001on on this month's numbers and and how we went from about 61 000 above the curve to a million three or four below the curve let me uh i may look to eddie to start us off and then i'll i'll join okay no problem good evening good evening everyone uh i'll start off with the narrative um as of right now you know we're reporting on january 31st as a close uh that's about five that is five of the months of the 10 month school year we're at 50 percent of our year to date budget as expected um of the 139 585 we expended uh 67 million uh we encumbered about 73 million minus um we did some edition and i know um al you had asked john about it originally was 1.6 for some reason
002when um we moved some stuff over from ivy into the excel spreadsheet it took one column and didn't take the other one but that 1.3 is where we're at right now um so if you look at the 73 million minus the 71 million for it's really 1.6 but that's because one of the line um didn't come over the uh what was liquidated was the health insurance for the month of january for 276 thousand 000 that's what brings us as of today or as of january 31st to um the 1.3 uh deficit that we're currently um looking at possibly in um i want to touch a few things and then i'll pass it over to john um you know as we're all aware the omicron variance was very heavy in january it affected a lot of
003our staff our teachers um which was difficult i know we uh we had to kind of close school for a few days because of it um and then what happened was um our overages overages is basically if uh a teacher's out and there's no one to cover we have to grab uh you know someone on their feed period or on their prep period to kind of cover that area so um good thing is we had a vacant we have a vacancy line of about five to six uh vacancy teachers majority of this uh overages is coming from the high school so it covers about um six hundred thousand excuse me oh we have an i.t question um the zoom user if that's michelle please unmute your mic and identify yourself because we had a we
004had an unknown user on our on our on our call i was on before okay can you hear me al may i ask uh who kim's iphone is do we know that person is who's iphone that's kim thompson thank you kim just wanted to happy to take the night off if you'd like me to leave we're always happy to have you nobody gets off the hook we spent a lot of time together yesterday so we're going to we did indeed thank you kenny we all set okay sorry to interrupt eddie um please continue no problem um we want to make sure there's no uh anyone trying to sneak in right um so going back to the overages so uh we had six vacant we currently have six vacancies um we'll total about 600 000 um
005but as of right now we've used about 450 000 hit in that vacancy line due to the overage good thing is is you know as of today and tomorrow and friday the weather is clearing up um seems like the pandemic is kind of coming down in regards to positivity rates so we're hoping we don't see as many overages or you know teacher staff being out because of the co-variance or you know whatever variance is out there in this case it was the omicron and then i move into the next part which is um the budget indicates a shortfall um and john is going to touch base on that um we've been really looking into it him and i um the cabinet trying to figure out what happened on this june 8th meeting um that was
006approved back in uh you know last june um right before you know kind of the board kind of went um esser 3 wasn't approved really or we didn't get the guidance until august even though uh courtney and the team and the cabinet submitted all their information what the needs were um so that's my update as of right now i'm gonna pass it over to john to kind of touch base on our uh that 1.3 transportation um and where we see ourselves now february 16th till june 30th before i do um al or committee are there any other questions on the other parts of the report before we talk about that it would be better to talk about this first and then come back it's your personal opinion i'd go i like to let's complete it
007and with questions we'll come back right so um it's actually june uh ninth um and we're gonna talk about that um i think quite a quite a bit in the next uh couple of months um that that was the night the board uh passed its budget resolution and um what you had to work from at the time i'm gonna show this uh it's a it was a fiscal year budget planning document i don't know if i can share my screen um i have it but um you might you might remember there was a sort of a five-year look forward um at the at the um operating budget and then um and you had seen this i think a couple times there was a sort of a spreadsheet that showed uh what was going to come
008from the city as it was called what would come from alliance what would come from the cares act what would come from esser ii and what would come from s or three uh because it was um there was quite a bit of change you know um needed uh to to come back to school uh full-time uh face-to-face and the social distancing that was required uh some of the social emotional needs that were going to be met with the grant um and things like that let me just um i don't know i may try and is that you eddie sharing your screen okay well i'll keep going um and part of the um the plan was uh multifaceted so there was um what we ended up with uh we adopted a general fund budget of 139
