001Oh, I don't know about you all, but this just wasn't enough time. I mean, it's just… just, just wasn't enough time. We've started to solve transportation problems in our work group, everything under the sun, we've started to solve. We even have homework for the others of you. So, um, I don't know if y'all have homework for us, but our group got so busy, we started assigning things to other groups. Um, but at this time, um, one I want to make space for each of the group leads, um, that are non-PGCPS staff to share what their group talked about, and in good behavior, as any good teacher would do, I'm going to model and start with my own group. Um, so Cherise Vickery, might you give us, um, no more? We have 15… each group has
002five minutes, so share what you all talked about and what the path forward looks like. hear what you all talk about and what the path forward. Evening, everybody. Well, first, I'm going to say we had an agenda that I totally could not find and ignored. I'm so thankful to Dr. Moss saying, Hey. You want to get back on the agenda? Not really. Dr. Moss, it's which way we going? We gonna get to your agenda in a second. But we did, we started peeling back the onion of trying to find ways to… you know, get our report written. And we we kind of started diving into payments for medical services and what transportation looks like. Most specifically, we wanted to make sure that the district was getting all of their money necessary from services that they
003can build towards insurance plans. And so for homework. Um, to our Revenue Task Force team. Um, we would like for you guys to meet with the Medicaid revenue team. There is a Medicaid revenue team that PGCPS has. Um, and we think that you guys should look into one, are they keeping up with the changes in the, um… It's called the fee schedule, the Medicaid fee schedule from the state of Maryland. Are they getting all of the monies necessary? And then additionally, um. There is a thing called the Katie Beckett waiver. It was signed into, um. the Federal Registry in the 1980s by Ronald Reagan. And it allows Bacon or Bush? One of the two. Either way it allows for children who have special needs, regardless of income, to also have Medicaid. Um, and we think
004that that might be a new revenue source where our community service workers can work with families regardless of their income, to ensure that the children are enrolled in Medicaid if they have special needs and qualify. And that could be another. medical revenue source coming in to cover those services. Um, and then we kind of delved into transportation. Um, some years ago. Myself, and I believe, um… Oh, I could see her Facebook can't call her name now from our group. We had heard, um, Dr. Coleman say, what happens if we wiped out, um. being a opt-out school district and becoming an opt-in only school district for transportation. And what does transportation look like if we change transportation around for specialty schools as well? And so, for our stakeholders team, the bit of education we would like
005for you guys to kind of explore is what happens if we do that? What happens if every parent at the beginning of the school year has to opt in for transportation? Maybe in July, you know, in preparation for that new school year. What does that mean? look like for us. That way we're not having stops that are not utilized, or we're not. funding a bus that going only to two stops, but on their bus, they have 25 stops, and we're spending diesel, things like that. And then, we'd also like to have a survey go out to specialty parents. What does it look like if transportation was to go away? Would you still be able to make it to that specialty program? Because what if we come down to the point of it's either specialty program
006or a specialty transportation, right? So those are the two surveys we want to get out. The first one is to all of PGCPS families, finding out if you… we would call them an opt-in. Um, transportation… Oh, I'm sorry, there was a third as well. Excuse me. And our third was whether or not families would be interested, especially families maybe around the blue line corridor would be interested if their child was in middle school or higher in being able to utilize public transportation. Sure. As their form of school transportation, and what that would look like, kind of similar to DC, where the kids get a Metro card. Um, so those are kind of the surveys we would like for the stakeholder team to kind of get out there, so that we can see, um, we're going
007to work on maybe modeling. the, um, budget to see what that looks like. But we would also need to know if we model this, it looks great. And we gotta deploy it. Is everybody going to be angry or is it just gonna be my house that's going to have people outside with pitchforks? So that's what we have. Thank you for our time tonight. And that's pretty much it. Sorry for the homework. very appreciative of it. Thank you. So, no, thank you to that team, um, with the remaining 40 seconds. So that team is aggressively looking at efficiencies, and so each one of them is bringing a different aspect of the budget to the conversation to talk about while chronicling that to ultimately be able to make some recommendations around efficiencies. Um, and then, you know,
