001All right, take it up. >> Okay, good afternoon. It is Thursday, December 18th. This is the December meeting of the ASD board finance committee meeting. Um, I'm Kelly Lessons, board member and chair of this meeting. and we'll go around the rooms to my left for introductions. >> Hi, I'm Mike Pleenstein, district's chief information officer and thank member of the committee >> chair senior director and communications. >> Great. We have officially one item on the budget. Excuse me. On Oh, and online we have >> Member Belly. Thank you. Um today we have one item on our agenda. It is a budget update. Um I had shared some ideas with our CFO and um would defer any questions and would defer to Candy and Katie for presentation of your document at this time. >> All right. All
002right. Thank you. Um, this pulled up so we had questions regarding contracted services. What makes up a little over $60 million that the district has and that is kind of one big bucket of uh reporting for those. And then we're going to go through the balancing act input analysis. You know, Katie put together a lot of information about how the community's feeling with respect to how we could balance the budget. Um, and then we have a six-year plan prepared that we'll walk through briefly if we have time at the end. Um, so contracted services, here's kind of what's included. Again, it's a little over $60 million that we include on this contracted services. and I'll break it down in a little bit different um format here. Uh this is based on the FY26 budget. So
003it's not really reflective of the 27 estimates that we included in balancing act necessarily or the proforma, but it's just here's what we currently have. And really those are just rolled forward by couple percent. Um, but that encompasses, legal fees, utilities, that's going to be, you know, electric, gas, trash. It'll be all, that also includes like employee mileage, a few hundred thousand for that. Um, but by and large, it is electric and heat that take up the line share of that. Um, staff, travel, registrations, memberships, uh, 500,000 or so. Mo, a lot of that's in the membership category. So, as we pay for things like council, great city schools, AESB C, those things like that um are also included in there. The indirect cost recovery, that's a negative amount. It's really kind of offset some
004of the things, but it's generally to offset the administrative costs of providing like grants. So, whenever we get grants, we can charge indirect costs and there's a credit that comes back into our general fund. um student travel, field trips, stipens, activities, contracts, that's a little over two million. Um most almost all that's spent at the school level. Uh building and equipment rentals, eight over eight and a half million by and large. That's just for our our buildings. This is probably this building about half of it I believe. Uh we have building custodial contracts, equipment repair. Most of that's through our major maintenance or our maintenance contracts um by and large. And then there's a object code 310 in there which is inscriptional com uh contracted services and that's the a mostly audits lobbyists demographers bond
005campaign and interpreters. There's a lot of other like kind of smaller chunks of things that go into there. You know if we were to hire a a consultant for something that's where they'll they would uh fall but it's really just you know that's interspersed along almost a lot of our different accounts in smaller increments. And then we have advertising and some other contracted services since uh by and large like it says contracted ASD services in the in the budget line item and that's kind of the the way that our our charter schools were able to pay a one-off class essentially. So it's kind of an intergovernmental type transfer more than an actual cost that's making up that line item. Uh some of the bigger ones I wanted to break down in a little more detail.
006The in that line I had the object code 3030 for contracted services for instruction. Um it's a little over $9 million I believe. And by and large this is the correspondence aotments take up about 4 million of this. That's a big chunk of it. The UAA tuition for the middle college is about 1.7 million. Um there was a question on the ANMC the revenue generation on that versus the cost to provide the program. We generate a little over $4 million in revenue based on the kids that are going there. Currently the direct budgeted costs were about 2.9 million. So considerably less but then the other side is that these kids are probably a lot of them are also taking classes at their home school or at a neighborhood school. So, if you can, you might
007be enrolled through AMCS, but go take classes at West or East or something. >> Yeah. >> And those aren't really reflected in that 2.9 million, but an estimate, you know, if everyone were to take two classes or a little more, it'd be about a half a million dollars extra um based on our per class calculation, how much it cost per student. Um instructional device leases. So, that's when we have our our devices for our teachers and staff. That's our ongoing cost for that. professional development, accreditation, and few other contracted services in there. And then that tutoring, see 50.54 million in there. That's what the board added back in the back in August, I believe. >> Thanks. This is I mean it it is a complex um >> and this is the really condensed version of
008it too, >> right? And this is the short version. I think you know the question was we saw a little bit of grow I mean the the reason I asked us to at least have this on the agenda was that we saw a little bit of growth in one of your slides at a work session two weeks ago. I think it was alluded to that growth was primarily coming from utilities >> um from 60 to 62 million. Clearly we have you know items within our contracted services which are fixed and not discretionary. And I think my my question as I you know thought about what would be useful is can we begin any kind of analysis of you know what could be considered a discretionary contract um and understanding that everything is you know has
009value >> and we need to start pulling away the things that perhaps have the least value to core instructional delivery. >> Yeah. Yeah, and we'll certainly go through these as we go through our budget development process internally to evaluate all that as well. That's kind of an annual process for us. >> Were there board members with questions about the contract of services? >> Yeah. >> Oh, there one more slide. Okay. >> There's one more slide of a couple other big chunks. The technology maintenance agreements. Um, this was a new object we added a few years ago to break out. It's kind of it's a state requirement for reporting, but we and I broke this out into three different categories between instructional administration and then there's some security and data center. You have questions kind of
010what goes into that, Mr. Frankenstein's here and we'll probably have a better idea. >> Can you give us an overview of what's in each of those buckets? >> Yeah, so 3055 for us really is mostly software contracts. And so when you look on the instructional side, so this would be all the curriculum um uh based software that we have in schools. Everything from uh on the administrative side managing your network um Q for instance um uh B+ which is our ERP our e big financial system would be in there. Email systems would be in there. um uh document management systems would be in there. Uh it really is all of those software packages that we buy. And so there are about 137 of those particular software packages and it's everything from uh you know assisted
011software for kids that need assistive devices um on down the gamut. So 137 of those security and data center is more about um what it costs us to maintain the data that we maintain and secure the data that we have at the district. We're we're we have a lot of data um and uh all most of that data is protected in some way. So, we have to maintain it, protect it, and then security um as you've seen in the news, has gone through the roof over um uh the last several years. And so that incremental cost to us continues to go up because there's just so many more bad actors in the system trying to get access to this information. >> I'll just off-handedly say I think that's one of the things that ASD has
