001Okay, we're going to call the meeting to order at 12.01 p.m. Mr. Robles, do you mind doing the pledge of allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Your Lord, this is an important meeting. As we get ready to review the preliminary budget numbers for the upcoming year, we ask you to guide us in liberating in the best manner possible for our staff and for our students and that you continue to bless us with our financial stability. We ask that you keep our students and staff in mind. We ask that in your name. Okay, we'll move on to public comments. I believe we don't have any, right? We don't have any
002public comments. Okay, we're going to go ahead and move on to the presentation. It's item four, finance. Good afternoon, Dr. Diaz, Board of Trustees. Tonight, I'm sorry, today we'll be discussing the budget workshop. The first thing we would like to discuss is the budget timeline. So in March, the superintendent sets the 26-27 budget priorities and Dr. Elias gave us some priorities for us to begin our budget process. In April, we begin our preliminary budget discussions mainly because of the preliminary property values that we receive from the county. In May, we'll start to update our enrollment and ADA trends through the end of the school year. In June, we will begin to finalize our staffing and begin the cost estimates for the new year. In July, we'll have final property values, and at that point, we'll
003have a better ADA count. And in August, the board approves the 26-27 budget for the September 1st school year. So the 26-27 budget priorities, we want to mitigate enrollment and ADA decline. School safety is always a priority. Employee pay increases, and we're working on managing our health insurance costs. For 2526 the budget assumptions we had made were that enrollment would stay flat at 29 613 on the right hand side of the slide what actually happened in 2526 our enrollment dropped to 29,000 53 The other ADSY for the middle schools is new for 25-26. We will not know the result of that until the end of June because that's when the majority of our ADSY days are at. Our tax collection rate, we projected 95%. We believe we're on target for another tax collection rate of
00495%. In 25-26, we did ask the school board to approve self-funded property insurance. And for actually right now, we've already made a million dollar contribution to that. So some of the budget challenges that we're facing is inflation. We have an underfunded basic allotment. The state basic allotment has not been increased to counter inflation and rising utility costs. We also are facing underfunded state mandates. If everybody remembers, the state gave a teacher pay increase, but they did not fund the employer costs for fringes, so the school district had to absorb those additional costs. We also have a full-day pre-K requirement for four-year-olds, but the school district only receives half-day funding for those four-year-olds. And again, school districts across the state are facing enrollment declines. These are some of the headlines that we're seeing across the state.
005You know, school districts all over are reducing positions. They're trying to recover a $181 million deficit. They're trying to reduce at least part of that deficit. And then, as you can tell, you have Dallas who passed an unbalanced budget for 25-26. So on the first side of the budget, we have revenues. And for 26-27, our revenues... are projected to stay the same. 76% of our revenues come from the state, 16% come from local, and 8% come from federal. So your local revenues are mainly your taxes, that's the biggest contribution to local revenues, and interest income. Your state revenues are highly dependent on enrollment and average daily attendance. Your federal revenues, we do have some entitlements, and some of them are competitive grants. The basic allotment. This is one of the budget challenges that every school
006district is facing. The maroon line is the basic allotment, and in 2017, that basic allotment was $5,833. In 2026, we received a basic allotment of $6,215. However, inflation to buy what we were buying in 2017 for $5,833 would now cost us $7,857. So this gap means that we're being funded not at the same rate as the district's costs are increasing. The district's costs are increasing at a much higher rate than the state is funding us. The other budget challenge is enrollment decline and what's causing the enrollment decline across the state. In our area, we have lower birth rates. Hidalgo County has seen a 20% decrease in birth rates over the last 10 years. Cameron County has seen a lower birth rate of 21%. Homeschool. In Hidalgo County, over the past three years, 3,156 students have
007chosen to be homeschooled. In Cameron County, 726. And for the 26-27 school year, vouchers will be awarded to applicants. The latest report we got from the state comptroller is that 84... Students from PSJA have applied for vouchers. They haven't been accepted yet. I don't know that they're going to notify us if they've been accepted. I think only the parent will be notified. Mr. President, will we be able to ask questions along the way or are we because... because it is a lengthy presentation and we only have one hour. We'll be able to ask questions. Can we ask the questions at the end of the presentation so that we can get to the presentation? Is that going to be still recorded and shown to the public if we pass the one hour? Well, the meeting will
008end at the one hour mark, so. Can you please tell us again why we only have one hour to review the budget? This meeting is being held during the lunch hour. We are trying to comply with limitations on holding board meetings outside of work hours. So to make sure that this is accessible during the workday, we're keeping it to just the one hour. I'm not going over. Because it is a... It is against, like you're saying, we do have to have it during working hours or non-working hours. So to comply with that, we're holding it during... I just want to recommend that the next follow-up meeting is done after 6 because I do not see a single community member, which is the reason why we should have it during non-working hours. There's not a single...
