AAPS Board of Education Study Session - May 13, 2026

001I call this study session of the board of education to order at 7:06 p.m. Miss Ozinski, may we have a roll call, please? >> Trusty Pascap, >> yes. >> President Feaster, >> yes. >> Trusty Muhammad, >> here. >> Trusty Schmidt, >> yes. >> Trusty Wilkins, >> here. >> Vice President Wils, >> present. >> Thank you, Miss Ozinski. I would now like to introduce the non- voting member at the table, Superintendent of Schools, Miss Jazz Parks. >> Uh, good evening. Thank you, President. you. That brings us down to the public commentary section of the night of tonight's meeting. The board would like to remind everyone the individuals who have signed up for public commentary will have their name called and will be given an opportunity to speak. Commenters will receive up to four minutes and the

002public commentary period will be limited to 45 minutes. When your name is called, please come forward and speak at the microphone. To help manage your time, a clock will be placed on the screen in front of you. We would like to remind everyone that public comments generally pertain to the Ann Arbor public school district matters. Comments about any individual or individuals are expressly prohibited. Also, please understand that board members do not respond to public comments, but we will listen carefully and will follow up as appropriate. Miss Ozinski, how many times do we have for this evening? We have s two signed up this evening and each person would get four minutes. Uh, first is John Marosi. Okay, >> good evening. Thank you all for your time today. Uh I know uh you have before you

003a lot of very important matters here uh at this study session in the months to come. Uh you're probably going to hear a lot of advice from people and so I have come to offer you some advice. Uh it's it probably is not unique advice but it's it's one that has been on my heart. So I I I want to share it nonetheless. as you consider the the issues about schools potentially being consolidated or closed, which obviously is a very emotional issue for a lot of us in this district and certainly understanding and appreciating the the important economic issues that you have to deal with. I would like to speak for a moment on the importance of preserving some buildings in our district that while historic and they may be up there in years, they're

004actually in my view amplified in their importance because of their purpose in telling the story of education and citizenship in this community. And I'm sure as you assess different factors, you'll look at the the property values that these buildings sit on. And I certainly am I'm aware that those are realities that you must consider. But there is value in a lot of these buildings that goes far beyond the land they're resting on. When you think about the history of Ann Arbor, uh the building that is now community high school, as you know, the legacy of Jones School to the African-American community here is essential in in telling the story of Ann Arbor. We think about the way in which our community has always welcomed immigrants. The the school that my children attend, BA, welcomed immigrants

005back in 1861 in its original form. The these are very important stories to share with our students in the area of citizenship. If if we want to send forth great citizens into the world and indeed locally in our community, we have to make sure that they understand through our own actions that we appreciate the importance of history and the importance of of civic engagement. I I think too as I've reflected on this and even since the initial bond was passed before CO that the needs of our community, the needs of of every young person who's being educated now, they've changed since then. And and I think our citizenship and our community's needs have changed too in that it's important to have schools where kids have the ability because of the neighborhood dynamics and and the

006ability to walk to and from school where they will stay and connect and you have multigenerational connections, students to adults, parents of their friends. These these moments are in many ways with the technological revolution that has accelerated since that bond was passed. These moments for kids are more fleeting than ever. And so we need to create very intentionally with the spaces that we have what what is important to us, what matters to us that we believe that it's important for kids to still be kids away from screens that have a chance to play and be there with their friends after school. So again, I know you have a lot of different things to think about. A lot of advice, I'm sure, is is coming your way, not just tonight, but in the in the days

007and and weeks and months to come. I appreciate so much the thought that you've put into this. I know these are not easy decisions, but I I just want to to raise my hand and say that that we need to create more spaces for our kids where where they appreciate history, where they learn the history, where they understand that they have a small piece of this long and great, and it is great history of of education in this town. and that uh we can best be caretakers of that legacy by keeping these historic buildings for their intended purpose which is to educate scholars and most importantly citizens for our community. Thank you very much. >> You Shannon Haramaki. >> Hi. Um, I would first like to say uh thanks for the note I saw on

008the agenda tonight that this meeting is currently being recorded and will eventually be posted somewhere. Um, can I request that it be like a YouTube link easy to share? Um, I have found it extremely problematic that many subcommittee subcommittee meetings and work sessions done by this body are habitually historically not recorded. Um, if you can't watch the Zoom meeting live due to work or child care obligations, etc., you are just out of luck. Um, it may not be against the Open Meetings Act technically, but it is not in keeping with the spirit of transparency. At a time when frustration and distrust is very high and there are difficult decisions to be made in the days ahead, I think showing that you have nothing to hide by recording and posting every meeting going forward would go

009a long way to build trust in this community. Um, I would also like to request that we do a better job at public comment procedure in general. Um, I know of no other public body that you don't know how much time you have to give your comments until the few minutes right before. It makes it really difficult to prepare or to even make sure you're getting your most salient points across. One time I remember I had less than 20 seconds. Um, um, then I would also like to thank our new CFO, Mr. Britain, for his presentation last week. I look forward to hearing more details tonight. I think he is correct to go after lowhanging fruit like buildings and land sales before more disruptive school consolidations um and to help our budget issues. I'm particularly

010excited for the sale of 2600 Nixon Road by Kle that was brought back in 2019 before most of you were on this board solely to stop a daycare from opening. Really bad decision in my opinion. But I would like to remind everyone watching that even not even three months ago, this board saw a presentation by Gilbane in which they were at the end talking about still needing to work with the city and start acquiring more land. It's almost laughable. Um, it is clear to me that Gilbang neither either does not know what they're doing or is working with incorrect enrollment and and financial data or more cynically is only concerned about its own bottom line with regard without regard to the financial health of this district. So, in the spirit of transparency and holding outside

011contractors and vendors accountable, I would like to ask this body and Mr. for Britain, I guess, to do more work to release a document that shows all of AAPS's contractors, the amount of money they have been awarded and for what and out of what fund, whether it be general fund, capital improvements fund, etc., and when the contract is up for renewal or review. Um, I know that many people get upset about tech purchases and a lot and then you all say, "Yes, but this is not from the the general fund where the teacher pay comes. from the capital improvements fund. But when we still have buildings where the bathroom stall doors fall off, I think we need to also be prudent with our capital improvements fund money. Um, that's all. Thank you. >> That concludes

012public commentary. >> Thank you, Miss Ozinski. We appreciate hearing from our community. The board would like to thank everyone who spoke and shared their comments tonight. Miss Parks, are there any points of clarification? no specific points of clarification other than that these are uh both commenters uh brought up points that are clearly very important. Um I know to you all as trustees to me and uh to to our team and uh we take our responsibility very seriously uh regarding um the topics of conversation uh that they brought forward this evening. So thank you for that both of our uh public commenters. >> Thank you Miss Parks. >> President Faster if I may. Yes. I'd like to clarify since I did sit on the board when the purchase of the land that the last speaker spoke

013of. The land was not purchased to stop any childcare center. Repeat, that was not our mission. That's not the action we took. So, I didn't want the community to believe that. >> Thank you. >> All right. If there's nothing else, that brings us down to our study session. >> We're at item A, uh, financial considerations for budget planning. and I'll ask Superintendent Parks and her team. I assume you all are going to open this up. >> We are. >> All right. We are going to start with just kind of an assessment of or summary rather of the survey that went out. So, if we could get that pulled up, we'll walk through that document um and just kind of set the table for the rest of the information that we'll be talking through this evening

014with trustees. So that survey as it pops up you'll see we had a total of uh 538 responses. Uh folks didn't respond to every single question because every question wasn't mandatory but uh the total response number was 538. Uh as we went through some of the quantitative aspects of the the survey responses we found that next slide please. Um there were se several key themes that emerged um comments that emerged and things that folks had questions about. The top finding from the open-ended responses was that teacher pay is the number one priority that came through in the responses to the survey. There was also broad support for land sales, some support for uh building sales and uh uh school closures and con consolidations uh was met with some opposition. Next slide, you'll see uh the

015breakdown of who responded between uh the community members who the survey was sent to. So parents or caregivers, community members, staff, parents, I'm sorry, staff, other and students. There's the breakdown there. So what what did the community say? So again, teacher paying compensation emerged as uh the number one priority around uh which the community responded. they wanted to see the district um operate and and and prioritize. Then also following that was student services, staff support, community engagement processes, consolidation and efficiency of our schools and buildings, fund balance stability, special education support and budget transparency. Then here we have um the areas in which the community rated uh their thoughts around some of the questions we asked regarding specifically selling unused land, selling uh current or unused buildings and then school closures and consolidation. So you

