001[Music] theit [Music] what [Music] up [Music] good evening everyone thanks for coming appreciate you being here for our kind of public input on budget priorities this is being live streamed so I'll use the mic Dr SLO will then use the mic as well and uh thank you for making time to come out and thank you for valuing uh Liberty Elementary School District and your child's education or being an involved Community member we appreciate it uh the purpose of tonight will be uh for you to be able to provide input on budget priorities that the that the board should consider um Dr SLO will speak here in a few minutes he'll actually compile all the data that's kind of uh uh the input and the feedback that you have and provide that to the governing board
002um prior to kind of the the board's budget priority meeting we're looking to have that on Monday March the 24th I believe that's the Monday after Spring Break um uh with the board and so the board will be able to have this data from tonight so thank you for for being here and I hope that you're uh uh you can be positive open-minded and um and help us come up with some uh really good Solutions um so I want to share a few things with you guys um just in kind of setting the context about tonight as you guys know we're conducting a budget analysis for the current school year that's 24 to 25 and then we're also looking uh what you'll do tonight will be with regards to the budget for the next uh
003for for next year uh to be able to reduce the budget we don't have the specific uh number at this point um but we will by the time we have the study session on uh on March the 24th we might be about 2 million right now um because we're doing a lot of different things with our with our budgeting and our m&o budget and different funds and so but we'll have that for the board on the 24th um but but we want to develop a very fiscally sound budget and have those priorities so the budge can the board can help us make those decisions as we move into the next school year so what you'll do tonight would not start until July August okay it wouldn't start right now it would be for the next
004school year 2025 so that's July 1 um I kind of went over the purpose of the meeting is to identify some of those budget priorities I'm going to share some of the budget priorities that District administration has come up with and a little bit of the rationale and then count on you guys for your your view of the big picture of the district and maybe things we haven't considered or things that you see you've seen that we have considered um and just the last statement um is as the District administration on the next slide I'll show you kind of what was the focus of our the filter for our decision making well not decision- making but where we are right now and working towards a recommendation for the board was to um it's probably best
005that I read it protect and prioritize classroom instruction classroom teachers in The Core Curriculum content for all students okay and so we're kind of working off of that to really prioritize that and there's a lot of things we do in the district everything touches the students but some things touch the students a little less and so we're really trying to protect that that's why we kind of put that statement we we are as we looked at some of these recommendations so some of the ideas that we came up with were here they were it was on another slide that you may have seen from a week or two ago um but uh I don't know if there's a yeah okay so we have we start with the district office and reducing Administration potentially that's that
006was made very clear to us by by the board and so there's positions you'll see this this uh word attrition how we kind of Define attrition is those are unfilled positions for the next school year so when we say like a district secretary would be reduced uh next school year there's no one in that position right now um same thing with educational I'll show you on the next slide okay some of the ideas but educational services coordinator uh individuals in the operations Department our communications director resigned so there's no one in that position so potentially next year we want to fill that position okay so that's what we kind of mean by this word attrition uh we have some counselor positions that are open now psychologist positions that are open we have a number of
007reading interventionists that will not be returning to us next year uh and instructional coaches so those positions would potentially not be filled okay so that's what that word attrition means right there and these these are some other areas that we'll talk about that we've considered for savings um uh and I won't go through every single one but I think Dr slope made a hand out for you guys okay and these are just some things we've come up with okay on the next slide you'll see some money uh some numbers attached to this um some estimated savings this is very rough okay uh it's a draft you can see the watermark here but you can see different positions where there's been attrition and you can see like reduction of memberships reduction of Consulting fees Energy savings
008that we'll have uh the budget for the communication uh marketing uh the communications director marketing budget you can see some savings with regards to our this is a tips account with regards to our Insurance liability we have some credit in there where we can draw out $100,000 of that credit uh the new web page Armored Services so we have quite a bit of different savings that are listed here that totals up to just about right here and these are savings that we've considered as a as district office leaders ship Administration to potentially offer to the governing board to consider um over here I would say this is a little more sight level if you will like if this is more District this is a little more site we have a few different things here we
009put like the counselors psychologists instructional coach like I said the attrition of those positions uh kind of there um permanent guest teachers was a big one we know we talked about that last year it used to be Esser funded uh the permanent guest teachers and it's rolled over into our M we actually have nine position I but only seven of them are currently filled okay um and then you have you know potentially reducing an ad uh athletic director stien and and a few different things this doesn't mean that this is this is the right answers necessarily but I wanted to show you some of the things that leadership has come up with as far as reduction you know and just some basic amounts you know up to about $3 million I don't think we need