012done very well. We haven't been given the news for data breaches. because we have student we have data on students you know personal lives their special education you know where they live our employee data it is it is I mean I think it's a something that has gone very well >> um because there are hackers and malicious actors out there deeply interested in schools data >> 34% of school districts last year were hacked um uh across the nation we are the number one target right now. So, this year they just did their report for last year and K12s were the number one target um on the list because typically we're underresourced and so it's harder for us to protect it and then they use this infrastructure to either resell that data or to then use
013just the sheer power of the infrastructure to attack other um other entities like nation states and that sort of stuff. And so we are top of the list when it comes to cyber security attempts. We have millions of attempts per day to get into our systems. And um I know you said it's gone well and I'm super happy for that. Yeah. >> But typically when we talk about security incidents, it's when it's going to happen, not if it's going to happen and to what extent. And so I think um what what what we're doing really well on that front is being able to catch those things early if they end up in the system. So it's alerting, it's understanding how to get to that information before it gets to a big issue. Um but everybody
014is susceptible to software bugs and so that just is is the way it is. But that's what that that dollar amount goes into. And a portion of that money, just to set your mind at ease on that front, is used in that we take that entire data set that we have for the district and we are continually uploading that to a global based uh data center. Uh that then spreads that out over 16 other data centers around the world and it's immutable. We can't change it. The data center can't change it. A hacker can't change it. Once it's written, it can never be changed. And so what that does is if the whole thing burned down, we could pull back that last version of it and respin up the environment. And so there's not a
015way for the them to be able to get to that information. So it's our backups. >> Thank you. >> Question. >> Oh, member Bing, you have your hand up. >> I do. It's really on the previous slide. the previous slide though because that 1.7 million cost for middle school or UAA >> yes >> what is what is the total cost for for middle not middle school I'm sorry middle college >> the total middle college budget is about 2.9 million for this year >> okay so does that the the the 1.7 mill does that include UAA's contribution or are they no longer contributing to that. >> Um, no, that's just what we pay in our tuition based on our contractual agreement with them. Um, I believe we get a pretty good discount from them on that
016tuition, too. So, it's a >> and that's represented in this figure right here. >> Yes, this is just the net amount that we pay. >> Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. >> Right. The last piece of the uh contractual services that always falls into that category would be our unallocated. Um it's not really contracted anything yet, but it's falls into those kind of 3000 series object codes. Uh a lot of that money goes into charter schools and the reason it's kind of high this year is based on the timing of when we got funding from the state. As you recall, I'm sure you all been about in August we got our the they overrode the veto. We put all that money just popped it into unallocated so we could get a budget
017and they they're free to transfer it how they want. So I I suspect in future budgets that number will go down. Um but it's really kind of high as a as a timing piece for this year. >> Yeah, that that money there is money that the state requires to be distributed to the charter schools. So it's was unallocated. It's not under our control at all what we could do. >> Yeah. Yeah, we didn't have time to allocate or have them come back and because a lot of them aren't on staff that time yet are back in buildings. >> So what are the charter schools going by now? Until they get allocated, they got to spend the money. >> Oh, they've transferred it over to salaries for the most part by this gone. >> So not
018adversely impacting at this point. >> No, but yeah, that's kind of a procedural thing. the 1.7 million we put in for or the $2 million we allocated for recruitment retention of that 1.7 went into um the unallocated as Marty Sim figures out kind of how we how we want to disperse that. The other 300,000 was into uh was I believe it was recruitment bonuses or >> teacher referral bonus >> referral bonuses. Um but since we didn't really have that plan uh flushed out very much at the beginning we put un unallocated the summer school cost about 1.7 that's always an unallocated and then when we figure out which um how that service is going to be provided that year then we'll move that money around. um instructional they have between elementary, sec, and middle and
019high schools and teaching and learning have small pots of just kind of discretionary money as schools problems arise in schools. Uh the same with the district-wide contingency about 400,000 and then the correspondence money that we put also in August when we allocated that money, we put that as an allocate at the time because similar to the charter schools, we didn't uh have time to get out and really flush out a plan for it. So that's the 60 million in contracted services summed up. >> Goes fast, doesn't it? >> Yeah. Please go ahead. >> For budgeting purpose, when I look at this, I wonder, okay, what because looking at the whole what can be cut, what can't be cut, and it's hard to be able to do that. If we get to the point of recruitment
020and retention, if we're laying we're going to be laying people off maybe $80 million obviously, what part of that 1.7 is money that we should consider to be part of the funds that we're going to have to cut back on and we should consider that in the budget proposal that we show that we're being responsible that way. uh the same thing. I mean, we know summer school may be out there, a lot of other issues, but recruitment and retention is a good example of an operational cost that's going to have to come down or should come down dramatically uh if we're laying people off. >> Although, >> sorry, a second, Charlene, go ahead. >> No. >> Oh, I just wanted to flag my understanding is that that was potentially going to be leveraged for the
021accelerated project. >> Yeah, that's what I was going to highlight. So there were there were kind of four buckets uh when we first talked about that $2 million. So Andy already talked about the $300,000 that we've set aside for uh teacher referral bonuses. Um that is money that we if we don't have to do a lot of hiring for next year, we may not spend down. So we would have the choice to encumber it or you know potentially use that in other ways to offset the budget. We have made commitments uh around about a million dollars of the remaining 1.7 about half a million dollars to support the accelerator commitments we've made to those three schools. Um and then uh the other half is um supporting our pilot group for the teacher apprenticeship program on
022the recruiting side. And I think we're slated to present to the board during work session in January on that project and its progress and its potential um for helping us create a local grow your own pipeline for teachers whether or not we need it next fall or two years from now or three years from now. Um building that infrastructure I think is is an important alternative uh pipeline for us long term. So, there is some unencumbered money yet that we haven't yet assigned there um that we will certainly have conversations around in our budget proposal about whether or not we uh use that to offset the the budget. >> I'm also interested in how many contract employees we've got out there will go to it because we've had, you know, we always seem to have
