001Good evening, and welcome to the Board of Education Finance Committee meeting. Today is Wednesday, April 15th. Oh, uh 2026, and the time is 6:00 p.m. Joining me tonight are board members Diana Carpio and Garrett Oliver. Also with us tonight is NPS CFO Linda Ogbonna and budget director Kristen Carswell. First, I will entertain a motion to approve the March 17th, 2026 minutes. Motion approved. Motion by Garrett, second by Ms. Carpio. Uh let's see. Um are there any revisions or amendments? Everything seems to be fine. Um if there are no changes, um are there any people on for public comment? I don't see anybody. Any email comments that were received will be included in the record. Um next, we will get a FY26 budget transfer report from Ms. Carswell. I will share my screen. And let's go.
002This is always the tricky part. Can you see the presentation? Yes. Yep. Okay. Um so, Ms. Carswell will go through the We only have one transfer today, and she'll walk us through it. Mhm. >> The shortest transfer list in history. So, one transfer. It's coming from We're transferring 39,000 from the operations summer nursing account to offset and continue to offset our food service deficit in the 910 account. Right now, we've making some good progress for the projected deficit and we have remaining of $320,000 left and I think you know, we're making way to do that. The reason we had this extra funding was we had a grant which had surplus money in it from another that was covering another nursing account um and we were able to take nursing expenditures that we have now and
003offset it and transfer it there and take that money to transfer to food service. Any questions on that? Does anybody have any questions or comments on that transfer? No, I don't and uh Mark has just text me. He's uh waiting so you have to let him in. Okay. I will entertain a motion for approval of the budget transfer. Motion to approve. Motion by Mr. Oliver. Second Mr. Carpio and that motion has passed. Um next we will get a FY26 budget review followed by FY27 budget development from Mr. Osmany. In fact, um is anyone letting Marcus in? I don't have the I'm not the admin so I don't see him. Let me see. I don't know who's on tech support. If you see him, Marcus, to let him in. He might have clicked the wrong link
004cuz he's not in the attendees. He's not in this one? Okay. >> Mhm. All right, thank you. So, we'll continue then. So, you do have the line item information as part of your agenda. I also provided a narrative but for the benefit of of public, I'll just quickly go through where we are. So, these are the financials as of March 31st. So, this is the end of the third quarter, and so now we're in the final quarter of the year. Our general fund currently sits at 162 million, a little below where we were this time last year, but it is consistent with where we would expect to be this time this time of year. So, I'll go through the major categories and just kind of walk through what the main drivers are for each. Salaries,
005as it says, it pays for salaries for employees. We're currently at 97. 6 million. This is the salaries account for about 59% of the overall budget. This is about a little over a half a million dollar decrease from this time last year, partly due to timing. Some of the drivers that are driving it down are salaries for unaffiliated. Salaries have gone down. Supervisors, certified hourly, are seeing some decreases, but again, it is consistent with just the movement of positions for this time of year. The next one I'll talk about is benefits. Benefits is funded out of a separate account, but primarily we transfer funds from the general fund into the benefits account, primarily for health insurance. That's the biggest benefit expense. You'll see that it's slightly lower this year compared to this time last year.
006That is partly due to timing as well. We make three quarterly transfers, four quarterly transfers each year. We just made the um the transfer last We made it in April, so it doesn't take into account in these my not financials as of March. So, you'll see those transfers this time next year. Last year we did that a little bit earlier. So, hence the hence the variance, but really we expect to to spend that full 39 million because it is just a transfer to the health insurance account. We are managing how we're trending with health insurance based on claims experience and just to make sure that we have enough transferred into that account at the end of the year. Professional and technical services, these are services that are provided by you know external professionals, legal services,
007medical instructional services included in this account. This is 7 million compared to 6 million where we were last year. It is an increase year over year. The biggest chunk of this is other professional and technical services. Primarily these are the individuals that we pay for our um like outsourced services with special education. This is where this account comes from. So we're watching that closely but we are seeing items that are kind of outside of our control and so we monitor this very closely but the big driver here are the outsourced services for our specialized learners and needs for services we're mandated to provide but don't have the resources to provide in-house. Property services are expenses related to the maintenance and repairing of our property. We're at 8 million compared to the budget of 11.3 million.