010to reduce that high like I said we're probably at about 2 million right now and hopefully it'll be lower as we can continue to do some work um uh currently so that's that's kind of on your flyer there uh there's things like this you might see where we reallocate some resources meaning we pay a lot of things out of Maintenance and operations but there's a lot of other accounts that we can pay out of and we can really maximize those accounts so what this says is there's about 231,000 in our m&o that we can just use a different fund to pay for half of those positions and the employee doesn't know the difference but we can just be smarter with our budget in school Finance there's lots of pots of money that can be utilized
011for different things and there's strings attached and so uh we want to just be really creative because we have a habit of coding everything to our maintenance and operations and there's other other funds that we can look at to to fund things out of or percentages or what have you so uh we're doing a lot of work on that like I said this is kind of this already changed so we were already working on something this afternoon so it's already a little out of date uh Dr slow and I were kind of laughing about this but um uh we have like skilled maintenance worker for example um we have a skilled maintenance worker who's retiring he's great awesome worker but he's retiring so we would potentially not fill that position and we'd split up the
012duties between other maintenance worker positions communications director we don't fill that position we split up some of those duties amongst amongst other positions uh same thing groundskeeper assessment coordinators District secretaries we find a way to be more effective and try and protect the classroom as much as possible uh the classroom teacher class sizes those kind of things um so um that's all these categories reflects our maintenance and operations expenditures okay that's what's kind of been presented um again not all staff reductions reflect the loss of the position but may reflect a reallocation to Alternative funding sources and again as we start to grow is as we can continue to grow and build up our reserves is not to say for example some of these attrition positions can't be um I don't even want to say
013added they just wouldn't be filled we we would distribute those duties but it's not not to say that those things can't return um and most of the staff positions reflect those vacant for uh some some are vacant for this year and then going into next year but and as we walk around and we do the activity we can help you with some of these things just if you're curious to know some of our savings but but I'm really curious to know also some of the input and feedback you guys have cuz we can also collect that for the board uh what we'll do with the board is have the board do a prioritization activity and uh I do want to say I appreciate board member Schmidt vice president Zimmerman for being here um as board
014members they'll probably walk around listen Okay um but I appreciate them being here to kind of hear the feedback and the input and that'll also be provided to all all four board members so Dr slope I know you want to do some quick intros oh Mr L you have a question oh oh right there if we have if we have questions about line items up there because one seems to be a duplicate who do we ask about those yeah you can ask me which one real quickly is a duplicate you think it was Transportation savings due to electric buses and then a little further down it's uh the same thing pretty much oh yeah so this is uh I'm sorry I should yeah I should have clarified that's maintenance savings we think we'll be able
015to as we've worked with our department and with the bus company save about $30,000 on maintenance because there's less maintenance on the electric buses however uh we're this one is different because right here because some of the fuel savings so we won't be using as much diesel gas and so we even though APS rates go up we think we'll be able to save on fuel savings as well so those are two different things fuel savings and then maintenance yeah yeah so you know less oil changes you know those kind of things so good question all right Dr SLO you have the mic sure thank you everybody for coming tonight so tonight um you can see that there's round tables here people sitting round tables and there's a bunch of manipulatives on the resources on the
016table so you're you're in for a workshop experience if you've not been in one before tonight the way we're going to do this before we get started though I'd like to have our our business office team introduce themselves so if there are questions throughout the night you can recognize and who the uh who might be able to help you answer some questions good evening my name is Crystal moer I'm the accountant in business services and I'd be happy to help answer any questions I'm Megan Canan and I'm the procurement specialist so I can help answer some questions I'm Rebecca Williams and I'm here to support Crystal well said well said so tonight we are the goals of tonight's meeting is you to collect information on your perspective to communicate those perspectives directly to the governing
017board so we're going to be collecting information tonight uh you can see the uh poster board that's on your table and cards and note uh Post-it notes we're going to be collecting your ideas uh and then what I will do is collect all this information at the end of the workshop and uh process it and not summarize it but tabulate everything and then that will go to the governing board uh prior to the March 24th meeting uh for that um so we're really intending to allow you to convey your sense of priorities to the governing board through the process uh with this all right so let's move to uh what we're going to do tonight um we will all have time to share out at the end uh each table can share out uh but
018in our general activity that will give you about 25 minutes uh to complete what we're going to do is spend a little time at your tables reviewing the handouts there are two handouts that you have I probably should get a copy so I can see it one of them it does not have all the dollars on it by lion item but one of them is says uh operational um uh organizational uh categories and so the workings of the school district in a general sense can be divided up into some subcategories so one might think of them as being classroom instru or instruction related I'm going to put on my glasses so I can see one might be instruction type things which is classroom teachers Core Curriculum substitute teachers those kind of things instructional support so
