001okay are we ready to begin all right good evening i'm commissioner amy malloy and i'm representing the board at tonight's charter school hearing the board is required by law to hold a public hearing for all proposed charter schools as board members we are not permitted to make comments pertaining to these schools but are required to open the hearing for public comment it should be noted that a charter hearings conducted by the board of education are neither an endorsement of charters nor disparaging of charters we are mandated to allow for public comment and i encourage those watching from the public to sign up to speak at these charter hearings with our board clerk so good evening this is a charter public hearing for the rochester sports academy charter school the time is now 501 the education
002law subdivision 285 7 and regulations of the commissioner of education require the board to conduct a public hearing within 30 days of receipt of notice of an application for a new or revised charter school the board of education of the rochester city school district is conducting this public hearing regarding the rochester sports academy charter school within the city of rochester the purpose of this hearing is to gather community input to provide to the new york state education department regarding the application the rochester sports academy charter school's mission is to develop the next generation of off profession off field professionals in the sports industry the rochester sports academy charter school's 21st century curriculum framework will prepare rsa scholars for the rigors of instructional programming by providing students that represent the diversity of the greater rochester community
003with access to high academic standards students that graduate from rsa will be global thinkers committed to lifelong civic engagement because of focus on diversity equity and inclusion practices that promote creative opportunities in the next level of sports and life rochester sports academy charter school proposes a five-year term serving 400 students in grades 9-12 i understand that we do have one person signed up to speak this evening and that is a community member um gabriel marshall so welcome gabriel the floor is yours for three minutes mr marshall are you there i am can you hear me yes you yes we can hear you when you're ready you have three minutes to speak okay okay thank you uh so my name is uh dr gabriel marshall and i'm the proposed chief visionary executive officer at the proposed
004rochester sports academy charter school set to open in the fall of 2022 so as a former high school and college student athlete a former high school english teacher former college professor a former college counselor former college men's basketball coach and current college administrator our founding applicant group and i are excited really about the opportunity to provide students and families of the greater rochester community an educational experience grounded in the principles of teamwork and empowering our students to achieve a lifelong success and based on our mission that was just read in our vision to empower all students to achieve success on and off the field by being part of a team we really wanted to focus on really our key design elements and what we would do so by focusing on three key design elements we
005really are looking to provide a school culture that builds character within our students and challenges them to reach their full potential our core beliefs are respect high expectations data-driven decision-making cultural diversity community engagement and social and civic engagement another one of our key design elements is our sports career pathways which are sports business management administration sports technology and sports health sciences and through those career pathways we plan to introduce students to careers outside of being athletes and teach them how to build strong relationships and networks to support their personal and professional goals and our last key design element is our school schedule and calendar we implemented this design with the understanding that colvin altered the learning process environment for students and in some ways so we really needed to meet the needs of students and
006families where they are so through brock scheduling an extended school day in our summer institute for incoming freshmen uh professional staff we're designed to better prepare them and engage throughout our our academic year so our team is really committed to holistically developing students and including families throughout the process as well as creating professional opportunities for rochester sports academy team members to grow as leaders and continue perfecting their craft so we will offer students a learning environment that exceeds expectations through awareness of student needs current education trends challenges and a willingness to hold one another accountable as a member of our team thank you very much mr marshall if there are no other public comments and i don't think there are um it is now 506 p.m and this hearing is officially adjourned thank you good
007evening everyone welcome to the finance and resource allocation committee of the whole meeting i'm calling this meeting to order the time now is 5 33 p.m on 10 19 20 21 um first item on the agenda is speakers addressing the finance agenda so i'm going to turn it over to the board clerk it's my understanding we have several speakers tonight that is correct and most speakers are joining us uh today on zoom and so i'm going to find out if our first speaker is with us i have an aria camion lind she is a parent speaking about cersei and arp funding and rcsd's five-year financial plan are you there aria i am here yes wonderful whenever you're ready you have three minutes to speak terrific thank you so much good evening president white the vice
008president elliot chairperson lebron board of education commissioners and superintendents dr meyer small and dr nelms it is my pleasure to address the finance committee this evening as a proud parent of three rochester city school district scholars tonight i am asking you to use short-term and long-term funding strategies to meet the needs of our students our children are faced with multiple pandemics at once racism poverty segregation food instability housing instability the delusion of white supremacy covid 19 is only the most recent pandemic for our kids please use our cresa and arp dollars and create a long-term funding plan to support hiring and training adults who can support our young people through these multiple community level traumas i implore you not to invite law enforcement officers back into our school buildings we fought long and hard during
009the 2019-2020 school year to remove school resource officers from our buildings advocacy based on years of community engagement and grassroots activism our youth have told us time and again that law enforcement officers do not make them feel safer in school i am telling you yesterday today tomorrow that i do not want sworn law enforcement officers in my children's schools i do not want any professional involved in the carceral system in my children's schools please spend our money on the staff and training for restorative practices and justice conflict de-escalation and resolution to help our communities determine what makes us feel safe at school spend our money to address the social emotional supports delicious nutritious food engaging in culturally responsive content and invested interested teachers administrators and staff that will help our scholars overcome the struggles and
010traumas they face every day and thrive i'm begging you to please center our children in each and every decision you make about budgeting for our scholars funding for a supportive school atmosphere no funding for police and sros and schools no rpd in rcsd thank you very much aria thank you for addressing the board i have another speaker who is with us joining us on zoom and that is victoria robertson a parent victoria are you there victoria you'll need to mute your uh feed oh no i think i've lost you okay when you're ready you can turn on your video i'm trying okay wonderful you have three minutes whenever you're ready thank you thank you for this opportunity to speak my name is victoria robertson i have a senior at wilson high school and my son
011is a proud graduate of wilson high school i want to tell you that absolutely we need to address the safety needs that the various unions wrote in concern of and that our children recovering from this pandemic from these multiple pandemics as arya so clearly said um need help but rpd pulling the police back into the schools is not the answer staff and students deserve to feel safe and supported there is all sorts of data as we all like to be data driven that demonstrates that police in schools does not make students safer instead it leads them towards the school-to-prison pipeline we all know we want to stop that let's not open the gates up again keep that valve closed as much as we can find alternative ways to support the kids use community agencies to
012help in staff help zones fund restorative practices fully use that our arp money to really get adults in the building that can work with children can learn to de-escalate can train other adults to de-escalate and if there's a crisis deal with it at a specific school but each school should be developing their own safety plans with what works for them with with enough resources and rpd should not be a part of it thank you very much miss robertson we appreciate you addressing the board tonight our next speaker is jessica fleming a parent who is also addressing the cersei and art funding and school safety jessica are you there yes i'm here okay whenever you're ready you have three minutes um good evening i'm i'm here to address the board hi okay we're gonna need to
