CPS Board Business Meeting June 2, 2025

001I'm getting better. I'm getting better. I call to order the June 2nd, 2025 regular meeting of the Cincinnati Board of Education. We welcome everyone and request that everyone in the audience please silence your cell phones and electronic devices. And seeing a quorum of voting members, I call the June 2nd Cincinnati School Board meeting to order. Treasure Wagner. Mr. Craig here. Mr. Crossson here. Mr. Lindy here. Miss M here. Mrs. Weinberg. Vice President Bolton present. President Mos here. Please everyone stand for the pledge of allegiance this evening to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I kind of miss the students not doing that. So, welcome back to Treasurer Wagner, who has been off for a

002little bit. Can you call the attendance role? Oh, we did that already. Okay. Don't have to call it again. I'm sorry. Vice President Bolton, please explain. Make sure everybody's here. Please explain the virtual hearing of the public process. Thank you, Madam President. Members of the public who are online and wish to speak during the hearing of the public this evening may do so by clicking the chat button now. The chat feature will open for your requests for five minutes. If you would like a direct response to your questions, please make sure to share your name, your affiliation to the district, your school community, your topic, and your contact information. Thank you. Thank you. The chair will now entertain a motion and a second to approve the June 2nd business agenda, business meeting agenda. So moved.

003Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Mr. Crosset. Vice President E. Vice President Bolton. Today's agenda is approved as posted. Voted. Oh my gosh. We got a vote. Treasurer Wagner. Mr. Craig. Yes. Mr. Crossen. Yes. Mr. Lindy. Yeah. Miss M. Yes. Vice President Bolton. Yes. President Moffett. Yes. Superintendent Murphy, please in introduce to the board the following presentation from one of our schools. So today I am so excited to see the young people from Western Hills come and uh present to the public and to the board. Uh this is a group of young people who created a pedestrian safety campaign and along their journey they completed a presentation to schoolboard school uh for which um myself and uh Dr. Moffett, Miss Matt, Miss Bolton, we were able to listen to the young people's presentation. and

004they were selected the winners out of a group of a lot especially a lot of adults uh doing presentations and since then uh our communications team has worked with the school to be able to create a b a billboard that is up and was unveiled several weeks ago and even since then they've had a chance to come to the state house to make a presentation on their project. So, I'm going to turn it over to their teacher um to begin the leadership of how this presentation will go today. Well, welcome. We were going to switch seats with you all, but I don't know if we need to. We just have we'll stay where we are and have you all come up and give us a presentation. This is what it's about. Just a reminder, these

005students already presented to our state legislators. So they they went to Columbus, they presented, they got a standing ovation, it's online, and they rocked it. So go ahead. What we uh what we couldn't do really is rehearse for this evening because they've been on summer vacation. So um for the first time this year, I'm going to do a majority of the heavy lifting, I think. Um next slide, please. Um I was trying to just prepare for tonight, and this Jimmy Buffett quote instantly came to mind. This year has been an academic whirlwind, as you're about to see. Um next slide, please. What actually happened was we had a student of ours get hit at the beginning of the school year. Do you want to talk about that for real quick? Okay. So, at the beginning

006of the 24 2020 24 to 2025 school year, one of our dear classmates got hit. She was just waiting at her bus stop just trying to get to school like the rest of us every other day. This impacted our whole school because she was a very beloved member of our community and we decided that we wanted to stop this and make a change and this is how we decided to start a student pedestrian safety team. Great. Next slide please. We were minded by the words of one of our parents who lost our child, Ms. Rodriguez, who um said, "People have to start listening and paying attention." So, as a class, we decided that's what we're going to endeavor to do. Next slide, please. Uh the first idea we had was to make our own commercial.

007Um we assembled a group of young people on a very chilly October morning. Um do you want to talk about our commercial real quick? So we made this commercial to try to spread the word over the internet and everything because kids are always on the internet and so are parents. So, we were hoping to get this video out there so people can look up and look out when they are driving to verify the safety of everybody. Next slide, please. So, we started to make progress. The students started to design their own pedestrian safety campaigns with billboards. Um, this is an example of one of the early designs. The student was meant to be here this evening, but was detained. Um, and this is when I started to get kind of nervous as an educator because

008they were taking the project very seriously and as amazing as Lord Nisha's artwork is, we couldn't put that up on a billboard. Um, how do we go from that student artwork to a billboard? Next slide, please. This is when we ran into friends from United Collective, a group of advertising agency partners in the city of Cincinnati who met with us to do what they called a design sprint in our library. The image you see is from West High's library. It was probably one of the most exciting days of my academic life for sure. There was electricity in the air and what came out of that was images you can put on a billboard. Next slide, please. This is one of the images from that day. Next slide, please. And this is another one and you'll

009see the image that we selected to be our first billboard in a second. Next slide, please. Um, we also won a grant somewhere in the middle of this time for $250. We didn't know what to use it for. Someone suggested using it to buy t-shirts so that we looked sharp when we went to city hall. Um the t-shirt that I'm wearing was designed by one of our students who um couldn't be here this evening. That's what we spent the t-shirts the money on. Next one please. Um we did present at city hall successfully in December. We were very well received. We walked away with everything except for the money. Um next slide please. Um as our superintendent graciously mentioned, we did win schoolboard school pitch night in January. We didn't know what that meant and

010for quite a while we really weren't sure what that meant. Next slide please. Um most of February and March were lessons in the real world. We waited patiently for adults to get their budgets together uh both at the state level and local level. Um and in the meantime parents from Lakota school district reached out to us. They saw our news report about city hall and for the first time parents in Lakota who were working on similar issues as we were reached out to me via social media to see if we could help out. Um, next slide please. One of you guys want to talk about Aspen's Law? Yeah. Okay. So, Aspen law was proposed because one day Aspen who was just trying to get to school, again, a similar um situation, he got hit by

011a distracted driver. They were simply 15 years old. 15, just like the rest of us, a a student, a child, which I imagine most of you have, which you guys can imagine the pain their family felt. and their classmates and their friends. Now, the person who hit them only got about a $300 fine and a month in jail, which is nothing. Now, the law proposes that they that when you hit a student, it gets fined as the same level as if you would hit a construction worker. Because what makes their life less valuable than any other person? Good job. Awesome. Next slide, please. So, we waited um we wrote letters to our state representatives. We informed them about our own Gabby Rodriguez that we lost. And we were largely patient and we went back to

012studying the Syrian civil war, which was not nearly as much fun. Next slide, please. Um on May 2nd, unbelievably, we managed to get our billboard up in the course of the same school year. Um the folks at United Collective say that that process usually takes 18 months to two years. And what we started in August, really in October, we managed to pull together as a team between CPS's resources, our superintendent, extreme leadership, um our partners in the community, and we can now see that we saw that billboard when we left to come here today. It looked down on us as we drove here today. Next slide, please. Um we were invited on May 14th to attend the city um sorry to attend the state capital to be given a tour by um state representative Rachel

013Baker. What she didn't know is that we had more in mind than just a tour. The phrase that comes to mind is give an inch take a mile. Um next slide please. While we were at the cap on the same day they were having a hearing for Aspen's law and these students impro impro impromptu were invited to give delivered testimony on the record at the state house for Aspen's law and they spoke amazingly well. Um you want to talk about your experience you talked enough they talked plenty. Next slide please. So that's what we're here. Um um that's and that's that's how we ended up delivering testimony at the state house on May 14th, which was quite a whirlwind year. So I think these kids deserve all the applause you can possibly give them. [Applause]

014[Music] [Applause] Amazing, but they're educated and they're not quiet and they know we're not done yet and they know we're not done until we stop getting run over. So, the three things that we have, my numbering system of Microsoft went wonky, but um the three things we're specifically having in mind now going forward is to return to city hall to get the funding that we didn't manage to get the first year. It was wellreceived our presentation, but they needed specific things that we weren't able to propose. The meeting that they had was in the summer, so we're going to have to regroup and try again to propose to get money from city hall. Um, we've also been encouraged to make a documentary um, summing up this work so that we can share what we've done

015with other school districts and possibly even other states. So, that's something we're looking at doing next year. And what we need our support from the school board and from our superintendent with is trying to find some way of joining forces of working together. Um, working with Lakota was a first I believe and we were basically trying to create this as we go. I know it's a problem all across the city and a bunch of people are interested in this. How exactly do we collaborate and work together? That's something we need to explore going forward. But thank you for your time. Thank you for having us out again. Thank you so much. [Music] This is super awesome. You guys did it. And I know you can talk more than this, but you guys did it. [Applause]

016Thank you so much. Here, take it. Well, thank you all. Do board members have any questions? Board member uh Craig got questions. They have questions for you. So I don't don't really have questions, but I did want to make a couple say a couple things. One, uh we'll say three things. One, excellent job using an effective amount of time to do a presentation. I believe everyone in our comes before us should learn from this group right here. Um delivering a lot of great information in a very concise period of time. Number two, this issue is a very important issue in our community. And because we live in an urban city, these things are more likely to happen than anywhere else, right? And we want to make sure each and every one of you all as

017you travel, especially to a school that's on a major street that you're able to get in and out of school and that that the worries not be about your safety, but be a worry, you know, worried about whether or not you remembered your homework or the things that normal students should have to worry about, right? Um, and then the third thing, do not take no for an answer at city hall. I really appreciate you all pushing for them, and I believe if they were going to support the streets being safe for you all, then they should be able to put some effort into that and some support into that. So, I really appreciate your hard work. Well, member Lindy. Uh, I just wanted to say thank you first to the students um for sharing all

018of your advocacy this year and also part of your summer vacation here with us. Um, I think it is inspiring and a big deal. Uh, and I want to say thank you and great job. Um, and just to Mr. Demery, I I don't know if you would remember this, but I remember I just joined the school board. I definitely remember and was at a meeting at the West High Library, I think on the same topic. Mhm. Um and this would have been I remember this so vividly because it was the last the last meeting before co last meeting before the world shut down. Um and uh although I wish we were further along on this issue, I'm very glad you're still doing what you're doing. Uh and want to say thank you again to you

019and the students. So thanks Vice President Bolton. Yes. Thank you very much. And I'm I'm I'm glad that there were at least three or four of us here on the dis that uh voted to have you win. and and boy, it's one thing to have voice, it's another thing to take action, and then it's another thing to demand something be done. So, you've done all three of those things. And I think that's great. As a matter of fact, on the later on the agenda tonight, we will be talking about a resolution regarding this issue about increasing the penalties uh in school zones to the similar penalties that exist in a construction zone. to the points you have raised and Mr. Lindy's right. We a couple some of us were here with the loss of Gabby

020and and it was it was tragic and it was not that unusual. uh and people have been working at this for a long time. And I know uh also something pretty exciting as well is that the administration has been outlining and mapping um where we have safety needs particularly around our schools, the infrastructure of warning uh lights and what have you. And I think that uh that's another thing where we can be insisting because state law doesn't require it around high schools to the level that it requires at our elementary. So we might be calling on y'all again since you seem to be batting a thousand. So it's better than we've been able to bat now. We're really interested to see what you can get out of city council though. We're going to be watching

021that very closely. But congratulations board member Grath. It's great to see you again. and I I had the honor to be there when you actually got to commemorate the the the billboard on that day and it's great to see you back and keep going. Don't stop. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Member Matt. Yes. I just want to congratulate you all again. Uh this is just amazing work. Thank you for your advocacy creating awareness and as um VP Bolton stated your action right. This is happening in so many spaces. Um, but you have truly elevated your voice and you have demanded that we all pay attention. And so, thank you again. I was just so pleased to be um one of the individuals to support you in being um the the winner for the education policy

022fish night. So, thank you, Superintendent Murphy, Treasure Wagner, anything. Also want to say thank you to Miss Bills for being here today. uh huge I'm a huge supporter of uh Cincinnati public schools of Cincinnati and young people and young people being safe and productive uh in our community. Thank you. Thank you and thank you. So I just want to say and to to conclude I am so proud of you. It takes a lot of courage to do what you do, to do what you've done, and you're doing it just because. So, you've demonstrated that you're leaders. And so, just keep on speaking because there are people behind you. There people right next to you, but there are people behind you that are listening. I'm listening. The community is listening. And your voice really does matter.

023Sometimes you may feel like you're standing by yourself, but you're not alone. And so, keep speaking up. I think you guys probably talk a lot more than you're talking today, but um just just know that people are watching and true leaders like you are sometimes might feel like they're standing by themselves or this topic is just not really nobody's paying attention, but you make them pay attention and you did that and you're doing that and you do matter. So, thank you so much for being brave cuz it's not always easy, but you did it. You spoke multiple times. like it grows girl power but um everybody's voice matters so keep us keep us uh to your advisors thank you because I'm a fan you know I'm always a fan of all 66 of our buildings

024but when you all are doing great things I want everybody to know so thank you for coming bring come back anytime in the school year when you have uh your documentary done I want to welcome you back to come back and show it to us so that we can see it and keep tabs on it keep keep us listening thank you thank you for your Um, do board do board members have any um acknowledgements or announcements? I'm sorry, I skipped around on my on my thing. We've got an update around memberships and professional organizations from board member map and board member Craig. There any update? Uh, so yeah, there's an update. Um, so I reached out to Ray Hart who is the executive director for council great city schools and what uh what he expressed

025and was pretty much what I uh had mentioned before. There is an option to uh essentially take a year off of payments. Um that is certainly explorable if we feel it's something we would want to revisit again in the future going forward. Um, so that is something they have done with other uh districts in the past and I know at least a couple districts where especially when they're were facing some financial dire circumstances they allowed them to still essentially be a member um but not essentially pay for that year. I think there are some implications with that but not not something substantial. Um but there is no uh variations because the memberships are based upon um the size of the districts as well as uh some other factors they put into a formula each year.

026So um so that that's the will of the board. You could certainly decide to ask for the freeze for the year or you could certainly ask to just not be a member. Um, I think I would raise some caution about not being a member of the council and in large part because of some of the stuff going on in the federal government. Now, we do not have um a a voice that is on a daily basis providing information as to what's happening with regards to the department of education in the same way that the council who regularly meets with the secretary of education does. And so I would, you know, I would certainly caution going making such a decision to completely disassociate ourselves with them. Um, but if it's the will of the board to

027make a decision to ask for the one-year reprieve given our financial situation, I think that's something that's fair to ask and that is something that's been done for other districts in the past. just just to educate the public on what we're talking about. We have um the board as everyone knows we're in budget crisis making some decisions and the board is has memberships in the or various organizations and professional organizations and the council of Grey City Schools is one. So we have been trying to um also join in on budget cuts and that is one area where we have been looking at budget cuts from the board's um budget. And so what I'm hearing and I'm the proposal is to it's not a motion, it's just your proposal is that they will allow us the

028same benefit but to take a one-year freeze financially. I mean it's not my proposal. It's just what they would do. I I would actually not propose it at all. Um what is an option is if the board does not feel it's feasible to pay the fee pay the membership this year you can ask to have the membership p not pause but the fee not charged. I think there are again some limitations that come with that and some things that would not necessarily um from a representation at council activities and whatnot. Um but you still would be a member. You still get access to information. you would still have opportunities to gather some of the documents and data that is produced um by the council. Okay. Um that allows us to do some measurables and other

029things that we can level set against. Okay. Discussion. Vice President Bolton and then board member London. Well, I think it's particularly gracious on their part and I think it's the best of both worlds. uh in the board budget itself. It's a sizable item for our small budget and I think it'd be great to be able to not have that uh uh be paid this year and yet not lose our status as being part of the cohort of great city schools because I think we've certainly we've been a part of it on the 17 years I've been here. We've been members and I know we they've played an incredibly big role in finding goals in guard rail. So I I in the interest of us trying to meet the demands of this budget and and be

030damaged and and have to surrender very much what everybody else is surrendering. I think this would be a great option uh to withhold that uh but not lose the status of being a cohort. I think also board members need to think again about looking at the or direct staff board staff to look again at is there ways that we can also reduce our uh rather minimal outofstate travel uh that takes place as well because I think other members and the uh staff throughout the district are going to be asked the same thing. So, I would I would make it a proposal if we needed to or we can move on as a consensus that indeed we take the very gracious offer up from Great City Schools as well as ask board staff to review our

031budget and get it back to us as to whether or not we can cut some more from our budget uh and and meet the demands that the whole district is facing. That's great news that they want us to remain and but are willing to withhold the requirement to pay the about $50,000 that it takes to be a part. Okay. Thank you. Member Lindy. Thank you. And I apologize. I stepped out for just a second. I may have missed this. Mr. Craig, are they saying they will give us the same services and support for a year for free? Um no what they essentially saying is that we still would have access to what a member district would have access to um which is the information that they gather. Now there are still services and other things

032that they provide that likely if we were to be asking them to do would be very difficult for us to ask in the light of the fact that we are not paying them for it u because it does come at a cost to their services and staff. but information that they have gathered, information they use to rightsize or to kind of data right-size data standpoints of where we are against other districts and that type of thing still would be information that would be collected. There's still information they collect from us to kind of build into their metrics of what uh our districts across the country, urban districts across the country are doing. So I think it's all of those things would still be allowable. The idea has generally been that if a member district struggled

033to make their budget work and needed a year off in order to do so, they would not lose out on all the benefits of being a member um just because of that. One year. I got it. Thank you. I think um I got to think about where I'm at on that. I think that the council's um vision and coaching around what effective school boards do is the best I've seen anywhere. Uh, and it makes me sad that we've moved so far away from that. And so I'm I'm I'm going to do everything I can to keep us trying to go back in that direction because I think I think we could all myself included stand to learn some good things. Um, I was going to make a counter proposal because I do think it's really

034important that we as a board do our share around the costs that are needing to come out of the budget as a whole. So, one one thing I wanted to propose was whatever the percentage of the last year's whatever the overall percent cut is that we're needing to make at the end of the day. Um, I certainly think we could reduce our board member salaries by that figure. I know it's not large. I know this is largely a volunteer activity anyway, but we do get paid little. Um, and I'm happy to give up mine. Uh, and I think that if nothing else, uh, I think it is a a gesture of solidarity. Uh and so whatever that percent reduction is uh I think frankly all of us should be offering that. Well, thank thank you

035for that opinion. Board member Crosset, I had a question. This is more of a question for the treasur. Um if if we skip a year, uh then we're going to have in the next year's budget, we'll have this um $48,000 come back into the budget. And I'm just wondering if we could not necessarily um um truly skip a year. I wondered if we could reserve half of that money now and have half of it for next year so that we don't get hit with that big bump in the in in the next year if that's a possibility. We could smooth it out a little bit. I think that's a that's a definitely an interesting idea and we're hearing a variety of of topics. I just want to remind people the board members get by the

036state the revised code $5,000 a year a year. So what board member Lindy is proposing is that we take a cut. I'm going to invite the administration to be more responsible on the broader scheme. We're not going to pinch from a $60,000 budget and we need to cut millions. So I think that the the issue was a lot bigger. we would come and talk about the um the disparity between the Council of Great City Schools at $48,000 a year versus the Ohio School Board Association which is 13,800. It's not the same services. One's on the state level, the other's on the federal level, but there we have really big issues, millions to cut. And so, um you're not making a motion at the moment. You're just giving the information. That's the conclusion of old business.