019not the direct classroom teachers but those things that we uh do in our organization to support instruction School administration district office including Administration staff and other things plant operations Transportation so big categories so what we tried to do with the help of the team from the business office is put under those big Ideas uh some of the sub areas right now purposely we're not going to be able to give you a line item 20page folder of every single position and line item because that's not the purpose of tonight we're not ready to do that yet uh with that but these General categories are meant to be here for you to think about to say where in these general areas would you recommend that the governing board dig deeper and consider reducing or looking for Savings
020in those areas so let's do an example right off the bat Dr Monroe said the two things that are off the table as far as we're concerned right off the bat in our thinking is classroom teachers and The Core curriculum so we would say those things are not in the reduce column or the savings column to look for um something else like office managers and the school sites maybe maybe there's we should look in there and that would be an area that it might be considered for reduction I don't know I'm making this up as I go along does that make sense so what are you telling the governing board if you write down under the reduced category oh sorry got my fingers going there what are you telling the governing board if you were
021to take a Post-It note and write on the Post-it note substitute teachers and put that phrase under the reduceed category you're telling them that it's okay to go and look deeper into that category of service and see what kind of savings might be there that we could um benefit from or the budget could benefit from does that make sense and how this is working now so you could write down any of these I'm giving this to you as so you don't have to just start thinking about it from scratch you have these categories somebody else like Mr lions and I were talking before might might say well I think what we should do is reduce the watering at Blue Horizon's football field to once a month and save money if that's what you feel then
022you would could write that under the reduced column there's no limitation about what you can put here this is meant to just help you think about it and give you categories to think about right so hopefully that's helpful now on the other side of that handout is the categories that the district office has done the work on to see where the attrition level where the vacancies are right now where things might be reduced where we could have some savings and to give you a little sense about how much money those categories um contribute might contribute to overall savings so this is giving you detail but it is not exhaustive we just simply can't give you the detail on every single uh part of the organization at this meeting tonight nor would you want that to
023flip through that's not the intent of what we're telling the governing board through this meeting so you are free to put anything under any of the three columns reduce means look for savings it's okay to reduce that area unsure means maybe but not as strongly as it would be if you say yes go look for R uh reduction and the Do Not reduce is saying off limits just do not we don't think you should go there does this make sense if you have something times I just keep talking unless somebody raises their hand and asks me a question yeah a full disclosure making our incision sorry some of these on the list can you cut I mean speech occupational therapists AR they legally required so let's clarify what we're asking I would be asking you
024what do you think we should look at investigate further for possible savings if you feel that speech should be off the table then you would say don't even look there but if you even if you don't know the detail if you think yeah that could be an area that we should look deeper at that's what you want to tell the governing board okay right does that make sense it does yep it does thank you yes you can sometimes I ask does that make sense the person goes yes and I can see it in their eyes don't agree with you know it's we totally educated to make that decision if that makes sense like say say that once again I don't feel like we're fully educated enough to make that assumption and unless you were unless
025I directly have someone involved in speech so right you know I I realize how important it is just like Core Curriculum and reading interventionist how are they going to read their Core Curriculum if they can't read I just it's a lot it is a lot and this is a very very difficult thing to do is it not oh yes to make this decision so put yourself in the governing board's shoes about I'd love to well there you go I think we have a new candidate for next next time around it is a very tough thing to do it's very difficult to do because you're talking about cutting in some cases we might have the flexibility that there is a rtion it's not it's vacant now it's in our budget we've budgeted for it but no
026one is in that slot or that service is not being fully implemented then that might become an easy way but when it gets hard is when you have to balance the budget and you have to cut something so both of those are in there um the question this activity would be asking you is what is your feeling and your sense of what we where we should look if you think speech maybe not be in the reduce then you'd write it or put it in it could be a maybe or maybe you put it in the Do Not reduce I feel strongly enough about the areas of special ed please don't look there I don't think you should be reducing Services no matter what if you feel that that's what this is asking you to express
027yes need something on here indicating that this particular position is required by law idea for example right if if you you don't have that level of detail because that's going to be riddled throughout all the blind items where the budget money comes from what's the budget source of the money whether we can get rid of you know what I'm saying most of what you have up there is flexible but some of them might not be might not be yeah quick question education services coordinator is that position currently empty and why are we considering that for cuts what is it why is it not necessary absolutely second line item second uh yeah the assessment coordinator the educational services coordinator rned services and those positions will be vacant next year you'll notice that a lot of the
