001We're good. >> We're good. >> Great. Are we We're on and recording live. Great. Okay. Good afternoon everyone. It is very close to 12:15 on Thursday, August 28th. This is the Anchorage School Board Finance Committee meeting. I'm Kelly Lessons, board member and chair at the meeting. And I'll go around to the left for introductions. >> Andy Hollowman, board member. >> Ed, board member. >> Carl Jacobs, board member. >> And CFO Bryant, superintendent. >> Jim Anderson, COO, >> Marvin, executive assistant, Anchorage Education Association, President Lang, Chief HR, Eric, Scott Lee is on a >> great and then online we have member >> Bellamy. >> Great. Um okay and just for the record um the other members of the finance committee are members Bellamy um and Higgins and myself and President Jacobs is our exitio member. Um
002so we have we have a full um committee today. We have a number of items on the agenda and um my plan is to pivot to the audit plan. Um very quickly after we just take care of very brief housekeeping which has to do with finance committee meetings which are currently scheduled on um we just want to touch base on changing the schedule a little bit for October maybe January and February. um in October, I think it has been proposed and adopted in our internal um calendars that we're going to move the comms and finance meetings on that day um due to a scheduling conflict. So, thank you to member Wilson for pivoting there. Um, there was a similar question that arose about February, but I'm actually going to pivot to January and just flag
003that last January we ended up not having a finance committee meeting to allow staff to have a little more time and space uh to work on the budget. So, I felt like this was a good time to offer um to just pull that off of the calendar um and let you all work very hard on a budget for another hour of your lives. >> Yeah, we won't likely have good updates by then anyway to share. We're still the deliberate process at that point, >> right? And then uh for February, because that is our budget month right now, we have our two calendared board meetings, the first and third Tuesdays. Um our our current committee meeting is scheduled for that last Thursday and it may be more relevant to pivot the finance committee meeting to the
004week of the 9th. And if we stick with Thursdays, I would propose that we pivot to about 12:30 on Thursday the 12th only because the MU's budget advisory committee meets at about 11:30 on that day. And um I know that Miss Parrot and I uh will probably be presenting something about our budget at 11:30. Um so in short, February 12th at 12:30 rather than the end of the month. Does that work for everyone? America can send out a calendar invite. Member Bellamy, any objection online? >> I'm good. Thank you. >> Okay, great. Okay, so that's the housekeeping. Um the second item on the agenda is um under discussion I guess item C1 and that's our FY26 audit plan. And I think that there is um a PowerPoint which could help guide us through >> some
005options for discussion. >> You can bring it up if you want. Well, it's maybe you while we're still pulling things up. Just as a refresh about a year ago at our finance committee meeting, we um approved an audit uh calendar for Y25 which involved PE cards agenda and the um correspondence audit. And we are waiting for um We are waiting for the final uh building access uh audit which is forthcoming. You >> want to go to the third slide. America. >> So the auditors are finishing up our building access audit now. Um we look at a potential audits for FY26. We developed a list and this in conjunction with uh our internal auditors behind me. Um, and they may have some other ideas, but they can generally do three to four audits a year, I
006think, is their capacity to get these done. A couple of new ones that we wanted to propose on here. The employee termination process as employees are getting exited out of our system. It touches a lot of different departments. Finance has or payroll has to touch it, HR touches it, it touches it. Um, building access kind of dubtales in with that as well. So to make sure the clouds are turned off things. Um, so interested in that one. And then like a subusage audit at at schools to make sure uh sub substitute teachers are being used effectively at schools and not just being um kind of assigned without any you know need for vacancy or other duties that are out there for necessity there just to make sure that we have uh kind of visibility into
007that. And then as it's a pretty large budgetary line item that as we've had a lot of vacancies it keeps going over budget of course. Um but then the other ones we have on there like P cards we've done before. uh cash controls and collections. We've done travel. I mean, we've I think we've done a lot of the other ones. Not necessarily the hazmat storage at the bottom, but as like with travel and special activity agreements, things like that. We've really, at least this year, we've really declined the amount of travel we fund and we're taking as well as special activity agreements. We don't use those nearly as often as we have in the past. So, I don't think there's a lot of uh risk in those areas or at least financial risk. So it's