013mute your um your other feed okay sorry okay um sorry um so i'm here to address the board on how we are spending um the funds um i'm also concerned like many others here uh um about sneaking rpd back into the schools when the students are who organized um to get them out of their schools many of these students have been home on a pandemic experiencing over policing by rpd and their communities they've experienced nationally known um abuse of power and corruption and abuse of black lives they then experienced many of them experienced tear gas at the hands of these police they experienced um you know what's now nationally recognized as a police brutality and rp is under national investigation for the way that they treated protesters including some of um rcsc students and when
014you think about community safety we have to think about the community the mental health protection and the protection of the students um and not just the perception of safety we know data suggests we all know that the data doesn't um support putting cops in schools we all know about the school-to-prison pipeline and i think that when we tell students that you know when you organize and fight for what you believe in and then you know staff can come in and override because of you know this archaic idea of um safety with police officers so that's a really bad message for our scholars um and uh we can hire and train adults with using the restorative approach that we know works i've worked as a behavior attack um for most of my career and the police
015are not trained in de-escalation they're not really this is not their foundation they are not helpers they're not educators they're not social workers um and there's definitely a better way thanks thank you very much miss fleming we will now welcome uh mary adams a parent who is speaking on the sirsa and art funding mary are you there yep all right whenever you're ready you have three minutes all right good evening everyone um i am of course very very upset by many events that have happened in recent days i'm really upset that the administration went and met secretly with the rochester police department with lieutenants and the acting chief the total lack of transparency is just it's really distressing i mean this has always been a problem with controversial issues in the district but really what
016i want to say is that the crisis in safety right now is real there absolutely are crises in many of our schools and by the way east is not the primary location of that crisis the secret meeting with rochester police department took place in the morning well before the situation that happened on friday where a football game had to be delayed because of a serious situation just want to put that out there too that's an issue with narratives i'm also upset that the superintendent has tried to marginalize specific board members by saying that certain board members might be upset about the return of rochester police department this is a community-wide body of work over many many years and many of you there have thanked me for my role in building school climate working and coalition
017representing the school board several years ago in that work i don't want thanks i want you to resource implementing the code of conduct that was passed in 2016. we have the resources now we do i'm concerned that there's not going to be capacity in central office to appropriately spend the resources that we do have to support students rock restored and again i was tactful i was careful i was making suggestions recommendations trying not to overstep my voice you know we have this body of work we had rock restorative we had a whole infrastructure that was building and building momentum that was getting involved in many different schools against the odds supporting decreased and decreased suspensions decreased arrests more positive school climate more students passing classes the data the reports are there that has been rolled
018back you have dismembered rock restorative you have dismembered that and you've used phrases like it's a mindset restorative is a mindset it is not it is a careful deliberate intensive difficult multi-year work that has been dismantled and i'm very very upset about this this is resulting the safety crisis that we have right now clearly police are provocative clearly police are a condescending atmosphere for our students they are not a solution they have never prevented violence the reason we're having violence at the levels that we are is because we have a community crisis and the headway that had been made in this district has been undermined i'm not going to be careful about it i'm not going to be polite it has been actively undermined over the past two years shame shame on you find more
019ssos that's what my husband has been saying for months and months and months pay them better train them better the resources exist to train them ms adams place rock restorative fund take advantage of new york state education department's culturally responsive sustaining framework bring in technical assistance to implement that because you do not have the capacity to do it we need you i don't want thanks i don't want anything but action so that we can solve the safety crisis and our students can learn [Music] thank you mrs adams we will now move on to a carly fox a parent who is addressing the board regarding certain art funding and sros thank you charlie are you with us is she connected now okay hello hello welcome i'm hi um i need to get my video off um
020thank you everybody for hearing my comments um my name is carly fox i'm a parent uh carly i'm going to need you to turn on your video if you can okay i will in to one minute um trying to be safe here all right trying to bring children to activities um i am a parent of a student at 15 school and um and a graduate of wilson magnet high school and i i admittedly have mixed feelings about the issue but a couple things i do feel really strongly sorry about sros in schools is that um restorative justice and all of the incredible investment we need to do in dick conflict resolution um is something that we should absolutely be doing if we're going to be bringing police officers back into the school and from what
021i understand although i haven't done as much homework as i should it looks like the proposal is to just fund sros but not bring back the restorative justice work that was so incredible and got cut the other um thing i wanted to mention is just that we've learned over and over and over again in the city how dysfunctional rpd is and that we really need rpd to be more accountable and so it doesn't make sense for us to enter into a contract with rochester police department given what's happening and the and and the recklessness with which they work with the community and i think especially for the students that's a problem and so while maybe school security officers are important and help um um and can be sort of under the administration of the our
022the rcsd i believe that entering into a contractual agreement with rpd is is not a good idea i say that as a parent as an alumni and as an inspiring teacher aspiring teacher okay thank you thank you very much we appreciate your comments snake thank you we have our next speaker who is ethan nguyen and i believe he is also connected on zoom ethan are you with us i am okay when you're ready please turn on your video and then you have three minutes okay thank you very much for your time um thank you to the board um i'm speaking as a parent of a school 12 scholar um and i have two or three points upon which to base my request that you not um re-engage the uh rcs the uh the the the
023rpd and reinstate our sros in our schools and instead fully fund um the rock restorative program and expand it um and fully fund the 130 social worker positions that were moved last year as they all need to be reinstated before we even talk about sros which we should not be doing for clear reasons for one um my child my as parents we love our ssos they are amazing we trust them they do a great job um we should be expanding that program not going sros two sros do not work period more police contact increases risk of incarceration there are better solutions that we should be prioritizing the fact that there is sro funding and not full funding and restorative frankly is a shame in this budget and finally as the recently released records on your
024section 5080 show some of the most publicly visible sros have pages long records of citations and infractions um we cannot continue you know the idea of re-engaging that program is that expanding the ones that are proven to work um it really should not be um even entertained frankly and i'm unclear how exactly parent voice um factors into these processes and these decisions um you know i think we've we've had a lot of hearings lately i really hope the board uses the opportunity to demonstrate that you are hearing our voices and you're open to reworking um proposals that we do not think are feasible and finding solutions that really work for us for our scholars thank you very much mr winn we appreciate you joining us tonight our next speaker is stevie vargas a community member
025who is speaking on cersei and art funding as well as rpd ms fargus are you there yes can you hear me yes we can but we can't see you yet oh hold on one second can you see me now no um let's just start my video all right good yes all right whenever you're ready you have three minutes thank you so much i am here speaking as not only a parent um my child has entered pre-k and he will soon be entering um kindergarten but i'm also speaking as an education advocate uh someone who has worked really hard with community members parents and students on the ground to make sure that cops get out of our schools rochester parents students and members and members of the community won a huge victory this past june when