028attrition positions we tried to hit in various different departments so it's not just all one department but they'll be vacant next year so it'll be like an attrition situation service what what about that particular position makes it an option for cutting because if it's what I think it is and correct me please it's essentially developing our curriculum refining our curriculum making sure we have curriculum committees and getting input from the community and going back to the schools and really finding out is this working the way that it was advertised to us um so please is there a reason why this is something that is worth getting rid of because it's so if I'm correct foundational to the success of our students over all well and that's why we're having this tonight because we want to
029hear your guys's input when we uh when we talk about the core instruction because the argument can be had and Mr Smith is not wrong but the argument could be had on all of these things of how vital they are and that's why we want your input tonight and so like I said what we've tried to preserve in the middle sacred is kind of core instruction and the content area for all students and you could make an argument to say that educational service coordinator is critical to that okay um or you could say no it's not it it's maybe a little farther out and so that's why we want your guys' input tonight that department would be reduced and we would like in a lot of our district office departments redistribute um some of the
030duties in order to um try to protect the classroom as much as possible however I don't disagree all the things up here these are this is not easy this is serious this is really hard and so you have to really make an evaluative decision of that's what the activity guys will do because Mr Smith may say well I disagree I think it's critical and I think it should be and which is why I asked because I can't make a decision if I don't know for sure um can you give us an idea of how you would distribute those particular tasks across the district uh I would say in a lot of areas uh uh you have to uh Empower your teachers a lot of times you work with your teachers and uh sometimes you find
031grants to pay your teachers to do that work as is a smaller District we don't have the economy of scale that's a fancy word we don't have this economy of scale of larger districts that have these really large departments and so we have to count on um teachers now remember with regards to our ed services department there's a lot of support at the sites as far as reading interventionists and instructional coaches and so a lot of that money considered for ed services is also um dedicated to the site so it could be redistributed between the jobs but it just makes it more challenging to do um but everything here is challenging whether you're looking at ed services or um you know landscaping or HR or what have you communication director or whatever is up here
032and so we would redistribute those duties and then we have to do more with less and we are a lean district office as you guys know um you know there's not not a lot of money that's been put into Administration uh on the AG's report over the past few years to the district office so we would have to sharpen our pencil redistribute some duties some job descriptions and and all do a little bit more redistribute to instructional coaches sorry if we're going to redistribute to instructional coaches then that would make that shared instructional coach at Lees and LZ is that lasa who zbro L zbro sorry um that would make that a non-option I would assume because then there's no one to pick up that if they're going to be a core recipient of Distributing
033yeah potentially that's a that's a shared option likely because of the school sizes that that will be those those schools would likely be smaller but yeah again that's no easy decisions and this is why we are having all of this input so thank you Mr Smith antip to pick up the extra slack regardless because that's what happens in our environments also with the Ed Ed Services just so you guys know Ed Services also supports the teachers they're the ones that give us differentiated instruction for our professional developments and if we don't have that as well that I mean that's kind of it's important to us um our ed services department is the one that has been depleted this year and um they have worked tirelessly not only for our students but for our staff um
034just within the last few years is the only times that I've had as an art teacher been able to meet with other art teachers in the district and work collabora collaboratively with them that was never an option in years past so I'm not saying that that assessment coordinator position um doesn't need to remain open but that's also a way that they support us staff um I personally think that the assessment coordinator if it doesn't get filled needs to be um the district office needs to pick up the slack with that not our instructional coaches hello hello um I was just going to say um as as a teacher and looking just at the benefits um benefit savings for HSA saving just so everybody knows that we were encouraged to take the high deductible with the
035HSA because it saves the district money so just so you know so if we take that off we're probably going to cost you more money because you're going to put us on a higher cost plan so that that is a little bit tricky up there I I think you probably need to look at that a little bit and also it will end up taking the cost of that as well so you'll take cost we'll take cost I see lots of places where teachers are taking the brunt of this I I see like oh we don't get the signing bonus we have to pay more for HSA we're going to pick up all these duties that are going to be reassigned that we need to think about that we're going to do more with less if
036we're doing more with less everybody does more with less yeah let me let me just clarify something too I should have said and we'll get to you add in your activity um the where was it is a signing bonus on here oh uh the signing bonus would be just to fund it out of a different category it would not to be to fund it out of the M this is all maintenance and operations so we we're planning on funding the signing bonus out of the classroom site fund so what happens is if we can fund it out of another account it's a savings to our maintenance and operations so I'm sorry I should have explained that a little a little bit because it is it is misleading no it can be funded yeah no it
