Budget, Finance and Growth Committee Meeting May 16, 2025

001Thank you. Good morning everybody. Uh want to welcome uh folks that are viewing as well as those folks that are present today. Uh want to welcome you to the uh Cincinnati School Board Budget Finance and Growth Committee. Uh and we'll go around the room and introduce ourselves. We have a full agenda as always and not only a full agenda but obviously very critical uh topics uh today and we'll start over there with our guest from the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers teachers. Jeremy Gullu, chief information officer. Nan Higgin, manager of state and federal programs. Good morning. I'm Cody Hutchkins, contract analyst. Shauna Murphy, superintendent. Brandon Craig, board member. Board member. Jim Croset, board member. Kevin Ashley, director of financial reporting and transparency. Michael Gustin, assistant treasurer. Davis, this board's administrative assistant. Rob Wilson, technician. And if

002you'd like to speak during the speaking of the public, please click your hand icon. We will ask your name and association to the district and we'll invite you in at the end of the meeting. Thank you. Thank you. We have a an agenda that we need to get through and uh everything's equally important, but some is more timesensitive than the other. But I would like to if we could to go down to uh in the old business to uh number three. I think that will require the least amount of discussion or decision making. I would like today, if it's possible, for finance not to vote, but to be able to pull out of finance a recommendation regarding uh five-year forecast regarding um the levy recommendation. We do that anyway. But I'd like to formalize that

003a little bit more because as we mentioned couple months ago, we think it's pretty important for finance committee to be as united uh and as influential as possible to make some of these bigger decisions and might uh influence somebody along the line. But uh we'll start with the uh uh levy options and presentation and assistant treasur. Is that you? I believe it is. All right. Hey Rob, if you Yes. Thank you. And if you could go to the last slide, sir. I think just a followup from our last uh business meeting. We had we had a nice robust discussion um about the levy about options for for November. So, I'll bring this slide back. This is kind of the the again pick one item from each of these three columns and and that'll give us

004a res give us what we need for the resolution. So, um, the bold items are, I would say, the ones that I that feeling is that I think most people landed on based on our conversation about substitute levies, other options, input from um, our partners at preschool promise who came a couple months ago. So, so I mean, there it is. I don't know. Ready for questions or comments? Yes. Board members have any subscribes? Uh, Uh yeah, I mean I think you know Mike kind of summed it up at the at the last board meeting. It was kind of the stance. I don't really have a preface between renewal or substitute. I think both of them will kind of share some of the same concerns or issues with getting passage. Um but if it's easier for

005folks to hear the word renew as opposed to substitute or some other language, uh I think that'd be helpful. I thing I would ask is just that we at some point whenever we make our decision work with the folks from preschool promise and our own um uh preschool uh programming to put together something that would at least allow us to have a selling point to why this levy would be important. I think that's some the preschool issue is an issue that I think a lot of folks seem to respond well to our ability to be on the cutting ground for or the uh being a leader for and so if it's something we can share as an accomplishment or something we've done well it helps improve the image around the levy. Thank you Mr. Craig.

006Uh yes. Uh I uh generally uh in in uh agreement with board member Craig. I I do have a probably a little stronger pre preference for renewal over substitute just because I think it's going to be confusing to the electorate. And also I think if if we want to go back and ask for more money a year from now or two years from now, we can say that we've we haven't really asked for any new money at all. So I think that's important message with the renewal. I also think we had a presentation from the preschool promise uh leadership asking for a renewal, not for a substitute. It's another thing that I think is important to uh emphasize. Um and I do think that uh it'll be important to get really good data about the

007effectiveness of preschool promise and use that for uh helping us achieve success with the renewal. Thank you. I'd second what both what the members have said. My question is regarding the substitute piece is that that would generate some more revenue for us. Uh is there kind of an amount? Do we have any anticipation of what that could be? Yeah. So so we did we did some modeling on that. Um unfortunately it's kind of diminishing returns. So, so the way a substitute levy works is on new property, new values, you you get whatever the millage rate is at that time on that year um added on to your thing. So, we did some modeling like the first year it was a little over $300,000 and then it diminishes over time. So really it's a riskreward I