037Um, any other questions? Board member M. I'm sorry. I just wanted to say thank you board member Craig for um providing a summary of um the discussion. Also, I really like board member cross's recommendation um because I really think that the work that the council does is really great and I really hope that in considering um maintaining that relationship that we can be more intentional about how we actually utilize their services so we can make sure that we're getting that return on investment as well. Sure. Any other comments? Okay, so we've got the information. Moving on. Um new business. Do board members have any acknowledgements or announcements? I just want to say congratulations to the class of 2025. All of our schools graduated some excellent students who brought in multi-millions of dollars. And so, congratulations

038to every single 2025 graduate of CPS. Um, Superintendent Murphy, please present any announcements and retirements that you may have. I definitely want to start with a few uh retirements on our certificated staff. We do have a couple and for today on the next slide, you will see a teacher uh Leslie Kubic from Fairview German Language School and an additional teacher, Kent E. Underwood from Silverton Elementary School. We also have on our civil service side, Sheila Podorf, a food service helper at Mount Washington School, and Andrea Robinson, a pair professional at Aspire. Congratulations to all uh being recognized for their [Applause] retirement. And then I do have a couple of quick timely kudos. Our kids, even though school is out, they are still hard at work. On the next slide, you will see an announcement about

039our district athletics. We do have some state qualifiers in track and field. So, we want to acknowledge those. So, in division one, Walnut Hills High School, Tazar Profett is a junior and she qualified for the long jump. Havlin Fairman, a senior, qualified for the discus. In addition to that, in division two, again, track and field state qualifiers, Javon Garman qualified for the 100meter dash and Lorenzo McMullen qualified for the high jump. We also have an all boys 4 by 100 relay team. And those students from Taft High School are made up of Marcus Hawkins, Javon Garman, Mansanna Torbert Jr., Eddie Holloway, and Zion Baker. Congratulations to those state qualifiers. Then my next uh kudos I want to give to uh Sierra Badget and Londa Thomas from our school and community partnership team. Uh they did

040host uh on May the 20th our parent leader celebration at Rothenberg Academy. The goal was to be in the rooftop garden section of the school. However, mother nature was not quite cooperating, but that cafeteria was absolutely beautiful. It was extremely well attended and everything was just perfect. We are so grateful for our parent leaders this school year. And then the last I want to just give uh just a little taste of this. Uh this is raw data from our spring 2025 state testing. Um, a lot of good things to celebrate. Again, this is raw data. You'll get more uh detailed a more appropriate time, but we did have growth in 15 of the 20 tested areas. One of those areas remain flat right now, but again, this is raw data and four saw a 1

041to 3% decrease, but there are opportunities there for cleanup, which our EMIs team is working on uh as we speak. So super excited about those high increases in eighth grade and at the high school level in American history, geometry, and algebra 1 in particular. Those are my acknowledgements for this time. Great, Madam President. I'm sorry. I just want to uh because I forgot to do it and then uh was reminded me there just celebrate all the folks who won employee of the year at the ceremony. Um because again this is something that was started a few years back. It's a great way to celebrate all our great employees in the district who do a tremendous job. Folks who were nominated got to come up. Past years have brought so much of their families that we

042then had to do a uh virtual version to to allow folks to see it and live stream it um because everybody brought like 20 people in past years. Uh but it is an exciting thing. I got to attend for a little bit this year before heading off to another event. But it was again another one of those ways we celebrate the staff in our district and the people who doing the hard work throughout the district and and really appreciate all of them. Great. And treasure wagon. So um I had quick three quick three quick announcements. Sorry. Um the first one being as Rob pulls it up. Um, Vice President Bolton kind of mentioned this at the last meeting, but I wanted to celebrate with the public on um, the state auditor released their new financial

043health indicators. Um, in Cincinnati, there's 17 indicators, two of which don't apply to school districts. They apply to different governmental entities. So out of the 15, we received um green, which is good on um all but two. The one uh indicator that's on the left was is a percent of expenditures versus revenues. And so we're in the little cautionary area, which is typical in later ends of a levy cycle. Beginning of the levy cycle, you tend to take in more money than you spend. The end of end of the levy cycle, you tend to spend more than you take in. Um, so that's kind of expected or not unexpected, let's put it that way. And then the other one is we'll never get out of yellow on this because the state uh or the Gazsby

044rules on our financial reporting make us show the state's liability to pay retirement payments to our employees. Even though we've already put our money in our share, the employees share of our retirement to match what they do. um we have to carry that on our books on our comprehensive annual financial report. So our percent of liabilities always looks horrible and that does is going to be for every school district in the state of Ohio. But anyway, so this is this is really nice um to have all the greens up there. So we are looking healthy as of the fiscal year 24 report card. Um next slide. Um just want to let the board know that we did receive our millillage estimate back from the county auditor um and so that we can do the next

045resolution at the next board meeting to um file and get our issue number. So we have to file with the after your second resolution accepting this language. Um we will take it to the Hamilton County Board of Elections to get our issue number um for the levy in November. This is the $48 million renewal um that was originally passed in 2016 and they've been fiveyear cycles. We are now extending it to a 10-year cycle at the same $48 million and that has a $15 million set aside for the for preschool. Okay, next slide. So last week, um Vice President Bolton and I were invited down to Channel 12 to film a segment on Ohio school funding. Um we were the Ohio uh experts. Um we were joined by superintendent of Franklin City Schools um Michael

046Sander and um so they did Paula Tody and Chelsea Sik did a did a segment with the educator team and then when we left they brought the representatives up to talk. So we were we were well represented by um Representative Isacson. He did a really nice job and um the other representative was Adam Bird. Um so they filmed for an hour. They're going to bring it down to a 30-minute segment and it'll air sometime in June. Um I know Miss Bolton, did you want to add anything to that? No, it's challenging and enjoyable and hopefully by the time it airs, most things will be resolved or at least known, but uh I think it was great that there's interest by a local station. Yes. And they did a really nice job on their research. They

047were very well informed on the challenges of Ohio State school funding. So, it was quite an honor to be in invited down there. Yeah, it was fun. Okay, that's it for me. Great. Thank you so much. Before we go to the hearing of the public, I'm going to just also provide an update to the board members and the public. Um, we got the total number around the board's budget. The council great city school membership is $50,000 a year. I'm rounding up. The board's total non-personnel budget is only $125,000. The council of great city membership is 40% of that $125,000. So, I just want to put that in perspective so that we're not talking about a lot of money, but that provides some context for those numbers. And I think I will turn it over now,

048Vice President Bolton. The chair is yours to please conduct a hearing of the public. Thank you, Madam President. Uh we are now at the item on the agenda for hearing the public. Each speaker will have two minutes and will address all comments to the presiding officer. If you're online, once a request to speak has been granted, you'll be invited to enter. You should click on the camera icon to go interactive. Provide your name, your affiliation to the district, your school community, your topic, and your contract contact information if you'd like a response to any questions you might have. This request is consistent with board protocol and we appreciate your help. In the unusual event that someone is not willing to follow this protocol, we reserve the right to end your person's time. Again, each person

049will have two minutes to speak. When the timer goes off, your time is up. Please refrain from discussing any personnel matters by name. After speaking, if you're online, you'll briefly see the welcome screen again as you transition back to live stream meeting. Finally, we ask that your public commentary be respectful of all listeners. And as we get started, we'll call up our first three uh speakers. Uh we have uh Jakyra Thompson uh Dean Wright. Sorry about that. Uh right. And then also we have a little bit easier Nancy Sullivan. Uh and we have uh Pat Hunley. If those four folks will come forward and uh we will uh proceed. That means come on down. Uh and after these people speak, uh the next group of uh speakers apparently are here regarding uh issues and uh

050concerns regarding with only one online, right? Just one. Yeah, they're ready. Let's do them. Okay. Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. Our one speaker for online today is uh Sandra Herine. Sandra, you can unmute your camera and microphone. You have two minutes, Sandra. You can unmute your camera and mic. Oh, there you go. Okay. I'm sorry. I thought we were doing the um persons first. Um person's live. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Start over, Sandra. Okay. I'm sorry. Um, I just wanted to talk about the critical role that social workers play in public schools. In communities where students face poverty, violence, food insecurity, and systematic inequality, school is often one of the very few spaces, safe spaces that they have. But even that space sometimes isn't enough without the right support. Youth in urban areas, as you

051know, are experiencing a growing mental health crisis. Anxiety, depression, trauma, even suicidal thoughts are becoming more common. And yet too many of these students lack access to basic mental health care and resources. That's where school social workers come in. They are lifelines. Social workers identify students in crisis, connect families with vital services, and ensure kids are seen and supported. They bring traumainformed care into classrooms, helping educators understand that misbehavior might be a symptom of pain, not defiance. Without school social workers, we're asking students to focus on math and reading while their world feels like it's falling apart. But with them, we're giving students a chance not just to survive, but to thrive. CPS schools doesn't just need social workers. They deserve them. Every child deserves someone who's fighting for their future. I understand we're in

052very difficult times right now, and difficult decisions have to be made and we trust your leadership to make the best decisions. I just ask you to think about the social workers. I know in our building, Sarah um Magical, Shereice Parish, and Jared Knight. I've literally seen them save lives and so just want to encourage you to think about our social workers. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker, Shakyra. Oh, you want to take All right, go for it. Hello. Hello, Coach Q. Well, that's what I go by. I go by Coach Q. Uh these are two of my players. We actually just recently found out that our head coach, his position has they're he's trying to be replaced right now and it kind of came, you know, blindsided. We weren't expecting it at all. So,

053we're here just showing our support and um as coaching staff, we've taken the necessary steps to try to save his position and move forward. But two of my girls did want to show their love and appreciation and everything that he's done for them personally. So, um, my name is Diana, right? And yeah, I think this is wrong because they waited till the last day to say something when he had already provide all of the stuff. He had spent like $2,000 on stuff. And yeah, he he is more than a coach. He takes us home. He's a mentor and a father figure to all of the players. Whenever we are in need of something, he provides it. And he just loves all his players equally. He's very joyful, understanding, and genuine. And yeah. Yeah. My name

054is Jakyra Thompson. Um, we built this program like when we was seventh graders and we are now juniors and he just wanted to stay until we graduated. And for them to take us take him away from us is something that we don't like. It's like they only cared about their feelings and not his feelings or our feelings. And this decision was made selfishly by our AD and other people that's at our school. and we feel like he deserved to finish out until we graduate cuz that was his plan was. Thank you guys. Thank you all very much. And I know it's deeply appreciated by coach. Nancy Sullivan and uh and then it'll be it'll be Pat Hunley after that. And during that time, if the folks that are here for with row uh concerns, come

055on down to the front and I won't call individual names till you're down here, but feel free to come on down while Nancy and Pat speak. Okay, Miss Sullivan. Thank you. Nancy Sullivan. I live in East Price Hill. I'm the parent of two CPS alums. Um, I'm the director of transformation CDC and I'm on the board of the 3R fund for immigrants which provides uh legal support for immigrants. I'm also on the Carson LSDMC and I'm in and out of Robert's Academy twice a week for years. So, I did not see under presentations and discussions anything about the resolution opposing HB42. Has the board already approved this and sent it on to Columbus? It's a question. Um, unless you live under a rock, you've probably seen some news about what happened in Price Hill this

056week, this weekend where um, at least one Roberts or one um, CPS parent was picked up by ICE and several other men um, also picked up in the parking lot of Kroger's. Uh, I actually chased the guys down um the the ICE officers with no success. My question to the board is what is the board going to do? I know that the Roberts uh learning center, community learning center is going to be open once a week to help parents fill out necessary documents. Is that going to happen in other schools with large immigrant populations? parents finally realize they need to do this family safety plan. Um, and what will you do if your students are suddenly um without a parent because single parent has been deported? Now, I'm going to change tac and I'm going

057to piss off some people in this room. So, friends, Romans countrymen, lend me your ears. I come to bury Caesar not to praise him. But the evil that men do off live beyond them and the good is often turred with their bones. So, I want to talk about what's happened at Roberts and the work that Joshua Hwell did that was outstanding. I know the kids, they love him. Thank you very much. Well, I think that the community deserves some answers they have not gotten. I look going from 2.3 to five stars and other issues where he did an exceptional Pat Hunley. Hello, my name is Pat Hunley. I am a member of Wro's class of 1978 and I'm also a 62-year resident of High Park and the WRO community directly. I'm speaking on behalf of

058the Withro alumni community. Read a recent decision to hire a new principal beginning the 202526 school year. We realize that the application process ended May 30th. However, we've received a small number of applications as potential candidates to be interviewed before the application deadline. We previously and still are requesting to review all the applications and to asssure that we are hiring the best representative for our community because representation and effective leadership matters. We owe it to our students, families, faculty, community to choose the best candidate. Thus far, the process of as presented by our current senior administration has been less than transparent, not fully vented, and re of misinterpretations, policies, and protocols and procedures that are unacceptable. Our graduation rates and test scores and other aspects of our school culture has been improving. Choosing the right

059candidate will help us continue growth. Conversely, choosing the wrong candidate will have a negative impact, which is not again fair to the students. We're asking for your participation and helping us be here for students and our voices to be heard. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you, Miss Miss Daniels. And then Miss Balden, and then Miss Mitchell Lawrence. Hi, good evening. Good evening. My name is Marcia Daniels. I'm a Ritth alumni, class of 1981. I'm also on Rthrow Alumni Board and also a member of the Rithro Athletic Booster Club. I am here to re I can't get it right along with Pat Hunley. Um, and I agree with her that we need to be involved and know exactly who the candidates are for the um, principal overthrow and what's best for our students.

060Thank you. Thank [Applause] you, Miss Balden. Good evening. Hope all is well with you. U, my name is Michelle Balden. I am speaking on behalf of the Withro alumni community. I too am a graduate of Wro High School and have held a host of um volunteer positions and professional positions throughout Cincinnati public schools as well as being a parent of CPS students, graduates, and a grandparent of CPS kids. Um I too concur with the um sentiments that have been echoed by um my um colleagues. And I would also add that the pro it's problematic, highly problematic in choosing a lead principle with no direction, virtually no direction from senior leadership. It is not fair. I would also concur that this would not be done at other schools, certain other schools. All schools e let's say

061everyone's not equal unfortunately and that goes against equity policy as well. So, I'm just imploring you to um fix this process. We need to see all of the applicants. We asked to see all of the applicants. We requested that repeatedly. We want to make the best decision. Withro has made gains as Superintendent Murphy has indicated with raw data. Wthro's part of that data in making gains in terms of test scores, culture, and so forth. So with that being said, we would want to continue to obviously continue that momentum and not choosing the right leader who is the best qualified and best representative. That's then we go backwards and that's not what we're here for. We are absolutely here to support. We have always been highly supportive of not just WRO but of Cincinnati public period

062and would hate to have to feel differently because the way that things have been presented it's not look it's it's not a good look. It's not so and there needs to be equity in terms of speaking from all voices not just certain groups. Okay? because there's these these matters are more complex than two minutes. Thank you very much. As uh Carol Mitchell Lawrence approaches with Lazarus hand and Angie Kuben Cubin, come on down. Miss Mitchell Lawrence. Hello, my name is Carol Mitchell Lawrence and I want to stand in agreement with my fellow alumni colleagues and echo the sentiments expressed in their statements today. Um, our ask given the limited a applicants that we have been given and the fact that we are not afforded the opportunity to see all applicants and apply that applied for

063the position per our original request. We're asking the board to extend the application deadline for an additional 30 days. We know that one applicant that we were extremely excited for the LSDMC board to interview. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. That person was not um interviewed. And we're hoping that um with the extension we can rectify this oversight. our alumni president and uh the president of the LSDMC board, Dave Bloxom, is asking the administration to create a document that the LSCM LSDMC principal hiring process that should be consistently applied and following and followed going forward. In my opinion, this will eliminate any appearance of uh bias. Um after attending the um policy committee meeting on Friday, uh board member Ben Lindy pointed out that the CTF union is given unlimited time to speak before the board to

064address important issues and that may be that maybe the same access should be granted to other organizations. So, I'm asking because I think that's a great idea because it's hard to sum up our opinions in two minutes uh talking, but I'm asking that maybe organizations like the PTSA, the LSDMC and the alumni board are afforded equal access um and volunt and we because we volunteer our time, our talents, our money, and we pay our taxes for the schools in which we serve. So addressing more complex issue requires more than two minutes. I thank you for your time. I thank you for all for your service and I appreciate your consideration. Thank you very much. Now while the next two speakers approach the uh lectern, there are eight or nine people here tonight uh to speak

065regarding uh I believe social workers. if they can quietly come down so we don't disrupt our these next two speakers. I think that will help facilitate. But be very quiet if you can please do that. Go right ahead. Hi. Hi. My name is Lazar's hand and I just graduated from sixth grade at North Aenddale Monoy. I've had awesome experiences with pair professionals in my time of elementary education. My pair professional, Mr. Brer has not just taught me academic lessons, but life lessons, too. Like when I was new, he taught me how to make friends, how to enjoy school, and even how to play his favorite sport, basketball. I think that pair professionals have more to offer than you believe. That's why you should not reduce the number of pair professionals in our school district. Another

066one of our pair professionals, Mr. Chris, helps when my teacher is in a lesson with other students. Sometimes he even goes to other classrooms and helps them. He also coaches one of our school teams. Mr. King is another pair professional who impacts me and he's not even in in my classroom. I am inspired by him and his leadership to students both in school and out of school through the men of Moore program. My pair professionals are really helpful and caring and do not deserve to be ejected from their job. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, my name is Angie Quin. I am a parent of two children at Dator Monasuri and thank you members of the school board for your service and allowing me to speak. As a concerned parent, I respectfully urge you to reconsider

067any decision that would reduce the paraprofessional support in our monastery classrooms. While I understand the financial and logistical challenges that our schools face, I ask that you carefully evaluate whether decreasing this support truly serves the best interest of our students and whether monastery programs are receiving equitable consideration compared to other educational models within the district. I am a parent of two students at Dator Monasuri School. I have served on the parent teacher network and the friends of Dar Monasuri fundraising committee. My husband has been an LSDMC member for the past two years. We are extremely involved in our schools and are proud of the education that our children are receiving. Our oldest child was currently or this past year was taking seventh and eighth grade math as a sixth grader. He was one of just

068a few children who received a perfect score on the state air testing for math. We strongly attribute this to the individual attention that he was able to receive at Dator Monasuri thanks to the current staffing arrangements of having a full-time pair professional in his class so that his teacher could give him one-on-one attention that allowed him to excel. We would like for our younger son to be afforded this opportunity as well. But this may not be possible if pair professional hours are reduced. If we had wanted our children in a traditional public school setting, we would have chosen a different school and perhaps even a different school district. If paraprofessional hours are cut, we may be forced to explore other educational options, including the Ed Choice voucher program and private school alternatives, which would be

069a difficult but necessary decision. I am certain that we would not be the only CPS family who would choose this option and that too would directly affect the future funding of CPS schools. I invite you to visit any Monasuri classroom in our district to observe to observe firsthand the vital role that the pair professionals play not only in the classroom management. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next four speakers are Nikki Smith, uh Emily Blaker, Desa Williams, and Beth Tracy Kaliski. Hello and thank you for allowing me to speak. My name is Nikki Smith Eberhart. I'm a parent of a rising fourth grader at Pleasant Ridge Monastery and I also serve as the parent rep on the uh PBIS team at her school. I'm here today to emphasize the importance in our own family

070of her school social worker. There are days when I can't get my daughter um to go to get up to get ready and I all I have to say is I'll message Miss Ally and Miss Ally is standing at that door and she gives her a look and it gets her to school. Um Miss Alley has helped me as a parent know that sometimes I have to say things like it's really hard to get used to a new sweatshirt and eat my and and and be able to to say things I never thought I'd have to say to get my kid to go to school. So Miss Ally helps our family and all the families in our community. I also work at another district locally who cut 50% of their social workers and I encourage

071you to look at the data of what happened in the two years after that social worker um after that that cut was made. Secondly, I'd like to speak on behalf of my daughter's pair of professionals who um are women who are able to get her to listen to things that she won't listen to me about. This is more than education. This is about right um making them be good community members and um uh raising strong women. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. My name is Emily Blaker. I'm a social worker at Hughes STEM High School. In the face of growing challenges, social workers do not merely support. They protect, intervene, and save lives. Behind each statistic is a child, a child who deserves to grow up with dignity, safety, and support. Social workers

072are not optional. They're essential. We keep students in school. We we respond to crisises. We create safer learning environments and we connect families with life sustaining resources. Tonight, you're not just making a financial decision, you're making a moral one. Please do not eliminate these essential positions. Our students deserve better. When something truly matters, we find a way. And in this difficult moment, we must find a way. Thank you. Thank you very much, Desa Williams. Take your time. Thank you. Um, my name is Desanna Williams. I'm a CPS parent and PBIS social worker for the district and have been for the past seven years. Um, in addition to that, I've also taken on the roles of launch ed instructor delivering trainings in CPI, trauma informed care, PBIS professional development, and restorative practices for educators. Tonight, I'm

073not just speaking for myself. I'm speaking for every student who walks into a school building carrying more than a backpack. I'm speaking for the child quietly battling trauma, the teen on the edge of giving up, and the family that doesn't know where to turn for help. School social workers stand at the intersection of crisis and classroom. We don't just respond, we restore. We build bridges between families and schools, between policy and people, between what hurt and what heals. Yes, we do home visits and manage attendance and respond to crisis and connect families to resources. But you, what you may not know and realize, we also lead implementation of House Bill 410 and House Bill 318. We train staff not only on social emotional learning, but also on the focus SIS and Canvas systems. We design

074culturally responsive SEAL lessons based on students lived experiences like using Wicked to teach empathy or Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl performance to explore identity and conflict resolution. And we do all of this while supporting multiple schools, hundreds of educators and thousands of students. At the very same time it is being proposed that PBIS school social worker position is no longer needed. I am training 73 employees districtwide in restorative practices alone. A training model built for two certified instructors but led by one. Not because I volunteered for double the workload, but because the need is urgent. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Beth Tracy Kaliski and I work at Sans Monasuri. I teach three to six year olds. Um I'm here to talk about the uh cutting of our social workers. Our

075school is one of the schools that is uh currently slated to go from a full-time social worker to a part-time social worker. Um I could tell you the story of a child from the West End. I'm I'm going to cry saying this. I could share with you the story of the child from the West End who asked me about gunshots in my neighborhood and whose brother's friend was killed in the front of their house. I could share that with you. And that how that child was absolutely shut down until he started seeing our school social worker every week. He went from a statistic to a child who was learning and a child who thrived. I could also tell with you tell you the story of my autistic student with intense anxiety and OCD who was

076almost shut down at the beginning of the school year. The environment was completely overwhelming for this child. I uh our social worker met with him weekly and he began to thrive as well. I could also share with you the story of a child who came to school with a contact high every day from being from his mother smoking weed around him. I could share that with story with you and I could tell you the integral part that our social worker played in helping that child be put in the custody of his father so that child could no longer become a statistic and so that child could also thrive and learn the second half of the school year. I could share with you many stories as could many of the people in this room but the

077point is that these social workers are miracle workers. If you want test scores to improve, you must keep full-time social workers in our school. Yes, my school is not a title one school, but that does not mean that my children in my school are not as worthy of a social worker as children who are in title one schools. Thank you. Thank you, Nikki Smith and Sandra Hartman. And then Naomi Madis already. Okay, you're right. Wrong pile. Good evening. My name is Sandy Hartman. I'm the school social worker over at Hartwell School. And first of all, thank you for allowing me to speak again this this evening. Um I I would love to share a story about how I had an opportunity to impact a student's life. As you guys all well know, the stories that

078are I have are all confidential. They're not anything I can share to say that these things happen. So, I kind of want to briefly go over just a little list of some of the things that we do from dayto-day and the impact that will have if we do not maintain the um current social worker roles that we have. Um, we complete threat assessments, suicide screeners. We do crisis intervention to minimize discipline referrals. We we report child abuse and neglect. We implement House Bill 123, House Bill 410. We support errands law, bullying prevention, bullying button supports, pure mediation, restorative circles, classroom seal, small group, short-term counseling, home visits, family connections, referrals to mental health, community and attendance supports. We partner with Project Connect and Kisser. We um resolve transportation issues. We advocate. But most important, we