008uh with this kind of list that we've come up with again you know maybe three audits that they could they can they can accomplish in the year and let them you know weigh in as well additional materials >> we can probably start um with the building access audit it's kind of wrapped up with it and ready to start a next one so one might be good transition to go to um as well but that's there hazmat storage would be very interesting Um, the word interesting is often >> complicated. Um, and hazmat and interesting together. Um, for an eyebrow proposition, but but I appreciate the suggestion and it sounds like member Wilson joined us at 12:16 and member Donley joined us at 1219. Thank you very much. >> Member the audit of the sub uses at
009schools. That's kind of interesting to me. Are we looking at you know you got a sub you got to look first of all at the skill sets they're going to that might make a difference on what type of class they could substitute but is how is the priorities with that done because I hear you know schools I don't have subs I don't have this you know that how is that selected is there a process there that it's just kind of interesting to be able to respond to the public issues who gets the subs and who doesn't whoever screams loudest >> no I think it's sometimes the effectiveness of principles in building relations and setting a culture in their school where substitutes feel like they're valued members of the, you know, staff and want to show
010up on a regular basis and are supported when issues come up. But we have a lot of different flavors of subs as well. Um, you know, we obviously have long-term subs. We have what we call building subs, which is allows principles to have a certain number of subs come back every day knowing that there's going to be a vacancy. So without, you know, an assignment, they just show up and then they get assigned. One of the things we would want to check for with a building sub specifically is whether or not they're regularly being assigned to classrooms or are they being used to cover other high needs areas in the schools especially as we reduce staff because that might help us you know surface some things that we need to talk about through the budgetary
011process as well. And then just looking at do we have disparities between certain types of schools where we can get subs at some schools but not others. um are there certain thresholds, you know, at which well we have high vac or high leave usage rates we know we can't cover, you know, just I there's a lot of different areas I think that um as Andy and I have talked over the last year or two. We're curious just to to get a a better snapshot of we have a lot of new principles. We have a lot of new timekeepers in our schools. Also just making sure we're following all of the protocols that we're putting out in terms of how some get coded. um two vacancies when or to to leave when it occurs. So there's
012a lot of areas that explore here. >> Just out of curiosity, what percent what how many substitute requests are not filled every day? That that got to be a problem throughout the district as well too, right? >> It's highly variable based on the number of requests in um I think our fill rate, it's been a little while since I've looked at the numbers, is somewhere in the mid 80s when we have less than 500 requests in a day. Um, we have a couple of calendar days, probably wouldn't surprise anyone, where we have more people who are requesting leave and we have a more difficult time filling all of our classrooms on those days. Like the days before Thanksgiving, days after the Super Bowl, you know, there's there's a couple of days that we know there's
013just going to be pretty high vacancy or leave substitutes in a day. >> How many teach Yeah. vacancies and all, too. So it's a lot more than just people calling in. >> Okay. >> For the purpose I mean I think this is a great example of maybe the value that board members might see in this proposition. I think from my standpoint you know what is actionable especially you know as we consider um our needs to retain and recruit people deal with staffing crises and our budget situation. the sub usage really falls into um some of those those hot areas. Um and so that seems like it would provide useful information um in a timely manner. Um so that's one that I would I would definitely support. Um for just a little bit of a record,
014I looked at the mun's records for when we last did the cash controls collections. Um this was an option that came up last year for board deliberation. we decided not to do it. Um, it looks like the last full cash control was was done in 2013, but there were maybe some more recent specific studies on our audits on nutrition, elementary, and student activities sort of between 2014 and 19. So, it's been a while since a full cash control collection um, audit was done. So that at least charge, you know, revisiting some historical data seems reasonable um to me. Um and it's one that I would I would offer as potentially being really valuable. Um we also discussed special activity agreements last year. Um we didn't decide to to approve an audit on that. So I