008think as everyone's discussed um you know you know do do we take the risk of having some longer ballot language having a substitute people asking questions for it um for for the potential reward of 300,000 and it diminishes from there down to over the 10 years I think it ends at like 100,000 so on a $48 million um overall levy it's a it's a small amount very important I appreciate that and yes, it's not worth the risk. Uh but we want to always communicate to people that we need the money and it's not like we're turning away from the money, but we're making the decision that the risk is is just too great at this time for voters for to be able to change. So my hope would be we obviously finance committee recommends that

009obviously doing this. I would hope that we would take this to the audit committee too uh even after the board has acted so that the audit committee can be familiar with what we're doing and why we're doing it. Uh and I think you've brought it up before but just to keep them within the loop. I think that would be helpful. And and we want to be able when we go to the public we wanted to say our community audit committee is also recommending that this that this renewal take place. And to Miss Davis, I would hope that this is not something that the board would have a lengthy discussion. And does this usually end up being a resolution? Uh I think Brandon, what do you is it a resol? So we have to pass a

010resolution saying that with the language and stuff with regards to us wanting to renew or renew the levy and then we would come back once we know the millage if I'm correct remembering. Yes. Um then we would come back and pass the actual resolution for the levy itself. So I I believe the first resolution's titled like it's basically titled statement of need, right? So, so the board is saying that we've determined there is a need to put this levy on the ballot and then and then we take it to the to the um and get a calculation and get the language and then we pass the second and I believe it is on the board agenda for Monday night and I think we just emphasize to the president and everybody that this is a preuncter

011kind of thing we're doing. we've discussed this uh at least four times uh with the full board and uh just to take action would be good. So thank you very much everybody um especially the administration for the work. If I may I I will say for for people who aren't used to this there will be the l the official language says something like in excess of the 10m floor. Um, and that is that is just official language. Can't tell anything about that, but that is that is part of every every single um levy. So, great. Thanks for adding that and forgive me for not asking if there was something else that needed to be said. Let's go, if we could to the financial website uh update. Uh, I think that's number two on old business

012and I believe that is uh you again uh assistant treasurer. Sure. Sure. We'll make this ve we'll make this very quick. Um but I do want to thank Mr. Ashley. He's done most of the carried most of the work on this. Yes. Um so so I don't invite you to go to the slides, but if you go out to uh our district website and click on financial information, you'll see we've got some new pages out there. We got some new links. Um refreshed a lot of the wordage. Other thing just to remind the public is we are now live uh with Ohio checkbook. So that that is a statewide program where folks can go in and they can look at their school district, their city, their county, and you can see you can see where

013money goes. And so we've been we've been uploading now after last finance committee, we've been uploading monthly um that data. So that I think that's it unless you unless there's questions questions. Any questions about the website? Thank you for the work and uh it's a matter of transparency and the public can access it directly. Yes. So thank you for all the heavy lifting. Kev if I one thing I think is nice about it is it's transactional. So you can actually drill down to transactions. Some of the things like payroll are batched, journal entries are batched. But if you want to see payments to a particular vendor, you can. The website's a little wonky, but once you figure out how to search it, you can you can search by vendor, by fund. Uh, so it does

014have a little more detail than just the high level stuff we do finance. That's great. And, uh, that too in a in a renewal year, uh, that's crucial and knowing what we face in the next several years, it's great that we have that as a foundation. I know on a number of occasions uh CPS has led in that kind of transactional uh transparency and appreciate this this update. Um you know let's uh if we could something new and still about transparency if we go down to the new business. Uh Mike do you have the school financial health indicators which is it this is new more ways than just on the agenda as new business. This is this is new. Yes. Uh Rob, if you'll go to the monthly reports um slide deck. I don't remember