079are the relationships. We are the safe people. We are the 988s of our school building. And for those of you who do not know, 988 is the mental health crisis line that you dial um when you need support. Social workers are here for kids. Please find a way. Thank you. Thank you. Hello board members, Treasure Wagner, Superintendent Murphy. My name is Naomi Maderas and I am your district lead school social worker. I know you have to make a tough financial decisions and I appreciate all of you for being in those seats and showing up to do the hard work. As the lead social worker, I hear many stories um about the traumatic experiences our students endure. Hearing these experiences would make you crumble and sorrow, as you heard some tonight. But I always end these

080conversations with our social workers by saying, "Thank you for being there. Thank you for being the person that the student and the family could depend on." The national recommended studentto worker ratio is 1 to 250. students. But it says, however, if you're serving students with more intensive needs, a ratio of 1 to 50 is suggested. While we're not there, we have been moving in the right direction. It's 2025 and we do not have the same challenges we had in 2019. Cutting our FTEEs will take away direct student support. You will see in an upcoming budget update presentation the recommendation to cut quote unquote vacancies and long-term subs. Our long-term subs are paid out of title one, I mean title four, mind you. So that does nothing for the general fund. And I know we do

081not want to supplant. So at the end of the day, all of these cuts take away from coverage in our school buildings. No matter which way we slice it, the end result is a reduction in support for our students. We have to make it make sense. We can't be here for students, here for kids, if we are literally not here present in the flesh for kids. Thank you, Adrien Jackson and uh Victoria Oakley. Hello, my name is Adrienne Jackson. I'm the school social worker at John Gilligan Digital Academy and also a CPS parent. When we talk about school social workers, we're talking about the people who meet students in their hardest, most hidden moments. The student who walks through neighborhoods afraid on the way to school. The student battling suicidal thoughts invisible to the world

082until a school social worker steps in and becomes the bridge between despair and hope. We are there for students when they lose friends like we heard earlier like Gabby, the child who's also struggling with addiction or even the student who's also a survivor of human trafficking who finally find safety in someone who listens. We're there for the student hiding in the bathroom to escape bullying and the staff member who's silently struggling on a daily basis with their own mental health, unsure of where to turn next. We are not just attendance trackers. We are more than just a formula. We are advocates. We are connectors. We are bridges. You are not just deciding on positions. You are deciding whether families have a path to stability, dignity, and hope. I know the challenges are real, but school

083social workers are truly here for their whole child. The cuts in social work from general funds is around the same amount of money recently approved for promotions. Please find a way to protect these essential roles. Find a way for the students and families who are counting on you, even if they never get to come here to tell their stories. Thank you. Hi there. My name is Victoria Oakley and I'm the school social worker at Western Hills High School. I sent a lengthy email to the board prior to the last meeting describing what school social work is. So today I bring the statistical data that we all know and love using my 10th grade boy group as an example. This group is comprised of eight kids, two of which who earned zero credits last year and

084two more who had so many discipline incidents in middle school that they did not even attend West High last year. As ninth graders, this group had numerous discipline infractions, including several suspensions and three expulsions. Throughout this year, we focused on academics and group while also consistently working through grief following the death of one of our group members. um coping skills and other social emotional skills. This led us to major improvements across the board. For fourth quarter stats, in total, we finished with 18 Fs, which for reference, we had 36 the first week, cutting those in half. Three people had zero Fs. One made fourth quarter honor roll for the first time in years. All year in total, we earned a collective 35.5 credits out of a possible 53.5, which is 66%. We only had five

085discipline referrals, totaling 38 days worth of exclusionary consequences. Three people had zero admin discipline referrals. Three people achieved true junior status. Everyone earned at least two credits. We completed four egeneuity classes. Almost everyone earned more credits this year than last year, if not equally as many. Multiple kids passed at least one EOC test. Several of them passing at least two. And in an alternative pathway heavy school, this is incredibly important to us. While some of these accomplishments might seem huge, any small improvement is quality improvement. So you see, social workers may not be they may be the easiest budget to take from since we're not directly in the classroom. However, the social emotional work we do fullheartedly impacts academics. We are important and incredibly valuable. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. As

086Mr. Risby uh begins to speak, Jessica Eert, if you'll come down and then also President Sers. Mr. Risby. Good evening. Last time I was here, I pleaded with you not to eliminate any social work positions from Cincinnati public schools. I shared the data. One in nine students are homeless. Over 27,000 disciplinary incidents in a single school year and 345 suicide prevention screenings took place after a child expressed either an interest in dying or a specific plan to end their life. And yet here I am again pleading with you to make the morally responsible decision. Let me tell you a story. I have a student who spent 6 months and 16 days in inpatient care at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. For those of you who may not know, that is an extraordinarily long stay. He has endured

087numerous traumatic experiences, details I will not share here. When he arrived at Hayes Porter School, he struggled, as expected, to transition back into a classroom setting. In those first few months, he had multiple violent outbursts and displayed behavior that endangered both himself and others. But as a team, we came together to ensure that he received the care and compassionate education he deserved. We implemented trauma-informed pedigogy, conducted regular check-ins, worked closely with his family, and stayed consistent in our support. That same student who went from having dozens of serious behavioral incidents in a school year went to just having one early in this past school year. Since then, not a single disciplinary issue. And 10 days ago, he graduated from Hayes Porter on the honor roll. And yet, despite stories like this, and I want you

088to hear me on this, the board is measuring the need for a social worker based only on enrollment and absenteeism. But need isn't just about attendance. Social workers support the whole child, ensuring their safety, caring for their mental health, and stepping in when they're in crisis. Without them, real students with real struggles will not get the support they need and deserve. I understand that the state and federal governments are placing you in a very compromising position. I understand that. But as I said last time, when something truly matters, you find a way. And this supporting our most vulnerable students matters. So I implore you to please find a way. Thank you. Thank you very much, [Applause] Miss Eert. Hi, thank you. My name is Jessica Eert. I teach at SANS Monastery. I teach three to

089six year olds and I'm also the parent of five CPS students. Well, two are now alumni. Um, and I'm here to speak tonight in support of both paraprofessionals in the monastery schools and social workers for everyone. Um, as a monastery teacher, I know how critical the relationship is with my parah and how much she does in the classroom. And same with the social worker who's at our school. When things happen in the room, when there's just one adult, then what I'm doing is stopping my work with students to attend to the social emotional issue that's happening or or any other issue. And when there is a parent in the classroom with me, when the social worker is somebody that I can call for support, my focus can stay on, right? This past year I had

09021 students on the other 20 students or other 19 students in the classroom moving their academics forward. I know that if paras leave, if social workers leave, if they're if they're reduced, my own children that are left in the district, my three kids, their education is really going to suffer. And as was mentioned by another parent, you know, we moved into the district for the monastery. We can't afford, we couldn't afford before to send our kids to private monastery. We have been thrilled with the CPS monastery education, but we will consider leaving and pulling our kids if if the education suffers and I really encourage the board to listen to those of us who work directly with children. We can help you. I mean, we know where there are costs that maybe we could cut.

091We know because we're there in the classroom. So, I encourage you to really listen to us and to seek us out and hear what we have to say. Thanks. Thank you very much. President Sellers, uh, as we referenced earlier, uh, the CFT president, according to agreement and arrangements, has longer than the two minutes in which to speak, and President Sers, uh, will be our last speaker this evening during this uh, segment, Miss Sellers. Good evening, everyone. Good evening. Um, I would just like I'm going to keep it really short tonight. You've heard from a lot of um the staff within the district on what is necessary, but there is also discussion in this evening's um presentation by the treasurer that there's discussion about riffs, which is reduction in force or laying off. The unions must

092be involved in this process. Um, I've talked to all of the different unions and we don't know anything about what the possibilities are, how many there may be and how many riffs could be happening across the district. Um, we have not been at the table for this to happen and it is critical that this is an accurate process because there's legal implications when this happens. We must have correct seniority dates for all employee groups within each employee group and classification. Um slide 16 this evening has 75 classroom position cuts at this time. I'm not sure that all of um parents have they said because there's less enrollment so they're making it based on enrollments. I don't believe that all parents have made their final enrollment selections, especially in the non-magnet schools, because many people throughout

093the summer move and they wait to see where they're going to be living for what school they enroll with. Um, neighborhood schools always get a lot of new enrollment right before school starts or right after school starts. But the school social workers are a critical um role for the mental health services for our students and you've heard a lot about that this evening. So, thank you very much. Thank you, President Sers. Madame President, that concludes hearing of the public. Thank you. Right. So, let's see. Let's start our presentations. Superintendent Murphy and Treasurer Wagner, please lead us off with the presentation of an update to the contracts for fiscal year 26 with recommendations. Good evening. Um, so go ahead and flip to the next slide. So here this is just a summary of um all the

094work that's been done by the senior leadership team and all the budget managers and principles. They went through and um reviewed over a thousand vendor contracts that were issued in fiscal year 25. Um this is just summary. So there was 395 contracts that were just the general fund that represented almost $93 million in fiscal year 25. Um, next year's budget is proposed at a $77.6 million level with a $15 million decrease. So, there's a lot of contracts that are being eliminated or reduced and that represents 16% of those funds. I would highly encourage you to click into the detail. I can't put a thousand contracts on the screen for people to review, but they are um some cuts that are very deep and um I would highly encourage you to review those. There's another 67

095contracts that are split funded. So, in other words, a portion of the contract will be paid for by general fund and another portion will be paid for state or federal grant. And so, there's another $6.9 million in reductions recommended there. All other contracts which is the majority 582 are non-general fund the majority of them are title one. These are under review. So you can see the footnote at the bottom that there's 265 that are still pending. Um mostly because we haven't been allocated our federal funds yet. So people people aren't sure how exactly how much money they're going to have entitled to renew that data coach contract or whatever that is. So those those are still under review. But we've been focusing on balancing the general fund and um through m much blood, sweat, and

096tears, we've um come to a recommendation of $15 million. Um I'm happy to answer any questions or ring up somebody that has an expertise on a particular contract if you have a contract. Um but the file is um linked for your review. Rob, do you want to click on the file so people can actually just see it, please? So, it starts off with the current year contract um by you know the sorted by vendor or actually sorted first by fund. So we could focus on the general fund and then by vendor and then so you can see like who did the review, how much it was and what the recommended. If you scroll to the right a little bit so you can see the fiscal year in column M. Thank you. I can't see that

097far. Um in column M is the fiscal year 25 or and the one with the yellow the fiscal year 26 is the recommended. So, this particular contract that's up first, we spent $70,000 this year and their recommendation is not to spend money on it next year. Um, and you can see who was reviewed by if you and then what budget strategy it's actually under. Um, growth sustainability is that first one. Um, and so all 144 contracts went through this process. Um, and like I said, some of them are deeply concerning and um, you I would highly suggest reviewing it in detail. Did you want to add anything? Okay. Do board members have questions? I know we Let's start over here with board member Matt. Uh, yes. Thank you for presenting this information. So, when you're

098reviewing the vendor contracts, do you all um look at the data that's associated with whatever service they're providing and make that determination? Yes. So if you recall for the last two or so years and even longer just educating people on return on investment, what key performance indicators are and how to measure those based on the contract services that are being provided. So every contract, the majority of them um now have measures and so th that information the budget leaders and the senior leadership team actually went through to see are we really getting the bang for our buck that we're that we're paying for um or is there a different way to do it? there are some contracts that um have decided that it's better to come back in-house instead of being outsourced. Um so that's

099also under consideration whether we can save money doing that. Um and so you know every contract has its own different kind of measure depending on what it is that they're doing. Okay. So just to reiterate but each vendor is going through that scrupulous process of looking at the the data and making sure that there is that return of investment. That's correct. Okay. Thank you. Any other question? Board member Greg. Um, so I want to start again by saying thank you for putting together this information and again the detailed list. I think I first question is really just it would it be accurate to say some of the contracts um were one-time contracts that we no longer will do and those things would have fallen off regardless of what we our budget situation would be. But

100some of them are things that we are now delaying andor choosing not to do in that manner um based on the costs that they were for the 25 fiscal year. um because I I want to make sure that's kind of a there's a difference between the ones that we were not going to spend this year or choosing not to spend this year because it's not something necessarily required versus stuff that we are either having to choose to spend less or choose to spend differently uh for fiscal year 26. So all of the above. So there are quite a few projects that were just one-time projects. You know, we had to do this project and we move on. We're done. We're moving on. There's other um service contracts that have been annual contracts that some are

101just we're rethinking the strategies about how the services are being delivered. Can we do it in a better way, you know, particularly around students with disabilities? Um and then there are some that are just we love it, we just can't afford to do it this year, and so we're going to postpone it for another year or look for alternative funding sources. I think that's the other part that I I wanted to maybe note in what what's in some of the contracts there is that there is a lot of things that we as a district resource out to purchase uh because in theory one we cannot do some of these things ourselves. Um but also some of these things that are at least listed in here that we are um decreasing by a certain amount. We're

102looking at things like returning them inhouse or other things that potentially could save us dollars. And I guess maybe the one question I would have on that that end of it is is there a plan of action in case the potential for doing some of those things of bringing in house are not as able to be done as we expected it to be done. And I think some of that to me goes into we've talked about this when we did some of the other changes from like phase one and phase two that there are things that we anticipated or thought might get be able to get done or get get handled and then if it's we find that we don't have or are not able to resource in a way that we would expect it

103to. Is there some alternative plans in place to address those potential challenges? So, uh, board member Craig, we did have that conversation a number of times and there are places where we did document how we think that we can get it covered. However, and we may not and so then we will have to rethink that. In addition to that, we're hoping to be in a better financial situation as we continue forward. But our conversation has been we have to make the decisions based on what we know today um, in terms of what our realities are. And then the the final point I will make is I think there are certain things in here like transportation and some of the other contracts that part of what we're expecting is that we will be able to manage

104the process better this year. And and I really want us to to spend some time focus and thinking about that within a within the other school context as well because I do think some of the problems that we have are in part because of the way we do it. it ends up running the cost up of doing certain things within our schools that otherwise if we had made a decision earlier or if we had done it in a in a less hectic way it would have saved us some dollars and I think that's at least my time on our board. I feel like that's one of the things that we have maybe not necessarily helped with as much on the board but um if we can get to those types of situations where we can

105have an a process or an efficiency aspect to getting things done so that we do save some dollars. Yeah. the the deputy and assistant students and I had a conversation around in many areas we have standard operating procedures in some not so much and that is going to be our work this summer headed into the fall identifying those places where we need to do that or make some adjustments and being more efficient. Um you also gave me the idea that um what we can do is tag those circumstances that we've brought things in house and make sure that our ROI team is reviewing that and monitoring that progress and reporting out to finance committee. Yeah, I appreciate that. And I I think this also tags into some of the work that's been done with how

106we're looking at some of the audit committee responsibilities and the audit team's responsibilities because I do think that's an area where as to your point uh superintendent as we get systems in place we can start to look at the efficiencies of those systems and the efficiencies of how those systems are saving us dollars in the operations. And that's a thing that the audit committee has talked about as being a goal of the audit committee's work and the process of the audit team is to really try and find efficiencies and savings. So, thank you, Vice President Bolton. Yes, thank you very much for this work. Um, help me understand the chart just a little bit. You know, it takes me a while. It's good. Um, so you have here, uh, when you're talking in terms of

107the percent column, uh, what does that represent? Percent of what? It's the it so $15 million is 16% of the 93 million that we spent last year. So we reduced 15 million. That represents 16% of what we spent. Okay. And then that's true for the rest of the column. Yes, ma'am. So if if we're looking at the total where it says 36.6 6 million. That would be if indeed we were going to cut all three of the above bands, right? But I would caution you that the all other is still under work. So just because so what we did is we looked for a contract that was issued in 25 and Brad grabbed that value and then we went and looked in the budget building software to see if there was a corresponding value and

108just because it's not there doesn't necessarily mean it was a it was cut. it just be because it the federal funds haven't been done yet. I'm I don't want to over rely on that reduction and then it turn in two weeks it's a different number because we processed it and and the public needs to understand a lot of these things are still unknown. I mean I know almost 10 years in finance committee uh the finance committee reviews these on an annual basis and if there's one area where I would really particularly defer to the administration it's about contracts vendor contracts that is uh it's it's not necessarily what what I feel like would have the most knowledge but the reality is just um you're looking at at least or it could be at least a

109I hate to use the word savings or cuts or not spent, whatever is the right terminology, but it could be it could be let's say $15 million towards our goal or it could be more than that including the general fund split if that were added to it. It could be we didn't have a way to get like the proportional of that split. So it'll be 15 if if everything's accepted 15 plus some of that 6.9 million. Okay. And then uh the other that you're still reviewing. Correct. Is that do we anticipate that by the 23rd when the uh when we hope that the almost final budget could be done that you would be able to come back to us and tell us we've also added this or taken this away. Uh what we can do

110is promise to give you an update. What I don't know is what when OD is going to tell us what our federal fund allocation is going to be. Exactly. Um okay. So um for for this help me out just one one two more things. I got a list long ago and it's probably wrong. Uh and it's just a print out. You're talking here that there's a thousand or so vendor contracts and I for some reason I had a list where it was like 1,600. Is that is that even a possibility or were we looking maybe at duplicates? Were we talking about are there school vendor contracts in this? You could have been looking at last year and there is um in the software that we use there's a there's a something called a requisition a

111purchase requisition and something called a contract. And because things that were attached that had a legal agreement with it last year that everything was put through a contract. Well, we don't need a contract to buy electricity, right? So that doesn't necessarily need to be on a vendor contract. Um, and there were there were some things like that. So that's why the number of reduced, but we actually went through reductions last year. I mean, Esther was our last year, right? And we were doing a lot of renovations on school buildings, so there was a lot more contracts to deal with last year. That's probably Well, good. That Thank you. That that helps clarify it for me. And and I know other people have comments, but from tonight, are we looking for guidance? Are we looking for

112a voted guidance to uh both the superintendent and the treasurer about pursue at least this or pursue more or report back or Exactly. That is one of the areas we're looking for guidance and direction. Okay. Well, when everybody's had an opportunity to do that, we can maybe have a motion on the floor for some guidance. But thank you. You answered my questions. I appreciate it. You're welcome. Any other comments? Board member Crosset. Uh, yes. I I wanted to follow on board member Craig's comments about uh internal audit. I think there was going to be some interface with internal audit to assess risk on on all of these. And I know I um I don't know if there's like uh the administration has looked at these in terms of where they feel like there's the most

113uh risk or the most uh challenges of where these contracts would be reduced. Yes, our internal auditor has been at the table with us. Right now we are not aware or have any concern for risk, but I believe she's planning to remain at the table with us as we continue down this road. I made a note to follow up with her. Okay. Yeah. Bo member Lindy, could you just repeat that one more time? I want to make sure I followed the the question and the answer what Mr. Crosset what you asked. Yes. I was just uh the uh internal audit has team has some expertise in risk assessment. It's part of what they do as their process every year. And so they were were hoping for that process to be uh integrated with the the

114budget uh system so that whatever reductions we made maybe there was some evaluation of which might which ones might expose us more or less to risk. That's great. Thank you. So I um I'll go last here. I sent to the administration, the treasurer and the um superintendent and our assistant superintendent my budget categories this morning at 11:13. So you have this in writing. I'll just share some of my thoughts in looking at the contracts in totality and then some specifics um with regard to Vice President Bolton's uh suggestion of guidance. Um I'm going to share them. This is not the first time that they've been shared, although maybe in this particular public forum they'll be at least listened to a little bit more. But I have a specific um angst around large contracts and um

115some of these seem to autorenew. So they were they started in 2022 and then all of a sudden, you know, we're renewing it for an additional year. I kind of thought that the board said very clearly and succinctly that we wanted to have some freezes. We wanted to have some freezes on contracts, some freezes on hiring, some freezes on promotions, some freezes on all that. Yet, that hasn't really happened. But in the contract, some of these seem to um be extensions from contracts that had already been in existence. So the contract started in 2022, but we're this is the third year of a of this is the third year of a third contract or something like that. So I want to give you an opportunity because I have a lot more questions, but I want

116to give you an opportunity. What can can we stop that? Well, absolutely we could stop that, but it's been past practice where um you know, we used to do five-year contracts and then I don't know 1015 years ago, we decided to go with the max of three unless there was like an unusual circumstance. A lot of times what vendors will do is they'll give you a three-year contract with two year two one-year extensions if you choose to take it. Um, and that's on a case- by case basis. Those contracts are typically brought to finance committee during our annual review. Um, and the administrator will say, you know, I tend to renew this. Um, we also have a tiny little purchasing department that has to handle all all the RFPs that are out there. And so

117sometimes um I don't know if the decision might be that they have too many RFPs on their plate and they'll just go ahead and extend that for one more year and then get to catch that on the next cycle. I don't know for sure. Um but it we could certainly make a practice or a policy that says once a three-year contract is done, it's done. It has to be rebid. That's just it's we just don't have that stringent of a rule yet. I thought we kind of put some things in place. this doesn't feel like the first time that we've had this conversation around automatic renewal of contracts and then um but yet we're here and then additionally this I'm looking at some of the departments that are requesting the services in contrast with the