009It's all employees from the school district, which is great. But... My question is that at one time on vouchers I did post this as a concern and I remember another board member telling me that all vouchers shouldn't would not affect us. Well, I just want to point out that if we're up to 84 on how it does work out there may that increase and it's also going to impact our attendance, our enrollment. The voucher, to address your increase on the voucher applications, the deadline has passed. So this is going to remain. And they have not been accepted yet, so we don't know. Right. And actually, we looked at the other school districts on the list, and two of our neighboring districts, one of them is at 143, and the other neighboring district is at 178.
010But we do not know. This is the maximum. If they all get awarded, that's the maximum that applied. So again, enrollment. This is the Hidalgo County enrollment. In 2022, you see that it was 178,000, and it jumps in 2023 to 184,000. But for 2027, then you start to see a sharp decline. And for 2027, Hidalgo County is predicting another decline in their enrollment. When you look at PSJA's enrollment trend, You see the same thing happening to PSJA in 2022. We were at 29 to 50 UCS jump in 2023 to 30,000 which mimics the slide before as a county then 24 and 25 We didn't have the sharp decline as the county slide. We were we were pretty much Seen and declined but not at the sharp Decline that the county was seen So for 2026
011we projected to stay flat Right now you told me that our current enrollment is 29,053, but yet you're going to budget for 29,013? No, I was saying that that's what we had planned would happen in 25-26. So on the next slide, this is the actual. So we had planned 29-613 to stay flat, but actually it came out to 29-053. Thank you very much. So looking forward to 26-27, we're looking at our cohort trend. And as you can see, the seniors this year are 2,354. The juniors are 2,235. So even with the seniors graduating, we're going to see an automatic decline when those juniors become seniors. But the overall trend down to kindergarten is downward. So you do have a couple of cohorts that are a little larger, but overall, even on the larger ones at
012fifth grade, which goes over that projection line, they're at 2,030. That's 300 less than our seniors now. So Ms. Becky. Yes, ma'am. So then the seniors are graduating. So the juniors, the projection is then that it's going to go down again? Yes. The juniors replacing the seniors are already a smaller cohort of 120. Okay. 120 days. Right. And what we wanted to show the school board is we don't see any enrollment increase with this cohort trend. I just want to remind to ask for acknowledgement so we can address your question. I apologize, President Rodriguez. We'll follow the protocol. My bad. Thank you, Ms. Patel. So using this cohort information for 26-27 on the next slide, we're projecting, we can't really predict, from 29,053, we're projecting a 28,500, which is a 550 decrease in enrollment. Some
013of the initiatives that we have implemented to try to mitigate this enrollment and ADA decline. We have the additional day school year for elementary and middle schools. Middle schools is new for 25-26. We have the ILEARN program, the optional flexible school day program. We have pre-K partnerships. We have recruitment liaisons. And we've done a lot of work on our migrant identification. And the reason we have the migrant identification up there is because if we reach a 5% on the migrant identification, then TEA will drop the lowest to six weeks of our ADA, and they'll calculate our revenue based on the four highest six weeks. So... Mr. President Rodriguez, I have a question. Go ahead, Miss. Ms. Gonzalez, what is the current percentage of ADA? We have that in the... some slides later on. Okay. Actually,
014it's the next slide. So we put our enrollment next to our ADA along with the trend lines, and the red line is the enrollment trend going down, and then you see our ADA, and the trend line is going up. On the bars that have the percentage, that's the percentage of the ADA compared to enrollment. And the reason we're showing this slide is because In 26, our estimated ADA, if we remain the same as 24-25, we will have reached a 96% ADA compared to enrollment. For 27, if we reduce the enrollment but we keep the same ADA, we're looking at 98% ADA compared to enrollment. So right now, we're not sure that 27 is actually going to be ADA of 28, 116 because that's a really high ADA compared to enrollment. And those two lines will
015never intersect because if they do, then we're saying that every child showed up to school every single day. So we really feel we're at the maximum ADA percentage of enrollment. We will have a better projection once the ADSY in June is over. We'll know if we need to come down on that $28,116. So the other part of our revenues are property tax revenues. This slide shows that our property tax rate for the past three years has remained stable. We are at the maximum 17 optional pennies that we can adopt, so there's no room to adopt any additional tax rate increase. And so there is no projected tax increase. On the next slide, these are our property value trends. The CAD grand total net taxable, that's how we earn our tax revenues from the county. We've
