February 12, 2020 Work Session

001So to get started I do want to go through Just the recommendations that were made for adjusting our adjustments So as you all know, I'm not going to go through reading every item that was sent in through Ad Delete, but I want to go over the five that were co-sponsored by board members. Just to remind the public, on October 4th, the school board members, they submitted their Ad Delete proposals. On February 10th, board members co-sponsored. The add-deletes of other board members on February 12th, which is today, the first add-delete work session is being held. And this is an opportunity for me to share with the board as well as with the community the recommendations that I'm making in regards to the FY21 budget. I want to start off by discussing first the item that was

002recommended for adjustment because this particular item which relates to the title of paraprofessionals is one that you know I believe it would behoove us to change the name from paraprofessional to an instructional assistant. We did some research in this area to find What are the titles of other employee groups who are similar to our paraprofessionals or have responsibilities that are similar to our paraprofessionals? And what we found was that in Fairfax, they are referred to as instructional assistants. In Arlington, they're referred to as instructional assistants. In Prince William, they're teacher assistants. In Loudoun, they're teacher assistants. In DCPS, they are educational aides. In Prince George's County. They are paraprofessional educators and in Montgomery County. They are pair pair educators Back in 1995 we actually referred to our pair professionals as instructional assistants So what I'm

003recommending is that we go back to the title that we had in in 1995 I'm not really sure why it changed the year 1995-96 I had just graduated from high school, going off to college, so I wasn't thinking about TC or anything else in Alexandria City Public Schools at that time. But I think that it's a name that is familiar to our community, so it wouldn't be a surprise or a shock or people wondering what that term means if we were to go back to that title. I do want to talk a little bit about the items that were considered by our team but were not recommended in the FY21 budget for adjustment. The first item relates to our administrative assistant recommendation for the College and Career Center, and it was a 1.0 FTE at

004T.C. Williams. So, you know, during this budget season, we have to look at a number of factors in regards to what are some of our high priorities, our middle range priorities, our low priorities. And the administrative assistant at the College and Career Center was not one of the items that was on our high priority list for FY21, but that does not mean that it's not an item that we want to consider in future budget cycles. I spoke with the high school principal about this particular ad delete. And he is also in agreement in regards to the priority of this. Right now we have 19 administrative assistants at TC Williams. Now does that mean that we take one of the administrative assistants and make them a college and career center? I do not want anybody to

005get that impression. But I think that we need to have discussions around FTEs that we currently have and how can we utilize some of the FTEs that we have. to assist with matters such as the college and career center, assist with, you know, helping kids with scheduling or assist with helping kids select, you know, their colleges and universities, because it really has to be an all hands on deck approach. So I'm hoping that we utilize, you know, some of the FTEs that we do have in place and work through how we can make that work in the interest of our kids who need that assistance. for the College and Career Center. But at this time, we have not recommended to pursue this or to make that adjustment for those reasons. But we do want to

006continue to investigate, which we did this year. We did investigate. And one thing that we did for FY 2020 was when we... upgraded the college and career center position from to a licensed school counselor just to so that we can have somebody who is a licensed in that position who is supporting our students in that particular area. The other item that we considered but was not recommended for adjustment for the FY21 budget, it relates to a stipend for paraprofessionals who are being required to stay past the 2.30 p.m. time to assist student departure from school and back pay this stipend to those paraprofessionals in our system who have been staying the additional 30 minutes since September of 2019. and one thing i do want to say you know these past a couple of months i

007know i have uh had an opportunity to really do a a very thorough investigation more investigation that i had needed to do seriously um in regards to um the the hours worked by paraprofessionals and one thing that's very important for for the board to know And that is our paraprofessionals are based on the contract that every paraprofessional signs. They are to work 6.8 hours. And our schools, when paraprofessionals, when they start their day, it varies at every school. The amount of time that our paraprofessionals are to work at our schools, it is 6.8 hours. And if any employee works past the 6.8 hours, we provide them with, you know, pay, and they get their hourly rate if they are working past that 6.8 hours. When we pulled time sheets of our paraprofessionals and we were

008looking to see specifically if people are working these additional hours. Pair professionals are still working within that 6.8 hour time frame and that is not we do not provide any of our employees a 30-minute paid lunch that is not a practice that we have in place and One thing that you know I can't own as superintendent now is I can't own what somebody used to do right so if Three years ago there was an agreement that I'm gonna pay you or you're gonna be able to leave early for 30 minutes That's not the contract that I have signed, you know, or that I've seen as superintendent. It says that you work 6.8 hours. It doesn't say you leave early, you get a free lunch or a paid lunch. That is not what the contract states,

009and that's not been our practice across the board. So we are not recommending to do any type of stipend because paraprofessionals are already being paid for those 6.8 hours. One thing that we do want to look into in the future is maybe looking at, like, a job study to see the responsibilities that paraprofessionals have. Because out of this discussion over the past several weeks, we've been talking through, like, what are the roles and responsibilities of paraprofessionals? And I think it warrants us doing a job study to see. Well, what are the responsibilities that paraprofessionals have at the different schools? And if we notice that there is something different from that study that then we would need to explore Well, are there different categories are there stipends are there different salary scales? I mean there are

010a number of things that can come out of out of that particular study But that was not one of our areas of focus for the compensation study this year. We were specifically looking at whether our salaries were competitive to other jurisdictions. We did not hire the company this past year who conducted, Siegel, who conducted our compensation study. We did not hire them to do a job study to look at roles and responsibilities, to compare those roles and responsibilities to other jurisdictions. And it would not behoove me as superintendent to make decisions based off of... of anecdotal information and not having some concrete data and facts that I can share with the board to justify why we need to do X or Y in regards to roles and responsibilities. Madam Chair. Do you want us to

011wait till the end to ask questions about these particular? I know, what would be your preference? Do you wanna go one by one or do you wanna finish saying and then we'll go back through? Yeah. I think let's. The next item deals with providing prorated health benefits to licensed instructors who teach at least 17 hours a week. Currently, as I understand it, these individuals must work 20 hours a week to qualify for prorated health benefits because 20 hours is defined as half time. However, the instructor work week is 37.5 hours, including a 30-minute lunch break. Thus, the work week of a half-time instructor would be approximately 17 hours, which should qualify for prorated health benefits. So one specific area in this and why we did not recommend this at this time for an adjustment is

012for our employees, our part-time employees, and we have about 2,574 contract employees. Out of those 2,574 contract employees, there are 24 employees that are part-time and that actually work less than 20 hours per week. Right now our current practice and our current practice is that in order to be eligible for our ACPS supplemental retirement you have to work 20 hours a week and we're trying to be consistent our practice has been to be consistent with that benefit meaning the supplemental retirement benefit being consistent with the eligibility you would need to have the health benefits because when you start saying okay well You don't have to have 20 hours for the health benefits, but then you do for the supplemental retirement. It gets a little complicated because it all falls under that health benefits. I'm sorry,

013that benefits package that we have for all of our employees. So one reason why we did not recommend this at this time is because we really need to be able to analyze, well, what are the implications for doing something like that? So we can go into this knowing specifically how that impacts. other categories or other sub um sorry not other groups or other employee groups um or other categories we need to also um understand like the the dollars because right now we were doing just an estimate as to how much that would cost right now we're looking at about 242 000 is what that will cost us um to be able to make an adjustment like that but we need to look at all of those factors before we just jump into making that adjustment

014Once again, that was not an area that we were focused on when we were doing our compensation study or while we were doing our budget this year, this fiscal year. So we wanted to make sure that we stayed true to what the budget priorities were. Doesn't mean that we can't add it to look at for next year, but that wasn't one of the areas that we were trying to focus on for the FY21 combined funds. And this also goes back to us having that job study in the fall of 2020. This is information that when we bring in a company to do a job study or a compensation study that includes a job study, that these are things that we can include in that RFP when we're looking for a company to work with us

015so that they can provide us with the adequate data that we will need to make an informed decision. The final area deals with the 1% market rate adjustment for paraprofessionals one and paraprofessionals two. And, you know, our compensation study that was just completed this fall, fall of 2019, our paraprofessional ones as well as our paraprofessional twos, their scale, it ranks higher than the market average for each step until you get to the top step. One thing that is in the proposed budget currently is that all employees who are eligible for a step receive a step increase, which gives them, on average, a 2.63% increase on their base salary. So that's for all employees, including our paraprofessionals one and our paraprofessionals two. All employees who are at the top of their scale... What we are recommending