118impact whole child academics we seem to be putting a lot of hits towards academics and so um or things that you know could could be academicy and when um when I look at curricular management manager positions or when I look at um things that that clearly say that they're going to not provide the service and it would be an impacted services but those are services that are delivered. It just it just makes me pause. But my my question is around the Hamilton County contracts. So I sent this list. There's about six questions there. I'm going to say them publicly because maybe that's what's going to be helpful. Um, is it possible? We spend we tend I see we spend quite a bit on data coaches for quite a bit of schools and we have done

119that since 2022. Those contracts appear to autorenew or to be renewed for significant amount for significant amounts. I'm saying significant 25 to 50 thou uh thousand each. So, I'm wondering how did how do we I know that's title money, but is there a way that we could preserve some of our CPS staff with having them be data coaches or having them do some of those positions rather than to have to cut positions? Can we utilize and reduce some of our extended contracts um that we're providing for outsourcing? We're out we've we brought in um nurses. We brought in crossing guards. I'm wondering why we're not bringing in those types of positions that could potentially be used for our own people. And then I think I did ask this question in in writing and I'm just

120going to ask it here. We've got data coach contracts and I would like to see the before I vote on anything, the we've got data coaches for schools that have had data coaches for three years now. And I don't I would like to see the effectiveness or the return on investment for those data coaches to those schools. Those schools that receive that are, and I' I've listed this, PRM, Riverview, Western Hills, Carlson, got an ELELLL coach, Withro, Bonhill, Covedale, Frederick, Douglas, Hartwell, Mount Washington, Leap, Roseline, Taft, Winton Hills, Oiler, um, AWL, Woodford, Gamble, um, Ammy, Schroeder, Gilbert, Dator, Hughes, Gamble, and Woodward. They've had a data coach for multiple years. So, what's the return on that investment? you know, are how effective are they? Let's look at their grades that they've had. The question that

121you just the list that you just read off is in the email that you sent this morning. Is that right? Okay, good. Because I couldn't keep up with I got you. Um and so, excellent question and we can get our um handy dandy ROI KPI guy working on it. Um did you want to there just um one um Dr. Maf and just for everyone some of it is just trying to honor the work of the individual schools ILTs and some of the choices they make with title dollars. Um and the two the second thing I wanted to mention was one of our strategies was to what extent can we go with using title dollars for some of our the work that we do in house. I think we have the cap on that or pretty

122much close to it and so we did use that as one of the strategies this year. Okay. Well, I know that we've talked before about um there being under title something around and I don't want to reduce anyone's work to just this but like attendance. We talked about those positions coming out of having to have positions coming out of title money and being able to use that before. So, I'm just wondering why we're not considering bringing in house some of the data coaches for our own personnel rather than outsourcing that. And so I think that that's we've had this conversation for multiple years, but specifically um before and and I just we're we're we're doing this with nurses, we're doing this with crossing guards, we're doing this with resource coordinators, bringing everybody inside, but I

123think we need to to look a little bit and I've seen that some of these cuts appear to be specifically impacting academics more than I see other departments in here as well. So I just I'm not ready to vote on it. If you'd like to vote on it, we can. But um I just feel as if maybe there needs to be in more totality a look at some of these contracts and the recommendations for cuts because I don't I don't see where it's um appearing to be more well-rounded. It appears to impact the children on some level u very directly. And then what's the plan moving forward for these cuts to provide to close that gap? because we're talking about cutting a significant amount of people and a significant amount of work. So, what's the

124plan to um to close that gap? Are we going to ask more of different departments? Are we going to reorganize some of this work? It's not just about cutting the money, but it's also about um filling in the work. So, those are my questions. Again, you've received this via email this morning and seen it before. Um so, Vice President Bald. Yes, thank you. And I appreciate that comment about insourcing, outsourcing, and I know that the administration's been working on that uh for at least four years that I can I can count. Uh my interest in in all of this is that unless we're going to have an extra meeting uh after the 23rd, we have to actually pass a budget on the 23rd of June. Uh and uh and I I honestly think we're going

125to have to have an extra meeting, but I know nobody here wants this to uh go beyond June 30th. Uh it's just too much. Uh but is it um I know that some weeks ago I saw some reference in one of the presentations about cutting like 12% or something of all of the dollars that are part of vendor contracts. and it said what the raw dollars would be. Uh, I I like being able to say uh to the administration, uh, listening to what we're saying, uh, I'd like I'd like to be able tonight to say to the administration, uh, please pursue the idea of a certain percentage uh, of uh, cuts that would be coming out of that particular not line item, but that that bucket uh, that uh, package. uh if you feel that

126that would help give you the information you all need to make those cuts would then that would impact on other cuts that you're going to have to come up with uh by the 23rd. Uh what I don't know if you talk to the board members about a percentage piece or is that even helpful? uh how do we move off this because we're going to authorize I would assume a riff tonight and the the size of that riff can depend upon the other costs and cuts that we're making. Um and this is where we're spending hundreds of millions of dollars is in the vendor contracts. I I don't know. I'd be really interested to hear my colleagues talk about a percentage guidance for anybody that's willing to do that or not do anything and Well, keep

127throwing it back to the administration. I have some thoughts, but board member Craig, go ahead. Um, I don't necessarily have a uh any opposition to giving a percentage. I think the thing I would say though is that we have to stop saying let's do the exact same amount of stuff we're doing now for less dollars. Yes. And I think my frustration is that we're talking about operating the district as we did this year, next year with less money. And no thing seems to be coming out other than we're going to do less contracts. And the reality is if you're not doing a contract that means you're not doing work. Like we can't we we can't say that we're still going to be doing the same thing or providing the same services and not having the

128same contracts. And so I don't have a problem with the percentage but I think it really needs to be first starting with the board acknowledging that we are going to have to give up something. you're here. And if we're not willing to say that part first, then it's waste of time to keep asking the administration to come back to us with all these other things with regards to contracts because I think we all can find a contract we like. We all can find a contract that we're going to cut that we would be like, "No, I think that's great. It's phenomenal." Or ones that we don't like. What is it that we're saying we're willing to give up doing so that the administration can then say, "Okay, this is how this would get done or

129this is how it would be helpful." So I think maybe in addition to um the gu the guidance of a percentage I think it may also require us to acknowledge what are we not willing to do or what are we willing to not do so that we can do something else that is of more benefit or of the uh necessity for the students to to still achieve. I appreciate that. Um, I'll just go. I think for me, rather than to have that question, I'd like to look at it from a what are some things that I'd like the administration to protect? And maybe it's the same I think it's the same thing. It's just a little a little different. Um, I think we've provided guidance. Unfortunately, we've had to do this before multiple times, but

130I think that things that are significantly going to impact academics has been a thing that we've asked to be protected. So, I'm not exactly sure um if if if we need to maybe say it a little differently. I'm for percentage, but the percentage can't just be equal across the entire district. Some departments that impact students or some departments that only have technology will be impacted differently than students that have personnel. I we just can't say a percentage across the board. I appreciated Mr. Gullah's presentation. Um, one of the questions that I had that I didn't ask was how it in his example, we are making all departments kind of equal when their impact to the district and their impact to students and student learning is not. So, I just don't know if that's fair or,

131you know, it's not an equal process. It should be an equitable one. Um, but I'm fine with percentages. Um but to say one department should cut eight when other departments look like they could cut some people or combine some positions and they don't directly impact students. We've we've had this discussion before. So I don't know if maybe we need to be clear or if um we need to just provide a little bit more. I think we started with zero base started with that whole bottom pyramid thing. fill in what's necessary. Some kind of way we got away from that and it it ended up being where some departments just threw everything in because they think it's necessary. Again, the the directive was given. It just was interpreted a little bit differently. But I'm fine for

132whatever my colleagues want to do. I just I'm not um I just don't see where there have been cuts with substantial thought around the impact to education or if there have been what's the plan to imp that that's going to be implemented to fill in the gaps that are going to exist because some of these cuts that have been listed are substantial to departments. What is the plan? It's nice to cut it. What's the plan? And I don't hear it. So maybe I'm just maybe I'm missing it. I could be missing it. Board member Lindy, thank you. One of the things I really appreciated about the materials that came out for tonight is there's a slide that has some requests of the board on it. Uh I think it was later in the evening's presentations.

133Um is there something you would like us to do with this now or is it best for us to wait until you've gone through the other presentations and then we can respond to all of them? I think if we wait um that would probably be helpful because I do think some of the things that are being brought up are addressed in further presentations. And I do want to remind that the way we set up last time's presentation had the percentage of the budget for each of the budget units. And so that's why some may look like more and others less because they have the bigger portion of the budget. So, I'm not sure if today that's linked to be able to review. Um, but there are some budgets that are bigger significantly than others. Curriculum

134is one. Um, that's I really appreciate that as very helpful. I think for me, I do have some comments, but I'm going to hold mine until we've had a chance to go through the whole piece and then maybe we can vote. It was very helpful the way you laid that out. Uh, and I'm happy to get more into it later. Thank you. member cross I I'll probably withhold all my comments too, but I I will say that the percentage idea is somewhat of a trade-off between fairness and um you know where where we can really maximize uh the money for student outcomes. So uh there's a trade-off there and I think we ought to just keep that in mind as as we go forward. So thank you Vice President Bolton. Yeah, on the percentage uh

135I don't think I ever mentioned across the board cut. I don't even believe in those uh for the very reasons that people have been mentioned. What I would like to say is that I would like to see a percentage of the total amount we spend on contracts to be within a percentage that starts to make sense and let the administration figure out how to do that because I I don't want to figure that out. I want them to figure that part out. But I I totally I thank people for bringing that up. I do not want to cross the board. I want the the idea that this is how much we spend on contracts, vendor contracts. These are vendor contracts, how much we spend and that I would like to have and I I actually

136appreciate even this 18% or whatever the 16% the way that kind of splits. I would like to be able to say we we'd like you to to cut the total amount spent on vendor contracts by a certain amount and you figure out where and how to do that based upon the guidance you're kind of hearing tonight or whatever. So 197 million um hold on 92 million or 93 million of the $644 million general fund budgets 14%. Just as a rough Thank you. So for those in the audience that may not have followed that um the 14% is our vendor contracts represent 14% of our annual general fund budget the general fund portion of that. So we are highly outsourced comparatively speaking. Very much so. Very much so. So let's we return to this for a

137vote later. Is that what I'm Well, I'm not exactly sure. There's another presentation on this that's listed there. The contract piece is also a part of the larger presentation. Because of how it was asked for on the budget, we decided to pull it out as a separate item. And and yes, Madam President, I asked this finance chair to pull out the treasur's actual uh report tonight out of the consent agenda because of the assignment we gave last time, which says that moving forward, we'd like to see a different format for the treasures report based upon this is a one-time deal. Referencing kind of what you're talking about, one-time deal. is a continuation or whatever. And they've said that they're going to be able to do that, both the treasurer and the assistant treasur. But interestingly

138enough, tonight that does not appear to be something that had to be done for tonight. But I didn't want it to be in consent and lose that discussion or make an exception. So, we should vote on the treasur's uh uh report tonight now because it doesn't appear any place else. Well, given that it's the end of the year, there are no new contracts to go through. So, there's three there's three amendments um to, you know, finish out the year, but um so the changes that are being asked for will be applicable when we start processing the new year contracts. I appreciate that. Do you want to vote on that right now? Yes, I'd like to make a motion to approve the treasures report. Second. Second. Okay, let's vote. discussion u discussion I'm sorry does anyone

139did anyone have any further discussion or any abstensions a wink and a blink across the across the stage okay you ready treasure wagon from our extensions okay so page six line item 19 page nine line item four four yes so page six under the then and now page n I mean line item 19 then page nine donations line item four I'm sorry after the page six line 19 I could not hear you could you repeat what you said so then and now which is on page six line item 19 and then page nine under donations line item four item four thank you you're welcome thank You ready for a vote? Okay. Mr. Craig, yes. Mr. Crossen, yes. Mr. Lindy, yes. Miss M. Yes. Vice President Bolton? Yes. President Moffett? Yes. Thank you. All right. So,

140let's go on to our next topic. Yes, ma'am. So uh the next two topics will be covered by uh our chief operations officer Mr. Burkhard. Uh we were asked to create a transportation update and then an update on phase one and phase two uh regarding the budget. Good evening. 7th through 12th grade on Metro put some stats together for the board. uh about 1,260 students would be impacted for those uh 7th through 12th graders that would go from yellow bus to Metro. I do want to highlight the 288 students who are currently have an IEP, those students would not be affected. I repeat, those students would not be affected. They would stay on yellow bus. As well as those Kisser students who are on yellow bus, those students would stay on yellow bus. They would

141not be moved to Metro. Um, one one staggering cost I want to share with the board. The average cost per student on yellow bus is $3,085. If you take the 34ish um million dollars that we spend on trans yellow bus transportation, divide that by the 11,000 and change students, uh you can see that it's very expensive for us to transport our students on yellow bus as opposed to the cost on Metro of $364 plus the printing of the cards. So hopefully this answered some of the questions the board had. Happy to answer any others. Well, member Gracet, um, does we also provide uh transportation for the uh charter schools that comes out of our budget, is that included? Charter schools are not included in this. However, um, we can uh, according to law, if we've

142moved our seventh and eighth graders to Metro, we can in involve conversations with those charters and nonpubliclix to move those students to. They don't have to agree, but we can now because our students are on Metro, we can engage with them. Uh the law is very specific. We cannot go to them specifically and ask if our students weren't already on that. So, we can have a disproportionate amount of service. That's why it's important. And to follow that up specifically, um this the law requires our kids if need be to be there or whatever, but it disallows the paro the private and the charter kids from being forced to do it. Correct. So I'm just saying that you said it much more diplomatically. There's it's a it's a class system. Our children are expected to be

143on on it on Metro and there's actual prohibition for charter and and private school kids to be on Metro unless they are willing to listen to our engagement. But that is that is I think that's three years old now if I recall. But yeah, that would be a great savings. Member Matt. Um, yes. I didn't inquire um last time, but for our students that are at K through eight schools and our seventh graders and eighth graders are going to be recommended to ride the metro, what does that mean for those students who have younger siblings uh at those schools? Will that impact our enrollment or is there a consideration for them to maybe be able to stay on Yellow Bus? I know that in our pre previous um recommendations um under a different administration that

144was something that was considered as well. Yeah, right now we don't have that as a consideration um unless the board uh wants to make that a a change. Okay. I think it's definitely worth something that you know worth considering especially we're trying to um increase enrollment so we don't want to create opportunity where we could further lose students. Hold on. I want to clarify her question because it was pretty significant. The question was around siblings and if a student is a seventh grader or eighth grader and has a younger sibling who is on a yellow bus, do we have the number of students that would be impacted that way? I do not. Um what what we're referring to is a what in the past was also called space available. So if there was space available

145on a bus and you had a sibling on that bus as well, that sibling or at that school as well, that sibling would be able to ride that bus along um if there was space available. Uh I believe and I I don't know all the history there. I believe that went away four or five years ago. Okay. Maybe you could have that as an assignment to get that information. That's what I was going to ask about if you could um bring that at the next meeting. Um, it's okay. Remember Craig? Um, so again, I think this is something this is a topic that I have uh kind of stood on when we first moved students back to uh yellow buses for seventh and eighth graders. I did at the time we were at high school

146and we're now creating a space where we have both yellow buses and metro going to schools. This is in reaction to what some of the community's thoughts were about met folks riding the metro and I think you know it's proven to be not necessarily the case. So I'm happy to see us moving a little bit back towards where it had traditionally been anyway. Um, I think for member Map's point about uh especially schools that are K8 where the uh the ability for someone who is riding with their younger siblings and the parent to be able to have the younger siblings ride with their older sibling makes a lot of sense for them to be able to ride the yellow buses together. So, I think it's a reasonable thing for us to explore. Uh, but I

147do want to maybe point out or think about because of way we restructured our middle schools, we have a variety of different ways that a middle school is currently configured. And we have some that are six, seven, eight where we essentially have one grade level riding the yellow bus and every other grade riding the metro. And I'm not saying that we need to start sitting sixth graders onto the metro bus, but I think this is again this is an example as we think about as we go forward of how we're structuring the district. Decisions happen have an effect, right? There are consequences to the decisions we make. And if we put a district, we put a building where we're having five different ways for a kid to get to school depending on where they live,

148depending on what their program is, depending on metro, you know, what age they are in the school. It complicates how transportation looks. And I think that's one of my struggles is I really want us to get to a point we can simplify our longerterm transportation plan rather than complicated. And I don't know that we are doing that quite yet still. Um and I know that just makes poor Mr. Burkhard's uh life a little bit more challenging at times. Um, but the the the real question I would have though, and this is where I think it's important to appreciate also, while we are seeing both Metro and Yellow Bus showing progressive rates of getting more on time and more consistency, I know that there's still been some struggles with with consistency of routes on the metro,

149i.e., you know, the route may be filled at the time that many students might get on, especially leaving school. And so that causes and not causes some of the students are just hanging out, but like may lead to more students being at the school after hours. Same thing with yellow bus. We've had inconsistency for years about yellow buses arriving, especially at some of the older grades on time and consistent. And so I just am wondering if this is expected to improve some of the efficiency that would maybe get us to a point where we can start to get a more consistent transportation plan. Yeah. So to couple things to unpack there. First of all, um we've given uh Metro our listing of student addresses and schools. So they are running in real time that data.

150So what does that look like and how many students are going from point A to point B? Um additionally, uh Mr. And Andrew Ielo who's been named the uh uh CEO of of Metro. Um I have a standing call with him every other week um where we discuss all the issues and look at the data. They have been very responsive on when we've looked and and had those complaints to say hey at school X um students are waiting. um they look at sometimes it's a matter of if the uh uh lency of a bus is every 11 minutes, sometimes they can put another bus in rotation and make it every six minutes. And so they've made those changes when we've requested as well. What they haven't done is run specific, you know, routes to schools,

151which they can't do, but they've been very um very good about working with us on those. We also know the first two weeks of school are very very uh tenuous because everyone wants to get to the same place uh early and um sometimes we'll we'll have a little bit of a a gap there. But usually by week two everyone has it figured out and where we don't uh we work with work with Metro to make sure that that service u elongates. I have a question for you. Um, just real quick, there is a pending legislative bill that's that could potentially impact our transportation. How have we looked at how that would impact us? Yeah, so there's multiple versions of the bill. it seems to be changing on a weekly basis. So I hate to comment

152specifically on which aversion folks are actually looking at but in in a nutshell the the language that is most common is that uh it would limit students from transferring at a major transfer hub i.e. i.e. government square. Um obviously that would be detrimental to our entire um process of getting you know every student from point A to point B knowing that students have a choice on where they go to school. So obviously the corridors will help this a little bit. Um but it's very problematic from from my lens and and folks in Cincinnati's lens to to endorse this type of of legislation. And then my last question is about Bramble transportation. When we talked about transportation with Bramble months ago, it was like um we didn't decide on the board needed to decide on this

153was going to be a magnet school. What was it going to look like? Is transportation going to have to be provided? What are we doing for transportation for Bramble? So through the whole process of having that discussion with the the uh Xavier Lab Monatory Lab School community, we decided um to pause on transportation for the first year until we figured out um what that process was going to look like. They uh wholeheartedly uh agreed to that. So for the first year, we do not have transportation unless it's mandated by an IEP or some other um reason. Um but right now that is um for one year just a a a stop gap measure till we figure out what that's going to be long term. Okay, great. Thank you. Those are my questions. Any other questions?

