valuation increase was about 8% which is fairly significant, but only about half of what it was last year. Last year we were above 15% in terms of what the valuation increased. But with that 8% valuation increase, then you know what that really does for us is in this case, it allows us to lower our levy, and in our case for our general operating fund Levy, we're going to be able to decrease that levy by about 14 cents. Then the bond fund that were used to pay off the bonds that were passed here several years ago, we're going to be able to lower that levy by ascent, and then also our qualified capital purpose undertaking fund. QC puff, you rattled that off really fast. QC puff, yes, you hear here's talk about. QC puff, that's qualified capital purpose undertaking fund. We use that to do a lot of security and safety upgrades and but again, with the valuation increase, we're going to be able to lower that levy by about a cent also. So that's put us in a really, a great position. We certainly want to, you know, take care of our taxpayer, yeah, but at the same time, one of the other things that that we know that we've got coming is a lot of significant facility needs, yes, and so as as we were looking at the overall budget, and how would we, you know, use those lowering of the levies in some of those funds where We've made the decision that we're going to move our levy up in our building fund, and by significantly increasing that Levy and really maximizing that as best we can, that's going to help us build reserves that we'll be able to use for maintaining facilities. And then, you know, probably at some point in the not so terrible distant future, hopefully we'll have some dollars there that we can put towards future building projects.

 

Mitchell Roush  09:31

Yep. So there's a lot there. So when it comes to, you know, our general taxpayer and our families listening to this, they know that our levy is going to decrease a little bit, but we are making a strategic decision to try to build up our special buildings fund a little bit more intentionally than we have in the years past. Would you be willing to just in simplistic terms, kind of unpack the difference between general fund and. Special buildings fund.

 

Matt Fisher  10:01

The general fund is is where we pay all of our operating costs. So all of our personnel are paid for out of that general fund. All of our supplies that we use for running schools are paid for out of the general fund. So anything that you would think about as far as running a school day to day is basically paid for out of the general fund. Yeah, so that's what the general fund is for. The building fund is really a savings account for putting dollars aside to address facility issues. Sometimes that can be repairs to facilities. Or it can also be, you know, if you have a significant remodel, or, you know, ultimately, and this is part of our thinking with this one is if we get down the road a few more years, and we have to do, you know, in addition to a building or add another elementary building at some point in time, which are things that we think are very definitely on the horizon for us, then the dollars that we put into the building fund couldn't be used to lower the amount of bond dollars that we would have to ask the Public for.

 

Mitchell Roush  11:20

So this is, this is a biggie, right? This is, this is obviously taken a lot of important conversation, intentional planning and some strategic thinking by you and Mr. Hardin and the folks here at the district to say, we want to be as responsible as we can with the burden of the taxpayer in our community, but we also cannot ignore the facility needs that we know are going to be coming up in the very near future. And so by allocating some of this money to build up the special buildings fund, it sounds to me like we're able to, hopefully, in the near future, shoulder some more of that financial load for facility needs. Am I hearing that correctly?

 

Matt Fisher  12:04

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think any, any of the dollars that we can put away now and have available for us when, when those projects come our way, those are dollars that we're not going to have to bond for. Yeah, and when we bond, we end up having to pay interest on those dollars, right? By the same token the dollars that we're putting away now, we're going to be able to generate interest off of.

 

Mitchell Roush  12:31

This makes a lot of sense, right? Like we're going to this is going to lessen the amount we have to ask our community for in a bond, we're going to be able to build interest on this as we're putting it in the special buildings fund all of these things like, make financial sense?

 

Matt Fisher  12:44

Yeah, I think so, you know, obviously, you know. And the other thing I think it does for us too, is, rather than, you know, having a 16 cent drop in our levy this year and then a 14 cent increase in our levy a year from now, because something changed. What we're really doing, to some extent, is smoothing things out too for our taxpayer. So you know, by by putting those dollars into a savings account now, you know we're not going to have to hit them hard right later on. And so I think, you know, we're still going to be able to realize a five cent lowering of our levy, which I think is great. This is three years in a row, third year in a row that we've been able to lower our levy. So I think, you know, we should all be excited about that. But you know, and and in the end, you know, we're going to be saving our taxpayer dollars by having dollars already on hand to handle some of the the facility pieces that we've got coming.