016in the current FY21 budget is a 2% one-time payment on their base salary. So if you are at the top of the scale and you are not eligible for a step, currently in our proposed budget, we are asking that you receive a 2% one-time payment on your base salary. which that means all employees, including paraprofessionals one and paraprofessionals two, are receiving an increase on average of 2.63 if they're eligible for a step or a 2% one-time increase on their base salary. So we're giving increases across the board, and what we are trying to look at is making sure that as we're making market rate adjustments for the groups that we looked at when we were doing our compensation study. So the groups who were below that market rate, that average market rate, we made market

017rate adjustments or we proposed market rate adjustments for those groups, but we did not propose market rate adjustments for the groups who were competitive in regards to the average market rate adjustment, I'm sorry, market rate between the local school divisions that we were comparing ACPS to. So we did not recommend the 1% market rate adjustment for paraprofessionals 1 and 2s at this time. However, we are recommending the step increase and the 2% one-time payment on your base salary for all employees, including paraprofessionals 1 and paraprofessionals 2. I think we should pause here. We can go into the technical adjustments later because those are not going to be, I don't think we're going to have as many questions about those. Ms. Lorber? Thank you, thank you Dr. Hutchings and I'm delighted that we I really am

018so happy we are be able to give the step increase and the MRA to all of those who are eligible for it. For me, I think one of the issues about the first one, the hours and the compensation, in fact, in both of these, that and the halftime versus halftime, it's more the question on how these things are handled. And I think we're trying to be this really respectful school system where everybody feels valued. And in the case of the paraprofessional schedule that changed the 6.8 hours, right, they maintained the 6.8 hours. But in fact, this was not introduced in a way. It came down rather suddenly with a letter telling them this is how it was going to be. And then it was discussed. And I feel that. And what it did was it

019extended the day. These paraprofessionals had worked until 2.30. departure time for years. And suddenly that schedule changes and it wasn't across the board. It wasn't all the schools. It was one school. But in any case, I think when a change like that is made, especially since the paraprofessionals are going to have what's the result is they've got an extra half hour in there that they've got to twiddle their thumbs or something. If they're needed, if they're actually needed from 2.30 to 3, then there must be a 30-minute period where they're not needed because their day was extended. And so I understand what you're saying. Of course they're not working extra time, working extra time, but from their perspective, they're twiddling their thumbs for 30 minutes in the middle of their day because their time was

020extended. But ultimately what I'm feeling is when a change like that, when things feel arbitrary, you know, that's, and I think... Dr. Wilkins will agree. I mean that that's the whole, we want everyone to just feel so valued and honored and that if we're going to make a change like that, we give a sense that they've had some kind of participation. That's all. I mean, I see that we can't, I understand the finance of the, why it doesn't make sense to do the stipend. And I think the reason. I and some others were thinking about stipends was we thought, well, if in fact one or two schools need this 30 minutes, maybe the people who seem appropriate for that, maybe that is the teacher assistance, but then let them keep their own schedule. And if

021they elect to help with that, then they could get a stipend. That was sort of a possible way to make this. help that situation. In the case of the retirement fund versus health benefits, when I came to ACPS, the VRS would not, I had been working 30 hours a week for the District of Columbia government, and I wanted to roll over my years of work there, but the VRS. said 30 hours a week was not enough. However, ACPS said it was enough. So I have to say, talking about the congruence of health benefits with retirement benefits raises a little red flag for me because... There can't be because VRS has different standards than we do as an organization. But again, as long as that hasn't been ruled out for future thought, I see it sort

022of as costly. I didn't think it would cost that much to give 25 employees access to health benefits. But anyway, I just wanted to make that point. just make a quick response to that and one is that I think as I talked with the principal for the school that did make the change in regards to it and I don't necessarily want to say it was a change but doing what Sticking to the time that they're supposed to be working. So enforcing now the 6.8 hours is really what happened at the beginning of the year. What I was informed by the principal was that there was communication with the paraprofessionals. And yes, initially it was by a letter because this happened in August before the paraprofessionals came back. They also, what I was told was that

023typically paraprofessionals, when scheduled times and things change in regards to like, hey, we're going to pick up kids at these times, that happens all the time every year. So those are changes that are not uncommon for paraprofessionals. So, you know, I don't know if this is a case of us not informing, you know, our employees who were impacted by enforcement, you know, of the 6.8 hours. I don't know if that was the case. But I do feel that, you know, moving forward. Just making sure that you know possibly before staff leave that maybe there's a discussion around Some you know potential scheduling changes that could occur so that people don't find out you know the month before school starts that maybe they find out before they go home over the summertime and I think that's

024something that maybe we could do as As a school division just to inform people before you even leave to go home and always say that their subjects, you know, the change based on student schedules or enrollment and there's always something that can change but at least gives people an idea of what the next year schedule might look like and I think that's something that, you know, we definitely will do on our end and I think it's feasible. I also want to point out that The items that were brought to our attention from board members that we did consider, we are not ruling out completely. It's just that these items were not a part of the compensation study in our... focus for this year. But now it is something that makes it to our list of

025items that we're going to be discussing when we get into our next fiscal year. So we're not completely ruling it out and saying no. And that's why I wanted to point out we want to do job studies that came out of some of these conversations to get more data. We're not ruling it out for the future. That touched on a lot of the different areas, so I think that what I'm going to do is go through so that we make sure that we don't leave anything out that we go back through. I have such trouble reading this. I feel like I want to bring a headlight to be able to see what's what on this piece of paper. So I think we'll go through starting with the first one is the college and career position.

026Questions or comments about that? Yeah Happy school board Valentine's Day everyone. I want to once again I'm thankful that we didn't have a meeting on Valentine's Day this year like last year even though it was wonderful to be with you all on Valentine's Day last year I think we're good, Rumi. I think we're good. Okay. Dr. Hutchins, thank you so much for your comments about... the additional administrative, potentially administrative assistant for the College and Career Center. As you know, this subject and topic is very passionate. I'm very passionate about it. I am also very sorry that I came in way low on what an administrative assistant would be, a full-time FTE would be for that, but I think that's with benefits included, correct? Okay. Got it. Okay. I might need to apply one day. Great

027salary. All right. I wanted to, and I thank you for actually bringing up the potential of looking at other FTEs that might be able to potentially help out in other ways, not just with the College and Career Center, but, you know, just across the board. I think we have, and I was talking to other board members about this earlier, I think we have a situation that we're not to our fullest potential. Cross collaborating I think there is potential that we could work together across the lines to be more efficient in our school system and So I thank you for those comments, and I look forward to seeing what you might come up with in that I also know that the college and Career Center does amazing work. I was just over there today Doing planning

028for the program that I do with them every year a career day program. So I know the work that they put into it and they have said that the workload has gotten better. So some things happened where it was shifted. So that was good news to me as well. But I just want to always keep that at the forefront because post-secondary plans for our students is so very important. If we don't focus on that and put... you know, as many resources as we can towards that, we're doing ourselves an injustice towards our students. So I just wanted to thank you for that. And I hope that we will continue to look at ways that we can, you know, even do more with that college and career center. Thank you. Miss Gentry, I just wanted to

029build on what what miss green was saying and I you know And and what you were also saying about you know the potential to get Really creative and come up with some different opportunities again for kind of you know, maybe Thinking about people not always always staying in one thing and doing one thing and I think what's particularly Exciting about this is that we all know that in in the course of a high school academic year. There are always different moments where a certain area of the high school is very, very busy, and then there are other points where, you know, there's a, and so we really could, we could get really smart about strategically deploying, you know, people for when they're going to have this, you know, you know, there are those moments in

030the life of the college and career center where you know, which are not necessarily the same as some of the other ones and so I I think Not only is that just literally a great opportunity to have a you know, another another human resource But and I like the way that you use the word, you know kind of cross, you know cross department Everyone learns things when they get to move from one place to another, right? Everyone gets these different perspectives. Everyone can add maybe some institutional perspective that maybe someone hasn't heard. So I just see this as a real opportunity. So, yeah, we'll look forward to hearing more about that. Ms. Alderton? So I'm building on this. Me and Ms. Green, we had some therapy together today. And, you know, it was interesting that

031we had that conversation because one of the things that, I think this is so important, one of the things that I grappled with in the add-delete process, if you noticed, I had questions about reading specialists. You know, I'm just looking at these numbers and I'm like, there's one reading specialist at Minnie Howard Campus. There's nobody at TC. What is going on? And I think we, you know, my immediate inclination was we need to put a reading specialist at TC Williams. The problem is in order to be strategic, you have to have a plan. And I think that's what we're talking about. You know, we want, you know, for me, it's like we can't neglect literacy at the high school level, right? Because we know we have kids, either they came to us late or they