016received our preliminary tax values for 26, and they're at $6.8 billion. If you see the very far right column, that's a percentage increase year over year for taxable. We had been averaging about 5%, and for 26, it was only a 1%. So on the next slide, with no property tax rate increase and a minimal increase in property values, we will be budgeting flat tax revenues. Other revenues, because we want to leave every stone unturned and we want to make sure that every revenue source that we have available to us is being maximized. We do maximize our indirect costs of state and federal programs. On our child nutrition, we use the unrestricted rate. For federal grants, we use the restricted rate. We also have attorneys that protest our property values at the state level, and they
017have annually recovered state aid for us. We have SHARS that's been an obstacle for all school districts in Texas. We're reviewing that for efficiency, any errors, and we're trying to minimize the recovery that the federal government is placing on school districts. So just to recap of our 26-27 projected revenues, we're projecting flat tax revenues due to the preliminary property values that we received. There will not be a tax rate increase. We're projecting a possible decrease in state revenues due to the declining enrollment, and we believe we've maximized our ADA. We're trying to minimize our SHARS losses by verifying our data accuracy, and we're still trying to ensure that all revenue sources are being maximized. So to the expenditure side of the budget, you know, like in any household, you want to see are we spending
018on something that we can cut out? Do we have redundancy? In our expenditure categories, 85% belongs to payroll. The next highest one is supplies and materials. After that, it's contracted services. On contracted services, we don't have a lot of room to make any kind of reductions because the majority of that is utilities. Other operating costs are 2%. Our debt service is 1%, and our capital outlay is less than 1%. So the majority of where we focus any cost savings is going to be in payroll. So some of the things that we're trying to do to control our payroll expenditures, when staffing teachers, we're looking at the master schedule. When teachers are leaving during the school year, we're reviewing student counts for filling vacancies. On overtime, all overtime requires pre-approval, so there's a cost containment of
019overtime. We do periodic stipend reviews. And on health insurance, we're reviewing our plan design and looking at our employee allocation. What do you mean? We have stipends that belong to A team, B team, C team, D team. And so we make sure that all of those, you know, right, are correct. Okay, we're talking about athletics. Yes, and there's also fine arts. And so, yes. So you're talking about... reducing the stipend or reducing the amount of people who receive a stipend? We make sure that all those stipends actually have teams, right? So you can't just say I'm the C-team coach. Okay, well we need to see that you're the C-team coach and that there is a C-team. So we do periodic reviews. Like a clean up. Does anybody, and I imagine they do, look at the
020coach's records to make sure that, in fact, this person earning a stipend is actually putting in the work with their ABC team to kind of review the stipend as well, make sure that it is? because of the extra effort and or if no effort is done. I imagine that you're getting feedback from principals, you're getting feedback from athletic directors. Athletic directors. And all of that. Yes. It's the athletic directors that tell us. And they do tell us remove this stipend. So on the other expenditures, we have an instructional resource committee and that committee evaluates instructional resources for utilization, redundancy, and effectiveness of the program. Mr. President. President, President Luzia, you say you have a question. Hold on, Mr. President. My question is, in this bullet, Becky, who are the, who's part of this committee? The
021Instructional Resource Committee? Correct. The head is Ron Marquez, and he has EO's... Executive Officers, Coordinator Specialist... Yeah, I was just wondering if you had teachers in part of the committee which thank you I I'm glad because it's important that we hear from them school year you're saying that you're going to review the plan design and employee allocation so the previous I have the six previous years here where assuming in maintenance and operations is where you include the cost of the insurance and the age in a record correct Yes, where can we find how much we spend paying for the insurance? Where in the budget would we find that? It would be along with the payroll expenses. Currently we contribute. Okay, so it's school administration or in which line? What number? Which slide are we? Is
