001on the 21st of November at 6:03 PM first item on the agenda we're going to look at would be the October financial statements I'm GNA turn that over to Mike yeah um Ken if um if you can uh pull it up if not I could share my screen I have everything open as well I just also want to uh take the time to uh recognize Angela for helping me while I was sick at these financials together it was a very big help thank you you're welcome um so th this uh this particular month was very similar to to last month and if you remember last month's expenses jumped up quite a bit because it was the um the full year the full uh payroll uh so can if you could just scroll down a little
002bit so coming in uh this month dat actual at 14 million um rich I want to point out the budgeted number if you look at the total is still that 1675 and we had discussed pulling that out and putting it on the bottom but um in talking with uh Joanne from the city and uh also Angela pointing out that those those funds are going to have to be managed very similar to the way we um manage our grants so it's actually not going to be in the general fund we're going to um have that in the in the grants report in the in the months to come okay that one of the comments I was looking to to make but the one with your report yeah uh so year year to date we're um coming
003in at 30 32 million with additional incumbrances of 109 so we do still have uh a balance that's uh um in line with what we saw last year and as um as we push through uh the year that balance the balance will come down um you can continue to scroll down can can I ask question real quick when back to the the budget amount 1675 you said you're going to have that is it that million it's thees 7.5 milon right so that's the part that's going to go into the Grant Line correct exactly yeah and we'll be we we'll be left with the original appropriation of the 160 million thank you so again we have our light line items um by budget um we working on doing some of the um reallocation um Rich you
004know that that's a a project that we've been working on for some time now um I I had some ideas about how to do that uh unfortunately what I'm what I'm seeing in the year-to date um in the budget numbers is negative numbers that were budgeted that I'm not sure uh in 2024 how how to to navigate quite yet um so Ed Aram is coming in tomorrow I'm going to pick his brain and see if he could come up with a better way to to reallocate that money and then um in in this particular report you'll also see that 7.5 we're trying to just locate the um accounts where they were plugged in so we can um pull them out um but after we do that and we can reallocate that budget um this will
005look a lot cleaner okay I keep trying to scroll um Can when Mike when you say lot cleaner you mean less negative balances uh negative and positive yeah so the the variances are um are on the column all the way to the uh to the right um right so you'll see that those will start to uh to approach zero um as we uh as we clean up the the budgeted item okay can you can uh scroll to the bottom this you'll see It'll total again at the bottom as it usually does um keep going down so here we see again the salaries are um for the second month of increased I just stop right there for one second um we'll see down at the at the bottom of the totals that there is about um
006a $500,000 doll swing uptick from last month um and I'm not sure if everyone remembers but I'll point that again there are a few um accounts that it's based on timing so for us it's Pupil Transportation uh you'll see that um in the previous month there was people transportation and then we got the the bill for 756 th000 that's that Top Line that Ken's pointing to now um and you can scroll to the bottom of this report I just want to show that variance if you could blow it up a little bit so you see last month we were at the 135 this month we're at 14 14.0 and that is L largely driven by um the the increase in transportation cost Mike how often do we get Char those bills just to give the
007board a sense cyclically how often did they come in last year uh last year we um were getting them probably about every other month uh Bev Bev PM um the other one that's usually acts up is utilities so you'll see all this also happens in uh in utilities so so Mike clean the problem to make the report a little bit more manageable basically what we're looking at a report that's on a cash basis to the extent that you also add in here onc or put in my understanding now through through purchase orders so as we've often I don't know if you have the abilities to establish acel but with regards to the transportation or utility bills which lag behind is there a way to to to get a field for for a better number to
008put in a a purchase order for the month as to what the estimate for that monthly cost would be so we sort of normalize it and then just reverse that out in a particular period when you get the the actual bills that we don't have to go through and look at all these CLS the only thing you'll have is maybe a variance between what you estimated what actually work yeah so for transportation um the the expense does vary from month to month but but not much we know pretty much what it's going to be um it's contractual as far as utilities go there there usually is a little bit of a swing um historically what I've done in other places is just take a look at the the previous year um and do an acral
009based upon that yeah I think you know I think we should start working to eliminate the the swings you know based on the the cash bases is to bring it up to to to more of a a combined you know full crural basis utilizing your purchase orders however you want to get the numbers in and your best guess for for those items that come in a month two later so it doesn't skew the it doesn't skew the statement we have go through needless conversation sure yeah um we can we can convert into a a modified cache if um if you think that would be more useful yeah I'd like to you know it's strictly do something where it's a combination of cash plus plus the acur and yours accounting for for your your purchase orders
010which basically is somewhat of an acrel as well as stuff that you anticipate as I said like a utility bill you know you're going to get 12 of those bills but you may get two or three in one month and then your financial statements are going to look scre in a line number bases because you're going to have blanks and then one month you're going to have a huge number so you know right you know you're not going to be that far off on the estimate which is going to skew any of the bottom line numbers right can I ask if you could explain that in English I I um uh in a cruel you could think of it pretty much as a placeholder we don't have the actual amount we haven't actually paid it
