001meeting of the finance committee to order and it's live streamed yes i got it we're live stream all right john and eddie uh you have the floor thank you do you want me to take minutes that would be wonderful terry thank you al hey do you want to start with the report yes um i'm going to share it because i know there's some questions still out there so i'll share it right now which i can share this can everybody see that no no terry you have a roll call on the participants in tonight's meeting oh thank you dear um kate canetta president albert russo here luisa sakota spring here and terry bizet okay all right guys it's not letting me for some reason it's showing that it's sharing here and i i know you guys
002can't see it but i'll go i'll go through it page one um [Music] so we've begin with uh end of march 31st seven of our ten school months have been completed which about which means 66 percent of our expenses have been used that is the next tab look in the middle you see the 139 that was our budget for uh fiscal year 22. we expended uh 92.8 million as of march 31st we've encumbered meaning anything from april 1 until just june 30th 46.6 million the next two tabs or bolts are our reserves which um we requested from the city of danbury for 2.4 million that is the non-lapse reserve which is included in 139 and the next tab sr3 carry forward is the 2.245 million uh theresa if you remember last meeting in february you
003mentioned or i'm sorry in march for february's financials you mentioned about that 141 um 141 million dollars that was discussed back on june that's part of that carry forward money from sr3 so that's why we we have that in there now moving forward once everything has been uh accounted for we ended march 31st with a unencumbered balance of eighty two thousand four hundred and ninety one dollars i know it was brought up just recently so there's a good way say way to get right into it um so if you guys are looking at the uh budget summary that last line that shows a lot of zeros or uh or minus numbers is uh last month we discussed about transfers leaving them there versus transferring we did uh john myself and the team we uh numerous
004hours transferred money from other line items and there are some that are in the positive there's only one line item that's in the negative which is that health insurance line so if you can go to page one five should be five correct five if you go down probably about 10 lines down 10 to 12 lines down you'll see object health insurance 52 000 line uh and at the all the way to your right you'll see a minus 872 000 that's the health insurance that uh we've been watching we continue to watch the good news is that uh part of our reserve request guidelines that meet the guidelines our health insurance so the plan is that um we'll continue to watch this all the way to june of course um once we get there we will
005be um prior to june 30th requesting this from the city to cover this fund if we go in a negative right now as as you can see we have unencumbered balance which brings us into the positive of 82 000 but as we're all aware there are numerous things that will happen spring sports there's a graduation other stipends that would be done so we're watching that so the good news is our bottom line or in the positive um thing is that health insurance is what we're really looking at because it seems we might have under budgeted uh for the health insurance for fiscal year 22. the next uh paragraph or sentence is explaining that we've transferred some of um line items into the yes or they met the esser guidelines into sr3 for example we did
006not budget for seven hundred thousand dollars in kelly services uh four hundred sixty three thousand dollars was not budgeted for the overages as we've discussed in many months in the last two months um in january when we had the omicron virus we had a lot of absentees a lot of people out so uh there were overages that teachers were taking so that's why that overages of 463 dollars we were able to move that into an esser to cover uh and then the last tab is our two hundred ninety three thousand dollars from the cares act here's act is our first uh some people call it cares act some call it sr1 that's our first uh relief fund um covet fund we went over 293 thousand dollars so we moved that to sr3 or one of
007our other essers i'll stop there i know i've dived into a lot of details into these this budget and the budget lines are there any questions uh just a quick question eddie um thank you thank you for this over um this overview of what's going on i just want to make sure that i understand when we're talking about the 66 of our year-to-date budget we're talking about that correct okay but we're really looking at having spent closer to 750 somewhere around there correct okay thank you you're welcome any other questions so what we gonna do with the empty lines the empty lines are those lines are balanced now as of right now oh they're balanced okay so we transfer theresa um if you remember last month we transferred a lot of the lines and i
008know we went from having a lot of negative lines to now the lines are zero right um so we took anywhere where there was positive numbers and moved them into the negative so we they're called transfers um in other districts prior you know we we meet we discuss about it it's presented and then it's voted on and transferring the funds in this case we transferred all the funds uh due to our discussion back in february okay how many is there are there any other questions right we can do that arbitrarily uh because the city gives us the money and they tell us to do what you want with it is roughly speaking correct everything is in order on on how we're spending our our grant money uh i'm not doubting you're doubting the practices of