015the slide. I'm sorry. We're keep We're keeping Rob very busy today. So while happy. Yeah. While he's pulling it up, just so that we have it's the other slide. Rob Okay. So So So while he's pulling that up, it's funny. We just got the press release this morning from the auditor. Yes. This is cool. Like literally hot off the a lot of these things are hot off the presses. So, so the auditor of state is rolling out a thing called school financial health indicators. They've been doing this for um cities and and municipalities since about 2016. And so they've decided to bring in the schools. Um and we we we got the first look at it beginning of this month. Um and and it is live now. So anyone can go out and look. We

016were actually Kevin and I were actually looking at other school districts to see. Um so so the idea of this and they call it like a financial physical like if you think about you go get a physical every month or every year hopefully. Um so so the so the idea of that is that they take our audited financial statements. So so these are the financial statements from the past seven years and and they put it through an analysis tool and they rank us on up to 16 different um areas. Are you helping Rob? Thank you. Thank you, Kevin. Thank you, Kevin. Yes, as a as I remember. So, so they rank us on up to 16 different categories and and the way they do that is a is a is a stoplight system, right? So,

017every so every category is either green, which means you're good, yellow, which means you're cautionary, or red, which means you're critical. And this is on board docs. It is. It is under word docs. It is. So the public is able to see this. Yeah. Thank you. There you go, Rob. So perfect. Slide 36. Yes. Is on both of them. Yep. So So if you if you go ahead and go to go to slide 36. So So as I mentioned, this is if you go to the Yeah. as as I mentioned, it's, you know, the stoplight stoplight kind of thing. Um, what they what they always say is no one indicator says you're in distress, but what they look for is a combination. So, they're looking for five reds or or a combination of seven reds

018and and yellows. And we'll see this in a minute. Uh, if the AOS thinks you're in fiscal distress, they reach out. They will send a letter to the treasurer, the superintendent, and the president of the board and offer their assistance in getting you back on track. Next slide, please. Looking at our 2024 indicators, we we we did really well. So, so we there there are two indicators that do not apply to us. Uh one is one is and these are the the black boxes. So, one of those is income tax, which we don't have. And there's another one that just doesn't apply to schools and then and the document it just says doesn't apply to schools. So, Okay. Okay. Everybody's got that box. Yes. It's it's sort of like the points every kid gets for

019their name on a test, right? Uh but but honestly, we we did really well. We only have two yellows, no reds. So, and yellow means again yellow is cautionary. Okay. And what's that about? And so and so what you can kind of see in the graphs here at the bottom is they for every indicator they define a range, right? So so you could say on a on a 10point scale, if you're between zero and three, you're red. If you're between three to five, you're yellow. So if you're above five, you're green. And and so we have we have two yellows. Um one of one of those is percentage of general fund revenues that exceed expenditures. And you can see we've kind of dropped there and actually dipped back up. So we were red in 23.

020We're up to yellow in 24. This graph is kind of odd and Kevin will tell you why. If you look at the two years that were really high in the green up there, those were the years that we were in schoolwide pool. And so instead of an expenditure that was showed as a transfer. Um so so it looks really good that we transferred that money to schoolwide pool and then spend it out of that fund. But but but it makes the graph look good. It looks good at least for one time. It looks good for one time. Like a broken clock at one time it'll be right. I I mean I hate to say a onepoint trend, but the onepoint trend is we're in the right direction. Uh it it's definitely something to keep an

021eye on. Everyone's keeping an eye on that. It makes sense. You know, you don't want to be spending over your revenues. you know for any organization that that that is a red flag or at least yellow flag. The other one is total liabilities to net assets. You can see we actually went over years from red to yellow. So we're we are moving down. So we are moving the right direction there. The thing I will say about this one is these are audited financial statements. So so liabilities is a really interesting thing. Kevin can tell you all the calculations he has to do for that. Um but but part of making our financial statements into something that is you know kind of industrywide is converting all of our retirement liabilities. So even though there's a really