023a retired COO that contractor. We've had that in history. We don't have that right now. Uh but I'm just you know and and they are basically looking as full-time type thing. How do we capture those somehow in the budget in the process and are we looking at that meeting at our option because that's the you know don't see it today but in the past contractors attended every meeting we had and going okay that they're serving like a regular employee and they're retired with the school with the state and then retired maybe military and then they're working as a contractor. um and a salary that's very competitive. And I'm just wondering how many contractors we've got out there contract employees. Yeah, I don't know the number off hand. By and large, almost all of them would
024be special education like psychologist, speech language. Um I don't think we have any on the business side at this point. >> Don't get me wrong, everyone that's a teacher, an assistant teacher, I don't have any complaints. Okay, let me go on record. I have no problem. I'm begging him to come back. Okay, that's all. >> Um, I want to keep us I think it's a great area to explore. I did just peek at the whole presentation. It is a robust slide deck. >> Um, so I'd like us to keep moving on. >> All right, I'm going to turn it over to Katie to go through the rest of this one. >> Okay, so uh as you know, we uh put out our budget simulation tool. Um, and this is kind of where we're at in
025the process. Um, remember last year, uh, we spun that up very quickly and had a pretty short turnaround time before we needed to gather information and then work on budget. And so that was only open really to be able to use those results for I think uh, six weeks maybe. Um, this time we had a lot more time to think that through and have that open. And so we've been able to compile some of those results. Um this is um essentially what it looked like. I know that u most of you have taken a crack at it. Um we started with the 77 million deficit and that is just for the um general fund and also remember that was before we did the proforma eval or analysis and presented that. So that number picked up
026a little bit from what we had initially projected. I have question. >> We you did absorb um costs that were incurred by the terminated FDS grant. >> Does that how does that fit into the projected deficit? >> So as part of the proformin we absorb those through our existing holdbacks, right? >> So we take all those positions and just roll the cost forward. >> Okay. >> Um so within the proforma all those holdbacks that we approved are still in there since we Okay. So that >> that is that is part of next year's projected deficit. >> Okay. >> And so this does only take a look at general fund. Um we also made a few tweaks this year. Um and one of the major ones was with no revenue changes because that's something that we
027don't really have uh the ability to change and lever up or down. Um we uh made that a locked feature so that you couldn't change revenue. Um, I think you remember that last year we made that kind of an open-ended and then there was, you know, some uh expansion of the revenues that would probably not be realistic in any um year whether we had a surplus or not. Um, we also added an option for unsettle contracts and health insurance contributions and then uh maintained those options for classiz adjustments and um school closures. Otherwise, um, you know, it's a it's an add of of dollars to each individual part of the each category of the budget or, you know, you can ratchet that down and reduce the budget. Um, but those options kind of provide a
028little bit more context for people to make major changes within the budget. Um so it was grouped by the schoolbased services operations and maintenance administration and then um the other components that were locked in terms of expenditures was the restricted or fixed cost component of the budget. Um some people are not a fan of that but there really are truly parts of the budget that we are legal legally obligated to do and provide and we don't have a lot of choice or discretion over what that's going to us. Um so those things were locked in the system. uh through the other areas where you could make adjustments. There were uh maximums set or or or limits set to how much you could reduce those because some of those functions we also just have to maintain
029in order to do kind of a bare minimum level of service in those areas. Um and then of course the other ones that I already talked about, we did provide a comment box so that people could still um give us kind of open-ended comments and suggestions and we'll go over those um later in the presentation. So, um the there was the vast majority of our respondents uh very similar to last year were parents um and a combination of parents and parents and staff. That was a combined 66%. Um and then um we had a limited very limited number of students and a lower number of of just community members that didn't have some other affiliation with ASC. Uh, one of the things we also looked at was kind of the changes from last year to
030this year. As you can imagine, um, because this year we required a balanced budget in order to submit and that was not the case for our simulation last year, it looked to be in the number of submissions a much steeper challenge. Um, you can see here that the amount of time uh, the average time that people took in the simulation also went up a bit. Um the page views uh for being open a lot longer were still a little bit down from last year. Um and the difference between last year and this year obviously is that um all of the submissions were balanced budgets. Um and so that that reflects some trends. Um in the next slide you can see and this is kind of from the dashboard that we have access to. Um there
031were recommendations for increases and decreases. The by and large the vast vast amount obviously by the nature of our you know environment that we're working in to balance the budget was decreases. Um but uh the increases were almost exclusively in the unsettled labor contracts um on average. Um and we'll talk about that a little bit more as we go through as well. And then this is just kind of that visual that's provided in our dashboard to show what that looks like. Um but by but by and large the balanced budget this tool reflects what we kind of already know without new revenues that the the um only way to achieve a balanced budget is through really significant cuts to programs and services. There were only five submissions that increased that provided increased to unsettled contracts
032that were also able to balance the budget without increasing class sizes. So, if you can see kind of the dynamic there, there was only one response out of the almost 400, only one response that added an additional 1% above the pay increase that also submitted the balance budget without increasing class sizes or closing schools. Um, so that's a very very very narrow margin. Uh, next slide. So this um the next few slides kind of give you that overview of as a percentage of the responses where people kind of landed in each one of the options. Um here you can see that uh no salary or wage increases above what's already been built into the budget was the majority of responses um with some you know smattering in that um about 40% of how much above
033uh people were recommending. Next slide. Uh for health insurance contributions, the majority of responses, 82% recommended no change um there. And then uh the vast majority of responses for school closure and consolidation, next slide, uh recommended uh two schools. So 85% of the responses recommended closing two schools to assist in balancing the budget. And then last but not least, the the challenge of balancing this budget really I feel like this slide kind of demonstrates that challenge. There were only three responses um that were able to submit um a balanced budget while reducing class sizes and then another 26 responses were able to preserve the current class size and pro provide a balanced budget another way. But that remains the case that 90% of the balance budget in you know included some form of classified speaking.