016see there um the responses Those were the responses for property and excuse me land and building sales, school closure and consolidation. And then we get into what is most essential. We asked a question about what's most essential to our community. again. Um, clearly it it was clear to us as we went through the the data that teachers and instruction was essential to the respondents to the survey. uh along with staff support, staff and support for staff, community and in neighborhood schools, special education services and inclusionary practices for students, arts, music and programs, smaller class and school size, as well as diversity and equity coming in um at the end there. So when we went through to assess and pull out the patterns that um the community wanted us to be able to speak to, these

017are the the seven themes that emerged um related to the primarily comments that respondents made. Um but there were significant a signific significant number of respondents that asked questions too and they kind of fell into these seven themes there. for teacher quality, compensation, and retention. Number one, that was a dominant theme. Small classes, small class sizes, and manageable teacher to student ratios was a very high theme across respondents. Specials, arts, music, and enrichment programs was a very high theme across respondents. Reduced screen time and skepticism about technology use was high. Neighborhood schools and community connection was high. transparency and accountability related to our budget practices and the way we report the budget was high and then student safety, equity and support for special populations was moderately high. So some of the key observations respondents frequently

018argued that money spent on technology, administrative salaries, and outside contracts should go instead to teacher pay and smaller class sizes. show and some some misunderstanding of funding streams and the proportional impact of some of these categories on the budget. Um then we also noticed that uh another key observation was the screen time skepticism was consistent across um demographics. Another theme that emerged was the value that the community places on the neighborhood schools um and it had a significant emotional weight uh to that and also the the teachers were through line in in almost everything. So teachers again and support for teachers and their compensation was a through line also. Again, this is just a breakdown of those seven themes uh a little bit more specifically. Teacher quality, compensation, and retention was about competitive pay, increasing

019morale and working conditions, fair benefits, and teachers as our top priority. Number two, small class sizes with manageable teacherto student ratios came down to individualized attention uh and teachers ability to be able to provide that to students. uh teacher workload, class size, and support for students who receive special education services. Number three, special arts. The third theme, specials, arts, music, and enrichment programs. Um the respondents uh acknowledged and noted specifically art and music, PN library, PLTW and CTE, uh PLTW's project lead the way, languages, and extracurriculars in athletics. theme four which was reduced screen time and skepticism about technology in classrooms. Um there was consistent across demographics. Um respondents noted limit desire to limit onetoone devices, increase hands-on learning, increase pen to paper and no AI in classrooms. Number five, neighborhood schools and community connections

020was about walkability, small school size, small community or school community feel, fears around some of the discussions we've been having related to school consolidations or closures. And then the title one school culture. Um there were respondents who are tit in title one schools uh were v vocal about the cultures that their schools in particular have built and wanted to sustain that. Number six was about transparency and accountability. Um some perceived administrative bloat, budget mismanagement. Um uh frequently those comments noted that there has been a history of budget mismanagement in the district and uh perceived lack of a transparency also and also the call for administrative uh and board accountability related to our budget transparency. And the seventh theme again student safety, equity and supports was about having physical safety in our classrooms and our schools.

021um student behavior and discipline supports, equity across all of our schools as it relates to resources and programming, having the appropriate IEP and special education supports, and having those mental health and social emotional learning supports for students. And lastly, this just c captured some bullets under each of the demographics uh who responded to the survey about what they value uh the most as it relates to the district. Uh I won't read them all there for you trustees, but you can see there um just a kind of summation uh of the major themes for each of the demographics. And so lastly, we have again just a cap recapturing the the theme and considerations that came through. The call to prioritize teacher compensation to protect class sizes to safeguard specials arts and enrichment programs. To audit our

022technology uh spending and use uh to pursue property sales before any school closures. to rebuild trust through uh transparency uh specifically related to the budget again and then ensuring safety, equity and special education support. So with those themes and those um the synthesis of the questions and the comments that we got throughout the survey, we have started um which Mr. Britain will jump into um in just a moment to address uh these not these these notable things that the respondents of the survey um as well as folks who have emailed us and that we talked to when we're out. I know you all talk to folks when you're out as do I and members of the team. um synthesizing all of that information together to start to um make sure we can provide for the

023community with some clarity uh the the things that they most find important to them. So at this time we're going to ceue up Mr. uh Britain's slides and he's going to start uh and walk us through. >> Uh thank you. Thank you trustees. Thank you Superintendent Parks. I am uh actually really excited to talk to you today um about budget. Um one of the things if as we're waiting for my slides to get pulled up that I wanted to start with is where we left off um at our last talk and that's how do we approach this? How do we approach these kind of conversations about tough decisions that we have to make? And I want to just reiterate that, you know, we start, this is round two of what we're attempting to do, which

024is increase the transparency, um um show how we use benchmarking and how risk avoidance we we are as well, trying to stay uh financially solvent for a number of different years. So, I want to go into this conversation and this study session um with that spirit. uh feel free to ask questions. Hopefully uh some of your questions may be answered with later slides, but um I really I'm I'm really excited to get into kind of this new um era of transparency and bench and showing how we look at data and how we use that data to make decisions. So where do we start and how do we start when we make changes? Again, I'll reiterate the same thing I said last week. We start with student needs and we use data and research to make

025those needs. Tonight is part of the third bullet which is engaging with our community. That's our community is you um it's our staff but it's also our our community as a public as well. So being able to engage our community and have these kind of uh budget discussions I think are really vital for the long-term sustainability of the district. uh as we go through and like I said already um what we'll go into first today um is we'll actually you can go to the next slide we'll go into our public school budgeting and what I wanted to do was give a little bit of an overview of how exactly we receive revenues how our revenues um impacts our overall financial picture um and then what we're going to do really is a heavy dive into

026our expenditures today uh we're going to talk about some of those things that um have been brought up like purchase services and the increase in purchase services and why we're seeing some of those increases across um so many of our cost categories. But first, let's just start with how this works a little bit. You you do hear us talk a lot about what different funds are used for and what they're not used for. This is a simple graphic that I wanted to show that there is indeed different colors of money in the district. Um, and the main source of funds that we use operationally that fund teacher salaries, staff salaries, instructional materials, utilities, operation, transportation is that general fund. But the thing to understand, and I won't take you through this entire slide, but the

027thing to understand is that we have several other funds that are set up, but they're set up in large part to support the activities of the the general fund, which supports our core operation. But the thing to remember here is these funds are really restricted and they can't cross paths. So even though we might have funding in a syncing fund or a debt fund or a food service fund, we can't use that for the operational things. We can't use that for teacher salaries or staff salaries or transportation and things like that. Now whether it's building renovations or or uh maintenance or things like that, that's where we try to make choices and try to make decisions about when we can use other funding to relieve some of the pressure that we have on our general

028fund. So this is just a simple thing that I wanted to show the three buckets on the end. I just want to make sure that we understand we report out on these every month, but they are the self- sustaining funds. And I think at our last board meeting, we talked about this a little bit too, is that with those funds, as long as they're self- sustaining, we just monitor that they're they're doing their job. The only time they'll interact with the general fund is if they're short or if there's some kind of deficit and then the general fund does have to go to cover those. So, I want to make sure that we we realize that the district monitors these on a monthly basis. We monitor ca cash flow, but we also monitor balance. And

029then we also uh monitor how they're doing in performance to what their budget is budgets are too. So when you take a look at the next slide, same thing. It's just really showing that these funds go in cooperation with the general fund, but they're very separate from the general fund. The general fund is our operating core. So today we'll focus more on the general fund. We can have other conversations about how the syncing fund is used or food service funds or debt fund. But I think today what I want to focus on is how the general fund is used and how that's utilized both how we receive revenues from that but also how our expenditures have been going and kind of the what is so um about spending and how we've been doing with spending

030at in Ann Arbor school district. So the first thing is how do we get our general fund dollars? So, it's a combination, but I want to make sure that the board understands the only part of this equation that we have control over as a district is the number of students. And by control, I mean that's the only lever we can really use to increase our revenue is the number of students. The foundation allowance is set by the state. And basically how it works, the second line that you see is you have your local property taxes that go into that and then whatever that the whatever less that amount is from your foundation allowance, that's what the state aid actually fills in. So they fill in the blank between what your foundation allowance is per student

031and then what you've actually covered with property taxes. Like I said, the only part that we actually control as a district is the number of students. So, let's take a look at how we've been doing for the last few years um with both the foundation allowance, the number of students, and our overall revenue trends. You can go to the next slide. So, when we take a look at it, um you know, we've had some some increases as of late, really the last four or five years in our foundation allowance. It remained relatively steady through the um through the uh early 2000s, but then we did see some increases in our foundation allowance. And so, one of the things that folks talk about is that we do receive a higher foundation allowance. But I'm going to