032didn't get it earlier on, and we got to do something for them. But we have the people, we have the resources. We need a plan for how to use what we have. And I think, you know, that's a lot of what we're grappling with sometimes when we're doing the budget. We want to look for immediate fixes or immediate adds. And sometimes we need to be thinking about how do we structure. How do we use the people that we have? Because we have plenty. I think 88% of people in the budget, that's a lot of people. So what I'd like to see us moving toward is moving the people we have more effectively, using the materials and the resources that we have more effectively. And I think it's a big deal. One of the things I

033sort of would like us as a board to maybe figure out is like as we go through the budget process, what are we focusing on and what are we anchoring everything on? I'm going to say over and over again because I keep coming back to this, but I truly believe that if we can really do a bang-up job on developing our multi-tiered systems and supports, we can anchor everything to that. And then we'll really know if we flesh that out the way it needs to be, we will truly know what we need and what we don't need. I think right now we don't really know because we don't have these structures. We don't have the cross collaboration. So I'm just like throwing that out there is like for me, that's the big piece that can

034really help us to be more focused and understand what our needs are. I'm just going to add something on to what Rami's saying, a little bit different about managing the work that's in the College and Career Center. I've said in other years, you know, I've shared what, like, at private schools, what they do, they kind of manage their caseload by actively working with people to do early action, early decision, you know, to try to balance that. That pool with the you know regular so that they can actually balance their work over the timing That's something that involves all the counselors and some education and not just the senior year Because people need to really be getting started on that so early in the year But I think that's number of that not only balances the

035workload over the year But it also was early actually I mean money when our kids need money the money sometimes goes away Early like you can get more money if you are there and in early and so I Having two kids who did early decision. I can tell you that it is difficult. It was difficult I don't know how it is now, but it was down to the wire benefited from a storm emergency delay on the second one. And so I'm hoping it's better now. And Ramey, Ms. Gentry reports that it is. But I think that that also is a way of managing the workload over the course of the first half of the year. It's really setting targets even. That's what the private schools do. They set targets for the number of kids they

036try to get in early action, early decision. and work toward that. We don't want something that's wrong for the student, but there are a lot of students I think who are very nice. If you get in, it makes everybody in the household so much happier. So now that any other things about the college and career add-ons, so we're going to do my favorite, like up and down. So up means you want to add it, and down means you don't want to add it. So let's, oh, I'm sorry, Ms. Green. No, I just want to say I was good with, you know, we can just pull it. Yeah. Okay. As long as we're still looking at it. Correct. I don't want anyone to miss the thumbs up and down. We really don't want to miss this.

037Thank you. Okay. So we'll move on with that. We'll move on to the next one, which is the stipend. Does anyone have to the paraprofessionals? Dr. Reeve. Yeah, thank you for your explanation, Dr. Hutchings, at the beginning. I think the issue with this came up, as you and Ms. Lorber talked about, because work hours were adjusted for some employees this school year, and it seems that there could also be some inconsistency across the division. So I wanted to get a clarification on this. So our teachers work a 7.25-hour day, and our paraprofessionals work a 6.8-hour day. So a 0.1 then is equal to six minutes. I want to make sure I'm understanding this correctly. So that would mean that a teacher's day at 7.25 would be seven hours and 15 minutes, and a paraprofessional at

0386.8 hours per day would be six hours and 48 minutes. Is a 0.1 equivalent to six minutes? Can you verify that? I think that's about right so six point eight hours is six point forty eight minutes Six hours and 48 minutes. And so as I understand it then, for paraprofessionals, the six hours and 48 minutes, an additional 30 minutes should be added to that for their day because the lunch, the 30-minute lunch period is an unpaid lunch, whereas for teachers, the lunch is part of their day. So as I understand it, teachers, I just wanna make sure I'm clear on this. So teachers would have a seven hour and 15 minute day and paraprofessionals would have a seven hour and 15 minute day. And I, you know, and I just, I think part of the

039issue has come up because we don't really have a clear policy around this. I know looking at what Arlington Public Schools, they have a regulation that their teachers have a seven and a half hour work day that includes a 35 minute duty free lunch and instructional assistants or paraprofessionals have a seven. hour workday with a 35 minute duty free unpaid lunch. So like to me, I think part of the issue is that this really hasn't been written down into a policy. And so I think it's been open to interpretation and I think there may have been some inconsistency. And so it was just I would like I hope we can definitely we talked about working to develop a policy and I would hope we can do that. And I just. I wanted to ask about

040how do you verify, like you mentioned that you looked around the division and verified that the paraprofessionals are consistently working the 6.8 hours across the division. How is something like that verified? Because I've also been trying to understand, like we have the time clock system. But everyone's on a I'm just kind of curious how that's used since everyone already has a set You know amount of time they're supposed to be working. So If you could just maybe talk about That a little bit and your thoughts on developing the policy So one I'll have dr Wilkins talk specifically about munis because that is where our time clock plus time clock Plus is where our paraprofessionals they actually you know What is it called? Clock in and clock out. Thank you. Clock in or clock out. So

041in regards to the policy, I do think that it would be good for us to have it in writing. Right now we do have contracts that state 6.8 hours, but in regards to the specificity in regards to the lunchtime, I think that could be helpful for us. Dr. Wilkins can talk a little bit more about... How we were able to kind of get an idea of what the schedule looks like across all of our schools with our paraprofessionals So in regards to time clock plus it's a time in attendance system And so you know you walk in and you clock out so we're able to track that period of time for each employee And we have done just a quick sampling of that data. And we also queried the schools as far as when do

042they generally start the time of their paraprofessionals. Again, just kind of getting an average. And again, those times vary based upon the principal's decision on when those start hours should begin for their paraprofessionals. And we do want to do, again, a more comprehensive study so that we fully understand the data that's out there. Dr. Mozingo also teamed up with me in this project, and she can talk a little bit about how each school responded to the query. Good evening, everyone. So it sort of ditto what what he has indicated, but we asked the schools we asked the principals we asked two questions and one question was we ask every principal to identify The work hours of the paraprofessionals so we have that information by school In addition to that, we went in, we had a

043staff member to actually go in. Now, remember, there are 200-plus paraprofessionals, so this is still sort of a random check, but we did go into time clock plus and looked at the hours that were in time clock plus. In addition to that, we went into time clock plus, and as it has already been indicated, we did see a tremendous amount of variation in terms of start times. Ending times and we saw variation in terms of lunch hours, although it's duty-free, but we saw staff paraprofessionals taking lunch at different times What we feel is what has already been indicated a more comprehensive study should occur But however, these are the data sources that we use self-reported what was in time clock plus and we also looked into munis So that's the data that we have collected,

044and it does show a degree of variation in terms of work hours. And I would just like to underscore again that that variation does not mean that there's necessarily something wrong. It simply means that the principal is making the decision to adjust or to set the start hours for the paraprofessional to best fit the needs of the school. And so there's always going to be some variation based upon running the school operations. to standard. So in the job study, what we want to do is not only just look at when this happens, but for... all 239 of them if we can get that done. But also we want to look at the tasks, duties, and responsibilities of the parent. What do they actually physically do? And observe that and make some recommendations with respect to

045does that amount of work equate to what we're asking them to do. So this is going to take some time to do, but again, a good job study will help answer a lot of the questions that we have in our minds tonight. Thank you, I appreciate that clarification I think You know as far as the variability I certainly understand the variability in the in the in the start time and it may shift But it's the sort of length of day I think that is has become an issue and whether that lunch period is factored into the length of the day But I just wanted as a follow-up. Dr. Wilkins. What is the timeline that you think for that? That study of the paraprofessionals that Well, I would like to try to start it this fall

046and complete it by the end of the year, sometime between September and December. And I think that Jennifer has talked about coming up with the regulation. She's been talking to you about that. So that's sort of in process. So that's also on that side is going to be progress on that side too. Anybody else? Sorry. I Michelle and I asked to the stipend and I'm happy to let it go. I mean, I I don't want to vote on it I don't think we need to I would just add that You know one of the things that I when I was kind of looking into this issue that I noticed on the salary scale placement handbook that there was this area for additional duty pay for paraprofessionals assisting with bus duty. So I was just kind

047of curious, too, if that's typically a part of written into the job descriptions. It's not actually part of the job description, but it's certainly part of board policy or our policy, so we follow it. I would just emphasize that the paraprofessionals, like all employees, are paid for the hours that are worked. Moving on, we have a question from Mr. Suarez. We have the health benefits. Do we want to talk anymore, but does anyone have any clarifying or comments about the health benefits? Oh, Dr. Reed? Yeah, I'm just, I think I do have a question, but I just need a minute to collect my thoughts here. So I had asked about the... the difference between the contracts and the casual employees. And so I just want to make sure I understand. So we have 2,550 contract