015guess you know my question to the administration is you know is an employee termination process you know I guess which of you know if we say yes to a sub usage at schools and we have the bandwidth for three maybe four audits um what would your priorities be for obtaining actionable information between the employee termination process uh cash controls and special activity agreements although the hazmat is not one is certainly valuable. >> Um I think we could we started with the PECARD audits which would be the third one I've done should go up fairly quickly. Um the cash controls I definitely would say would be an important especially doing some school visits. I think it would be nice to go in and see how they're currently handling things if there's any support that could be
016provided there. Um, >> and then the sub usage also could be very beneficial as well depending what the data and things like that look like. >> Yeah, for the special activity agreements again with Marty, it seems like those have kind of been declining. Okay. >> The usage of it. So, we don't have I guess as much exposure on our liability for those. Um any other board member thoughts on the v? I mean so what I'm hearing right now is a recommendation to explore pec cards which we've done oops um which we've done in 2022 and 2024. But the conversation my notes from last year said it wouldn't be bad to do these on an annual basis because they're such an integral part of our district's functioning and we want to make sure that we're doing
017them right. Um, so maybe there's value to >> Can you run through what what our current three are? >> Um, well, it looks like, sorry, it looks like the top choices might be, um, the subusage at schools, PE cards, um, and cash controls and or, you know, and or employee termination. >> Yeah, I was going to ask what can we and if I missed this, I apologize. Um what does the employee termination process audit look like? >> So right now when we um typically the process goes uh principal or someone will submit a notice resentation I believe it comes to HR to start turning those systems off but it has a component to turn off their access via computers. we have turn off their P cards, X amount of payroll, um the other F security,
018just making sure we get all that back and limit their access. >> I I also just for my own purposes and my own perspective, I like that audit. Um I think it speaks to security, safety, um it also I think aligns with our guard rail about um employee retention, retaining the workforce. Um, not that cat controls and collections aren't valuable. I just think we're talking about a list of valuable things and I think that should safety should always something with safety should always be useless. Um well I guess my maybe my question is okay if we prioritize sub usage and the employee termination um what is more valuable you know key cards or cash controls one of which we've done regular recently the other one not but maybe there's more value in needing to revisit
019a card you have to keep or bring >> there's always a risk associated with PE cards and I don't know about the amount of cash that's flowing through the schools if that would if one would be more risky than the other. I would say >> that we're moving away from cash was >> yeah to be true. >> We're trying. >> Well, so to me Pard like does does the MOA perform it feels like the MOA performs annually? >> Yes. >> Okay. To me that's kind of a tiebreaker. >> Okay. Yeah. Does that work again? >> Yeah, the PC card was identified in the purchasing audit and it's one of the objects, one of the goals of the purchasing committee that we're trying to do to implement that. So there's a little bit of overlap here
020that's going to go beyond that. So we're going to but this is looking at the finances so you keep track of it. you doing that as opposed to utilization, but the utilization will come into the committee for the purchasing group and that's what we recommended for the audit that's purchasing is that we're not underutilizing the purchasing co and whether that's true or not the committee will look at >> I think they could probably roll in some utilization data and there's two >> it's not overlapping completely but it's not >> yeah dvtail in to see what the new statistics are >> okay well then to keep everyone on time. And um to wrap this up, I guess it seems as though the consensus is around the first three items, employee termination process, subusage at schools, PE
021cards. Um and perhaps there is interest from our auditing experts um in starting with the PE cards because you said that would be a fairly easy one to >> easy pivot. Yeah. From where you are currently. Um, and so my request then would be that the finance committee, yes, member uh Higgins and member Bellamy, do I do I have your approval? >> Yes. For those three items. Okay, great. So that would read a recommendation from the finance committee and the request would be that the board president generates the recommendation to go to the board in a memo um at a future meeting. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Great. Terrific. Okay. The second item on our agenda is the FY27 timeline. And I think this is all encapsulated in one sort of PowerPoint. >> Yeah, I did.