037can be funded and there's a lot of those that are up here too as we as you guys are doing your activity we can walk around and talk to you about that but this is M savings some of these things are funded through a through a different account uh the for example one the uh let's see the Lumis armored car service $166,000 we don't need to fund that out of Maintenance and operations there's plenty of accounts where that can be funded out of that's why we're getting input and that's what we're going to be changing I don't need that okay Dr slope oh one more question then we'll go to Ed thank you have we had a communications director before before this gentleman or this person the position was created I think two or three
038years ago the community communications director position all right and um if if we feel strongly about protecting something tonight we just put it in do not reduce right and if enough people vote for that I mean that at least gives you an idea well we're not going to f it out tonight but if if yeah what's happening is you guys are going to provide your input and your feedback on the list all of that's going to be shared with the governing board so it's not going to be we're not having an open call to the public or an open debate or anything we want to get make sure we get input and feedback so so if someone doesn't want something cut we just put do not reduce right I mean simple as that that's the
039idea some of the the comments that you're making and the insights that you're having and the feelings that you're having are exactly what the governing board wants to hear and uh I know there will be governing board meetings that will be coming up in which more detail of possible decision might be coming up and there'll be opportunity for one to say specifically if if if the ass assessment coordinator goes onto some list of a possible saving and the job description and the duties of that particular one you would feel should not be let go that it should be filled then that's the kind of feedback we're trying to give to the governing board what we don't do tonight and because we're not there yet but the governing board with the staff will have to do
040is go through every single bit of in the budget every line in the budget and say is this something we should or could gain some savings on that's the job of the governing board that detail it's not our job here tonight because we simply we would have to have an hours and hours Workshop to do that to make that but if you have that feeling that ed services should not be at all in the savings bracket that's what the governing board needs to hear and that's what we're kind of trying to do tonight uh imperfectly you would put that feel free to put that in the Do Not reduce because that's what you're saying I don't think this General category should be looked at at all for reduction because it's too vital to it if
041you want to get specific these are specifics but they're there as an example there's this is by far not complete much more work has to be done but if you feel the specific for a category or something there that's what your voice is supposed to do tonight yeah yeah yeah I had two quick ones uh reduction of the ad sipon for the five schools that was placed under a catchall person that we hired I'm assuming we hired I was just going to ask how that's going because that person I remember when that job description came out it was like Mission Impossible I thought are they able to do the ad for the entire District successfully y yes um that's the hope that was a position that was approved right before I started but yes that
042would be someone exclusively over Athletics among other things to take that yeah sorry the microphone looking at my water this is this is a bigger one the guest teachers I wonder if you could just elaborate a little bit on that because guest teachers permanent guest teachers seem to be used in to like a very large extent in other words I don't think too many of them don't have a job so I don't understand what we're gaining where you're coming up with a third of a million dollars by reducing guest teachers there's a permanent guest teacher assigned to every school there's two schools that have two permanent guest teachers but not all of them are not all those positions are filled so there's a uh there's there's nine under the budget but there's only seven that
043are filled and you're right those teachers those permanent guest teachers those substitutes probably have work to do every day they have classes to cover and so that was something my understanding is that came out of some of the Sesser monies some of the covid monies that were assigned to the district a lot a lot of districts used covid monies for classroom coverage and supporting the teachers so this is simply the amount of uh what the seven teachers the seven permanent substitute guest teachers would add up to their salaries if it was reduced it was funded out of Esser in the past and then it got rolled over to maintenance and operations in this past year so they had to pick up the cost there so what you're suggesting doctor then is that these would not
044be filled and we would not have any permanent Subs is that correct that is what is considered an idea if there was not a permanent guest teacher at every campus but you used the substitutes substitutes that that we have it's that many more subs are going to have to call every day well yeah every school starting point at every school has one person yeah so they wouldn't have that person again this is just an idea that's a recommendation but yes go thank you so no easy no easy U task to do this as we're finding out to do it so if we could this is how I'd like to suggest that we proceed you're at a table with colleagues may or may not know each other introduce yourselves if you if you haven't take a
045moment if you haven't already to look at both lists and get familiar with the various number of current vacant positions uh on the list that has the uh amounts on it but also look at the other list to understand the breath of where Public School dollars go into funding and the resour sources ask each other questions have a little discussion but when you get to the point I'll give you about five or 10 minutes to do that when you get to the point that the items that go on the poster board are individual so each of you would be putting suggestions and categories topics whatever you want to say to the governing board as if you were standing up in front uh the microphone and say this is an area that's okay yes look for