048employees, and of those only, so those are people who are considered. Permanent employees, I guess they have an annual contract and so of those 2,550 people there there are only about 24 25 that that work Less than 20 hours a week. Is that correct? Maybe we'll have a say It is such a small number. It makes me, I mean, is this because as it worked out, this is what the schedule that worked for these individuals? Or do we have a situation where potentially, you know, what is the process hypothetically? It may be that this doesn't even apply right now. What might be the process in which, in a hypothetical situation in which a person is on the one side of the part-time would like to work? Would like to add some more hours. You know,

049what might be the process for, I understand that, you know, some of that is just do we need it? Do we need those hours? But is there a way that they can, you know. I guess I'm just, you know, do you have some examples from the recent past of somebody that crossed that threshold and maybe how that happened? I don't know if that would be helpful or not. I don't think we have an example today. I'm sure we can provide you all with an example. But typically for our contracted employees or any part-time employees, it's based off a need, and that could vary year to year. So there are situations where you may have a position that was part-time initially, and now it's needed in a full-time capacity. That doesn't necessarily mean we just select

050somebody and put them in there full-time. I think that would be a situation where somebody might go from a part-time position to a full-time position. But I would need to have HR actually provide us, like do some research to provide us with a specific example of how that, you know, conversion happens. So maybe another way to think about it is that if are there, and again, none of this might be applicable in our, you know. What kind of process happens if there ever is a hypothetical where someone's just on the other side, you know, they're not maybe 40 hours a week, but there are enough hours, you know, to receive the benefits. If something happens that they're about to then go under, that's a larger impact than literally just, oh, you were working. you know,

051it's not just their hours, it's that they're losing the benefits. And I, again, I understand we have to do this based on the need, but, but just like, you know, how, how do we, you know, from an HR side, how do we, how do we work through that and kind of think through that? And, and this doesn't really impact necessarily anything that I'm, you know, suggesting for add delete. This is more just, I think, interesting for us to kind of understand. As Dr. Hutchings mentioned, I can only state that it starts with the supervisor, right, in defining the demand or the need for the work. And so we want that supervisor, of course, to make their best judgment of why that work is needed. And we kind of go from there, but it starts really

052at that level. What is the work that's required and how many hours are actually required to do that work? I think once that's established, let's say someone's below that threshold, that conversation more than likely happens with that worker and that supervisor. And if the supervisor revises the work in some way, for example, and it can justify the need for that work, they make the request and then we evaluate it from there. But it's not something where necessarily it starts with human resources. My office sense it really starts again at that need for the work which is with that immediate supervisor Let's see if we actually have an example well, I have an example of We had a we had an employee in our communications department that was contracted for One or two days per week

053initially And then the domain that's how they were hired that demand as you all know in communications has increased So there was a request from the director of communications last year to have that position become a part-time position that was half-time, so 20 hours a week, versus the, I think it was more like 16 or 15 prior to that, that was needed. But that's an example of, because the need within that department was there, the request from the director. was to increase the hours and the status of that employee. And then it was approved by the superintendent to do that because we knew that work was needed. And the person in that position was doing a great job in that work. So it was just extending their time, not necessarily giving them a new job.

054It was just extending the amount of time that they were doing. But that's an example. Yeah, I was going to let Ms. Alderton go first too because I think she has an example that might help us. My own personal example, actually, I think sometimes it's like you said, too. Some employees are electing their how their position works because I did a job share. And so when people share positions, the actual employees are the ones who create the proposal. And so what an individual gets in terms of hours and time is based on what they've decided. is going to work for the job. So I did a share where one of us did two days and the other did three days. So it was, you know, our options were completely different because we were doing different

055amounts of time. So, I mean, you know, sometimes people are actually electing to do partial work too, and they just go with what works for their need. If I may, I would just add that you're correct. It's really a dynamic process between the worker and the supervisor, and some of it is experiential in the sense that you start with something and you learn more about the role based upon the intensity and the duration of the demand. So something that may start out with every other day. Now we have an increase in communication requirements. Well, that's not every other day now. It's every day then how much of every day well That's four hours a day. Well, no now it's six hours a day. Well now it's eight hours a day and so You know the

056establishment of the specific work hours right is dependent upon again the requirements of the role and again it starts with that relationship between the supervisor and that worker right to ultimately come to the hours that best suit Yes, I would say before we do a bunch of stuff for 24 people, we should probably just ask them what they need. Like, if there is a problem, we should probably identify if there is, in fact, a problem. Because I know people, too. I mean, I know some of those. I think I probably know some of those 24. And they've also elected to have the number of hours they want to work a week and not necessarily the health insurance. Anyway, Dr. Eve. Yeah, I think the reason that this issue came up was because we did have

057a reading specialist who was working You know the point five which half time but and was under the assumption that she would be getting the health benefits because she was when she was working in Arlington and then That didn't turn out to be the case here. So I guess a comment I have is that you know, you mentioned dr. Hutchings that the 20-hour cutoff was Seems to have been somehow linked to when we offer the supplemental retirement So I'm just curious, you know, like at least you know What we heard about Arlington is that for anybody with 15 hours and up they do so and I and I noticed just we didn't do a compensation study on the teachers but like with You know with the paraprofessionals, for example, a lot of divisions aren't even

058offering the supplemental plan so I'm wondering if we can like if Why those things need to be together or if they can be do linked maybe that's something to look at in the future and you have a comment there I just wanted to Concur with your with your comments in regards to other jurisdictions do do different things And that's part of what we've learned over the last couple of months so we can certainly change But I would, again, think that it would be best to let us do a job study to kind of get that because we just don't know enough. We have little snippets of information here and there, but we really do need to look at it more comprehensively. So, yes, other jurisdictions do do things different. The second point that I would

059make is that we do have the ACPS supplemental retirement plan. And as Ms. Lower pointed out, it is different from the VRS retirement plan. It is two different systems, two different ways for it to be accountable, right? But one of the things that's similar is this thing about the 20 hours, right? That is part of the contractual requirement of the plan, right? So you have to do that if you're going to get the ACPS supplemental retirement benefit. And so that's what we're saying as far as maintain consistency across the work group. Could we change it? Sure, but it would require a lot of study, and it would certainly have an impact on our pool of candidates or to base the insurance risk factors on. So, again, it would require study, and that's all we're asking

060to do. As a follow-up, I mean, I agree and I'm glad that you're going to study that issue, and I think that's a good step to take. But just since we're on this topic of the different employee groups, I was surprised there were only the 24 that were working part-time but less than 20 hours, but I was surprised about us having 1,628 casual employees, which... I had always in my mind thought were part-time employees, but it's been clarified that they're basically temporary employees. So I was kind of wondering, you did describe it in an email conversation that we had back and forth, but I was just wondering if you could just talk a little bit about, that's a lot of folks, and I'm curious, like how many of, and you might not even know this,

061but I'm just curious, like who would fall into that, that would be substitute teachers, would that be? And how many of those folks then might be even working full-time, the 1,628 casual employees? Can you just tell us any more about that group of employees? Well, I think we could go in and provide a more detailed list of specifically those roles that are filled that way. But, again, a casual employee is a temporary employee, and so there's a temporary need that comes up. It could be a sick worker for that matter, right? And you want to bring in a temporary worker, right? A temp employee, that would count under that category. So are some of them maybe longer than what one would expect? Possibly. But we would have to go in and look at each casual

062employee, right, and take a look at whether the specific responsibility is required of them. And also those, you know, casual employees, they range from, you know, a few days to a couple of months. You know, if we have people who are out on leave for certain things, but they are still in those positions and we have work that needs to get done while the employee is on leave, we typically bring in casual employees. Some examples, you know, last year when we had Betty Hobbs, you know, here, and she was a casual employee. She wasn't here permanently. She didn't have a contract to work. She was. Thankfully helping us out during our transition, but that's just an example of how that happens. And then we have long-term subs that come in if teachers are out on

063maternity leave. Some teachers or staff members may be out for a particular illness that we need or an extended period of time that we need those casual employees who are stepping into those roles but are not permanent, meaning they have a contract and they're obligated to that position. Because that job has already been allocated to somebody else. So typically the casual employees are coming in to support Contract has already been given to someone and they're just out temporarily any other things about that one Okay, we need to Are we good with that? I am. I would just, I'd like to hear more about the casual employees because, like I said, for me, I was struck by the high number of casual employees. So I'm just, you know, I'd be interested if that's pretty typical for