022>> So, here we go. >> There wasn't a whole lot of slides. So, >> so this is kind of our more generic calendar that we just here's broad with a broadstroke. Here's what we're doing at any given time. Um, the next slide is actually the detailed dates for FY27. Um, so we'll know or hopefully know what the state's going to board's going to do with the local contributions in early October. Uh, the balancing act, it has a question mark. We do want to do that again. I really thought that was valuable in determinate showing folks where the money's at and if you want to cut, here's kind of the implications of it and how you can get to a b balanced budget. We're hoping the press push that out earlier this year and like maybe
023late October, early November, but it just kind of depends on how fast we can get that spun up. Um and then maybe in a future finance committee meeting we can talk about some of the criteria if you want to limit some of that because I wanted to some lessons learned from last year like one of them being if you have a free form field of here's what you can add and someone adds a billion dollars it really skws off the results. >> So so it's just trying to limit to some of the things to what might be um plausible versus perfect world type things. Um so that's that but then the other ones are just the dates that we plan on releasing things. We'll have the proforma again want to do that information only this
024year and then have a separate board guidance memo from that because the proformer really is you know here's how much revenue we're expecting based on statute. Here's what our expenses are supposed to be and here's the difference. But then the guidance memo is you know knowing that difference here's what the board will allow us to do to balance that budget. Um, so as far as drafting that memo, I forgot to, you know, whose responsibility that would, if you want us to take the lead on that and just have space for you guys to fill in the details or if you want to do that as part of a committee to submit to the board, um, or work through it in a work session or something. >> Um, well, how about we open up to member
025comments? >> Yeah, thank you. You know, I'm sure we're going to be looking at same thing we had last year. we're going to have there's no way that the governor is going to approve an early uh funding for the schools and so we're going to be going forward with that. So the question becomes one of does the board action doing it earlier put more help us make our case legislators to what the consequences will be and try to push it forward quicker or not uh I don't know but coming back with some sort of approval that way and the other part was so that's going to assume we got so many millions of dollars of cuts and we then go forward and say if we get additional funds these are things that we would do
026and put that up front too so that we're showing the legislature and the public what how we could benefit from additional dollars um with that you know whether it's 500 $5 or 500,000 who knows but it's going to be something out there so I'm just trying to think in time frame from political perspective the other part is information coming to us if we're going to be cutting can we see options out there if we're cutting if there are some options sometimes if we can cut this or that this one may be so straightforward you don't have many choices But if there are options out there, if we could cut that, what would we cut? I think it gives a board more information to be able to make an informed decision that to me is just
027not yielding it, but trying to work together with the administration. And without the administration making the decision, he approve it. But these are options. I've always wanted to make it say if you got to cut 10 million, what would you do if you cut 20? And then you look at what you could add. I don't know. But I I look at options of always trying to say what could we do, what we what are we unfunding that's most critical and if we do we may cut something more than what we would have otherwise because you need it. So that's that's all I'm hoping for is a time frame and a little bit more information in the budget process. Um, >> um, yeah. So, moving away from the political aspect of it, I guess I the
028other big initiative that we're going to be working through is right sizing and I'm curious how this timeline relates to that. So, I'm trying not to do both at the same time if we can. What does that look like? >> Um, I think the draft timeline and I'll be briefing that at the work session and uh a couple two work sessions from now. um a recommendation is going to be a very shortened window for right sizing or at least for the school closure piece to limit it to um six weeks. So the first week in October we announced the uh the required number of schools which is no less than one um and then some other ideas and it might be the components of right sizing some pieces of it when you start looking at
029childare and facilities and some other stuff we've talked publicly. some of those kind of things. Maybe they keep going a little bit depending on concerns of the board or the community. But if we can get a decision uh very early um you know pre-Thanksgiving um yes or no for the closure and the uh utilization of the facility decision um we really can then shift full boore into um what what's really going to be the biggest challenge for this board this next year is is budget. So if we get that done in November, will that guidance be helpful and help form the proforma? >> It would. >> Okay. Then when so our deadline for decision is our second meeting in November or first meeting? >> Second. >> No, 18. >> Okay. So then if these processes
030dovetail, I think this >> and then Andy can take that decision and roll it into the proforma and it's a much cleaner um less less unknowns. >> Okay. The other and we don't we're not talking about this right now, but I guess the other thing that I hope we're framing is that I think at least member lessons and I when we talked about right sizing and making the board commit to having this conversation again this year was our intent this will be our last year or at least we intend to take a break with right sizing after this year. So um I think this timeline these two timelines put together makes sense given what the board already committed to. Um, any other comments online before I keep talking? No. Okay. Thank you for those comments.