011but based upon historical values we'll take a best guess at what it is and put a number in there as a placeholder yeah under what column um so for for this month um or for last month we would have seen it in transportation because we didn't get uh a transportation bill in time okay ter would be in the column it would be in his encumbered column the encumbrance coms basically are potential liabilities that the district has that they don't really have the that are not you at this particular point in time so you can have in the encumbrance column you have a contract you're can to have the full 12 month value of a contract in that and what you'll do is to keep in the encumbrance contract just the number of months that are
012still open and and uh when when you pay off let's say if you have 12 months and you pay off the first two months then your incumbrance basically will have the 10 month obligation what we're saying here is that if you don't have a contract or an obligation such as perhaps when you get something at home you'll get to you generally ever Source will send the bill let's say the 15th of every month but if they send it on the 25th and your accounting cycle closes and you want to display in a particular month an accurate presentation of your cost you can say that okay in this particular month I I didn't get the bill but my average utility cost is X number of dollars and I'm going to estimate that and put that in
013as an encumbrance or as a liability so that at least the numberers there and it it just makes more credibility to look at the statements rather than have huge fluctuations based on cash I I I appreciate the explanation but do we see that on here when it's listed or he just points it out you'll see it it's in the details of a particular column called encumbrance and then Mike will be able to tell you what the cation of that particular encumbrance number is okay no so it I'm not missing something it's it's there it's just you got to know he's got to point it out yeah that it's an acrel exactly so to think of the to think of the encumbrance column you know I would say encumbrance slash ACR and you know I don't
014mean to get too technical but it it just cleans up the statement so you don't have these these wide fluctuations no that that makes sense no I appreciate that but I thought I was missing something um but I appreciate no thank you thank you very much yeah it's like before you know last year when I asked John Spang to go through and give definitions of some of these categories and what the definition of the encumbrance was things like that because the more you know see I get to to be in the same point with like with Cara is you know I should take my own advice in knowing my audience but I you know in talking to Mike it's on a different level then I would talk to to to me well the rest of
015the committee members who lay people you know so it I apologize for that all I'm trying to do is to get the statements you know to a point where we can rely on them but I hear you right now and Mike let me say this I don't pay you a compliment so don't take my criticism I gu personal I've been very frustrated in the last couple years with presentation of the financial statements that they they've been horrible you you've walked into a situation which is is a nightmare particularly that damn audit thing which takes up tremendous amount of your valuable time compounded with walking into a a budget where you played little if any role in understanding where the the what the numbers represent and where they were so the the faster and it's a
016lot of it's my impatience but understanding your workload the faster we get I let me ask you this before go on the presentation of these numbers in that budget column did John put that together or did Aaron put that uh Ed put that together there was uh John that was John okay so that's unfortunate so what it to me my opinion is to go through the financial that we're doing now makes it very difficult to to me to have an interest number one there's 7.5 $5 million from here which is a lot a lot of money for and again it's not a negative comment about to to to you but for which we don't know anything at this point is to where those costs lie in any one of these these line numbers number two
017is to whatever extent that cash was laid out against any of that AR money or encumbered I you know I'm not sure I I I don't know if any of the $7.5 million that we were allocated were given if we spent any of those monies and that that being the case that also skews the the the monthly report in in terms of saying how much expenditures we have in a particular month so bottom line is the faster we get and extract out that 7.5 million dollar and all its respective accounting column that pertain to it better off we can go through these particular reports because at this point here it's almost a meaningless exercise to to to do that because if you look at the variances you have no idea I don't have any idea
018as to what part of that variance may or may not include any of these arer funds so that that's one you know that's my comment on that as to and I was going to it's part of the the other part of the agenda terms of reports yes I had said to show it underneath this report but if you want to show it in Grants I don't care just so long as we have SIM type of accounting by line members and all this stuff here in terms of the format I you know I I don't think the city can tell us or should tell us I think it's amongst us how we want to see the presentation of the financial statements to it so long as they're properly labeled categorized this is our business it's not
019their business but they're correct in saying it shouldn't be part of it shouldn't be part of the the overall budget and as the correction to your comments on the year to date summary you made a reference which is an incorrect reference that the 1675 is part of the operational budget that's not the case the operational budget is the 160 million the 1675 if you want to talk about it I would call it a spending a spending plan the both but don't get confused and have people get confused that our budget 1675 because that number is is not coming to us next year as an appropriation if nothing else happen we're guaranteed to get $160 million next year as a bare minimum because the city can't give us anything less so you don't want to mislead
020somebody and think we're going to get 16075 or if you take any measures as to increase over this year you certainly don't want to take any budget increase you're proposing over the 1675 so that's just for clarification purposes I didn't want to go down to the line numbers that there are some some negative numbers on here I'm not sure if we should pay so much attention to them but they they they have negatives and this stage of the game just wondering why we would have some of the negatives um some of the negative numbers that we're looking for uh if you look at like health insurance and those categories should be the second box down Ken I me got a negative in a life you know life insurance small underneath that that's 12,000 in Dental