032talk about that relative to our revenues in just a moment. Over that same course of time though, you can also see that since 2000, we've had a steady enrollment decline. So if you think about what I just said with the equation, what that basically equals out to is the student loss negates a lot of the student aid increase that we would see if our student if our student count was remaining the same. So I think sometimes um folks might assume that with the state aid going up, our revenues are going to go up tremendously as well. That's actually not the case because it's subsidized a bit by the student enrollment count. So going to the next slide, our revenue our revenue stream and our revenues have increased but it's a little bit misleading here where

033the increase has lied. The increase has not lied because in our enrollment or necessarily because our foundation increase one of the biggest jumps was in 2021 when we received uh co money um ers money uh elementary and secondary school emergency relief money. We received about $27 million. And so part of that increase is in there. So if you go to the next slide and I can go back to this one if necessary, but I wanted to show this. So we have had a 15% uh increase in our revenue but at the same time part only part of that is because of the foundation allowance. The main part of that increase was that 27 million that we received for CO but we did see an increase on our foundation allowance. But the point here is that

034if we would have if if we would have remained steady at our student count, that revenue increase would have been much more significant and I think closer to the expectation that some folks have about how much revenue we actually have in the system. So this slide just shows how our revenue, our foundation, and our FTE per students have been performing over the last several years. Like I said, you can see an 11% overall increase in our foundation allowance and then a 15% increase in our revenue. But like I said, a big driver to that rather than the foundation allowance increase, a big driver is the one is the one-time funding we received for CO. Um I will mention this too since we we're mentioning that money. That money was primaril that was was used in

035a number of different ways and it was used in the in in the intent that it was uh Ann Arbor stayed out a little bit longer uh during CO um and that was used to cover some of those costs. It was also used with retention of key staff and and teachers and and personnel across the district across the entire district. It was used for retention as well. And then it was also used to implement social distancing once we did return. So all of those funds were used for that purpose. And and so I want to make sure that we know that even though we're not going to talk I'm not talking today about that spending. I'm talking more about our most recent spending. I want to make sure that we know our revenue increase is

036what is due a lot more to that influx of cash than it's due to the uh foundation allowance increase. So, how do our revenues stack up? So, our revenues, we we have about $316 million in revenues. The biggest source of that are state sources. So, it is that of foundation allowance and state aid. Um, but it also involves some special education reimbursements and other funding that we receive through the state. The next the next biggest part is local sources, which are property taxes. Property taxes are local millages and things like that. And then we sum it up with our interd district sources, school of choice, uh, non-resident tuition, some consortium agreements we have, and then federal sources. I want to mention this with the 3.5% of federal sources. Even though it's general fund, it's very

037restricted to what you can use it for. So those funds are not always available to be used for things like salary or even utilities and things like that. It's very specific whether it's special education that it has to be used for or very specific functions when we get money from the federal. So you can see some of those you can see some of the where some of those land as far as federal sources it's IDA title one things like that. >> May May I ask a sure question or clarification? So, um on slide seven, you talk about um money coming in from the state and what where the money for the school aid fund it, uh comes from. And the statement was made um taxes on property in our local taxes, property taxes. >> It's

038not homestead. >> No, it's non homestead, but it's mostly sales tax and income tax. So, I think when I hear sometimes from the community, we're, you know, our values are going up. We're paying these big taxes in Ann Arbor. Why aren't our schools getting more? Those the whole concept of proposal A was to make that source for schools to be mostly from sales tax and income tax with just non-homestead tax. And when we do um take in the non-homestead tax and we let the state know this is what we've brought in, they'll basically say, "Okay, well, you get 10,000 a a child, you were able to raise whatever amount, right? >> We'll fill in the rest, but you still don't go over 10. >> It doesn't matter if you bring in even more. We'll just

039give you a little less because you still get the amount." Um the other thing that and I wasn't on the board at this time and maybe um can add to this but some districts when the co money came in took that money and put it in their fund balance and there were I mean Detroit got some huge amount per pupil as they needed it right um what I saw from the outside and I had just retired but is that the money here was used for air filtration delivering meals to kids that weren't in school. you know, we actually used the money for the purposes. It wasn't just to squirrel it away into your fund balance. So, um, is that and am I accurate about that? >> Very. >> Yeah. >> Continue. >> So, you know,

040our fund balance could look differently had we not spent it on the children and the things that needed to be done >> and and that that's very true, trustee. Thank you. And and that is that is why we see some of the differences in fund balances with our district peers is because some of some of them were able to bank that co money and we did not. Um Okay. All right. So what I'd like to get into now sorry I just and thank you for pointing out the the co money that came in. What I know you I know we're not going into expenditures right now but what what was it mostly used for and when was it used? when we looked into it um because we had to go back and look because it

041was a little bit be it was before my time in the seat also we we saw that um a significant portion was used as a retention bonus if you will a retention stipened for all staff. So that was a significant expense. And the other significant expense was um when we returned to in-person instruction um the value was around having smaller class sizes for social distancing purposes. So we added additional staff to be able to support having smaller class sizes. um and not just teachers, but we also added um other staff as well um to support the increased needs that we saw when students returned um to inerson instruction. >> Okay, thank you for clarifying because that's what I thought most of it was for um which was very important definitely at that time but it

042it helps. So, thank you. >> I just had a real quick question too regarding the the CO money. Um, so when we received the CO money, was it actually earmarked to be used for those purposes that were just outlined? And why why were some districts able to to sort of tuck it away into their um fund balance? I I just don't >> So it >> I don't really understand that >> ESR dollars did have to be used for specific purposes. Uh I can't I can't speculate on what what or why other districts did anything. So, I don't I don't want to speak to that, but um I can confirm and verify because we've looked into it that what we spent the co dollars on was for the intended purposes of >> of those funds. I'm

043not sure what what other districts chose to do or why. >> Okay? But so, let me put it this way. So, if I took CO money as a district and paid some of my general fund expenses, I would have money left to put in the fund balance. We went above and beyond what our general fund expenses were because of the needs of our students. >> Got it. >> So, they maybe didn't take it and put it right in, but you know, it made the money available to build that fund balance. >> Okay, I got it. Thank you. >> Thank you. So, what I want to dive into for the next few minutes is uh expenditures. Um, how do we spend our money? And I do want to go through a little bit of my my

044thoughts on on how how do you kind of judge and at the end I want to talk a little bit about how do you really judge whether you're being effective or not? Is your spending effective or not? So there's a few different metrics that I've used that I want to talk about. But first I want to talk about what we've seen in expenditures over the last several years. So the we have about 302 million in expenditures. the majority of that, 80% of that is in wages and benefits. Um it's about 240 $2 240.5 million. Um the next largest category is purchase service followed by the next largest category which are supplies. That's the three categories we're going to focus on here today. Um we're going to focus on wages and benefits. what trends we're seeing

045in wages and benefits, our purchase services, and our supplies. Because I know and and it is a budget concept for everything, and I've I've said this before and I'll say this, you'll hear me say this many times, for everything you choose to do, you're choosing not to do something else or you're choosing to change something else that you do. There's opportunity costs. So, where are those opportunity costs as we look across um Ann Arbor public schools budget? And so I want to highlight some of those and talk through some of those a little bit more. So when we look at our total expenditure trend and our trend over the last several years, um we we have we we went up um for a while um in in 2023 and 2024, but we're now on a

046downward trend where we're really trying to maximize um and and be lean in our operations and really maximize our cost. Um well, not maximize our cost, but minimize our cost. um as much as we can. We're looking for um and you'll see in our contracted services, we're actually seeing more savings there um than we believe it would be if it was in house. We're seeing some of the things starting to play off in our maintenance department. Some of the investments we made in our maintenance, we're starting to see those pay off and some of our operational costs, and you'll see later that we're starting to see some of those costs pay out. So our costs are they had steady growth over time and that is true. Our costs have gone up and our expenditures have

047gone up 36% um over the last 5 to 6 years but I'm going to show where that growth is in those three major categories. So when we take a look across the categories where have we seen the most growth at? So we've seen growth in those three categories. Like I said, the m majority of the growth has been in supplies, materials, purchase, service, not necessarily other. Other only makes up about 500,000 of our costs. That's in equipment, dues, some of those other things. Those are not what's really causing the increase in our cost or uh the the amount of our what our inpenses are. It's really in wages and benefits, purchase services and supplies with supplies and materials seeing the biggest jump and then purchase services under there. And then our wages and benefits have

