Maybe something that I didn't answer today or something that we could bring back later. Um, and we have this uh QR code and it's going to put those wonderings up so you'll get to see each other's. It should anyways. >> Does it work? >> Yeah, I got it. >> Okay, good. Oh, it doesn't it doesn't show yet. I think I have to do something. >> How do I show? >> See, this is why we do this. Four responded. >> It is. >> Please wait for the presenter to change slides. >> There it is. There's one. >> Oh, that's cool. >> Such a broad question, >> but an interesting one >> emerging with another district. >> And I don't >> I don't think we're going to answer these questions. I just want to get them uh recorded. >> We're just wondering >> because these are just wonderings.
you know, because Yeah. Never mind. >> Yeah. >> Um Garrett Archer, you know, the numbers guy at ABC15, I don't know if anybody watches the local news, but Garrett Archer is like the data guy there. He two days ago had a story where he basically summarized the findings of all the Arizona audits, school audits. >> Uhhuh. >> And you know, one of our neighboring districts is now at high risk. >> Oh, did everybody see that um on the auditor general? >> Yes. report. Yes. >> Oh, I think Tristan, you brought it up brought that up in the board meeting. >> It was interesting seeing his report because >> it was interesting to see also several times over and over again our neighboring districts are struggling in some of these areas and I was glad to not see our name in this report a thousand times on the news.
>> Okay. And Oh, Nicole, are you gonna You look like you're doing you're >> Oh, no. Sorry. I don't have any wonder right now. >> Um >> I I really don't. >> It was Mrs. Heirs that >> Yeah, I don't have Not a Not a problem. Doesn't have to do it. I'm just trying to break up the day supposed to Vanessa and her spreadsheets. >> Pivot. >> Oh, sure. >> Sorry, my my eyeballs can't see the answers down there. >> And then, you know, you guys have great ideas and you've brought some up and so I wanted to kind of capture any strategies that you may be thinking about. I know Katie had talked about um banging on doors. Um so >> doesn't I think Mr. Man has a story about Emily and him uh running from a dog after banging on a door. >> I wonder.
And actually, did you get to experience a dog when you were with us, Russell? >> No, I I don't remember. >> I don't know the answer to this one. >> Yeah, it's typically pit bulls. >> That's true. >> Now, imagine having to >> But I really do value the input that the board brings and I just think you have a different lens. A lot of times I'm really stuck into the, you know, the numbers. Uh, and so I really like getting and and honestly that's why I really enjoy facilitating uh the committees that I do have uh with me this year, which was the compensation and compression committee and then also the fiscal stewardship committee. Um it has been uh just a very productive year and you could see how um when we were looking at some of those mitigation strategies those are coming out of those committees.
>> Dang who's yelling >> I know >> the president is yelling >> knew it was >> I mean I just have some facitious things to add but nothing our district can do. >> Is that that adage if you don't have something nice to say? Yeah, I'm thinking about oversight for >> you. >> Oh, grace. >> Absolutely. >> Let me get some of those innovative things in there. We don't even talk to each other and our answer is the exact same. >> That is fantastic. >> In case anyone's ever wondering out there. >> Yeah, we don't. Half of the time we don't. We just show up and we're like, "Oh, we're aligned. Great." I I put like a voting thing for people to vote on it, but I was like, you know what, it's fine. Uh I don't think that's necessary. I was just excited. I was turning things on with this tool.
Um it's the first time I've used a tool like this, but I know that um we've had this tool used in some of our other uh presentations, so I was excited to kind of bring something like that forward for us. A little something different. Yeah, I remember there was something similar used at one of the ASPA conferences and and I forget what I don't know it was something like as a schoolboard member how do you you know stay balanced or keep something like that and like it was surprising how big alcohol kept getting. Oh my gosh. >> It's where the words get bigger as more people type it in. >> So does go. >> Okay. >> Cuz it's like anonymous. someone can see who's >> Yeah. But but yeah. >> Wow. >> So, these are things that um have been gone over in the budgeting process quite a few times with some of the um uh more experienced board members, and I wanted to make sure that our new board members had access to some of these tools and documents.