154Board member Crosset. The um $3,000 per student on yellow bus. Is that a do you are you able to benchmark that with other uh urban school districts in Ohio or um is it do you you don't have to know tonight? I'm just kind of curious if it's possible. Um it's it's it's I mean we can it's hard to benchmark because we have such different parameters than even the you know Columbus and and uh Cleveland um on how we transport students as well as Cleveland um does almost everything in house where Columbus has um outsourcing as well as some insourcing. Um so it's really hard to compare apples to apples but happy to get that data and and share that with the board. All right. Thank you. Thank you. And then Dr. Ma, I just wanted

155to share regarding the um pending legislation. We do have a meeting scheduled with Metro. I believe it's Friday. Friday. Yep. I'm on that one. Yes, ma'am. I got you. I just didn't know if you had taken that into consideration to say, "Hey, if this passes, it's going to go be this." I know they're still talking about it, but Well, we will know something by the end of the month, right? For sure. Yes. Thank you. Uh, let's see. Are you the next one, dude? I'm the next one, dude. Okay. I was like, he's not moving, so maybe he's still there. I could sit down if you like. Yeah, you're good. You're good. Um, the the next part I was going to talk talk about the uh phase two uh costs um for the growth plan. Um

156the total infrastructure cost and we actually have this in a spreadsheet. I believe the board has um the it was shared with the board the um growth plan and all of the tabs with all of the information, but I kind of summarized it up here. Um the total infrastructure cost right now is just over 3 million. That includes the labor to move, and that's labor to move not only our classrooms, but the specialized classrooms, uh preschool, and those uh types of things. any renovation walls, floors, ceilings, uh lockers at the middle schools, all new the new furniture at the middle schools, which includes uh desks and chairs as well as tables uh for some of the middle school classrooms, building upgrades, obviously raising uh toilets for some of the schools that were for the little

157kids. Um curriculum materials, supplies, and then cafeteria tables. the cafeteria tables. I want to uh point out that that was a process that was already in place and will be in place over the next five years to replace cafeteria tables. What we did was switch out those schools that were supposed to get uh new tables this year with the middle schools. So this year the middle schools are getting new tables um to to accommodate those um larger students versus the elementary schools that were supposed to get um done this year. And then the second part is the uh phase 2 growth staffing. Um we just hot off the press did a on May 29th a review of what the staffing would look like in phase two with all the latest projections. Uh the the greatest

158uh takeaway from this is the middle column on May 29th shows a savings of about 7 million in change. 7 uh 358,000 in change. Um and if you go to uh the next slide, the final slide, infrastructure cost, as I showed was a little over three million. The staffing uh savings is uh a little over seven, which gives us a total savings of about uh a little over four million, 4.2 to be exact. And this is obviously in process as we are going along with infrastructure costs. We're updating the spreadsheet in real time. Um, there are some on the spreadsheet some costs that are in red and that means those are anticipated costs. Once we have the invoice or that's been actualized, we turn that to black so that we know exactly where we're at

159in the process. Um, so again, thank you for this information. This is something that folks have requested and and this is helpful to see. I think um my question seems to be stemming around a little bit of the staffing numbers and I I think some of this to me is about is this because we've also thought rethought how we're doing staffing for the middle school level and up in a sense of like where the students needs are and that kind of deal as opposed to um that we are seeing some huge drop in numbers in enrollment because I think the concern I would have is if these numbers are based on some massive decrease in enrollment. I mean, yeah, we saving some dollars, but that means we're not going to get some dollars, too. Um,

160if this is about the fact that for we're treating four, fifth, and six a little bit differently now that they're or five, six, and seven or six, seven, eight differently based on them being kind of a separate entity themselves as opposed to when they were both K through six, seven, and 12. So, maybe if you can provide a little clarity on that end. Yeah. So, so part of the the savings um in staffing is pushing a whole bunch of the different levers that we had at our disposal. Obviously, the biggest savings is taking those underutilized schools that we kn know that were, you know, below 40% of capacity and really you're right sizing those schools um as we look at a lot of them. Now, a lot of them have healthy um enrollments, which also

161means we have a healthy staff in those schools. So really it's it's a lot of right sizing that's happened. It's not any one thing, but you you I mean you've called out a bunch of them in your in your question. All of those things together are are giving us um the answers as well as you know these are projections going into next year with our with our greatest um data as we have it right now. Some of this could change hopefully not significantly but we do anticipate some changes as well. And then my only other question to to the growth phase which again this is a great sign. It's a great thing for us to be thinking about. This is a one kind of a one-time adjustment cost. So it is not something we will

162perpetuate over year after year. This is really a we get a bunch of savings this year. Next year we kind of are we're back back at status quo, right? Like that's where our new measure is and going forward. It's kind of the expectations, right? Yes. until I'm pushed to start grow phase three and then we'll start the process over again. Vice President B. Thank you, Vice President B. Um about the enrollment piece u you what does that we don't need a report but uh what does that look like right now? I mean usually in the FMP a first year of anything there's a drop off. What are you all noticing as you um see enrollment coming in and the projections, but also moving, you know, like sixth graders from one building to the other building

163or what what what's it starting to look like regarding enrollment because that will save good money on on staffing and we'll be able to have full programming where we have full enrollment. So, in the last budget and finance committee meeting, uh Mr. Ashley mentioned that we had an increase of about 500 students. What we're seeing across the board is um no longer a decline but a stabilization is happening based on what we know today. Mr. Galahu, is that okay? Or if you want to say anything more. He's going to say something more. Yes. Okay. Maybe about a bridge while he's walking up here. um the numbers that they used to do the spring enrollment matched within less than 100 of what we used to forecast. So the forecasted revenue I was worried that the enrollment

164would drop and then we'd have to change enrollment but for the revenue but we're right on target. Yeah, just to add and offer that the 500 students that kind of referenced that we see as an increase is something that we really saw happening in the last half of this school year, which is really what changed our trend over the past three plus years that we've been slowly seeing decline. Uh once we factor that in, it's it gave us a much better stabilization. And so next year based on the spring projections that we're seeing with real enrollment um the lottery or the school selection results and those kind of factors coming in currently next year we believe we'll see a very flat slightly increased um number of students for enrollment. So, I'm going to be really

165I'm going to kind of ask for that as an assignment because I would really love to see what the projected numbers are and versus the actual numbers to date before you know by June 1st and then um maybe we'll have it again at the beginning because you know there some some attrition is normal you know you some students leave but that I just want to confirm the numbers that I've heard because it's not what I've heard. I'm I'm hoping that what I've heard is not true and that we actually are having an increase in enrollment um for especially for our middle schools particularly cuz engagement was low there. So I really want to make sure that we're doing really well there too. Thank you gentlemen. I appreciate that. All right, our next report. So that'll

166be also a combination of uh Mr. Galahue, the treasurer and myself. Um, and so, uh, what we'll see on the very next slide with this overall CPS budget update, uh, Rob on the next one. Oh, hold on for a moment, Shauna. Okay. So this uh slide number two is uh what we are looking for your guidance uh advice approval on um after this presentation tonight and you see the list of bulleted items there and we'll come back to that list at the end of the presentation. on the next slide, Jen. Oh, thank you. Um, so back to the pyramid for for another revision. Um, just kind of recalculated this. You'll notice we did renumber the tiers. So, one's at the bottom, four is at the top. Now, uh, we did recalculate um, tier one. So,

167it's at 438 million. If you go to the next slide, you kind of see these are the fixed obligated costs that we've updated. Uh big changes here. Debt transfer went down a little for next year. That's a fact two factors. One is we are paying off some of our debt and we've made some money in interest over time. So we need to transfer a little less to hit the required amounts. Everything else is pretty similar. There's some there's some small changes here and there, but overall obligated cost went from 63.4 to 59.8 million. Go to the next slide. uh working through the state and CBA minimums and so I went back and looked through um the collective baring agreements just tried to get a little cleaner numbers. These are using updated average salaries. So one

168thing we do is we calculate average salaries as part of the budget process every year. Um and that's what we apply for all the school-based positions and we recalculate those throughout the year. Uh as people retire generally we can see a little bit of decrease in average salaries. Sometimes, like this time it was only a couple hundred bucks. Sometimes it's a little more. Um, but it's using updated average salaries and the pre-sp springtack enrollments, which you'll see in a later slide. Did you want to say something, Treasure Wagner? Speak louder. Sorry. Okay. So, um, just kind of going through this the Go back Rob for a sec. Just high level trying to go through this the state and CBA minimums. Um, it's not just CFT's contract. That's another thing to be aware of like obviously

169classroom teachers and PAMs are in there but you see like principles is a state requirement. Um you know elementary support specialist is in the um C5 collective art agreement. Building engineers is local 20. So there's a lot of different collective art to bring into these numbers. There's also non-personnel. You'll see some of that on the right hand side. You know each union has a PD fund where we set aside PD. Um there's some stipens that are built in for CFT and then stuff like clerical overtime. Combination of all that is 349.7 million. So add those together in the next slide and you see that's how we got the and plus you know 28.5 million for the minimum transportation estimate from Mr. Birkhard and that's how we get the 438 million for for tier one. If

170you go to the next slide, we'll go to the top of the pyramid now. So these are the things, these are the new initiatives um which would be tier four now. I think we've talked about a lot of these from the foundation, crossing guards, the monastery lab school. Um one is the new um Walnut Hills interest exam test. That's the savings. And then not all of these are implemented or in the budget, but they're things that have been discussed at the top of the tier. Next slide. So things that were approved last meeting um obviously the nursing pausing the Taft Elementary monatory classroom transportation athletic trainers in the foundation and then there were some things also that were approved in the April 7th meeting we wanted to put up and call out on here takes

171you to the next slide which is kind of a here's where we're at. So budget target is 624 million. Board approved um changes on there was about 1.9 million. Tier 1's 438.1. And that leaves you with $184 million left to allocate. So after you take out tier one and the things are already approved, you're looking at $184 million left. So this is the slide that you just looked at. you can skip over it because it was originally part of this presentation and we pulled that out. So, and so then I'll go with the next slide is just an uh opportunity to look at positions that were this past school year held by long-term substitutes. And there's a total of 140. And so we believe that uh what we can do with that is any positions

172that we have available with certificated staff, we want to first try to pull them into those positions. Those are the positions that are posted uh over the period of the rounds and sometimes beyond. So, what you see on this is a list of those um assignments and then to the right you see the process that we're using and to the left you see the letter that those uh long-term subs were given letting them know that their services were completed. Then on the next slide uh we were asked to share how many uh are in each of these bulleted areas here. So, administrative positions with one-year contracts, there are currently 39. Administrative con positions with expiring multi-year contracts, 43. And then the last bullet, you can see by bargaining unit, how many people are in the

173retire rehire classification. Jeremy's going to take care of slide 13. Thank you. So, as we transition from looking at the additional data requests into what the board asks for tonight are, we wanted to take an opportunity to recap uh and really update the pathway to balanced uh sheet that you saw last time. Uh really focusing on the top part under the purple heading. You can see that we captured both all three of the items that were presented last time. the list of 100 uh the additional central office department critical budget reductions and the line by line review reductions. Those are all linked here as they were last time. But we did add uh for ease of reference at the bottom of the slide there. You can see the master reduction list that combines both in

174summary form and in the detailed list a single file that represents all three of those for ease of being able to reference it without having to go to the multiple locations. Um, one thing to call out as we've talking about contracts earlier, I think it's important to note is within those three the first three items there, most of the contracts that we're talking about when we're looking at the 15 plus million of the general fund that has been reduced or not being put into the FY26, those items are captured within those first three items. So when we look across the list of 100 reductions, the additional CO department items and the line by line, that's where you would find the context for those uh contracts that are being removed or being reduced. I would call

175out specifically the additional central office department critical budget items. That link will take you to the impact list and to the question regarding some of for example the curriculum contracts. There are contexts in there that provide notes around what the impact of that reduction would be. Uh moving on to finish that section, you can also see we are capturing the uh items that were approved at the last uh two board meetings after the presentation. So in tandem with looking at the tier one and the found and the foundation of the pyramid building up mo a lot of our conversations just like that contract conversation is around reductions and we have to also track those as we go along. So this is kind of the handinhand opposite side of that same coin where while we're building

176up we're tracking all of our reductions down to make sure that we're reconciling the two. So you can see we take out those reductions which means our new critical minimum budget request as of the the update on the slide was at 651.8 million which leaves our gap at the 27.8. Following that are the three items that we also discussed at the last board meeting that are currently in progress which we project will bring our budget gap down to 19.8 million. From there, we would go into um our uh considerations for tonight and what a phase one potential reduction in force could look like. Superintendent. And so that is uh what you see on slide 14. Rob, thank you. And uh we are seeking the board's guidance um in this request for the reduction in force,

177which we did mention the last meeting. This sheet simply says what the process would look like. Uh we have not engaged with the unions yet because we needed to get we wanted to get your uh blessing to move forward. Um we are really um in need of this because administratively we have to give notice by June 6 in order for this to not go into the next fiscal year uh and actually have those savings. On the next slide, um 15, you saw these positions before. Uh we wanted to make uh provide some clarity and these would fall into the need to participate in that riff should you approve that. Um and so you see where we would have reduction and then you also see where there are opportunities to do reassignment and there's opportunities to

178reassign to schools. And then on the next uh sheet earlier there was a mention of a spring TAC. We have been through uh the difficulties and challenges of having TAC in October and I don't know that there's anyone who um appreciates that. Um but we understand we have to make sure we have uh staff following the children. So we had this idea to do a spring tag now and look at uh where the numbers are and where movement may need to take place. And so that is what you see here. And then on slide 17, uh this is the uh information about where our current school so um how many current school social workers we have. We talked about um reducing by eight and so therefore maintaining nine and we did use the formula that

179you see there and then we wanted to share the categories in terms of where the employees currently are three and a half vacancies uh three long-term subs a half retire rehire and one on a seniority limited contract. The chart to the right of that would indicate where we would distribute the 59 uh remaining uh school social workers should you agree to do that. So on page 18 slide 18 you see the ask that one um you give us the guidance and support around the tier one or the fixed obligated cost the base which is on slide two if we want to reference that. In slide 12, you could click on the link that takes you to the list of 100 that you have uh seen over time. The central office critical reduction also on line

180slide 12. Slide 12. The impact positions on slide 15. Again, these are all what we're seeking your guidance and support on today. Uh a riff for uh to begin utilizing the spring tac movement on slide 16. the school social worker reduction on slide 17 and uh two things I want to add. One, the sale of property and earlier I was asked about what we needed uh regarding the contracts. Uh the direction of the board would be extremely helpful. Thank you. Questions, board members, board member Craig. Um again, as we always say, thank you for putting together this collection of material. seems like it was a huge team effort here. So from both sides of the um the the district but um so if I'm understanding correctly if we did the items in the first two

181by so the first one the first set of um and maybe slide 13 will be helpful to understand if I'm understanding correctly where we're at now. Um if we did the things from the list of 100 that we can or feasibly could do the additional uh department critical budget reductions as well as the line by line you or all the things that are inside of those we get to that 27 278 roughly figure and then if we do these additional couple items that we talked about at the last meeting we get down to that 198 199 somewhere we're in a range or yeah, somewhere that range. Um, what are we projecting to then get to with the riffs potentially as well as um the spring tack at this point? We believe that will take care

182of the balance of this. Okay. Right. This will take care of the balance of this. We did look Jerry, we got 19 million to go. No, apologies. I I I that would take us to 12.8. 12.8. I'm sorry. Oh, what you're saying is what's listed here. Yes. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Yeah. So, if we did the reductions in force. Yes. And we did the um impact positions in the the spring TAC that would get us to 128. Yes. Okay. Um, one again question with the spring tech and I think this is again an example of right sizing some of the schools resources and and and staffing to make sure that we're actually following what supposed to be in there. But it looks like some of this is about um moving some positions um or utilizing

183some of the overload paras. the Paris for for the overload classes in a different way or at least in some of the projections of class sizes. Is that correct? Yes. So, regarding class size, you saw that earlier in the presentation. Um that for us uh we did not adjust down for now because of not being able to really afford that. But that along with phase three are uh two pieces that we would um ask to look into for a potential new money levy uh in our near future. desperately needed. And then just as a third question so I understand and then I will turn it over to other folks to to ask questions and inquire around how many social workers do we currently have in the district and maybe how many pos I should say

184this how many positions do we have and how many people do we have filling those positions because I know we have some vacancies right yes I believe there's 63 total school social workers there are 67.5 positions by 63 3.5. Um, and again I think this is another example though from my head on on some of this. We're we are asking to have eight roughly or what you are asking is that for roughly eight positions to be the no longer full-time positions. There may be some half and other stuff that gets tapped into it. Um, but we did do and you know championed by board member map some of the things that we were talking about with regards to building the social emotional curriculum and and building some of those resources. And then I guess maybe

185my question is also how do we plan to utilize some of the other resources or some of the other things to provide assistance for those schools that may not necessarily have the same governmental coverage they would have had this year. Um because I also think there's a that there's a gap anyway that was missing where we had at least four positions that were unfilled anyway. So yes, but so you can see on this the chart to the right, we every school would still have a level of of coverage perhaps not ideal and we certainly understand that and we uh this may seem like an oxymoron definitely value our school social workers. Uh but if you do uh agree to a riff situation or give us the permission to move forward, some of the categories here

186would be some of the first that we would have to address. Um and so uh we're we are hoping and believing that with the training that we've had over the years, um this level of staffing um is going to be ample for what we're dealing with until we can have additional dollars. Okay. And then I guess maybe to tack on to that is are there opportunities to utilize some of the other means of providing uh counseling services and throughout our school district that could be an on call or something else that might be more readily available for those schools that might have for instance an incident or we see stuff that happens at a school where there's a pattern of things that require additional needs after the year starts. So, I mean like we know

187that some schools may have stuff that happens at the school that may lead to us needing to provide additional care and coverage for those students. Um, are we going to explore some of those opportunities as well? Thank you. Yes. Uh we do have our district-wide crisis team and we do have uh the willingness of staff uh if there's an individual school that has something really challenging going on. Uh those resources do come together, thank goodness, from other schools to help to support that school in need at the time. Thank you. Any other board member questions? Board member Lindy. Thank you very much. Um, I wanted uh this is very helpful. I I appreciate all of it. Um, I I wanted to just try to understand more about who would be impacted potentially in the RIFF

188scenario. Uh, and I'll I understand that there's more thinking that needs to be done and I'll hold nobody to any of this and I'm very open to the idea that this may change. I just am trying to um move from $19 million to what that actually might look like and is that big, is that small? How do we think about that? Um could could we go to the slide that shows just that last $19 million number? This one. That's great. Um and so so or I guess it's 20 million. So it's it's about the idea is to um do a riff such that we close that last 19.8 and change number. That's possible. Um there there there is also the concern if there's anything you choose not to approve or give us permission to move

189forward on bigger. Yes, sir. I got it. Yes, sir. For now, let's hope it's just what's on here and maybe even smaller if we, you know, come up with some new plan. Um the CPS Foundation raises us a billion dollars, then we'll have a new We'll take it. Great. Um so um if I I I have um I'm trying to understand is that call it 20 million um that could be all of one group that could be spread evenly across all groups like how do we figure out is that teachers is that administrators is that paraprofessionals is that like how do we think about that? we would have to identify where there is the opportunity. Um so I I hate I can't use any particular example because I'll scare people. Um but we would administratively

190look at uh where there is the opportunity to make additional adjustments um and and go from there. Uh so if you look at our our our where we usually have vacancies, the most number of vacancies, where there are those hard to fill positions, we wouldn't start there. How about that? We wouldn't start there. We would start with where uh we have more challenges and or or where it's a little easier uh or where we have an over um staffing, if that exists, of positions. And so um that that that is helpful, I think. Um, and again, it's more the big picture that I'm trying to get my head around than the specifics. But is it fair to say that like it couldn't possibly be the case that that would be 100% teachers? No. I have

191to imagine it would be spread across That's correct. Because we'd want to do as little of it as possible. That's correct. Um, and so if if if we had and I think this this the reason I'm asking is I think the um when I'm trying to size how many positions this is. There was an average salary number last time, but I it looked low to me, you know, like like I had to imagine if it were but I don't know like like is the right that average salary was 72,000 73,000 something. Yeah, I can answer that one. that that is the average salary across all employee groups. So teachers, paras, custodians, administrators, everyone lumped together. So it is lower than what you expect for a teacher, but it's again a combination of everybody. Yeah. Yeah.

192So if that's at 72,000, that's 264 positions. So we took the 264 positions which is really really challenging to really think about and just to conceptualize if you took 66 schools we divided by 66 gives you an idea of how many people per school and that's really simplified and not necessarily what it's going to be but it would give you some sense of the impact. That's helpful. Um, I think the other thing I wanted to how um two last questions then I'll I'll I'll um uh I'll I'll be finished here for a minute. Um how many staff members do we have in CPS? Uh 6,500 total. 6,500 ish. So, if we're talking about 264, that's about 4% of the employee complent. Am I doing my math right? That's 4% on what? In addition to what's

193on those other lists. Yeah. Right. So, if you go to is it slide 15? My might might interrupt. In addition to that list, I think you got to add benefits into that, too. It's probably closer to I couldn't hear you. I think you'd probably need to add benefits in there because it's probably more like a h 100,000 savings per person, not 70,000. Correct. Is that the fully loaded cost or is that just the salary? I believe the number was with benefits. So you have to remember for every, you know, have to remember for every teacher, you know, there's a parah. So you've average those two salaries out with benefits. I had the same reaction. I thought it had to be closer to 100. Either way though, like, and again, I think that the point um

194truly I'm not trying to determine in advance what this is or should be. I'm just trying to get my head around how big or small this is relative to CVS. Uh and thank you very much. I may have some other comments or questions in a minute. I'm going to just take a point of privilege to go because I have to go to the bathroom. So, I'm going to turn it over to Vice President Bolton, but I want to say my comments before I leave. So, it bothers me when I hear um a cut to positions and how do we get to the other positions when we say we're going to look for opportunities and make adjustments. We're going to start where it's easier or where there are more challenges because what I wanted to hear

195is we're going to start with the least impact to students in achieving those goals and guard rules that we set. That's what I wanted to hear because I look at security positions. I look at other positions that are on this list and those go towards what we've said we wanted to maintain and monitor with respect to goals of the district guard rails of the district. Mental health is a significant goal but we're cutting there. So I under I completely understand. I don't want my colleagues to say that we have to make some choices and people don't want to cut things. I think the public and I think our staff would be willing and understanding that we have to make cuts, but where I'm not willing to make those cuts are where they're going to impact

196the academics that we're being held accountable to. And there's no plan to remedy that to close that gap. And so it just concerns me to cut an ELA manager. It concerns me to cut school social workers in Paris. It concerns me to cut fine arts manager and then we we have a cut in here for 200 200 it said um on one of the sheets fine arts um would be cut 200 and some programming would be cut. That's does that how does that impact the policy that we implemented as a board to provide PAM for our students? I need to understand the plan in totality and not chop at it. And that's just me when we say we're going to cut the treasurer's office positions. That could potentially impact payroll. That could potentially impact how

197we are accounting for different things. I mean, I I understand that those are not direct student touch positions, but that is going to adversely impact the operations of the district, and I don't hear the plan to remedy that. I hear that in a hodge podge, we have to make these decisions before next week, but we could have started earlier. And I just again, I'm I'm going to say that because I've said that before. Um, and it just it just concerns me that we're talking about cutting positions where we have invested money previously that to improve academics and these are going to have adverse reactions on them. And it's it I I suggested to the administration and the treasur's office, please look at tying the goals and guard rails to these positions. I said that a

198month ago. Now we're hodge podgeing it. I feel this is this is my this board member. So, I don't want anyone to take away that I don't want to make cuts and that I'm I'm wanting to stay exactly where we are. I understand that, but I'm not willing to sacrifice any little gains that we've had cuz we have a lot of work to do academically and I don't hear the plan to pick that up. I hear the numbers, but I don't hear the plan to pick that up. So, I'm going to go to the bathroom, turn it over to Vice President B. But um that's just my I'm not willing to I don't think that this I am not confident that this has been thought out in the manner that is going to be the