022it the graph? Which slide? No, I'm talking about on the budget. Oh. What line would that be? It's in every line. So function 11 would have health insurance included in function 11. Function 12 would have health insurance included in function 12 because teachers are 11, 12 are librarians, 23 school administrators. So every line has health insurance in it. That was my question. It's not like I'm going to go to one line and we have an itemized line for specifically insurance. But do you have that type of information? Can you provide us with a report of perhaps, or Dr. Elias, I apologize, Ms. Gonzalez. Dr. Elias, will you direct and your staff, whoever is in charge of, you know, if they can provide me and the board a report on how much we've spent, a comparison
023in the past, I guess, four or five years. of insurance uh the company the actual companies for uh and the agent of records the totals that we have spent to compare and what is projected to be compared for this year yes uh i'll go ahead and get with uh miss gonzalez but just to let you know that right now we might not be able to provide right away because we are out for bid on the health insurance no problem doctor yes i understand and i know you guys are at the end of the year But if you can provide us with that information in the next few months, that would be great as long as we do get the information. Thank you. As soon as we close out the bid, then we'll be able to
024share it with the board. Okay, perfect. Thank you so much. So the $1 million that you said that had already been collected, where is that money assigned? The $1 million was for property insurance. It was property insurance. Okay. And that $1 million, so where would I find, where would that money be assigned? That's in a separate fund completely. Okay. So controlling our other expenditures, we already went over the Instructional Resource Committee, who evaluates instructional resources for utilization, redundancy, and effectiveness. We also look at our energy costs and we try to shut down HVACs and electricity when facilities are not in use, specifically in July and sometimes in December. Inventory levels are reviewed by transportation maintenance to make sure that we're not overstocking or stocking items that are obsolete. We made a change in print shop.
025They now print banners and announcements. The banners is new, which keeps the dollars here. Before, we used to outsource the banner printing for our schools, and now they're able to buy them directly from the print shop, which keeps the dollars within the school district. We utilized purchasing co-ops to ensure reasonableness of vendor pricing. We compared their prices to other vendors in the co-op. And then again, we did the self-funding property insurance because property insurance is a high-cost, low-return fixed expense. And in most years, the district saw little to no recovery. So we have that on the graph in the next slide. In 2019, our property insurance was $1,059,000, and that year we didn't have any recovery. It's a 0%. And then you see an 8% recovery in 2020, and then you see minimal recovery until
0262024. In 2024, we did have a recovery, but we had to hire a law firm to get that recovery for us. So in 2025, we had no recovery, and in 2026, we have funded the self-property fund for $1 million. If need be in the summer and we get a windstorm or a hail storm, it'll be a 100% return. We can pull that $1 million to make the repairs that we need. And so this is why we recommend it to the school board and we appreciate that the school board saw that insurance is really more protection from risk than it is. uh reasonable reasonable it wasn't reasonable for us yeah and it wasn't reasonable for us anymore at almost 7 million so our recap of our 26 27 expenditures were focused on controlling payroll and payroll
027benefit costs because that's 85 of our budget We're trying to reduce any redundancies that we identify. We're maximizing co-ops. And like we talked about the print shop, we're reducing outsourcing of printing and transportation. And we're working on our energy efficiency. And so we can do questions now. I have a question, Senator. President Rodriguez? Go ahead, Ms. O'Brien. Yes. In light of recent events, I have a question. because of a recent bid that we voted on on Monday and that I had questions in the past. So it has come to my attention and I have questions on, for example, we just voted on the t-shirt bid. Ms. Gonzalez, what is it that we approved? Because let me tell you where the question is. We approved... two companies, which is a deviation of prior years. Only last