046the first something if you feel strongly in the area that shouldn't be cut then put it under the Do Not reduce I apologize for the word reduce it's mine I had to figure out to put something on top of these things of the three categories the unsure is a maybe you don't know the details because you and I are both not budget people uh we don't know the details of the budget or the job descriptions and you're unsure about it then put it under the the the unsure uh category um and you can put anything now you could use the Post-it note if you'd like you can write directly onto the poster paper whatever you'd like maybe put a line under something and then there are index cards at the end of the day I'm
047going to collect all these index cards from the tables and here's where you get to write a little bit more I wouldn't want you to write a paragraph on your poster paper because I we run out of room really fast but I have a ton of these if you'd like to make a comment on what you're thinking or expand on the categories that you're putting under there uh feel free use those and that every one of them will go to the governing board is that fair enough it's a workshop activity welcome to try to do some complicated stuff uh in a short time and put it into some context and structure for that so any questions before I give you about 10 minutes to think about things or talk about things are you are we
048clear we good okay why don't you take about 10 minutes think about it look at the categories uh and if you want to start writing you can too we are here to answer questions if you have a specific question you think of something raise your hand one of the staff will come over and help oh this is a public Mee this is a meeting that is being recorded and live streamed uh so you won't have microphones at your table but just know that the room is being recorded District 8 or is it site base a that's a good question but 0% of those things are things and like it was instruction service would they need Adat but I agree um I can't say for sure yeah sure like exposive they have a district coordinator ad
049I like they're hiring sure you want to write she been cing la have right if I could interrupt just for a second your wonderful conversations please progress to um putting your own ideas down onto the either the posted notes or on the poster board because that's the data that we're collecting and forwarding to the governing board uh tonight so if you could move to that um we're going to stay here for about another 20 minutes or so for you to start to fill that out and please let me know if you have any questions you for I'm it's for e e e e e for e e e I e for e okay hi everybody I give you we do about another five minutes to close out your thoughts please and be sure to write
050them down they not look like I didn't want we would that's e for e e for okay everybody not to not to put a damper on your conversations but uh you don't want to keep you here all night long so our final part of this activity and you certainly can keep writing while I'm talking though is um I'd like to do a little little bit of a share out from the tables um if you can somebody want to volunteer from their table to be uh to tell us uh tell us what you guys were talking about and some of the things that you were realizing anybody want to go first don't make me pick somebody Paul you'll go all right here here's a microphone all right um some of our do not reduce the permanent
051Subs if you get rid of the permanent Subs you're just going to have to pay subs that we can't get in so no use and we probably even said add a couple to the district so that they can rotate around because if you have permanent Subs we can always use them for something um do not reduce the office manager the secretary or nurse um ed services the classroom coverage again one of kind of the themes was we wanted to make sure that the teachers are paid for what they're doing and that we're not we're not taking that away and by reducing that classroom coverage we're then asking the teachers to do the same stuff that they're doing above and beyond what they're doing without getting compensated for it so that that was one of the
052themes that we're trying to cover um the athletic director stiped uh we we said if you're not going to pay them then let's cut the program instead of not covering not paying for what we're going to ask them to to do um counsel psychologists instructional coaches and reading and interventionists all on the do not reduce um achiev 3,000 we said that was a good program and while I'm talking about that we'll pop over to DreamBox we said reduce that it's very few people seem to like that so put that on the reduce look at what we can um behavior interventionist uh one of the thoughts was to we're getting the ssos and sro's in see if we can use them for reading buddies or what can we use them because the goal is have a
053gun in the classroom and they can have a gun in the classroom reading to A Buddy as well as they can sitting in the office doing whatever it is that they're doing so if if we've got a grant bring them in and let them do it do some stuff school supplies well it looks like a great thing to to get rid of we just we're already short on it and all that's doing is saying hey parents why don't you buy this for us or teachers why don't you buy this for us um do not reduce the preschool and increase the fee for those that are paying right now it's a pretty low fee so those that are going to be using the preschool um we can have them pay um one of the unsure items
054probably because we weren't sure where to put it but the reading intervention is TE the they're doing the the testing for those that are going into the kindergarten and right early intervent early entrance exams and they were asked instead of being paid for it to instead do it underneath their contract so again we're asking them to do more without what it is they're there to teach the kids not to do this other stuff and and when we paid them that was fine they could they could go do that but let's let's not pull it off and then also what happens to all those that move in during summer and can't get that then we may may lose some of that um reduce the subprogram it's not working um the executive bonuses and the executive director
