So, that's another thing we want to do. So, as soon as they can come up for air, which they have not been able to, um, a few of us are going to be staying over the April break to work on some things, but soon as they come up for air, that whole team needs and wants and has been asking for training, and we're going to get that for them. So, there's a lot to this. It's it's pretty complicated. It's a great question. Um, but the goal is, you know, to to build the 2526 budget in the system. Once we get our allocation from the city, we'll have kind of a a little clearer road map of what we have to do and where people have to go. Otherwise, we're doing everything two and three times uh again and it it's very timeconuming. But I I appreciate the question because I feel like I've been waiting to say this for a little bit.
Um so would that involve um more negotiation with the um parah uh we would sit down with the representation from the parun representation and the nurses union representation the same individual so we could just work with that person and have a very limited scope memorandum of agreement that you you know those who want to work can work though you know that kind of a thing basically what I described in the memo um again if the board is comfortable with that. So, do we need to vote on that or can we just verbally authorize um I mean I guess a vote is a relationship if the board actually made a motion to authorize me to do that or it could be the personnel and negotiations committee but it's it's such a limited matter here and we wouldn't engage in this without board's attorney. So, as far as the paras and the nurses, it would be up to them if they wanted to work those two extra.
May I ask one more question? The size district that we are obviously we you know we've had to you know pay for additional help in the finance department. Clearly, that is, as far as I'm concerned, the priority. So, we know where we stand because we keep having surpluses, but yet we can't, you know, we don't pay enough, right? We don't have enough. So, how do we get that? How do we get over that? Um, yep. And is there a uh is the system that we currently have, it's an in-house um like the all of the payroll and everything is done inhouse. Is that customary for a district our size? Where is the advantage? I've heard several times over the last few years that we've had some payroll issues or glitches, possibly new systems and new so many that I can't even keep up with. But um I guess that's my question.
I think I what I not quite with the nurses. They're really not interested in working those extra. Well, I mean they worked two before. So, I just want to make sure that, you know, if the nurses already did those two days, they don't have to do two more if they don't want to. And then if the pair is elect, they they can and we'd have again, there's plenty of work to do, you know, to to close out the year. And others may be like, I've had enough. Yeah. I I mean, I think when we were talking about shortening the day, you know, the two student days, it was really like it would be really nice if we could give the teachers Friday so they didn't have to go back to Monday. Not really. Yeah. And again, that's the board's decision, but I'm just kind of talking through my recommendation here based on, you know, what we have in the various contracts and think things to think about.
Are we again trying to bandaid a situation? Are there other systems that can, you know, quickly, you know, differentiate what you've got going on? You know what I mean? Just in today's day. I'm Thank you for that. Yeah. Yeah. No, we could definitely use more staff. We're working on that. Um where's I don't see Mike on my screen. I got to scroll to his face. But laugh when I say this. I said, you know, Mike needs to get he's in the process of hiring an assistant, a secretary because he has been without um one. Um, and the you know what I'm saying to him, you got to put your o oxygen mask on first here so we can continue to do this work, right? Because because that that office has been stretched. A lot of offices have been stretched. I won't say that that's the only one.
You're welcome. Where do we think most teachers stand on this? Like I mean, I know where I would if you're going the teachers. Well, it's affecting their pocket, isn't it? But no, here the the teachers if the teachers Okay, then if the teachers are going to work one less day, they're not going to I don't think they'd be interested in we would have to do an MOA with the teachers. They're not going to be interested in not getting paid for that one extra day. It would be kind of a a nicity from the board. So, and again, someone asked me kind of during the conversation two weeks ago, Dr. Bro, would there be would there be a problem with this? And I said, there's always going to be some kind of problem. So, there's always a challenge we have to work through. And and so these are the things, you know, with the different contracts we have.
The same is true. So so we've got to get the finance rounded out um so that we don't end up in this position. Um it's actually more costly if we don't staff appropriately. And that's that operational efficiency thing that you guys have heard me say from time to time. The same thing with with HR, you know, in terms of the ability to recruit and be responsive and and on board in a in a way that keeps up with our the turnover that we're experiencing. We haven't right-sized some different offices around. And last year, um, you know, when we tried to kind of balance out where the cuts came from, we, you know, we we dipped into central office and it and it hurt hurt tremendously. So, you know, we it's one of those things. It's pay now, pay later. And yeah, we closed the budget, made it balanced, but in the in the back end, we're we we're less efficient.