199least impactful to our students academically and that's where that's where I'm at. So thank you u member map. Uh yes. So thank you. So in reviewing this and if I'm understanding this correctly with the uh budget pyramid on page three so it's saying that we're starting with the fixed obligated costs. Correct? And then from there, we're moving to the critical uh AC achieving the critical goals um and guardrails and strategic planning. And so to the point that board member Moffett made, I concur with what she stated because we're saying that this is how we're building the budget, but there's misalignment in what's being presented to us in terms of what the recommendations are that are being cut. Um, thank you to my colleagues for championing the uh, mental health and wellness policy because we've worked

200um, significantly on developing the policy and making sure that we provided a comprehensive scope to um, our students as well as our uh, educators. And so if we look at page 17 where we're talking about the school social workers, can you please inform me on whether these schools um if they're are K through six or if they're K through eight where we're talking about making the reduction for school social workers. Kilgore is K6. Fairview K6. Hyde Park K6. Sans K6. Gamble Monatory Elementary K6 Rising Star Carthage um which will have a shift there will be uh K3. Okay. So the reason why I'm asking that question is because as we currently know that our school counselors do not service uh the students in K through six. They service them 7 through 12. Correct? So, if

201we're talking about making a reduction, we're lessening how much support our uh students will be able to have access to. So, there will be challenges in having that collaborative process in these particular schools that we're recommend recommending the uh the cuts or the reductions to. So, I would not be in favor of that. And again, in good faith, as I said throughout the entirety of my time on the board, that our budgetary decision should be aligned with our goals and guard rails. And if we're saying that this is how we're building the budget, it really behooves me as to how we're making recommendations that's going to directly impact in a negative way those student outcomes. And so, um, I would not be in favor of the cutting the school social workers. I would not be

202in favor of cutting the pair of professionals. I would not be in favor of cutting the ELA manager. And again, I think that is really important that we're not only making decisions based off of just the numbers. If we're going to consider numbers, we need to consider the data. We just received data that suggests that we're not doing well in wellness. We're receiving data that suggests that we are having challenges with academics. So, I think that's where we need to put the bulk of our focus. Again, I recognize that it is challenging, but we really need to make sure that there's alignment with what our decisions entail for our budget. And then the last thing that I'll say, it is very difficult to make an informed decision about our budget when we as a board

203have not received the information until later today as well as the public. So I think that yes, there's been information presented previous meetings, but for us to make such a critical decision, we need to make sure that we have the information ahead of time so that we can um make a decision with fidelity. Mr. Lindy, thank you. Um one of I realized I had one other question. Um and I think it speaks a bit to to member Map's point about getting information ahead of time. Um the um I had sent a request to the administration last week on Wednesday and the numbers you shared were helpful. I was trying to understand what our teacher to student our student toteer ratio had been over the last several years. There was one other piece that I was

204looking for which is forward-looking. So, so in addition to the um and I think all the board members have this um but just for the public uh as I was reading this um our at least teacher of record ratio uh was about um 18 to1 uh if we go back five years ago and it's been gradually coming down over the last five years. So um um more teacher per kid rather than less teacher per kid. So that in most recently it's been 17 to1. Um but it's been getting the the teacher to student ratio has been getting better each of the last five years. Um one one piece of information I really want to understand is were the rift to go forward what would our teacherto student ratio be next year? And I I it

205may it may be that we don't know yet, but could you just talk about that a little bit because I think um I think riffs are hard and they are awful and I hope we don't have to do any of them. If we do have to do one, uh I think there's a big difference between one that returns our teacher to student ratio to where it was 5 years ago versus one that makes it worse than it's ever been in Cincinnati public schools. Like those are two very different sized riffs. Uh, and so I'm trying to understand how how big the potential one would be. And if you could speak to that just a little bit. I would probably, Mr. Lindy, need more time because these aren't just based on to your point earlier, teachers.

206Um, it's really across the board and so I don't have that data turned yet. And that's that's fair. I think there are a lot of different moving parts. I think that that it just for for my understanding, this could be a situation where uh once the riff is over, our teacher to student ratio is actually quite in line with what it was four or five years ago. And and I would love not to have to do a riff at all. And if we do have to do one, it's good to know that it's not going to crank up the teacher to student ratio in a way that's worse than it's ever been before. Or it could be the case it actually is that bad. Um but but but we we would Just speaking for myself,

207I'm very interested in the answer to those questions as we get closer to a vote on all this. And did is what I said accurate? Like it really could be either of those things. I understand. And yes, that makes sense to me. Okay. Thank you. Other board members have comments. Mr. Crosset. Yeah. I wanted to understand better your slide on the impact positions. Are those positions that you're recommending to eliminate? Uh yes. So yes and so this these would be admin the reduction um those would be involved in the administrative side with so on your chart for uh the 19.8 8 million gap. I don't think that the impact positions reductions are reflected there. Correct. They are they are they're on if you go back to I think it's 13. This one it is um

208what line item the second line. What what line item is it? They would be comprised between the list of 100, the additional CO and the line. Okay. So they're buried in there. Yeah. because they're separated out within those by department, but we pulled those out separately so that you could see them collect them. So the so the 19 million I I still would kind of challenge that as to because I think you've got to if you're going to reduce an employee, you also have to take into account that you're going to reduce the benefits that you pay that employee. So it's really closer to 100,000, I think, not 70,000. Um and and so we're looking at maybe 200 positions, not 240 positions, which would be closer to 3% of the total employee population. How many

209vacancies on average per week do we have in the district? Or is it close to that number? Julia, do you question how many vacancies we typically have? Um Thank you. So, great question about vacancies. Um, so right now at this particular time of year, um, we're looking at vacancies related to staffing for teaching, um, coming up. And so right now if you looked at our vacancies, we're probably marinating around 180 to 200 teaching vacancies um of which I think um the superintendent referred to a little bit about those high needs ones. So some percentage of those are math and science um positions that um are difficult to fill um and aligned with the um goals and guardrails for sure regarding academics. Um we also have um at any given time um probably 200 paraprofessional vacancies

210at any given time. Um and so we've been doing some thinking about potentially ways to populate those in such a way that we can um really lean into compliance around those. again um aligning to the goals and guardrails with making sure all the whole child is is um taken care of and making sure the needs of all of our students with disabilities are being met and our multil- language learners have their parastorians have their paras etc. So we're doing all that. So those when you look at those buckets, so at any given time, we generally don't have assistant principal or principal positions, right? We generally don't have a lot of central office vacancies, but we do have vacancies in those forward- facing staff um positions. And then of course our job is to fill those

211um for the summer. Right now, we're a little bit on a pause because we want to figure out this piece of it before we start um plugging in those vacancies because to your point um board member Lindy um we would rather riff a vacancy riff a vacancy or freeze a vacancy than riff a human being. Right. So that's why we're being very very careful and very strategic and very slow and cautious around how we're doing offer letters right now because we hear you Dr. Muffet when you say we shouldn't be, you know, promoting and hiring in a time when we're trying to figure out budgets. And so right now we're being very um specific and and checking every one of those offer offer letters before they go out because um we're purposefully kind of pressing

212pause on that a little bit until we get a better handle on u we don't want to offer somebody a job and then two weeks later say by the way we have to resend that job. Well, that all makes sense. Thank you very much. Absolutely. the we do keep so you're talking about maybe 380 400 positions vacancies I don't know if that carries through the year but I also know u when we get our financials there's a line item in our in our information about contingency which relates to right vacancies that we know we're not going to fill during the year and those are counted as savings. So, I'm curious about whether or not this budget has a contingency line and how much that would affect, you know, how many vacancies we would um or

213positions that are vacant that we could uh I guess eliminate through a riff without actually losing a person. I mean, I I don't expect you all to know all that, but I know there's some moving parts. I just want to make sure that there's consideration for that. Is that there is an estimate in the current data that of a negative contingency well the vacancies um it's very conservative because we are talking about reduction so you can't cut the people and do a negative vacancy rate at the same time. So um it's all balanced out but yes great thank you. Yes. Sure it's on your radar and you know we're not Yes. We we uh we talk about that a lot that sort of you know Jen's um department is trying to save that money, right?

214And we're trying to fill those positions. So we often talk about where is like kind of where is that neutral ground where we both have this negative contingency but also service children um since that's our business. Mr. Craig. So, I wanted to just raise two thoughts to the conversation that we're having with regards to the budget uh the budget concepts and ideas. And I think one is, you know, I think this goes back to the conversation that again I feel like I've said this so many times, but this is why we need to do this earlier. This is why we needed to do this in August because these things are difficult. And I said this last year that the budget we did last year was the easy stuff because it didn't touch people. And this

215year's budget has to touch people. There are no other options. If we reduced all the contracts to zero, we would still be needing to do something to care for these students. And and I think this is part of the problem is that none of these things are going to we can't do everything we did. We can make decisions and we can look and prioritize and and really try and focus on those things that may best put us in a position to keep the the academic growth going. But I think the also reality is that we made substantial cuts to central office over the last two budget cycles that makes it very difficult for the central office to operate in a manner in which it would not cost us dollars extra. And I think this is

216one of my big frustrations as we talk about how a school operates as if the way the central office operates does not affect what happens in the school. If you can't hire a teacher, if you can't verify that a teacher has the certification, if you can't get them the training they need, if your employees are working and don't get a paycheck, they're not going to keep working. And I think this is this is one of the part of the conversations that we we've talked about on audit of committee. We've talked about in other parts of that central office requ. And so I think there's a need to have that conversation as well. Not just because our goals and guard rules tell us that we we need to act work on the academic side to make

217sure we're focused on the things that affect students learning but also make sure we affect the folks who are affecting how students learn. Um the second point that I will raise and I think this is a part that was getting a little bit into those vacancies. We've every year talked about having vacancies and we've tried to use vacancies as a savings point and I think it's a lovely thought and all. Um the reality is if you have a vacancy at a math class that means somebody has to teach that math class. It's not that it's not that that vacancy is a zero some gain. it's that either that class doesn't get taught or um you bring in a sub which is the other part that I thought was just a little interesting point as to

218what was put out in the the budget proposal. The some of the classes listed or some of the things that were listed for the long-term subs that were you know or areas where we were using long-term subs to to cover those classes. Some of these things are very important things that we I mean you have a long-term sub teaching, you know, some of the really important classes and then some of the things that are really sensitive nature to to students who have, you know, autism units and these other things. I think it's a hard thing for us to sit there and and not recognize and not appreciate the fact that finding folks who want to teach those things, finding folks who want to be in our classes, in our schools is a challenge still because

219there is a teacher shortage out there in the market. There is a there is a difficulty and an extra effort and I want to thank a lot of the folks in HR for trying to push and work hard to you see the signs now out there and you see the promotions out there to bring people in but the reality is there are a lot of people are burnt out there are a lot of people who come into this industry and work for three and four or five years and get burnt out very quickly and the more we keep piling on those folks who are doing that work the more stuff we keep saying they have to be the more difficult it is it's going to be to retain those folks who do come in who

220are great workers and so I want to make sure that we're also not impeding the things that would keep people in the district, not just keep the students learning. You know, if we have a teacher who feels that they're not being supported in all these different levels, and they leave after two or three years or they leave after five years, that's not a helpful thing for us either. Um, and and I or you have someone, you know, you hear this with our facilities folks, you hear this with our counselors, you hear this with a number of our positions that folks are are not feeling supported, so they don't choose to want to stay in the same way or may not want to stay in the same way we could be having to do. So, I

221I do think yes, we have to make some hard decisions. We're going to have to make some choices that are affecting people, and that's just the reality of this. We have to do it in a respectful and humane manner in a way that makes that acknowledges the thing that is most important which is our students earning and and being educated. Um but this is also why I think it is important for us to say what we are not willing to do any what we're willing to give up doing because until we do that we are all keep saying that we want everybody we will all keep saying these things from different perspectives and we will not get to a point where we give clear guidance to the administration to bring us back results. So, I

222mean, I have I 100% appreciate and 100% believe that we need to do the things that that will get our students learning best. I just don't know that that is only the things that affect the classroom when in fact it could affect the teacher in that classroom when it could in fact affect the building maintenance folks. I mean, we're we're deferring building repairs in this budget. That means if something happens at a school where a ceiling falls, if a wall needs to be repaired, if a window is not working right, if a air conditioning unit goes out, we ain't got no dollars for those things. We know that. We've been told that a year and a half ago, two years ago, and that is nowhere in our budget whatsoever. And if we want to sit

223there and say that that doesn't affect the student learning, let's have ask how many students were not able to go to a school when the school's power was out or when we had to move students because, you know, facilities wasn't working or something was going off or an alarm's going off. So again, I I think there are a lot of things that we got to sit here and at some point say something harder to say we are not willing we are willing to say we're not going to do this in order to preserve all the things we want to do. And I just am worried we're not doing that still. Thank you, Mr. Craig. If Madame President, if I could make some comments and ask some questions. I don't I don't want anybody to leave

224here today thinking that, well, whatever we didn't get to cut, we're going to make up a difference by by riffing. And that's sort of a theme that seems to be kind of reoccurring. And I'm not sure that the administration has necessarily said that or that we've given the guidance enough about some of the cuts, but in a budget that is 80 well 75% people and salaries and benefits, it's obvious you're to reach the goal, there's going to be uh positions that are going to be ended. And it makes perfect sense to start with those positions that are already going to be up contractually uh or that don't have the license or uh are are doing something uh sometimes very very important but something that could actually be taken by somebody that has perhaps the additional

225credentials if indeed they exist. Let me ask a question if I could. uh whatever we talked about a couple hours ago or an hour or so ago uh about contracts where is that in the amount of monies that would be that's well that's page 13 on additional data that's page 13 and you'll find them within those top blue I think that's blue so if we said we're going to cut I'm saying we're going to do This is we were going to give you guidance and say, "Okay, cut 18% of the uh uh total amount of the vendor contracts." Not all of that 18% is already figured in. Correct. I think so. I don't think so. It was 15. 15%'s already figured in. Okay. But not the 18%. The 16% is of the total amount that

226we spend on vendor contracts of this year, right? Of this this coming or this year or this coming year? No, what we spent it's 16% of what we spent fiscal year 25. I understand that 16% of what we spent this year is vendor contracts. If we were to cut 18% of the total of the vendor contracts, the 16. Yeah. So you're tell you would say cut 2% more perhaps, but that wouldn't be figured in. No. Okay. If if we're talking in terms of that obligated cost where there were four more million or four more four million less we're obligated that is that four million figured in yet since that's kind of a new uh whatever yes so that is amount okay then if I could let's ask if I can do this when we talk

227about positions I I know we're thinking a h 100,000 but a lot of our people do not make a great deal of money. Correct. So, I wouldn't be too uh motivated to say that it's well over a h 100,000 or a h 100,000 even if you figure in benefits. When you think in terms of our security folks, some of our paras people are making very less money. So, I can see where it's at 70 80% uh considering how many there are of those folks. And very frankly, certainly as a retired teacher, I'm I'm I don't want anybody to take anybody out of the classroom, but I also don't want to reduce security. Uh I don't I I really don't think and we've heard for year after year the value of the Paris in in all

228of our buildings. So, u I think that's important. And help me out with student t I think what what Ben mentioned about student teacher ratio. I think that's really important. But that also does figure in other people as the superintendent mentioned that's just any longer no for the last 20 years that's not even about classroom teachers. It's about anybody that's certificated is usually figured in on what that is. And there's no district in the world that has more support certificated people than Cincinnati public because of whole child. I mean that's been our thing. So the student teacher ratio it would be very important to keep that as good or as well as it already is or try to make it even even better would be great. But on the social workers, the someone mentioned the

229250 to one. Was that the was that the national by the professional associations? Um, and the social workers, if you have a if you have a big school, does that mean there's still only one social worker there? Is it going to like our building engineers or something? you we have one even though you might have a small school with a smaller number of kids. Yes, that's correct. But then again, to member Map's point, the counselors uh we don't necessarily place counselors uh in our elementary grades, but we place them about 712 generally and certainly 912. So all that that would be part of what I'd be interested in knowing uh because two things are happening. you. We are still cutting and we're still building. It's so it's like Continental Railroad or something. We're doing it

230from one end to the other. We're building a budget. At the same time, we're trying to cut to a number. And that's getting to be kind of confusing to be able to be doing both of those. But if we finished today and we did whatever contracts we would say, are you suggesting that if we said, "Okay, cut this percentage of the contracts, vendor contracts, for all intents and purposes, you don't need that guidance. You just need us to rubber stamp that if you already made that decision, which I don't have a problem with, but I, you know, guidance means you haven't made the decision yet, but you're saying all these things are already built in. That's true. So, yes, contracts are built in on that page 13. Okay, I'm there now. Yes. Okay. And then

231if we're looking at the impact positions, I I don't think um I don't unnecessarily want to cut stuff that makes it impossible for you all to be efficient or move as fast as you're going to have to move. I also worry about sending too much to title because I think I've been advised at least as one board member in these public meetings that what we're worried most about on title is not FY26 but FY27. So we'll be back in exactly in the same place if we shift stuff to title coming up. Then at the end of or this time next year, we're going to be cutting more things that we have to because we shifted to something that may not exist. And then finally, I I'm very interested in what we have to vote on

232tonight and what we uh are giving guidance that isn't really guidance if it's already happened or it's already anticipated. You can't do anything without us doing it. But I I I really do think we need to know what it is that we're still have available for us to help you decide. Thank you. So on page 18, this 18 that's showing all of these pieces, all of these bullets are listed within the documents over the last couple of meetings. Um and those are things that we were seeking uh your support and approval to move forward on. These are the board asks. Yes, ma'am. But also on the board asks, I don't see the contract piece. Well, the contracts are within the list of 100 and the central office critical reduction, which is on page 13. Yeah,

233I still take you at your word on that one, but I I still think that's seems different than the the kinds of cuts that we've talked about rather than the contracts, but Okay. Okay. Board member Cross, I'm just curious. It I I want to go back to the vacancy topic briefly, but it seems like we have enough vacancies that would cover on average that would cover the 20 million gap during the year. Do we or do we not? Well, how much of it would it cover? I think this year's vacancy would Oh, I'm sorry. Sorry. So, I can tell you from this year, um, we budgeted about $14 million in vacancy savings. And as of last month, we hadn't hit it yet. So, we hopefully hit it this month, but it's Yeah, 20 million would

234be high. I mean, pri previous years, I think we were there, but not anymore. So, I'm I'm just curious. I mean, it seems like uh with your proposal with the rift that the first thing you're going to look at is vacancies, it looks like on the chart. And it seems to me that um maybe just a suggestion is that you don't really necessarily eliminate positions that are part of these vacancies, but you just put a hiring freeze on them for the fiscal year. So that so that if we get funding that maybe they would still be able to be filled in future years. Just an idea. It would still and it would still have on our books maybe an idea of what ideally what kind of staffing we would like to have to help us

235meet goals and guard rails. It's just an idea. I don't know if that's possible. I hear Brandon is kind of sighing back. I don't know. Just an idea. I I feel like the vacancy component is going to be a big part of filling this $19.8 8 million gap. I would think I think it is. I think the hesitation and and probably the reason why all those vacancies only sound like 14 million is exactly what um Vice President Bolton said, which is most of the vacancies occur throughout the year are PAR positions and um positions that are less highpaying because if you have a teacher position that you have to have, then we hire all those long-term subs that we just saw, right? to bring to uh to board member um Craig's Craig's um piece because

236you you if you need a math teacher, you need a math teacher. And if you don't have a math teacher, then you hire one of the $140 long-term subs that we had this year and you fill it with a $51,000 math teacher instead of an $81,000 math teacher. And there's slight savings, but we there's a cost for everything, right? Because they're not licensed and they may or may not know their content as well. They may be fabulous, but without regard, we tend to fill the teacher vacancies because without a person in front of the room, that's problematic. If you don't have a PAR and you have to have one because you have a student with an IEP that requires an an IP, then we if we don't have one, then we have to call an

237agency and then we have to to um to go outside of our organization to get a third party to bring those folks in. So in some cases we're going to get those paras at a higher cost. That comes in a contract though. That does not come with ours necessarily if we can't find enough um pair of professionals. But the big the vast majority of vacancies that exist throughout the year are not at higher paying jobs. They're lowing lower paying lower salaries and as such those don't add up nearly as quickly. So while but it's still 14 million. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Oh without a doubt. Yeah. It's it's a large chunk of change. Um, we just have to be strategic about how we think about that. But that I mean that makes

238sense. But if you need a math teacher, like there's one of our high schools has four math teacher vacancies. You can't really just freeze those and say, "Well, we're just not going to do math this this year." So obviously then we have to figure out some other ways to structure that. Sure, I get that. I I I've meant freeze positions strategically, not across the board or whether really needed. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. the one for Lindy. Uh, thank you very much. I think I'm I'm prepared this evening to support most of these requests for approvals from the board with I think one caveat which I want to get into for a minute here. Um, and I think I'm better able to get my head around all of this because of the exchange for the

239last bit. I appreciate the context on being able to size kind of how big the riff might be or might not be. Um I I um I continue to think that we need to approach this entire budget process from the perspective of what is going to make the biggest possible impact for student learning. I think that is job one for us as a school district. I think this would be true for any school district. I think it's particularly true for us. We have 80% of the kids in CPS are economically disadvantaged. I'll share a couple numbers here. I know I've shared before, but last year 52% passed the third grade reading test. 21% passed the eighth grade reading test. This is in reading for economically disadvantaged kids. So, we have really, really important work to