064other school divisions or if that's like exceptionally high or what. Just to give you some examples and we'll provide you with some more data but substitute teachers tutors coaches for our athletics as well as adult ed Those are all casual employees. So dot-a-dot-a workers people who are working in evenings and some of our adult ed programs Those are all types of casual employees but we can provide you all in temps as well but i was giving her some specific positions but we could provide you with a more comprehensive list so you can get an idea of who those thousand employees are i think it gives you an idea like if you look at the last part of our human resources report we get every month like all those people that's like the number of casual

065for each one of those casual a lot of women We have season ESL registration is has really busy times and less busy times and They beef up with temporary staff during the really busy times and I mean, that's one I remember we were the last school board we were thinking of trying to reduce budgets for temps and I knew that would just be Horror people who need those temps. I mean we really when you need them you need them. But anyway, that's another Next up we have the market rate adjustment for pair professionals Sure, thank you. Yes, I put in this ad, 1% market rate adjustment for paraprofessionals 1 and 2, and this was something that I mentioned when we had the presentation from Segal Waters that, you know, of the different employee groups that

066they studied, I was disappointed myself to see that there was not, you know, that there wasn't a recommendation for a market rate adjustment for these positions because I, you know, I think that they are on the lower. They provide a lower pay than some of our other positions. And I think the compensation study from Segal Waters really provided us with valuable information. I thought it was very useful. But I do want to just say that I think blindly allowing market comparisons to drive our decision-making is a bad idea, because I think when we do that, we're letting other jurisdictions determine how we pay people. And I know when we talked about this before, you know, Ms. Alderton, one of the things you brought up was, you know, just the general, this being kind of a

067part of a general societal devaluation of education. And, you know, I think that's an unfortunate trend that we all want to change. I think, you know, income inequality is another huge problem in our country, in our area that I think we want to change. And, you know, this isn't a case of... The stock market, you know, these are decisions that are made by people like us in rooms like this, and I think wages are going to stay low until some folks decide to just do the right thing. And I think there are other data points in addition to the compensation study that we could look at. For example, I know we talked about how the paraprofessional pay, the introductory pay, meets the city's living wage ordinance, which is $15 an hour. But I just would

068like to point out that someone working 40 hours a week for 52 weeks at $15 an hour is making $31,200 a year. Our starting rate for paraprofessionals is $16.92 an hour. They work 6.8 hours per day for 192 days, and that works out to be $22,090. It would take 12 years or being on the step 12 in order to even make $30,000. And, you know, for a family of three, $22,090 is actually below the federal poverty line. In addition to that, I was just thinking about some of the conversations that have been happening in our city, and I know one of the things that happened recently, our health department has been conducting a community health assessment, and I found it interesting that poverty and a lack of affordable housing were identified as top health concerns

069in our community. And we also know from the city's recent housing summit... that a person needs to earn $74,040 to rent an average one bedroom in the city of Alexandria. And I appreciated at the work session when we talked about this, Dr. Hutchings, you talked about how our students benefit when our staff can afford to live in the same community where they work. And I think that our students also benefit when our staff don't have to work second and third jobs in order to pay their bills. And so when we evaluate our budget each year, I think we need to consider, like I said, a variety of different data points. But really, at the end of the day, we need to ask ourselves, how much do we value the contributions paraprofessionals are making to our

070school division? And what steps can we take to attract and retain the best paraprofessionals? I think in this case, we need to do what's right, not just what's market competitive. I think that the market does not value paraprofessionals like it should. And so, you know, I think, you know, if the group of folks in this room chooses to raise the rate, then, you know, that's going to lead to other school divisions in our region doing that. And so that's why I was proposing the 1% market rate adjustment, which really is just a very small amount at the end of the day. Well, I just wanted to just add to to what you said when I do appreciate dr. Reeve your your comments your sentiments in regards to this I do want to say that What

071we are proposing is above and beyond what the compensation study would recommend so because When the compensation study was completed and our pair professionals one and two were above the average market rate We are still proposing for our pair professionals one and two to receive that increase that step increase or the two percent so you know if we were just saying to keep our salaries as is um in regards to the compensation study i could see the point that we're not trying to provide you know our paraprofessionals one and two with additional compensation to go above and beyond that um average market rate but we are asking for for the increase and that was just a piece that i wanted to keep pointing out to the board as well as to the community that the

072recommendation was to provide that increase for all of our staff members because we do value all of our staff members. And for staff who are not eligible for that step to provide the 2% on their base salary, which we've had a tradition of doing a 1% on the base salary in the past. And this year we are saying, hey, we really want to show that we're valuing all of our staff to give that 2% who are at the top end of the scale. So I just wanted to point out that we are going above what the compensation study has recommended because the compensation study would have wanted us to keep our salaries as is. And in our proposed budget, we are still recommending to provide the step increase and the 2% one time on their

073base salaries. I just wanted to make that point for the record. Yeah, I appreciate this sentiment too, but then I think about all the other people who are also not paid all the way up. I mean, teachers aren't paid, but we have the people who work in the cafeteria and then bus drivers. They're all, so we kind of have to go back to the data almost, I feel like, because we can't just, everybody should have their magic wand and make everything, because I don't think that it really, but as a society, it's just not, and I don't think it's something we... Fix except we're trying to be you know what that try to be more aggressive than Was just gonna say that you know and I this is something that we've also talked about as

074a board is the role that we have to be advocates and I think that You know, especially the way that our Structure is set up here between us and City Council You know what we can do is ask for what we need and if we believe that you know, our folks are not being paid You know adequate salaries then I think we can ask for what we need and we can also advocate do more advocacy around What's needed I mean I do I do have some questions about the market rate, but maybe miss Lorber has like I just actually I just wanted to oh, I always it Veronica's turn No, I just actually wanted to thank dr. V for previous comments because I think I think everyone in the room actually would You know, we're

075there in terms of, you know, social justice, socioeconomic justice. There's so many issues, and I think we are all pretty much there. When I look at the 93,000 I'm not sure actually what would that amount to I think one of the things that I found very depressing and a couple years ago when we we started running the numbers on what it would mean if What a 1% MRA would do to the salary and it was nothing. I mean it was just so little so again I like the idea. I mean I think is that as a board If we are really, you know, bought into the issues of, you know, raising the status of education by increasing salaries, et cetera, it is a goal we have to work for. And I agree with you that

076we do have to lobby. For all of our employees, we have to lobby city council and work on it. But it's only been in the last couple of years, a few years, I think, that we've begun to make some inroads with. City Council and an understanding that the school system needs funding in so many areas and I think part of that has to do with the fact that a number of council members have children in the school system and so they started to see her a few of Children and they've started to see what the needs are other before that they really was there was no consciousness So I would just thank you again, and I really think we just have to work and advocate and you know, hopefully we'll get there Yeah, I think

077part of the shame in it all is that to put, I hear what you're saying. I think that the difficult part and what I think is the wrong part is that to put all of that burden on localities is completely unrealistic. It is. sad that it's set up that way. So, you know, I think lobbying city council is one thing, but we got to get to our state legislators. We need to get to the federal government because if we can allot, you know, billions and billions, you know, in militarization, you can't tell me that we couldn't make some adjustments to put some focus on education. You know, the mediocre amount, I just think about, like, I remember filling out IDA Part B applications, and the mediocre amount of money that comes from the federal government

078for that, it's appalling. So to, you know... for it to all be on localities and then the pressure around, you know, increasing people's taxes and, you know, and we talk about how expensive it is to live here, you know, there's going to be so much pushback and so much, you know, there's so much tug of war over doing the thing that is the thing that we should be doing anyway to fix all of our problems, which is to educate children. So I think, you know, lobbying city council, sure, but we got to go farther because it's a bigger problem. And, you know, we still are operating within a constrained, you know, budget. And, you know, every single person in education should be paid more. You know, how are we, I think the best we can

079do is be strategic, keep looking, keep trying to push as much as we can without, you know, sort of blowing ourselves up. You know, so it's so complex and complicated, but our advocacy has to go much, much higher. Ms. Nolan? Yeah, thanks for solving because I was gonna say the same thing I think that is a concern right because I think we have to be realistic about That we are also returning to City Council and we're about to ask them for the most money in the history of Alexandria in terms of what we need from the CIP so it's like there is just that the problem is we don't have a pot at the end of the rainbow this is one fine night, you know, it's not it's a small pot and it's it doesn't

080grow and so And I think the other challenge is that I couldn't agree more about how much these people are deserving and I think you know The concern also is just like there is not a I don't know if there's a single position in the school system that we're the top that we're the top paying in the in the jurisdiction. So I mean the teachers are in the middle. The principals are in the middle, which is really concerning. I mean, and then there's other like, you know, like lower paid positions like the LPNs are really concerning, which we haven't even talked about, about LPNs and what their vital is and that we the turnover rate of LPNs in the school system is like nothing else. And like the speech pathologists and the. you know, the