022we carry that too I mean on on this there there's yeah yeah we we carry a a portion of the state systems even though we do not intend to pay those directly. Um, part of it is it was a Gazsby from a couple years ago, a pronouncement that required us to because ultimately if if the pension plan failed, let's say, they would come back to the members the other the entities and and look for recourse. So, so basically it's there was a lot of discussion when it first came out about is this really our liability? uh and at the end of the day it is something we have to present and it fluctuates from year to year. So that's another thing it's it's something out of our control that is going to continue to affect

023us. So I think that's one reason they you know one indicator may not even be in your control and to me that's one um that's not necessarily in our control but we'll continue to monitor it. Mr. cross it. If you took that liability out of uh the calculation, would we be in the green? Um maybe not because it's a pretty good gap from the blue line, blue dot to the yellow. We might still be in the cautionary category, but um you know, debt liabilities, all of those things come factor into these. So, yeah. Mick Superintendent, are we good? Yes. Okay. Uh, thank you. I do think the idea that we were someplace and it got better is interesting. That might be u something to think about. Um, are there other areas there that we had

024some issues and it's gotten better or just hopefully that that we don't need to turn that leaf over. I think we need to Yeah. Look, take a closer look at those. These two yellows, I believe, were in the prior. So, what they did, they went back one year and gave us what the indicators would have been for last year. And I think we had maybe two reds and two yellows or something. Um, so there definitely was improvement from last year to this year across the board. Um, but we'll take a closer look at those. I off the top of my head, I don't remember what they uh related to, but they they give you the detail of how they calculated each one. Excellent. So, and this is new for all of us in school finance.

025So, I'm sure I'm sure over the course of the next year, you know, we'll learn more. And who knows, they may tweak some of their things as they get feedback from all of us. And does this help us figure out that with things that we need to be focused on or looking at or is it at all helpful or is it just a matter of being transparent to the public? I would say more B. So, so one of the interesting it's it's good we're doing these two things together, but remember this is a backwards looking this is a backwards looking indicator, you know, and we're going to do the forecast in a few minutes, which is a forwardlooking indicator. So, so it does give you an idea of of your relative strength over time, but

026but we're always looking always looking backwards a year. Okay. Thank you. I think it's kind of cool. Is also Oh, good. Hey Jen, one of a what's up? Good morning everyone. Sorry. Good morning. Um I just wanted to say in relation to your question um President Bolton was or vice president chair. There you go. Board member is fine. Yeah. I think there'd be value in looking at their calculations on each specific ratio because then even though it's backward looking, you can start anticipating or making plans to improve those specific ratios. For example, like the debt to asset ratio, you could use that indicator to say, well, when we're facing the decision if we want to take on debt for some improvement project, it's going to have this impact on this ratio. or um there could

027be um we haven't we haven't received details on what all those ind individual ratios are so it's hard to give you an example but there would be value in understanding them and and then using that information to make forward financial decisions that make sense yes very much so I appreciate it um well this is I'm I'm liking that they're doing this uh and I think this we look we look good just Just another surprised. Just another tool for the public. There you go. Another tool for the public. And speaking of the public, we're going to also go into new business and have our if she is prepared and ready as she always is, our uh our chief is going to be uh able to present as is in our work plan. So our internal audit

028chief, please do your presentation for us. Well, thank you all. So, I will ask Rob to transition over to the internal audit update slides. So, I appreciate the opportunity to speak with everyone today. It's an exciting time of transition. We reported and closed out our fiscal 2025 internal audit plan at the last audit committee meeting in April. Since then, Isaac Cart and I, this is a not a part of the slides, but Isaac K and I had the pleasure of going to the 2025 ALGA Association of Local Government Auditors conference and speaking about the great work that we've done, really the work that Isaac's led on the status of past recommendations and the follow-up process. And we presented live in front of about 500 auditors. So, we got a lot of great feedback and I