031Thank you for the timeline. It's helpful to know that we will have um conversations in October and November about the right sizing and that will be separate from but helping tea up the budget related conversations. Um, I wanted to go back to the balancing act. I really did see value in it. Um I would like to see the district use it again and work to make it more accessible or um >> put more data in there about what departments do I think is >> yeah I mean I think that there were um there was engage I mean we had a really interesting presentation on how people engaged with the tool um but if we can find ways to push it out more or to to make the information somehow easier to wrap your head around
032as a member of a community to provide meaningful feedback. >> Um, >> yeah, last year kind of >> I mean pushed it out pretty quickly. So, >> yeah, >> having more time and having that um ability to be able to try to recreate how we did it last year too and then add make add stuff to it'll be >> helpful and I think we can make it more valuable at that point too. >> Um, so I would support you know that gets sort of brought out in October. Yeah, we're try to get it ready for end of October, November, November just with staff capacity and how we want to build out and roll out as uh kind of our time limitations on it. Um, the other question that I have, and this has been something
033that I feel has been valuable the past couple of years, maybe like I've raised it each fall the past couple of years, just knowing the magnitude of our um challenges is we've had now um an additional meeting in February. We've pivoted to um you know, we scheduled an a third meeting. The first two, the budget really has become non-action and then the board and we've taken a lot of public testimony which can take quite some time and that has really allowed the board to engage in meaningful conversations about the budget really at a separate meeting rather than at 11:30 p.m. after hearing significant public testimony. And I just it's such a big conversation that I see value in potentially asking the administration and I know we have the timeline to get you know something prepared
034for March for the assembly but if there's a way we could consider calendaring a third in essentially the action budget meeting for um you know something like Tuesday the 24th. Is that something that we could talk about, you know, now just sort of add to the public calendar? >> Yeah, member Jacobs. >> Um, so I I think having a date um in our back pocket is wise depending upon what the legislature chooses to do. I think um the legislature doesn't seem to have well, we'll see. Um I have personal thoughts, but I think it's too soon to share this. So, I I I think it's good to have a date in the back pocket. I think that if we can act um >> the night Yeah. I think we should keep that option open. Um
035but I also agree that we most humans don't do their best work at 11 o'clock at night. And so having that in our back pocket as well would be good. Um I don't think we need to wait till the towards the end of the month. I don't anticipate this being a down to the wire thing. I think we'll have a pretty good sense early on whether or not there's consensus to engage in responsible legislation um sooner than later. Um so maybe the 18th or something, but I think that I can work with administration on getting a backup date. >> Okay. I think my request from a personal I mean I my my personal request would be um I'd like to clear my calendar for that third meeting if we're going to do it earlier rather
036than later. >> I think we could have an announce or we could have it figured out by >> Okay, terrific. Um great. So I think that that this is helpful for understanding what's coming. You know we will have our regular finance committee meetings. Additional meetings can be scheduled if if needed to you know grapple with a local contribution or anything else. But >> yeah and then the other thing I want to get a little feedback from the board on something I'm kind of struggling with now. It's got a really seasoned board who have been through these presentations many times now. So, what information would be helpful for you guys in um better understanding the district or making decision- making process? So, in September, October, we're going to start pushing out some of that information to
037you guys, whether it's like administration, administrative costs, better understanding what goes into state functions. Um really kind of anything else that we can present on uh because at this point, you know, we're just kind of rehashing the same presentations we've done for about three years now with this group. >> Yeah. member Jacobs. >> Yeah. I I think um acknowledging the fact that we we've all been through this before, I think it's good. Um one of the things that Senator Steman does, Senator Finance that I like is he will back up and explain to folks watching who are tuning in for the first time as we continue to have to make cuts, we're going to bring in new groups of our community that are passionate about a certain project or program or school. And so making
038sure that we're educating the public at the same time, I think, is going to be super important. So it may not be for us, but some of the same conversations need to happen. Um, with that said, wherever we can speed up and continue, so this is the last year we'll be able to do this, right? So we're going to have to be board members next year. Um, I think we can and should be efficient, but we shouldn't stop educating the public. But I think I would empower you, your team, Dr. Bryant, to figure out what that looks like. We don't have to necessarily sit in work sessions because that's not the best place to do it. Maybe we have um some town halls just to talk about budget awareness and we're super efficient in our
