001good afternoon everyone and welcome i call to order the uh special public meeting of the cincinnati public schools for june 22nd cincinnati public school board for june 22nd 2022 uh ms wagner would you please call the roll miss bolton mr craig here ms jones here dr moffitt here mr marowski here mrs weinberg here president lindy here uh thank you everyone um we have just a single presentation today and then a couple of votes on a superintendent's recommendation and treasures report and then we're going to be recessing into executive session my hope is probably in about a half hour from now so welcome everybody glad you're here and we're going to turn it over to uh the superintendent and the treasurer for our presentation on the budget actually we're going to start off by inviting miss
002char jackson um from the cincinnati preschool promise she was unable to attend the finance committee meeting and so some questions about the cpp budget were submitted to her in writing and she's here to answer them so if all board members can hear it and then we'll go on with the rest of our presentation sounds great turn your mic on thanks i appreciate it um and thank you so much for allowing me to attend this meeting to respond to questions um one of the questions we received is um a brief explanation of why tuition assistance is up quality improvement is down from the fiscal year 22 budget and admin costs are up our priority is tuition assistance of course to make sure that children have access to those seats and making our budget the fiscal year
00323 projections are closer to the fiscal year 22 actuals when we look at numbers of serves and expenditures that are going to be made it is an 11 increase not year-over-year budget but actual over budget if you will see on the first page of the deck that we sent it talks about the increase over actuals versus the budget the second question is quality improvement going down for the budget we have reduced some of the cost that we're doing in outdoor equipment expenditure also in professional development as more and more providers reach high quality sure if i can interrupt for one second did staff know do we have a copy of the deck that she's referencing it may have been emailed out i just wasn't sure and thought i would just check real quick i can
004email it to you report that'd be great thank you very much and i think the high level numbers were shared at the last um school board meeting when the overall preschool budget was presented and i am in talking about generalities about percentage increases but to address the questions in general in terms of quality improvement we know that many resources for quality improvement are coming not only from state stabilization grants and arpa funds but from other resources as well that's why we reduce some of our spending and as more providers reach high quality less funds need to be expended in that quality improvement space it's what we always anticipated and if you look at the original master agreement and how the expenditures worked ta minimum dollars continue to grow while qi dollars continue to decrease as
005we progressed as more people reached high quality in terms of the admin cost the recommendation from our board of managers in december after our review of our [Music] dashboard our outcomes our goals as well as looking at the new strategic plan where the board convened in april to plan is that we needed three additional dedicated positions one is a deputy director to back me up one is somebody that is devoted to quality improvement that's an associate to help make sure that we can do that with some efficiency now that we are spending less in terms of tangible equipment to make sure that they have the support they need and another one is to make sure that our outreach and enrollment team that does direct communication with recruiting parents as well as meeting with providers to
006guilt children enrolled had the support that they needed on the ground the next question was also related to fundraising what efforts have we made in fundraising and how is that impacting on the last dollar in analysis the fundraising that we have really focused on is to fill the gaps for things that cannot be used for public dollars and public resources two examples that i can give is one hundred thousand dollar grant that we receive from the greater cincinnati foundation specifically to help family child care providers do training and business development and business planning so that they could be effective businesses that were also educators another example would be the joint efforts that we've done with 4c learning grove and other entities to request a million dollars in arpa funding specifically from the city of cincinnati
007to address workforce issues and to address the challenges that we have with the talent pipeline and workforce we will continue to do that and one of the priorities that was set with the strategic plan by the board is to focus on reversing our fundraising needs and i'm happy to take any other questions that may be raised by that budget and hope that i was responsive to those questions that i did receive in writing thank you very very much sharon the board members have questions for the head of preschool promise dr profit i do have a question for you um and i feel bad because i'm just now getting to look at the presentation so please forgive my ignorance um you're increasing the staff by three but what was your what are you going from in
008into an increase of three i know you have a you do a lot with a little already sure um that is an 11 increase so if we look at our budget on what that increases that includes not only those staff positions but the cost of living increases as well and the adjustment in that is approximately overall all staff related expenses increased by 337 thousand dollars those three positions are just part of that but you'll see details as well on the key changes for the forecast and the budget of all things that are included in that line item how many staff do you have what will you have with the addition of three we will have nine ftes and roughly how many do you service how many providers do you service in our network we have
009approximately about 214 providers that are at different stages of development we probably have 160 that are on the two on the moving to tuition assistance side we also do some recruitment of new providers as well that's all i have for now thank you thank you dr moffitt other board members with questions ms bolton yes thank you for being here and thanks for being specific about answering those questions that i think came out of finance committee appreciate it and appreciate all the good work i'd like to if i could we had a couple of things uh come up before the board uh recently and and you're probably very well aware about the workforce development council uh in in in the original design that is an entity that really reports directly to the school board more than
010anything is zero could you tell us how in any way you use the workforce development council or if you do i think first the workforce development council has really been used as a resource originally for professional development resources and we have found that over time having our team that does coaching as well as our provider council make recommendations directly to us of our professional diversity opportunity serves us in a little bit of a better way i know that that council also did outreach to us to teachers and that would be very beneficial because we meet with providers we meet with center owners and directors we don't always have an opportunity to access teachers strategies that would help us develop that would be helpful what we saw is kind of the best opportunity with the workforce