 

Mitchell Roush  13:48

It's a unique opportunity that we have here, which makes sense as to why we would be trying to capitalize on that opportunity now and lessen the burden on the taxpayer as best as we possibly can, while still thinking long term.

 

GIPS COMMERCIAL  14:07

public schools. News, Flash, substitute teachers are heroes, and that's why Grand Island Public Schools is hiring for substitute teachers across the district. The best part about being a substitute teacher, GIPS has a new higher pay rate, and you can pick your own school. Go to gips.org/employment for more information and to apply today, will you join our team of everyday heroes? Go to gips.org/employment to learn more about joining our team of substitute teachers.

 

Mitchell Roush  14:47

Why do we need to be talking about facility needs now? You said that it would be in the future, right? Why do we need to be talking and planning for that now?

 

Matt Fisher  14:55

Well, obviously, Grand Island continues to grow. Yeah, and with that growth come more students. And right now we're really in pretty good shape. You know, the the bonding that was done to do new elementaries a few years ago, it really has our elementary in in pretty good shape, our high school, with what we're doing with the academies and having students in several different facilities, we're not overcrowded at the high school level. Our biggest pinch right now is actually at the middle school level, absolutely and when Westridge was built, it was actually built with the idea that it could be expanded. So I think as we think about future projects, there's, there's probably a time coming in the not terrible distant future that Westridge will probably need to be expanded and right and take advantage of the way it was designed to be, to be a larger building. I think that's probably going to have to happen. And obviously anything that you do of a construction nature in this day and age is expensive.

 

Mitchell Roush  16:10

Unfortunately, things aren't cheap, but that's that's just kind of the way it is. But I'm glad you brought up the middle school piece. I know that our middle schools do a great job of taking care of our kids. We've got great staff, great leadership in those three buildings, but the fact remains that all three of those schools are getting getting close to capacity, and so we want to continue to have space for our learners as they're going to come to school, right?

 

Matt Fisher  16:35

And that's that's really what it's all about, and in that area, is making sure that we have the space. Now, the other thing that's that's out there that at some point in time we're going to have to deal with is as more and more housing is added down around the new hospital.

 

Mitchell Roush  16:52

Yep, that's growing so fast.

 

Matt Fisher  16:56

It is.  It is growing fast and and certainly there's, there's going to probably come a time when, when we're going to need to be thinking about locating an elementary school out in that area. And so, you know, obviously, that's, that's part of the planning process. That's, that's going on, you know, the good life district, when that gets off the ground and they start adding housing to the north, yep. Then again, that's a place where we're going to have to be thinking about, you know, what do we need there for an elementary building? And then ultimately, where do those elementaries go in terms of middle school and and then there's always that, always old, pressing question is, are we ever going to build a second high school?

 

Mitchell Roush  17:40

Yeah, the can of worms that everyone's waiting to open.

 

Matt Fisher  17:46

I certainly don't have an answer to that, but it is something that we need to be thinking about and as and planning around and and then, along with that high school question certainly is the the principal building. And that's one of those questions that we get a lot, is, what are we doing with the principal building? Well, we're doing a lot of things with it right now, but we don't know if that's the long term thing we're going to do with it. We don't and and the reality is, is we're not fully utilizing it now. And there's, there's certainly space there that we could use, but in order to use that space, it's going to take a significant investment. And so again, those are, you know, whether you know 10 years down the road we're we're revamping that so that we can continue to be in one high school structure, or whether we're thinking about, Well, are we going to have two high school I mean, those are all questions that we need to be planning for now, right? So that finances are in in place for those things when they come and you know that there's, there's a plan for it.

 

Mitchell Roush  18:50

When we're talking about things as big as adding on to a school or adding a brand new school to a district, and as you mentioned, the expense that goes and everything like that. Like that is not something that comes together. Something that comes together quickly. And so especially when we're talking about finances and wanting to make sure the special building fund is prepared to shoulder some of that load, it starts. You got to start doing that now so that you're you can think about, how are we going to be able to do these things when the time is right, or when we really, really need to.

 

Matt Fisher  19:22

That's absolutely right. I mean, it's all about planning. Now, in this case, we're taking advantage of an opportunity to put some dollars into that building fund that are going to help us be in a better place when the time for those things come along.

 

Mitchell Roush  19:38

Taking that one step further, what's on the horizon for GIPS, financially and facility wise, in the next 520, years and beyond?