048also increased. And since our wages and benefits, don't forget, are the biggest piece of that pie. That's a significant cost increase even though it's only 7 and a half% or 7.3% over that time. So, first let's talk about purchase services. And there's a lot on this slide, so I'm going to leave some of this to your own consumption cuz I understand um that people will want to take a a detailed look, but this is part of us being transparent as well. I want to make sure that people understand where our costs when we talk about purchase services and we talk about our contracts. We talk about them in terms of non-instructional and instructional and I understand that. But some of our biggest cost and our purchase service and what's driving some of those increase I

049would argue are very vital to student success in the same breath. So Durham which is our transportation vendor is about 19.7% of our purchase services. We that that is what what students have access to their school. So that not being non-instructional is still vital to student success. So remember what I said before, what's guiding our decisions around finances are primarily students and primarily what the student need is. Transportation is a student need and what any district needs to run um a successful district for their students. The other big category that we're spending in is in our custodial and maintenance, our lawn, snow, and athletic field maintenance. So that's making sure that students have a safe and clean learning environment. So, it's just as important um you know that they get to the buildings safely, but

050it's also important what the the condition and the environment in those buildings are when they get there. So, we do we commit we invest in um our learning environment and we invest in transportation. But then one of the other biggest costs that we have that's third in that is our educ staff cost. it shows up in purchase service because it's a contract, but really it's not administrative at all. This is to cover instructional teachers when they cannot be in the classroom. So, this is this is part of what you're seeing in purchase services. So, when purchase services goes up, this is a large component of the cost, too. Now, some of the other things that are driving some of those costs are special education services, which are some some of them are reimbursable. So, we

051do offset some of those costs, but then we've seen growth um over the last several years in tuition. Um with tuition, it's dual enrollment. It's our CTE uh program in cosmetology. Um and it's it's different tuition programs across multiple categories that we have with WISD. So, one of the things I'd like to say here with purchase services and how we spend purchase services is I think sometimes it's a notion that we're just buying supplies or we're just buying these things. And I'll talk a little bit about what's important is is one to make sure we are getting the best cost for those contracts. And I'll talk a little bit in a minute about how I looked at it as a kind of incoming CFO and what did I look at to see how successful are

052those contracts when we benchmarked those. One of the things we talked about was benchmarking. When we benchmark those against our peers, how are we doing in terms of cost? And I'll show that our contracts are actually performing really well. I think when we look at our operational cost and it's it's not I think I'll show in a minute. When we look at our operational cost in comparison to peers, we're doing better um as far as our spend and that is because of some of these contracts that we have. Go ahead. Um when we look at the dual enrollment uh program and how costs have gone up, costs have gone up because the partnerships we have with the colleges, they've raised tuition that we pay. Can somebody dig in a little bit? How many students does

053it impact? This is just I know nothing about it. What can you tell us? >> Isn't that Dr. >> Or we can have anything to add to that? No, >> sorry. It didn't take >> Dr. Haywood. Did >> Dr. Haywood, did you have those numbers this evening? >> Mhm. Miss Lynon, what about you? >> Okay, we'll we'll look at >> Yeah, I don't mean to catch anybody off guard. I I think um could could somebody just explain what that I know we sat down a couple of us on the board had a discussion about this because I'm not sure people in the community or even myself understands what all we're offering through that. That's a line item and it's like that's because some students can go to uh Eastern Michigan and get advanced math. Could

054somebody just talk to what that is? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. Looks like Miss Lindon if we we'll pass it down to her. >> Thank you. Sorry. So, we offer our students the opportunity to enroll in college level courses for courses that we don't offer in our school district that go beyond our offerings. Um it is a state of Michigan reimburseable program. Um students have up to $800 per course. This this typically covers all of the costs of a community college course. um and most of the costs of other four-year colleges. Um so students apply through their counselor to um participate in the dual enrollment course. They list the course they want to take um when they want to take it. Counselors vet and verify all of that. Um and then the students then register

055themselves, their families do for that course. They actually have to apply to be accepted into that college or university as well as a dual enrollment student. Okay. >> And then uh the school district pays for that course directly >> and we're not reimbursed by the state. What's the 800? What? >> We are reimbursed for dual enrollment. That's correct. >> Up to up to 800, I believe, but I'm going to double check those numbers and I'll also get you the count so you know how many. >> So the 800 sounds like it probably wouldn't cover everything because obviously we've got costs here unless these are just costs that we see, but then we're reimbursed later for these. Is that what that is? >> That is correct. We we pay for the course directly to the university

056and and if monies remain that we also cover costs of books. >> Yes. >> But you you follow where I'm going with this? >> So So we do so so the way that things are tracked and that and that's one of the things like when you see our spending like in public record, you don't always see that some of these costs are reimburseable. So they do hit the books and they hit our books in purchase service and you see this large thing, but some of our things in purchase services are reimburseable or they're even covered by grants. So you're like one of the things that you're going to see in our supplies budget is we had a huge hike in one of our purchases for arts and letters, but that was also covered by a

057grant. So it's still going to hit our books as an expense, but then it's actually reim it's reimburseable by through a grant. Well, that that's a really important piece to know. >> Yeah. >> So, just for clarity, what you're saying is we have to have that money in our general fund to cover it up front. >> We have to have it covered up front to be reimbursed first. We don't have it up front then. Yeah. It's it's not they give you the money for it. We have to cover the charge first. >> Just want to make sure that's clear. Trusty Muhammed. So, I know you're going to go to the next slide, but those numbers um specifically, so if there's like an increase, for example, with dual enrollment, that not necessarily includes tuition increases, but

058it could be that more people signed up, right? So, there's more people signed up. >> Um, but my I just wanted to clarify because there's going to be increases. It could just be the need has increased, right? >> That's correct. And then if there is so it would help to see to understand I know this is more about the money like how many are in enrolled in these >> okay >> services because it gives us it quantifies like really how much the increase is and then um the other thing is um when it comes to cuz I see some increases um I think that's that would be helpful just to have like the number like especially when comes to programs because then you can average it out. How much is it per per person that

059is enrolled? But thank you. >> That's something we can follow up on. >> Are you asking that for the possibility of cutting those programs? >> Well, just to understand also like has it with the increase is it also due to increased enrollment in these programs? Um and then sorry that was the other sorry I thought I had another question for um for these numbers that are on the next slide do these these are just pure expenditures they're not there's no um it's not covering like what's being reimbursed >> the numbers that are going to be covered >> pure expenditures >> these are pure expenditures because this is what shows up in our public documents okay that people are responding to right they're responding to this data and the increases that they're seeing across the board.

060So, no, we haven't matched it to what's reimbured and what's not in this analysis >> because that might be helpful especially when we're looking at like for example the dual enrollment if most of it is is reimbured and that's good for us to know too. But yeah, I just wanted to make sure the numbers that I'm looking at make sense. >> Let's do it. >> Yeah, I I just wanted to highlight that we are very fortunate to be able to offer this to our students. When we talk to other school board members across the state, I mean we are an envy because of where we are and the partnership that we have with the higher education um institutes. Um people institutions people are really envious that we are able to do this. Now of course

061this isn't for every student. Um, as Miss Linton said, the students have to be, you know, uh, have to be eligible to be accepted to the institution and to be able to do the coursework because they will graduate from us first. Um, so they've definitely got to do the the coursework that's required through AAPS as well as keeping up in their college courses. So, um, again, this is often seen as a recruitment tool as well. Um I know of students who come to us because we do have again educational opportunities in our district that they wouldn't have in their in their home district. So um again just wanted to highlight this is a lot of good work from a lot of good students. Thank you sir. >> Thank you. >> Okay the next slide. So

062this shows the trend uh in our purchase services. So where are we seeing the increases? We're see we are seeing increases in for example Durham. Uh we've seen increases there. that is largely due to some additional routes um we've had to add but also in the use of monitors. Um we've seen an increase a marked increase in the number of monitors needed for general education. Um and that's largely due to behavior will issues that we're seeing and requests from the school um on for that. So, a lot of that does have to do with those uh with those additional monitors as well as an increase in some of the routes that we also had to do. So, we have seen an increase in Durham. But, like I said, I I'll go back later and talk

063about how I kind of look at that contract and how it's performing. But, one of the things I do want to mention at this point is that we'll continue to look at our contracts. We'll continue to look at those to make sure they're cost effective and what it will and compare those cost every time they're up to whether it's less expensive or more expensive to bring it in house or more effective to bring it in house, but also what other vendors are out there. So, we're making sure that we're getting the best pricing. But this is kind of a this like I said this but we're also seeing an increase here in our purchase services in things that still are reimburseable like special education. um we're seeing a marked increase um in our special education