021you know dental insurance um you um are you looking at um the top part yeah I think yeah maybe scroll up a little bit yeah not the grants no it's in the yeah I'll tell you what so this is the 52 anything with the 52 is a a benefit right there on a page there you'll see yeah the second page yeah so these are these are the variances um and the reason that there are um the reason that there are variances is because the the budget I think the intent was for John to reallocate the budget in in July I don't think he um intended to do it earlier um but the the big one that that's on here is um about about 10 down it says part-time printing um and the the total variance
022for that one of the larger variances we have is uh four 4.2 million um there's not there's not actually 4.2 million in part-time printing those um were salaries that were sitting in sr3 that had to come out and I think he put He had to uh put a charge code in and I think he used that charge code 511 98 um because it really uh isn't used very often at least he'd know where everyone was and then I I think like I said his intent was in July to reallocate those those people uh the actuals to where they belong but the as you so you know as we're talking Mike the the report and again nothing criticized against you becomes almost useless until we get this squired away in caror see I I I I
023know Mike only has so many hours in a day but whatever we could do to to get Ed to to go through and and to an analyzed however you can or whatever we have to do to to get these numbers squared away so that we know what's in them so that we can we don't know what's in them I also find it hard to comprehend that we know how to charge something against it you know so yeah then that's been the that's been a little bit of the a frustration with the with understanding kind of where you know everything that's in each line and there's a lot of backtracking that's that Mike is trying to do now to try to trace back different moves that were made so um and as far as Ed goes
024he's he's been coming in like once a week or so so the but you know I don't think that's what I'm concerned about terror is in a few weeks you're going to you know things are going to shut down and you're going to be focused on the budget yeah for a period of four weeks or six weeks when we're going to just only breathe and talk about the budget and then by the time we get to this you know it'll be May or June and we'll have another a third year of wasted statements which I also think is it's a blemish on us because we're supposed to be the custodians of the money if we can't account for it it puts us in a bad position and it shows that we have egg on our
025face so the point is Ed's got to step up and bring in more time or we've got to figure out how to bring in some people who know how to go through these General ledgers could you know figure out what's in there but I think this project is is a time of the essence pro project as well in addition to the 12 others you got on your plate I agree all right so I mean it's because the further we go along without it you know we'll have meaningless conversations on on the we'll have meaningless conversations on numbers and it it's going to be hard too if we start putting together a new budget and you start doing comparisons you really can't it's not going to make any sense so it it just puts us in
026an awkward position that unfortunately we were stuck with you know and again it's like last year the last three or four months of the year we were holding our breath so that you know we came out and fortunately we were you know looking for a a break even or if it was a break even a positive Break Even was a small amount and then loan behold it's $2 million positive they say wow you know it's a nice it's a nice surprise but you know for somebody who the finan I mean somebody who's in charge of the finances that's a big surprise to say that's a big swing you know yeah point I don't I don't think think it should be a surprise you should know where you're going to end up no no I I
027understand but I'm saying was a surprise to us when all all along we were keeping our breath our breath you know holding our breath looking for a a marginal positive number then we come up with a $2 million positive certainly a lot better than negative but on the other hand you know I'd hate to be pure financial advisor with things like that so so you know I really think from my point of view enough set on this particular statement and and going back to the narrative The Narrative we have to continue working on so it tells us a big story as to know what's happening I can certainly work with you on a narrative once we get these numbers so that we get a monthly narrative it tells somewhat of a story so it doesn't
028ire you to go back into these numbers and analyze them yourself and have a conversation but would be a starting point to either accept and just confirmed and build upon it rather than have us go through and do the investigative reporting on on why the ups and downs and things like that you know I think first things first first we've got to clean up the the budget know what we've got to there and we can't wait until July to do allocations that that's insane I mean that that's absolutely insane insane because it just distorts everything you know if you're keeping all this money in the operational budget and then mid year you pull out 50% of the number and say it should go against grants or some other place and you're looking at the the
029said my example you looking at the grant budgets and it it looked very very favorable and then you get a six Monon hit which you know normalizes things or put you in a different position the name of the game here is not surprises there should be no surprises when you're looking at these financials let me you want to move on to the grant part you know that that's fine does anybody else have any comments on see Mike move on for the BRS can you could uh scroll down to the bottom so um Rich if you remember um last month we spoke about also redoing the way we're reporting on grants um grants have some um some interesting aspects to them because there are both one-year grants uh and two-year grants uh many many of them