028year and this year, we've chosen two companies to sell the t-shirts. Prior to that, I did some research and we had only one company, but that's not the problem. The issue here, or the question that I have, more than the issue, is that we approve. It comes to my attention that the schools are selling these t-shirts at a profit. We are proving, for example, on Monday, if I remember correctly, one of the companies, I believe, was at $8 per t-shirt, and then the Duratex was at, I want to say, $8 or $10. I'm confused because there was like a $2 or $4 increase. So let's just say $10 for a take-away. Then the schools sell it at a different price. According to the website, and I don't know if that's... updated or accurate they're setting
029the schools are sending them at 15 each making a profit so the question is is this a fundraiser are we approving to pay anything do we buy from these companies and then the schools are setting that a profit what funds are we using are we using title one federal money that cannot be use for fundraising and then if there is fundraising because obviously students are making a profit where is this who is administrating those funds are they going back to the student activity fund is it going to the administration fund you know where is that money and then if it is a fundraising who is this money So they do make a profit on the shirts. I am not aware of any campus selling the shirts for $15 when the cost is $8. We will
030check on that. But the money does go back into their campus activity fund. We do not use federal funds or budgeted funds, and the school is allowed to keep the small profit that they make. But we will look into a $15 price shirt. to buy from these vendors that are provided to the district and buy from the school, right? And that was just fine. So it may be a discrepancy. You know, they may be selling them at a lesser price. They're at $11 or $12. Uniform for all the schools is that are everyone selling them at the same price? But are we paying for the shirts and then they resell them and then they're sending us back the money? How is the t-shirts for the students? You're approving the price of the shirts from the
031vendor. It is coming out of our general fund or any fund. We are not paying for anything. Correct. So it's just the price. And each campus is giving us an increased price. Each campus should be recovered the cost to them for the shirt. We did tell them that they're not allowed to increase the price to the parent. So I am not aware of that $15 price tag. for, you know, for now because that's not the issue. The issue is we're approving $8 and $10, whatever it is, but the parents are buying it at a higher price. So it is a fundraiser because we're setting it... or more for parents. Parents that have a hard time sometimes to make ends meet with that sacrifice to buy a uniform. So I thought that the purpose of going
032out for visits was to lower the price or get the best price, the lowest price, the best quality for our parents. And then, okay, so then it is a fundraiser. And they recover. They buy from the company, let's say from IBE $8, and that T-shirt, when they send it to the parent, they get back their $8 and they make whatever, let's say $4. Correct. Okay. And do you get a report on how those funds are spent? We pick up their reports monthly, and we do check their disbursements. I can't, we don't trace it back directly to the t-shirt sale, but we do see their disbursements monthly. Yes. Okay. And the practice of selling it on a higher page because of going out for bids for the lowest price because we're increasing it. And let me
033tell you where I'm coming from as well. So the quality of t-shirt that is a little bit more than the very lower quality of the t-shirts. Obviously, the cheaper, um less um quality uh t-shirt but if it is cheaper it's going to be what the schools and telling the staff order from this one because this is where we can make more of a profit you see where i have a problem even though the parents are saying well it was very low quality i would have rather have this if i had a choice but because the schools are the ones that are ordering there i don't want to say push But they're obviously, because it's a fundraiser, they are favoring a lesser quality and lesser price because there's more revenue to be made. Right. So we
034don't set a minimum. Price that they have to sell them at but we do set a maximum So you're correct. You may have a campus that's buying it at 8 and selling at 11 You may have another campus. It's buying it at 8 and selling it at 9, but we can look at maybe uniform costs across all the schools You know, you're not allowed to charge more than a dollar than what it cost you So we have said a maximum that they can charge but not a minimum thing to have a 60 40 to a 50 50 so perhaps on the next bid the bid itself what kind of quality so that you level the field because uh you're not comparing apples to apples so again uh if you give me a choice i'm gonna