081special ed department and, you know, the preschool teachers and the cafeteria workers. And so, I mean, I just think the challenges, I just, I'd love to know, like, what is the long-term approach, like you were talking about, Dr. Hutchings, in terms of the three to five year, you know what I mean? Like, what is the most we can give? Because I think everyone is aligned. Like you said, you know, Ms. Lorber, that we all want to give as much as we can, and we all do want to be the... you know, the social justice school board members who want, you know, economic opportunity for all the people that work here. But it's sort of like, what's the strategy? And that's what we're going to be relying on you. And it sounds like, Dr. Hutchings, that's

082what you're focused on as well, is like, how are we going to make this a long-term effort? Unfortunately, because that's what it's going to take. But yes, I guess I just wanted to add that I couldn't agree more. But unfortunately, it's just everyone, the need is everywhere. And I think... The other thing that I would love that we, I just want to put out there that you've mentioned before, Dr. Hutchings, it'd be great. It sounds like the board is obviously concerned about paraprofessionals and what is the hours and the job descriptions. I think it'd be worthwhile. I know you and Dr. Wilkins are planning on HR department having like a, I know you do teacher talks, but like the paraprofessionals having a meeting and learning more and that making sure the job descriptions are aligned.

083You know what I mean? Like there's other things that we can be doing this year as well to just make sure it's the best. work environment that they're not being asked to do either whether it be hours or job descriptions or what have you but it sounds like the board would be interested in knowing what the feedback ends up being from that um that you already planned yourself you know in terms of like getting the feedback from the paraprofessional so i think there's an invitation out there that we'd love to hear how that goes from your end but um yeah i mean i don't have much i just didn't want my silence to to think that that's not an important topic and that there's i just want to throw out like the the parent liaisons

084you know i mean like there's just so many other Positions in addition that we value in this school system know what is the plan and how are we going to retain? It's really challenging and I do think the federal government and advocating there because I just don't see the local Jurisdiction I mean we already as this city we rely so much on city and we don't even the state like you know that we're working on the state of that that add-on is going to be a really critical as well, so Anyways, just some thoughts about what are some other areas and pots of money we can look into and just like Voicing that this is a concern. I think we all should I think the staff does as well I'm hearing you say that too

085So anyways just wanted to add some thoughts and didn't want silence to be seen as like not feeling it's not an important topic Just add on to what they're saying. I think one of the things that you made me think of about paraprofessionals That's a non-monetary thing is making them feel like they're part of the team. I've heard something From some of them sometimes that they're not included maybe in training that they feel like you know, they're gonna Check that out. I don't know because I don't know that that was somebody's opinion but then it I do want to emphasize to as miss Alderton said then and Nolan that we do have to look beyond the city because you have to realize It always brings me back to the sitting in the room when when

086all the people are testifying for the overall city budget You know, there are other parts of the budget that also impact our kids. So so there's a lot of stuff, you know, we don't want to You know, we want to press for what we need, but we also have to be aware that we, there's a lot of other stuff the city has to provide, and some of the other services also serve children that we serve. Well, preschool, but there are tons of things. The whole rec department, you know, there's like a ton of stuff. So when you sit there and listen to it, it's kind of like, I don't have to make the bigger budget decisions as well. Anybody else on that? Oh. Yes, but did you have something on that? Okay. All right. Go

087ahead. I just had a question about the title thing. So the first recommendation Yeah, so do you want to go Michelle? Yeah, I mean just before we move on from the compensation study, you know, since I had more time to just check it out. And we had this slide from the first work session on the salaries. And I was, I just, I wanted to make sure I understood. And I know we had an email back and forth, but just to clarify. Like the different groups it says it's like for the bus drivers It's recommending a four point six four market rate adjustment and a three year approach So initially I had thought that was four point six four over three years, but it's actually four point six four For three years in a row right

088each year for three years Because this proposed, I think this proposed column, you said this was for FY 2021, and that does represent the full percentage listed there. Right. The percentages represented for each one of the groups represents the first year. Just the first, yeah. Just the first year. And so as we move to the further years, we'll have to evaluate what the percentage increase will be to help us maintain the approach. So obviously for the bus monitors and the paraprofessionals. The reality is they're on the lower end in terms of salary. We feel like we could bring them up to a more competitive market average in three years versus when you consider them. Sorry, when you consider the principal as well as the senior leadership, we expanded that to a five-year approach. But each

089year, we're going to evaluate and assess what that percentage will be to help bring us up to the goal that we're trying to get to. So it won't necessarily be this percentage that's listed here. It's going to change from year to year. Correct. So, yes, it will. But the goal is to try to keep – so the focus more so is on the ranking of where we are because the other jurisdictions, they're going to do – We don't know what they're going to adopt, right? So we don't want to assume that everybody's going to have consistently the same percentage every year, right? So we are going to have to adjust based on what the market looks like and what next year's increase looks like. But the commitment that we're making is that over a three-year

090period, particularly for the paraprofessionals, that our goal is in three years to get them up to that top tier ranking. Can I make another comment on that? Just real quickly, and we will be bringing forward to you the relative comparisons between what some of the other jurisdictions have proposed in terms of their operating budget for the proposed school next school year. But what we're finding so far is kind of this interesting dynamic in which they're selecting subgroups of employees and doing market rate adjustments. So it's kind of this, you know, we're chasing each other to figure out which employee groups we're going to provide market rate adjustments to. So we're finding that very interesting. So we're in competition. So so to kind of I mean so another follow-up to this slide a is that I

091noticed that Like for the market rate adjustment groups. It has a bus monitor on here But if you look at the compensation study bus monitors, I'm sure they just I'm sure they need a pay raise But they were market competitive according to the study, but they're listed here for a market rate adjustment and then I was confused by the Chiefs category as well because not all of the Chiefs were If you look on the page three of the executive summary of the compensation study, it shows the list of job titles that are below market salary. And so it's just not necessarily consistent with what's here. So I just was kind of wondering about that. And then when you look at the following pages, I just noticed that the... In order to get the market ratio

092and the market rank for each job title, I noticed that for some jobs, the midpoint pay range was used. And for some positions, the minimum pay rate was used. So like for the paraprofessionals, it was the minimum pay rate. And when I was looking at the specific... compensation study report around the pair of professionals that if you look at their midpoint and their maximum Pay range they go down in rank And so, you know, I'm just that seems like a little bit inconsistent I'm wondering if we are, you know looking at doing an increase on the the tail end of their their their range of pay So it was just it was just two comments about the consistency of who the pay increase the market rate adjustment is being applied to based on what's in

093the report and then it's just there's a little bit of inconsistency about Where the data points are being pulled from if you have any comments about that What I can say is that when you look at the particular tables for the paraprofessional, they did look at the midpoint range because they were looking for the market rate as compared to that initial higher. So there may be some variation there, if you will. But again, paraprofessional one and paraprofessional two generally lead the market up until that last step. With that said as dr. Hutchings mentioned we we have a decision or any any place has this right? Are you can you keep your or do you want to have your employees lagging the market meeting the market or leading the market? so our paraphernalia already lead the

094market right the pair for us wanted to pick her and We value them as we all do here And on top of that, we're still trying to give them a little bit more, meaning that step increase in the 2% for those who don't qualify for the step increase. So we're being very sensitive to this matter. And I think, again, working together, we can continue to make improvements to the salaries. Okay, there's a point of clarification that we're leading on the front end of the pay scale for paraprofessionals But we're lagging at the tail end of the pay scale for paraprofessionals And I just I was wondering with the compensation study when you receive it does seagull waters assist in Devising the strategy for how to make these market competitive or are they just? Strictly giving

095you the data and then you all come up with the strategy for being market competitive I can't speak for the CFO's actions in particular with regards to his contact with Segal, but certainly that's one of Segal's services. And so they are our consultants and provide us that advice. It's also more of a collaborative effort because, I mean, we have Segal. We're not going to have an outside company come in and tell us everything that we need to do internally because we also have internal information and direction where we're trying to go as an organization that has to be put into consideration as well. But it is a collaborative effort, just like with any other consultants that we work with for studies. Ms. Alderton, about the next. Yeah, I just want to I had a question

096about the title changing and I know so the term paraprofessional is so broad right because I mean technically a One-to-one is a paraprofessional You know there are special education paraprofessionals and then the teacher aides in kindergarten are paraprofessionals so my question is have we Don't know if Terry if you might have this answer we talked to Terry Warner to make sure like do we need to distinguish between a Like with title wise for paraprofessionals who are specifically for special education Like I'm just wondering I don't know if that's an issue or not I think that would come out of the job study, you know, because the job study is going to look at the entire employee group and like what they actually do on a day to day. And then that will afford us an