011development council because of all the workforce initiatives across the footprint is if we had an entity of people like those that sit on the workforce council with expertise that helps us with the kindergarten transition because that is where our greatest need is to make connections with preschool teachers to make sure that the students that they have that are graduating that are kindergarten ready then have a direct connection and can move to a cps kindergarten that is what providers have asked us for to someone to help them make that transition and understand that good mr president uh to follow up on that are our my understanding uh from the price the preschool folks both cps and preschool promise that the uh workforce development council is kind of moving towards being some sort of a working committee
012or work uh it's kind of i don't know if it's changing its purpose or if it's in some sort of transition i wanted to get your assurance that you are interested in that whatever transition or whatever destiny well we can't know what destination but uh comfortable with the transition as we uh continue to move forward yeah i think it we would always be open to that transition and how it serves as a reform as again um you know understanding of what that workforce development committee is is that it is truly a cps committee and cpp has devised some ways to help support that and do that outreach to teachers that transition committee we can share the strategies that would be most helpful but again as that committee transition what providers have shared with us is
013that that is the greatest need to make sure that is a smooth transition not solely a focus on workforce as you know there are probably 10 or 15 different initiatives in our community that are on that are focused on workforce so i think perhaps the transition to a work group to see what they could bring to the table would do that but cpp does have a cost of quality committee that shares many of those same members that work together to talk about what those professional training and development recruitment and retention strategies are as well that's very helpful one last question if i might of um both the cps and the cpp folks as we made that commitment to the the voters both the original and also in the renewal that this would be last dollar
014in um there's been some reports that somehow um maybe united way or others might be diminishing or reducing rightfully so i'm sure their profile could you could you tell us how successful you all have been or your plans for making sure that you um are pursuing the kinds of dollars that we as a public entity so to speak uh can't necessarily do because i know there's been some major millions of dollars released regarding workforce development i don't know if it pertains at all to preschool or education but if you could kind of brief us on that last dollar in that you play sure i think in terms of last dollar in what we've seen is the resources that are available are those that are not designated for direct tuition for students so the last dollar
015in would not come into play we have seen places in which there are grant fundings or scholarships for classrooms for large groups but not for individual assistance to students to do tuition assistance what we've seen in the case of many private providers is that when they go out and procure grants or other funding they then are faced with making the choice of whether or not they want a preschool promise for funding and support or other funding because those combined together exceeds the amount for us to be last dollar in thanks thank you very much um miss bolden other board members have questions i want to try to get our treasurer up here in a second or so okay thank you very very much we appreciate it and we'll invite um ms ragner and miss wright
016to share an update on the budget the other parts of the budget good afternoon so we're going to tag team on this presentation as we've started doing um and welcome to what feels like the 12th presentation on the budget um so we will go ahead and jump forward um excuse me as always citing the um board policy on equity and the equitable distribution of funds is what we tried to to guide our way next slide so the key messages for today is the superintendent is going to introduce her budget initiatives um for next year as well as things that are carrying over from prior administration in the strategic plan um you have in front of you we're going to talk about the staffing changes school-based and central office and you have you have detailed handouts
017there's just too much data to put on a slide so we'll walk you through that as well we're going to show you some examples of how we tried to use a financial impact tool to make budget decisions um and then superintendent is going to talk a little about the board and public feedback and then um we have a summary of the revised esr budget so next slide one more time the good news is we are under our budget target um in addition to all the um reductions budget reductions that we've shared with you in the past i just wanted to spend a little bit of time on this slide we've balanced a budget using what we have as recurring vacancy savings on our salaries so pre-covered we we tended to have about 9 million dollars
018in salary savings every year based on just this rolling vacancy you know trying to fill people leave come and go hard to fill positions since covid we've um grown that vacancy savings in fact fiscal year 22 we're going to see about 24 million dollar savings after the last payroll next this week so for next year we're just making a conservative assumption that 13 million dollars will be put towards the salary line items so that we won't be spending that money and then um the next line that shows an annual prior year encumbrance cancellation so in september by september 30th of each year we have to file our final expenditure reports for all our state and federal grants and when that process is over we go out and say that any open purchase order from the
019prior year is now cancelled and that money reverts back to the cash balance so um pre-covered we were estimating averaging about six to half to seven million dollars a year um and the last couple years it's been more like 13 and almost 20 million um so very conservatively we're going to use that 7.4 million to offset some of the increases in the budget that we've been trying to deal with so just to kind of explain that the left side of that chart the top line the school allocated is the school budgets based on the projected students so all the staffing is a formulaic base then they're non-personnel per pupil allocations that equals 340 million dollars the next line are budgets line items that are budgeted centrally but they're allocated out to the schools based on
020a per pupil cost and those things are transportation services um some of technology expenses and i wrote them down so i wouldn't forget oh the department of student services has about 30 million dollars in that lined item it's 23 million uh curriculum is about 14 million so the line below that essentially allocated are same thing centrally budgeted but they're allocated to the school and not to the student and so those examples are the custodians so custodians are budgeted by budgeted by the facilities department but they're actually working out into the buildings and so we're trying to recognize that this the cost of the schools is not 340 million but 550 million um and then that leaves us with 52 million in central off central administration 26 million in district fixed and if you'll recall district
021fix is made up of our debt payment that goes from the general fund into the debt fund the 3.4 million dollars are required to transfer from the general fund into the facilities maintenance fund and then um our liability expenses so as of yesterday we were at 629 million and then using those savings we're down to 609. so the chart on the right-hand side shows you visually that over 88 percent of the every dollar we spend is actually spent at the school site um four percent is for district fixed costs and eight percent for central administration next slide here i'm going to turn it over to superintendent wright um she's going to talk about her priorities thank you thank you um so today we spent a full day in the first day of our uh principals