008just being, you know, super thoughtful about these different places, and much of the time I spent, again, on transportation and ways that we could, you know, make cost savings there. The last question in the group, I just wanted to make sure I highlighted this, was around, is PGCPS. Funding what it says matters in terms of, like, literacy, math, and student supports. And, you know, we elevated some of the work that, um, even, you know, Senator Alonzo Washington was pushing the system to fund dedicated aides. We say that that matters, are we doing it? And what is our plan over the next few years to be able to do that? And then we also mentioned the math work. Publicly, we don't… we… the superintendent is pushing for additional funds to be able to fund a math
009assessment. We see our math scores are dwindling, and so we're doing this work around cost efficiency, but also is the district funding what it says matters most? So thank you group. to that group, the next group, could we do stakeholder, um, group, the group that is with Dr. Kendrick? Just to reiterate, you said a 9 district member sharing out, right? Yeah, or you could if you wanted to, if y'all didn't, you could if you wanted to. It's up to you. No, I don't mind anybody in the group sharing. Please feel free to do so. I think you should go ahead, Dr. Kendrick. You had it organized so well. Okay, thank you. So in our group, we are essentially two parts. We are stakeholder engagement and getting their feedback and using that feedback to go to
010policy or lead to policy recommendations for the budget. We're obviously not on the latter part, so we began this meeting by really brainstorming some, uh… looking at the different stakeholder groups, you know, educators, families, etc, and asking ourselves, what is some critically important information we need to communicate to students about this budget, to families about this budget, to educators, to community leaders, etc. Um, what's important information we need to communicate, and how do, like, what's the most effective way to go about doing that, and then how will we actually gather their feedback? And so today's session, or this evening's session, was more of, like, a brainstorm, and we're going to essentially take that information. within the timeline that we have between now and, you know, mid-June to turn it into something actionable so that we
011can inform this final decision on the budget that's supposed to take place at about mid-June. And so, each of us had an opportunity to really type into a document, and we really just shared our thoughts from different perspectives, from parents to district employees to. members of diverse backgrounds. And so, yeah, that's what we did this evening. Great work. It is no secret that Dr. Kendrick is an evaluation specialist. I'm sure that just showed for everybody. This is literally what this guy does is. Uh, so that just showed up in this moment. And the last group, um, I believe was with Chief Strader today. Is Jamie here? She is not! She's still stuck in an airport in South Africa, I'm hearing. I know, I… she… but she was meeting with me earlier today, hoping that she
012would be able to, so we've… we've… she left us in capable hands with Chief Strader, though, so, uh, I'll turn it over to Chief Strader. Alright, very good. If someone else wants to speak for the group, they're more than. willing to. I'll put it out there. Dr. Corbet was taking notes. Okay, I can shoot. So we began our our meeting. Our supervisor over budget, Siobhan Smith, met with us to talk about revenue flows for the district and talking about the major categories, right, of how we get the money into the district anyway. So we spent some time on that, a little bit of learning in the beginning of the of the session, and then we got creative. Dr. Joseph joined us, and he shared a few ideas of potential revenues and just to highlight a
013few. Uh, that we were discussing. We were looking at other revenue, creative revenue streams, like looking at the tickets, the revenues that are received off of tickets, uh, seeing if there could be an increase towards, like, education, uh, reviewing the gambling funds. There was time with MGM, and the partnership with MGM, allowing MGM to get their gambling certification and. Prince George's County, there were some promises around, uh, education, so revisiting that, first of all, tracking to see if the monies are going where they're supposed to go, but then second, see if there's any possible opportunities there for improvement or increases in revenue. CTE programs, we talked about partnerships, looking at trying to build, adopt a school type partnerships. We mentioned CTE programs and other areas of which there might be outside funding opportunities. To support
014several of our programs. Another was looking at grants that were focused on, like, ML instruction, um, bilingual instruction. As another example for, again, grant opportunities or private partner partnerships anyway. Of trying to expand those roles. Talked about stadium sponsorships, also bus revenues, looking at there was earlier mentioned in parks planning, looking at revenues for use of properties. Alumni giving. Uh, opportunities, if we have any type of alumni associations for various high schools and opportunities of making revenues to try to engage our alumni, uh, to, again, engage with their particular schools, but also do it from a central office focus. So there were several of those type of pieces. I'll also focus on philanthropic funding. Dr. Collins shared there's quite a few of those relationships with Baltimore City, but why don't we see what we can