026our tireless collective action led police being removed from our schools for abuse and criminalization the attempt to bring back our sros especially in secret not only directly contradicts our wishes but will take resources away from ensuring that our schools aren't pipelines to to prisons i'm highly disappointed in in seeing cops present at schools when i feel our district has not done its due diligence in investing and expanding in restorative practice programs um i i have seen nothing but divestment from those programs and i have seen the videos of altercations at schools but i have not seen an investment from the district in investing in programs that are proven to work there is no proof that having cops in schools mitigates any violence if anything it exacerbates it it makes students feel like they are not
027welcome in the school setting and i don't think any dollars coming to the district should be invested in more punitive measures against students we need to create a holistic approach that gets to the root causes of these incidences happening in schools and we need to see those investments at the district level we need to see that you are invested in this because we're not seeing that right now and i do want to thank members of the school board who have been tirelessly advocating uh to get sros out of school keep sros out of school and make sure that we are investing in the programs that truly work um ricardo and beatrice thank you for standing by community members i'm not sure where the rest of the school board members stand but a lot of you
028have been oddly silent and as a parent we need you to get it together and work with parents and stand by the community and do not make these back door initiatives to try to reinstate cops in our schools money should not be going towards that it should be going towards programs that help our students thank you thank you ms vargas we appreciate your comments tonight our next speaker is mercedes feeling a community member who's speaking on sourcing art funding mercedes are you with us we were having some trouble getting connected mercedes yes hi whenever you're ready to have three minutes i'm okay i'm ready um forgive the sloppiness of my statement as we had almost no time to even respond to this and right now i'm fully furious i'm the parent of a fourth grader
029at school 58 and a co-chair of the citizen action education committee given everything we know about the years of work the students community members and organizations and district staff have put into reworking the code of conduct and the implementation of restorative systems under ruth turner it is shameful that the suggestion being made right now is reinstituting sro re-institute sros in our buildings the district had dated back success after the investment into the rock restorative program the community has been advocating ever since to expand this work that works ever since but instead the paper got rolled back and now at a time when we need it most with students transitioning back into school after the coveted closure and virtual learning you are turning to police it is unconscionable especially when so much data also supports when
030police in schools is a terrible idea it criminalizes our children creates psychological trauma and contributes to the school-to-prison pipeline that disproportionately affects our black and brown students i cannot believe how ill-informed and short-sighted this move is honestly how dare you even consider this it's absolutely shameful we got the sursa and art funding to support our kids as they transition back into school and this includes mental health and social emotional needs where is this money being used to actually do that what systems and supports are in buildings what are you doing to hire and ensure social workers are available in the buildings what partnerships have you created with organizations like piri gandhi center for youth pathways to peace ibero and teen empowerment how are you utilizing staff who have been trained in restorative practices and justice
031how are you training more this is a paradigm shift you need to train and support people what is your plan to ensure every single building has mental health services and a solid action plan for district-wide implementation of restorative practices your response is lazy and destructive you sabotage this program and now you want to do something that students have fought for years to stop thank you to beatrice and ricardo for being advocates for this but other board members willa amy van where are you this is shameful thank you very much we now have our last speaker who is emman scanlon a community member who is addressing the board on cersei and art funding as well as the rpd is mr scanlon in the room okay let's just give him a few minutes to connect mr scanlon
032are you with us yes okay you have three minutes whenever you're ready hi board uh i'm here as confused i'm here as a representative of the children's agenda and the education policy director when we received news that the board was considering and the administration considering reinstituting the school resource officer program and already stationing police officers school buildings we were very distressed i want to be clear a vote for the sro program a vote for police on school grounds is a vote for the school-to-prison pipeline if you support this you support students being handcuffed you support students being pepper sprayed you support the over criminalization and disproportionate arrest of students of color that is what this is research is very clear police in schools do not make them safer there's no conclusive evidence of this from
033multiple studies but multiple studies do show is that students of color are disproportionately arrested when there is a presence of police officers and suspensions are higher this is the wrong direction for this district it was a great victory in june of 2020 when you took a new direction and to go back on that promise is a complete reversal of this trustful thing that you are doing with the community and frankly terrible policy uh you are hurting your students at a time when they are greatly traumatized dealing with all the fallout of covid for um from everything from deaths in the family to the violence in the community yes the violence in the community and the stress of all these past 18 months and so rather than getting to the root of the problems that students
034are facing and supporting them you are re-criminalizing them and re-traumatizing them through police presence this is a failed policy you must reject this and every one of you that votes for this is voting for the school-to-prison pipeline thank you thank you mr scanlon we appreciate your comments tonight uh i'm sure that is the end of our speakers i want to note that we also have um eight comments that were submitted to the record and those may be viewed on the district's website and also on board docs thank you and thank you to everyone who came out to speak tonight um up next on the agendas reviewing and acceptance of the minutes from the august 17 2021 financial cow minutes can i get a motion for those minutes so moved second all those in favor all
035right hi i'm going to go voting okay here we go all right i think everybody did you get all the votes in mr adams i was waiting on your vote are you so i'm updating um the system my computer oh no worries so your yes yeah okay got it okay thank you [Laughter] up next is our chief financial officer carlene pierce um who's going to give the november 2021 um oh wait are we doing that yeah i'm gonna have carlene present first and then we'll do the resolution review so carlene pierce our cfo europe on the september 2021 on on audited financial report and trend analysis thank you foreign thank you [Music] complex technology good evening president white chairman person lebron commissioners superintendents and dr jallo it's an honor to be here before you this
036evening and a privilege to serve the children of rcsd as usual we're going to get started with our report this evening to discuss the cash flow and the point that i want to make with regard to the cash flow is that we are holding our own we're going to see the impact one more month from the fact that we do not have iran but again we are still like i said holding our own the true story is going to be in the next three months and i want you to take a look at those bottom lines very carefully for the next three months from october november and december and we're going to be talking about this a little bit later this evening but this is a point again where our sursa arpa will have impact
037on our liquid cash flow this liquid cash flow is for all funds and so therefore cersa and arpa will be included within this and what i want to say here with regard to this is that there's actually going to be one week within december where our cash balance will be reduced to about five million dollars and so again what we need to do is remain cognizant of that fact of our spending vulnerability if we are not diligent in our dis and disciplined within our spending we could be at risk so i just want to put that out there that if that is something that we do need to consider we fully expect that the state will be walking this walk with us as they have shared in the past that they will be there for