029think people were impressed with the rigor of work that we've been able to accomplish between our team and and management and of course with the board and audit committee support. So, just wanted to mention all of that. It was a great uh great opportunity. So, diving in looking ahead now to fiscal 2026, I wanted to share a couple of quick updates and uh gauge the finance committee's interest in participating in the next steps. So for the public reminder of the role of internal audit uh it's listed there on this slide but most importantly as I said today what are our next steps for fiscal 2026 internal audit plan. So again as a brief reminder the internal audit cycle occurs the same way each year and we are now entering the May June time frame which

030is our strategic risk assessment and planning phase. That will then lead us to our July audit committee meeting where we will present the plan and ask for review and approval of the plan. And then after that, we get right into the work and off we go again. So, this is a bit more detailed than likely is needed, but I wanted to highlight each of the steps that we go through from essentially the beginning of planning all the way through the development of the internal audit plan. I think this is a point that board member Crosset highlighted during our just ask Jen session is that internal audit selects projects that are riskbased that are based on strategic direction. Um and so this is a good way to show the public and of course our finance committee

031members how we go about this process. So where you'll see uh a couple of items to highlight are the opportunities coming here with planning surveys in our upcoming meetings with management the audit committee as well as board members if they are interested in participating. All of that leading us there to hopefully as I mentioned an approval of a strong and robust plan in July. So moving to the next slide here. I certainly won't read through all of the infants, but as we develop methodologies, we are trying to balance a strategic and mathematical scientific approach with professional judgment, logic, and reason. And so you'll see that there's various items that go into the development of the plan. Some are qualitative, some are quantitative. Uh but I think the thing that's a little different this year and

032why I wanted to really highlight that through today's conversation is that it's you know no surprise to any of us that we are facing some strategic and budgetary changes. So how does internal audit adapt and support that work this year? Um, so we've had pretty extensive conversations between the superintendent, uh, assistant treasur and, uh, likely with our treasur when she returns about how do we support and play a more critical role as things potentially shift and change as it relates to budget, limited resources, and potentially those impacts on process. So you'll see here highlighted in the purple at the bottom of the slide, that's where we really want to come up with a way to weight that a little bit more heavily than perhaps in years past. So again, this this is really the adaptation

033this year is how do we become a proactive partner for the district and as I mentioned those budgetary impacts. So as we think of a change in a process. So the process used to have x number of resources now they have less. So how do we adapt and change processes streamline our controls to ensure that the outcome whether it's compliance related operational based where we have to continue paying our employees or whatever the case might be. How do we redesign controls with the resources available? And then I think the other side of it too is a little bit more of a proactive take. So we can analyze things hopefully before we were to find that we were missing a control due to a change if that makes sense. So again I just wanted to highlight

034the quote at the bottom there. We're not just looking back. I know that's as auditors sometimes it's retro expected. this year. I think the really critical role between partnering with our our leadership teams is how do we look ahead and get ahead of things and I think internal audit will play um a bit more of a critical role in that regard this year. Um so where are we headed next? Just briefly wanted to share with you uh where what our next steps entail. So we are right now finalizing our methodology trying to adapt like I said for the budgetary impacts and how we'll incorporate that into our work. But what that means for these groups and this folk the folks here is uh opportunities to engage with each of you. So our approach is to

035develop a survey that's hopefully quick simple straightforward share that with management senior leadership as we do each year but also would like to extend that to our audit committee members and board members with an option to indicate if you would like an inperson meeting as well. So being mindful of the everyone's time if we do have a number of folks who are interested I think we spoke with the audit committee about doing some subgroups uh of a couple members being mindful of you know public quorum and whatnot uh but really trying to get our arms around uh using the data that perhaps we can collect and then seeking insights from from our other um stakeholders. So just wanted to mention that survey should be coming soon. It's noted in the dates above. uh the surveys

036hopefully will go out the last week of May and then we can get right into those planning. So just wanted to take the opportunity to to preface the work that is coming and get your insights, feedback and any questions you might have. I thank you and I I like the idea that we have to look forward but also you obviously understanding and seizing the the the critical nature of where we are and it does have to change how we approach many many things. um not by our own fault but by the environment in which we're operating. Members have comments, questions. Yeah, again I've said for a while now I think Lauren you're doing a phenomenal job with re-imagining how we think about internal audit. I think in the past we've just really done it as