097opportunity to possibly categorize the different responsibilities. So I would say that the job study will give us a lot more direction in how we I mean, maybe everybody remains the same title or we may have different structures. For different responsibilities, but the job study will give us a lot more that data or clarity And I just asked that question because when it comes to like services for kids like if we have to identify Specifically a paraprofessional is providing a special education service. I don't I'm just I'm thinking in that direction But it would be good to find out I also think with the title change, as we do the job study, it will be more comparing, you know, that same title to other jurisdictions, which will help us in some cases, like of what an

098instructional assistant there does. And it also may show us that, you know, what we think an instructional assistant. should do is not what other jurisdictions do. So we may have to have a different name for whatever that responsibility is. So I think that as we go through the job study, it's going to be a lot more telling around, do we keep a general title for this employee group? Or do we categorize as well as do we need to differentiate in regards to pay? You know, there are a number of structures that can come out of the job study. So anybody else for the title? And the next two are ones that we've already covered in other. Oh, and one more point I did want to make that, you know, our ones are instructional aides right

099now and our pair of twos are typically our one-on-one. So we do do some distinguishing now with one, two, four. But I think being a little more specific could, you know, it can come out of that job study. But I did want to make sure that. Everybody's not just a paraprofessional. We have paraprofessionals one, paraprofessionals two, and paraprofessionals four, which all distinguish different categories currently. And to be clear, the paraprofessional fours have the licensed practice school nurse certification. Before we move on, actually, changing up the names, which I'm sure, I feel like everybody's fine with that one, but I want to back up because we talked about the thumbs up and thumbs down. I'm determined to do it once, right? For the market rate adjustment. So we have that as a... Add that had some

100you still would like that Add the thumbs up and if you're not wanting that add then it's thumbs down Right the 1% all right And now I think the next two are similar to the ones we already had yeah, and those are all the ones that had co-sponsorship So does anyone and I think there are a bunch of them that are deletes or are there any? Others, which I don't think we need to talk about the deletes are there any others and the ones that didn't have co-sponsorship that people because we do Allow we do allow for people to ask questions or comments about that. So if you want to Know I only I just said after this I just you know ink I also know that we you know, there are the technical adjustments

101So just if in case anyone had any questions about those as well Yeah, yeah, yeah I'm going to turn it back over to Dr. Hutchings to go over the technical adjustments. So Mr. Easley is going to actually go through our technical adjustments with the board. And he can go in specifically, but I told him that I wanted to at least start off with some layman terms for folks, because when people see technical adjustments, everybody has a different definition of what that means. And these adjustments are being made from how things were put into the draft proposal that you all saw. and as you go through them, how we might move things around because people are not actually at those locations today and weren't in the fall either, but we didn't make that shift from last

102year in some cases. So that is what technical adjustments mean. This doesn't mean we are taking somebody away from a school and adding somebody to a new school. I want to just make that very clear to everybody so that we won't get the emails tomorrow and the phone calls. and principals saying, oh my God, I lost five people. No, you didn't lose anybody. You never had those people. But I'm going to turn things over to Mr. Easley to speak as the budget director. Thank you so very much. And it's an unfortunate reality that we face in putting together a 470-page document that we're pulling data from a variety of different sources. So we're pulling it from Munis. We're pulling it from some payroll data. We're pulling it from some... Databases that we have from prior

103years so the unfortunate reality is that when we pull this together there are some technical glitches which then leads us to produce a document that's Technically in error so again as dr. Hutchins mentioned these adjustments do not affect an individual person the persons are where they are in terms of the school, but in terms of our document We're accurately reflecting. What's what's happening and so you'll notice that I'll just go through number one is we're reducing an FTE encore position from William Ramsey on paper and Shifting that to the point to to increase it at Douglas MacArthur. So if you're looking at an individual page The William Ramsey FTE is going to reduce by 0.2, and the Douglas MacArthur will increase by 0.2. So the person is actually there. We're just correcting the document, if

104you will. So all of these will reflect no expenditure change, so it's not like we're adjusting the superintendent's proposed budget. We're just making the adjustment. The larger one in terms of the FTE at TC Williams and at GW, where we're, again, shifting those positions. When we pulled the data source, at that time, a lot of positions were, at least four additional positions were reflected at the King Street campus at TC. As we went and we met with the individual schools, like, no, where's my security officer? I know I should have a security officer. That security officer is actually there, but when we pulled the chart, he was still showing up. He or she is still showing up at TC. So we're just making those corrections. The .2 psychologist, were there any questions there? So the

105.2 psychologist at George Mason, we did, in fact, should have added that in there. It was just omitted from the chart. So again, we're just making that correction. The reclassification of a specialist, teacher specialist 11. which was, again, I have to take ownership of that. I have no idea how that title actually showed up in the document. So that's the reclass to the actual 1.0 FTE encore at Jefferson Houston. So we apologize for that. Reclassifying a 1.0 FTE EL teacher to make it more specific to what Hammond had requested. It was actually a .5 world language and a .5 social studies. So we're making that corrective split. Similarly at John Adams and the Early Childhood Center, the principal is in fact, the assistant principal, I'm sorry, is a 1.0 at ECC, whereas when we first

106started at John Adams and ECC, that person was split funded between the two locations, but they're now actually all in the ECC. So again, we're just making a corrective update to our document. This year we moved the TC Williams satellite campus from the combined chance for change satellite and we moved it to TC. Unfortunately, when we made that shift, some positions moved over with the satellite campus that should have remained part of the chance for change academy. So again, this is not like the satellite. Group it's gonna be like what we're losing it like no the coding for it is actually chance for change and they'll still have the resources made available to them it's just a more accurate reflection of where the person of the position actually resides and Lastly, I know this is

107created a question the FTE counselor the point five school counselor and the point five college career counselor Should in fact be a 1.0 college career counselor. It was split funded In the past and it's just getting the documents or the data that we have together to be more reflective of what's happening So again, these are just technical adjustments to a budget document. That's that static that you know is forever going to be set in stone So we're making these corrective adjustments here. And again at the end of the day, it's a neutral change to the proposed budget So there's no dollar impact to it or a person. Absolutely Thank you. This is just a general comment I guess about when I was going through the budget some areas of difficulty that I had resided with

108the reclassifications figuring out which departments got moved to another part of the budget and so I was really happy actually when Miss Gentry asked the question when we submitted the budget questions about can you just provide a list of all the reclassifications and movements. Okay. That's something that would be helpful every time we do the budget and I think it would be a good quality check for things like this so those admissions don't happen. Good point. Anyone else? Anything else? Staff? I just want to thank our staff for the work that they have been doing for the past few months. I also want to thank the board for the marching orders that were given to us at the beginning of the year in regards to budget priorities and making sure that they're aligned with our

109strategic goals. I really believe that it made our process easier. This process is never easy. but it made it a lot easier for our team to know what we needed to focus on this year. So I commend the board for taking that additional step. And I just want to thank the team again for their hard work because I know, especially I know Dominic is probably watching from home on medication right now, who knows? But I know because he's texted me a little earlier today, so I know you're watching, Dominic. I do want to thank you for leading the way and allowing your team to, you know, spend those additional hours because they really come in over winter break sometimes to work on this stuff. It's a part of their responsibilities because we have to have

110it prepared for when the board gets back into session in January. So they do additional hours above and beyond their time to make sure we have what we need. to well I have what I need to be able to present the budget to the board and the community. So thank you all for that. Ms. Green. Thank you, Chair Anderson. I just want to bring up and see where we're at in talking about the process of pushing up the budget schedule slightly to be able to get our budget, our approved budget into the superintendent before. He approves our budget type of thing. How it's always been that he approves it and we're still in the process of doing it. I mean, sorry, city manager, not superintendent. Right. Yes. Yeah. You guys knew what I was talking

111about. And I know we had talked about it before and I wanted to know and we tabled that and I wanted to know when we're going to revisit it. Well, that's one of those things that it's unfortunate that. Dominic is not here because I think he did he's done a lot of work and collaborating to at the city and I think one of the problems if I remember correctly is backing it up too much more it would would be a lot of work that have to do in this too early like the Data would end up being kind of old by the time we get to it, you know because of the summer break and things I think and I and I guess it would be To me in some ways it would be somewhat