064cost, which means we're providing better support for our special education u students and in the classroom. So, we're seeing a marked increase there. And like I said, this is kind of the annual increase that you see across. But how I evaluate and how I look at kind of how are we doing in terms of spending, I'll show you in a in a few in a few slides in our benchmarking data. >> Real quick question, just real quick. So how often do we revisit our contracts? So for example, EDUS staff, do we revisit that contract on an annual basis and Durham on an annual basis? >> So we evaluate each of our contracts on an annual basis, but as far as up for bid, it's it's depending on the length of the contract. So it may

065be a four-year contract or a 5-year contract and and and it just depends on the length of those particular contracts, but we evaluate them every year um to see how we're performing, why we're performing. I recently just sat down with Durham and had a conversation about our cost increased and what how we can work with them as a partner to kind of decrease those costs to go in the other direction. So, it's things like that that we do on an annual basis, but as far as doing a full evaluation on what's more cost effective, it's it's depending on the length of those contracts. >> Okay. All right. Thank you. I see Trusty Wilkins and then Trusty Schmidt. >> Is the decrease in educat edgy staff in the last year? Is that because building subs? We

066no longer have the building subs. Is that >> the dedicated building subs? Mhm. The one. Yes. >> Yeah. So that was a reduction. Just so everybody knows what we're talking about. That was a reduction in the dedicated building subs that were basically dedicated to each classroom where we discontinued that >> each school. >> Each building, sorry. >> So they no longer have a permanent sub in each building. Correct. Exactly. I got it. >> Correct, Dr. Schmidt. >> So a lot of expenses in edge of staff. Um and I think I mean we've had to raise what we pay per day on Mondays and Fridays. Is that right? >> Correct. >> Because we have so many people out on those days. Um, when you talked about reimburseable special ed, it's reimburseable. Is that through Medicaid? We

067have some things that are reimbursed there or what who what's reimburseable, >> Casey? >> I mean, I know we get I think Miss uh Lewis is trying to get her mic to work there. >> Here you go. I think it's >> Oh, it's on. >> It's on now. Um so the way that special education costs are reimbursed um is in pots almost similar to what um talked about earlier. So initially uh we submit all of our costs for the school year on a form called the 4096 to the Michigan Department of Education and they reimburse us 28.6% 6% of our costs for special education. Then in addition to that reimbursement, uh we also receive federal funding, idea, which is based upon the number of students uh that we have in the district that have an

068IEP. And so that uh particular amount of chunk of money, again, they pay that on a per student basis to us and it fluctuates from year to year. But I would say typically maybe that is somewhere between three to $4 million per year that we would be reimbursed for that. Once those two are taken from the total costs, then we are then reimbursed um through the act 18 funds from the WISD. And again, the reimbursement from WISD depending on the amount that they budget for the county will then determine kind of what our allocation is from the WISD act 18 funds. And historically that has caused our average overall reimbursement to be somewhere between 93 and 97% each year. We are also reimbursed um for particular Medicaid uh billing and we're also reimbursed for special

069education transportation. So those two pieces can also um again increase that percentage number for us. So, do you feel with all these different ways that we're reimbursed, we are still not made whole with the expenses it takes to get the federally required support for these children? So, right, there's still a small percentage of the overall special education budget that must come from the general fund, but it is in comparison to other um counties across the state, the amount that we are reimbursed is much more significant than other counties. Again, there is a small amount that would um like I said, somewhere between 3 and 7% that would need to come from the general fund, but typically again in comparison to uh other places across the state, we are actually doing >> and that was at

070CT um the special ed enhancement mill that we voted on. Correct. >> Correct. Correct. That was the special ed mill. >> But it's very weird because we don't know. I mean, we're reimbured for that a year later and we can assume that we think we know what we need and we will get we won't necessarily get as much as we need. Correct. >> Yeah. Depending on what everybody else needed in the other districts. That's true. That's where you really >> unpredictable. Okay. Just a quick question to clarify >> on edge staff. Are we still the uh highest paying district for our subs? I know we've raised our rates. I'm not sure. >> Okay. But I I mean we have our rates are often higher than other districts. Our demands are so. >> Yep. Appreciate that.

071>> Yeah. We'll check and you all that answer. >> Welcome. >> All right. Thank you. And so before I leave purchase service and we go into the next category, I just want to mention, you know, it's it's good that we're being like that we're able to provide some transparency around this category because I think one of the misconceptions is that it's it's purely for things that do not impact the classroom and it very much is. Um our highest categories in this is edge of staff and then like I said it is things like uh classroom environment whether it's grounds and maintenance custodial and then our transportation. Uh those are our three primary truck cost drivers here. So I just want to mention that before we go into our next category which is supplies. U so

072really briefly we can go into supplies. Supplies makes up about 11.2 million of our budget. uh we have seen an increase in this in in in these categories. One of the reasons why and I want to be clear why you still see operations and maintenance and custodial supplies even though we have contracts with those is that we get a better price for them. Um we're involved in some cooperatives as well, but we get a much better price. They have a 6% markup on custodial supplies, things like that through ABM. So we actually purchase some of the supplies. we purchase um the operations and maintenance supplies, our plumbing, uh carpentry, those kind of supplies that we also still have to purchase outside of our contracts. So, we're not going to completely wipe away our supplies budget,

073but you're going to see, and you'll see our comparables in a minute with other districts where our supplies budget is still below uh what normal districts would be. And I think a lot of that does have to do with our contracted services that we pay for in those purchase services. Uh when you look at supplies at the next uh slide, when you look at supplies, the one big jump that we had in supplies that is really driving the four-year change um is that we implemented a program that you're probably all familiar with, arts and letters. Um and that had a one-time uh uh price total of like over 1.5 million. Now, that was actually funded through a grant though. So that's one of those things that even though it shows up as an expense here

074and as a cost increase when you look at our books that's actually was covered by a grant. Um so that's but that's why you see the large increase between FY25 and FY24 in teaching supplies and textbooks because of our arts and letters program. So other than that supplies have been increasing somewhat but we haven't seen a dramatic increase in supplies in any one particular area. supplies covers teaching supplies and textbooks, but then it covers our utilities, our uh DTE, our gas, things like that. So, those are the things that are covered in our supply budget. Once again, still still very essential. >> So, do I remember that? Didn't we have other expenditures in textbooks this year? It seems to me it was um Miss Lynon, was it physics and geography? I remember you bringing those

075huge things to Yeah. So there we were hit with a lot of those it seemed like right together. >> Yeah. Yep. Whoops. >> Sorry. >> I can move. It's all right. >> There were several that we brought over the last uh few years because of the outdated nature of the AP textbooks. So most of those were AP. Gotcha. remember AP psychology >> AP history >> and they're pricey. >> Yes indeed. >> Thank you. >> Okay, you can go to the next slide. >> So this next slide is really important. Um as a as a CFO whenever I kind of enter a new place or a new organization one of the things I ask a question to when we start to benchmark around our competitors how are we budgeting? How are we doing in in in

076in in uh in the place of budgeting and our financials? One of the we ways that I look at this is I look at our expenses but not as expenses as a as a part of the expenditures but as a part of revenue. Why do I do that? Because I want to I want to look at what your sources are to what your spending is. If that makes any sense. If if I just look at it in relationship to spending that just shows me how much you're spending. That doesn't mean you're not overspending. even as that amount increases. But as I look at it in terms of sources and in terms of revenue, that gives me an idea of how we're doing in relationship to budget. Does that make sense? And what you actually have

077available. So, if you take a look, and I am going to go back up to personnel expenditures because I know that stands out, but if you take a look at how we're operating in operations and maintenance, transportation, business services, across the board, pretty much when you look at our peer districts, we're actually operating much lower in our cost than they are. Uh, in transportation, we're at about 3.3%. There's the couple districts that are lower than us, but for the most part, we're under most of our peer districts. in what we are for transportation, even though we have even though we have Durham and we're contracting that out, that lets me know as a CFO when I take a look at that that that contract is performing up to par. If if if I saw if

078I came in and did this analysis and saw a 10% cost for transportation or 8% cost where all of our peers were at about 5 or 6%, that's where we would look into is is this really most cost effective for us as a district. when I look across the district in operations and purchase service and supplies and things like that, we are we are right there where we should be. So, this lets me know as far as when I take a look at the analysis that budgeting wise and planning wise, how we're spending our and allocating our spending is right in line with our district peers. Now, the one caveat is you see the 76% for personnel services. I want to point out one thing. If you go to the next slide, our contractor services,