022academy so i'm really pretty excited about that it was an amazing experience but in terms of thinking about the strategic priorities they really align with the things that we've talked to the board about before one academic behavior and culture just to put those in the back to the basics abc's um so one of those is maintaining high quality curriculum this year we did adopt science in world languages in terms of curriculum this is the fourth in the adoption cycle we did have the team to go back through and review as we've been going through the budget and reviewing each line items to make sure that we are able to offer the resources to the students but we're not doing that in a way that it would be cost prohibitive so we did maintain that as
023a priority the other over the last several years the district has done a really good job of purchasing high quality materials in the era of covet and slightly before there was an op was not as much of an opportunity to provide high quality professional development to to staff in order to effectively utilize those materials so really wanting to make sure that over the course of the year we're offering those professional learning opportunities and that's also something that we've seen quite a bit in terms of feedback as we've seen from all of the feedback that we have as well as the feedback that we did on the budget there's still very much an interest and a focus on mental health and how we're continuing to maintain our mental health initiatives and coupled with mental health mental
024health positive behavior supports as well as social emotional learning so continuing to focus in those areas an addition is a high school focus we have high school we know that you know our high schools are in need of additional support and so in walking schools and getting feedback from principals and then looking at really the work that needs to happen in terms of high school one of the spaces that really need some additional support is really in the junior high school space our seventh and eighth grade students are in the high school buildings and as you're walking with them and having conversation with the principals there's need for additional support for them so establishing a high school transformation office where that office really looks at the overall high school redesign where we bring a plan
025to actually talk about that plan and what implementation looks like and a part of that is giving some additional support at specifically for the seventh and eighth grade level for high schools that would like to have that support for additional help with pbis as well as social social emotional learning and behavior and discipline support and also making sure that we are continuing to elevate diversity equity and inclusion inclusion in terms of operations so one of the positions as a part of the organizational structure is not just the the chief position in terms of uh operations but also an instructional equity a senior director of instructional equity so we're looking at all of those all of those resources that students would have access to that are outside of english math science and social studies so as
026you're talking about ell or world languages art music making sure that there is that that is being done with an equity lens in mind as we go to the next some of these are carryover items for or carry forward items from our budget initiatives from previously so from the previous administration there was the focus on the first grade reading specialist that is currently funded in ether that would be one of the areas that at the end of this year we will be looking at the data around that to determine whether or not it's something that we look at continuing to recommend that we fund into the next essay cycle maintaining social workers in every building really loud feedback around again social emotional support social emotional learning pbis so maintaining that and still having a nurse
027right now in each of the schools that is something we'll also be monitoring to have additional discussion about as we get to a point with covet that appears to be more manageable right now we also know from working with staff that we did have several vacancies in in the school nurse role last year so continuing to monitor that so that we're not continuing to carry vacancies or holding the budget because we're holding on to those vacancies we did add additional or previously there were additional counselors that were added specifically at the high school level to provide support uh to try to get closer to the national expectation for counselors in terms of student council ratio we're off right now but closer with the addition of it with the addition of the counselors and last the
028expansion of ell learner teachers so in terms of the ratio we have added an additional eight teachers for our ell population that is a growing population for us and again we want to make sure that we're getting as close to the anticipated and expected ratio for teachers as students as possible i think that was to the next one so what you have in front of you and on the slide is a high level summary of the school staffing but you have a handout that actually shows you position by position um but in a nutshell our classroom teacher positions were increased um and then we have reductions in some of the support areas and operations and what i did on the right hand side was to give you the major change not every little change but
029so for under structural support some of it we reduced overload paras um you know it's all based on projected students but there's also a change in the collective party agreement in terms of the way the formula was calculated so that was a reduction um we reduced super subs if you recall we added 163 super subs to the buildings to prevent viruses from carrying from building the building and um we were stepping that down each year to get back to a normal level and so there was a reduction of 40 super subs and so there's some other offsetting positions in there and then under operations there was um 85 health and safety pairs that we eliminated we've added them because of pera and i'm sorry because of copied because of the need for physical distancing and
030monitoring the halls and the buses and temperatures and masks those needs have gone away for the most part um and then we said some changes in administration a couple of assistant principles were added due to enrollment growth and clerical so next slide shows you the central office high level it was hard to determine what to put on a slide from central office but once again you have a handout that shows you every position there was a reduction net reduction of 17 positions they were almost all vacant otherwise position they're moving into other roles what i do want to say is that the superintendent's reorg plan hasn't been fully implemented in the staffing numbers they've been put into the dollar values but um until she goes public with her choices i don't want to get out
031in front of her publicly so um those we will monitor that and update it for monday night next slide those superintendents back up again okay so the financial impact tool is one that we spent a lot of time looking at and reviewing as we're bringing forward recommendations so starting with the first centralized enrollment there was conversation about removing enrollment at each individual school site and bringing that down to um the central office building so that all parents would need to come here in order to enroll their children and so in looking at that 1.9 million dollars um you know the the their other priorities in in terms of um access making sure that parents have access to to buildings versus trying to come here just to enroll um the other the other one was a
032750 000 ask which was renovation of the third floor as we reviewed the tool we really looked closely at impacts for children and this one did not impact students at all this was a reorganization of the third floor that would impact staff it's not as if the third floor we're using the third floor now so there it's not that it wasn't usable initial conversation uh was around um additional spacing that may have been um more necessary during higher covet times so no students were impacted there in terms of the outdoor classrooms 875 000 with about 6 800 students and that is something that we really want to continue to look at and move forward with but we want to merge it into the strategic plan so that it becomes overall a written plan for implementation