035go with the cheapest because i'm not gonna wear it it's gonna i'm gonna sell it to the families uh and they're the ones that have to buy again because the quality is lesser and so but because i can make more of a profit now Also, what is it that we're using the campus activity funds for this particular fund? So in light of the recent events, I think it's a good idea, Dr. Diaz, to perhaps you reminding our staff for fundraising, the rules, the consequences. and the fact that anybody that's fundraising out there needs to report the money immediately the same day, unless it's completely impossible. But to straighten and tighten the fundraising. And so just wanted to bring light to that because it does. I am always pro teachers and resources for them, but not
036at the expense of the parents paying $4 extra. So perhaps looking at that and helping the parents and the economy while at the same time finding ways to help the campus activity funds stay healthy and not that big impact. I don't know what the answer is. You're the expert, Becky, and the one that always makes the magic happen. So I would appreciate very much if you look into it and look at those things because we don't have a level field and with good reason, vendors reach out to anybody else and voice their concerns. So thank you so much, Mr. President. Thank you, Ms. Othello. Dr. Othello, do you want to? Yes. Ms. Gutierrez, just to make a quick comment, we do train as principals. They do train every year at the beginning of the year,
037and halfway through the year, they get trained on the procedures. The bookkeepers actually at each campus train the staff on how to handle monies, how they need to report it. So all that training is done every year, and then we also do our random audits through... our comptroller. So those things are being addressed constantly. I know that our comptroller and finance do trainings also and they are out there at the campuses doing trainings at the principal's request. But when it comes down to the uniforms, I understand what you were saying. the quality of the material but this past year we had a committee where we had several principals in that committee and actually we saw that the material was exactly the same the shirts were exactly the same now the cost did go up in
038one of them but as of a while ago like maybe about 10 in the morning I received an email from one of the vendors that you all elected to take an action. So it's going to have to go back to the board because they are matching the price of the other one. So based on that, that they're going to match it and the materials are exactly the same, now it's a level playing field for the vendors. But we will address with the principles that we are going to set a uniform price across the district for the sake of the parents not being abused on prices. Right. I appreciate that, Dr. Lea. Thank you for the information. Well, Dr. Lea said it all. We are all cognizant of the fact that we need additional or periodic
039refresher training, whether random or uniform at a campus in regard to handling of activity funds. It's not a big... crisis, but I think that it will serve as well to have some refresher or refragment. In regards to, Becky, I agree with you, but Dr. Leeds has already said it all, I think. I was going to recommend supporting what Becky had said. The campus has to have a choice for the material and the shirt what they want to buy but doctor is in the snow that it's basically the same quality so it's not an issue anymore and if they're going down one of the vendors to match the other one that's not going to be an issue either but I do agree that maybe we can look at the fundraiser there's nothing wrong with that but
040set up set a maximum that you can go up to and then have it be consistent across the board. And I think that will solve it, take care of all our problems. I wanted to recommend that, like Mr. Villegas said, put a max as far as the price, because we do want to help the parents also. We don't want them to be struggling to want to pay a $15 shirt when they can't afford it. So to take that into consideration also. So right now we do have a maximum. I think Dr. Lias is headed towards setting a standard price. Because right now we have a maximum and you do have that spread and the campus has They can charge a dollar they can charge 50 cents more and so you do have some disparity amongst
041the campuses So I I think what dr. Elias is going to recommend after this meeting is that we standardize the price of the shirt Period we've set a maximum, but we haven't set a standard price I had a couple of questions on the parent activity fund. There's always activity funds happening at campuses, you know. Do we have a set number of activities that we, fundraising activities that we do per year? I mean, or is it open to the campus? And my other question is, do, how often or do we have? Those activity funds being monitored like those deposits though those activities because yeah Once you you send out all those tickets or whatever they're selling from the campus I mean I can just be bringing you all this money But do we monitor the deposits