009million but there was another 2.2 million of needs and what we voted to do was to pay for those needs from the sr3 grant and what we're starting to see today is those expenses beginning to uh be incurred in the general fund and we haven't moved those over in to be paid for by the grant yet but let me just point out uh one thing that was mentioned uh back on june 9th that the uh 2.2 million uh was uh described as restoration because if you recall on when sal first made presented his budget for this year uh we we wanted more than the city said we actually said we needed six million dollars to keep thing or six percent to keep things going and part of the reasons were uh transportation there were we
010said there had been uh transportation that needed to be added for enrollment growth that hadn't been funded uh there was some a one-time credit in transportation that was going to be lost and there were some other things okay there's the page and uh we said we we needed those uh we needed six percent to maintain what we had um and we didn't get that but so what we did was we looked to the esser grant sr3 grant to to find the money and so what what we're really uh operating under this year is a school budget that's 139 million you see it right there in the in the column under city and i will get back to that in a second but um and i wonder if you could just go to the last page
011for a second that shows uh the total of the s or 3 down a little further i i think it might be on yours right right there right above the dark bar is 2.245 million and you can see that's included in the eight million dollars of esser funds and uh the way we described it you don't see it on that page was um it's called restoration and it said uh it was for enrollment edition includes 330 000 for teaching staff uh 215 thousand for esl bilingual teachers three hundred thousand for special ed tutors four hundred and ten thousand for transportation remember we we had trouble explaining why the transportation budget was so low compared to next year's uh last week when we presented the budget and that's because for this year we were planning to
012do some out of the grant and then 15 000 for equipment but the uh this is what it's i think this is the important line in what you were looking at in june it says this was not restored in last year's budget we continue to carry the need forward so that's that's the 2.2 we and we probably could have done this a different way as as the months went on and said well when these bills come in we'll just charge it for the in the grant and um we wouldn't look like we were pointing negative uh but we we didn't if if something were uh so far if something was a bill from sta we charged it where it was or some of these teachers were budgeted where they always have been budgeted we just
013kept going but now from doing that we're showing the deficit and we're going to have to move some of that expense out into the grant as you can see we're looking at 1.3 million so far from our report we have 2.2 million available so that that's the uh you know that that's the reminder of this was our plan all along so i i'll i'll take questions uh if at this point if you like okay for my broad stroke is this will be covered with sr3 correct yes yes although it's it's if you're led with that my blood pressure would have stayed with it well um except i i have to say that it it won't be exactly as we thought it might be and what i mean is when the when we first started hearing
014about sr3 and the american rescue plan initially what we were everyone was told is well this will be more uh it won't be as restricted as sr2 you'll have more flexibility we learned we know you you know you have needs that we don't quite know what they are yet so i think we all thought we could use this um in a wide variety of ways but then months later and that news really came from the federal government that's where the money originates for the this is the american rescue plan but then what what the federal government does is they look for the different states to administer these grants it doesn't come directly to us it goes through the states both the city and ourselves got grants american rescue plant grants ours is called esser and
015in our case uh guidelines were laid down by the state education department in the city's case guidelines were laid down by the office of policy and management so we're we're managing them differently but our guidelines came in august and the grant i think was due the application in september and the things that they said uh you could do with the grant were not some of these things we had planned to do for example what they say about transportation is that if you need to if you're having trouble getting drivers and the thought was well drivers like other people in the workforce aren't coming back to work they're not interested and you have to pay a premium or a bonus to get drivers to come in uh then that you can charge against the grant or
016if you need more buses to uh distance your students for socially distancing uh like we're doing with brookfield um that's okay too but but you you're really you're not allowed to just take operating money and put it in a grant then it de facto it becomes just relief for the taxpayers and it helps keep the tax levy down and that's not what they wanted to do with this money they wanted to help with the pandemic get schools back open safely and things like that so um that's one of the reasons we didn't just start charging these things as planned because we have to stay within the guidelines now i believe there's other things in our budget that will fit the guidelines uh for example some of the uh social workers that we use to help