So the motion that you've described would be that the board authorizes you to negotiate or to to enter into an MOA. Yeah. With each of the unions based on the discussion this evening based on the memo elicitate the par. I'm sorry. You could even elucidate. Yeah. With the paris and the nurses unions. It's not allions. Um so that'll make Friday their last day. Not not the Monday or Thursday. Monday the last day. Make them on Monday. I was confused about the days. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um so an M I have a motion language. Great. Um, wonderful. Well, I I'll I'll move that we authorize the superintendent to engage in negotiations with um PAR educator and nurses uh bargaining units and enter into a memorandum of agreement um considering the items here as discussed in this memo. I'll second. Any further discussion on this? Okay. All in favor, please indicate by saying I.
Um people are quite frankly very stressed out and um you know, we're trying to retain retain people. And when you invest a lot of time and energy like when I invest in this finance team to have all that, you know, very high quality but expensive training, I want to make sure that they stay with us, you know. So, and that's that we have to make sure that that office can handle what what's being asked of them and as well as the other offices that are that are doing similar high volume work right now. If I could just jump in to to add on to that. Um Michelle, you you know I I came from outside of education and um one of the first things that um John had tasked me with was to look at payroll because as you mentioned um it was a little bumpy when I first uh came on.
I. I. Any opposed? Any abstensions? All right. So, that vote is unanimous. Great. Thank you very much. All right. We'll get to work on that. Super. And is that something that we would know for the um April meeting or I don't know that we could do it that quickly, but if we as soon as we have it, you'll know. Okay. All right. So, now uh we're going to the subcommittee report. So, let's start with facilities. All right. Um, we met on uh March 5th. Uh, we called her at 6. Everybody was present. Casey, myself, Sarah, Stephanie, and Dan Cwell was there as well. Uh, new business. We discussed the non-priority grant applications for capital projects. Casey informed the committee of the process for submitting it and the grant applications to the state for reimbursement on capital projects. Casey will be moving forward uh with submitting the applications for projects that qualify in the future.
Um and you know wearing my typical industry hat I said I'll roll up my sleeves. I'll fix this. I'll bring in you know an outside payroll. Um we did I went to um three or four different vendors um paychecks UKG um ADP and I think one other one. I had in-depth conversations with them about about how we work in our systems and how they interface um and how they might be able to offer solutions to us. Um I think it is customary for um districts to use um their own in-house. Um, and I think that's a function of the software that we use. We we use Tyler Tech. Um, and that that Tyler Technologies is a huge publicly traded company. Um, they have many different products and they're all throughout municipalities and that's kind of how they're built. Um, so I I met with these companies and I took the top two or three and I brought them to Carara and I said, "Hey, can we just at least give them an opportunity to see what an outside company could do for us um and how they might interact with um with not only the finance payroll part, but we're plugged into the Tyler part that's human resources and recruiting and all that." Um and at the end of it it's we came to the conclusion that it may very well be something that's um costwise break even perhaps a little bit more expensive um but it would completely tear apart the entire system that we had and in the end they the payroll system said we can only guarantee you accuracy of the files that you give us and that's kind of where we were struggling.
I know it's a tall task, Casey. It's a lot of work. So, thank you for that. And uh hopefully we'll be getting those. These are also going to include the roof replacements, HVAC projects, and the oil tank replacement projects for Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Did I say that? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oil tank. Boils replacement. Yeah. Um for school due reports, we discussed the various uh uh school D reports are out there. There was nothing too pressing on there. I know Dan had covered most of it and said he was on top of those. Um and they were shown and indicated by the days that they were open. Um the update on capital projects the roofing project at uh BHS and WMS. The next steps are the planning of the schematic drawings with the Frier Frier architects. It's been postponed based uh because the of submitting of the non-priority grant application for this project which I believe will help us right offset.
So, okay. Garbage in, garbage out kind of situation. So, we um we went back to the drawing board and I'm proud to say since at least um July, don't say it. I I don't have any wood to knock on, but um since July um we've been much better. Yeah. Okay. Good. Thank you, Mike. Thank you very much. To add to that, Michelle, a big part of what we're going through and have going through uh is the the issue that we've had a lack of consistency or continuity in our finance department. Created this this issue where every time we get a new finance person is, they're coming in cold not knowing what the previous person has done and it's creating the issues. as you can you know hear and as you remember a couple of years ago I forget the timing the horrendous problems we had in payroll so the decision was to go with Tyler Mike explained the relationship between that what Mike has done too the Tyler system is good it's powerful but it's not all perfect to case in point Mike has made it a lot better by these account codes which can break outside of patient codes department etc etc But one of the the idiosyncrasies are that if Rich Janelli is a teacher in school A and two days a week he teaches in school B and you want to keep the records straight then they got to charge school B that requires some sort of a manual intervention to move it from A to B.