009my finance folks here i'm just uh i saw a headline in new haven and and i thought i would just ask the question that we are doubly sure that we're good yes we're doubly sure yes we are we're we're watching it on a daily basis to be honest and we discuss it three or four times a day so yes thank you you're welcome i'm going to move over to uh the next kind of your final sentence and then um i'm going to pass it over to john it's regarding our head start 214 thousand dollars um reason we bring that up is last year it was in our um when it was voted on by the board of ed the 214 was voted part of the five 137150 um i'm going to turn it over to
010john explain a little more if you guys can go to your last two pages of the packet um john i'll go into that thank you eddie you're welcome so there are two pages um one is from the the mayor's budget or the city budget uh the other is uh from our own minutes i think i've i've shared this earlier in the year so from the city point of view when they say how much money they're gonna budget for education uh that's not just the our board of education um it's it's two organizations the second being head start so the page you see uh they they consider that education and it is so the page you're looking at that says um city of danbury at the top you can see that um there are two lines
011uh the first one 136 million 936 and then so that they intended to give to us and then uh 214 000 that they intended to give and they have directly to the head start program they have for many years they write the checks uh it comes out of their appropriations does not come out of the school budget uh however um on on june 8th when we uh set our budget down for this year if you look over at the motion itself it says that we set the second line we set the budget for 2122 in the amount of 137 so we made a mistake we thought we were getting the whole thing and we are not so what that does is it sets up a shortfall uh if nothing changes between now and and june
01230th as you can see from our our forecast uh we have 82 000. there are some things that still have to come out of that but if we don't get another 214 000 we won't be able to pay all our bills so there's uh there are a couple of choices that we have one would be to go back to the city and request uh what's called an interim appropriation of 214 000 uh saying we we made an error we plan to spend more and uh we would like additional funding and that would make our budget balance um if it wasn't a second choice if it wasn't so late in the year we could have uh reduced some other plans by 214 thousand uh not done something that we may have already done or planned to
013do um when you get this late in the year you know all our spring activities are underway all the sports and things like that most of the purchases have been made there are very few places where you might be able to postpone uh 214 000 expenditure and do it uh next year so that's that's not a good option late uh the other thing would be we could go back and and uh look even more carefully at our budget and see if there is uh 214 thousand dollars uh that would qualify for essa reimbursement and move that over to the esser grant we've not looked at that i wanted to get a feel from you first what you think of a might ought to happen in a situation like this and before we discuss it let
014me point out you heard about um you know for next year uh the mayor is proposing adding 4 million 64 000 to the school budget so they're coming up from the 136 not not from the 137. i just wanted that to be known and as you hear different numbers bandied about so uh thoughts on the different options strategies maybe what happened would it be less painful it would take it from the grant money the asset funds uh i'd have to say yes but it um that means something less that we had planned to do uh with esther either next year or the following year if you remember there are two esser grants one is 11 about 11 million dollars and the plan was to spend half of that this year and half of that next
015year and the other register grant was uh almost 25 million dollars and the plan was to spend 8 million this year 8 million next year and 8 million the third year right so i thought go ahead i'm i'm sorry my thought was it might be easier next year yeah it's never easier to shave 214 000 but we can't do it this year though there's a possibility we we could we could shave something in the 2223 budget uh from grant money if we use that money now uh have you got any feeling from the city fathers how they want to go i i haven't i i didn't think uh that would be uh really appropriate until you know we heard from you in in the full board okay that those are my thoughts i have a
016whole committee here uh terry kate um so mr russo i'm i'm sorry terry i i i just respectfully i'd just like to interject um john talked about two different options and one of those options he included was going back and finding the appropriate line items in other grants to make this work so i i i'm going to say publicly in front of everyone we have 215 000 eligible and other grants to make this work there's no need to go to the city to ask for this money at this time and i agree yes yes we had considerable transition in this office but it's not the city's fault that we had transition in a finance office and it wasn't clear what about that 215 000 budgeted we it's not necessary to go back to the city