030have um various expirations so some of them are on expire on 6:30 some are at the end of the year in December and then others are um in in the fiscal year and it just becomes very difficult to understand um and uh and manage because you don't know how much longer you have by looking at the reports that come out of Tyler anyway you you don't know um the other thing that um Angela pointed out is that in in our grants mixed in with the regular ones and can you you could scroll down a little bit more uh it should be like the last two or three pages um we have not only regular grants from this year but we have carryover grants in here you'll see them mixed in um and I really think
031that we should probably look at them separately um so Angela has a report from um that she shared she's been working on to break this out uh into that manner because to your point you know just looking at at these numbers it it doesn't it doesn't tell the story um it's it's very hard to to parse out and uh and look at the that's part of the conversation we'll have on future reporting Cara let me ask you a question can could you offer suggestions to to us T Mike as to classific ations of the grants in other words you know the the alliance Grant titles 123 Etc do do they have a commonality significance where you can group that say that this is yeah yeah so you have yeah you have state grants right you
032have State uh entitlements you have Federal entitlements then you have competitive grants so the state can offer competitive grants so so for example Title One is is an entitlement Grant title two title three um there are other grants that are federal grants that are competitive so you have to apply for those every single year you have to compete with anybody else you don't know if you're going to get them or not it's kind of up in the air you don't know if um the leap Grant is is is a classic one where we we're not sure each year what will be sustainable um you know some times they're reduced so there's certain grants that you can sort of rely on as predictable and reliable and then there's other grants that are competitive and then of
033course there's like um you like a private Grant you like the bar Grant would be a private Foundation Grant um and so I'd probably say there's like maybe three buckets three or four buckets um great so to that point there's a starting point Mike if we can take those classifications as to entitlement statement Federal competitive and then private we could use those as major categories and underneath those categories put the particular grant that that belongs there the other thing I would do is add in another column you know after your budget balance put in expiration this way we have an idea to when those grants expire or if you even want to go further and and had another category called carryover you know that's fine but then then at least to us Cara we have
034an understanding as to where these fall see a point what's competitive you know out of this particular number how much may or may not come back next year what we think we can rely on so again you know we're becoming a little bit more fisticated in terms of looking at these numbers understanding what they are in certain classifications that has a meaning to to us the Layman plus yourself there and your staff whoever with this so maybe Rich I'm sorry I'm sorry to interrupt Rich Teresa has her hand up a quick question I think go ahead car um I think a couple years ago we had the grants set up by expiration date to give us an idea um how long that was the most that we determined that was the the most important classification
035was really the expiration date when we knew uh the particular Grant was expiring um some like you said are one year some have twoyear um that was the um that cleared up a lot I think it was about three years ago maybe we had that and then for some reason we went back to the just listing it yeah I I I remember that Teresa and it was helpful we had a chart and um Angela just Angela just went in and started to organize that chart so we'll have that we should have that you know for the for the next meeting um but it definitely lays out the the dates and everything you know the other tough thing about the grants is you can have a grant an allocation in here so for example like the
036increasing diversity allocation in here that was just approved a couple days ago that money was sent over sitting but you can't touch it you can't spend it and it's on a reimbursement so um that's that's an example of one where you get an allocation but you can't spend it until it gets approved uh the work plan so they just the state is just getting around to approving some of those and there's a few other ones on the list here as well so some of these are they give you the allocation but you don't can't start the reimbursement until you get approved so there's a lot of but there but why do we list it then it's pending it's not even even ours yet that shouldn't even be on there they give it they give it
037to us but the the spending plan gets approved so it's kind of like that's one of those you have you're G to you're going to get the money but your plan has to get approved so that's you know there's a whole there's a whole sub subcategory of these beyond the categories that we talked about then and that definitely then should be a separate category because that's important so we'll lay out the things just so that we can kind of explain them a little bit more um we did the dates to your point Teresa are very important and then you know we tried this once before I think people got a little bit overwhelmed because when you start to try to explain the what every single one of these grants um the requirements and the contingencies
038and the strings and the what you can spend it on what you can't spend it on um you know what goes do we but as a finance committee do we really need to know that no we just need to know the expiration date we got this money it is just pending you know committee yeah of course yeah yeah I mean and we'll be able yeah for your record you need that yeah well just because sometimes we get questions and there every single one is different with different rules of engagement so I you know I I think I'm sorry Wanita has her hand up now okay I'm sorry goad I wanted to ask a specific question about the alliance District funding so I can hold off Rich if you want to go first no that's fine
039go ahead um is Mike still on Michael yep okay one of the attachments that you sent was in regard to the alliance District funding yeah one of so in looking at that um you also were able to show Us by location the different amounts correct do you know which one I'm talking about I I I do and I think um Carrie that that was actually something that was new this year um where they asked for it by uh by location yes right okay so um okay my question is it and it is by location I don't see Ace on there so just to just to so the the science grant we have a lot of kindergarten teachers in there right all of our kindergarten teachers bilingual tsol bilingual you have um oh who else is