008Most of these expenses are seasonal. We do a lot of our work especially around the properties when um the buildings are vacant. So we'll do some work during spring break and then you won't see some expenses and we'll pick it up again during the summer after the schools are closed but we anticipate no major issues in this in this account. But this does include payment for utility services, boiler repairs that we do throughout the year. Those are some of the property expenses that we see. We are seeing a decrease in our electric in our utilities for electricity. Part of that is we have brought some of our buildings on solar, so we're reducing less electricity year year over year. Other student services are all of these other services we provide in service of children. The
009biggest driver of this one, this is where we charge our special education tuition and also our out of district tuition is charged in this account. So this account you'll see that we are pretty much where we we were last year this time. This is one we're monitoring closely. In prior years, we've we've had to do transfers into the other student services account for specialized services. This year we did a we were the budget appropriation for this year allowed us to stay very close to what we expect to spend. So that's why many of the transfers you're seeing this year are not related to a specialized services, they're more related to the school services school lunch fund because that is where we're seeing some some some shortages. So student services we're on track to be where
010we would expect to be at the end of the year. Supplies and materials are just various supplies and materials throughout throughout the district. We're about 5.4 million on a 9.7 million budget. This is actually where we pay things like natural gas and maintenance and supplies and other instruction related supplies. But again, this is consistent with where we would be this time. Equipment is equipment for equipment that is not charged in our capital budget. So this includes things like instructional equipment, non-instructional equipment, software is used from this account. You'll see that we're at year-to-date 1.1 million on a budget of 1.82. Many of these expenses some are front-loaded, so we buy them at the beginning of the year just because we need them throughout the year. So you'll see a big jump at the beginning of
011the year and then a slower spend trend as we end towards the year. So, we'll typically end within that $1.8 million range that's included in the budget. And then other objects, primarily these are payments for memberships that we belong to. Kansas Connecticut Association of of Boards of Ed, Superintendents Association, Finance Associations. So, these are basically membership dues that we pay that support our organization. And so, we are we typically spend the full amount that's budgeted because we budget for the dues that we know of. We We're invoiced Some of these were invoiced annually, some of these we pay monthly, but we are within where we would expect to be at this time. And then as I mentioned, transfer to food services, this is where we transfer monies from the general fund to the food services
012fund to pay for food services expenses. So, you'll see that we began the year with just under six over 600,000. The original budget, we did adjust the budget to 1.26. We did receive, you recall, funding from the city, additional funding from the city, and funding from the McCourt Foundation. You'll see the year-to-date number will go up. Last month, you did a $300,000 transfer that was posted this month. It's not yet reflected. And tonight, you also did a transfer into the food services fund. So, when we present this to you next month, you'll see that year-to-date number go up to reflect what you've presented. And as Ms. Carberry had said, our goal, I believe this year is to get close to, I think, a million and a half, a million six is what we're targeting to
013spend into this account. And we feel like we will be there because we weren't able, as you see, last year because of challenges with the budget, we did not transfer any funds to the food services account. So, that account was in the in the deficit. So, this year we're transferring what we're projecting for this year and what we weren't able to um transfer last year. Um and then the two last slides on this report, we always give you an update on where we are with our grants. Uh these are funds that we receive from the state uh year-to-date. You'll see that um we're at 20 million compared to last time this year we were at 26.8. Uh that is just reflecting in that we have fewer grants this year than we did last year. And
014I apologize that last uh the chart the bar headers are off there, but that last column reflects the FY26 uh year-to-date numbers. And then the last slide I have on the year-to-date are uh the food services account that I talked about. We spend money out of this account. There are primarily two sources of revenue, federal grants that we get from the US Department of Agriculture for the national uh uh school meals program, and then the funding that we transfer from the general fund. So, this is the other side of the equation where we spend the money and then we get the money that goes into this account from those um two main uh two main sources. Um and again, as I mentioned, you have the detail, you have the narrative, but I'd be happy to
015answer any questions at the time that you have um regarding the year-to-date financials. Does anybody have any questions or comments? Yeah, I'm good. So, I don't know if you guys saw that. I I guess this will impact us next year, Linda, that it looks like the state lawmakers are going to go along with the governor in terms of uh proposing that they just fund breakfast, and we're probably going to be going back to the old model of just providing lunch to those who are, you know, based on uh their income. Is that what you heard? What do What do you think about >> we'll be having conversations as we work on on reconciling the budget. Um there are a couple of options that the district can pursue that we'll be presenting to the board, I
016believe, next week. So, one of those options is going back to the to the old model where we start uh charging families that don't fall within the categories of being able to reduce to receive uh free meals. So, that's one option. Another option is we continue as we have been by providing meals that for free to everyone. It does impact our lower reimbursement, but it does also require us to contribute funding from the general fund into the school lunch fund. So, we'll be presenting those options to you next week, and perhaps the board can kind of give us direction in which way uh we could go, but we are excited that um it does sound like the free breakfast uh is included in the governor's proposals, um and the assembly has also um supported it.