055of operations reduce those um superintendent salary bonus car allowance um increase an am so increase the amount on the um How much the single for the health benefits those that are on the single plan right now pretty much get a free health insurance it's always hard because you're asking them to pay more but at the same time a family plan is paying like $1,600 for the HSA to get to get that health insurance compared to someone that's single it's free so increase the amount that the the individual has to pay for that ideally I I think it should be a little bit more equal so that if you have a family you're not really stuck paying a ton versus a single having it free and so instead of taking away the HSA benefit where you're
056wanting people to go instead make the other place where you don't want them to be more expensive to encourage them to go to that other plan that you want them to do um increase athletic fees um it it is cheap compared to other options and so if we're going to do that we could increase that um see what stoppage we can do at Loro zumbro I'm sure we've already got contract signed and whatnot but is there other furniture or other things that we could delay on that even if it's a six-month delay or some type of a way to reallocate some of those students to different places because really blue is the only one that that's overcrowded so can we help move something to to reallocate those um the gifted program reduce that as well
057as the all student testing um and do not open Loretta Umbro save money on the operations and teachers and salaries and all all that um the tractors trucks the maintenance all that new equipment and stuff let's not buy any more of that uh District memberships and District Consulting fees District memberships look to see CU some of those do bring us value but some of them not and and we hate to drop out of some of those but at the same time give a really heavy look at those and the Consulting fees yes let's do that um internal um i' rather have ed services help us with that and and work that into hey this is what we're doing then paying a consultant this that all of that um knowledge is going to is going to
058go out the door when they leave um look at the admin taking 11-month contracts instead of 12month contracts so the principles and and admins being on an 11-month contract and and that would be those that want to could could do it that way and that could be a savings any other thoughts good all right who wants to go next maybe just the next tap all right so some of our ideas might mimic what they said but I'll go through our reduced list um so they said don't open Loretta zumbro I was under the impression that we had to so if we have to we thought that we should send Sierra schools over to Loretta zumbro because they already have an acting admin and that's not an additional cost of the district also move prek to
059Loretta zbro and they also have a district coordinator so that would mean that they wouldn't necessarily need an administrator there and the only additional salary that that would require is possibly a nurse um taking away District Gas and car stiens uh Human Resources if we're on a hiring freeze we can reduce and stop um hiring for HR armored car service a communications director we don't think is of value at this point um anything that can be absorbed at a district level teachers are already doing a ton of stuff um administrators you know on the sites we're also we're doing a lot to say that District isn't but a lot of these problems are stemming from District so uh District consult fees District memberships District secretary uh reduce maintenance but we don't also don't want that
060to make our schools not look good so if we can reduce but not cut um spending on customer service signs um taking pictures putting them in the in the office is that's an extended cost that's not needed gifted programs cluster in a gened classroom instead of having an their own program that would alleviate some things we aren't sure about is um we didn't really have a choice on the buses or the transportation there's a lot of us that aren't happy about the electric buses that we have $6.9 million in concrete sitting there and most of our bus depot has no AC things that we don't want to reduce our permanent guest teachers one per building we think is needed at least HSA we think is a value I was um talking to Crystal moer and
061um something that maybe wasn't thought about is we were encouraged to take the HSA the lower one so that we would have that account where we were grandfathered into the highest one we're no longer grandfathered so all those of us that are on the HSA right now may choose a higher um a higher tier so we um would also maybe increase costs in that so it may not be the reduced amount that they think it would be we think that it's important that we have instructional coaches in each building one per building reading interventionists We Believe are a must mandatory sped team members need to be on sites counselors and site psych sorry um signing bonuses are on the do not reduce as well as Champs and we thought that they needed to be added
062to the instructional category because they do have their own set of um standards that they are needing to teach nurse secretary office managers are a must Paris um classroom coverage teachers already do a lot so adding more to their plate is just going to decrease morale um ad stien athletic director stiens We Believe are important and also um supplies into classrooms things that are touching kids hands they need to not be cut okay you want to pass the microphone go ahead D oh you're the one to put your name in for that a big seat all right I'll read what Dave wrote on the reduce um assistant superintendent for HR um uh superintendent no uh reduced uh payments um no bennies like cars and things like that uh what's this one say Department Department directors
063Department director salaries need to be reduced the assist assistant assessment coordinator uh juice boox uh Lumis the district memberships the district Consulting fees property liability insurance we spent a lot of time getting educated rather than writing sometimes uh communication director school psychologist purchase of new equipment uh the unsur um the one-time purchase reduction ction and uh we wanted to have at least one counselor at each school and then ESC education services coordinator educational services coordinator do not reduce the HVAC tech summer is insane oh summer is insane okay uh HSA benefits same thing um reading interventionist should not be reduced permanent guest teacher should not be reduced champ should not be reduced is this one um hire principles and APS from within so that way you don't have to compete as much with other districts