040in there we've got social workers um coaches Etc so the majority of the Staffing in this grant we have a lot dedicated at the elementary level because most of our ESL bilingual is at that level our certainly we have a lot of some schools have five five kinderg teachers across um so you'll see a lot in there but our a staff is pegged in the priority Grant so the almost the entire priority Grant is dedicated to alternative education so we' the whole grant for priority is the a staff so that all of their Staffing is a separate Grant because that that Grant better suits the theme of the the grant so they're not in this they're not in Alliance the Staffing anyways okay thank you that was a the question that I had said we're
041getting to be in the right track and Teresa the ultimately the will start to put in different formats that we could agree on you know on on particular the the grants uh and then we could you know agree as a body as to how we'd like to to see the format you know I don't know how the these are done but when I when I was working I had to get sell spreadsheets and so if I had something like this I'd be able to do it in the three classifications and then I'd s it on that last column which I would have as the due date and run a report by due date so you have flexibilities there the the other thing too is sometimes it's nice to have an addendum to to to to
042the the schedule just indicating just what the grants are for not in a whole lot of detail but what's the purpose of the alliance what's the purpose of the leite grants Title One Two Three just simple sentences so that you do have an idea what these grants are for but again that's more polishing up the report right now you know I'd like to get to the point where the reports become usable and function both and then we can worry about putting the icing on a cake Rich if I could just point out we did produce that last year um for the major all the major grants entitlement grants and the major state federal grants to what each um Grant is geared for we didn't put the whole thing in there but a a general gist
043so that people if you can come up I forgot that but if you can resurrect that yeah definitely in the minute somewhere we'll have to go back and look okay just have Cara send it out and we'll include it in the packet so that we can just have this is is sort of like a a glossery at the end of the report little cheat have it fixed so thanks for reminding me sure is anybody else have any questions on the financials okay that being as I said I I apologize for being critical but I'm afraid that we're going to get too far into the year and just have another wasted year uh really don't want that to to happen the next item on the agender is the 2425 Alliance Grant summary Cara if you want
044to go through that and discuss that sure so um you know we we haven't really done this before and I I know we've we've you know and I think it's important to do it but you know it's $30 million so you should be able to see how how that money categorically is spent and where it's being spent um this year different than in years's past um they've asked us to tag the allocations by school so um some schools have more kindergarten teachers than others some schools have more bilingual t- cell teachers and because we've differentiated the Grant in that way that's kind of makes up the difference between some of these um you know you'll see that some of the schools are quite a bit there some of the larger schools but it really all
045depends on the Staffing and how many people that we've put in the grant that actually work in that school the general fund picks up a lot of the other staff so there's really not uh a ton of Rhyme or Reason to how many in uh you know haast toown for example uh may have more an alliance and less in general fund whereas um you know Rogers Park has more in general fund than they have an alliance so it's not that anybody's getting short changed it's just how the Staffing worked out um over the years as we added as we added members in um the big change this year excuse me car sure did this was sort of a last minute addon there do we have the capability of putting your right up on the screen
046I'm not sure yeah it's the next tab over sorry about that I'm I'm reading I'm just reading away that's okay thank you okay yeah thank Ken is anybody can zoom in a little bit just a tiny bit thank you Ken okay so um the big change if you look at the Danbury High School number that was the that was the line that that really blew up this year and and kind of took on the uh a good portion of the increase that we received this year so as we were shifting from general fund to Alliance to supportmy um a lot of Staffing shifted over with it so the the academy Staffing that's going to be on that West End campus was who we shifted over into this grant uh one of the categories in Alliance
047are bold reforms right and so um we captured that that narrative in there and that was that was approved as a as a qualified expense so um that helps to relieve the general fund also but also if we didn't be start moving staff into some of these grants we would not be able to fund them so it is definitely you know a needed strategy but also one that I think um you know makes the most sense for us at this time we also tried to leave a good pocket of in of of money um we didn't you know there's so a lot of our I'll go back to the stuff that you see under the danburry school district at the top of the the line on top of where the location is so that's an
048amalgamation of all the other things um in the district so purchase and Professional Services other purchase Services uh we have trans some transportation in there we have some uh Kelly sub services in there at least two million couple million dollars in sub costs in there that'll get charged over the course of the year so there's a lot of money like that in there um supplies so curricular supplies uh testing supplies PSAT our um our power school is in here big expensive kind of items and contracts that we have um almost on a yearly basis that we that we renew um you'll find in here as well under the property section for example um that'll be some more student devices um headphones some computers part of the refresh so between the money that the mayor is
049giving us the 7.5 and what we have an alliance we'll be able to do our next refresh cycle um and I did try to squeeze uh copers in there and it got booted out so I had to I I tried Teresa I really did uh but they they didn't like that it wasn't a student wasn't a student device per se um and then you know regular professional development things that come out over the year um but the but the preponderance is in that salary line and the and the benefit line and that does offload quite a bit of money off of our general fund and has been doing so for years um I had an opportunity so today we had our uh First Alliance District monitoring visit with our new state monitoring uh supervisor and