034Um and you can see here also that the large chunks of the response um 20% 21% was a plus 10. Um 20 another 19 20% was a plus five. And that really shows and demonstrates the challenge of preserving other portions of the budget and what that what the the the cost is really to the classroom. >> I'm Can I ask a question? Maybe you can help. >> How many you were to break the pie out, how many of the responses are plus five or more? So there's plus five, plus eight, plus 10. >> The colors are a little harder. Yeah, the plus eight is like a dark navy. >> I have this somewhere. Let me see if I can pull it up in my other looks like about half. I can tell >> about half
035the response or more. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Okay. Right. So um so as we did last year uh we kind of took a look at the top uh 10 suggestions um across kind of two metrics. One was the top suggestions by dollar amount. So the amount of money that was suggested as a reduction on average and then the other one we took a look at was uh by percentage of the budget that was being reduced. And so here you can see that obviously class size adjustment um as is reflected by the last slide was the top dollar amount figure um in terms of average uh reduction in the budget and then as follows um the the rest of those items. The unsettled contracts obviously uh was an ad to the budget, but we included that
036obviously in the grand scheme of things for the dollar amount influence um found there. You have a way and maybe this is a followup for a future conversation. >> I think it was only like 1% of the respondents were students, but that's still 30 something students that responded dozen maybe. >> Do you have a sense of what students >> said? Not broken out, but I can certainly do that. It might be interesting to to see what they >> I guess maybe I'm most interested in what the students are >> interested hoping to protect. >> Yes. >> One question. >> Yeah. The cutting back on special education is all kind of legal limitations on that. Is the 6.5 legal or is that what is the maximum or how can we really change that? >> Yes. So
037I think that goes back to the the maintenance of effort standards. we have to spend certain amount on special education, >> right? >> I think the caveat to that is you can't reduce it more than you reduce everything else proportionally. So if you have to make the reductions, you can't reduce those special ed services more than other areas. So 6.5 would be okay given the dramatic cuts we do know that they >> likely >> even with some of the cuts that we've implemented in the past we we've done a good job of kind of steering in the direction of preserving that >> member Bellamy has your hand up >> just a question I might have missed it u on the class size adjustment it does is this across the board or is it do we
038preserve serve uh K3 or is this AC every across all grades? >> Yes. So, this is across the board, but I will tell you that there were certainly some comments that were provided for um you know having consideration for protecting K3, but there that wasn't built into a way that they could provide that in the way that they selected. >> Okay. Thank you. And then um this slide demonstrates uh the different um order of kind of um preference in in terms of percentage of the budget that was recommended for reduction. Um so uh one of the things too I want to point out here on this list of items is I did put an asterisk next to curriculum and materials. And the reason why is because the current budget um and and previous cuts to
039the budget have resulted in leaving out curriculum purchases and postponing curriculum updates. So that the amount that's kind of situated here in the budget is not a reflection of the full need. Um it really is just kind of what has been authorized. And so when we're looking at that, I think that's another consideration for the board and administration is um taking a look at what cycle, you know, and how long you postpone some of those um you know, similar to how we talked about contingency for the budget and things are left out of here that eventually are going to catch up with us on the curriculum side and also the technology side. >> Yeah. And it's partly going to be reflective too is we did set those limit set those limitations in some areas where
040you couldn't go below a certain amount. So these are mostly reflective of items you could had at least bet business management or something where you could produce more than 20% and I'm not sure it would have been. So just got to take that consideration as well. And so, um, this really just is, um, reflective of the total list of all of the items and kind of the ranking in order of, um, amount of average reduction in order to close the gap, um, based on the the submissions. Um so then we also took a look um and tried to develop some trends and themes for high and medium frequency comments across um all of kind of the open-ended comments. And um there was an opportunity even though people couldn't adjust the revenue figures, there was an
041opportunity for people to provide comments to us in the areas of revenue. And so um these were kind of uh in encompass the top comments. There was a lot of um ideas or feedback related to how we can use district facilities to leverage um efficiencies to um and possibly um you know use some of those as an opportunity for untapped revenue um to a greater or lesser extent in terms of you know what we know we can we can and can't do maybe with some of our facilities. Um there was also a little bit to my surprise there was a trend of comments talking about um a a willingness to increase local taxes and fees to generate more local revenue. Um which that one surprised me a little bit for the frequency of that comment.