 

Matt Fisher  19:48

Well, you know, our, our board, is going to have a retreat here in October and and really talk about that. You know, I think we've, we've talked about, we need a you. A five year, 10 year, 20 year, 50 Year, you know, you think about a 50 Year Plan. You think, wow, long time. That's a long time. But the reality is, is, when you you start talking about, you know, bonding for 20 or 25 years, and then when that bond comes off, and what are you going to be in position to do, and what are you going to need to be doing? The reality is, is we need to have a 50 year plan so that we can say, Okay, we're going to do this in this order. Yep. And you know that that way we aren't at that point where all of a sudden you have to be asking the taxpayers for, you know, unrealistic amounts, to take care of the facilities that we have and to build the facilities that we need. So I think it's really important to have that plan. And so as you think about the horizon, I think that's, that's the next thing we're doing is, you know, we're going to meet with the board and really had that discussion about long term, where are we going? What you know, and then I think we're going to be seeking input from the public. Absolutely, we need to know what the community's long term vision for education in Grand Island is.

 

Mitchell Roush  21:18

And so you pivoting to that, the thing that I'm hearing is we're planning for the kind of immediate future, and we're also trying to be responsible to the taxpayer and to our families and our students about long term planning as well, so that we can really be smart and efficient with the way we're operating with our funding. But you said that. You know, the community is a huge part of this, and it makes sense we belong to the community here. Why is it important for our community to not only support public education, but to be a part of these conversations with us?

 

Matt Fisher  21:54

Well, obviously, because we need their support, because we need that support. We need to have them involved and and on board with what we're doing. And so I think it's, it is really important for us to, you know, be very open and honest with our our community about, you know, what, what are our needs and, and where are we going and, and why are we going that way, and, and, and then listen to our community about, what does the community want? You know, you think about the the second high school, yeah, is that something our community wants, or is that something our community doesn't want? We really need to that's important information to have. And so I think those are, those are all, you know, important parts of that planning process is, is really seeking that, that input from the community, you know, I think you have to, again, I think it's important that we meet with the board and start shaping some ideas, because we need to go to the community and say, here are some thoughts. Yep, give us feedback on this absolutely. But in the end, we do need to listen to the community we do.

 

Mitchell Roush  23:05

And it starts by being responsible with our budget, doing some planning and some conversations with our board, and engaging our community to see what direction do they want us to go as we continue taking care of our community's kids.

 

Matt Fisher  23:18

I think you nailed it right there, perfect.

 

Mitchell Roush  23:21

Anything else you'd like to add, Mr. Fisher?

 

Matt Fisher  23:23

No, I don't, I don't think so, you know, I think, going back to your first question, I think we're in a really good place financially right now, but I think we've got challenges ahead. Yeah, you know, obviously the the state has done a really good job the last couple years of bolstering the the funds that they put towards education from a state level, and then that certainly has helped our overall position. But the state's struggling financially right now. Yeah, so how, how long are we going to continue to get those states? How sustainable is that? And so, you know, those are all, all parts of the the picture, and, and, you know, I think we're going to continue to to work towards being conservatively responsible with the funds that we have, and, and for developing long range plans that that hopefully are going to put Grand Island as as a school district and as a community in a great place.

 

Mitchell Roush  24:23

That's the goal. Thank you so much, Mr. Fisher, for being here and for unpacking all that for us.

 

Matt Fisher  24:28

You're very welcome.

 

Mitchell Roush  24:35

Thank you again to our superintendent, Matt Fisher, for joining us on this podcast and for being willing to talk through all of the complexities around school finance. It's an exciting time for us in terms of planning and growth here at GIPS, and there are certainly more ahead. Thank you listeners for joining us on this podcast. Be sure to visit our budget page on our website. That's GIPS.org/Budget, and you'll be able to find more resources about our budgeting process, what the financial outlook for the next school year looks like, and more. And of course, if you enjoyed this episode, or if you enjoy the GIPS cast, we would love it if you gave us a rating or a review on your favorite podcast platform, whether that's on Apple podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, wherever it is, you listen to us, feel free to give us a rating or a review, and that will help other people discover us along the way. Thank you so much, listeners for joining us. We will be coming back at you soon with some more great stories from Grand Island Public Schools.