079we take a lot of the staff that we would normally have in house out. They're they're now working for the contractor. They're now working for ABM. They're now working for Durham. If we were to have all of those, and this is not our pure cost of bringing it in house. So, I don't want you to think that it's not equipment. It's not the liability of work workers compensation. It is not those things. This is just purely salary. the number of bus drivers that they employ, the number of custodians that they employ, the number of grounds and maintenance that they employ. If we had all of those in inhouse, it would be 34 million. Well, if you go back and you take a look at my analysis, if you now put that 34 million on top

080of the 240 that we already spend on our personnel expenditures, now you're up to 87%. And going to the next slide, which is the which is the same slide as before, if you look across the board at 87%, now we're either above or right in line with where our peers are. Now, some a couple of those peers do contract out services, but even if you look at it, even if they contract out services, the we're we're performing or we're spending at a lesser rate than them in those in those in those categories in transportation, in operations, in maintenance. So, this actually is one of the things that I looked at that let me know spending wise is not the issue. It's not where we're spending or where we're in terms of overspending. That's that's not

081the issue. It's how we're we're going to have to utilize resources. And like I said, this is why I'm recommending more of reducing our geographic and our footprint in the district to reduce than reducing cost in one of these big categories. Does that make sense to folks? >> Any questions on that slide? >> I have a question. Can you explain I don't yet understand it, so I'm sorry. the first column under AAPS 79% of expenditures. So of that 3006% of that >> 302 million. >> No, not the 302. The 302 is expenditures. So we're looking at it as a percentage of revenue. So it's the 317. >> It's the 317 for revenues that we're looking at. So, as a percent, if you take your personnel expenditures, the 240 million, and then and then you take

082that by percent of revenue, the 317, that's where we're at, 76%. >> Okay. So, the next one, 58.3%. >> That's in instructional expenditures, >> percentage of >> same thing, percentage of revenue. So if you take all of our instructional expenditures and you take that as a percent of our our revenue, the sources we have available, we spend 58% in instructional in instructional expenditures. So looking at it in terms of revenue, the sources of revenue, how much do you have available versus how much you spent >> for that particular category >> for that category for instructional expenditures. And then it shows how peers So this is apples to apples. This is taken from their their audited statements and their public statements. This is this is apples to apples. So this is how much everybody spends in

083instructional expenditures in relationship to their revenues. >> I want that whole column to add up to 95% or 100% and it's not doing that. That's why >> it won't add up to this is where this is where the disconnect is. We're used to looking at it as a percent of expenditures that it adds up to 100%. because but but that doesn't tell you if you look at it as percent of expenditures that just tells you that you're spending more or or how you're spending across your overall expenditures. That's why I look at it as source of revenue because it's so important that you look at it in terms of what you have available, not just what you're spending. So that's why it's not if it adds up to 100, which one of the columns does,

084if it adds up to a 100, that actually means you're overspending your revenues >> and that's not a good place to be in. >> Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it. >> Other questions on this one? >> Well, that takes us actually to uh wages and revenues. So, want to talk a little bit about this and I also want to talk when we talk about this, I do want to get a little bit into teacher compensation. That seemed to be one of the primary concerns and drivers in some of the things we saw in the survey today. But before we get there, I want to talk a little bit just about our overall wages. So this is the 240 and this is what I was referring to but this is our total wages and salaries. The

085biggest part of our and this is why it's so important where what whatever we shift or move in this group in our teachers group shifts our whole salary and wages because it's 77% of all of the salary and wages we play are in our teachers. The next largest group are in pair pros then you can see followed by principal office professional. Um, our cabinet makes up about.9% of our overall salary spent. Next slide. So, this is taking a look at where we've been over the last few years. Um, and what's increased, what's gone down. So, teachers have seen an increase of about 3%. That's not a 3% increase on their salaries. that's actually that their over the overall spend that we spend with teachers as a group has increased but the number of teachers actually

086has decreased. It's down uh 95 over the last 4-year period. So that that 3% is still an increase even though we've decreased the number of teachers. The spend is still um an overall increase over the last uh four years. Um, we've also we've seen a decrease in paraples, but that is not due to any kind of strategic decision for a decrease. That's due more to being able to find the pair of pros in that position. We've had a decrease in the number of pair of pros cuz it's just so difficult to fill um those positions right now. So, we've had a decrease in those numbers which caused an overall decrease in the spend amount. addition. Oh, I was I was just going to add in addition to that, we did also audit um pair of

087professional FTE based on um student IEPs this past year and brought uh it that part was intentional bringing our pair pair professional staffing in line with what is written and students >> but the uh teacher teacher um change of positive 3% is that in reference refence to to uh to to steps or what is that uh in reference to as you know >> so yeah that that's the the natural salary increases that they've had over the last o the steps or the natural salary increases they've had over the last three years three to four years I'm sorry yeah and so it's the salary and benefits >> thank you >> um I also want to mention real real quick I'm sorry there's a question there where do um we lost some behavior of your intervention specialists

088in that those cuts is that which category would that be in? >> They're the non-bargain. >> Okay. >> Could you explain what steps are? >> Well, she's got one right there. >> Mic. >> Sorry about that. >> Didn't mean to give you additional work. We're talking for some people this we're talking inside baseball here and some public watching >> all right so um we have salary schedules for every bargain group within those salary schedules there are steps so a person may start off at step one and then the next year they would um go to step two or if they're at step 10 they go to step 11 the next year. So steps basically mean that you're moving from one pay um level to another pay pay level based on whatever that increase is. And

089I know for the teachers those range somewhere between four and 7% but I am going to give the caveat that once you kind of get to the top once you get to a top level then you stop getting steps. So they're not included um in that. They do get I think a stipen um amount but it's not the same as getting a step. >> So what's the maximum number of steps that they can reach? What is seven the last step or? >> So there are 11 steps. It's kind of hard to explain um because they sit at 10 through 13 um for 3 years other than getting those stipens and then from 14 to 17 they sit there for three years as well and get the stipens. So there's really a total of 17 moves

090if that makes sense, but they sit at two levels for a total of yeah three years for each level. >> Okay. >> Step. So in looking at a graph of salaries, you'll see and this isn't unique to us. You'll see a steeper increase in those first few years and then it can level off, you know, at different places. Um and just to be clear, steps are not dependent on evaluations. They are not a merit-based thing. It is years. If you've finished a year and it's you're now in your 11th year, you're given that just automatically. That's correct. Just automatically. Yes. Okay. >> And and that just restarted like a year or two ago. >> The automatic where it had to be automatic. Yes. Restarted. But I'm, you know, there have been a few years here

091that I know there were frozen steps and and so forth, but I believe it was 2 years ago when the law changed and steps became automatic again. >> Yeah. >> The last thing I want to point out on this slide uh is is is one data point as well. Um I know there's also been talk of cabinet. So if you take a look at cabinet the overall uh salaries have actually like the not the salaries but the amount that spent on salaries has reduced by 1% and those cabinet administration positions actually had were reduced down by two. Now sorry this is bad news for you guys but that's going up by one next year cuz I'm here now. So that's actually going up by one but that you've seen an overall decrease um in the

092amount that we spend on cabinet administration. Can can I just make a quick comment? I think it's really important to point that out because I know that we have heard um in some of our public comments that um cabinet administrators are are overly paid and that they've been receiving payraises when teachers have not. Um and I just think it's really important to point that out that based on these numbers and these facts that's not that has not been the case. >> Correct. >> So you just said it. You said because you're here, it's going to go up because now we have to pay you, right? >> And when our superintendent, we love that you're here. Our superintendent when she was um interim >> was at a lesser pay than when she became our full-fledged superintendent.

