001good evening everyone welcome to the 2023 budget deliberations for the Rochester City School District um my name is Beatrice LeBron I'm the chair of finance and I'm joined by my fellow Commissioners our state monitor our fiscal consultant appointed by the state and thank you all for being here today Dr Carmine peluso and all of our Chiefs and legal and so just to go over what to expect tonight um we typically do what's called a round robin style tonight we'll be focusing on the budget and particularly in the administration section of the budget book so if you open the budget book it's a few tabs in and will be round-robbing um I'll call each commissioner they have an opportunity to ask their question we also have a parent rep that David Garcia who we're currently waiting
002oh she just joined us bienvenidas who will also have an opportunity to ask questions and what I'll do is I'll call each commissioner and our parent rep and you'll have an opportunity to ask one question at a time and we'll round robin um from one question to give the administration time to answer anything that cannot be answered tonight um which hopefully not too many questions will go in the board budget log um for the budget deliberations and that is made public on our website as well so the community have an opportunity to look at the questions that Commissioners have asked and the response from the administration in addition to that the next budget deliberation will focus on school profiles and that will be happening next week so I just want to put that out there
003for folks who may be wondering why we're not talking about schools tonight because we'll be talking about that at the second budget deliberation and that looks at what's all funded in a school what positions are there and what the makeup of the school will look like in the 23 20 for budget year 24 25 I think I'm in the wrong budget Year sorry about that so with that I'm going to turn it over to our Board of Education president to say a few words before we get started thank you thank you vice president abroad I just wanted to um just to share that the community is aware that we have constrained resources and I know that our community will make requests and um you know things that are good things but may we may not
004be able to approve in this budget as the superintendent mentioned uh the other night we have um we're unfortunately going to have to close some schools based on the enrollment it is projected that the enrollment is going to be going down to the point of at 16 000 towards the year 27-28 and so we have to look at how can we remain financially viable in the midst of low enrollment in the midst of you know students selecting alternative educational programs low birth rates so those are the kinds of things that we are facing and so um while we would love to have approved all of what you may be requesting just know that as we move out into this process this this budget process that based on those um you know criteria and what we
005have to deal with that we may not be able to respond to every ask we've got priorities that we're going to address receivership schools um ensuring that our budget is uh is balanced and so we want just to let you know that you'll hear this over and over again that we've got to we've got constrained resources and that you know down the line we're going to have to close some schools based on law enrollment so we want to thank you all who may be listening to us online uh we want to thank you all those who may be listening you know in the future with this and if you have questions there's a process a way in which you can get those questions to us and we can respond to those questions accordingly but just
006want to thank our leadership person uh vice president LeBron for leading this effort this budget deliberation we believe that this budget delivered immigration is going to go smoothly many of us have already asked our questions and they're in the question log and we're going to just move forward into this process so vice president LeBron thank you president Elliott um and I'll say thank yous at the end for the administration because this year's budget deliberations process and even getting up until the budget has been dramatically different from last year really 180 if you will um I do want to before we get started just remind the public that we have the participatory budgeting tool online to get feedback on what the budget book should look like as we move forward so I'll put that reminder again
007at the end of every single budget deliberation please take a moment to go on there we have some examples of what other school districts do and best practices and what it looks like but we really need your input on developing a book that is the adjustable readable understandable and that gives the community the answers of how we spend dollars and what we bring in with those dollars so with that we're going to get started and and I will start with commissioner Patterson as our parent rep will need some translation support so I'll jump to commissioner Patterson so I will start with commissioner Patterson and then I'll turn it to the Gracia um thank you uh president thank you president and vice president for allowing me to go first I have a conflict this evening someone
008here for an hour so thank you um I want to lead in for the public uh you know with uh the division Department overview so when I uh make this request as far as the budget that they have an understanding why I'm making that request so the board is responsible for educating the children of Rochester the board sets a strategic direction of the district through policy development and adoption and provides oversight and direction to the district the board works with members of the local legislation late of Delegation and lobbying organizations to ensure that the interests of the district are represented the office of auditor general and the external claims Auditors report directly to the board in compliance with the laws of New York the oag sets the board question assist the board with their oversight
009responsibility for audit internal control financial reporting and compliance the reason I read that is my first question is I don't see when it comes to the auto General's office that her individual or an employee has been replaced it says here 15 down to 14 minus one one person I think that it's very important um being the chairman of the audit committee that she be at full staff I think it's very important for checks and balances that were able to audit even the areas that we're auditing now even more areas that we possibly can audit and with that help she has been requesting that help she is short and I would hope that we could add that back you know to uh the budget thank you um commissioner Patterson and I just want to and I
010want to apologize to my colleagues because I just got off work too but um when you're asking a question or making a statement if you could please indicate the page and section number so those who are perhaps watching online can also follow along but it also helps the administration hone in specifically on where to look so that they can answer to that question so if you want to state where that way the administration can look and give a response sure thank you so specifically on page 117 the positions by Department it talks about the Board of Education I've been advised that includes the uh auditor generals office that personnel there so she's down one personnel and requested that you know we provide her you know with that that individual where we replace it and you
011can also refer to my first paragraph that I read was on page 118 and the section also references page 120. I do want to start by saying one of the tests that we did was we took a look at vacant positions how long how long they were vacant how long people weren't in the positions to make sure that when we were looking at the budget that we were not impacting people at this point in time and so we made some decisions to pull some vacant positions out of the budget that have been there for quite some time one of those sat in the board of education's budget right from 15 to 14 with in the auditor generals staff if it is the will the board if that's the will the board you know I feel