038reimbursement and will be timely and we have every confidence that that will take place where i'd like to go to next would be on page 15 kalia if that's okay because we have the visual again of the what this looks like without the numbers and just in the graph form you'll see those dips again showing the vulnerable points in the next three months and then if we go to page 15 on page 15 we are looking at the budget transfers or journal entries that occurred over this past month and what i really want to point out this particular month is that you're going to see the establishment of the grant funding so be it cersa or arpa or title money coming in all of those budgets are being established so that's what you're seeing is
039the movement there with those journal entries to get those budgets for those grants established so it may look a little bit perplexing and confusing compared to what we've seen in the past there but that is again just the establishment of the grants and the budgets within those grants if we go back to the um sorry kelly if we go back to the memo there's one thing i would like to point out with regard to the h fund and the k fund and that's where you will see the expenditure of updating our equipment some of our equipment within our buildings in this particular case this capital expenditure is for x-ray scanning machines so that was processed this past month as well and lastly as part of this package we will have our first payment for our
040charter schools and as such we have promised to provide you with the updates on enrollment levels so we have to keep in mind that the september 1st enrollment level is actually projections that are given to us by the charter schools in august so as you can see it's going to show the [Music] where we were last year compared to where we think we're going to be this year and at this particular point in time once again you're going to see where our enrollment is in charter schools is expected to increase right now by students again concerning this is something that i will speak a little bit more about later on in tonight's presentation because i know we're on a tight schedule and i don't want to take too much time in this we'll go into
041further detail later on the other important thing to look at in this particular chart is that for the november 1st number that number is going to be felt to be much more accurate so if you take a look at it from the 450 to the 566 we're banking on the fact that it will be closer to that 566 level come that november payment so again we have to keep an eye on that because we're running pretty tight when you take a look at the variance between budget to projection which is in the far right hand bottom corner you're going to see how tight it is if we actually start to have greater increase than what we're projecting right now we will be falling short with regard to what we had actually budgeted are there any
042questions i'll start at the end no questions adams and adams no i'm susan white vice president elliot yep clark any questions okay i do have some questions just too i'm sorry um on page three of this report um kelly if you can go to page three you share with us what this h fun project for x-ray scanner for auto clear llc what this is yeah for the h1 what this x-ray scanner thing is certainly and we do have um jim shepard here this evening as well so jim if i misquote any of this i will state my understanding but my understanding is what we're doing is we are actually fortifying the scanners within the buildings that we we have there was some equipment that needed to be replaced and other equipment that just needed to
043be brought up to speed so to speak am i saying that correct okay do we know what schools we're putting scanners in or updating the equipment for the scanners i don't have that list with me this evening do you know okay so we're paying 15 000 per school because the total amount for this contract is 157 500. so is it 15 000 for each of the schools oh each unit so there'll be multiple units in the schools right in one of the schools commissioner lebron we did have a situation where the times were adjusted so that in that case the upper school and the lower school were arriving at the same time so there wasn't enough equipment to actually accommodate all children arriving at the same time and then i guess my final question on
044this because i have additional questions but i'll submit it to the board log because i just want to understand this one a little bit deeper than we'll have time tonight to go through um is there a resolution that's going to come before the board for this amount i don't know mike if there was one put together or not this is a requisition that was being passed through mike can you turn on your mic sorry is that on now yeah good evening commissioners uh there's not a resolution attached to this specific item we're replacing equipment we're not adding any new schools uh so therefore it's just using our h-fund resources to replenish the equipment which is a eligible expense okay so then i guess i need some clarity because i thought anything over 35 thousand dollars
045as an expenditure would have to come to the board in the form of a resolution legal i'm kicking it to you i would i would defer back to um the deputy superintendent of superintendent if that's how we want to bring it forward we certainly can do that um it's uh it's an item that we really need to replace in order to get our students into school uh safely and quickly uh we that's that's the main reason for doing this but i will defer to whomever would like to if they want to change that process legal the the policy you're referring to commissioners for professional service contracts these are this is purchasing which does fall under a different policy it does not have the same thresholds interesting okay i'll keep that in mind because i've seen
046resolutions for purchasing come to the school board but i will once they choose to bring purchasing contracts forward i agree but under the two different policies that exist it does not have to happen um in all instances and what mike is saying is that this is one that they did not bring forward in that way i i don't know tim tim schmidt the director of purchasing um has uh that side of things so i don't know specific on this matter but there are times where it does not have to per policy come come to the board okay i would ask that the board um as an entire body look at that because it's a fairly large expense but if their expenditure is happening to this amount and they're multiple we don't know about it i
047we i don't even know if it would have shown up on a report if it wasn't in this finance report um how else we would have been informed of that expenditure if it's not through a resolution that we're voting on and having that clarity and understanding um i will submit some additional questions through the board log thank you and then my final questions are on page 12. um is it page 12 no i'm sorry it is the substitutes where was that on page 15 we were on was the 15 yeah it was it was page 15 but on the bottom it says page 12 of 31. um the substitutes i here you currently we were moving these lines around um and creating i guess essentially new or codes for them but i was also just
048looking at the amount that we're in that we budgeted for some of these schools is that correct is that for example um let me use school number two because it's the first one there's a thousand dollars budgeted for that school and then if i look at school number three there's five thousand budgeted for that and then that says teacher and administration substitutes so is that the amount that we're budgeting for substitute teachers for those schools or substitute administrators is that what that means i'm going to have to take a closer look at that commissioner lebron because i don't want to give you the wrong information i want to fully understand what's going on in those cases okay i would i would like to um formally submit that for the board question log and you can
049answer it that way but the reason i um want to uplift that in particular issue around i hope that that's not the budget item line for schools because we know that we on top of the shortages always well i want to say since i've been on the board the fact that we have under budgeted for substitute teachers and not had a proper appropriate system for management of that expenditure that has been quoted and cited by the state auditors multiple times to this district and so i would imagine that that's a low amount especially if administration substitutes is on there when some of our retired admin selves can make up to 500 a day so if a school only has a thousand dollar budget and we have a higher paid administrator on the scale that's two
050days worth of work for a retired administrator assigned to a school so just curious about those numbers i fully understand and i'll make sure you have an answer thank you does anybody else have any additional questions all right thank you carlene um we're gonna review the first quarter report do we review that too here yes we usually do give me one second okay thank you is this mike schmidt who does this report it rolls up to my schmidt yes oh mike come on down so mike i'll just have you stay right there real quick i'm not going to have you present this but i do want to ask my colleagues if they have any questions about the material that's in here this would be the time to ask to you or if not we can