050what happens is is we put together a mega deck of information that we go over and um we talk about we talk about the alliance Grant we talk about the performance metrics we talk about strategies and how how we're using the money but also what type of work we're doing in the district and so we talked a lot about also the this the fear really in Alliance that the ECS this is our ECS pass through this is also our ECS allocation but that if you look at the schedule for the alliance it tops out at 2526 so after the 25 26 school year it just levels off and so you know one of the things I always try to point out is that when you have a lot of salary in Grants which we do
051because of our history of financial uh allocations um you know those go up our contractual obligations go up every single year and so we have to be very careful not to put any more staff in here just you know probably a handful more but we don't want to outspend our allocation uh over time once this Taps out we're not the only District that's concerned about this the state is talking about uh with for the with the alliance districts um on how to handle that situation and at least in the terms of cost of living adjustments and and all of that but um that's definitely on the on the topic of concern for the urban school superintendants I think that's a very important comment to to make car so that we're all aware historically I always
052look at the alliance is to be fungible it offset a lot of the overages that we couldn't afford in the operational budget fortunate enough to have have the capability of putting in in here but when you continue to load it up with salaries that has a continuing effect yes gotta be youve got to be careful and this is the first time as far as in my tenure that we've ever seen what's been in in the L we being the board people ever seen it so it's part of the the reporting process Mike it should be that when we report on this subject that part of the budget items we should have this reporting in some sort of a an accounting or line number fashion so that we can monitor the expenditures against the proposed proposed
053uh proposed expenditures in car am I correct in saying that every year you have to or is it more so during the year you have to present this to the state to get approved in order to get funding right so every year you have to you have to re redo the application it's an it's an expectation sort of that we're going to get the money it is an expectation that we'll get the money but the plan itself has to be approved so they what they do is that you submit it and it has to they go through it and vet it for qualified expenses and in line with the Grant and um and then they ask questions and so I go through a process with them um and then they'll either kind of provisionally approve
054it you know or not or kick back certain items or ask for more detail or ask for more clarity um you know and generally you know they don't you know it's not like the this grant changes all that much but from year to year you know you might swap out um one thing for another or something you move on to a different um curricular resource that's the the better version or the newer you know so but this year because of the the big addition that was definitely a big rewrite in in the grant so it'd be nice if cap the capability of having substantial amount of funds in one-time expenditures so that yeah it help it helps us in the future with the operational bu yeah I think this I think this is a tremendous
055start and again we make more and more progress in getting to know you know what makes up the the finances of the district does anybody have any questions on this I do okay um The Alliance supervisor what's the name and are they the same every year you're looking at her um I would love to shed this responsibility right now really we just don't have enough hands to I'm yeah I'm still very much involved in the development of the grants the writing the detail I you know this was the first time I actually for this grant hit I hit the submit button so now it was it was quite it was funny because I wrote it and then I had to go down to another office and approve it from from the superintendent's desk so I
056had to you know so it was a little different and I and it was a good process because there's I've done that with a lot of Grants where I I write the content and the strategies to kind of piece piece uh quilt things together to make things work um but now I'm on the other end also approving them um and there's some extra steps and stuff the insur there's are assurances and things that you have to go through as a superintendent that you know I didn't see before but you know this this is something and I was reading the details in Alliance and that that the board should see the categories they should see the spending by school and that's a recommendation and I don't know that we've done a good job of that over
057the years or maybe you know just not inadvertently but that's why I wanted to make sure that you saw this you you understood the categories and um you saw where the spending is and you know from time to time from from a strategy perspective you know as as we head into you know next year too you know there's still time to talk about how to use this grant if we you know as a board you know we look at we can't make too many changes to it because we're kind of the the salaries and things we're highly dependent upon a lot of fixed pieces in here to keep those going but um certainly I I use the grant here strategically to align resources to things that we have in our district plan so that there's
058some funding behind whatever it is that we're rolling out at the time whether it's professional learning or particular curcular resources things like that it's certainly a step in the right direction and it's it's a big number and something that's been you know historically has been a big mystery you know a great just a great job moving will get approved Rich if you will approved with financials I think they should be approved just like the financials get approved so on an annual basis right for this meeting do we have to make a motion or a recommendation to the board that uh that we approve this presentation uh yes that's that we we're hoping that that's on yeah KP put it on for for next week for the before we leave yes so yes that's the intent