033for how that looks with rollout and then collectively not just what we're doing with the spaces but how we make sure that it's integrated into the overall curriculum itm services and delivery um so during the initial covet time there was an increase with the amount of technology there was an increase at the school sites with the service delivery model so we were able to look at the service delivery model and recognize that we could save 1.1 million dollars in that delivery model without having major impact to the response time for staff and so that was another one of the areas from the impact tool 559 was the cut 1.1 is the new value i'm sorry okay and next slide [Music] and continuing one of the areas we know that there was an overall cost within
034this increase from initially but they asked for walnut heels for an additional building space and the information that was provided to us was to reduce the number of teachers that were traveling so apparently essentially there are 18 traveling teachers that are in the buildings we have about 14 14 additional schools that were not a part of the facilities master plan where there is some additional work that needs to be done in those schools as well so as we think about equity across the schools that is one that we're recommending that we hold on at this time the next is career coordinators um this is a position that just came about last school year this this current school year and so they've just really gotten started and so we're that's a position that we're recommending that
035we look at under consideration to repurpose to give schools the option um around the dean position that we discussed earlier and having feedback from the principals there are many of them that would find that role for the dean of a little more beneficial for what they need to do in the buildings right now in terms of behavioral and discipline support and the last was the attendance clerks and this is an additional clerical position that's in in buildings right now it's an entry level clerical position in reviewing data with with with our staff um this is a position that had quite a bit of turnover because it's an entry-level position and so as other clerical positions open in the district this becomes one where our clerical are moved from those positions into other positions so um
036the the purpose of these clericals uh was to schedule the attendance intervention team meetings uh and so that would be something that would be routed back to the school for for those meetings to be scheduled while we're also working with staff to see what kind of um technological advances we can do to offer some offset with this is it something that we can generate from the computer that can that we can send out versus having an individual having to write the letters to actually mail them out to families next slide okay so we i i'll do it so in terms of the vendor contracts and we know that we have some contracts that are in the treasury's report however we're looking at the financial impact logic across the board so the cost how many students
037we're serving the cost per student and adding a focus on the outcome measures and what is the return on investment for the contracts that we're paying we know that there are a lot of contracts that we're looking at and prior to the submission to the treasurer's report that would be something that we would review in advance um so so that as we move forward there are some contracts that we would not be looking to repeat some of them for recommendations for this year we have re reduced the cost within those contracts from the ask because many of them were asking for additional costs and at this time there just wasn't the data to support recommending that we move forward so on the the this is a slide that you've seen before and this came as
038a it's feedback from the budget town halls and the one thing that i will add here is you know i don't think i need to remind anyone that i started on may 2nd and so this engagement at this particular level budget town hall meetings were already scheduled when i came and as in having conversation about how we could capture actual hard data from from families or from those that were completing the surveys we had already put out the um the survey of of my entry that on may the second and so at at that time we added to the survey questions around the budget prior to then there was not just one way codified that we could collect responses now there were there were you know there's qualitative information that's been given out or provided
039or you know our constituents or constituents of the board may have reached out on different areas but in terms of a hard factual way for us to say this is the feedback that we've gotten we started that on the third so with those two sessions the surveys were open the entire uh from the third through um through the the first friday in june those surveys were open and the town halls were on may the 3rd and may the 31st the slide that you have gives you the feedback that we received on the surveys and it was just pretty generic in terms of if you would like to give feedback about the budget this is an opportunity to give feedback and how would you prioritize these things so that's what you get in terms of the
040actual slide and you see kind of how it worked out in terms of the slide that's also why it's important that we we look at the financial impact tool to help inform the decision but it's not the only thing that makes the decision because there are other factors that we need to consider and the from the responses from the 100 the 100-day plan we have actually 111 responses from the plan and essentially the conversation has been pretty consistent through those through that plan we have a team that that went through the plan uh and then gave some additional recommendations based on the feedback that was provided a cross-section of a team uh across the district that has done that and what we see in in this bulleted form at a very high level is that
041currently we we have initiative overload we're in initiative fatigue and so one of the things is really auditing the current initiative that we're doing connecting those things that we believe are important to a form of of a strategic plan as we're beginning to go through that process and then doing implementation plans around those so that it doesn't become we're rolling this out at this time focus on academics um this specific was in the in the feedback was the focus on academics before athletics and extracurriculars we know that there is an opportunity for us to do them simultaneously but essentially the hard information from the feedback said that equitable programming across schools as well as continued strong support for mental health and next libra so on the screen is a very high level summary of the
042esr3 grant if you recall we were allocated 200 almost 209 million dollars um and we have we can spend it until september 2024. so the original column represents what the board adopted in august of 2021 as part of that three-year plan and the current column represents where we're sitting today in terms of our estimated costs um we haven't closed the finished closing the books for this year so that 33 million dollars will change based on what didn't get spent and then that money will get allocated to the other years you have a document in your hand that shows you the line by line changes for both uh fiscal year 22 fiscal year 23 and 24 and so i can certainly answer any questions about that but like i said it was just too much data