017with social emotional things uh there are some premiums in the transportation that could go in but not all of it um some possibly some of the esl bilingual teachers and i think we can find the things um but you know everyone had the best interest at heart when back in june but and now we know uh a little more and and uh you know we're we're well into the school year so it's a difficult story to tell there's a lot of parts to it we have an hour well i do have another piece we can get to but see if there's any questions on the the s or funding and and everyone understands that our spending plan is is really 142 million this year it's not 139 because we didn't make any cuts in june
018when the city said you're not getting what you asked for right but it also in june uh correct me if i'm wrong it was the last administration or last finance crew team to uh to use the esser money to take care of that shortfall shortfall and now we're aware of it uh-huh we'll have to deal with that in the future but we are we are covered for the current budget i i believe we are i i believe there's um eligible expenses in our operating budget that can be moved over i do okay but uh i was also it can be covered with yes or three funds yeah okay yes all right i think what we have to be careful of as we get into the new budget is that we don't do the same thing
019because i think there's an expectation not not just here but in other places that the esser is more like the alliance grant where we have a lot of flexibility that we can just move operating expenses in if they're certain ones the the answer really is uh pandemic related all right john if i'd like that i'd like to open up to other members of the committee if they have any questions finance subcommittee any questions please committee member one question um being a city worker can you uh in my experience you can't once you establish a budget you can't change the lines i mean is this okay for the school budget it's okay to change the lines amount to something else yep it's a good question there are two sets of rules uh one that applies to
020boards of education and one that applies to all other city departments i i like to explain it this way that um a city council or or the mayor uh can um has line item veto authority on the individual lines and uh only they can make transfers or they can promulgate the rules uh for you know police fire public works all of all of the things that fall under the um the mayor's responsibility uh board of educations is a little different a city council cannot make specific reductions in an operating budget they can only make a lump sum so if we ask for 152 million they can say uh we're only giving you 150 and then the board of education decides where to take those cuts but they do they are allowed to transfer uh within
021the lines of with that and and the example i use is you you really you're as a board of ed you're responsible for example for graduation requirements you have to you know a diploma from danbury high school means a lot and it means that students have taken certain courses and passed certain things and you can't have a city council saying well um we're gonna we're gonna do something else or we're not gonna you don't need uh algebra books in ninth grade use the old ones and that kind of thing um it's not their call you you have the responsibility so the state gives you um the budget authority uh within what the city sets for you now capital is a whole different ballgame uh with capital uh which are larger expenditures uh like the matrix
022and things like that ellsworth um the cities do have line item veto authority and only they can move the from line to line we we cannot do that where our our authority uh our ends with our operating budget so that's how they do it thank you joe yeah committee members are there any other questions okay john please continue sir i'm sorry i'll mean to interrupt you i just have a quick question john i noticed that we saw a pretty big bump on um health insurance the health insurance line um [Music] i don't know if you had any any feedback on that yeah we um you know a couple months ago we i think you remember me saying we did not encumber our health insurance for the year and it was distorting our our our bottom
023line uh so we put um in other words we wrote a purchase order to cigna with the hopes that each month as we paid it we'd reduce that purchase order but we didn't connect them in the um in this system we probably should have i thought bev would just automatically reduce it and and didn't um uh follow up on it so um it's an inexact match right now and uh that that's what's going on okay i i think she we yeah that makes sense like changing better right i know that's like a moving target as well anyways so you know i appreciate the explanation i just wanted to kind of make that a little bit more transparent thank you okay all right um okay something else while we're on it um eddie do you want
024to put that first page up that shows the um the grid again like this so um you know as you guys know better than than i um the the mayor uh through from the from the charter uh must present a um a total budget to the city council so that includes uh a board event budget but you know it's the c it's the other one at the uh the one you head up before um but it's a city council and and the board of ed there it is uh that determine the the budget and so if you read the mayor's budget last spring as he talked about what he suggested for the board of education he mentioned that there was an agreement and it's right in in writing he said there's an agreement between uh