012like I've heard from other Commissioners as well we will look to add a position back knowing that once we get the final budget that means something changes somewhere else and when we're doing this budget I want to be clear so what I'm trying to do is not impact people right now right you know and so vacant positions is going to be our first look and if we have to add some vacant positions back then I'll have to look elsewhere to kind of make those adjustments and if once again if that's the will of the board we'll make sure that position is back in the budget thank you superintendent thank you vice president thank you commissioner Patterson um okay so we're going to keep going I just want to honor that our parent rep is here
013and give her the opportunity um commissioner Powell thank you thank you I have a two-part question um to to set the stage there's a couple of questions in that have already been responded to and that was handed out to us that included uh that were that pivoted around the percentage of variants and indicating that they were an error I found uh at least three more uh four more on page 196. so part one of the question is do we have the correct percentage of variants for page 196 and the more important question is um Dr Hassler or director hassler's described to me uh in a previous meeting that um the book is built around pivot tables and I'm wondering if these variance calculations are errors are a function of pointing the wrong cell table or
014some such do we have a do we have a an explanation that can kind of cover all the bases when it comes to calculating these variances well that's it's obviously pointing at the wrong cell um when it comes to a calculation of the percentages on the on the right side of any column in any of this book is it's a percentage that we have to add on and we have to kind of merge it with a pivot table because well [Music] not easily no um we we pull from the data for the two columns for each year from our system so then we for the like for that page you're referring to the 22 22 23 column the 23 24 column we're going to pull that information from our financial system and so that when
015we do a pivot table we know we're working with the same information for every pivot table throughout the entire book and then we have the add-on formulas to calculate the percentages and the dollar variances so we kind of have to merge ours with the tables would you happen to have those number the correct numbers in front of you that I could just write into my book you're referring to Debt Service in district-wide I'm referring to page 196. yep uh I can because and the reason I'm interested in this this page is that The Debt Service appears to have dropped considerably from last year to this year at the risk of stacking my questions I want to eventually drill down to what the root cause of that is is it paying off the FMP and not
016incurring more FMP just yet or or what exactly are you looking at um borrowed funds is that what you're uh the lines yeah the borrowed funds is the first district-wide expenditures employment benefits indirect costs all of those variance percentages well I mean the second part of the question when you that's specifically towards the second line right and that is directly related to our capital projects and our debt schedule of course thank you so you'll provide us those variants of change or a new page in the book absolutely yes thank you thank you commissioner Powell commissioner Malloy Administration my question is um we have features listed and teaching assistants and I'm not sure what why those would be at central office so I do want to say once once you start looking at the whole budget
017for administration what you're going to see is you're going to see Deputy superintendent for teaching and administration you're going to see Deputy superintendent for supports and we do have teachers teachers on assignments in those roles if it's restorative supports if it is toas to support language or toas to support um Apartments like Ela math science and social studies those are all here centrally as well in some of these positions you'll also see variances built in for departments when we're looking at Administration in general we may hold 11 positions just in case we have to add some staff or reduce you know over time because of new entrance stuff like that so that's where teachers will come in in this section when you're looking at page 115 116 that's the whole Administration budget you'll start to
018see more of that when you break into subsets such as the deputy superintendent for teaching and learning or the deputy superintendent for supports or you'll start to see where those positions start to fall out and where those teachers do lie this Administration is the whole Administration section of the budget I would love to see just like explanations though just moving forward in a budget book for clarity purposes but thank you and that's all I have for right now thank you commissioner Malloy commissioner Simmons thank you can you hear me okay um I'm also looking at page 116. I just wanted to get some clarity around the transportation supplies I do see that there is under supplies that that line going down about 20 and is that to accommodate student um decline or what does that
019mean Transportation supplies what are we so are you looking at uh page 116 correct the 65 52 to 25 yes so that is just supplies in the transportation section of the budget office yeah so it's office budget yes okay so that is so their administrative oversight cost yeah okay um and then I'm just looking throughout the administration piece in the budget book The contractual piece is just it's very large and obviously the the city school district is very large and wondering how we're assessing the contracts that we currently have to determine which ones stay which ones may need to be Sunset you know that type of thing because there are some contracts that have been historically here and I would not want to see them turn turn over into the next year um if there's
020other things we're talking about closing schools you know absolutely I think this is something that once again is also in the financial and academic plan to make sure that we're evaluating our contracts and our contracts at an evaluation criteria to them we did and the board did approve a resolution for Gibson which is evaluating a hundred of our contracts right and giving us feedback on that we are looking at our contracts and also tightening up what is the evaluation procedures for when you enter into a contract they should be evaluated every single year Center for Youth for instance I know that the deputy superintendent for supports looks at what is the effectiveness ask for data all that needs to be an expectation on our contracts the other thing in contracts here is you have Charter
021Schools you have transportation you have other costs that are in contracts especially heavily in this section of the budget do you have a pulse on where we are with the assessment that I know Gibson is just kind of starting or looking at some pieces like where where are we in that so they've given us some feedback back already on several of the contracts um Deputy superintendent attorney what information we have on that great evaluation team that is working that we can also provide those programs that already been evaluated both by Gibson and also internal evaluators and we are looking for those that are providing great outcomes of course to continue working with those as our budget allows us and those places where we're not seeing outcomes working to no longer provide those services to our
022students so we can certainly send a list of the schedule and also what has been evaluated both internally and by Gibson via email thank you commissioner Simmons um I'm going to turn it over to commissioner Adams I'm looking at page 119 the Board of Education see extended just for equipment is going has gone up oh man I'm just trying to get a grip on why that increases there um and we we're not getting I don't know maybe I'm just trying to find out why are we going up increasing the expenditures is it because of price I'm going to have uh behema to respond to that good evening everyone yes and the board budget we did make small um adjustments in anticipation of inflation and things of that nature so for um items such as like