042do we monitor that we are like like our own account you know And so that's my question because I see a lot of that happening out there. Ms. Perron, like at the high school, I can give you an example that at the high school there was over maybe close to 70 different activity funds open. because there's so many clubs, organizations that want to open and they do fundraising. There is a tracking because there's a bookkeeper. Even if it's at an elementary, the secretary is usually the bookkeeper to take into consideration. They have to bring in forms. apply for those forms and then this is the club I'm opening this is what I'm gonna fund raise this is how much money I'm putting in this is how much money I'm expecting to make so all that
043is based on the bookkeeper and they keep track of all that and then it's created into where they do deposits within the 24 hours they have to be doing deposit but there's no limit there is no limit as those activities come up no and I know like at bears Just in activity funds throughout the year, we run close to half a million dollars. But there's always a bookkeeper keeping track of deposits and everything that's happening, and then the checks being written to counter that back. Thank you, sir. And maybe we can go to Mr. Prism. So there are a lot of clubs, and from my experience, you were held to one fundraiser a semester. So each club could do one fundraiser a semester and then sometimes it was, you know, like if your fundraiser was
044you selling pizza during lunch, I don't know, they still do that, then you have these two weeks, this other club has these two weeks, this other club has these two weeks. So there is some limitation there and I don't know if that was part of your question. Yes. And considering that there's so many, so many clubs, each one of them must have their own account, right? Mr. President, I just wanted to add. I had a question. Hold on a second. I just wanted to add to what has been said. In my experience as a principal, every single penny went back to the students' one. The other one is that my grandchildren and I have family members, children that are attending schools. I think that they pay like no more than a dollar 25 extra if
045the shirt sells for If they sell it to us for $8, I think we paid $9.25, which is $1.25 more. I don't know about what other schools do, but I know from my grandchildren, we paid $9.25. And if we get it for $8, then it's only $1.25. So I don't know of $14 or $15. It could be. I'm not aware. And the other thing that I am going to say, I know and I'm assuming everybody does this too. Every penny that is turned in, we issue a receipt. I'm assuming that's still the practice. But when I was there, we used to do that. And we had, at the time that I worked here, we had a... periodically and so I'm assuming that's still happening I guess it's the thing to or what we're wanting is
046maybe a schedule of is do we do an audit in the spring one in the fall and one in the spring I think that would help just so that we know that you know we it is being monitored regularly for some kind of structure some kind of you know a calendar where we know that that it's standardized but I agree I think that every point that has been made it's important that that we that we are cognizant of parents that that are there were not like you said sir abusing but yes thank you Yes, so there are different prices. I know a school that sells it for $11,000 and there are different prices. So thank you Dr. Diaz for looking into that. But my question Vicky is simple. So we have a projection of $20,500
047in enrollment. What was the projection for ADA? Sorry, 98.7%. What is the amount per student that we're going to allocate for next year? So that I can calculate how much we're going to have in funds for the students. How much are we getting per student? If you're, if you're, are we talking about the basic allotment from the state? Right. It would be minimum 6,215, but that's assuming that every student is in attendance every single day. So if they're not in attendance every single day, we don't actually earn the full 6,215. 5,500 and 6,000. Maybe. Right. And then we have the categorical funding. So when they belong to a special population, you know, if they're at risk, we get additional weights added to the attendance. So $6,215 is the minimum. That we would earn for student
048what you can do What you can do is 6,000 215 multiply times at 28 500 and then take 98 point 6% out of that and that gives you the amount would be getting based on attendance Ms. Castillo mentioned that 100% of the fundraise funds go to the student funds. And so, but you, Becky, said that the money that they're fundraising from the t-shirts are going to the campus activity funds. So make sure that the campuses are... following the law the student activity fund cannot be used for anything that is not indirect uh or it does not benefit the students directly and so that's why i was also i forgot i printed down for everyone that i forgot to give it to him to take The Student Activity Fund has very poor legal specific rules. And