051submit to the board question log does anybody have questions on this particular quarterly change report no no no okay all right mike that was it i just wanted to fix that questions this would be the time to ask about that particular report my apologies for the slow reaction time from the back i was trying to process the actual report so i know i'm sorry i'm still also learning this new system because the agenda had them listed a little bit different and then the yeah usually i pull a hamstring trying to get up here faster so my apologies i'm still um figuring this out myself all right up next is the resolution review [Music] and this is for the november resolutions and you will notice that the resolutions also look very different this time around and
052this is the new format that they um will look like this is part of them being uploaded into board docs and how board docs generates them so it is a different format certainly take some time to review them it took me a minute to kind of figure out i do think it is a little bit more clear on what i'm reading what i'm reading however it does take some time to get used to so you want to look them over and if you have any questions that you would like to ask now please let me know are there any questions on the resolutions president white no i i probably will submit one uh i definitely will submit one to the question okay and again it's a new format and how these resolutions look and read
053so okay if there are no questions i'm going to move us on and we do have a guest tonight speaking right so laura is here uh with action for education equity so thank you laura for coming in to present um for those listening in uh laura um is one of our parents who really got involved in the issue around the need for funding for the district in a different way and i'll let her speak more about that but up to date laura has been fundraising for the district to provide some services that our students need and that was her call to action and we're very grateful to have her here today and i have axed her to come and present to both the board and the public listening today so that they can learn more
054about the work that laura's doing and the organization that she's with and also see how others in the community and board members can get more involved with that so laura turning the mic over to you thank you thank you can i take my mask down absolutely thank you very much um i'm very grateful to be here today thank you everybody um so yeah this i'm talking to you today about action for education equity and my name is laura smith and i'm a parent and a rochester city resident and well basically i'm just going to take you through a little bit about who we are what we're doing and how we would like to ask for some help um so we're a group of volunteers from the greater rochester area that are fundraising to support the
055rcsd so we're in the process of working to create a smooth system where people can easily support students and donate money and know that that money is going where it's needed most so we have a mission and our mission is to take action to help students in rochester new york thrive by raising critically needed funds for the rochester city school district and bringing awareness to the systemic inequities that are a barrier to student success this is a finance meeting so i'm only going to talk about the first part of our mission tonight but if anyone does have questions or wants to know about the other part of our work you feel free to reach out to us you can do that anytime so um we are um we have rochester education foundation as our fiscal
056sponsor so through them we have transparency and a clear framework and how the money is collected and distributed and accountability as to what we're doing um all of the information about uh how much we are um paying rochester education foundation as a fiscal sponsor is available on our website um and if anybody does have questions about that i can take you through the details of that but um that's the way that we've chosen to set ourselves up at this point because ultimately we would like to not exist and be absorbed into the education foundation um so what have we achieved so far so up to this point we've raised around about thirteen thousand dollars um and we've donated uh at this point nine thousand of that to the district so uh for our first donation
057we um reached out to the district to say that we had three thousand dollars what would you like to do with it and at that point that was when students were looking to go back into hybrid learning so uh we were um we purchased a number of chromebook bags um for those students to be able to transport their laptops to and from school and then um for our second donation again we had three thousand and we we came to the district and asked what you might need and we were given a list of um original spanish texts um that uh for the sixth grade i believe uh and so we were able to buy half of those with the three thousand that we had and then we were able to reach out to other organizations
058within the community and uh through them we were connected with the wilmot cancer institute and they gave us the other 3 000 to purchase the rest of those books so at this point and that is what we have donated so far and really um that was just the first phase of us trying to work out how can we do this and and testing some ideas and seeing what the community response was to that um so what's next for us is that we are looking to clearly communicate rcsd's biggest needs to potential donors that's the next thing that we're really looking for so we're looking to create effectively i would call it some kind of wish list that incorporates input from students and staff to ensure that we target the money to where it can provide
059the most impact so for example when we talk to students often they'll say things like uh well our sports kit stinks or something like that so you know we're saying okay well is it if you weren't looking for sports things then that would be on our list and as we collected money we would fund those particular things so we are working at the moment with the administration to start developing that list and to find a way to develop that list where we have maximum student input at classroom level so how do we raise money so the first thing that we set out to do was basically make it easier for people to donate and get involved in supporting the district so we have a website and we have the ability to donate directly on the
060website we also have the ability for people to delay by cell phone by texting action rock to that number and we're also set up now on benevite which is the giving platform used by quite a few local employers like xerox and so people are able to make a donation straight out of their salary to support the district and we do get people donating that way we're also now set up to basically create a lot of crowdfunding fundraising so that people can set up a facebook fundraiser for their birthday and that money can come and support the students we're also now if anybody uses amazon to make purchases and uses amazon smile all of the donations to rochester education foundation from amazon smile go directly to the action fund and come directly to the rcsd um
061and then we also are reaching out and getting some support from local businesses and other organizations so at the moment for example um laughing girl chocolates has a mixed berry chocolate i think they call it um and that proceeds from the sale of that gets 30 goes towards um the fund and as i said we we you know were able to make that connection with willmott cancer institute so to be able to um get donations from them when they know about things that um that need to be purchased so that's uh how we work and really i guess the main point of me standing here today is to sort of ask and discuss how we're looking for your help so um we really need uh support from the community and from the board to spread
062the word about ways people can get involved so we have a website we have on facebook we are on instagram we have an email i've left them in my handbag but i have actually got some little business cards that i would like to ask some of the board to take and it's just a little uh business card with a qr code so if you know somebody who's interested in getting involved they can click they can click that and get to our page easily and find out about what we're doing and how they can get involved that's all i was going to say does anybody have any questions yeah thank you lauren i'll start at that end over there um dr jallo any questions commissioner uh powell commissioner malloy commissioner adams um leslie dr marshall uh
063no but thank you for coming tonight appreciate it oh i i did want to say one thing um carrie pecor will reach out to you tomorrow and circle back oh fantastic thank you you're welcome and thank you for coming we appreciate you uh thank you then elliott no questions yes just thank you for the work that you're doing all right thank you yeah and um laura i do want to thank you and all of the donors and all the parents that are involved in really heaping the call like i said when we were going through the mid-year layoffs i think that really sparked a lot of conversations for folks and i just really admire the fact that in your position that you were in and watching that from the outside as a parent said what
064can we do this is so heartbreaking to families in the district and what can we do at this grassroots level to support the district with this deficit um and then it has morphed into this and i really appreciate it and i know that we will continue to educate our educators and our families about this wishlist and this desire to help fund some of these things that we can't necessarily always fund very quickly and effectively and efficiently internally because of the system itself so thank you for coming out if you can pass the materials to our board clerks you will make sure we all get them and certainly we can leave them out and um also share them i'll also make a request that we share them uh digitally and through social media for the district