023our Printing and Courier Services and things that make sure there's just slight increases placed in and so that's why you're seeing that five hundred dollars sorry about that um okay I'm actually going to turn it over to our parent wrap Divas Garcia um before you do I just want to acknowledge that um Dr Noms was on zoom and has a personal emergency so he has to step out he wasn't going to be presenting tonight but I do want to acknowledge that he was here for a little while um and I failed to mention that at the beginning of the meeting so foreign [Music] language departments so if we if we take a look at page 193 and 199 uh 194 of the book that's where we so today we're taking a look at the administration
024section of that multilingual lingual education we've the only where we're maintaining the same level of support that we've had in multilingual education for years the one thing that we are reducing is the level of contingency teachers that we've already distributed out to buildings so if you remember last year in the budget if you take a look at page 194 you'll see that there was 23.4 teachers and now next year there's 10.7 some of those 23.4 were contingency teachers and when we approved Ria to go to K-12 Ria was a case a 712 building when the board adopted the budget last year so some of those positions transitioned to Ria so we've reduced the number of contingency teachers because what ends up happening is if we continue to compound and add contingency teachers back into the
025budget all we're doing is compounding our teaching course so if I had 20 teachers in contingency and I gave out 10 this year and I put 20 back in again for next year and they use 10. as you can see we're just compounding the number of Staff in our buildings when we're really taking a look at how we could streamline our processes so you'll see in some of those areas especially where you see teachers in the administration section some of those are contingency staffs that we then go out and use and then really start to look at Trends how many did we use last year and how many is appropriate to have this year for next year questions sure yes commissioner Powell so on the same page 193 the Top Line difference is just under
026a thousand dollars and if we have if on average it took 15 teachers equals a million dollars we're looking at what maybe 12 11 teachers that are all 11 of those going to Ria or is is that just describe the predominance yeah I'm just and that is an example of a case where we've distributed some of the contingency staff teachers not all of them went to Ria I was using that as an example of how we use contingency and how they've been used in the past and is does ria represent the majority of that move so you know I believe they had five or six of those moves I'd have to go back to last year's budget I don't have to go to school profile and look um but I think they're right around there
027about half of those moves yeah okay thank you you're welcome uh president Elliott thank you vice president just one question uh just the overall question that I know that um unions and Community would like to to have a response to but this is a reference to um there was some concern about their additional positions being included in administration um and you know that's always a criticism so I asked Dr brusso how would you respond thank you how would you respond to that so the the overall Administration so I do want to say Central I'll be specific central office so I do believe based on the independent budget right this is this is a central office budget so we are going to see more administrators than teachers in this project right you know we do have
028teachers that work as part of central office administration but it is where heavy Administration here versus versus teachers I think both of these these cases right we're going to need to and this is where we talked about at the meeting the other day is take a look at organization how we're structured to support our schools that you know Administration also takes the burden of someone obviously we cannot keep on throwing more people at the central office is mostly Administration and we're going to see that heavier on this section of the budget that's your question thank you and the only thing I just want to remind folks if you can point out of a page the folks who are watching can unless it's a general question about the whole section and I actually have no questions
029at this time so I'm going to turn it back to commissioner Patterson to start so that he can get as many questions before he has to go out and thank you sign on here okay this is going to be referencing Pages 167 and 168 it's the expenditures uh summary for school safety so again I'm going to talk about the decrease you know superintendent I've already spoke and he explained some things to me and I'm sure he's going to be explaining to you our conversation but there was a decrease in uh of 94 000 roughly 94 000 so my question was you know with the environment um the current environment of our our district how could we be not that not be an increase in that area you know for school safety so I put something
030together real quickly because I thought I was going to have to run out but I'm just going to read it a lot of these are suggestions but um again I'm not seeing anything here what I thought I'd see in this section so given the current climate of violence being committed and around our school buildings I'm puzzle why I don't see any increase in budget spending on school safety I'm afraid that we won't be able to achieve our entire objective that is to keep our children teachers ssos administrators additional staff and employees safe and make all our schools all our school buildings safe and classrooms conducive to learning so allow me to ask the administration how does a budget address the current crisis and or improve efficiency and effectiveness of school safety and you can hold
031that question there so I just made a few suggestions again having 27 years in law enforcement being a New York state certified teacher instructor for Suny Brockport for security guards I said again more so my my career in law enforcement 12 which is an investigator I made a few suggestions to the administration for one use federal funds to make our schools safer and invest in resources to protect School in our community that will be the art and service of funds I know the uh they are for funds I think if I'm correct we have those for another year September of 2024. um and invest in our infrastructure and emerging security technology invest in a digital an additional Intel intelligence digital sketch and blueprints immediately they go to RPD in their patrol unit so if we
032have an issue if they have access to that information and instantaneously go directly to their patrol Vehicles while they're in route better contracts to train we can spend money on better contracts to train and Power ssos we can pour money into raises but until they're trained to be efficient and effective it's simply a waste of money and resources cross training cross-train building employees and parentheses in parentheses create positions and Staffing to be a teacher leader building over time a plan for each building training not by our own people but by professional organizations be it RPD stay police which we're trained by believe it or not we go out to California Highway Patrol because they're the leader in law enforcement so we went out there for training we went to the FBI Quantico we even went
033to Israel because they're the leader and anything dealing with fighting terrorism so not saying that we're going to send our ssos to these location but there is good training more in-depth training that we can give them you know should we as a board consider possibly arming them with mace I don't know I'm just throwing it out there I'm not saying we have to excuse me that a site survey on all schools and buildings be performed to detect our weaknesses by an outside organization or agency or risk evaluation or an analysis be performed on every building security company convergent I understand is currently working with Newark their Central School District on a svpp grant for five hundred thousand dollars and other non-profit organizations in our area specifically designed for security so even though we may have