240do. I would like to see us fully fund the thing or things that we think is going to make the biggest difference in terms of student learning and then make bigger and deeper cuts elsewhere. I I continue to feel like we are and I understand why we're doing this and I say this without judgment because I think this is a deeply human impulse and comes from a good place but I think we are trying to back into the smallest possible riff number to balance the budget. Uh and again I understand why we do that because we care about the people who work here. I do too. I think that is a good impulse. I also think it can lead us to do something other than prioritize funding the things that will make the biggest difference

241for kids, even if that means we need to make harder and deeper cuts other places. For me, um the best bet, the best thing we could invest in in this budget is around helping teachers implement the highquality curriculum that we have already purchased. I think it's not enough to buy the curriculum. I think we need to help people use it. Well, I've shared this number before. It got some attention in a previous board meeting, but as of the winter instructional rounds, only 37% of teachers were using the ELA curriculum fully. I say that without blame. It is hard work. I think it is our job to fund and support implementing that curriculum effectively. I think this is an incredibly good investment. It's 40 times more impactful than class size reduction. And that's according to the

242Democratic Center for American Progress. I also think you've got great proof points from around the country that this kind of investment really does work. Uh so not just the Center for American Progress study, but if you look at the NAPE results that came out recently, the state with the largest gains in reading was Louisiana. The biggest investment that state has made is in high quality curriculum and in professional development for teachers to use it. Well, you can see now if you look at the state of Mississippi, Mississippi fourth graders in NAPE actually outperform the state of Ohio in fourth grade reading. And a big thing that state has done is exactly the thing that I'm asking us to resource in this budget. So for me, I just want to put a number on this. Like

243I would like to see us commit a million dollars in this budget to helping teachers implement the curriculum that we have purchased and that will make a difference for children. I think there are a lot of different ways we could spend those million dollars. I'm I'm open to multiple ways of doing it, but I think we we have to fully fund and fully resource the thing that is going to make the biggest difference for kids, even if that means we need to make bigger cuts other places. So if there's a way to invest a million in helping teachers teach the curriculum that we have purchased, I will support everything that is on this slide. That may take a little work. We may have to revisit this. I'm open to revisiting this, but I I I

244for me to support the budget, I have to believe that we're investing in the most important thing, even if that means we need to make deeper cuts other places. Thanks, Vice. President Bolton had her hand up. No, I think uh I think that makes makes sense. I I I would bet you though that the administration could probably point to a number of things on here that actually are devoted to that. And you'll recall uh at least six sessions ago we talked about the idea of the goals guard rails and building around a budget towards something instead of having to you know get to something based upon cuts. So I I would agree with you is whatever can instruction and what have you is is the most important thing. I I do believe though that it's

245it's uh it's beyond instruction in the classroom. I do think it's I do think it's getting kids to school is is would help that. I do think the kids feeling safe at school is part of it. Feeling wellness and healthy and whatever and feeling uh uh that the social and emotional it's it's all wrapped up to one. But I my feeling is that we need to at least get to some point tonight where we're voting on some things and and very frankly like even that list of a hundred. I don't know that if we vote on the list of a hundred that that means that all the board members that are voting for the list of a 100 is all the hundred things. uh because even the list of hundred the administration has said no

246to or decided not to do. So uh there probably has to be some sort of a an elasticity to what we're agreeing to. But it seems to me that it's time to uh at least figure out where people are on what the asks are. And if the asks I think we if we could add the contracts as being an ask I think that would be helpful. I mean, I think there's been enough guidance kind of by the dialogue as you guys go back into your efforts to think. Okay. Well, member cross, I don't mean to cut you off. Um, does this um 19 million.8 million gap take into account the projected $2 million from the foundation coming in? No. No. All right. Well, I think what I'm hearing is um a little bit more more

247information. Well, some people are ready to vote, some people are not ready to vote. Um we've definitely provided guidance, but I also heard the administration say that there was a timeline that was restrictive. Part of the reason why we suggested to board member Craig's point to do this earlier, we've been suggesting for some of these things back in May to be presented. Um I don't like feeling like I'm under the gun. um and have to rush. However, I do want to have some integrity in the process. I'm not in agreeance of of all of those things. To your point, Vice President Bolton, some of the list of hundred I agree with, some of it I don't. I do want to ask a question of the administration. Can you share if there has been any consideration

248around reorganizing certain departments for efficiency? So it feels like we are cutting existing things um that have an impact, but what about reorganizing positions to be efficient? We're in a contract year, a negotiations time right now, and so maybe some um we're asking some more people to do things with less. Um so for some departments, we know they can be a little bit more efficient. Maybe it's some that quit and someone's picking up their role, their responsibilities. I'm speaking like let's say transportation for instance because that's the vein of our existence. Someone that's a position that's not there. And so um has there been any reorganization? We haven't looked at the or chart lately, but has there been any reorganization of departments for efficiency? The best department I can think off top of my head

249is department of student services. have they've done a lot of reorganizing this year, but they have a lot of cuts here, too. But these are but these are positions that will go into classrooms as opposed to being here at central office. So when you have here under I'm I'm wanting to understand the impact report that you have and I'm looking under like department of human I'm sorry DSS student services has like nine nine things here. Yes. Home instructor, home instruction coordinator, vocational evaluator, transition coordinator. Those are significant cuts to that particular department. And when I look at the impact, reduce access to resources. So, how is that department going to be reorganized so that they're efficient? I think I'm looking I'm still confused about in totality the plan to lessen the academic impact or the

250impact to students or the services that we provide. So, um couple of things. one um with those positions returning to schools where there would have been a long-term substitute teacher in a special education classroom now will have someone credentialed in those classrooms as the priority. Um the director has expressed the ability to reorganize the department in order to fill the gaps with those positions that we're transitioning. if I know you probably want specifics that I can bring to you or ask Chrissy to bring to you. Okay. I I'm I guess I'm still just a little confused because it says for the impact report unable to work with CHD lower reductions result in not covering every school. So that's an impact to the school and the inability. So I'm confu I'm I'm just very confused. So

251maybe it's that it needs a little bit more explanation or it just needs to be shown in a different manner. Um because I I just am wanting to invite reorganization so that maybe the department can be more efficient and then there happen to be cuts there versus I I just want the work to get done. Um but what do we are we ready to vote? Is there a motion or anything on the table? Sorry. Okay, I have one question and I'm happy to put a motion on the table um of what I think summarizes at least where I think some of the stuff we have agreed upon is that uh selling a property I didn't really hear much discussion of what that was in reference to and so I just wanted to get a quick

252sorry selling of property is on the list of um 100 we do have um maybe four or five lots that we're looking at and we'll have general counsel come to give a little bit more detail. We have had inquiry on at least a couple uh this current school year. Yep. Thanks. So, from the most likely to be able to be sold uh is is a property um it's it's we call it the Digby property. It's above it is not Koi Field, but it is a couple of tennis courts that are above um Koi Field. Uh we separated those parcels out last year and they were able to be s sold. we would expect that to bring $500,000 or more. Um there's some interest in the Burton property, but we have not valued that. Uh so

253that's an estimate. And then I I believe on the list also is uh some possibility of the Jacobs property as well. It says sell property Jacob Center. So those are estimates that you have no the only thing that's assurityity is $500,000. We feel confident about the Digby property. The others are estimates. Vice President Bolton, I'm I'm very supportive of that as long as it's not entailing the big lot that we have uh on the west side uh or something else. But and I do think we still have to protect our properties uh from the state because that still appears in the governor's budget if I recall. Maybe not in the state house budget, but I've been here 17 years. And in 17 years, in my memory, and I believe it's clear because I've looked back

254as best I can, we have not ever had a massive or major riff. And I don't want to have one without us divesting ourselves of every single property dollar we can find or uh revenue we can somehow generate or whatever. I mean because that's very serious stuff. We we have a great track record with the taxpayers waiting eight years for new money now nine years for new money because we've been operating with very relatively fiscally responsible budgets. But now that we're ready to do something larger rift than I can recall in 17 years, I I feel strongly that we do need to divest ourselves and we we have to tell the people that might be losing their positions or the taxpayers going to get a request from us in November. Yeah, we we've thought of

255everything and if that's a divesting property, I I would be very supportive of it. Any other comments? Board member Matt, I just had one question about the fine arts manager. So, I know that that's a position that um the individual is retiring, but have we considered what that Can you hear me? Oh, okay. Sorry. So, I was um inquiring about the fine arts manager. So, I know that that position um the individual is retiring, but have we considered um what the restructuring of that position would look like as well considering that this is a critical part of our district? a very critical part of our district. I was uh pleased and don't have the detail yet that uh I was at a celebration last week for Dr. Rdnik and there was the announcement and introduction

256of someone who was going to pick up the work of the Jazz Academy for example. And so again, I don't have the details on that or I don't I'm not even sure how that's totally happening. Um, but I know that is critically important. Okay. Thank you. And if you can provide an update once you get more information, that would be helpful. What member Craig? So, I would like to put a motion on the floor to accept the tier one fixed cost obligated base part of the pyramid, the potential exploring of the selling of property. And then what I was going to say with regards to risk is just the in that first pool the positions that are either vacant or uh in excess of the available positions that those could be explored and that would

257be all that I think there is some level of consensus around um at least from what I've heard from discussions. I would put that motion on the floor um with the also the um request that other potential whether it's the contracts whether it's the other roles and other positions continue to be developed and brought forth um for additional u additional vote later but that these are the three from what they've asked that I could see is some level of consensus around so I can I can second I have a discussion question I like that so so we've at member Craig one more time tier one selling property and the riff the first section of the riff where it's the vacant positions and then uh current employees in excess of the available positions for 2526 school

258year do you have that first tier in the riff part That was seconded by um board member Lindy. Vice President Bolton. Do you have it? Jen considering a a friendly amendment. Again, I I hate to be beating a dead horse, but the the uh what's already been built in is the general fund on the vendor contracts. What's already been built in is the general fund only because that's what we're we have to pass and with all of the contracts it gets to be uh 160 million instead of 77 million. Help me out with and this is just discussion within my friendly amendment that I would like to add even though we're only concentrating on the general fund. Those contracts are also outside the general fund or they're split or could it be the ones that

259are the general fund and general fund split? How could that work? Maybe a little tutor tutoring on that for me. What do you mean how can that work? Uh would that improve or in would that uh increase the amount of uh impact the vendor contracts would have on the uh amount of money we're trying to cut if we did more than the general fund ones and did just also the general fund and split contracts. You want to add those to the vote to approve those? I would like to to approve those. Yes. to increase those. So, I think that board member Craig was putting a motion on the floor where there was overarching consensus, but I asked for a friendly amendment. I understand. I understand, but I don't know if there was consensus on contract.

260So, my question is, board member Craig, are you accepting that or no? So let me maybe make a friendly amendment to the friendly amendment that the percentage of the vendor contracts that 16.2% for the general fund because it's technically all we really I mean it's not all we really need to do but that's at least getting us to what we'll talk about here for our budget purposes. um that that percentage that the vendor contracts uh be not less than that 16.2%. I like that. So approve. So it still required them to bring back specifics but that we were committing to no less than the 16.2% uh percentage wise which gets a little bit back to your original thought of giving up a percentage. It can be more if we find more savings but it cannot

261go less than the 16.2%. 2%. Uh would that be I'm I'm feeling very friendly toward you right now. Okay. Does my second uh support the friendly Wait, board member Lindy. So I I was I have a similar ask, but I think it's even less ownorous. Uh, I hope um I was going to I'd like to support this if the administration can figure out what it would take to make part of this budget an investment of a million dollars in supporting teachers to implement the high-quality curriculum we've purchased. You may have ways of doing that that is really thoughtful in less than a million dollars. And I I wanted to share I'm open to that. But I I for me to support this budget, I have to believe that there is a reason why this next

262year is going to be different than this past year on the most important thing that we can do to improve student outcomes. Um, and so I'm I'm I'm happy to support all these things if what we get back at the next board meeting can include the their thinking about that topic. So So maybe I I I'm all about creating friendly amendments to the friendly amendments. Okay. So rewarding all of this. So the the amendment or the the motion would be with the friendly amendments the tier one the riff of only that first block which is just the vacant positions and in positions in excess of the available positions for 2526. the selling of authorization to sell to explore the selling of property to approve to authorize the amount that the contract vendor contracts reduction would

263be no less than 16.2% 2% as proposed and that the administration and the treasur's office um would identify or potentially um like identify the support for um use of the curriculum and and um development of of of our teachers at at or around the $1 million mark. I would even say like an impactful investment. I've shared what I thought the number would be. Um but I I want to leave room for them to come back with something. Yeah. So it would be providing um a a method of doing an impactful investment into um our teachers regarding the curriculum. Um does that sound is that supported by the second or second? Very friendly. All right. Okay. Accepted by the friendly amendment motion maker. Yes. Friendly. Friendly. I throw one more in, but I'm not going to

264do that. Okay. Please don't. Can I ask a question? Point of clarity. The the riff line that they're referring to, does that include the positions that are on slide 15? Refer. So on the on the board action reduction enforce process that slide the blue it's got the blue arrows on it. One more up slide 14. No his was just vacant positions. Those aren't all vacancies. But it said in excess of budgeted positions. Not that available positions. Oh wait. Just trying to be clear. So, do we need to clarify this again? It's not including those positions, right? Or it is. I don't I don't feel like it is. Um they're not they're not vacant. So, we're not eliminating vacant positions and we haven't made a decision on what are those levels of those staffing for each

265of the other positions. Right. Spring. Spring Tech. The spring tag would be that would be helpful. So we can maybe change it to the vacant positions and then spring tag. Spring tag would be help. Okay. Thank you. Can Okay. Hold on. Well, whoa. Mr. Gahu, can you come to the mic and say what you said so that we can all hear you? I said uh my belief would be looking at that line from the eliminate the vacant positions and those employees in excess of the available positions for 2526 that would not include all of the impact positions. Um there may be few some that qualify but I don't believe all would but the second part in excess of the available positions I believe would qualify the spring t positions because that is based on an

266updated enrollment and projection. So it would be allocating those teachers based on the number of students we expect to have. So I believe it would qualify for that second part. So those could be currently filled positions. The spring tech data they would be right. So they may be currently filled positions but they may have to be shifted to another school. Right? So if there's if there were or there could be a situation where like if a school that they have three vacancies but now because of projections they only need one of those three vacancies. So the other two vacancies could either be frozen or probably froze in that case. If you're in a situation where a school has hired four prek to three teachers and they only need three bad example but they only need

267three that other fourth teacher then would move into a vacancy somewhere. So, it's really just doing that fall tack in the spring so that we're moving teachers paras in advance of the start of school both to downsize budget into right-sized schools and to make sure that we have as many licensed teachers in those positions as possible. Does that answer your question? I think so. Yes. Okay. Vice President Bolton, I'm I'm u not feeling friendly about that on the spring TAC largely because what's going to be reported is that today we decided that we were going to based upon the spring attack we were going to eliminate 75 teachers and 65 pair of professionals. I I don't I don't want that to be the add 67. Yes. So just just for clarity quickly on that 67,

268excuse me, and cut 75. So that is cutting teachers and cut. That's a cut. Positions may or may not be actual teachers, but many of those are going to be vacancies, but they're so when we say riff, everybody thinks immediately of a person. Our first job in riffs is to look at vacancies. So the first thing we would do is is freeze a vacancy rather than displace a human being. So maybe a friendlier friendly amendment is just on the vacant excess positions. Yes. And then any v any vacant positions including vacant excess positions of 2025 26 school year and only the vacant positions not the second half of that just the first half of that. Do you got it Jen? Got it. So let me just repeat it. So Okay. So, there's a motion um

269to accept tier one, the fixed and obligated base um the exploring of property sales. Um the vacant riff positions, whether it's spring TAC or not, just only vacant positions at this point. Um and then contracts that are no less than the 16.2% 2% reduction as well as um administration would identify a support for the use of a million dollars to implement curriculum and development. Well, I did hear board member Lenny say it didn't have to be that number, but it needs to be a process because that was his number, right? A process. Yeah, I wanted to uh throw out a number to be generative. I think you could do something really meaningful with that. You may have other ways of leveraging things we have, but I wanted reason to believe next year is going to

270be different from this past year. Got it. Okay. All right. Everybody wait me. I'm sorry. So, as we're talking about the vacant positions, that would include the 3.5 social workers. Correct. One more time. I didn't hear you. So, as we're talking about not filling the vacant positions, that would then include the 3.5 vacant positions for the so social workers. Correct. It it it could if it's a vacant position based on what's being said right now. So, it's just not there's no one in there. It's just not filling that position. Is that right? Correct. Not filling it. Yeah. I understood you to say you wanted us to only look at positions that were vacant and not ones that had people in them at this iteration. So, okay. Okay. So, you're saying that there are people in

271those positions or there's not people in those positions for the 3.5? Correct. The 3.5 positions of school social workers right now are vacant. So, there are is nobody sitting in there those 3.5 positions for FY26. Okay, the other there's the chart right there on board member map. So, the there were um three social school social workers that were long-term subPBIS folks who have somebody in them. Um they are it's a little bit different. They're social workers, but they're not school licensed school social workers. So, they're considered long-term subs. So, they're not they're like a long-term sub for a teacher because they don't have the requisite lensure. It's a little bit different in the school social worker world. They're PBIS um social workers. Um the retire person um that that's all that's all because of riffing

272because following the riff rules, you have to go in the certain order. So that's why those folks are in that order. But the the top 3.5 are vacancies. There's nobody in theirs. And those are um in part because I know that we had at least a couple of people who have resigned for next year. Okay. But this ultimately could still impact the um social work allocation for these particular schools, right? As as will every vacancy for every school if you start taking vacancies and it then it affects allocations everywhere. Okay. Thank you. I have a question. Where do the retire rehires fall in terms of riffing? Where does that fall? So, when you riff, you first look at obviously you first look at vacancies, then you look at long-term subs, then you look at retire

273hires, you look at part-time folks, and all the part-time folks, you're also still looking at contracts. So, we're looking at limited contract versus continuing contract. Um, and then we look at seniority for limited contract. So, if you have, this is why everybody wants continuing contract, right? Because it protects you in a riff. And so, um, those folks would be very last. So, retire rehy hires are are um one of the the first group that you look out after you um um take any long-term subs out or folks that don't have a contract at all. Okay. In in this particular case, there's some and there's um so in that position um may take care of itself um in that I think that that particular person may not be returning. Not sure yet. Um but we put

274them in the order um as we know them today. Like I don't have separation of service. We don't count those people. People say, "Well, they might be leaving, but not until I see a separation." And one last question, when we talk about the um selling of properties, um Mr. Hing, are those tennis courts impacted by the koi field? They are not. The the tennis courts or Koi Field. Koi, you would not know that the two properties are together. Koifield is up on the hill. You can't even see it from Koi Field. Koi Field is our field. Hughes uses it for baseball, track, and I believe football workouts. They're they're completely separate and they're now separate parcels as well. Okay. And the tennis courts themselves are beyond repair. Okay. Gotcha. Thank you. Oh, wait, wait a

275minute. Bo member Mab, you can continue and then Vice President Bolton. Okay. So, uh just want to inquire about the fixed and obl obligated cost. Is that the slide that's on page four that we're expecting? Is that will there be reductions there or there will be um yeah, will there be reductions or savings on the fixed obligated costs? So there's a reduction from the May 19th estimate simply because we just paid off a bunch of debt. So our debt payments are going down for next year. That's the the major reduction on the fixed and obligated costs. Okay. And so this is all of what that tier one that board member created is recommended the base, right? This is part of it. So if you go to the next slide on one more slide you show

276this bottom block shows you the cost of the bottom base the 4838 million is the 59 million of fixed and obligated plus the schoolbased and things that are colle required by the collective party agreement plus the minimum state transportation of $28 million. Okay. So you're voting on the $438 million. Okay. And then if I could make a friendly amendment and I'll be done or I'll vote accordingly. Um family amendment at this point. Well, everyone's putting things on the table. If we can remove from the vacancies those social work positions if we were to say to freeze just to have them as a freeze hire as opposed to a riff, would that be sufficient to you? because I do think we we have to long-term explore that pool conversation. You said to freeze hiring. Yeah. To

277just keep it as a freeze as opposed to a full-on riff for that part. Would that work for you? Well, I think it would still create that challenge with that 0.5. And so I I understand again I I think we're going to face a challenge though and and I don't know that we if it's a position we haven't filled anyway this past year. I don't know that we're going to fill it next year either. But I some of those positions but I'm happy to say we would do we can do that for this week while with the commitment to explore it for the next meeting as to what the long-term solution would be. Say that one more time with the I'm happy to make that amendment with the caveat that we would explore what the

278long-term social work requirements would be going forward. I I'm also a little bit concerned about leaving some things out that are vacant from the list of vacance positions. And that that's my struggle is because I don't believe we everyone has a vacant position they don't they want filled. And I think that's to me that gets back into my question of what are we really saying that we're willing to commit to do. Um, so I'm happy to do it as a still keeping it as a freeze, not as a we won't necessarily riff this one, but that it would be explored at the next budget in the next meeting where we discuss the full budget. Okay, I can I can receive that. That is happily accepted as a friendly amendment from the second as well. Board

279member Lindy. Okay, vice president. Cutting the vacant positions but just freezing the three social worker ones. Okay, just so you know, that does not help the budget problem. If you just freeze them and don't fill them, I still have to budget for them. Right. But according to board member Craig, we can discuss it again at the next board meeting about what the loans. Got it. Vice President Bullet. Yes. I have a question. The superintendent des explained this to me the other day uh about um long-term subs and extracurricular folks. And I and maybe retirey hire. First of all, retirey hire at least in some of the contracts they are supposed to be the first people that are notified. Is is is that correct or am I remembering an old contract from you know when I