039work sessions. I think we've got options. I would I mean I think you know I've looked at older things from the district and my sense is that in previous years maybe not recently but in going back a a bit there have been budget town hall um conversations you know under um >> multiple administrations ago >> Dr. Rhy >> yeah well I mean I think we've had right we've had plenty of really great town halls but maybe they've been focused on right sizing and not budget and those are different and linked but >> different um one thought I had and this is as a result of attending the task force on education funding is that um it might be helpful to make sure that our conversations are in sync with the conversations that you know that
040our legislators that are part of that task force are having. So there's a really um sizable you know PDF appended to their meeting um just a couple of days ago and there were some really useful charts from the legislative finance division on the history of the BSA and the value of a dollar uh going back to really FY6. So they looked at about 20 years and so that might we've looked at you since FY17 and then the board said could you please look at it since FY1 but maybe uh there's value in making sure our charts are looking like the legislative finance division's charts um you know they're looking at 20 years of data um so that's just that was a thought that I had. My very loose understanding is that in November the legislative
041task force is going to be talking about um funding and and the formula and um some of their interests. So perhaps our November meeting can um touch on that conversation at least in the findings committee. I just it would be nice to be on the same wavelength as as >> um learning and sharing. Um >> what is that helpful? >> Yeah. But if there if there's any like specific topics you want to cover in either work session or in this committee um happy to develop some data points around that. >> I know like administration is one thing. I think it's a lot of conversation and people have different ideas of what administration is. >> Um or it's more of a deeper dive than like our state functions and how that relates to our budget and
042financial reporting. what goes in all those state functions as a good example be it touches you know three different state functions generally um and different costs but they're they're all in one organization code and our budget that here's it cost x amount of millions but it is separated into different state functions so maybe something like that to help better understand our the layout of our budget what the state requires for reporting and then what functions of our district go into each piece of that. >> Yeah, I mean always admin should be a top 10 budget. I feel like we need to continue to to harp on the fact that we're one of the most efficient districts in the state. Um, I also think the a topic of the value we we continually seem to bring
043up the middle school model and assistant principles and so getting ahead of that and explaining why those are important and why we continue upon those uh things and how they impact students positively I think is a good idea. Um, yeah, just inoculating ahead of political misinformation that happens from blogs and and somehow gets into our boardroom every year is always a good idea. Yeah, maybe we could have something like a portrait of a school like here's our standard elementary school, here's the staffing that we have in there and the dollars they're allocated towards that just so people understand, you know, those all might be in their in buildings. We could do like a title one or non-title school like one each or something then do that for different divisions. So when you're saying hey let's
044cut all the counselors whatever is whatever it is you kind of see how those stack up in each school and what those supports you have each school to even just like give rest teachers a restroom break you know >> how cutting those impact the school >> not that not that um your presentations aren't amazing I also think it might be helpful to hear from a principal at some point like can we have other folks come in like it would be we are doing school tours right we're engaging with building staff that um but the community doesn't necessarily get to hear from those folks and folks watch our budget meetings and so hearing a principal share their experience about why they need an assistant principal and the value that they have and how they support educators
045is just going to be different than hearing from you guys. Not that it's every voice is valuable, but it's a another perspective I think that could be helpful if we have someone. So I don't know getting creative with who whose voice we allow in the room might be another way to refine the concept. I think one of the ideas that I mean, you know, I think that this is this conversation is really helpful and I think that we should continue to revisit it next month as well. Um, one of the things that I've been thinking about is, you know, what is the relationship between our investments and our outcomes? And I think, you know, I was just specifically looking at some on track to graduate data and I think there's some really great growth that's