043to put in a slide so we still have a contingency line of unallocated monies we started with six million and now we're six and a half million or more um and that will grow unless we come up with uh some new initiatives once we close fiscal year 22 and reallocate the unspent cash so i believe that was the last slide yes so i'm happy to we're happy to answer any questions that you might have the plan to the superintendent on page six on the proactive vendor contract review um i i have always had an interest in um figuring out or really better understanding how we measure success of our vendors that's important because everybody anybody can come in and say we provide a good service and i promise you they can bring you data that
044says that they're good but how are we measuring the value to to uh in alignment with our strategic priorities thank you very much so as we're starting the process i think one of the areas that we are that's a growth area for us as a district is our access to data and how we're actually using that data so collectively it you know if if all things are aligned in the direction that we expect for them to be aligned everything would line up so that we're see we're seeing improved academic outcomes for children as well and right now we're not in a position where we can cross-reference that data to say that we're seeing improved outcomes in terms of attendance improved outcomes in terms of behavior depending on what the area of the focus is for
045the contract and improve outcome in overall academic performance so forecasting moving forward where i see us being able to do that is looking at the students that that are that we are working with inside with within our contracts not just the data that's provided by the provider but from the internal data that we have how has what has been the impact to our children in terms of their academic performance in terms of their attendance and in terms of their overall behavior thank you thanks ms jones other board members with questions or comments dr moffitt i'll go i appreciate the work that you two have done to put this together um i'm a little um when we don't see it ahead of time i'm a little nervous because i have lots of questions and i'll i'll
046definitely shoot those out via email um as you all know we spent a significant amount of time hopefully the public does too and um governance training and as a board i think one of the things that we were charged with is establishing goals um for the board that will be in alignment with the goals of the superintendent and the priorities of the superintendent i'm a little concerned because we don't we haven't done that part of it as a board to have board goals and just for the community's um knowledge our board goals should align with what the community goals are so the community should tell us what you all want and then we as a board in collaboration with the community establish goals and then we align that with what the superintendent and um has
047established and we just haven't done enough of that to me 1100 responses out of 3600 families is just not enough or students it's just not enough to me to have established um succinct priorities for us to work on for next year so i don't know how quickly we can do that but i i would challenge the superintendent to collect more data um in a collaboration with us as a board to um establish what the community really wants um more widely before we maintain before we start um saying that these are the only priorities or these are the main priorities that that we have um that that's my first concern um i have some more but let me ask just another question just for clarification the financial input impact tool that starts on page nine all
048of those are cuts is that correct okay so we're cutting outdoor classrooms the recommendation is that we cut that by 875 000. um i don't i guess i just wanted to understand how we're cutting that we're cutting career coordinators we're cutting attendance clerks um i just think i probably just need to sit with it a little bit more and that's this is what happens when i just see it for the first time along with the public but i'm just concerned that we're cutting we're down we're going to cut 85 paras is that what i heard we're going to cut we're going to cut staff that potentially directly impact our kids and programming that i think potentially impacts our kids and we haven't established that that's a community priority is am i understanding that right so
049the the terrors that were cut the health and safety pairs were added because of covet because that we they had to monitor and do temperatures and hallways and bus monitor buses and stuff like that they needed extra schools needed extra help to comply with covet restrictions and guidance we're not under the guidance anymore and so most of those positions are um where there were a ton of vacancies and so they were hard to fill anyway and so they would remove those because we're not under those same covet guidelines okay and so they're instructionally they weren't cut okay okay so the other thing that i'll add dr moffat is so just for again and i definitely concur with you and we're going through the training together however we have a budget that we were asked to
050bring when we started the process we were 56 million dollars in deficit when i came in on may the 2nd when we started working together through the budget so in terms of these priorities these are priorities right now based on what we have in the budget and how those recommendations were made this is not to imply that as a board we have determined through our process going to the to the to the community i know 1100 is is not enough responses but i walked into none so in terms of where we are right now that's what we have and these recommendations are best recommendations for to the board if the board is not in support of that of course then we're open to what the other recommendations are instead but as we were looking at
051balancing the budget we reviewed the information in terms of the strategic the these strategic initiatives and initiatives that had already started that it provided that had been provided previous to me coming to the organization and then looking at the impact tool to pro to give you a to give you the board collectively a balanced budget if there's anything that we're not in agreement with i definitely think that that's something that we work through we talk about it but at this point it becomes what do we what do we take out to then add something else in or what do we add in to then take something else out well i think i'm just i guess i'll sum up my my commentary to just say that um we've collected data before you you got here so
052even at a very minimum that data should be it's from the community so that data should be looked at too and i just want to make sure that if the community tells us that something is important that it's been captured and not we're just trying to rush to balance a budget and we've come up with priorities that we understand what those priorities are from the community too so that's that's just those are just my questions um right now i'll definitely send my email but thank you for all the work that you all have done i appreciate it thank you dr moffitt other board members mrs weinberg yes i just have one quick question and i too will be sending some additional questions through email but if you turn to page six world i think the
053slide is really eleven um i know you mentioned that some contracts will not be renewed are you able to share the number of contracts that will not be renewed no we don't have a number at this point because as they're being presented so we went we try to look at the current contracts that we had this year but they're not necessarily all renewing so it we ended up spitting our wheels on that so as contracts are being presented to renew for next year is when we're determining whether they're going to meet the outcomes and the measures and whether it's part of the funding priority well others too mrs weinberg or was that the only one good other board members ms bolden yeah to that point if we don't know which contracts are going to be