025the the city and the board of education to use what he he then described as 3.5 million uh from prior year funds or non-lapsing funds now as i believe that's what they thought would be left over in a prior budget i'm trying to get some information on that because what uh remained at the end of 2020 was 2.4 million dollars that was unencumbered that would have gone back uh to the city and if you look at this uh page here i'm sorry it's so small but uh back i'm sorry i'd go back to the page you had the 139 million that we're uh spending you know actually we're spending 142 but the 139 um is described as coming from three or four places or reasons um and the way it's displayed is uh here's the
026previous year budget and here's what we're adding to it we're gonna add some money for enrollment we're going to add some money for um increases but again on on june 9th your your resolution said that our 139 million was going to be made up of really two things uh 137 million from the city and 2.4 million in non-lapsing fonts and you can see it right there it's in the city column it's the fourth number down and that's baked right was baked right into your resolution but what i'm what i'm trying to find out is were there any strings attached to that and what the reason i am is um i receive after um we approved our budget for next year i got uh um i was emailing david saint-hilaire for another reason and he said
027to me oh i happen to notice your budget are you sure you're using the right beginning number so i said i wrote i emailed back i said yes 139 million here's the resolution our board adopted and he wrote back and he said well no he said you know that non-lapsing fund that's really for one-time occurrences if you have uh unexpected transportation or special ed and things like that that's not how we've understood it um so i just i wanted everybody to know that uh he's asked that question um and maybe there's is there something that was talked about with that or was there an agreement as the mayor had described or uh but it's it's become a question mark it's that um just to give the video heads up if you guys can see that
028motion on the top c you guys see that right in here barely can't read it okay i'll zoom right in thank you how's that good yeah works better thank you so it says the second line uh the board of education is all proposing to utilize an estimated 2.437 so in the in the second line there's 137 million that's where we get our 139 from and i i thought nothing of it until uh until the email came and i i honestly would have thought if there was a agreement between the board and the mayor's office that as he described in his book at least it would have been some communication back to you somehow weren't able to find it today but that communication is that in the district office anywhere cara looked uh once today she
029didn't find we're gonna look some more okay exhibit 2189 okay page 16. okay if there were any email communication sent between city in the board or whatever but nothing as as john mentioned as of as today okay interesting right that was emailed to you by um mr savage and saint hilaire on on thursday yeah we were um i forgot you know we passed information back on different things all the time i it was something different we were emailing about and he he said oh i saw your your budget i we must have posted on the website and he thought we were starting from too low of a number okay all right so i you know the way i left it i said you know we want to talk to you about this but i'm just
030i'm not ready yet uh to say you know my my own feeling is uh you know it it's the city that um come to comes up with the sources of money you know if if we you know demonstrate a need of 139 million um you know how they finance that is up to them um yeah they're the okay we'll be [Music] okay so those are that's what we have to report tonight all right i know we have another committee meeting at 6 30. can we are there any other board members on board that would like to ask a quick question i know we've we've held it to committee members at this point madam chair yeah i just want to say i don't recall anything about that that 2.4 in the non-lapsing funds you know any
031other agreement with that um i just so when you built the budget for next year you assume the 139 that's right and his inference was we should have started from 137 yeah yeah and yeah you know we built it kind of on a zero not kind of we built it on a zero base basis as you saw with transportation we just said here are the buses we need and here's what it cost we did the same thing with teachers we never rolled forward any lines uh like by adding we just we every line was looked at we said here's what we're doing now what will it cost next year kind of not not did we budget right or wrong okay so technically we're four million in a hole john well there's 2.4 million right there
032i mean that's that was what you voted we have the 2.4 for this year next was the concern where do we go up an extra 2.4 of what we're asking you know we're asking for 12.7 do we ask for 15.1 that's you know well exhibit 2189 we can dig through the emails and dig through the files and come up with that exhibit we can probably add a little clarity to that um if i recall um and this may not be completely accurate so i even hesitate to say anything but my understanding of those non-lapsing funds were that there were certain grants that were carried over because we didn't utilize those dollars due to the schools being closed the grants are all very specific and for specific purposes you've probably heard us say you can't supplant
033your budget with grants you have to supplement they're for additional things like special ed or title one or school readiness but the 2.4 was basically a carryover from the previous year i think is that what you're saying kate that's what i that's what i remember discussing that there were certain grants we just you know didn't make use of and so that that money was being carried over i don't know if it was at the state level or what we also had what 2.4 2.5 and unused insurance monies right that's all maybe creating some confusion well at the end of any year um what you don't spend goes back to the city there's there's no um budgets are only 12 months you can't you you can't perpetuate them they're they're over now the money goes back