112It would have the appearance that we had but so much goes into I mean there can't really if even if we both had two weeks before Not sure how much that would change things in terms of the city cities proposed budget. There's in other words They they're not gonna like suddenly halt and say okay We're gonna and and I guess if it's you know, just that we're asking for more than they're giving us, you know that kind of thing I'm not sure exactly what What we're trying to accomplish so maybe what your view of what we were trying to accomplish Well, I mean in my view, I mean we're always every year. Where's well, I've only done this is my second time but in watching it for many years The school board is sitting in

113a meeting and you know, we hear in the news that the superintendent has approved our budget But yet we haven't so it Sorry, I need some rest. The city manager has approved our budget and we're sitting in a budget session. So it really, to me, it devalues what we're doing and the hard work that we have put into it by him saying that he's approved our budget and yet we're still working on our budget. The only thing I will say is I think we're off it turns out we're awfully close this year Just by you know, we're gonna hit it by a few days And so so I would say that that's helpful I do think it's worth us talking about I think this is another one of these things it'd be interesting to see

114The interplay with some of our neighboring jurisdictions how much or little gap or overlap? happens there. I mean, I think it'd be a fascinating thing for us to, you know, talk to some of our fellow school board members, you know, not that we would necessarily adopt something, you know, whole, but I find that valuable. And I'm sorry, everyone, I'm just going to point out that one thing that's going to be a challenge this year is we're starting school later than every other school jurisdiction, which will impact our budget calendar. My lone holdout vote. Just because school hasn't started doesn't mean we can't have a budget meeting. Yeah, yeah. I think actually we are earlier than a lot of jurisdictions in terms of the school board budget. That's one of the things that actually complicates. So

115that's another thing that actually complicates our looking at what other people's compensation is. We have to guess because they're later than we are. So we have to think that through in terms of... Although we're not gonna I think we're never gonna be as late as some of them are to get their information I think because I think their presentation of the budget is even after we Approve like in Arlington for sure. I don't know about Fairfax County, but we can certainly ask I think it would be better when Mr. Turner is back to talk about that again. We want to get just the week before Exactly, and if we're this close this this time it doesn't seem that it would be that difficult. I mean we may have to even Back up. I mean we'd

116have to back up the CIP To in order to have maybe them I mean the operating would probably have to do it before the break though since we do it so quickly after the break Yeah, I believe the complicating factors CIP propose our cip and trying to i think we tried to um condense our calendar to have our cip and our operating budget more closely aligned um this year but i think that was the mitigating factors like how much more compressed can we have our calendar when we both have the cip and our operating budgets together Also, before we close, I just want to make sure that we're not too early either because of the governor's budget. There are a number of factors that we have to put into consideration as well because those are

117things that get impacted. I mean, it impacts our budget and what we recommend. So I think that's a point. Another thing is that the time that it does take to try to get this work done, and I was just talking about the finance team and some of the things that they're doing. You know, they're already doing that around the winter break time. I think then we'll be breaking into the Thanksgiving time that they will be doing it too. And we just have to put all those factors into consideration. And I think the major point that... uh madam chair mentioned in regards to the other school jurisdictions is that their times their um budget is proposed at a later date uh than we are um so if we get even earlier than that in some ways

118puts us at it could put us at a disadvantage doesn't necessarily always will but it could put us at a disadvantage actually you have miss nolan dr reef I appreciate the discussion. I also really appreciate just this ending up the budget work session with just some feedback and like thoughts for next time. One thing and I just wanted to share that could potentially be helpful is just also not having the questions due the day of public comment because that was challenging because there was a number. Yeah, there's a number of questions like that helped us out. So even just the next day would be super helpful. So that was just one piece of feedback. And then the other piece of feedback was that. It would also be helpful to get the questions back that we

119had, like the day before the work session even, just so we can ask follow-up questions about the responses we received in the work session. So those were just two minor pieces of feedback that even just adjusting it by a few hours I think could make for a more robust conversation and just be helpful for the board and hopefully less email traffic for the staff. Dr. E? Ditto. That was my comment. That was your suit? Almost. Okay. Just in the same vein. And I think we've brought this up before, the whole coordinating the public hearing on the budget. As we are thinking about budget schedules, just in addition to when our questions come and go. And one of the things is I always feel so rushed to get the questions in and get them answered. So

120just anything we can do to... Calm that schedule down a little bit and give the public more time, you know Give us time to respond to the public what they say and Sarah so I am saying I'm chuckling a little bit because we just we've just before this decided that we wanted that we want to a quicker So that maybe those two things might be somewhat mutually exclusive but but but the good news is that we have an reinvigorated budget advisory committee and one thing I think that we should have them help us look at too is Our calendar because I swear every time something goes amiss Correct that the next year, but then something else And it's like so maybe it's some others eyes on that will help us Miss Gentry, I'm so glad

121you mentioned that because I'm gonna put in a plug I believe all of you should have received an email from from the budget advisory committee and I'm sure a lot of you were very focused on Your budget homework, but they they have specifically reached out to all the board members trying to get some feedback because of what and I want to extend my thanks on behalf of the budget advisory committee for those of you that have already responded But for those of you that haven't they they do want, you know individual board feedback on you know exactly that you know, you know are there and I'll certainly bring up the discussion that we're having here tonight when I The meeting is scheduled for tomorrow Some of these questions I think the calendar is something There

122are a number of things that they've been thinking of but they do want to make sure that their work is really aligning with what the board You know would find most valuable for the for them to be spending their time on I'm glad you mentioned them. Yes, yes, that's good. So please do the survey. And I'll just say, I am terrible because I did respond to their email, but I haven't done the survey. So I actually wrote myself a text while I was sitting here to do that. But the other thing is that we're going to need to have more members. That's the other thing. But I would ask, one thing I would ask, because I'm not sure that was part of the information we received, it would be interesting to have a little... blurb

123about who they're looking for maybe you know what what kind of back what would be useful so that we can sort of give out to people and Then I just want to tell you all So we finished everything adds elite wise what we're still gonna have our work session next week because we do have to talk about What what our presentations going to be for this? operating budget presentation to the City Council as well as Have a discussion about co-location since everybody else in the city's had it and and we haven't as a group so so I've been to so many meetings in the last 30 days location too narrowly focused and so we're going to try to bring it out and back to where it was and talk about it and yes because that

124will be a critical meeting on on the 4th of march because we can hope the last two have been rocky and the last one was almost like silent meditation for most of us because we didn't really know what was going on So let's let's hope we can turn the corner here Tuesday Tuesday and it's just a work session with those with us and so to clarify We pulled the presentation review off. I think it's better at a work session anyway. We pulled it off the meeting, but we have added to that meeting. Mark Jinks is going to come and deliver part of his presentation. He's not approving anything. He just presents the budget that on Tuesday of next week while we're having our work session. On Thursday, he's coming to present the school portion of

125the presentation that he's given to the city council. Just a clarification first. I'm really excited about I think this is a nice development to have the city manager come and present That's really nice. This is just a warm question What we do is that the superintendent? You know makes the presentation and there aren't questions at that point Is it a similar situation for the? I think says we can ask questions. That would be really yes. We will be able to ask. Thank you. I just I wanted us There's nothing else it's Lorber just a question about tomorrow night the open house Tell us a little more about this open house. They're holding at TC Williams from 830 about the city schools facilities joint I'll send you all an email. No, no, I got I got

126the email, but I just am curious Why are they doing an open house? Why isn't it a? The open house is specifically about the joint Sibley's master plan right and it's to talk about the multiple facets of the master plan because a lot of people Because when that started was many years ago There are new people who are engaged and they're trying to set the foundation to help people understand the history of it what it's all about and that it's not just about You know affordable housing or co-location or you know, it's multiple facets of the joint master plan So that's what's going to happen tomorrow tomorrow evening I guess my question had to do in some degree open house gives the sense that you can come and go you know come at 630 and

127you can't seven come and go so what is it going to be different stations with people in for all the different aspects of Showing that the joint facilities master plan is an umbrella of a number of different Things so you're going to be able to go to different booths depending on what you want to learn about And then as I understand their comment cards or that you can that you can fill out and leave if you have some comments about it Yes, dr. You've had something else I was just gonna add that they they just did one at the Mount Vernon Rec Center about the Delray area plan and it was it was similarly organized I think it's a really nice format I know we did some with the high school project where it's just

128an open house and you walk in and you Can view the information and give feedback and at your own pace Right, so it's not obligatory. I just I thought it was you asked me about it I had it on my calendar and then I realized it wasn't on everybody else's and given the last months that you know We've had I think that we wouldn't want people to miss it if they thought that would be helpful Some of that information is going to be shared with the board when we talk about co locations next week So if you can't make it tomorrow, you're gonna get some of that information that's applicable to us Next next week. Yeah. All right. Have a good evening everyone