017to ask for that money okay there are eligible lines to find that money in grants to build that too and i can curse her totally unequivocally we are on the same team all right so my my apologies about that next month oh no worries no i'm finding the grant money i'm good with that okay i'm just asking the rest of the committee if they had any thoughts on the subject okay i concur with you sir sorry about the uh interruption always good to see you kevin good to see you mr russo so i'm all set al um that was my that's my our our report um based on march 31st so we're looking good uh overall um we'll continue as you know watching um i'm glad that uh you know us changing those transfers brought
018questions in a good way so um i'm glad for that that you know teresa thank you for the email today so now it made sense why you couldn't open or you didn't see the the but i didn't understand the last line so now you were seeing zero uh balances where in the past we've seen negative balances so as mentioned um in this meeting it was transfers that we did throughout the month or the last few weeks so and we have thoroughly explained the negative balances and some of the grants yeah okay i will do that right now you guys want to pick one and i have my little notes so well if you have notes start from the top okay i'm sorry so i'll get uh the real big ones um so you have some
019lines for example you know uh let's see ones that are big in the negative area your your alliance district uh funding carry forward that was allowed for one year or a year and a half really two years due to covet uh that minus 26 will be coming out it'll cover it'll be covered from our alliance grant that we receive every every year so um once the year comes to an end that'll be uh gone alliance you can't carry forward due to the pandemic we were allowed to carry it forward um your you know your title three your bilingual your um immigrant and youth uh those grants are grants that um continue to use um to staff for supplies you know of course as we're coming fully back even though we've been fully back for about
020say uh half of a year at this point we haven't finished the year out we'll continue you know hiring staff um anything that is needed for the schools uh for the staff for the students um so those numbers your alliance uh construction grant that kind of speaks for itself um that'll stay there um any the real extending learning program you're seeing a negative balance of a million dollars um those are ones that and there's a few of these uh you know you're extended learning you're some of the other ones school readiness uh 21st century um parent trust frc summer those are ones that we have to build once we build uh the you know the agencies we uh basically put it in the budget and it balances out but as the expenditures are coming in
021we're putting them in so that's why you're seeing these negative balances in the uh in the grants sr3 as we know is a three-year grant um we'll continue to be using that that's the that's really the grant we're uh one of the one of the many grants we keep focusing on just to make sure what we can move what's eligible uh per the cares act ester grant etc um priority school district that's part of a alliance so um what we've noticed is some individuals are in that grant and they will be moved into alliance very similar to what we just did with general fund will need to be done in grants but grants are a little different we can't just move it from one grants to the another uh priority school grant were allowed to
022because falls under the alliance grant umbrella um adele ed very similar to some of the others we bill them in april and this month we will put in the budgets for them uh we build the city and state so that two forty a hundred ninety one thousand dollars in the two forty seven thousand dollars negative balance once we build the city and state and receive the funds they'll be put on the budget side and then they'll zero out um i'm trying to get the big ones that stand out title two for example uh teacher uh quality that's for uh teachers improvement uh personal development that that money we can roll over um so the cabinet myself the team we're uh identifying what those funds are once that happens we draw down from that and i
023think that's really the magnet school is one of the other big ones um that goes together with the magnus school tuition whatever we receive from surrounding districts with tuition that goes against the uh magnet score of uh grant one third what grant number is that eddie 130 30 130 and 131 oh thank you okay sorry to scroll down what it's okay um one of the other ones are say coca-cola we'll use that one that's actually uh so in the vending machines we get a portion of the funds it goes into this bucket which is the coca-cola grants if you want to call it so that's that 23 000 right there um and then this the summer school very funny just found out today is a credit card fees john and i found out today those
024are credit card fees that you know we receive so uh that actually will be going out there was never a budget for that there are funds for it um there was just never a budget entered so we found out about that today so bottom line is um our budgets we our grant budget sorry breakdown is about 54 million dollars is what we have in grants that includes the big ones you know your essers and your alliance um alliance we will continue to get title word to continue that esser is the one that will come to an end come september 2024 which is sr3 and then as of right now if all the lines align as i mentioned we cannot move one grant from another unless it's alliance or title or there's certain ones we can't