So, the the school finance manual is a document that's created by the Arizona Association of School Business Officials. It's an it's an effort to try to make school finance a little more um uh easy to disseminate by layman people who aren't finance people. So, it is it's it's absolutely meant to kind of say where do these dollars come for schools and and where do they go? And Nicole, you'll have access to all of this. um in May computers >> Russell these aren't items that I'm going to go through today. Uh we've just made a for you and your your use and I would highly recommend going through uh the school finance manual. Uh in May of 2025, we also did a budget 101 presentation at a board meeting. Um this document is still very relevant. Some of the numbers have changed. Obviously, there's some references to that year's uh information, but that document is translated.
>> So, it's a it's a nice uh presentation to be able to have if you're wanting something that already has a translation built into it. >> Thank you. >> And then um the uniform system of financial reporting. This is just one of the guidance documents that drives what we do. And this is the legal stuff. So when we talk about how we do pro like purchasing and procurement and um h how we select vendors and how we manage cash in our district uh how you write a receipt all of those things are in the uniform system of financial reporting that is what we are audited on when uh Josh came and talked to us about our audit findings that was the un uh the USFR uh compliance questionnaire there's 170 questions this year. It changes every year. It's gone up to like 200, over 200 at some points.
Um, depends on what problems are found out in school districts as they audit or as the AG goes out and does performance audits. Every time something happens out there, uh, they put more focus on some of the questionnaires to help auditors direct that in a systematic way. So, like an example is uh back in the day at one point there were some border Arizona districts who were allowing students in from outside of Arizona uh borders and they were coming in like from California, sorry, New Mexico. Um and the students that are getting a free education, public education in Arizona are Arizona students. Um and uh so out of state, and I'm not talking about out of country, I'm just talking about out of state in Mexico, California. um that resulted in a huge process that we uh do to in the middle of Phoenix, we have to prove where you live.
And so there's a um a piece in our registration packet that you have to provide like a a bill or something showing that where you live. That came from that that that actually came from that. So we didn't do anything wrong but now there's this extra regulation this extra uh statutory compliance item that we have to follow because something happened somewhere else at some point in time. So um when you look at the uniform system of financial reporting if you look at those words you could say it's you suffer. That's kind of what we say >> suffer. Um our chart of accounts is really uh fantastic. There's about a bazillion pieces in that account code that I love so much. Um, but it really does dig into some of the fund information that we talk about at the board. And Tristan, what I was saying are these are items that I wanted to provide to new board members that um dig into the budgeting process.
We've done some of this in the past, so I wanted to make this available um for you guys because today I really wanted to get into the next level of the budgeting planning. I kind of want to pull back the curtain and talk about when I'm bringing those numbers to you guys, what where did those numbers come from and how were they developed? Uh what are the strategies that we use to try to um make sure that we're on the right path and we're targeting things appropriately and I am going to do some look backs to say here's what we said was going to happen and how did it turn out. Um, and then navigating our fund balance reserves, managing that budget balance carry forward, and then just kind of projecting budgeting, like what's the known and the unknowns and and how do we make sure that we're safe through all of that.
So, that's going to be the the second half of the budget presentation. Um, and before we get into that, I wanted to do a breakout. I just have a quick question as um before we go into this one. Do we have a document out there that has a crosswalk of how much of our budget is going into each goal or is that something that can be eventually explored so it it lets us know like how much of our funds are going into like board goal one or board goal two? >> All of it. >> Okay, cool. >> I I don't know that I would. It's aligned. So >> yeah, I think >> do you have an idea of may I mean we could do some like >> Yeah, I I think there's some >> and that's just an out there. It doesn't have to be answered right now, but that's just where my head goes as we think about future um budget hearings if we have a crosswalk sheet or if something can I don't know what that looks like, but that's just a wondering I have.
>> We can look for something we might be able to do. I think the biggest challenge with it is and I'll just give a quick example. Um, you know, we do training with our staff on um, tier good solid tier one instruction, right? So, creating learning targets, success criteria, writing a lesson plan, um, engagement, right? >> Well, um, some of the goals are math goals and some of the goals are literacy goals, but those things apply to all four goals. So, then how do you divvy like how do you take those dollars that are expended on that and divvy them up? They're actually across all four. So we can think about a way we might be >> but I think you answered the question that money would be put in there because it goes through it doesn't just meet the goal of one goal. It meets all of them.