042There was also no surprise um on the state funding side uh comments related to really needing to advocate very strongly for the state to uh meet its obligation to um providing for a well-rounded education program. And then there was also uh several comments related to exploring other non-traditional revenue options through partnerships fees and fundraising and those kinds of things. And I think you know as you know probably the caveat we would add to that is those a lot of those options are very small dollars amount dollars compared to what you know potentially we need to make up um Drew and other fun >> and we would have problems if we start getting additional funds balancing that with how much we're allowed to have with the state with the maximum and I think the public needs
043to know that too but the municipality gives us more money they're in violation because they're giving us the maximum if we got money from uh grants and profits of it could have gone into problems that way too as well. >> Yes. Yeah. So, everything has a cost or a cap as it were. >> Uh, for the expenditure comment themes, by and large, the most um frequent comments and probably the most um enthusiastic comment is to protect and prioritize the classroom, which I think is no no surprise there. um as well as continue to look at cuts to central administration and to all of the non-classroom items. There was a strong um theme of closing and consolidating schools and uh making sure that we're continuing to take a look at the district's uh footprint. Um there
044was also uh frequent comments for prioritizing teacher compensation and benefits um which is also likely no surprise as well as um prioritizing poor academics um in favor of protecting those over specialty programs and optional or what what would be considered extra supplemental enrichment type programs and activities. Um there was also a kind of a caveat that was included. It was hard to capture this um uh kind of but when there was a strong comment thread that people who were increasing PTR were actually in strong opposition to taking that action and were only selecting it out of necessity which I think is something that we all can identify with. Um, there were also a few new what I would kind of consider new or maybe recurring comments that we haven't seen last year as kind of
045a core theme. One of them was to explore other models of providing education. Um, an example of that would be exploring a 4-day school week. Um, there was also kind of some comments that I I would encompass in this kind of like reforming programs so that we still provide something in terms of like our supplemental or extra enrichment but maybe um changing that up so that we're providing it much differently. And then also there was a lot of frustration and angst about the tool. Um there were um lots of people who appeared to um give up um because it was a frustrating and depressing activity. There were you saw that there were low submissions compared to last year and there were a lot of comments that were kind of related to um you know to
046be kind of um off-handed. I hated this and this wasn't um this wasn't an activity that makes me feel like um we have much voice and choice in the process. And I think that that is a really harsh reality for um the public who tried to do the tool and also for us internally who are trying to work this process. >> I'm interested at some point later, not right now, but a response to like the four day school I know we talked about six versus seven and eight class, but the four day is one. I know some school districts have gone where a different quarter is off every year. I'm not don't think that saves any money and we can't go year round because all those are money. But the four day I don't know
047if that's a savings. I don't know if other school districts have done it, what the results have been, but given the dramatic thing, what are the options that we may have? Are there any anything out there from the superintendent? Not right now, but it's superintendent in regards to what are some of the more dramatic changes in the way the school we deliver education. It might be something we should at least consider when you're cutting this much money. >> Well, I mean, I appreciate the the question. I appreciate the fact that it may have come up in community members suggestions. Um, to be transparent, it's something I've noodled on over the past few days because it's come up in my mind as perhaps a least worst option, right? If you could if you could capitalize upon
048the savings, whatever those would be from transportation, from um just all of the different areas that we, you know, heating a building on a fifth day of the week. Um, if you could offset, if you could minimize or offset a PTR plus 5, is that worth it? You would need to extend the school day four days of the week. Um, it's incredibly complicated, but perhaps it's an area for the administration to evaluate and consider recommending or consider consider incorporating into a recommendation. But I say that knowing that it would be extraordinarily challenging >> for families. >> Yes. >> And extraordinarily challenging for the community as a whole. >> However, if it could prevent the total, if you think about um a PTR plus, so we have half of the respondents solving this with a PTR
049plus five or more. that is um you know plus five is two more than we proposed in February of 2025. I we saw in February of 2025 with the FY26 budget school schedule in the fall apart >> with a PTR increase of um less than what we're talking about. So I I feel as though the urgency may be there to at least explore that as a possibility. I think it would be a you know it would be a huge process of analysis obviously. Um, one of the things that I would guess context for some of the comments is that um, a lot of those I can't tell you right off the top how many of them or what percentage of them, but a lot of the comments that were related to the 4day school week
050were also building in time still for staff to to work by days. So that staff would be able to do certain functions and provide certain things, but the kids wouldn't be in the building. And so that would also have to, you know, you kind of have to consider that as well. It wouldn't probably be a situation of like turning off the lights and turning on the key necessarily or at least that would not have been what the respondents would be proposing. >> Yeah. So I maybe not something to answer now, but um this is the first first sentence of the first part of a conversation that I think would have been helpful to have in the right side of the conversation. Um knowing how deeply the public who takes time to grasp our fiscal situation
051understands that reducing our footprint um is inevitable part of the solution. Um but then two recognizing that we will want to reduce resources spent on buildings so that we can spend them on people. I understand that there may be some board members who want to reconsider closures at this point and I'm not opposed. We have to consider literally everything. I think um but is there a path forward where we don't permanently we don't permanently consider a building rights size and just consolidate the number of students we have at buildings for a particular year as part of a budget solution and would that save I mean because we'd have to maintain the buildings would that I can't imagine the fiscal savings would be there but would that help in any way. Would it provide better services
052with our new reality if we had to increase class sizes? >> If I may, and we defer to the administration to fully respond to this, one thing that I thought about, and I spoke to this during our right sizing conversation, we have schools that house two programs, a special program and and a neighborhood program. And in some cases, they're really well balanced and robust on both sides of the house. However, in other cases, one one group is considerably smaller, one group is considerably larger. My very high level understanding 37 30,000 foot level understanding is that the schools with dual programs in aggregate have really leaned on hold back teachers to prevent class size bubbles. And so if you could for a year perhaps move students from from one side whether it's the neighborhood or whether