054renewed or not renewed how are we supposed to vote next week how are we supposed to vote i mean um the contract piece and i applaud the treasurer and i know that the superintendent feels the same way that there are so many hundreds of contracts that we have both at the school level and the district level that really need to be reviewed i mean tonight we're going to vote for 440 some thousand dollars for cyc and nobody's been able to justify that for me for three years and yet we're going to have a contract that might be for one year two years three years or whatever and we can part of the kids that they're they're helping are the kids outside our own district so so the contract piece i'm so glad that member weinberg
055brought that up and i'm so glad that we're using the financial uh outcome tool or whatever it's called to look at those we need to do that and the and the the biggest problems with those contracts i think actually isn't the schools i think those are those are hard many of them i would bet majority of them are impossible to justify and there are hundreds so uh board member bolton thank you very much so as as our treasurer shared we started with the contracts from this year um in looking at reviewing those contracts many of those contracts so right now where we are in terms of balancing is balanced with the information that we have for the current contracts which includes those that are on the treasurer's report so one of the examples that you
056gave for example was cyc and the information that's been provided back to us from that particular organization there was a request to increase the contract which we did not request but we did believe that we needed this school year to collect the additional information and the data so that we were making the decision that was the best decision moving forward and so as our our treasurer is sharing in terms of the contracts many of the most of the contract challenges as you know as well um are at the school level and so we've talked about for moving forward once we determine what those overall priorities are make priorities are collectively as a board making sure that we begin the process at that time to bucket out those priorities and then look at those vendors based
057on the services that schools would be provided we thought that it would be disruptive at this point as we did as schools have already started with their processes and are waiting just waiting for an approved budget to move forward we thought it would be disruptive to say to them with principals leaving next week we thought it would be disruptive to say to them that this is what you've already put in this is what you have this is what your budget supports at this point and you're not going to be able to move forward with that instead we thought that it would be most prudent to determine the priorities determine the areas that we're looking at as we disaggregate the contracts most of them are for academic support they are for mentoring um they're for data
058coaching so we can look at those three buckets to start with but disaggregating those and then looking at from from there who are those vendors because a lot of the contracts um they go outside of our overall processes because they're done at the school level and we don't have one way to review it so that's that was our recommendation as we move through it uh the best way to to kind of move forward but just to that specific one that you did recommend it was it's not one that as we reviewed that we were looking to increase what they were doing for last year if i could follow up on that then it would be my hope since we're in a transition period then that none of these particular contracts are longer than a year
059support the ones that are in um under award of contracts the rfp the bid tabulation some of them say three years yes they do and and the other piece of that is traditionally we've done some five-year contracts that i know we've regretted greatly so i think maybe part of the answer on the contract piece to follow up on a member weinberg's point might be just the length issue because if we're actually in a transition period in a serious review of very focused accountability one year should be it and i know that costs us more money for a year because the longer the contract generally it's a it's a cheaper contract for some obvious reasons because they have stability we have stability but i would certainly encourage that to be for one year um and if
060indeed we're pursuing these i won't be voting for cyc because we've asked three years in a row for information about cyc and it's a historically significant entity that has done great things for us but in the last years it has not um of of course um to follow up on on dr moffat's point if i could uh i do think there's a an interest in the connection between whatever the board goals are and we did spend two days together and didn't come up with any goals um uh which is unfortunate but i i appreciate your goals that you've listed here i think we all agree that these are good and of high priority but looking at those goals and you won't be surprised what i'm about to say i think any one of those goals
061or all of those goals speak to the outdoor program every single one of them speaks to the outdoor program and i honestly think it's a betrayal of the community's work for three years to say oh we're gonna we're gonna and and i'm really pleased that dr moffat mentioned that financial impact tool really reads cut um and we need to list it that way and for full transparency because this is the the 875 000 i don't know which part of its curriculum and i don't know which part of it is the 180 percent 180 000 of facilities the reality is we made a promise last year and the administration didn't develop and deliver on it uh and these folks uh 30 some different uh nonprofits have been working hard and doing all kinds of stuff and
062and i feel very strongly at least for as one board i want to see that returned and i'm happy to give you a couple other ideas what to cut instead of that because that's directly impacting on the children it is for the future and it's connecting us with the city with the county and it is it is the future so i i would make some comment there i'm worried um i like most of this stuff and and i trust you i wouldn't have voted for you if i didn't think i could trust you but i i think one of the things that i want to see here is um i'm worried about that somehow somebody believes there's too much focus um [Music] too too much focus on athletics and extracurriculars i i don't believe that
063that is possible in urban community to not be focusing on extracurriculars and i do think we failed miserably on academics that's another reason you're here but athletics and extracurriculars i think are at the heart of it which goes also to the field trip piece and you know the four-wheel buses and what have you but i that concerns me as you all review this because i'm going to assume that we still have something to say about this um the last thing on the i worry that we're gonna have a dean about seventh and eighth grade uh we need it because that's another promise we did not keep to the public when we move from the k-8 model to the k-6 7-12 we promise and that goes all the way back to the roan administration that we
064would be able and i think we've talked a little bit about that we promised those families and those kids that there would be some concerted effort about seventh and eighth grade and that they'd be separated they were not good to have them fill it with the little people and we already had junior highs that failed miserably years and years ago but we didn't do what we needed to do i'm just worried this dean thing i think part of that would be to to really be focusing on maybe some more k-8s or i would be hoping that we would be focusing too on making sure our high schools are more accommodating to our seventh and eighth because that's where the dropout's happening yes um so those would be some of my comments but my number one