093So there would have been an increase because she changed jobs. And so people need to look at the details of understanding what that means. I think also importantly previous to that, you know, because the time frame that we've heard referenced, uh, it was even before inter, right? It was another position entirely. Um, and that's been the case for several of the um, uh, staff on district lead, the district leadership team who have been referenced over the past few weeks in public commentary have changed positions. >> Okay, thank you. Next slide. So I want to talk a little bit about um with the last few minutes I want to talk a little bit about teacher uh compensation before we go into recommendations and what we should do about it. So uh when we look at our

094teacher compensation I look at overall and we look at the average overall. So average um we fall about six with some of our peer and like I said we benchmark and one of and these are some of the peers um that have been used in in several instances as of late but we benchmark and this is we we we're at about 79,785 for our average teacher salary which puts us about six with our peers. This is the issue. So the issue is not that across all of our teachers or all of our scales we have issues as salaries. We're pretty competitive as steps three through 10. So we just got through talking about steps. So it's actually good that you asked that question. Uh cuz we just started talking about steps. We're actually competitive with

095our peer districts when it comes to that. We recognize as a district though that we fall behind u when we start talking about our later in careers and more experienced teachers. That's where we fall behind at the top scale. So, that's really where the challenge is. It's not I I wanted to show that the average teacher salary, we're not that we're not as far behind as sometimes um I I I think we think we are not across all levels. We're pretty close and we're pretty competitive. So, right now, like I said, we're at about 79. Now, what I'd like to show with the next slide is when we look at our peer districts though, for those that are significantly above us in our average teacher salary, 92, um, 84 or 87, they also have very

096different working conditions. Um, whether that's the their class sizes or whether that's their elementary planning time, they also have very different working conditions. And so, uh, for example, if you look at Birmingham, you can see 270 for planning time, but they do have an average teacher compensation that is much more than ours, but they also have a larger class size and uh, less planning time in that same sense. So, that's also why that's one of the things that we continue to look at as a district is the working conditions as well and right sizing uh, for student enrollment as well. um because it will create more capacity to address the issues that we have at the very top level of step 11. Um it will address some of those issues if um if if things

097if if we can take a greater focus on the working conditions as well as a teacher salary and teacher count. >> Have a question to clarify. >> Mr. Biscuit, >> I'm sorry. Um, on that same slide, if you look at Wayne, West Wesland, and Troy and you have elementary class sizes, are those numbers correct? 26 to 20. Should be 20 to 26. >> Should be 20 to 26. I should correct it. 20 to 26. >> I wasn't sure if it's 26 to 30 or should be 26. 26. It should be 20 to 26. Thank you. Yep. Thank you. >> The next slide I just want to show you, and this is a fictitious example, but I also want to show you about how those average salaries work. uh just sometimes it's just easier to break

098it down into plain math. But how those average salaries work, so if you had an al average salary out of about 85,000 for teachers, if you add 100 teachers, um you add more to that pool, it drives the average salary down. So the more teachers, the lower average salary. So in a lot of senses we are we we do know we are still continuing to try to rightsize both through attrition and I'll talk about that in a few minutes but right sizing is going to be critical um to increasing compensation at any level um right sizing is going to be super critical to making sure that we have long-term sustainability that we're not overcommitting um too early um to it's like I said it's our largest salary group so we want to make sure that

099we're not that we not overcommitting and then putting the district in trouble both with the reserve level or long-term. >> Mr. Schmidt. >> Okay. So, I'm trying to make sense of this because you have more teachers, the average salary is less. I understand if you have more teachers coming in at the lower end. You've added teachers that are in their first three years that their salaries are going to be lower and that's going to throw that average low. But just having more teachers, explain to me how that works. >> If the pool stays the same, so if the pool stays the same, if if your overall spend is, let's say, 120, and this is just a fictitious example, but if your overall your overall pool stays the same at 120, the average of having 1,400

100teachers is 85,000. That's the average salary if you just take the sheer numbers of it. But then if you have 1,500 and you divide that down, it it takes it down to 80. Now, those aren't exact numbers. This is just simple math. >> I got you. You're looking at total >> the total number of teachers. >> I'm thinking of 120,000. >> No. >> Okay, I got you. I was reading that in a different way. >> Okay. >> Yep. And this is just an example to show what what some of the drivers are for average salary and average conversation. What one of the drivers is? >> Yeah. >> Okay. So recommendations. Um so moving to recommendations, one is that we have to like I just said um from the slides previously, we have to focus on

101right sizing our staff to our enrollment numbers. Uh what one of my recommendations is is for us to set targets. This is something that we're already uh working closely with our schools with and staffing and making sure we're at adequate numbers um and targets within each and one of our each one of our schools. um to manage that to continue to manage through attrition as well to keep an eye on our numbers, our vacancies, and that we're not necessarily uh refilling all positions automatically, but that we're really doing an honest assessment of whether those positions need to be refilled or can they be redistributed somewhere else in a different way. Continue to track and monitor those and then align our resources to our priorities in order for us to create capacity um to address some

102of the compensation issues. I think whites sizing is the avenue to go through. >> May I ask a quick question? I'm just looking back at slide um 26. When we are looking at average teacher compensation, when we say compensation, it's not just salaries, it's everything >> that wages benefits. Yes. >> Okay. Thanks, >> Wilkins. >> Managed through attrition. >> No, that's not right. That's it's just I'm sorry includes no and and I think >> on that slide it's just salaries. Well, okay. Cuz that cuz that's another thing that um is tricky to compare because if you're just comparing what a salary is and you've got somebody from another district that has bigger benefits in their health than we I mean you see I I run into problems comparing when I'm only looking at salary because

103there's a teacher that's getting uh 79 the cost to the district is much more than 79,000. 000. Yes. >> For that teacher. >> So, a compensation package. >> Um, and perhaps they're listed here, but I just think that that's the real cost of a staff person for the district. >> Yeah. And but I I will say this, one of the reasons why we just looked at salary here is because you you're absolutely right. You can't it's hard to compare apples to apples if you bring in benefits because the benefit structure and health structure are so different. So if you're going to look at apples to apples in a district to district to comparison and dis and and benchmark salaries is really your only nugget because you don't have the health and benefits vary on on

104selection on choices on everything else. They vary so much that it would be very difficult to compare district to district with total compensation. But that's important for people looking at this because if you say, "Oh, you're only making this much." But this district has class sizes that have four students more per class and they have >> um less planning for healthcare, let's say. >> And they have less planning time. But you're I mean, >> yes, >> because it's a package. It's not um I I just think that that makes it difficult to have these discussions unless we look at the whole thing. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> I wanted to ask about manage through attrition. So, is there I know I don't I don't know what the right word for it is, but can you

105estimate how much savings or how much future cost avoidance there is in that? How much money are we talking in average? Shante, did you want to speak to uh the kind of turnover we see? Or >> as she's turning on her mic, I can say we we do set a target number um of the minimum number of staff each year that we would like to um actualize through attrition. Um and for the past few years that that t the minimum target has been 30. Um and so that is a part of what we kind of base some of our budget assumptions on that we will have at least a uh turnover of 30 staff in attrition. >> 30 people. >> People yeah and I'll let Miss >> is that through retirement or it could be

106a variety of reasons. >> All of the above. >> So I was just going to add so just to further kind of answer your question we approximate about a 100,000 per teacher. Um, so if uh as Superintendent Park stated, if we're talking about 35 every year, that kind of gives you the dollar amount um to what we're looking at saving. And then the other thing I was just going to mention um is just an as of I think yesterday we have 51 retirement slash slashresignations. >> Getting my words out. >> No, no, not all of that will be actual attrition. So some of those positions we will have to replace right now but it's a it's a healthy start. >> Okay. Thank you. >> The other recommendation um and this is a slide I've already

107shared with you um at the last board meeting but the other recommendation is around again land and building sales. Um I think there's an opportunity for us to uh reestablish a healthier reserve um through those land and building sales. You can go to the next slide after this one. Um, and this is the amounts. We talked about this at the last meeting, but I want to reiterate that. Uh, these are the amounts that we think and we and really I want to say this at this study session. Uh, the land sales and the building sales I think are realistic. Um, those are I think we, you know, we have an opportunity here. If we look at some of these land sales and building sales, whether that's underutilized and un underutilized or unused land and building

108sales, I think we have a real opportunity here. That opportunity if taken uh by the board, take the next slide. If taken by the board, the impact is that it will it will increase our fund balance and give us a much healthier uh fund balance and go into the general fund. It's a one-time cost. So, that's not something that can be like committed over several years. That's something that would be go to uh implement our uh replenish our fund balance. So, if you go to this very last slide, this is how they're all connected. So, um doing the do doing the land and building sales, like I said, it generates a one-time revenue that strengthens our fund balance. It gets us further away from any kind of state intervention. So, I believe that that's the

109first thing we should really take a look at and analyze. Uh we should continue to rightsize staffing through attrition. Like I said, there's no way that we can get to the competitive levels that we want to get to for teacher compensation if we don't continue to rightsize through a through attrition um and through staffing um that we that we do with the buildings every every year. Um and we also, you know, we want to retain our people um and we want to retain top talent. That is a goal of the district. So, I think right sizing will get us there a lot closer. uh school consolidation and program modification that has an impact on students and the student program impact making sure we're strengthening the strength and the quality of any program that we're offering.