046happened with some of our most vulnerable students in um the child and transition program, for example. you know like how can we show that when we allocate money just to areas that there is growth that's happening whether that's growth in our MAPS course when we allocate you know and and staff our K3 classes appropriately or whether it's you know among homeless students who we are you know making sure they have taxi cabs to get school uh when they otherwise struggle. I think that some more granular understanding of, you know, some sample ways that when we invest, we see improved outcomes. And so I I would leave it to the administration's discretion to sort of find ways to respond to that. But um you know there certainly have been conversations about targeted investments and I think
047that we have done some targeted investments that have have paid off and I just want us to make sure that those um we have a chance to celebrate and and stress the importance of um investing in our school system uh translating to improved outcomes. So maybe we can have some conversations about outcomes in relation to the budget. >> Okay. >> Anything online? >> Okay. So let's just say that this topic will uh we'll revisit it next month um and hopefully give you some more guidance um for that budget process for things that would be useful. >> Um okay. I think that the next item on the agenda was FY25 closeout updates. >> Yep. Um so right now we are on track to close out on time. Everyone everything's going smooth so far. Um couple of
048new things you'll see in our financial statements. This is where it probably gets a little more technical and you'll start going to sleep. But CASM statement GAM accounting standards for statement 101 is regarding compensated absences. What this change is going to require us to record a liability for acrewed sick leave. Um for context, we have about $und00 million in sick leave um sitting in employees banks right now. So big portion of it, most of it the you know the vast majority of it doesn't have any cash value, but we have to recognize a liability for what's going to be more likely than not to be used. Um, so if there's a future use of this cichlid, some of it just kind of falls into the eaters. People leave, they don't get the there's no cash
049out benefit of it or, you know, anything that they can any any value once they're gone. Um, but you'll see that I think we're still working with the auditors to determine the amount that we have to record. Um, should be in around the $35 million range, but we'll meet with them to continue to refine that number. Um it's a pretty significant change in our financial statements. It's going to be recorded on our government governmentwide fund um rather than like our general fund. So you won't necessarily see it as a change in fund balance on the general fund but you will on our governmentwide statements. Uh the second one is gas statement 102 which is certain risk disclosures. Um, and this is specific to entities that have revenue coming in from um, single source or kind
050of source where they don't really have a diversified revenue stream. So for us, we look at like state revenues, uh, federal revenues, um, and local, those are the three biggest pot or local taxes. So we have to write notes disclosing what potential risk of revenue loss might be for those entities. are or actually give us the money to fund education. So you'll see that it'll just be a no disclosure. It doesn't change the financial statements any but um we have to write up a here's the risk that we have if uh you know state funding doesn't increase or federal grants are pulled, FEMA obligations aren't fulfilled, there's several things we have some risk there. So you'll just see that. But other than that, you know, the closeout's going going well. um average pulling samples. We
051don't have any issues yet. So everything's going good there. >> Great. Any questions? I guess the So we'll see this round about November. Yeah. >> Okay. >> Hopefully the first meeting in November, possibly the second depending on when the audit gets finalized. >> Great. This is just an early heads up. >> Yep. >> Um all right, we are doing great on time. Um, I think the last item on our agenda for today is going to be FY26 enrollment updates. >> All right. So, here's our enrollment update for the first through the first 10 days of school. We have um over 41,000 kids enrolled, uh, 39,400 in brick and mortar and 2,000 in correspondence. The intensive needs number don't doesn't add into that. that's kind of outside of it, but it's a significant factor in our
052funding. So, I wanted to include that. Um, we're about 838 students less than we were this time last year. Um, we projected about a 200 student loss through our ADM, but it's more than that. Um, we lost most or lost about over a thousand through brick and mortar, gained a few in correspondence and some intensive needs, but again, intensive needs aren't included in that. 838. >> Can I I just ask for clarification? So when you say 838 enrollment decline from this time last year, that tells me, okay, it's gone down 88 students, but I mean were we projecting a,400 student decline? Is that how I'm reading? >> No, we projected about 200 student decline. Okay. So this is >> so yeah. So we projected >> so we're having 6 >> 640 more students. >> The
053drop is greater than we projected. >> Yes. By about 640. >> Okay. >> At this time. And we can we'll continue to change that as we get closer to the October count date. But um and this compares the first 10 days of school this year versus the first 10 days of school last year. >> Okay. Thanks. And I saw a couple of hands. >> Yeah. And and how does that connect financially right now? What we're looking at you've got 838 less kids, right? 640 was is less than projected. No, you were projecting only 238 >> about 200 students. >> So that means 640 more. If we did lose 640 more, that's represents pretty substantial amount of money. >> Yeah. It's several million dollars. >> Yeah. Um, >> we have to find someplace else, >> right?