053it's a special program, right? Put all the neighborhoods you put the put a small population of neighborhood students in one school in an adjacent school for next year. That might help provide that might help diminish the reliance on holdback math teachers and provide those students with a greater chance of having a you know a third grade teacher rather than a two three split or three four split or one two three split depending on the size. Um it it essentially would be a temporary reason or you consolidate multiple special programs into a building. Could I? Yes. And so I I think that's um that is a how to potentially effectuate what I'm asking which is but I I think there might be another way. But I I I'm interested in hearing the answer to that. >>
054I but before we get to that I want to ask the bigger question of this board until a new board is ready to address seriously address our footprint. Um, can administration or should administration seriously consider, forget about open, close, consolidate buildings, permanent, long-term? As you prepare a budget, should you or will you be considering we have this many teachers, we have this many students, we have this many buildings. We're going to work populations as part of a budget solution for FY27 and we'll figure out what's next FY28. Uh, if I may, my initial thought is I'm open to the idea conceptually, but I don't think it changes the fundamentals for why we weren't able to right size in the first place. We'd still encounter the situations of sped students being relocated to different schools. We'd
055still have all the questions around safety and security and walking distance. We'd still have students with longer bus routes. I I think the the difference here is that it's being discussed as a temporary solution, but I think from the parents perspective, it's essentially equivalent to a school closure. So, I guess for me, I'd be curious to know what has changed on the board side because to me, that's just a closure. >> Yeah. I guess what I would say is the um the alternative vision is we keep resources spread as thin as they are or the alternative vision is we we utilize why I'm asking this question is I don't anticipate any significant help from Juno for FY27. However, in FY28 if one were were to want to be an optimist maybe that's different. I don't
056know if we'll want to make a rash call categorize as rash. I don't know if we if this board will want to make a such a significant long-term commitment given what's going to be a lame duck year, an unproductive year. Um, looking ahead two years down the road, we might have something significant. So, a one-year temporary measure may be something this board feels willing to commit to say as we aren't comfortable committing to long-term changes at this point. And it really boils down to levels of optimism regarding funding. I think we heard a couple board members speak to Juno's going to be fine. We'll figure it out. Um we'll our enrollment is going to grow and those are wonderful thoughts that aren't based in reality, but they're optimistic and I hope we get there. Uh
057but we need to see that play out first. But this year is going to be filled with lots of conversation, very little action. And so I wonder if our budget should reflect that temporary reality or at least an option to consider that as an alternative to our typical process which involves cuts and trying to maintain everything we do at a certain lesser level. >> I think one of the challenges is going to be how we would navigate it with a student count. So the statute related to school consolidation fulltime harmless um and you can only use one you can only use school consolidation full harmless or the enrollment plan full harmless at one time. Um there's a provision in there that says that you know when a school is closed it's has to be for
058a period of seven years and then the district can come back and present a case for why capacity is needed or what like we present a case and we could reopen it. So, I'm trying to figure out what would be the mechanism in which we would submit a student count that had a zero for that building where we wouldn't get the school size adjustment and we wouldn't get a whole harmless provision. >> If we just request a waiver and say, "Look, we're trying to do we're not trying to manipulate the formula. Our state's kind of a mess right now. We're doing the best we can." >> Yeah. I guess the one thing that I would add is that part of this immediate savings from a school closure would be removing the principal and the administr
059the administrative assistant and I think one or two other positions. So that would be a permanent termination for those individuals right if we wanted cost savings otherwise we're just shuffling the chairs and not reducing your cost and then we still have the open building if it's temporary right we'd have to pay for the electricity to maintain the building and make sure that's fine. So then you know really the biggest thing that relieves is the class size perspective but it wouldn't necessarily mean fewer administrators fewer resource unless we agree that it's a temporary closure but not for the employees that would be that's >> yeah you know there's a history here remember when we looked at potentially moving Eagle River High School to Chugiaak because of the earthquake thing and all the other poss is that
060we did and we did the cost because you combine the schools how much money you get the impact the savings and it just it it there's the savings are not as significant when you com when you get less per student and you got all the other issues as well the history of closing schools and I know the superintendent raised that we've done five I got to remember what the other one was one school was closed at at base because parents couldn't get to it we did it so parents could get to them to three different schools we didn't make it harder for parents who made it easier in the past. These are different. These make it harder for parents to be able to engage and they are further away from the school and that impacts
061academic outcomes too as well. We parents being engaged we know is beneficial. So there I want to not look at just dollars. I want to look at kids and say what where do we benefit most for the kids for academics uh as well. And so the history of the other schools closing is not the same as what these three schools have been. These three schools push the school away from parents. The other situation was pushing the schools to the parents and making it easy because kids academically are in one thing when they get stable they go to a regular and they go back and forth. Now they go within the same school and that made it a lot better for them as well. So I just I just want to be cautious on these things
062that somehow we start off is this better for the kids academically and not just a something we could do and save a few bucks because it's not as much money that even the estimates showed that uh within that and I think the estimates didn't reflect some of the additional expenses sometimes when they were looking at SBBS to go into tour again that was that was probably a pretty big expense to accommodate that school to be able to take those kids. I know we came out with another plan, but that was out there being considered and it didn't show up in the estimates of this cost of the savings. So, I just want something more acade more financially there, but I would want to start with just saying is this good for kids. That's all. Let's
063start with kids and then then deal with it, not not treat them separately. And I think that's what we've got going on the board. We got two groups out there arguing differently because I'm absolutely opposed to it. Could I follow up? Yeah. >> Yeah. I I don't understand much of what was just said, but I I will say that I I don't I think everyone on our board is focused on prioritizing student and I haven't seen anyone from administration there prioritizing students. I think the two are inseparable. In this case, this is our um budget. Um and I don't think there's a way to um navigate this without impacting students unfortunately. And that's reality. I think we the more we say that out loud and acknowledge reality, I think that's wise. Um, as administration has