034additional art funds that there's grants out there for us to secure up you know our infrastructures maybe they could possibly give us a presentation see I'm almost done here that our actor shooter policies be reviewed in our schools tested for preparedness that the use of bulletproof film be used on all bottom floor windows and doors the classroom locks be changed out to more durable and efficient lock systems or mechanisms every door which I know we're working on so I want to give the superintendent Kudos here working on door alarms with activation cameras and mic I'm sorry um Schmidt you know working to make sure that our doors are secure so kids if they do open the door for another student that the camera immediately goes off and takes a a photo of that and an
035alarm goes off commissioner Patterson said we need to focus right on the budget so I mean those things are good things but this is the budget hearing and we can talk about those things at another time but specific questions for the budget all right well the question is and I can stop if you want but um you know I had a few more things here but that's okay but what I was trying to indicate is that I would hope these things will be in the budget somewhere not everything I'm just giving you an overall you know um you know picture of things we should be doing okay yeah so you want me to stop there yep okay thank you you want okay um I do want some of those things are happening and if you
036look in the ARP spending and when we get to the ARP spending of the budget you'll see some of those things in there as well as door locks uh some of the uh other Safety and Security things that we're doing we are going for the school violence Grant we're putting in the paperwork I know Deputy superintendent Turner and her team are putting are getting that Grant ready to go so we are getting and engaging in that process so those things are happening um Safety and Security is obviously of our kids the utmost importance right and we're living in times that have been very different than we've ever experienced from the central office budget really there's been two items that hit the central office budget one of them is a raptor software program that we have
037the Raptor software program we've paid for it for numerous years it's paid for it's done it's not included in this budget that's where the the reduction of the 35 000 comes from there the other component of this is the three staff members which was you know immediately when I saw that that is those are part-time guards for Hudson Street and those are for a Saturday and Sunday um 24-hour coverage we haven't been able to fill this those positions at all we're paying for it out of other lines to cover during those Saturdays on this but we can't hire for those positions that haven't been able to apply for those positions so we are paying for it's not that we don't have the coverage we do we just don't need the positions right now for the
038part-time guards we're paying for it somewhere else thank you you mentioned Raptor something could you explain that and absolutely so the Raptor program rollout is done so every building has a raptor program which allows our staff when someone comes into the building for them to scan their ID if you know or some form of identification and then it checks it against a background check to make sure that they're okay to come into the building so um I don't know if I if Chief Schmidt has anything else that he could add to that but I think that's pretty much it so it's been a full rollout we're fully rolled out okay thank you I just want to piggyback back to president Elliot's reminder that we just focus on the sections and again we do have people
039that are watching that also typically will download the budget book that's on the website to try to follow along but we also have staff that pull up destruction so that when we're talking people who are watching live can also see what we see and that's why it's important to stick to a page and a question related to the topic at hand however I just want to acknowledge that in the third budget deliberation some of the comments you made tonight I think are going to be more applicable because they cover all some of those sections discussed so I just want to put that out there in case you want to bring it back up in deliberation three um yes thank you Patterson commissioner Powell I don't think it's early to weigh in and say I think
040the Board needs a fully staffed audit Department if if it's been vacant for some time it may be because we can't find people in that price range um so it doesn't it's certainly not symptomatic of not needing the person and but I was a little amused by the idea of buying that position back I mean nice strategy there Mr superintendent we will add it back yep the world aboard yes if it's a Well aboard I said I will add it back but I I do want to just acknowledge um just past practices of the board of adding and cutting at this stage we are really should be deliberating and asking and drilling down on what we're spending and why but the requests of the board happens when we were talking about board budget priorities because
041when it's the same if you're watching at home and you plan a budget and a shopping budget and then you go over that budget you're going to have to pull that money out of another line and I know that we have ARP dollars but I cannot stress enough that this year I have almost zero concerns about our budget but all of my concern lies in next year's budget when we lose a hundred plus million dollars and we have to move funding back from General funds and school closures and what that impact will look like so I just have to stress that to my board colleagues but also to the community listening um and so breaking some of the historical practices of this board and I'm not saying these members here I'm just saying in the
042past even for decades of getting to deliberations and saying we want to add a position back and I would support that if we add that position that we recognize that that money has to come from General funds somewhere else because it's a long-term expenditure and that it will potentially impact someone who is physically live already here we also do need to look at removing positions and the historical practice on the administration side of budgeting for positions that we never feel and holding that money up that schools don't ever get to access or tap into because there's a vacant position and so we carry lots of vacancies over so I just have to say that and certainly if we have two Commissioners who want it we certainly should have that conversation I'm open to having that
043conversation at the finance meeting on Tuesday certainly We'll add it as an agenda topic so we can discuss it on record at length there um and we also could go into executive where we're going to start talking about personnel and naming names and finish the conversation there but I just want to put that out there to the community listening around these things and with that commissioner Malloy thank you um I just wanted to uplift a lot of what commissioner Patterson was saying regarding security I had a very similar question the first question that he asked and so thank you for responding to that but obviously and during this time we want to make sure that we're adequately making sure our schools are are safe for both our students and staff but with that being said
044I think part of having secure schools and Security in general is making sure that we are increasing our investment in the social emotional learning components within all of our schools um and I'm making kind of a comparison here between two different pages in the budget book I want to know if Equity is truly a focus for our district because it says it's a major goal but when I compare these two pages and I hate to make this comparison I don't want to you know put people on the spot or schools on the spot but when I look on page 127 at the East EPO administrator costs and it says that although there's a minus 23 percent for this year we're still going to be spending about two and a half million dollars for Administration in