So that money could >> still be you know that's still a good tactic of saying hey this is much going into tier one and it's going into tier one because of XYZ and this is how it's related and okay bam next. I think we're doing that and I guess what I would say is I think we're doing that with the any changes, you know, as we go through and and develop things that we strategically abandon or and then we bring on something new. Um, I think we could like like we did last year when we brought the coaching model and we put that as a special line on the budget because we wanted to draw the board's attention that we were changing and going to go down a different path and we're going to offer something new. we put our resources to it and that made it um stand out because it was new.
Whereas like right now if we're talking about eighth grade math, if I'm looking at staffing, kindergarten helps >> Eighth grade math. I mean, if we don't do the right things in kindergarten, kids in eighth grade aren't going to be able to pass math. So, it's it's a little harder to pull out things that are already existing. But I think we've really put in a good framework to um tie those cost to new things. And I I think we had talked with Lissa and the board had maybe brought that up during one of the um uh presentations uh when we were talking a goal present. I I don't know which one it was. It was an interim measure and I think we were looking to put dollars to some of those things when it has dollars. Is that kind of like where you were going? Right.
Yes. So that when we're do doing the presentation on the goals and the interim measures, we can say uh the the district invested, you know, this much money on this software >> almost $60,000 into like as an example, I think we had a conversation at one point about um the co the extra coaching support, not just like in our internal coaching staff, but the additional coaching support from an external math consultant, right? just like we had brought in an external language acquisition consultant the prior year. So those are the types of things that I think it would be easy for us to assign dollar amounts to. >> Yes. >> Yeah. And that the only reason why I say that is because eventually we're going out in public and saying well what new interventions or what new dollars are you using on X Y and Z to support this?
And then I look at them and I'm like well I don't know I know it's being done. So if there's just a place where that lives on, it gives us easier access to go out in community and really pinpoint, you know, x amount of dollars was put in this and this is, you know, what what Mr. Man just referred to >> crossf functionally and I just want to give some kudos to this right now because topically like this aligns um Miss Shapiro um Dr. Pombo and um uh Miss Wizak's team um so their teams and Miss Wizak's team have also gone out and said what do we need? What grants exist out there? So they've actually brought in new dollars that we didn't have before and then those dollars have been targeted specifically at SOFGL. So when you when you look at something like the implementation of a pilot with the mirror this year the AI reading intervention um we didn't redirect exist we didn't take money away from say reading interventionists to pay for that that's additional dollars coming into the system from a new grant that we received in order to pay for that.
Um, in addition to that, I think through that same granting program, we were able to get to be able to pilot uh the virtual coaching option. So that way where we might not have, you know, we only have so many coaches, right? So we could expand the amount of coaching we can put into our system by having virtual coaching available for some of our teachers as well. And then the beauty of those solutions is not only did we expand the pool of available dollars and use them for those things that are specifically targeted at SOFG because we're able to pilot them in that way. We'll have data on was this effective. And so then that will help us whether we're deciding to redirect existing funding from something that's less successful to that in the future or whether we're continuing to be successful and find additional funding resources.
Well, when we find them, should we put them into a mirror? If it's not working, let's not put more money into it. But if it's working exceptionally and it would be helpful to have it available to more grade levels of students, then let's make certain that we do go about finding the availability of funding to be able to support. And I love that because I know it's sometimes hard to put a time frame on new strategies to see how much time you need to give something in order for it to work. But I do believe those time frames are going to be needed regardless because at a certain point we have to say, "Hey, this is no longer working. Why are we just continuing to spend and spend when it hasn't produced the outcome that we wanted?" So, thank you for clarifying that. our our the our wonderful tech support here today, Russell got tasked um I think it was last year that we started the project with leading our strategic abandonment process for us.
>> Yes. >> And so and I don't know that this district has ever done >> I'm sure we have but not in such an intentional way strategic abandonment with the focus being on is this driving our SOFG goals forward? um you know because you you can't you can't continue to add things to the system, you'll break people. So if you're going to be bringing in new things that are going to move the needle for you, something's got to go right. And so and it and it supports it removing those things supports growth and development in two ways. One, it frees up fiscal resources for those other things, but the other is it frees up brains, right? It frees up hands. And so um >> so we're not in a cognitive decline. >> Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And and so you know that we're being very intentional about that.