280used to teach? That's correct. So so and and that being the case are retire contracts or positions annual? Uh they are so let me just back up just one minute. They are the first after you after you release any vacancies and long-term subs, right? So, the first people that you when you look at licenses, when you look at licensed or certified folks, then you have um retired rehires as the first group. Correct. You're great question was are retired rehires on one-year contracts. So that is I would say that we did some language changes in the last two contracts around retire rehires because we wanted to attract rehire retires, right? So they started at step three and then could move up to step 10. Since then we have now start them at step 10 and they

281can go to step 14, 13, 14. Um, wow. And so while some of them are on a contract, it it doesn't matter when it comes to a riff because they're still first in line. Um and so they won't be on a continuing contract. It would be a contract limited, but everybody that has a license after you get rid of long-term subs, everybody from there on down has a contract. So when you're talking about riffing, they're still at the top of the list of riffs. So in this motion that talks about vacancies uh for a um a rift to begin, we have not included uh long-term subs or we've not included retire. But if we say we have a hiring freeze, extracurricular are annual contracts, long-term subs are annual contracts. Does that mean that those positions

282uh would not necessarily be anticipated to be filled? I would say that I guess and this maybe more superintendent. My understanding is that right now we are somewhat at a hiring freeze unless a position is absolutely critical to should have been um operations and need at this point. um that there may be some positions again that we are certainly hiring for because of the need to to have that role but that um I don't know that we would be hiring any of these roles or making any of these determinations before the 23rd. So I don't know the superintendent would probably know better than I would or I think we can hold until the 23rd till we come back on the 23rd. The last couple of positions I I brought to the president just for clarity

283and we did not move forward on those. Right. But, uh, we can just wait for any hiring until we come back. And for, so I just wanted to help with the long-term subs just so just so that there's re lots of clarity around because it gets very confusing and we have some very long-term loyal folks who have served in those roles. And so, like kudos and thanks to those folks. When it looks like you're looking at a riff and when you're downsizing population, you have to start with those folks. They don't have a contract year to year. They don't have any contract. So, at any point, let's say you put a long-term sub in a science position because we couldn't find someone and magically a science teacher appears who is a a wonderful fit. We

284could immediately put the science teacher in and displace the long-term sub. Um, we don't often do that because in the middle of the year you don't find teachers falling out of the sky who are great. Um, but it happens and so then we do that. So, just so that we're clear about that, all of those long-term subs positions, those 140, those have already been posted. We're already filling those. Those are calculated back into the allocations for the schools. The only reason we ever have long-term subs is when we can't find a teacher who is could fit that role or in some cases and this is happening more and more I'll be honest with you is as pipelines are being developed through our local university partners partnerships as people are getting really like somebody may have

285finished the shine program you see and they have their um their masters in special ed they finished it they're ready to go they're waiting for their test 190 their reading test to pass we might go ahead and hire them because they're all but passing that one test and they're also our employees currently and they're moving. So, that's kind of an example, but long-term subs are an August event. They're not a May event in my opinion. Right. There's 140 of them. And for all intents and purposes, those positions don't exist unless we say we want you to exist again. No. No, those positions do exist. Right now, there are no long-term subs. So, as of May 23rd, May 23rd was the long-term subs last day of work. And today, right now, there are no long-term subs

286because we haven't hired any long-term subs. Right now, we have daily subs and we have teachers under contract. Those are the two categories of people that we have. I got you. Well, that's what I Yeah, I thought that. So, but the position still exists. the people in those don't exist unless we can't find folks and you got to have somebody in front of the classroom and that's true for extracurricular activity people schedule E schedule so schedule E positions are annual contracts also yes we would have to make a determination to continue that right so the allocation is sent to the school and the ILS discuss it and the ILTS make their recommendations about schedule E but Those positions don't exist unless we say they're going to exist again. Right. We say the dollars exist. The

287ILT decides which which positions. Got it. Thank you. So, we have understanding now of the amendment. I mean the motion and the three amendments that have been there and they have been friendly friendly accepted on all terms. The administration has things to do to get back to us by next week. Can we vote now? Is there any more discussion? One more just one more question. I'm sorry. I just want to make sure I have clarity. So, um, and uh, board member Bolton, I think you kind of spoke to this, but I missed it. And so, we might need Julia and Delesio just one more time. So, when we're talking about page 17 for the social workers, the long-term sub positions, are we is that considered a vacancy where we're not filling that position or would

288that be something that's discussed at a later time? because from my understanding of the recommendation, we're only focusing on the vacancy piece. Right. So, the vacancy So, it's a little bit different with this and and I'll be honest with you, I need to I probably need to get back with you on that one because social these particular social workers are a little bit different because they're in PBIS and it's a little bit there's just a little bit of a lensure tweak. So, even though they're called long-term subs, when I talked to um Manisha House um about it, she said, "These are long-term subs, but that's only because they have a little bit of a different um title because they're PBS social workers." So, um I hear your question. I understand what you're asking. You're like,

289"Am I freezing 3.5 positions or six positions?" Um so, I don't I I probably need a little bit more um information on that. Um, superintendent I don't know if you have sorry I would just want to follow up with you on what is the lensure and what is required um to be a school social worker in our district but we can have that conversation tomorrow but the three LTS PBIS people are not part of this motion that's okay that's what I wanted to verify thank you I'm good now Wagner can we can we vote vote Did you want to you want to still say that? Okay, I might vote. Okay. Mr. Craig, yes. Mr. Crosset. Yes. Mr. Lindy? Yes. Miss M? Yes. Vice President Bolton? Yes. President Moffett? Yes. Thank you. All right. Okay. So,

290the budget's solved, right? What' you What did you What' you say? So, the budget's solved. You're ready to go. All right. Another presentation. or are we done? Did we put those all together? Okay. Um, we have several topics for board matters this evening. I will start. Um, I I kind of was anticipating that we would have a sample resolution for CPS school fair uh to support the fair school funding. Uh, as you all may know, I think I sent you all the email, city council did pass a resolution for us saying that they would like that they, you know, wanted the full the funding formula to be fully funded. Um, and I was anticipating and I sent out some sample resolutions that we would have our own. Maybe we can have that, Mr. Ho, for

291the next one. I don't think I was clear. I put it on there and I tagged you guys in the uh agenda, but we don't have a sample one. So, just think about it. I sent some I sent this out to everybody some sample resolutions for fair funding and um wanted to see if there was any desire for that any push back for that and then we'll have something for the next meeting. I wasn't clear to Mr. Horn. That's great. Okay. So, we'll draft up something for the next meeting. Um our next topic is Vice President Bolton, a proposed resolution supporting increased penalties for moving violations in school zones. Yes, this is something that's uh been moving its way through the the state capital. Uh I heard it uh on a local news of several

292weeks ago and of course after our presentation tonight. Uh and I'm I would like us as we find out what the actual status is of that law. Um to be able as a board to support kind of in the name of the kids that did what they did. Um, and also as they pointed out, our continuing problem, uh, pedestrian safety anyway, most particularly on the west side of town, west side of the district, uh, seems to be most prevalent. Uh I'd love to be able to have a sample uh resolution to in support of doing that where it's uh and I will tell you there are also some members of the community that want to come and ask the board also to endorse a resolution about having uh cameras uh installed in specifically in school

293zones. And there's that's always unpopular but there seems to be in interest uh about that. But right now, I'm just worrying just trying to deal with the construction zone penalties for being in be equivalent with schools or schools being equivalent with construction zones. So maybe we'll have a sample next time. Okay. This also sounds like a topic we need to have at our joint meeting with the city, too. Be great. That's that's coming up, I believe, in August. Do they have a sample resolution? We have a sample one. I've seen I've seen a a very short one. Okay. But yes, I'll get I'll get together with general counsel. Board members have any other questions, comments? All right. Very supportive. Oh, our next topic is an update around state and federal budget. Does anyone have a

294update around any news? I do. I did hear that the um Senate budget is supposed to be announced tomorrow. Yes, that's what we're hearing is they're going to drop their budget tomorrow. So, we'll be in a flurry to review and try to get some testimony together in terms of we don't really have any updates on federal budgets yet. Okay. Well, tomorrow is a big day. We should have some updates for the next meeting or for the calf and the naming of CPS's new middle schools, the Roberts Health and Dental Clinic as well. That will be you, Vice President Bolton. Um, two things. Uh, uh, as many of you know, there was a remarkable soft opening, uh, at Robert's school for the, uh, new, uh, uh, health center. Uh and I know we've mentioned it a

295few times uh in the last six months or so that the suggestion of perhaps naming it for uh Darlene Kayine who invented uh basically community learning center the institute and what have you uh and has been shephering our our efforts uh along that way. And so I would just suggest that we that would be something that would go I believe to policy but it would be my suggestion to name it uh for her if there is interest by the board to do so. Well member Lindy just as a procedural point we looked at this in policy committee last week and there there is no special purview of policy when it comes to naming schools like that is that is the decision of a full board. If you would like policy committee to look at that

296policy for whether we should change it, happy to do it. But if it is a question about what the school should be named, there's there's nothing in the current school naming policy that delegates that to the policy committee. I think it's I think it should be full board. I think that's great and and I'm happy to bring that or any one of us can bring that back as a suggestion uh for the the health center. And then that leads us to the next one is that there's the basically the last chance we'll have to seriously try to rebrand or rename the six schools that are going to have different purposes than they had before is probably the J the June 23rd. So, um I would make an assignment to the administration uh to be able

297to gather whatever uh suggestions have been made regarding uh the renaming if necessary or interested interested by the board exists of of the six schools that are very much changing who and what they are. So, next meeting the administration already sent out something asking for names. Are you saying you want something additional or you just want to vote? We probably need something additional. I think that was suggestions that it's my understanding at least from Pleasant Hill uh Academy was coming from the principles makes sense, but I know the community has suggested a couple of other things just at Pleasant Hill particularly and making it a a middle school that it should change its name so that the middle schools or junior highs or whatever, they're all going to be middle schools, let's say. Um, uh,

298probably for the branding and rebranding probably would be good to not necessarily carry a neighborhood name unless we want them to. So, I would I'll assign that to the administration to have a more expansive and see if there's ideas coming from the community. I'm only familiar with the one coming from uh, College Hill for obvious reasons. I do know that the people in Milville want whatever happens or whatever the name is, they do want uh Ethel Taylor's name to continue to be associated with the school. I think that community group has told us that in a in a rather extensive letter. uh and um Hartwell I I I haven't heard anything from that community but um be interesting and I know there's some interest in saying that these things that are associated with particular high

299schools somehow maybe it would be helpful if they somehow carry that but that's something we can talk about. Okay. All righty. So, are there any do board members have any assignments or just repeat the assignments? Vice President B uh that the administration would come back with a list of possibilities for rebranding of the six middle schools. Can I ask a question about your assignment, Vice President Bolton? Yes. Are you wanting community engagement in two weeks or are you saying begin if there's been some community interest to share it and I think probably community engagement will be necessary. Uh but if if we're doing it in part to rebrand, um that needs to happen pretty quickly. Uh and if there's not a particular process, who knows? Because here's the reality. Those communities are no longer the

300communities of those schools. It's it's a very this is a very unusual situation that we have before us. Okay. Any other assignments? I was going to say some we we've made some significant requests of the budget. Um and I think um I know one of my assignments was um to explore and expand on any impact the impacts that are recommended and how those things impact um the goals and guard rails student learning. Any other assignments? Um, yes. So, we assigned to uh Chief Burkhard providing us with the information of the amount of students that are in the K through8 buildings that may have siblings. Uh, um, and then we also recommended the updated projected or the updated numbers for enrollment. Um, I think in comparison to what was projected. Okay. Any other assignments? I think

301board member Lindy, your assignment was to see if there's any exploration um to explore the professional development. Do you want to formalize that as a sign? No, I think it was part of the motion. So, it's been accepted. I don't think we need anything else. All right. Anything else? Okay. A look around. A proposed consent agenda has been distributed. Do board members, the superintendent, or the treasurer have any exception items to the consent agenda? I'm so sorry, board member M. You're fine. Um, so I do have um a correction to make to the May 19th business meeting. Um, so it's at page 460 is the heading number. Um, it's under one of the comments that I made. So I just wanted to correct the um information around Reissi Price and the kindness corner. So it

302should be the being B I N G project as well as seeds of change grant. So I just wanted to make that correction. In addition, I would like to um make a motion to pull the promotions for the uh principal recommendations under the superintendent's recommendation. Okay. So, there's a motion on the floor. Is there a second? Just a procedural clarification. I I think if it's a consent agenda, anybody can pull anything out. Sure. Sure. So, like I'm happy to second that. I also don't think we need to second it and it can just be voted on separately. Okay. Thank you for that. No, that's what he was saying. Okay. Okay. Any other exceptions? So, just to be clear that the promotions that are in the superintendent's recommendations will not be voted on tonight. Correct. So,

303I'm going to have to learn I'm going to need to learn about this. So, her motion is to take that section of promotions off. That's what she's that's proposing, right? And we're saying that that doesn't need a second to do that. But we had a second when I did when I asked for the promotions. We had a whole vote about it. So I'm I'm needing some clarification because I I I did this for the promotions before and we had a vote about it. So now what I'm understanding is, hey, we don't need a vote. We can just pull it out. One of them is right, one of them is not. I think the way the policy is written is that any member can take something out of the consent agenda for a separate vote on

304that item specifically. Okay. So, so you would take that out. You'd vote on the consent agent agenda and then you'd have a separate vote on that item. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Dan. Thank you. So, are there any other exceptions to the entire consent agenda? with those things pulled out. Okay. So, so we need the mo the motion and then the second No, we don't need to vote the motion, right? But the consent agenda. Oh, the No, no, on the consent agenda without the exception. Without the Yeah, that is correct. So, so moved. Thank you. Second. There it goes. You ready? Yes. Yes. I didn't know if you wanted to discussion. Oh, well, did we need any discussion? Mr. Craig? Yes. Mr. Crossson? Yes. Mr. Lindy? Yes. Miss M? Yes. Vice President Bolton? Yes. President Moffett?

305Yes. So, now we vote on our on the exception. Okay. Give me a minute. Give our poor chair time to catch up. Got it. So, this is on the promotions on what page is it on? It's page three. Page three recommend uh rec one section D lines one and two. Okay. So we we need to have discussion. Do you want discussion cuz we already have the vote for the motion. It's pulled out now. We're discussing it, right? Yes. So I uh recommended to have this pulled from the superintendent report. We have received uh significant feedback uh through emails through uh hearing of the public about concerns regarding um upholding the uh LSDMC policy. And so wanting to make sure that there is in fact the correct um interpretation of the policy and that the selection

306process for principles are in alignment to what our proposed policy or our recommended um policy from the board is. discussion. My understanding is that you're now voting on whether you're going to approve the promotions or not. I I Right. Okay. Board Lindy, I I think I think procedurally it's been pulled. Right. Somebody needs to make a motion to pass it. Otherwise, it's not going to get passed. So I move that we do not accept the promotions for the principal positions and the superintendent recommendation. Second. Any further discussion? Well member Craig. Um just as a point of clarity. Um is the position for the second principal listed there is that an interim position or is that the full-time position? Interim. And then is that I guess maybe the set the followup qualifying the interim would be

307for uh a year or is that an interim until until a time where it was a selection for a permanent position for the upcoming school year. Okay. Vice President Benefit affirmative versus the negative. We're voting in favor of the uh motion would be to not have those promotions take place. Right. Correct. So to say yes would be agreeing with the motion. To say no. Okay. To say yes would be you're not promoting. And I can make a friendly amendment to the motion um that we do not uh make these uh positions um excuse me that we do not accept the recommendations today until further review of the actual LSDMC policy and ensuring that the um LSDMC's that are assigned to these schools have followed the said policy. member cross. Um I'm kind of curious what

308this is a question for the administration in terms of you know being sure that we h can launch a good school year in the fall. What would be you know obviously you would like the timing to have a principal in there now but we seems like we need to do this fairly quickly so that somebody can be ready to go for the fall. Is there a time line suggestion that you might have for us? I I would just say as soon as possible. We want it to be done right. We want it to be done well. Um, the problem we start running into is members leaving for the summer, for example. But I I I guess I would want to talk to the board separately about what you would need to hear from the LSDMC

309um to make you feel more confident in their selections. So, I I'm under discussion. And I'll just share I am uh I I'm not confident that the board policy uh for LSDMC's was followed to the full complement of the LSDMC's. Um it was says said we've shared it and discussed it extensively that it needed to have a minimum of 12. That's not a maximum. Um and and that just didn't happen on some areas. I would like to invite and give the opportunity for the administration to um go back and if the LSDMC engage those LSDMC's in the event that they have um they still would like those particular positions um some of them have have expressed that they felt the policy for the board was violated and so um I would like to confirm that

310with a full complemented LSDMC um that and and again we don't have anything in policy that states that there is a time limit when people can join that they they're prohibited from joining when there's a principal search. None of those things are listed. So unfortunately that was the interpretation that was provided and I want to be certain that those schools which we have given the power to have an LSDMC have indeed um done what they what they've requested to do because that's the board policy. So if it's the truth, then if it'll come back around and if it's not with full engagement and full clarity, then they will be able to have their engagement that they have that we've given them the power to do. So um I'm ready to vote. Does anyone else have

311anything else to say? Ready for vote? Yep. Mr. Craig. Oh, wait. Just one more time. I'm sorry. Confirm. A yes means you agree to not promote. not promoted at this time. Okay. And no means you wanted to just to clarify a we're voting on based on the friendly amendment was that it would be delayed until further discussion and come back to the next meeting for final vote. Is that is that a so making sure that there has been an opportunity to review as well as align with our actual policy to make sure those um processes are in place. So wait, hold on one second. I I have a question for clarification. I'm not sure if two weeks is is enough time for that. Did you say the next meeting or did you I didn't say

312the next meeting. I just said to review to make sure that we had time to review it and also make sure that um it directly aligns to what our policy expectation is because those positions were not to begin until when? August. August 1st. Okay. Good time. Vice President B. I'm I'm sorry to raise this issue. Help me out. We we are using this opportunity to review the policy or is that is there an expectation that other names would be submitted? So I think it's based off of what the uh what where uh President Maf just discussed that the administration goes back review what the policy is and then make sure that there is alignment fully to what the policy states. And so if that is not the case, then that needs to happen and that

313may require uh um a new interview process to align with what the board policy outlines. Okay. Thank you, Superintendent Murphy. Yes, ma'am. Um not done this before, so I'm asking. I've seen it when the superintendent has simply made an interim appointment without the LSDMC process. Is that allowable? I've seen that hap. I've been a part of that before personally, but of course that was years ago. So, I've seen it where it gets so late in the summer, the school must have a principal to operate and the superintendent in the past, not Shauna, has made an an appointment. I'm just going to speak as a former chair of the LSDMC again under a different administration. I think I've seen that, but what was told to me as a former chair by a different administrator is that

314that's not the preference. a preference that there that is definitely the ability to do that. But that previous administrator wanted to engage the community and not impart upon the community what they what she wanted them to have. And so she exhausted every opportunity to be able to allow that community to be able to engage so that they felt like they were a part of that because she felt like that was maintaining the spirit of what the LSDMC policy incorporated. So she worked with me very diligently to engage my LSDMC and had the assistant superintendent at that time work with us over the summer to ensure that that happened and that we were comfortable. So I would I think that to answer your question very succinctly, you are probably within your rights to do that. But

315I would caution that that particular community um that we're speaking of, those two communities have expressed to the board that they felt like they were um being excluded. And I don't want them to feel that way. I think it's just just to take a little bit of extra time and actually engage probably wouldn't be detrimental considering that the particular positions don't even begin until August the 1. Remember Craig, I just want to point out we did this two years ago when the LSCMC had difficulty in selecting a principal at a high school in which there were multiple rounds and so ultimately a person was selected to be the interim to restart to allow the LCMC to restart their process. Um so I think it's absolutely fair to say that a superintendent has that perview has

316that right to do that as part of the purview. Um, again with the premise that if there was something they felt that did not happen right in the process, you can certainly restart the process to look for a long-term principle which is ultimately I guess the goal in a lot of ways in this process. I would also only caution to to at least bring this back next week because or not next week, the next meeting only because the next meeting after that is July 16th or no, I'm sorry, July 14th. That is the only other meeting we have before August 1st. Yeah. And so my only concern with us not making any decision is that we will sit not only not give the authority to make the promotion or an interim even, but that we

317will put ourselves in a position where there's not a way to even potentially review or redo a process within July. There's there's absolutely no way that you're going to get something done from July 14th through till August 1st. So I would just maybe ask that that be at least brought back to the discussion table to make either a recommendation or decision whether to move forward or not move forward at the next board meeting for that specific reason. Okay. And I think that's to the administration to you know the speediness of which this happens is really directed by the administration as well. So engaging those communities I think is time is of the essence for you all too. So all right are we ready to vote? Did you want to say anything? No, I was just

318going to reiterate actually what you said that I think it's incumbent upon the administration to kind of move uh forward with this in a uh timely uh manner. Jen ready. Yes, ma'am. Mr. Craig, yes. Mr. Crosset, yes. Mr. Lindy, yes. Miss Matt, yes. Vice President Bolton. Yes. President Malta. Yes. Um, we don't need to review the assignments. The chair will now gladly entertain a motion for adjournment. So, moved. Is there a second? Is there a second? Who was the second? Nobody. Anybody going to second the Kendra second? Thank you. In fact, there is unanimous