049so I would like to know specifically the money that are being funded for the teachers are going to the Campus Activity or Student Fund. And also finding a way to, and maybe in this one Dr. Elias, sorry to keep asking you to do things. I know you have your plate full. But reminding everyone about those rules, I know that they get trainings and stuff, but in light of recent events where people forget that they signed these trainings, that they took all these trainings, reminding them that the student account is not for teacher appreciation, board appreciation, that that has to come from the campus. We do use those terms interchangeably. We use campus activity fund and student activity fund interchangeably. I apologize for the confusion. MS. Correct. interchangeable and make sure that okay campus activity can
050be used for students but students can only be used for students. You're correct. Yes. And we are requiring each campus is required to open a staff activity account. Right. So the campus activity fund refers to the entire campus activity fund, their checking account. The student activity fund like Ms. Castillo said is just for students. However, In complete transparency, we do allow a transfer of 10% to a principal's discretionary account. But that's from the student, actually. From their fundraisers, yes. Okay. But the law says, Becky, that if you fundraise... for things that the children are participating in, their sports, you know, that those funds have to be used to benefit the children directly. So anything that's done at the school with the students has to be used. To give you an example, principal charges $5 on
051Fridays to wear jeans. Now that is for the teachers, can be used for the students, for the school board, for the parents. But if you have, for example, the children that are going to go to a field trip to the McAllen Library, or Farrer Library, rather, then it is a fundraiser for the students. So you cannot get a 10% from there because it was intended for student activity. So that's what I'm saying, that this is exactly what I'm talking about. that everyone needs to be on the same page because it's not only about moving funds and how I use it, it's the law. Right, so the example that Mr. Robles gave, the pizza sales, that sale is directly to the student and you're absolutely correct, Ms. Gutierrez. We are not allowed to use that money
052that we collected from the student to make a transfer into the principal discretionary fund. However, when it comes to campus-wide fundraisers, where the sales are happening to parents, to outsiders, to adults, we're not selling to the student, but we're selling to the parents or the community, that we do allow a minimal transfer into the principal's discretionary fund. So yes, you are correct. In Mr. Romas' example, we don't move any money that the child is buying from us. It does. You know that we forget or some people just maybe like me with very short attention span get into their thoughts and during the training forget that the student account is only for students. It cannot be used for anything else because in the past we've had issues where it gets- Ms. Gutierrez. Yes. I'm sorry to
053interrupt. If you don't want to take it anymore- For the sake of time, I've got two more minutes. I have comments. I'll skip a question. It's already been answered. Thank you. Let's continue. Mr. President, I think we kind of deviated from the main purpose of this workshop. And so I am requesting that we have a second workshop to get to the actual meat of the budget. I wanted to discuss the plan that was put in place this past year when we went over our budget. 60 million expenditures. I know we had a plan that the district will continue to strengthen financial monitoring to probably detect any discrepancies between budgeted and actual expenses. This includes variance analysis, trend analysis, and ongoing communication with department heads. Some of that I've seen presented today, but I had further
054questions regarding what measures specifically we were taking to avoid the over expenditure, for example, the That 2.4 million in child nutrition that 2.4 million in construction and I Have questions and I feel that because we're limited to this one hour That there should be a there should be a second workshop prior to the board meeting where we approve the budget You know, nowhere near the area of looking at cuts, but there is some redundancy. I mean, as you said, from previous experience, and I hate to talk about, you know, what I used to do, but that's just the way it is. And utilization. You know, I know that some of those online subscriptions to different, you know, vendors that deal with curriculum, sometimes they're not being used. look at that so you know and we
055can tighten our belt by not having a board appreciation. I agree. I've said that before or have one day to appreciate everyone and that's it. How much time do we have? I know we didn't start right off the top. A minute. Yeah, I started right at 12 o'clock. Okay, good. I'll make a vote as far as it's like. Okay, all. motion for adjournment we're adjourning at 1