065on behalf of the organization so that they know sure thank you thank you so much up next we have an update on the fun balance and i am not sure who's presenting that piece is that our cfo as well long-range plan first i think long-range plan commissioner lebron and then fund balance oh i see on here i have it as fun balance first so which one is it okay oh okay i know the agenda is different from this agenda and that's what's confusing me too so thank you again laura all right update on the fun balance though cfo yeah thank you i had my documents in the other order as well okay the goal of this presentation this evening is actually just to have us focused on three primary areas that we need to take
066a look at this year we cannot lose sight of so first up is going to be our fund balance we're going to make a recommendation to you this evening and then bring the recommendation back in the form of a resolution at a later meeting for your approval and acceptance we are going to take a more in-depth look at charter school enrollment as i mentioned earlier as well as the source of spending plan for the next slide so with regard to this particular slide we have a listing now of all the fund balance items that we recommendations that we have listed for fund balance for this end of this current year and i just wanted to go over some of those with you as you'll see some of them are driven by resolutions from times past
067i want to say a special thank you to carrie couples our director of accounting who actually did a lot of research going back into resolutions of the past as well as taking a look at our current fund balance policy to make sure that we were in compliance with the policy and so what you're going to see up there are some new items as well as items that are not going to change you're going to see um and first of all maybe i should just ask if there's any questions with regard to any of those items that are listed there on that particular sheet okay vice president elliot so just explain um carl leave what um give descriptions of what these uh funds are for so that people in the audience at home understand what these
068funds are sure absolutely and i apologize but i left my document at the table back there i was doing the other one first just one moment please i had the range plan up first so i thought it was all organized and i left the wrong one at that table and between the agenda and the online system it's not a problem at all right okay so if you take a look at the um non-spendable payments the first one for 15.6 million um that's going to be the charter school payments that we will pay out or would be budgeted to pay out between july and august of this current budget year we paid that out of last year's money so that then this year we would consider that to be a prepaid we have restricted allocations there
069of debt service flexible spending scholarships and student funds with regard to debt service that is the debt service obligation that we will have for our current year meaning that's what we have to pay to repay it to it would be on the obligations that we have to support our bonds our projects that we have okay correct so that's how much we have to pay for this year that's correct okay um the next item down is actually the next three items down are brand new requirements under gasby 84 and that was just implemented this year and gatsby 84 is a realignment so that it's removing restricted funds that were previously held in the trust and agency fund and placing them within the general fund and so again that is just something it's an audit requirement that
070we have to go through we're just making sure that we're following the rules as they are stated and we have moved that now into the general fund because it is now obviously underneath the uh trust and agency fund so what is flexible spending and what is scholarships and what is student funds again these are questions i'm putting out there so that the our audience understands our finances right so it's my understanding that with the flexible spending account it's a benefit that our employees would have and so we have to make sure that we would have that fund funding set aside for those that are participating in that program with scholarships it is just that it's any money that has been given to the district that would be considered for scholarship payments out to students would
071have to keep aside the money that was donated for that benefit and the last is student activity fund which would be our extra class funds let me just go back to the scholarship funding so that this is money that say someone from out of the district has given specifically to a student to a specific student it would be given to a specific um scholarship that would be awarded to students as the student who qualified could be awarded for that money and for that purpose the committed funds now the next three down that you see workman's comp oppab and the insurance claims the insurance claim starting with that one would be we keep in close contact with the legal department as far as any insurance claims that could be made against the district so that amount
072did not change from last year to this year the same type of thing with workman's comp at five million dollars that is approximately one year's worth of expenditure so really keeping it at that level the committed op this was much discussed this past winter and spring so that dollar amount now the increase there by 7 million was a result of resolution 790. um so we've we have added two what is opeb what does that stand for yes that's other post employment benefits so again if we had to close our doors tomorrow what is the dollar amount that we would be expected to be that would have to be paid out and in our case it's much much greater than this amount but this is just allowing us that reserve to start putting that it's putting
073money aside so if we had to close today what would that amount be it i don't have that off the top of my head it is very significant and we certainly can get that to you it's um mind-boggling when you actually will see it um so so colin can you explain to me the insurance claims is this money set aside for you tell me it's money set aside for possible litigation in the course of the year so it would be we would be running with the figures that are being provided by the legal department who keep us surprised what those obligations might be for the current year so it's basically again so that you have money set aside that you could handle the obligation without having to to have an unfunded expenditure within your general
074fund budget so so this say for example we have someone that wants to sue the district for two million dollars is this not that same that's that that funding no that'll be another part of money this would be and i'll let steve take over but this would be um because you do obviously just like in with any other insurance policy you would have insurance money that could cover it but this would be beyond um to help with offset some of those costs yeah i believe this is up to our self-insured reserve so we're self-insured up to a level and so we have our litigation attorney go through um the list of open cases and decide if we need to set aside a certain amount of money and we reserve that amount and it if it
075ever gets up to the 500 000 uh self-insured limit then we just set it for 500 000 but we most cases are well under that so we we preset those so that since we're self insured up to that level we have to make sure we always have uh a ready reserve of funds if all of our cases that we have to pay out correct okay all right thank you the next item down i'm sorry are we still taking questions yes madam chair oh oh yes absolutely i'm sorry commissioner fell okay all right so um in particular the committed funds reference resolution 790. 790 has a provision it resolved the superintendent shall present requested changes to opeb committed fund with the goal of maintaining a sum greater than one year and less than two years of
076benefit payments at least once annually prior to fiscal year end the board this proposal does not increase the amount it does not bring it up to one year so um i need to hear the rationale for leaving it the same as it was back in march when we uh passed this resolution as i recall the commissioner powell the amount was 10 million at that point in time and we are increasing it by an additional 7 million resolution 790 already increased it to 7 million because the resolution that's inboard docks for march 22nd was amended on the floor because that resolution originally was to increase it from 10 million to 20 million 889 000 uh commissioner elliott that was that goes directly to your question about what should it be if we had one year of
077reserves it would be 20 million almost 21 million now in the course of preparing that resolution it was obvious that we couldn't we didn't have fund balances support a 21 million dollar an increase of 11 million dollars so we through discussions and and the record will show this um a review of the video would show that our discussions brought us to the point of change of increasing it from 10 million to seven to 17 million additional 7 million that was in april any any proposal now would be to bring it up from 17 million to something closer to the 21 million i think commissioner paul if i'm not mistaken the discussion that was had at that point in time was that for the past year that had already been locked down for that amount and