065comment is if i'm going by your priorities outdoor needs to be returned and i think you're going to be hearing about it so i feel strongly about that thank you mr president thank you miss bolden um i want to get every board member in but i don't want to see anything from his writer ms wagner to ms bolton's questions okay i i would i would say thank you for the feedback um not surprised by your feedback at all uh in terms of the conversation i i would say um in terms of thinking about i don't think that we should think about the outdoor classroom for example as a knot i think that we should think about it as a hold for now so that it becomes a part of a larger conversation for example we've
066had conversation board member moffett and i um with around the conversation with with teams and one of those was one of the representatives i think from the organization that you're referencing right now around a larger conversation around energy energy conservation across the board one of the things that is the concern at this point is what is our overall long-term plan for whatever the initiative is and so as we're talking about energy conservation as we're talking about renewable resources as we're talking about expanding opportunities for children outside of the classroom how do we then do that and build it into an overall plan that becomes sustainable so again it's at the will of the board in terms of what we do next and how we do that work but that is in terms of that response
067that would be one that that i would provide for this yeah thanks uh superintendent all right now i do want to get mr moroski a chance here so we can hear from everybody thank you mr lindy type two but one has been largely covered and it was the outdoor classroom piece i would love to see on monday and miss bolton sort of address this i'm just going to say it a different way if i could see i don't know what that 875 000 means i don't know what that to your point if i could see what that means i i will also argue and fight to keep that in there but if i'm able to see line by line uh there might be a way maybe we could put that on hold or this one
068hold and i'm glad you said what you said too so i want to put a pin in the piece about the plan i think that's amazing um we often in any government not just here do things because either they feel good or responding to so with no actual what is the end goal so i think that's awesome i would contend that putting on a program that the community loves on hold to do that is maybe not the wisest i think we could probably do both at the same time and again maybe it's not all 875 but i don't know because i don't know what it looks like so i would just request that if i could and then second um and i i would love to know if they're okay so the attendance clerk piece
069we made a huge investment in our social workers on as a board um we were proud of that we had students come here from woodward high school people will remember um pre-covid we did an investment then we did another one and another one and another one the attendance court said a lot of that clerical work that social workers were doing is there a concern i i think i might have one but i'm curious if there is a concern getting rid of them if that work then falls back on the work of our social workers because if so to echo miss bolton regarding this bucket i would be more than happy to help find places we could trim some things to keep those clerks yes so in terms of conversation with staff one of the areas
070so essentially right now that process is all manual it's a manual process where you actually have staff that are writing the letters looking at the reports writing the letters and sending them out there is an opportunity through our student information system to set up systems so that when students are absent there are a certain number of days that you get an auto-generated letter that is still mailed out from the school but not necessarily from one individual person the other thing that's also important about this role is this is not while it's a change of the position because we have clerical vacancies it it doesn't change the personnel so many of these positions remain vacant for a period of time because it was an entry-level position and so it was a revolving door um in terms
071of getting staff ready now again at the will of the board if there is something else that that is recommended that we do instead we can definitely take a look at that because by all means you all have control of that part of it but that was the background thinking on it you're welcome thank you mr marowski did mr craig have anything um so i i just will say this i think what you guys presented is really helpful for us to understand where you're looking and where you're moving towards i think one of the things that has been a hard conversation to have at times is that we do have a number of vacancies in positions that you know at times we're trying to keep or at times we're trying to figure out how to
072deal with but the reality is if there's not gonna be somebody in that position long-term similar which you're just discussing with this with the uh attendance clerk's position if we're not gonna have somebody continuously in that and we're gonna be doing that work anyway outside of it what's the value to reviewing those types of things and i think that's helpful to have that communication with you guys as we build the budget and so i appreciate that effort i think we had similar conversations about uh some roles last last uh board meeting as well and at the budget finance meeting about roles where we don't have people in it or we're not using those positions in the correct way i mean that shows to our community that we're actually thinking about how we're spending your dollars
073we're actually paying attention to some of those personnel decisions i think the larger question is going to still be there for folks to review is just whether or not the priorities from which you have set align with the priorities for which board then has to make a decision and so i think that's on us to give our feedback in our our opinions thank you mr craig i want to close by sharing just a couple things here and then i think we will um recess into executive sessions we have a couple things to discuss and we're going to get people out of here at 5 30. i wanted to say i think a heavy dose of gratitude i think doing a project at this scale of this complexity on this kind of timeline is incredibly challenging
074and i think there are a lot of things coming through the the emerging recommendation that i think are really important uh i think it's really important that it be financially balanced as we look across our five-year forecast i think that's outstanding i think there's more rigor around return on investment for children than i've seen in past budget discussions uh and i think that's a great step in the right direction and i really appreciate that i also think in that the governance training has come up in a couple different contexts um ms bolden said i think we spent two days in that room and we didn't have any goals by the end um i think that uh we're going to be in this space for a minute where we're both having to execute a current year
075with a current set of constraints and realities while we're also trying to build and set something up for the future and that's just going to take some time and i think that over that transition period we'll see our community engagement get better we'll see the types of goals we set as a district improve we'll see the way we think about budgets improve and evaluations improve but there's going to be this middle space where we're coming off of a way we have done things but we're not to the future state yet and i think in many many different ways this just feels like a really strong example of what that looks like when done well so i just closed by saying i think these decisions are always really really difficult and really hard um i trust
076our new administration i think you got a great sense of where people are and the kinds of questions they have um we don't have a ton of time but we have a little bit of time um to make sure that we could get all those questions vetted um and i appreciate it mr president i know you want to close but i'm going to i do want to close yes ms bolton's too bad the the issue here for the superintendent and the treasurer's own sake while they do not have new new goals from us which is the justification for what they are envisioning and what they want to implement they have to be working from that set of goals that are already in place and those sets of goals that are already in place i think