064time to to think about this, I I hope we get creative. Um, I I don't know how I personally could rationalize prioritizing funding for a building over funding for an educator. Um that's certainly not in my opinion best for students and I I think the public who is engaged in our budget process to the extent that they can has sent us a clear message that they agree with that and so um I hope we get creative in how we attack our facilities. Maybe there isn't a long-term way to um or a short-term way to implement creativity in this way. Um, it's one of the few unique things I've thought about besides just cutting and doing what we can to open up. >> Um, >> yeah, member Belly, is your hand up? >> It was I
065I'll just hold for now. Thanks. >> Okay, I want to be cognizant of time. I think we have maybe one or two more slides. >> It's a couple more. Um, additional context and and kind of information. This was an interesting thing that was observed was that there was a a small minority of respondents that accessed the additional details that they could you could pop out from um that were kind of built into the model. Um some of those were really related to the historical uh department staffing levels to show what's happened over time in departments. And it does appear um that there may have been a decision point for those who did pop those open that it did that additional information that additional context did maybe change the behavior. So this is just kind of
066an example of one of those um areas where um you know 36 of the respondents opened up the more details which showed historical staffing and then 31 of those you know their submission was unchanged in that area where they accessed that additional information and so comments important >> and that was based on the business management line item specifically. >> Yeah. Um so uh we did also take a look separately at the schoolboard responses. Um and this kind of encompasses the the uh variety of responses um to the options. So uh for unsettled contracts um this was kind of the the perspective of the board for those submissions. No change to health insurance contributions. Uh class size increase um of two four and five. And then um all respondents uh cited to school closures. And then
067uh the next slide and last slide um just lists in a similar way uh those um uh rankings for schoolboard members specifically for dollar amount and then percentage of total budget. And so I know that that's really small, but I will also preface, you know, kind of disclaim that by saying that not all schoolboard members did submit. So, it's hard to know what the true, you know, as as a body, as a board, what that feedback is and then that's it. >> Um, I think my first question is, are you still accepting schoolboard responses that may not have yet been submitted? >> Yes. >> Okay. >> Yes. >> So, that would be valuable to like board members who haven't yet submitted. >> Yes. >> Great. Um, are there member Belling, did you want to, you
068held your question. Did you want to offer that at this time? >> I was just going back to uh I think it Katie's what prevents us as a board from just consolidating programs and schools? Do we I know we have to go through a process, but is there a legal >> situation that prevents the board from consolidating schools and programs so that we are not so so that we can think put the kids first because right now we're not putting the kids first. We're not because we're doing all kinds of things. This board is not doing what we know we need to do. We we are choosing to be partial and to be selective in in in in competing schools against schools and that's not what we need to be doing. So what what what
069prevents us as a board from deciding for the next school year or the next two school years we are temporarily or permanently consolidating these schools. And is that something we And I'm sorry I I should be in the room. I'm not, but I'll be quiet. >> Member Bellamia, this is Sven. Um, question about that. Are you talking about consolidating the administration of programs and schools? Are you actually talking about moving specific programs into like actually co-housing them? What what >> I I'm looking at a combination of the above because we in this I worry about the schools where we have dual enroll I mean we have a a neighborhood school remember member uh lesson spoke to it earlier >> there are programs where we have a we have a neighborhood enrollment but then we also
070have a a huge program immersion program or some other program that that um where I don't think the resourc resources are are are equitable. I really don't I mean I I can be convinced otherwise, but I don't think they're equitable. I think our special programs are getting the priority wherever they land. They're getting the priority. So my I'm just trying to think of kind of along with member Jacobs. Is there anything that prevents us from consolidating uh uh like programs, immersion programs maybe or uh uh elementary school programs where we have a very low capacity where we can give kids more opportunities, more uh access to um uh services. if we if if we didn't close the school, we just consolidated it. >> And I think my understanding is that there is flexibility to move
071programs, but at the end of the day, one, the school board would have to approve the closing of a school. But I actually think the biggest thing that um would come into play would be how the state calculates how much funding ASD would receive because if it's a temporary closure, from the state perspective, how do you incorporate the school size factor for those kids? like which school are they at, the the new school or the old school? And all of these things that the state would have to approve because every building has a code assigned to it at the state level. And I I would guarantee you be the first district to do a temporary closure. So I could see a whole snowball of legal and policy and regulatory questions. So it doesn't sound like
072it would be easy. >> Can I give an example um that I think you're getting at, Miss Bell? Is >> Yeah. We used to have a school called Crossroads, >> right? >> And but that school during a former budgetary cut, we moved Crossroads right into Benny Benson. >> So Crossroads and Benny Benson pretty much combined. We still have Crossroads. We still provide all those services, but they're administered at Benny Benson with that particular We got rid of it. um a lease. We got rid of an administration, but the program's still there. It's still thriving. It's just in a different spot. Is that the kind of example you're talking about? >> That that is uh Yeah, that's similar, but I'm looking at elementary schools. You know, I drive I used to drive by 11 elementary schools
073to get Jackson to his school, which was not in our neighborhood. And in those 11 schools, they were not all at capacity. They were not the enrollment was not what what it needed to be. But we keep them open because we believe in and I believe in community in neighborhood schools. We are not at a point now where we can continue to do things the same way. And so there has to be a way. If I'm looking at if I'm passing by Russian Jack and there's Naka Valley over on the other side of the highway, is there any opportunity temporarily or otherwise for for those schools to merge so that we can give a full slate of services and opportunity to those students? >> Is there a way for College Gate and uh whatever what
074else is over there? um uh whatever I can't remember but >> we have really we h we have we we have done a great job of putting our schools in our neighborhoods but right now we we are we are not serving our kids as best we can because we are trying to figure out how to make $80 million not be so hurtful. And it there's no way to do it unless we we try to figure out this board is not going to close any schools. I've given up on that. They're not going to do it. I not I I can probably be recon convinced otherwise, but they're not going to do it. >> And even though the public agrees, they're not going to do it. So then where does that leave us? >> I mean,
075I I'm just thinking through different scenarios. I think based off of the laws and regulations on the books, the only thing I could think of is that the board chose to close a school and if remind me if I'm wrong, Andy, I believe the state said when you close a school, it has to be closed for at least five years. So perhaps the board could or seven could close a school and say in seven years we resolve to come back and maybe reopen the school, but otherwise we need to have laws change and regulations change. Okay, >> that's the only thing >> I want to say for the record that Mr. Gustoson joined us about seven or eight minutes ago. Um, so I just get that on record. We are also a few minutes over.