054We did end FY25 preliminary. We're looking at we gained a few million there. So, we'll have a little bit of headroom, but it's >> it's not a lot. So, um, to that extent, you know, once we get it out, it's going to depend on what schools these are at, of course, but then the intensive deeds funding will kind of make up for some of it. So once we get a little bit closer to end of September, we'll be able to model that out what the financial impact is going to be. U BI could be several million dollars to have to try to make up and I think we had this same issue last year as well where we declined more students than what we projected. >> Member Bell's hand is up. >> I do. Thank
055you. Uh so what what can we expect uh in terms of an increase following the Labor Day? Usually we get some people just wait until after that h that that day to to to just come to school. What has that looked like over the years? Do you know kind of roughly? >> Um yeah, it generally grows by a few hundred I think over that course of that time. It kind of varies >> okay >> by year but again you know last year that number would have grown as grown as well. So we are comparing apples to apples in the first 10 days right now. >> Okay. >> All right. Thank you. >> Um the 43 intensive need students is that a loss of 43 intensive or is that 43 additional intensive students we anticipated? >>
05643 more. Well, 43 more than we had for last year at this time. We had,00 record at that time. I think we ended up with 1120 or 1118 on the final count. I think we have 1120 in the budget. >> That is I mean >> and I guess my similar question would be that we now have 210 additional correspondent students that we maybe didn't expect or project. >> Correct. I believe the growth is primarily in family partnership in Alaska choice not so much in frontier. >> Okay. Um any final questions about enrollment? I presume that we will continue to receive enrollment updates uh in various forms in word connect and can revisit in finance committee meeting in a month. That's helpful. >> Yeah. And we can get them in board connect too. >> Right. They've
057been provided. >> Yeah. Once they model out where the students are at, then we can get the revenue more dialed in. >> Mr. Again, >> Andy, you may not know this, but I don't know if you do either, but does anybody know like where the intensive needs are that increase came from? Is it preschool increases or is it pretty much spread out evenly? >> I'd have to go check. Yeah, >> like the it's generally been kind of growing, you know, everywhere >> across the key fs this time. >> Yeah, >> we have to do a survey on why people are going to the um homeschoolers as opposed to to find out from them what's triggering it. It could be school times, it could be a number of different things, but we do any surveys with
058that recently. I'm not aware of any, but I can check in with their correspondent principles and maybe Robin Harris. They they may be doing that. I think that's a good idea. Actually, >> I'd like to see that the gut because that I know changing start times cause some people to go home. Uh because they just and that one hour on Monday kind of causes problems for employers. And so I'm just trying to say, okay, what and what in some schools do we have preschool with it? Some we don't. So that's a that's an issue, you know, support. maybe drop off more quickly and that can make a difference by school. So, I guess I'd like to see that next up. >> It's a great question. Yeah, I wanted to look at that anyway because nationally
059I've been seeing greater enrollment in homeschool and virtual programs, but it's more because there's just a lot of uncertainty and noise in the community and some um children feel safer online. So, I'm curious to know what the impact is here like that >> and more opportunities with with online system. Yeah. >> And I don't know if this is an RFI or just a chance to share a question that I had about correspondence. you know, are there specific grades where we see shifts either into correspondence or out of correspondence? Um, you know, are are we seeing um students who haven't been in correspondence programs through middle school pivot back to brick and mortar high schools for the opportunities that they want to take advantage of or are they staying with? I guess what's the trend line
060sort of likely for for utilizing programs? >> Yeah, I'd love to add that to you. I'll figure out how complicated it will be to track individual students movement, but it sounds like a great idea to me. >> Great. Um, I think that's all we have for today. There was a potential item about teaching positions updates, but that was only if the data were available today and it's not. So, um, that is not going to be we won't dive into that today. >> I think of that a little bit broader. I mean, um, facility is a good example. when you got less people in facilities, you're doing more contracting. It's more expensive. You got it's like, you know, the the number of different positions we've got, we have to bring in contractors. So, I guess some
061type of information on how much we're being impacted by contractors coming in replacing it from cost standpoint and whether there's some things we can do to offset that uh within it because I know we've had we've used more contractors. I know in some places special ed is one because we don't have the staffing. So I'm just kind of curious if there's any information out there showing the financial the financial impact us in regards to needing to bring more contractors in. I'd hate to think that we're bringing contractors in to do snow remove. We have to buy all the equipment because we don't have people. Uh that would be a big expense that would be avoidable. So I guess I'm just kind of interested in doing that if there's some options out there. I know that
062if you go to medical they end up with a additional adjustment for on call they give you as you know for people who are not regularly benefited but you don't for benefits to give them so that they come in for the day you're giving them four per hour but it's it's cheaper still for the employer. And so I'm just trying to see what options are out there, where how we stand, not just in um sorry, I thought was I was multitasking on >> Huh? >> Uh I'm sorry. I was multitasking and I thought you were directing your conversation to the administration. >> I kind of fell asleep, too. >> I tuned you out, Pat. I'm sorry. Sounds like we're done >> with that. I think we are at the end of our agenda and um
063thank you all for your participation and know the doors open for suggestions for um working with the administration on one of the topics. Well, thanks for being on