078so again i'm happy to go back through all of this but we we believed that we acted in best faith with what we knew at the time and what we could do at the time because the other fund balance for last year when we closed it out had already been settled at that amount so it was the year was already closed so what we're trying to do is bring it up to that amount as quickly as we possibly can with what we have available in which to do it i think you need to review the minutes of april 22nd you need to review the video of april 22nd because it may be a good faith effort but it does not capture what actually happened we um the res a resolution in april uh is well
079before fiscal year end of 2021. the presumption is that the seven million dollars from from from another commit from an assigned fund balance was going to be moved into this committed fund opec and within and the resolution clearly states an expectation that it would be increased now if there's a reason why we can't afford to increase it all the way up to a one-year threshold that's accepted i mean that could be presented to us as a as a phase-in plan if you will but um this this resolution essentially this proposal is essentially a no change proposal because 17 million is what it should have been on june 31st um i'm sorry june 30th thursday june 30th yes carlene and i will work together and we'll go back and review i was just trying to scan
080but i don't wanna i wanna focus but we'll go back and look and we'll get a response to you in a timely manner okay next next question i have is around the um health insurance uh recommendation the recommendation you have here is exactly the same as what was in resolution 578 which simply restored it to [Music] previous previous threshold the resolution calls for the superintendent to be informed by the joint health insurance committee recommendations at least annually prior to publication of annual financial statements has the joint health insurance committee met and what is their recommendation we have matt and we have been advised of the surplus and we've also reached out to lolly and our broker and they feel that this amount is adequate so again i'm happy to go back take a look at
081the resolutions as written we we did go through that exercise but i'm happy to do it again and um again as i stated we'll bring that forward to you in the form of a resolution i guess at this point at the next meeting for your acceptance and commissioner paul may i just say one thing i appreciate the questions what we would like to have up for consideration because i wasn't quite done with all the recommendations yet but just to keep in mind that this is the year that we are asking for dispensation so that we stay as liquid as possible with regard to our unrestricted and that was something that we have talked about in meetings past with the fact that again we have numerous we just have concerns with with regard to making sure
082that we do cover our obligations and that we have an unrestricted balance significantly sufficient i should say to cover any needs that may develop in the course of the year as we move in through cersei and arpa so that that's all so we will be happy to go back through research and bring it forward to you not a problem so i do hear what you're saying about and i heard you say it when you were presenting our financials that that we're going to be hitting a cash flow trough very soon and so that certainly right now is not a great time to be talking about increasing committed fund balances but it's also therefore not a great time to be asking for a resolution to assign funds it's better that those dollars continue to reside in
083in your available fund balances until we get to the other side of that trough because you're basically saying well once you've assigned these funds you're basically saying they can't be used for anything else including managing our basic cash flow so my recommendation is that you hold off on any resolution until we get to the other side of that cash flow trough the only concern that we would have with that is being able to close out our year-end statements our financial statements with our auditors and this information is required by them to know how we are to apply the funds so any delay there means that we would not be able to deliver the year-end report are you saying that this is a recommendation for balances effective june 30th right as a matter of protocol what
084i need to do is i deliver the recommendations to the superintendent we discussed that this year i included dr jallo in the discussion as well um to make sure that we were all on the same page before we brought it forward to the board so a lot of thought like i said has gone into this we we did study the resolutions to policy again i'm happy to go back through but we want to make sure we're absolutely on firm ground before we brought it forward to you based on what you just said i'm going to revise what i said earlier if this if this recommendation is for effective june 30th and the close of the 2021 books then the 17 million for opeb is exactly what it should be thank you but i thought we
085were talking about set-asides for 21-22 so the concerns that i raised about the joint health committee and about where opabs should be is something we do need to be in active conversation about for when we're budgeting okay um there's also since i don't know about june or july we i if you'll recall i proposed some further changes to policy 6500 that have nothing has happened since we had our original conversations about them at the beginning of summer and because we are working through financial policies right now um there there needs to be some more conversation and get some closure on those items because they include possibility of further restricted funds that we might want to put into place effective 21 22 fiscal year okay so um thank you for the clarification that we're talking about
086closing out the the books june 30th 2021 and that covers it for me thank you thank you any other commissioners with questions [Music] i think we left off on insurance claims we have urban campus renewal as an assigned dollar amount of 10 million dollars there as well and that is for um just to again take a look at our campuses um what they what they look like the feel the um ambiance there if you will the structural um strength weaknesses within those buildings and just to make sure that our campuses are fully uh looking alive and and we're using that as a marketing strategy too to bring the charter students back into the district we just want to make sure that we're fully keeping up with the expectations of our parents what they want for
087their children and also what we want for our children the labor contracts are the retro payments three million dollars we had set aside for that from the 2021 budget we have the 14.1 million and you may remember this last year when we talked about it at this point in time we thought at that point in time the dollar figure was 12 million that would cover our obligation to the state for both the phase one and phase two for the fmp and that was the adjustments in the right interest rates so this is the amount that we feel comfortable in stating that we owe back to new york state for the adjustment in those interest rates we do have the health insurance which you talked about assigned for encumbrances that is an allowable set aside that
088we can when we can place within the fund balance to make sure that up until typically the end of october you're allowed to place encumbrances on expenditures so those expenditures can be paid out of the 2021 budget unless we do have that unassigned balance of approximately 50.2 million so of the total fund balance of 135 135 million that represents 16.2 percent of the total budget general fund budget again this is general fund only and of that amount and again this is all defined in current policy 6500 where you take a look at the unrestricted fund balance it's composed of three different categories that being committed assigned and unassigned that total is 105.8 million roughly that equates back to when you take a look at the general fund operating expenditures for and section 3 subsection 3.1
089of that policy when we're using the general fund operating expenditures of 602 million we're running currently in our unassigned or unrestricted fund balances roughly 15 percent and it states that it should not the policy states should not be greater than 15 and currently we are running at 18 percent which we are allowed to do that but there is an expectation that if it is higher what we need to do is spend that money down and it can only be spent on one-time non-reoccurring expenditure so again just to say that more clearly our unrestricted fund balance right now is running at 18 percent policy says 15 percent unless there's agreement by the board that we can exceed the 15 for one-time expenditures and again this is all according to policy 6500 for the fund balance other
090questions on that so the board needs to approve the suspension of the of the policy and to to to maintain the 18 or we're going to have to spend it when i when i read the policy again and again my team and i kept going over the policy as well as um as you may recall the number of um conversations we had with the osc it's my understanding we are allowed to exceed that with your approval and that those ex that that amount that's exceeds the amount the 15 so the three percent over we have to collectively agree that it will only be expended on one-time non-reoccurring expenditures the amount that's over the 15 million yes the amount that's over the 15 percent so the amount says okay i think you're going to bring it