025but we can't do the same thing what we did with general funds but it brings our grant total down to a positive 179 right now all right thanks for sure you're welcome committee members any additional questions i have one kind of off topic do we ever get a list of scholarships yearly scholarships for the graduating students what's your eligible for or what's available through the high school just curious eddie if i could i jump in and answer that um those counselors um have access to all the events there's very there's a ton of scholarships you know available to students so when they meet um and discuss senior planning as well as walk students through the college recommendation process and help with their common app through naviance um scholarships is a component of that and um
026they do um let the students know which scholarships they're eligible for encouraging them when the due dates are what the application requirements are um and the high school also has some scholarships that they will give out at their senior night closer to graduation uh is there a list of them that can be shared just curious you know what's you're still in the process of assigning them but i'm sure we can get them to you i mean i don't need to know who who's getting them i was just curious you know uh what we have available for our students are you talking about using district funds or just in general things that are available i guess like they they're the uh just general funds that uh you know donated to deserving students for books for college
027and you know there's a kitty for that you know that type of thing i mean do we have any kind of list like that all of that all that is managed uh at the high school uh under the guidance office um it doesn't go through um the school budget nor the finance department right right they keep all the records of that i can get a list of we can get that for last year for example we could get that i'm sure just curious what our students earn just curious i'll follow up on that thank you john do we have any other items to discuss today well i think that was it okay before we sign off uh i cannot our chair is here uh madam chair do you have anything to add no but i
028think kate has a question yeah i'm asking just a quick question i'm just looking at the um the esser cares act funds um and it looks like we have a negative balance on that particular um and i just want to make sure i understand that k are you talking about 2.245 um sorry i just had it on my screen eddie i'm looking at uh line 30 under the the grants section at 74 000. yeah so that's uh in the beginning i mentioned how that's the cares act slash s1 some people call it um that is the that's really uh money that in june or we received but we spent more than what we received so we're moving that negative balance into s or three okay okay thank you i appreciate it very good well john
029eddie mr walston i appreciate your all your work uh i must say that this this meeting has gone much better than i thought it would when i saw all of the empty columns and but that just means okay we are we are on par i appreciate the explanation about uh a moving grant monies that we can grant from item to item to make it work [Music] and uh if there are no other questions could i ask a question please madam chair gladys cooper welcome aboard yes ma'am could i ask the question could you explain uh account number 141 uh out of my time on the budget i've never seen a word just hanging out there or account just hanging out there by itself could you explain to me account number 141 minority the minority grant
030um miss cooper yeah is it a grant it is a grant and um i i honestly don't know too much of the grant i'm not going to pretend i do um okay i don't want you to pretend yeah that's what i say kevin or kelly are you aware of that by any chance i you know i'm just curious as why is it there uh could it be in with another uh some other account i just want to know what is it and i've like i said i've looked over um a lot of budget books over my years and i just never seen it seen an account just there and and really no sort of explanation i just want to know what it is well this is the first time i think we've seen a a
031list of grants right we've seen a list of grants before yeah okay i can look into it gladys for you and uh get you an answer tomorrow okay not just for me you know just for you know because if we go down in front of city hall uh you know next week and we get to looking at this and you know it's not a whole lot of money i'm just saying what is it for i'll get you that i'll get the answer for the committee for everyone to uh tomorrow and my last question is is there anything new that's going to be proposed out of this budget when we get down to um the education committee meeting on next week at city hall is there anything that needs to be corrected now or added to
032before get down to city hall next week gladys the the only thing that i think is different is um you know for the first time in in the last three years um we will not be returning unspent money to the city come june 30th you can see from the projections um i'm not sure if they expect that annually but not this year so and i think that's comes through on the report okay anyone else going once going twice i will attain entertain a motion to adjourn we'll see you all at the next meeting motion to adjourn thank you gentlemen thank you very much so moved gentlemen