064plus they have our culture already so oh and what else uh for the psychologist position we do agree on having a psychologist at the district um but it looked like there was two positions for that and if we're already having problems hiring for filling those out then that might be one that we could lose but we do need a school or a district psychologist two yes I'll just go across the room I'm glad you guys are reading this because if you have a hard time reading some of these I'm gonna have a devil of a time two days from now I appreciate it okay so we have um listened to a lot of what you've said and and and agree with a lot of what you've said um things do not reduce um I think
065maintenance and groundskeeping is important I think we've done a good job to reduce some of the costs on that area I agree with the HSA benefit I think that's important to everyone um the signing bonus I think is you know we have to have that um I I would like us to bring back Dane Balden um the prepaid account um for the property liability I believe we can move that we that's a that's a good benefit that um is a savings the third party cleaning I think that's a good savings you know we can contract out see if we can reduce some of those costs um the fuel and transportation and the Trust Services I think that's an important that was an important move um and Champs of I you have to have Champs um
066I think we need some more funding resources so some of the unsur and the reductions how can we rework it um like sponsorships from businesses for things like school supplies you know I I think that maybe we reach out to our community businesses that are coming in and we see if we can get some interest and and help in small ways that would reduce some of those expenses that we have um we were unsure about the guest teachers versus the substitutes and I know you have some good reasons for that but that was just something we weren't sure about um Juice Box the uh shared in uh instructional coach um and the the professional memberships the ASA asbo those kind of things um to reduce we thought that I I I'm trying to what I'm
067trying to say is um our education services coordinator and our um assessment coordinator can we add to somebody that's already qualified that would say I would like an extra1 or $220,000 on my salary I can maybe step in and take that role so you're appreciating them and yet we're reducing for the total cost to have it in-house um the communications director I'm an admin person I appreciate what people do in in the district so I would be for the secretary maybe that has that extra graphics and communication experience that would be able to take on both roles and we give them a bump in salary of you know 10,000 which certainly is is you know reduces by 125,000 so that was my thought on that um the custodial services that we learned we can move
068some of these um categories take it out of M um Lumis again that's another one that can go to to M and um the behavioral interventionist I thought maybe we could share some positions to do some cost savings there just to kind of help out wonderful thank you and I believe oh Fair uh here we go I've heard some good ideas already uh in reduce the Education Services the size of the department can be looked at web page and the logo design communications director uh we found that one of the reasons that that position was in place was to increase enrollment and that did not take place so we're okay going away from that the district members ships uh we could sell some electric buses when they get delivered and recoup some of that and
069uh Consulting fees with the the district and unsure the permanent guest teachers um perhaps there will be some opportunity to send some of them to other schools when there's a availability and a need in another school uh just making sure that the otherwise maybe it just needs to revert to a pool to make sure that that's optimized and those funds are optimized do not reduce the custodial maintenance and HVAC anything to keep the lights on and the doors open of all the schools I don't think you can uh you can look for cost savings with uh looking at contracts but those are just critical to keeping things safe for the children and and staff um classroom teachers class-size targets that was something that was in the last M vote to be protected I don't think
070you can touch that reducing I'm sorry reading reading interventionists reading upside down uh Champs was also protected by voters in the last override and then school counselors great great thank you thank you so much for really diving in and contributing every table every person it uh uh we greatly greatly appreciate it I've been asked to remind you that uh Miss simmerman if I get this right that you are free to contact the governing board members by email uh with additional comments thoughts um on this but I guess on any topic that's why there emails I'm not going to say phone numbers but but I I don't I don't know that they're posted but no your emails are posted they have they all have Liberty emails and that's what they're there for um so I would
071be remiss to not remind all of us that that you can reach out with your thoughts about the budg budget and the savings directly and they're there and they will receive your voice on that left so he has there should be a line in there where we job so we'll see okay all right job is posted so we'll see yes any closing comment for the good of the order I'd like to thank you personally for uh engaging so well in the activity whenever you run a workshop you never know whether the approach you're going to take for the workshop is going to involve everybody but um what I'll be doing is I'll be collecting everything that's on the table uh and then trying to summarize not summarize it trying to tabulate it so I am
072not going to just summarize what you're saying I'm going to tabulate it and provide it to the governing board every single comment in the categories everything that is on the 3x5 cards we also have now an audio record of your comments as you were making as you walk through that is data in my book and that um if I can I am going to access uh these closing comments and create a transcription of it so it is part of the record um to hear your voice in in what you guys were talking about is that fair is that good try to do as much as I can for that so with that Dr Monroe any closing comments thank you apprciate your voice thank you for spending 90 minutes with us you can email the board
073you can email me but drive safe thank you for everything thank you for being pro Liberty and appreciate your time tonight thank you all drive safe thank you for your time [Music]