091forth as a resolution at the is it at the next board business meeting or i would like to bring it forward the next board which is next thursday absolutely yeah so so let me just be yes clear so so we are in good shape with our fund balance we are in better shape much better shape than where we were a year ago a year ago um leslie and i were just talking about this where we were a year ago and we don't want to go back there so you say we're much better yeah what is it going to take us to be good where where what does that mean we have to remember that what happened with our fund balance in this past year the financials was driven by covid and so we did not
092have certain um uh wage expenditures that we didn't have to realize we did not have certain contractual obligations that we had to pay out so as we tried saying throughout all of last year it was a false read of our financial condition so now what we need to do is in order to remain in that level or to have it sustained we're going to have to fill up figure out how to continue to close our our budget gap there still is a budget gap there and that's something else that we'll get to this evening we'll go over that again but because you don't want to deplete fund balance you don't want to have to always go back to the fund balance to continue to deplete it we don't want to take away what we've accomplished
093this past year so that's what we'll take a look at that this evening as well and and i'll show you what the figures are there the projections in our long-range plan but we we did make significant progress another item that we had up for this evening was a more in-depth look at our charter schools and so on this particular chart what you're going to see is the new charter schools that are proposed for opening all of these are currently under review with the exception of rochester science rochester academy of science which has been approved and on the far right hand side you're going to see what the allowable chartered enrollment number is and when they are anticipated to open we'll all be in the same range of september 2022. so again we just need to
094keep our eyes on the charter schools and with how that's going to impact our um our enrollment so tom if we go to the next slide okay okay so all of the numbers from um marlene can i ask a quick question i'm so sorry i missed something on slide number four um you had um mentioned something about a 15 percent and i didn't know what you were talking about sure sorry no that's okay if you go to section 3 subsection 3.1 of our general fund fund balance policy it references that it can only that are unrestricted or unassigned i should say and which includes unders unassigned is included within unrestricted that the unrestricted amount can only be a maximum of 15 percent at the current time with current calculation it's running at eighteen percent okay
095thank you okay on the charter school enrollment trends what's important to know about this particular slide is that the numbers up till from 2018 to 2021 are all reconciled that means that those were the absolute enrollment figures that we experienced in that period of time and each of those years the number stated for 2122 is projected as i said earlier and it's projected at that rate per pupil which is on the right hand side so thirteen thousand nine hundred ninety five dollars next year for twenty two twenty three which again is a budget consideration for us the projected enrollment is um set to be anticipated to be i should say at 7407 and the projected rate per pupil is 14 195 dollars so again we have to keep our eye on our charter schools i
096want to point out here as well that recently we received the fitch rating for monroe county and as it relates to rcsd the fitch rating was actually for the county overall was reduced because of charter school impact on the schools and so again where we made significant improvement with moody's and s p the fitch rating is another rating agency and they actually lowered the monroe county rating because of the impact of charter schools to the school districts so i just wanted to so so what does that mean can you talk a little bit more about that about the charters the rating right the the rating itself means that they see that as being a risk fish sees that as being a risk the impact of charter schools to this area to monroe county is seen
097as being a risk because it's continuing the charter schools are continuing to take the enrollment away from the other school districts especially rcsd oh not only ours is our css any child that attends a charter school within rcsd so overall it's a monroe county rating it's not an rcsd rating but are they taking let me just ask this question are are students from suburban schools attending chart these charter schools they can have seats within these charter schools as well but we don't know for sure if that's the case that there is um a certain number that was in there but i i don't have that information for you this evening carly yes um i'm sorry i'm sorry commissioner malloy i have um commissioner clark's hand up first so i'm going to call on him and
098then i'll call on you thank you yes my question related to a saturation rate does new york state have a rate where they indicate that we cannot go beyond as it relates to charter schools versus public at this time there's no moratorium that has been established i know that individuals as well as entities have been asking for a moratorium in this area but when you put these and this does not include the new charters that are just up for approval but when i last did the calculation the number of students actually attending the charter schools in our for that impact us that number of children enrolled in those programs is second only to the greece in the entire greece school district so that's that's the population that we are looking at um with with the
099total number but it's a very valid question that you're proposing and what should that if you know what should that moratorium look like and when could it come about thank you commissioner malloy thank you commissioner um i on behalf of the board led the required charter school public hearing this evening for the rochester sports academy charter school and it's listed on page five that the charted enrollment is 500 but what i announced at the hearing tonight it says that there's a projected enrollment of 400 students so i'm wondering what the impact will be on that i would have to look that up i don't know why there's that difference because what we do is we actually get our information right off of the state's website that is something again that we've really tried to make
100our charter school reconciliation process much more robust and that's part of that is absolutely going to the state website to get the information so i'd have to take a look to see why there's a discrepancy first thank you okay um i have a question for you too curling just on the projection for the enrollment trends um this is on page six though have you gone to page six yet i just want to talk about the like financial impact that that's going to have on the district um i know that you just mentioned that and that is a great question about the mandatorium because people have been asking and calling for that i do think there's going to have to be some interventions because there will be a tipping point at some point where the district
101is essentially going to be gutted of our students so um with the projections between the two numbers um i just want to highlight that the rate per pupil right now has been is 13 995 but that the rate is the rate per people projected to go up because as i heard from the state that they were going to not increase the rate per people um for enrollment for students are they going to increase it in 2022 2023 school year this is the information that we have again right from the state so we're trying to work with the most current information that we have available to us for budgeting purposes because you might recall charter schools was another area that in the past had not been adequately funded in those in that budget code so we
102are working closely with the state we've developed a relationship and this is the information that we have have as of today interesting okay the other thing commissioner ron that i just want to bring up is that some of you may have read where governor holcol has the settlement of the lawsuit has actually occurred now with the new york students education rights and so as you may have heard then foundation aid is supposed to be repaid back to the schools um and so it's it's wonderful news first of all that we should be getting all of our financial our foundation aid in the next couple years but what we need to remember though is that if our student enrollment continues to decline foundation aid is no longer frozen and that means that foundation aid will follow
103the declining enrollment so even though the money is due to the school it does not mean that we will get um that amount that whole amount that we're expecting back if our enrollment continues to decline yeah thank you for uplifting that and and i just want to you also that that are it's frozen right now so just want to clarify it's frozen it was frozen by the state because of covid and so is that correct it was frozen previously correct and then um the state had frozen it under governor cuomo and now it was just being starting to release as of this past year when we received that bump in foundation aid but now that it's not frozen it will start to follow enrollment again so in our case it works against us many school
104districts are going to see an increase in foundation aid because their enrollment is increasing in our case because we're continually decreasing our state aid foundation aid will be reduced thank you and commissioner yes that means that we've got to make sure that