045a school with 1 000 students um and then when I compare that to page 142 when we're talking about some of the social emotional learning projected expenditures I see that an investment of a little over five million dollars that's on page 142. and I guess my question is is that Equitable when social moaning learn social emotional learning should be such a priority I reprioritizing that or are we prioritizing the management of a school building and again we can break down the cost it just seems inequitable to me and I would love to see more investment um in our social emotional learning programs so it's more common than anything else but it's a comparison that I just can't help but not make thank you that's everything thank you commissioner Malloy commissioner Simmons also Echo the sentiments
046rest around school and I do want to draw your attention to page 178 in the budget book and this is regarding specialized Services um and I'd like to know or just kind of get some thought around the extended school year it looks like an external special education services where we see reductions again I know that there's dollars that are ciphering out and we are preparing for that and then I also see that other dollars were maybe outreallocated like there's audio services that were based on student need we've increased that apparently but when I consider regression summer learning and things like that I want to know how that's going to impact the students and the the thought process around that reduction or if I'm looking at that properly so I I do want to start and
047if we could um Chief Richmond could come up I do believe there's some funding changes in terms of how they're allocated so if you look at summer program 12 months that went to 1.164 million dollars and then of a dollar variant sorry um and then extended school year had a 1.18 reduction so I you know it looks like there's been a shifting in terms of How It's budgeted for the same amounts there but um I'll have Chief Richmond expand if I missed anything that's exactly okay um yes so that's exactly what happened we shifted some of the funding the other thing to realize is that extended school year is for students that qualify so they have to show regression over the periods of time when school is not in session so our staff collects that
048information and then they make a determination of regression statements and so not the same number always qualify each year so the Staffing may change as well what we need so quite honestly I think that's what uh superintendent paluso provided is accurate thank you shifted into different ways that we're funding it so just to some to just repeat to make sure that I did understand you properly when you're checking for regression you're you're talking about the students who over the summer months have lot they demonstrate that they've lost some learning when they return to school and the new philosophy is documented during the school year and then we monitor their goals over the summer okay to to see if we maintain the growth that they made during the school year gotcha okay thank you commissioner submens
049our parent rep face 193. we know that the executive director is Grant funded until the next year how will we address some sustainability so you absolutely I believe when the executive director was reinstated a couple years ago it was put into our for the remainder um committed to bringing back funds into to our a funds obviously World language special education bilingual education World language special educations are priorities for our district right and those will be reflected in what we make in terms of decisions of what doesn't go what comes out of the budget for for the the um for the 24 25 budget sorry I'm just getting my years right for the 24-25 budget there are additional positions there we've added a director of enl we've added a director of bilingual and then we also
050have the executive director so we have added administrative spots that are in the actual general fund the executive director just seems to lie and ARP and has lied in ARP and that will come to general fund next year next year thank you commission Adams I submitted um some questions in the question log see him here but I'm sure the public will probably be able to see him at some point if they're not here yeah so I just want to for those listening tonight again we do have a board question log where board Commissioners could start submitting questions based on the same sections and then um have this public q a the board question log questions um were made public a few years back so I just want to put that out there so if you
051go to www.rcsdk12 backslash.org um k12.org and then um backslash budget you'll be able to look at this year's question logs as well as previous years as well to see what Commissioners have asked around the budget and for this year and previous years and I do think it's important because not every question can be asked through this process but sometimes hundreds of questions have come through the board question log and folks may find some answers there as well president Elliott oh I'm sorry president Elliott commissioner Adams just want to State his question on record so for um just for the Public's sake um my questions were that I submitted were highly focused on ssos um bus drivers so I just needed you know that's definitely a priority for me and um even though I didn't say
052anything here my questions are are logged in that's all I got thank you president Elliott thank you vice president so similar to in advance um but I would also like to just continue to put on the record that we need to have narratives so that the public is able to go through our budget and be able to have it to be explanatory for our community so other than that my questions were responded to there's one question that was not really responded to so I'm asking our board clerk to follow back up with you with regard to outcomes for diversity equity and inclusion so they just gave me a description of what the program is not the outcome so whoever is responsible for that give me outcomes not a description of the department thank you thank
053you and then for myself I just want to point out we're going to go all the way back to the beginning to page um and just point everyone's eyes to utilities and you'll notice that that number has significantly gone up by the millions and that is a two-part way inflation and also locally many community members have experienced the same price gouging is what I'm calling it from Rochester Gas and Electric Company and we as a public education system with many buildings and schools are not exempt from what's Happening there not only with again inflation across the country but the way that RG e has done billing and so I think this is a conservative um you know guesstimation of where we may end up but I do want to point out that this is just
054our best guess based on where we see the pricing increases over this year but that there's really no way to predict until the state comes in and does some interventions with RG e and fix helps them fix their billing for the sake of this entire community so I just want to point that out because we're going from 8 million a little over 8 million for our utilities to over 14 million almost 15 million so I just want to point that out because even though you see it's a big leap it may end up costing us more but by the end of next year we have no idea what will happen over the next year with Rochester Gas and Electric who is our provider so yes Dr paluso I do want to add to that we