077will serve them well and are very much involved and they some of them besides the three years of strategic planning that is concluding besides even those goals going back more than three years the goals that exist that were adopted and and this is over at least four iterations of boards would be good guide posts that i think that the the administration will want to in so i and and interrelating that because you don't want our administration out there in the hinterlands coming appreciate the feedback and the perspective and it's important and i do we have a superintendent's rex and a potential report and one of the things we're going to talk about in a minute i think will address many of your concerns um but i want to keep us moving in that direction so
078um do we have a i think we have the superintendent's recommendations and i think we have maybe one retirement this evening to announce if mrs weinberg would like to share the retirement all right yes we have one retirement today um it's for civil service personnel rhonda waggers assistant supervisor in dining services we want to wish her well and thank her for her service for the cincinnati public school district and for the students and we wish her all the best in her future endeavors great thank you mrs weinberg do you have a motion to approve the recommendations from the superintendent this evening afternoon um i was just going gonna say can you give a moment um because people didn't get the physical copy of it they got it on email so just give a moment for
079the board members yeah do people need a second to review it [Music] because i i didn't see it and i'm still who who did it come from did it come from let me follow up with that because i was under the impression that you received it it was on the 21st so it was yes so yesterday okay i'm finding it i'm just going to say publicly because i've said this before just just give a minute it doesn't i i'm here i do not want things to be prolonged but i don't want to feel rushed a couple of seconds just is fine just give a couple of seconds so if people are looking for it it is posted on board docs okay thanks ms jones so is there a motion to approve the superintendent's recommendations so
080moved thank you brandon is there a second thank you dr moffatt any discussion ms wagner ms bolton uh i uh yes uh on everything but i will abstain on um e i'm sorry did you say d d d yes i have two of them uh and i think it's the first item on d mr craig yes ms jones um i read q's vote on item e and certified and yes on everything else of course this is what happens with outdoor ads what happens dr moffitt yes mr moroski yes mrs weinberg yes president lending yes do we have a motion to approve the report of the treasurer so moved thank you miss bolton do you have a second second thank you mr craig any discussion on the report of the treasurer i would just like to
081draw yes thank you i'm sorry i would just like to draw attention to the fact that some of these are for the next year uh and um i think that's uh great that's good but a member should be cognizant of the fact and i think it would be helpful too as we go forward to actually know the length of these contracts that we are i mean we're talking about dates you know june 22 to june 23 but for these contracts how long are they actually this will be a great reporting thing maybe they are but i've missed it so i was going to point out that in the first nine agreements are there all for fiscal year 23 we started you know instead of you doing 300 contracts on july june 27th or whatever monday's
082date is um so those first nine are and then we will make sure that the multi-year uh contracts are noted in the future president so the ones we're voting on tonight that are for the future are only one year um i didn't say that okay nine okay so there's the first nine in here under the agreements are for next year and they appear to be annual contracts the pro source contract the first one on there is a multi-year contract i don't know where we are in that but in in reports going forward we'll make sure that you know that on the document the ones for the re that are awards of contracts for the rfps there is one that's a multi-year contract well several are three-year contracts one is one year thank you ms wagner
083um other discussion questions dr moffat are we able to differentiate that in the reporting maybe moving forward like one asterisk is one year two asterisks is two and then um my question is to for both of you who owns the data that these contractors so if you're at a school and you do all you do this wonderful programming at woodward for example do we own that data so that we can collect the data to see trends and we can analyze it or does the does the school own it does the district own it does the organization on it right now uh dr moffitt from information that i've been able to review all of it's come to us from vendors if there is data so that's not to say that there is not data that's available
084at schools but it's not in a format that has been trackable across the board at this point so vision moving forward one of the things that we've discussed in terms of even even the conversations around reorg is a contract analyst contract specialist that a part of their responsibility is to do two things one is to make sure that the deliverables are in the contract in terms of what we're expecting as roi as a return on investment from the contract the second is to be a repository for collecting the data so that it is data even if the organization is providing data we have a way as an organization to cross-reference that data based on those three different metrics because those are the metrics that you know depending on which organization is another metrics might be
085um credit attainment so if you have an organization that's working with uh our high schools around credit attainment but really it's around academic performance attendance and and discipline generally and my last question is do we utilize um some of the i don't think it's data collection like the university of cincinnati xavier cincinnati state they have uh departments that collect data for us do we utilize them in those ways to with our contractors and anyone is there any connectivity to have uniformity across our data there there has there has been some conversation that was started within the organization through our research and evaluation team um but it was um it's just starting um so in terms of working like for example with the um children's home for example or or cincinnati children's they would enter into
086an agreement with us a request to to do evaluation with our students and then data would be provided to them that they would triangulate with the data that they have so that goes through research and evaluation in terms of approval processes on the inside of that however there has not been one systematic way that we're collecting data in the district or have a data platform that we're collecting data in in the district that we can then work with our individual vendors to to pull their data cross-reference their students and then be able to say these are the students that they were impacting and this is the data that comes from that work in progress though okay thank you very much uh any last questions ms wagner would you please call the role bolton uh yes
087but no on the cyc contract which i believe is roman numeral 4a mr craig yes miss jones yes dr moffett mr moroski yes mrs weinberg yes president lindsey yes thank you um we're going to adjourn this section of the meeting and at 5 15 in room 110 we're going to reopen it with a motion for executive session so we're going to we're going to end at 5 30 team so we're going to start real quick probably have one topic and then hit the road thank you