Um Casey and Dr. O will be coordinating Mr. Dunn in order to obtain the required resolution to move this application forward. The air conditioning in the library scheduled to be here at March 6th uh to remove the old unit. mechanical hookups will hook up into the f next week, which was last week, I think, or this week, something like that. Yeah, last week or this week. Um, staff bathrooms, uh, redoing them hopefully during spring break. The restoration of the heating coils, 19 of them throughout the building. Uh, should be a summer project. All this should be covered through insurance. Those were the ones that were damaged during the, uh, breaking of the vent. Thank you. Unit ventilator. I forgot that uh, secure entrance at the high school, the salad port. Uh, it's still a work in progress. We still need to wait on permits to be pulled.
You know we're not at at the point at this point period where that's automated. So a lot of that minutiae, but we're trying to to build to a better record keeping situation is is not done. So we know the limitations and we're looking to to to work around them. Uh but it's it has to be prioritized. I'll I'll just add one last thing and then I won't I talked a lot tonight but you know Michelle and for all everybody on here just our our finance group and our our board we we have to do a lot of work to restore the confidence in the taxpayers. Um we know that and I can tell you right now we're having some great conversations about really looking at our systems and and digging deep to say where else can we improve? How can we do this? How do we build build this team up together so that the communication you know is is strong?
and Dan is reaching out to the contractor to determine when the project will be completed. During the snow, we had six inches of water come through a pitch, pocket water, which Dr. Bril uh outlined and spoke about, and Dan did and his team did a great job working till 1:00 a.m. over the weekend to make sure school was ready for Monday. So, kudos to you, Dan, and your team. Again, well done. For middle school, the Edertton, Inc. as the boiler replacement job. They're going to attempt it, possibly attempted April break, uh replacing the one boiler with the leaking section. Uh the roof blown off in the gym a few weeks ago, 34,983 for work should be covered by insurance. Um estimate from Barrett Roofing, 83,000 to replace the roof, which is a work in progress. Um we had about 11 small leaks found in the building after the last storm.
How do we um you know what are the red flags? You know, how do we not miss something again? Like how do we you know even though we went through four CFOs for Mike is our fifth in a very short period of time, you know, what are the questions that we need to ask and what are the things that I need to do and everyone else so that we don't end up in this situation in this situation again. So, um, we're putting ourselves through the paces on this, um, to make sure that that, you know, we get the training and that the and that the things that we're doing on the back end, we're doing them well and right, and we're not just trying to, you know, throw it together to get through another financial year. Like, we we have to set this a strong foundation so that every year it's more tweaking as a instead of like blowing up the house and starting over again.
Barrett Roofing will be on site in the next couple of weeks to perform these to make sure that those are taken care of. We had no updates on the portables yet. Uh the NBC or their contractors. The cafeteria floor is going to be done during the summer and the rebuilt uh rebuild rebuilding excuse me the oil oil burner at WMS educ and Dan's team again have been working on it and every time there's an issue Dan and his uh crew are on it. The rooftop unit has failed at CLES. One of the five units has changes the air to the building. It's not in the warranty but I believe we are working on getting that taken care of. As we all know we fight over the whole new building stuff. Uh issues in the alarm system, sensitivity issues with motion motion sensors. There was some issues with wall covering coming down.
So, that's kind of just, you know, that's something that we're working on. And and the other thing too is is so that Mike doesn't repeat the the revolving wheel of the hamster that he did last year is to get him more professional help so that he can direct them to to resolve the issues that we have and those issues being cleaning up these accounts and looking at the current budget consensus. So, you know, we're I I think we're making progress. It it's uh it's going to take some time, but I think we're on the right track. I think we know what we're we're doing. It's just a matter now of having the manpower within and doing that within an accelerated period of time so that we all can feel comfortable that we're starting at ground zero to to move forward. I hope that you know it's a good it was a good question, Michelle.
Dan and Paul Czechos said they will be working with contractors to put them back together. An exterior siding have blown off during those last windstorms. Um, and those will be taken care of as well. The situation with the airtop units with the league, Dan and the team fixed this themselves and chill water pump issues. OMG put in a work order for this and we adjourned at 6:46 p.m.