055have pushed the increase to Utilities in our over the last couple of years so we've flatlined utilities and we've put out increases into art so if it was 8 million and then it went to 10 million and now it goes to 12 million right that those two cycles of increases have the the two million to 2 million have been paid in the arp we need to start bringing that back to our general fund and so now we have those two years of increases plus what we're estimating for next year's increase all built into that right you know so you have three years of increases in this year's budget because the first two were carried through an uh Federal stimulus fund for that clarification commissioner Patterson if this has already been answered let me know it's
056page 143. expenditure summary Deputy superintendent department administration and support there's two areas in the contractual section about halfway down the page contractual General there's a one million 523 and change increase and again utilities and it could be again Gas and Electric I don't know but you see a six million 761 000 and change increase could you just explain those for me please yep let me I'll give it uh so what we see here on the first page that President uh vice president LeBron just brought our attention to that's the overall budget rate then we subset this budget out so utilities has multiple places where it may be seen now we're looking in the deputy superintendent section of it where you'll see utilities and then when you get to the chief of operations section you'll see
057it broken out again for what the chief of operations offers and utilities so it's kind of just subsets as you go down the contractual General contractual um are chargebacks to our budget right so I'm I'm gonna do this as best as Layman's accounting that I can do and then I'll probably turn it over to Sean I'll see the CFO to kind of get this through but we have chargebacks to our budget so in past accounting what we've done is we've included those chargebacks and reduced the net and just shown the net here of the overall cost what we're trying to do is get an actual reflection of cost so we've now made sure that any chargeback comes back and shows us revenue and not in this section of the budget that's my layman's terms but
058you know I'm sure the CFO has some a little bit more detailed information yeah and just um explain for me so I know in layman's terms yeah when you say the utilities are broken down by each Deputy superintendent are they do they have schools assigned to each one where it's broken down or so so just the way we roll up our budget so Deputy superintendent uh Turner oversees the chief of operations right overseas um different components of the dish brick so those roll up to her so in her budget it may look like more than what it looks like in someone else because there's multiple things rolling to her right and then in the central Administration budget would be where they all roll up to so okay we break this budget down and so many
059subsets so that's where it comes in and looks different on different sections of it yeah I think the way it's laid out is confusing because the reader doesn't know right what's rolling up right like you don't you look and it's like this section and you don't know that it rolls up to this so in this case yeah we have the overall budget then we have a deputy superintendent we have a chief of operations and then we have facilities so what you'll see utility that utility Spike for each one of them yeah seven million dollars in each of them yeah but it's the same seven million dollars it's just being you know deconstructed differently but but to your point about the chargebacks um I refer you to page 151 because this this will give you the
060better example of it and I did name the page number didn't I okay it was a different page so I think I'm sorry yeah but so page 151 uh because what What's Happening Here is uh the print shop so what we've done uh operationally here is the print shop does jobs and then they charge it back let's say you do a print job for a school and then we charge it back to the school um which is fine but what we do with that chargeback historically is we've applied it to the expense Okay so we've re and so now what we've done is we've lost track of what our actual expense in The Print Shop is it's actually Revenue right like think of a business like it like if you go to a copy place
061you pay some money they've recorded as Revenue they have their expenses so um so we're trying to in this year uh correct we're trying to get to correct accounting um and so the print shop is still printing nothing changes the schools are still getting their everybody's still getting everything except that instead of applying it to the as a negative expense and then we lose what it's really costing us we're now actually going to put it into Revenue okay so what what you'll see on this page 151 on the print shop and you'll see a budget for one million three forty that's actually that now for the first time is gives you an idea of what our print shop is actually costing us right so the budget of 683 is there's about 650 000 so a
062lot of activity in the print shop you know because everything they do is a job for somebody right so what you're seeing what we've seen is you haven't really seen the true cost of what the print shop costs us now now when we say this is the real cost of it and the jobs they charge out becomes just becomes Revenue um to you know General Revenue on the on the revenue side of the school district so that this is a significant change and it sticks out and and again this rolls up because this is under the deputy superintendent for administration as well um so you'll see it in her budget uh and then you'll you'll see it down into to IMT the technology budget so that's a change in accounting practice but it doesn't doesn't
063change anything operationally change but it does change in the year that we make the change the numbers right and that's why you're seeing this this large variance okay that response is way above my pay grade and off that count on one of my colleagues commissioner Paul what's your turn anyway so if you want to make your comment and then ask your question yeah can we make this a follow-on so I don't lose my questions yes yes that's a follow one that's what I'm saying make your comment and then ask your question thank you being a CPA accounting trained individual I totally get what you said it's it's a practice that's usually used when you have cost centers versus Revenue centers and your example was terrific in terms of the print shop um the charging back
064gives you uh the ability to track who's using the print shop who's abusing The Print Shop using the print shop instead of buying using the textbooks they've already been offered and so on so my only question directly to commissioner Patterson's questions why would we do that for utilities they don't really have that much control do they over the amount of utility used in their buildings if it's drafty ever yeah no I um we we are we're making changes in a lot of areas specifically there is one area of utilities that we will charge back for and that is the Oasis program in the Hart Street Building so there they occupy a fair amount of space in that building and we charge back uh to them for a percentage of the lease cost right and and
065we also you know also pay for proportioning utilities as well but but the rest of the rest of the district there's things that we're pulling back and centralizing there's actually things we're decentralizing as well things that we've held centrally that we're pushing out to schools but I'm trying to get away from things that we account for that are really kind of immaterial our utility costs are our utility costs right and then we control that through various mechanisms of usage right so we can monitor usage in buildings and the cost is you know whatever the per unit cost is so we're trying to I'm trying to get away from kind of nickeling and diming you know programs out there and just centrally say this is our Central utility cost and then we we can focus in