059so then in our in our minutes okay we'll just note that the finance well if we have to take a vote does everybody agree that we the finance committee recommend this to the board to accept um as authorization to to uh for the funding of the alliance bran so should I make a motion to that effect Rich a motion yeah put it yeah you can put it in the in the minute and then it'll be official and if we can make the recommendation to the board so that they could authorize it I second it you want to clean up the motion or gu um I guess I'll make a motion to recommend the alliance Grant report uh beor recommended to the to the board and to be approved annually by by the I'm sorry I
060just can't hear you guys there's a lot of noise going on I just want to make sure I understand correctly Rich so we're we're making a recommendation for this specific report as well as for you know a future uh future you know annual approval yeah we like the the finance department the committee is recommending to the board that annually they approve the presentation to be a presentation of Alliance expenditures does that say it Cara it does and I'm just I'm just thinking because this is the first time we've done this I'm just wondering if like maybe every October or November whatever month where we do the financials that when you make a motion to approve the October financials that that motion says something like um which includes you know the alliance whatever that just wraps
061it all up as as as a financial package and if that if that works I mean this time around we could just approve it separately because I think it's written that way but um or or you can you can do it as a actually I don't think it's too late Cara didn't send the she didn't send everything out she could do make a motion to approve the October financials which includes the alliance expenditures okay that's so maybe we'll just do that as a single motion I think so okay so I'll make a motion then to recommend the October 2024 financial report including the alliance Grant expenditures to the board thank you then all in favor would be I hi hi thank you good next item that's on the agenda is the recommendation to the board
062of ed to withdraw uh the reserve draw down to uh request to the city the 23 the 23 physical year um yeah u a recommendation to the the Board of Ed to withdraw a reserve draw down request to the city to to the city right so this is the balance no so what we're trying to do is is is last year my understanding that the board approved and the the board gave approval for John and and and Kevin to go before the the council or the ad hoc committee to to request a draw down of of reserved monies that they had that request has never been acted upon and that request is is still open and I I asked them we were advis the best way to get that situation just closed and off the
063calendar so to say is for uh Mike to write a letter uh to then the city council and the mayor Etc withdrawing that request um the the I don't know if we have a copy of your letter Mike with that's what we're going to it's it's not attached it's not attached if you want if you have a copy you want to read it or should I read it um yeah if you have it okay so to the committee members we're looking to and we put here the copy that was sent to the city council that you guys approved last year authorizing John and Kevin to go before the council to request this money again there has never been any action taken on this particular request and it's still an open item on the ad hoc
064committee so I was concerned and all I wanted to do was to close the book on on this and we were advised the way to do it is a brief letter from the current Finance director p and Mike uh so that we can just close this unfortunately it was late in the afternoon which the the letter was developed so our read you the letter and this is what I think we just have to vote on tomorrow or at the next board meeting to have the board authorize Mike to send this letter as they did back last year to authorize John to send the letter to request the door down so this is a letter that's dated uh November 6 2024 from from Mike and it's going to the city council uh the mayor Dan Dan
065Garrick uh the finance director uh and it reads on June 26 2023 the Board of Education approved a request to draw down 3, 44,8 eight of educational reserves to supplement the physical 2024 annual operating budget this request was formally made on July 5th 19th 2024 to the city council with John Spang Chief Financial Officer at the present at the present the request was made the superintendent and the cabinet engaged in immediately cost reduction maneu as a result of of these cost R reduction Maneuvers the dist District was was able to the district was able to uh complete the school year without These funds the Danbury public school system is requesting to withdraw the request since it no longer is necessary Michael all we're saying is that we want this thing to be taken off the
066books and and close the request so I think part of the docket part of the papers car in the next board packet should be this letter and again Kate part of our recommendation should be that the finance committee suggests to the or recommends to the full board that they approve the the the letter to withdraw the prior years Reserve uh fund withdraw sure so Mr Janell I just have a quick question though as you were reading that um and maybe I misheard but I thought you said that the request was made July 19th 2024 is that what the letter in front of you says yeah it should be 2023 or did he meet for the 24 fiscal here it was good cat 24 now so yeah I just want to make sure because the original
067request was submitted by John Spang on uh July 19 2023 so I just want to make sure as we reference it um that we're referencing that original letter that's all I'll make I'll make a change the okay thank you I appreciate that sure so you're looking for a motion Rich from the finance committee to um recommend to the full board the submission of this letter by uh Finance director Mike Weaver uh to formally withdraw the draw the um draw down request that was made originally yeah so I'll make that motion the reserve indicate the reserve draw down request sorry the reserve draw down request yes so I will make a motion that the finance committee recommend to the full board uh approval uh sorry approval of a letter from Finance director Mike Weaver uh withdrawing
068the uh draw down request from the reserve funds um made originally by on sorry on July 19th 2023 second yeah somebody have a second Wanita thank you Wanita all in favor I by by thank you and the last item on the it's not the last the audit 20 23 fisical year Financial audit update Are we almost done I'm gonna um I'm going to share my screen I just wanted to give you an update um let's see so this um what we're looking at is um might look familiar from last year this is uh called Sur link it is how RSM who is the um accounting firm that's auditing the city uh communicates their audit requests to us um which are which are many um there are currently through RSM um three audits going on um