110So with that, I'll answer any question any more questions you may have. >> Yeah, I just had a quick question regarding land and building sales. So, um I'm not really aware of any unused school buildings at this point. I'm just wondering are do does the district have a lot of unused buildings that are just sort of sit sitting vacant? >> So, I think I would say underutilized uh buildings. Um I think I mean uh I won't name specific buildings, but yeah, I think there's some buildings that are underutilized as far as capacity um and as far as what they're being used for currently. Um, I think there are some buildings that are underutilized and that could be prime targets for sales. >> Okay. And in terms of possible land sales, um, the land vacant land

111that we currently have, were were those um was that land allocated for certain uses, I guess, once we purchased those those proper those land properties. And are we going to examine that? I'm assuming that we purchased these properties for a reason and I'm just wondering if we can sort of examine why we actually purchased them and why they're just sitting. >> Yeah, that's all part of the evaluation as well, trustee, is the is to evaluate what were they purchased for, what was the intent, and what are they now being utilized for and and what makes them a prime target is if they're no longer being utilized for the original intent. >> There you go. and and based on our current circumstances um as a district, not even specific to financially, do we still have the

112same goals um that we had when those properties were uh acquired? Do we have the same goals and priorities now? Um so it's a so that's a part of the assessment process. >> Got it. Okay, good. Thank you. Um, >> so first of all, thank you so much for this very detailed presentation and then thank you for putting together the survey um and and analyzing that information. Um, I think it's important. So, it's good to look at both pieces and see, you know, especially when we're making more decisions, you know, those recommendations that you presented, they're they're all things that we have to consider. Um but also think about again what's our vision here you know especially looking at the survey know it's not a scientific survey I mean it's a survey but we got

113a lot of feedback from parents and community members and I wish there was more students >> um but um it and hopefully we'll get some feedback from them but I think I just for me what I'm looking at this I'm looking at it as like what is bringing the key people to our schools, which is the students, the teachers, you know, enjoying to come here and work, and then obviously the parents that have the kids in our district. Um, so I it's all on the table, but at the same time, I just want to make sure that we're also listening to or looking at the survey results that came forward to us. And, you know, they really want to prioritize the teacher. So that seems like the first thing that came, you know, came up

114from that survey. Um, but also like limiting the technology came up a lot. I don't know. I don't see much movement when you presented the the budget as far as like what can we limit or decrease, but you know, I don't know if you see any any room for that, but that is something that came up from the survey. Um, but also like the community feeling and impact. And I know when we start talking about cons, I mean, we're going to have to make tough decisions and, you know, potentially consolidate schools, but like how do we do that without impacting um communities as well? So, that's what that's what I'm sensing from this. I'm trying to look at both pieces here because you're presenting the facts >> and then we have to also listen to

115what, you know, the the parents and the community is saying, too. Thank you. This was a a a great first step. This was a very short-lived snapshot of a survey. To me, that's why we're going through a strategic planning process because it we need much richer, fuller uh responses from a lot of the community that didn't respond in these 500 >> and this is a beginning. So, we got a sense of it. Um, I'm looking forward to going through the bigger process. I think there are some lowhanging fruit, as they say, or things that are just pretty obvious that we need to get moving on, but um I I think there's a lot deeper, um, surveying and focus groups and all that sort of thing that we need to do to really make sure we

116hear everybody's voices. Mohammed. >> So, um, based on your recommendations, what would you say the time, because I understand we have a strategic plan >> coming forward. What does the timeline look at as far as recommendations? There's things that we need to take action like yesterday, you know, um, but then there's things that we can wait hopefully for the strategic plan. So, is there a good timeline? Yeah, I think as we've been talking about it, we are thinking about it in terms of what are those things that are right in front of us that are pretty kind of pretty obvious that we can address now um that um I think again we you referred to as low hanging fruit. What can we what are some of those things? And then other things are just going

117to have a longer runway. Um things that will um where we will need to go out and engage communities around things such as school closures or consolidations. That's going to have a longer runway than selling selling land, you know. So there are some things that we can do in the in the immediate and then some things are just going to have a longer term uh timeline before we can uh know what the impact of a recommendation will actually be in effect. And so um we have kind of two sets of things that are in front of us right now um that we can do and things that are going to take a little longer. >> So just to follow up so so that's helpful. So, I understand there's things the lowhanging fruits, but there are

118right now especially I understand that um we're still negotiating with the teachers contract. Um there are I'm hearing from teachers, you know, as far as some ask, they want compensation. They want increased compensation. When it comes to the timeline, there's immediate and I don't see those land sales being enough to be able to give the raises that the teachers are asking for. Um, but the like the ones that need more time, I'm assuming there are things that we're going to put forward to the teachers. So, I don't think we have like two years to do this, but I'm so that's why I'm asking about a timeline. So it would be probably something we would do along with the strategic plan that hopefully we'll implement soon. >> Yes. Because the strategic planning process is where we

119will have >> um the ability to maximize our engagement with the community through um those community group meetings, through those focus group meetings, through those targeted uh groups to make sure we are uh incorporating the the voices and the perspectives of um the areas of our community that are are under reppresented. Um so that process is where we will get all the richness of their perspective to inform our next steps. >> Well, let me just say something real quick. may if I may, President Faster, um I know we only we heard from 538 respondents to this um survey and that's just a fraction of our community of our stakeholders. And I know that we all look forward to the strategic planning process like you said, Trustee Schmidt. It'll allow us to go a little more

120in depth and it'll also allow us to hear from a lot more people. Um I know a lot of folks weren't able to participate because of the cut off time, but again this is just the beginning. Um yeah, we're going to be doing going a lot more in depth and hearing from a lot more voices and um and it's only going to help us in the long run. >> Yeah. So for next steps and this is be more to the community. So, um, on April 22nd, which was another work session we had, there was another document attached to that, um, that I would highly recommend people dig into. I think I'm seeing a nod in the audience. Yeah, that really gives you a lot of numbers. So, you can look at capacity of buildings, where

121we are, where the what their capacity is, and how we're way under on some buildings. just it gives you so much information that I think having seen what you've seen this evening pulling in the context of that um I just think it'll give you a full view of some of the things that we're dealing with. So it's listed on um under the board of education it's board reports April 22nd work session budget work session I think. So go to that and there should be a document there that you can uh it's it's a good one. All right, thank you all so much for all the great information and the community for the great uh input. Over 500 people responded and we appreciate it. And please don't stop sending us your input by email. We're glad

122to hear it as we make some considerations and some decisions. I believe that moves us down to items from the board. Do trustees have anything they would like to share? >> Trusty Basket, >> I just want to make a note. I I know there was some concern about some teachers boycotting or choosing not to attend or participate. Um I just want to assure families and the students and the rest of the community that um we will provide the best year-ending activities that we can do. Um, I was pleased to hear that um, administrative staff were uh, ready to to be at all the proms and I was very pleased to hear that some of the teachers changed their minds and kind of gave some of you administrators a night off if you will from the

123prom. So, you know, thank you for again your continued support to provide the students with again the best year-ending activities that we can provide and that includes graduation. Um, I believe all of us trustees have have volunteered to step up and do what we can. And I just want to reiterate that publicly and remind the superintendent we don't have to be sitting in the chairs. We can be lining the students up taking pictures, whatever it takes. >> Put put us to work. Put trustees to work at graduation if necessary. >> And and again, as always, students, please celebrate responsibly and safely. >> Thank you, Trusty Basket. Anything else from the board? Real quick, I just wanted to give a kudos to um Pioneer uh theater for uh their presentation of Chicago. Um it was not

124this weekend but last weekend, but it was it was amazing. They did such a great job. Um very polished, very professional. So, um again, great job, Pioneer High School. >> Right. I've got to add I I want to thank all the staff that put this together. I know you have I mean really you have a lot of things you're working on now to put a budget together and all the things you're doing. I know our new CFO you've come in and hit the ground running and I appreciate it. I think the rest of my board members appreciate it and the community is asking for more transparency and I think we're making some good moves in that direction. >> Thank you very much. >> So thank you. >> Thank you. Uh let me say that I

125know some some trustees met with uh different uh groups over the last week. Uh including some people from AAEA. Uh we had a great discussion. Uh uh two other trustees and myself had a great discussion with the Aea Elementary Caucus and uh it was a very good uh uh discussion and we're thankful they invited us to have that discussion and I just wanted to say thank them for having uh Trusty Wilkins Muhammad and I and I know some trustees went to I believe the special education special ed special education caucus >> and so thank you all for inviting uh the trustees and thank you all for going and uh learning and having good discussions. >> Absolutely. >> If there's nothing additional I think that brings us to a u motion to adjourn by voice vote.

126>> So moved by basket supported by vice president Wils. Any discussion? >> Seeing none. All in favor say I. >> I. I. >> Any oppose say nay. >> Okay. We are adjourned at 8:48 p.m. Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.