034into the city surplus say but they made an exception that year is that possible to make an exception i think that i mean recall yeah if they again how they finance our schools if they want to take money from that we just put into the surplus or they want to use state aid or uh reserves or the tax levy that's really up to them so regardless we where really what we need to decide is i don't know if we can decide because it's already passed and brought to the city but having known that before all of that would have increased our our request so i i don't know that we can i don't know if there's anything that we can do beyond what's already been done right because correct me if i'm wrong rachel the
035numbers we've seen are 139 million and this is our first exposure to 137.1 right i mean unless there can be discussions with the city that you know that's how we built the budget and [Music] any decrease to that request is just yeah the what what i'm curious about is it you know in the mayor's budget book there's a message it's called the the budget message or something that's two or three pages and in that he says uh there is an agreement to use he calls it 3.5 million but i i just i i haven't been able to find the agreement that he's talking about he's writing about so that i assume that if there was a correspondence between the city and the the superintendent's office or the the board that we would have something in
036central office right because i don't remember seeing any kind of communication at least from at the board level right there had to have been something that happened for this to get into the motion uh wouldn't it i don't think it just would have come on without something it was reliable so i just want to clarify john in essence you're saying we don't really fully know where that 2.4 uh for in funds that were you know carry over funds what their origin was well i i i believed they were the unspent funds from the 2019-20 budget that was the year we closed in march been a lot of leftover money i think i think it's the same amount but i didn't think there were any strings attached to that that that they were one time or
037they wouldn't be we couldn't use them it doesn't feel like we couldn't use them to make for and there it is okay thank you ed that's the mayor's message and there yes he says the remaining phrase so it says pursuant to a mutual understanding between the city and the board of ed the board of ed was permitted to specifically designate the remaining fy 20 surplus of 3.5 million to be used for future budgetary needs as it turned out it was 2.4 million but if it's for future budgetary needs that's what we did with it in the motion so once again i'm trying to find that mutual understanding or the the match of the 3.5 to the 2.4 yeah anything anything at all i think that warrants the discussion i mean in my opinion um right
038i mean i don't know how else to investigate this a little further and come back to us with it with a resolution or additional information john yeah yeah i i i plan to keep digging and and find out um but exactly perhaps david himself has something of email he sent us or um the former mayor uh may have something yeah mr cabo would be i would reach out to him yeah because he wrote this right okay well time marches on and and so we get a resolution the sooner we know that where we actually stand and uh if you should come up with some communications that did hit the central office uh please be surprised because anyone else anyone answer the question okay is that it ladies and gentlemen if we have no further questions
039i'll conclude to entertain a motion to adjourn so we can move on to our next meeting and uh certainly um john eddie kevin please uh yeah we do we need a resolution we need to know what's going on i mean it's a big difference but it sounds like possibly last year's on last year's are the funds that are gonna probably just gonna be reused back in the budget but we don't know i'm just filling this with a broad stroke glass anything you had man um thank you uh [Music] just looking at that document i do remember when we passed that motion and i was very clear to dr sale how he had that motion very specific we had a discussion and i said to him is this the way that you want this motion to
040be read tonight and he said yeah it comes a sort of uh we can't find the information but if i could get the date that that agenda was passed i have it here at my house so i don't understand trying to understand uh what the city is saying and what we use as for as the uh information that we had in the uh motion so i'm a little sort of confusing mr russo we're all trying to join the crowd gladys so am it's on june 9th but i remember i you know no information came through to me as board chair at that particular time from the city but i was very clear okay let me see the date on that june 9th june tonight okay let me i have it here somewhere in my house
041because i keep everything june the night okay okay that's fine i'll try okay thank you all right ladies and gentlemen we've had had everything we can handle is here tonight and we will all dig deeper i know june tonight i'm pretty sure i may be able to dig that up in an email um john thank you for your input eddie thank you for your work sir thank you guys thank you all right i'm going to journey oh yes no wait we're adjourned