069one is the state single audit um which um it's an audit of um of different various grants that the the city has but we do have some things that they ask for um since our our financials roll up um so all of those requests for uh DPS have been met um I think there's one thing outstanding um it's from the city they're just waiting for an untimely filing notice um the second the second audit is really broken up into two different sections one is kind of the planning um that's when they go in and they ask for a bunch of information which they then synthesize and come back with other requests to actually test the data um so I don't have access to the cities um but I have access to ours uh this is
070what it looks like um and then as you submit things um they go from um outstanding to fulfilled and then they will either return or accept um we hope that that they accept you can see they made quite a list of uh of requests um and there are still some things that we've submitted that they haven't even looked at um but if you take away the things that um we have sent in and success and successfully submitted and you take away the things that um we fulfilled but they didn't get to look at you'll see that we're we're empty we're done I think the last time I reported out we were about 30% done um so now at this point um we we kind of move on through the fieldwork portion of the audit um
071and again it looks very similar um just today uh we submitted a request um and they kicked it back so there is currently only one thing that's um that's outstanding that was returned back um there are other requests that are going to come after they have a chance to look at our data they're going to formulate questions and start asking us for payroll registers and um and invoices um POS thing things like that um but currently we only have that that one item um that outstanding which is just a copy of the front and back of the first and last check for the year so um I'm fully confident that we could get that done uh tomorrow for them um and we'll be completely up to speed is this still done by Zoom um yeah
072we we have teams meetings um with CLA and RSM um on a weekly basis we have two of them um it is it is very much remote our Auditors are um all over the country as a matter of fact that's crap Mike is is um for some reason I'm kicked out and I'm just looking at and advertising for Zoom but the the uh are we still on target to be complet by December as as far as I know I think the um the date got pushed from December 1st to um December 31st I haven't heard anything um different than that um but at at that point um you know they have to put a report together and they you know they issue that that caffer document um and then um we start on the next
073year the 24 audit um we're hoping to get that one done um quickly as well um and then we'll be finally um completely up to speed um just before we have to start the 25 audit it says we're outstanding 14 um this particular um type of requests is blue um outstanding um is stuff that they haven't selected yet so know see it's kind of like blue over here if you click on it you'll just see um that they haven't made any any selections yet so they're going to come back um for ad dispersements they're going to ask for um not not yet selected they going to come back and they're going to ask for um an absurd amount of invoices they're going to want to see the the POS that belong to that invoice the
074canceled checks the bank statements with the canceled checks on them um and that's kind of like the the um flipping into high gear that's kind of like the less section so we just have that this one thing um between all three audits left the DPS and that's the first and last check committee members next I think it's next Tuesday at six o'clock yes at City Hall there's the meeting of the audit committee I had requested that at least the finance committee chair but these meetings are open to the public as far as I know so if anybody wants to attend certainly welcome it's six o'clock in room right next to the the conference room room 3C uh and uh has to do with the audit committee so I'm not sure what you'll what more you'll
075learn but I've asked is that we be included so no that's a good idea Rich yeah like to make that's a good idea to be there and just invite anybody else who wants to who wants to be there I since it's an ad Pary I suspect you're not allowed to talk but could certainly listen M I thank you for that and again I apologize what you stepped into I know you're doing an excellent job uh and it's just a a huge waste of resources in a critical time but it is what it is the we'll push forward the last item on the agenda is a discussion of the type of reporing I had received from Teresa and from Kate um ideas on their part as to the type of reporting that they like to see
076um you know if any of the committee members and I've asked a couple of times during the board meetings what this point here wants to send me a an email indicating the type of reporting that they'd like to see um is just send it to me what I'm looking to do is I'm going to have the copies of the emails that Teresa and Kate and whoever else quoted to me and then I'm going to summarize it on one sheet in addition to my thoughts so that we could have some sort of a meeting along with Mike to discuss these reports the feasibility of doing them what we'd like to to see and not say what practical um and I think that's going to be a a separate uh amount of time that we're going to
077have to devote to this particular subject matter so I'm not going to go through and and list the meetings or the pipes at this point here uh I'd rather have the backup and the documentation behind it and and give some of the committee members and the board people a little bit more time to put their request and and then we could look at this this at a separate meeting because it's going to take a while to at least discuss the concept of it the reason for it and the practicality that anybody have any further comments on that particular that being said I think we've concluded the items on on the agenda so nobody else has any any information to add I don't have any any information I would just like to uh just a reminder
078for board members uh board ofad we give out Christmas gifts to carara and ogre and I'm asking all board members to come on Monday night with $20 so I can do our Christmas gifts to those two people so I I'm expecting all board members to participate and if you don't we'll just make sure that Cara and ogre gets a gift for Christmas okay okay thanks Clen thank you that being said I'll ask for motion to aaren so moved second by I'll second thank you K all in favor