017So, yes. I mean, it looks like we're tracking pretty good. Looks like, you know, we only have 2 more months left for of the school year. It looks like, you know, most of the lines are within 50 to 65%, right? That's been spent. So, do we think Is there anything that jumps out at you that we need to be concerned about? Normally, it would be such special education, but as you've indicated, it looks like it's at least at this looking okay. Yeah, special education um is in a better place than we have been in the past. We may fall a little bit short, but not to the magnitude in the past year. We are trying to really play catch up with the transfers into the food services fund. Uh we also have the teachers balloon
018payment that we pay the 3 months in the summer. So, when you look at our account, it's not an 12 equal 12-month split uh so far. So, we will have a balloon payment at the end, but we are projecting and we are tracking that as well uh just to make sure that we do end the year um in the positive within what was appropriated to us by the city. Okay. Well, I don't have any other questions. If there's no one else does, we'd love to hear uh information on the budget development for '27. What's next? Perfect. So, um I'll just kind of give a brief overview, you know, when the board approved the budget back in December, it was 6 and 1/2% $15.9 million more than this year, which would have brought us to about
019263 million. In February, the mayor uh submitted the mayor's recommended budget, which was a 4% uh year-over-year increase, which was about $9.8 million additional funding, which brought us to the $257 million in the mayor's recommendation. That does fall short of what we had uh what the board had approved. What we do throughout the year, we also make budget adjustments. We up We revise our our employee counts, we revise salaries, we revise benefits, and this we do throughout. So, between the time that the board recommended the budget the board approved the budget and the mayor's recommended budget, we had some adjustments that amounted to about $851,000 or so. So, the total reductions that we needed to make at that point to reconcile with the 4% was about 6.9 million. Uh below are the three buckets that
020we were planning on addressing that. The first thing that we did was we looked at enrollment throughout the district. We have seen a slight decline year-over-year in student enrollment. And so, we did what we refer to as right-sizing, basically looking at the student counts per school uh looking at class sizes and number of sections. From that adjustments, we have about a $1.2 million um savings just between the class sizes and moving uh students um accounting for the way the students are are in the district. Uh that still didn't get us to the 6.9. So, we had budgeted to make additional reductions of 3.1 million on the non-school budget sides and about 2 and 1/2 million dollars on the school budget side. It's really with a number like 6 million, there's no way you can really
021reconcile without impacting impacting the schools. And so, that's kind of where we were with the mayor's recommendation. As you know, the council when they were sending their preliminary cap to the BET um appropriated allowed for the BET to appropriate up to 4.9%, which then read reduced the gap that we had to reconcile from the 6.9 million to about 4.6 million. So, what we did was uh you know, the right-sizing stayed in place. And what we did was we basically took the burden off of balancing the budget out of the school-based budgets, and we're working to reconcile that entire amount on non-s- on the non-school budget side of things. Now, it doesn't mean that schools won't get impacted because the non-school budget side does impact services that are in support of the schools that are not
022paid directly by the schools, but they're non-student facing reductions. And so, we're working with uh with the principals now. And next week when we meet with you, we will present with you how we plan to balance um to make those reductions, areas that we're looking at, and then from there uh you will give us direction if you're in agreement with the way we're progressing, and then we should be able to approve um the budget um at that point with those with those adjustments. Uh there are a couple of meetings that are still happening, so the numbers aren't totally final. Um on Monday the 13th, there was a meeting of the BET with the Finance and Claims Committee. This is a new requirement in the new charter. So, um I I listened to that meeting. It
023didn't was about a 20-minute meeting just to give them an update on where where we were. Tonight, immediately after this meeting at 6:30, there is a meeting of the BET where the mayor and members of the superintendent's team are going to give an update on where we are with the reconciliation. Basically, the same information I just shared with you just to give them an update. And then next Monday, on the 20th, the BET will finalize and send their proposed appropriation to the city. That's when we will know the um the appropriation amount that we're working with. And then that's why we're waiting for the 20th to have conversations with the board on how we will proceed with the reconciliation. So, we're hopeful we'll be at the 4.9% even though the board approved a 6.5%. We've
024had a number of meetings explaining the consequences of not getting the 4.9% or less. So, we're hopeful that there'll be some positive feedback from that. And then on the 28th, the council will make their final budget recommendation and then first week in May, the BET will set their final cap based on on those numbers. Um and that's really the update that we had for you just to keep you posted, but next week is going to be a busy week between the BET and conversation that we have with you in terms of where we go from here with the reconciliation of the budget. I'll be happy to answer questions. Does anybody have any questions, comments? Um it looks pretty straightforward, so all we can do is hope and pray. And hopefully things don't change. Agreed. Mhm.
025>> Linda, thank you to you and your team for all of this work because this is a lot. It's a big number and it's a lot of work and we appreciate the efforts and especially when it comes to um the the reconciliation piece that you just presented to us and what that is going to look like or may look like. So, appreciate that. A lot of work happening here. So, if there's nothing else >> it on to the team. Yes, thank you. So, I know you guys need to run to this next meeting. So, um if there's nothing else, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn this meeting. To adjourn. Seconded. Okay, vote. The meeting is adjourned at 6:20 p.m. Again, thank you everyone and have a good evening. Thank you, everybody. Bye. Bye. Good night.