066on that we know then we actually know what our overall cost is and then we can work on controlling usage right the different kind of lighting and right and you don't want to punish a school because they have air conditioning everybody wants air conditioning and not everyone gets it right and there's a huge utility cost associated with that particular park right right so I guess that feeds into I have three questions so I'm going to use this opportunity to make this observation um and this is not a this is not a ding on this budget but one of the things that happens from one budget to the next it's like a pendulum swing is we actually treat buckets of money differently from one year to another and so every year there's some part of the
067budget that's like comparing apples to oranges and like I said everything you just described in this example is justifiable and and I'm excited about it but it seems to me that we probably ought to have some policy language that outlines number one how certain things are getting treated in the budget and so that if we're going to change it in a subsequent year we've had that conversation as a policy conversation well before we start building the next budget so that we're not going through this Agony of trying to compare numbers that that are built around different sets of assumptions does that make any sense yeah yeah but observation on that you are we are seeing all these changes and and of course ARP is not helping us you're right because it's because they have their
068own rules well we've pushed money out we'll bring money back in it's it's creating all these variances but an observation is that um the tenure of the CFO position at this district has been fairly short and so somebody comes in right so this is my first year and and I look at things that we're doing and just you know from an accounting point of view just say well that's we make we need to correct that right or or we need to be more efficient like we're doing stuff that isn't beneficial to the district um so we're implementing those changes right um if if they're is consistency in the CFO position then things kind of get dialed in you bring in somebody new comes in and they're like oh let's do that you know let's make
069this change make that change so that's also part of what you're saying but if we had a standing policy that built around the best thinking of our best CFO and I'm looking at you then we can avoid uh the use in future years of oh for sure kind of accounting slight of a hand yeah to hide the fact that that you know maybe someone's trying to pad the budget here or or or or cut something somewhere else that if the board could see it more clearly would would not have approved of yeah so that's why I'm suggesting maybe now's the right time yeah and that way when there is a turnover the next CFO isn't um inventing a wheel he's relying on past practice and if he doesn't like past practice he's got to think
070far enough ahead or or put off a change to a subsequent year right after the policy has been updated right oh I just uh it's kind of an addendum to this same line of thinking that the what brought it up was the discussion earlier about the ftes and Ria okay I mean it's explainable justifiable but without the explanation it looks and feels a little bit like sleight of hand right and that's the thing that we have to kind of build policies against okay I also just to piggyback off what commissioner Paul was saying um I also think it's just a bad budget book and rather than us trying to invent another temporary one without real authentic Community feedback we would be changing the book again and so the decision was we'll just stick with this
071bad budget book because I do not think this is very transparent I do think it's hard to understand how processes and money is being moved around so I just want to uplift that because we hated this book last year the majority of us we still hate it but as we move forward again reminding folks about the participatory budgeting but also to the Commissioners if you haven't seen the tool and gone on the website just to give us some feedback and ideas please do it as well and there's also a space so that if you find another budget book in another school district we pulled some of the best ones that we think we could find that kind of have the easiest digestible Syracuse big one of them um I was surprised by some of the
072schools that we pulled but they are more readable more transparent and easier to understand but if there's another District that we just maybe didn't know about and they have a much better budget book please put that in the comment suggestion as well because we will look at those as well and we will be doing some prototyping around it but certainly would support some policy as we move forward because for me they're kind of two separate things but they are heavily tied together right so if the policy says this is how it has to be the formatting of the budget book is more aesthetically around those things but clarifying how those transitions are occurring so I would support that commissioner Powell just a reminder to the community listening and from a historical perspective back when the
073city had a say in how much money we got it we were the the budget look book looked like what city hall wanted the budget to look like and and we're kind of untethered from that in more recent Years and we're still trying to get our feet under us about that and and so you know what does it need to look like for us yes and for our community so that they can understand what's going on in our parents and staff as well so thank you for that commissioner Malloy thank you hopefully this is just a quick question I'm trying to find out where I can find information about a cyber security costs for our district this is kind of an I.T question I was looking at 151 you know cyber security costs are rising
074exponentially globally but then also for school districts across the United States and Insurance costs costs and so I just wanted to know if there's been an increase for us or projected increases and where I could find information on that we were able to thank you for the question we were able to increase our security from eight Microsoft A3 to 85 using power seeing a significant Improvement in external penetration tests as far as a dollar value ongoing dollar value that is something that I could provide I just don't have it off the top on top of my head right now thank you thank you commissioner Malloy commissioner Simmons thank you commissioner Adams is also president Elliot no questions our parent rep I just told her she has more than one question at this time she I
075know she had one or two left if she wants to just ask them back to back she could start us and then end us thank you thank you it's just a general question is Administration competent this budget is accurate yes we're we are confident that this is accurate yes absolutely thank you and um if there are no other questions unless commissioner Powell You Yes commissioner Powell I will give it to you answered about My Brother's Keeper um and so so this is kind of a follow-up to that question and answer has the My Brother's Keeper program been evaluated is there evidence that there that that there's any part of this that has saved lives academically or actually um and part two is are there any any elements of that program that will persist even in
076the face of no federal funding so I'm going to turn this over to Deputy Turner yeah you know we do My Brother's Keeper right here you know we're very proud of the work we've done we've lost the grandpa tell that uh Deputy China yeah yeah so in in terms of the grant um there are two grants that we've historically uh have received and written for one of them is uh My Brother's Keeper challenge Grant which the RFP just opened up right now so we're in the process of writing responding to that uh proposal request and then there's the my brother's Keepers fellows which four students are selected Rising seniors each year to represent the district in in that cohort of fellows and they engage in leadership development uh book studies they also travel to Albany