015do here to attract some of those relationships here? So we have quite a few things to continue to explore, and we're just starting the list. And if I missed anything, group, please feel free to chime in. Looks like you all covered it. We fully expect you all to close our budget deficit by the next meeting with some revenue stream. And so if you all can have that figured out by the next meeting. I think the superintendent will be able to sleep at night, and we'll be able to start planning for the next academic year. We're on it. He's probably like, I'm already planning for the next academic year. What are you talking about, Felton? But, um, so first of all, I want to thank you for your energy tonight. So much good stuff is coming
016out of this. Again, this is… this work group came from the board. There are board members here. Miss Jackson Saunders, who represents District 9. Of course, my co-chair is board member Goes McCants, my partner in crime and Vice Chair of policy and governance, Amy Olivo is here. And, you know, we're sharing with our colleagues, and, you know, in June, we'll be making a rec… we'll have to vote on the final budget. As Amy shared with you at the start of this meeting, beyond your work is just a stakeholder, a member of this group. There are two opportunities to show up. One is past, almost, for sure, but there's another opportunity to speak to the county council, uh, and encourage them to give the additional 30 million. The county executive has been great in giving us
01720 million above what we normally get, but the superintendent says he needs 50. Um, to get the work done, and our legislative partners, they did their part. So thank your delegates and senators. They sent us a good budget from Annapolis this legislative session. And so now we have an opportunity to close a deal. But. I mean, should everything shake out this year and we don't have to make any, you know, cuts, that doesn't mean we won't have to in the future. So all of these things that you're coming up with tonight are super instructive. I'm going to lend the last two minutes of time to our superintendent, and then I'll see you in your next meeting, and you should hear from your committee. Yeah. Thank you. leads before our next committee meeting. Um, Superintendent Joseph,
018I'll let you close this out tonight. No, thank you. I think this is a great, great opportunity to come together and start thinking. You know, one of the things, you know, uh… Our team spoke to the education, um… What is it, Education Workforce Development Committee today for the Council. And one of the things we were stressing to the council was that Um, you know, of that $33 million that wasn't funded yet, $27 million of those dollars, you know, dedicated to special education. Uh, you know, so… so there's still a lot of urgency and advocacy needed at this point. You know, so I'm, um… you know, I'm a bit worried. that, um, our community doesn't realize how powerful their advocacy at this moment, uh, would be and is needed. And I do think, you know, we're
019in a tough situation, so I don't think we could get, you know, that full $30 million. I think, but we can make a case for… um, you know, a little more than what we have, particularly focused on helping close that gap in the special education realm, which is critical. For us, as we're in corrective action. Um, so, I think it's worthy. I know we have a special education Um, meeting coming up soon with Senator Washington. Uh, well, we'll be speaking with special education families, but we're in the process right now, like, there's a… There's a short window, and I think, um, getting… families aware to just pay attention to what's happening in the conversations, uh, because I think one of the biggest challenges we have in our county, uh, is an education gap. Uh, people
020really being informed on the issues and knowing how to have their voices be heard. And so, um, you know, as we work through this season, hopefully we won't miss the opportunities to advocate, um, but I think it has bigger implications as we move into the future. And so, so thank you all for being informed and engaged, but now we have to activate folks to be able to communicate and affect, because I think, um… you know, when, um, people's voices are in the right spaces and places, the likelihood of… Um, our issues being taken seriously is higher, or at least coming up with a plan. For it. Because again, these problems are complex, they're historic, we won't solve them overnight, but we have to have a plan to get better each year. With them. And that
021takes coordinated support. Okay, Superintendent Joseph, we thank you for our charge. I fully expect to see all of you signed up for public comment at the Council meeting. Board member Olivo is going to have Micah to send out how to register in that complicated process. Um, but I fully expect to see boots on the ground. Um, and we'll see what happens, all right? If there's nothing else for the good of order, um, I will end tonight's meeting, and we will see you all soon. Of course, Micah will keep you updated when we meet again. I know you get her memo, so, um, thank you all, and have a good night. Thank you, good night. Thank you, everyone.