076I did notice that the communications committee meeting was um >> cancelled. Uh, if there is agreement and there's a little bit of capacity, it'd be nice to maybe finish this conversation by 1:30. >> Is that okay? >> Great. Yeah, >> if we're going to do this, first of all, we need to start with the understanding of how full the voting is and not use the states numbers which are misleading like math. Okay, so I think that's number one. So we're using, you know, and that's misleading to the public too um uh within it. I know we've got other options out there. I know the university is interested actually with the preschool at uh Leotus Elementary with part of their training program. they're they're talking about that inside information. Okay. Um within it, so there are
077options out there, but we we got to make sure we're dealing with the factual information first and not the misleading information uh just to support something. Those schools are not say that they're 50% being utilized. It's just not accurate. Um and I'll be glad to walk through those schools with other school board members and tell me when we're 50% not utilized. um and then we might reach agreement. But I just I leave that open because I just the idea of just closing schools without recognizing the the data is is what drives me crazy on it and that's all I'm asking for. >> Um Oh, I see member Bellamy's hand. I did want to put in a plug for board members to potentially schedule meetings with Dr. for offering focus suggestions in the coming days and
078weeks. You know, with the holiday coming up, um that seems to be a very good opportunity to share suggestions, potential frameworks for thinking. I think having an understanding of sort of the legal uh parameters that we have to think about is really a useful flag. Uh but I will be having a meeting uh that I have not yet scheduled with Dr. Bryant and team. um and would encourage others to do so. Member Bellamy. >> Absolutely. Just two quick points. I've already uh shared my thoughts on this with the superintendent uh getting more information on that 4 day week and uh I think you know one of the things that is uh absolutely he I don't I I know board members don't have to be educators to be on the school board but you really do
079need to trust the people who are in the business of educating our kids. Walking through a school to figure out capacity might be one thing a lay person would do, but that is only part of the the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more that we need to be concerned about. And the the only So, I would like more information on that 4 day week if we can if we can get it. I know it's it would be awful. Families are going to struggle. Um, but I don't know how we're going to get $80 million and um try to give our kids the best quality education possible. We we can't do both right now, guys. And that's the reality. So, uh, something has to be done. uh and I think the four day
080week would be at least a point to just say well you know give us the information from the experts uh who are in this business and then um those of us who want to continue to shadow buildings and go into buildings continue to do that but you know you you're only getting you're only getting a bird's eye view of that of what's h happening in the school so for that >> uh thank you member I see President Jacobs >> yeah I'm just very quickly if we're going to seriously consider the the 40 work week, which I I'm okay talking about. Um it should be part of the proposal and at least I'm assuming where we're going to end up when we get we need to we need to acknowledge that we either have a plan
081or don't have a plan for what our families are going to do on the fifth day. Um and I can't imagine how a school district could generate a plan. So part of our proposal and part of that discussion should be we have no idea how to bridge the gap for families for child care on day five, right? Um, and I I one of the things that I am without a clear solution I'm going to have a hard time overcoming. As much as I think it's a great idea academically and efficiency wise for our economically disadvantaged students, we are telling them to figure it out. And um I can't until as a as a community we can answer that question. I don't know that I could ever vote for it. As much as I personally think
082it would be amazing. I think we should go to four day work weeks. I think we should have a 4 day academic year. We just aren't ready for that as a community. >> Yeah. I I'm asking for information uh Mr. President, not not for action. Thank you. >> Understood. I just I part of the information should be we have no idea what our kids are going to do on Friday. >> Right. And to President Jacob's point, I think we need to manage expectations. I don't think that we'll be able to reasonably prepare a plan for what we would do on the fifth day by the time the board has to approve a budget. I think frankly we would have to acknowledge if we approved a 4 day week that we know that there won't be
083a plan on that fifth day and we know that certain parents would have a huge strain because of that especially with the lack of child care in Anchorage. That's the first piece and the second piece is that the board has to be aware that the reason why that's a cost savings is because it's you're having fewer hourly people for that fifth day. So it would essentially be reduced wages for some of our lower paid employees. And that's a conscious sacrifice and tradeoff that districts make when they make that decision. So just know there's no such thing as a free lunch. It's coming off of our lowest paid employees and off of our families and their childare scenarios. >> I'm just going to say but I do agree with uh President Jacobs on the 4day thing
084because that would be a nightmare within the community. We have to acknowledge that. I I hope you're just talking about future meetings too because I was hoping to get into a discussion about individual development budgets and looked at I looked at the increases from 2000 uh all the way to today and I looked at it from 2020 22 to today and which ones have gone up substantially school district school boards way up there the top five you know high school admin because we added schools and student activities way up high chief academic officer and the anchor school board Now we've got an increase that we've done recently that is shifting cost of one through the other. I want to challenge that what what took on to it. So when I'm looking at this I'm looking
085at the increases the last since 2022 and I'm saying okay why is that targeted or should that be discussed for purposes of reductions as well much more so we don't have the audit process like we used to have because council of great city schools doesn't do that. So I'm just I would like to get into that discussion at schoolboard meeting. We don't have it in January, but I'm done first meeting, but u I just think it's an important discussion. >> Member Hagen, we know that in previous finance committees, maybe last year, most recently, possibly the year before, we've seen a couple of slide decks which show changes in departments over time. and I um can, you know, talk with we can we could talk about incorporating something to that effect at at at January finance
086committee meeting. If it would be relatively easy to update those slides, I can show you what I'm talking about. >> Um we're nearly at time. I know that there was a six-year plan uh that was prepared for today. It's attached to the agenda. Is it possible to pull it up and just briefly uh point to it and I had asked about this because um I think normally it's part of or it has in the past been part of the proformata and um it just didn't there wasn't quite enough bandwidth to create it um a couple of weeks ago. So here it is >> and you could a high level talk about it and we had print out as well. >> Right. And really I mean this is really a a really really high level look
087at it. Um the first five years you'll see on here 22 through 25 are or four years are actual expenditures and revenues and 26 is based on the current budget. 27 is just perspective based on our revenue situation and then a when you see the general fund staffing piece down here it's really just a prora cut on this. So this probably wouldn't necessarily be what we propose, but if everything was proportionally cut based on the revenue we have and the average salaries, that's kind that's where we would get to and be nearly 700 positions for 27. And then as we kind of stabilize that fall off the fiscal cliff, so to speak. Um, and down there at the bottom, then it's just kind of inflationary pressures that are causing it on the outears. Um, and
088then there's slight decline in enrollment too, but we don't really have a good projection on that yet. But it's really just to kind of in in like a big picture scope of what will happen if funding remains flat um for another six years at this point. >> Great. Um, I guess I would invite board members to spend some time with us and share follow-up questions. Um, I guess either with Mr. the rat life and pair or through um a future finance committee meeting. Um so with that, I really appreciate everyone's time and questions and engagement today. Thank you staff for a little bit of extra time. Um and our next meeting, I do want to make sure we flag this. Uh we are scheduled for January 22nd. Um the next the f the February finance
089committee meeting, we talked about this in earlier in the fall. uh it seemed to be more valuable to have it between our board meetings rather than at the end of the month. So I confirmed with Miss Sullivan we are going to have that February finance meeting on February 12th and it'll be at 12:30 and that is to allow um ASD staff uh to connect with the budget advisory committee which meets at 11:30 that same day. Um, so again, February 12th, which will be between our first and second meetings in February, which will allow deeper conversation about the budget at that time at a normal meeting on January 22nd. So, thank you all.