077twice a year one of them to be inducted which is going to happen in a couple of uh weeks in May and the other one for them uh to get together and they do some Stand and Deliver uh talks and and learning so that's how that Grant is spent uh the challenge Grant initially was what kicked off our were restorative practices so the first challenge Grant in which I responded to when when I was here was to help us build the infrastructure before we started work which it did for three years it gave us a really great foundation in training and research implementing and showed a drastic reduction in our suspension in this iteration of it we are focusing on reading by grade three and also financial literacy so part of the requirement for recipients
078of the grant is to provide data to the state that shows that whatever uh intervention or whatever program we use with MBK dollars have shown some level of movement and whatever that Grant was measuring for that period And if we did not do that we would not be invited or would most likely not get the following year Grant so that that is how historically it's been done so as we apply and get this ground we'll also have to provide data as we select schools depending how much money we get to really increase that reading by third grade and financial literacy opportunities for students so if I could just like do some feedback there your um because the board is committed to restorative practices the answer to my question are there any parts of this that
079will persist after the grant the answer is yes restorative practices will continue we just have to find different dollars to pay for it and secondly you said that there are ongoing evaluations that will determine whether we'll be able to to whether we'll be successful at Future challenge grants did I get that part right so when we yes when we respond to our RFP each one is different sometimes they have specific points that they say this I want you to focus we want you to write focusing programs and intervention dealing with this this one being reading by third grade and financial literacy so when we respond to that and put interventions to help us achieve those goals at the end of the cycle of the grant the state wants data in which evaluates whether we were
080successful at meeting those metrics with the grant funding particular programs apply to my brother's keeper because they attempt to close the achievement Gap or I mean the literacy part yes okay yeah okay thank you thank you commissioner Powell commissioner Simmons has flagged as a follow-up question the selection of schools would be part of that process um as you're going for the grant our RFP um do you have like a ballpark um number of students you expect to be impacted by these efforts in in the group that we're writing yes now so I think right off the top of my head I think the funding is 000 so over the years we've seen a significant decrease in in the award section so we're just in that beginning process we just literally met a couple of days
081ago to talk about the framework of responding toography because again the turnaround time is only two weeks to really calculate our thinking and then begin to write it and submit it in enough time so we have some ideas about schools that are that are ready and have the the focus to be able to do the lift and then we'll discuss uh you know amongst the grant team to talk with them and figure out a plan uh for the rfe right do you have an estimated number of students you would expect to impact by these efforts I we will certainly determine that um depending on what program so for example uh in the terms of financial literacy some aspects of it Advantage Federal uh Credit Union has worked with us and so we want to focus
082on middle schoolers right to really begin that early Foundation of literacy so depending what their capacity is Biz Kids and it all depends financially how much money we have the capacity of the partners that are working with us the capacity of the school to implement those interventions but we'll have the numbers shortly okay so then can you give me um how many have been served previously then um last Grant cycle I would have to get that for you because I wasn't okay I wasn't here but in the past that we've been able to anywhere from 800 to 1300 depending how you know what we were targeting and how the grant was written yeah just my my questions are just coming and when you mentioned literacy and and we know that state of our district I'm
083very excited to hear about efforts to address that and then of course I'm wondering is so many students that are you know that we need to work with and so I'm wondering how great uh the numbers would be so that that's where that's coming from thank you but I just want to make a request that our board clerk captures that question so again because the questions are public and so the answers will be public so those listening tonight they may have the same kind of thought pattern of how many will we be impacting um I president Elliott has a question around this topic as well yeah thank you so um I'm I'm concerned about did we did the grant end because it just ended and is there is there any possibility that we will not
084be uh awarded the Grant and the reason I bring that up is because it just seems as if I don't know how well we operationalize it before and I'm looking at we've got a great program over at school nine right a great program over there and it did not receive any uh MBK uh dollars and so um I I we I don't know let me just back up you know we've got to make sure that we are connecting the funding to these programs that are helping you know our young males our young black males and I do know and as well as you know that uh this is a high priority for the chancellor and so you know we've got to make sure that we are also you know supporting his work as well as
085if he's ensuring that we've got this funding then we've got to make sure that we're supporting him by by doing um by by allocating it correctly and and putting it where you know it it can work I mean for what I just don't understand why they didn't get in in my BK dollars over at school nine for that particular for that program so we've got to make it make sense you know so that's that's my concern and I'm hoping you understand what I'm saying so that you know we can we can get this right you know when do we think that we'll get the grant so it's due in about two weeks um and I'll have to look at that but generally we should get an award notice probably six to eight weeks I'm optimistic
086we'll get uh the grant we have yet not to get it when we write it so just to respond because I think you bring a very good point that I think there's been uh some uh sort of General sometimes misunderstanding so nobody really gets MBK dollars the grant has to be written away to say like say for example the first couple years we focused on reducing suspensions and student Behavior because that was the focus of the Grant and that was district-wide we trained students we did that and then right now is that focus on early literacy so depending on the target population that might exclude some schools from others if that makes sense so thinking about the work that's happening with uh the academy at school number nine right now the focus fits that beautifully
087thank you for that clarification um so I just want to thank everyone for coming tonight joining and watching and um certainly I have to thank the administration like I mentioned in the beginning this budget the cycle really did a 180 and I want to thank um Jaime and Dr jallow I always started to say your last name so um Dr Ivy um so and I want to thank our parent rep who also has a family and comes here in person to be a part of these conversations again tonight's Focus was on the administration next week though we'll be on schools and I do always believe that that is always where we do spend the most time having conversations about what changes look like but again um I'm just going to put this on record again
088my concern still stands with next year's transition of art leaving and us moving positions back into General funds and I do believe that that's going to be a painful process for us but in full transparency you're going to hear me repeat this the entire year because I don't want anyone to say they just didn't know was coming down the pipeline it's coming John and we have no other opportunities so with that I'm concluding tonight's budget deliberations thank you all for watching and we'll see you next week thank you have a good night