037something needs to be checked on and then we check on it. And I think that notion did not always think about the fact that things don't have systems in place, things don't have things prepared to to really allow for some of that work to be done. Um, and so I think the only thing I would maybe put into the thought process or the frame of reference, it's just that I don't want us to also overextend what internal audits purpose is, right? Because I do think that is the one thing that we were getting a little bit far down the line with at times is because you all were having to go back and check on somebody three or four times to see whether or not something was actually what was being implemented or whether or

038not this was actually working or whether or not even had a system yet. um that all of the things that we put in as ideas or all the things that you all decide to kind of take on or task is just make sure that we are not overleveraging the work that's already still being done with projects that are still being monitored, the other work that's still happening. Uh because I do think that's the other part that I think we we started to see a little bit of that especially with the I think for instance the school uh the school audits you know it was it was a great idea to do we just what we learned in the process of it was to do it took so much time and effort and so much away

039from the other work you were doing because they weren't prepared for it. And so I think some of the proactive stuff of getting folks prepared, getting folks looking at their systems, making sure that we can work with management to really ensure everybody's operating um and a methodology to our operation that makes it easier for things to flow and more efficient will make it easier for you all to do these different projects. And so I think just maybe the evaluation of some stuff that may come up that again always sounds like a great idea and I think we always want to do it, but it's make sure that we're using the time best for you all. Thank you, Mr. Craig. Mr. Crosset. Yeah, I think uh I like, you know, continue to do the riskbased assessment,

040but I do think that your uh comment about focusing on the future, not so much on the past, is going to be important. Uh I don't think it's out of the realm for you guys to do to emphasize maybe doing a little more operational auditing versus financial auditing and look help us look for cost efficiencies. uh that could be a big benefit to the district in in the in the uh environment that we're operating in to borrow the words from our chair. But and but I also uh echo uh board member Craig in that um uh there are I think you have a pretty good um uh dashboard to reflect the uh recommendations that have not yet been implemented and uh certainly the uh making that more visible will help maybe accelerate some of those

041things to happen. So thank you. I think it's I think it's great thinking forward and of course the thing you always the danger is always making sure as you're thinking forward and being so kind of influential in what it is that we need to be thinking about somehow still maintaining that separation um and not you know not being drawn into the to the you know the wrestling match so to speak. Um so uh appreciate this work and again it's one of our uh crowning jewels I think that we've had this committee uh community audit committee and a wonderful internal audit group of folks. Uh I just it's it makes selling a levy a lot easier I will tell you out in public. Um so if other comments questions as always thank you. Uh let's uh

042do uh we want to make sure the thing we must get done today is the five-year forecast. But before we do that, let's see if we have a a new and um uh Readers Digest version of our uh uh monthly um financial report. I'm dating myself and my parents on that one. What have we got? You want me to do the fast version? There's a there's the uh the normal one and then there's Okay, team it up. However you want to. I mean, we can do this. There's the slide. Thank you. No, that won't won't do that. Um if you go to the next slide, Rob, just quickly, um we'll go through our cash and investments. Um the end of April we had $239 million across all funds. Gez. Yeah. Most of it's tied up

043and things that Yes. Um our operating cash was pretty low because we we waited as long as we could um to transfer money from Star Ohio. So transfer was actually initiated on the 30th, hit on the first. So we don't show it here, but we are trying hard to get every penny of interest earnings we can good on the money we have. So trying trying every way to squeeze out some more revenue. You go to the next slide. Um you'll see the operating account balance is low but again we did a transfer the next day which pushed it back up. Next slide. Rob you can see there general fund cash balance was 95.1 million at the end of the month. Debt service um little Say that again. It was what at the end $95.1 million

044at the end of the month. So again, remember we're in the period now where our cash balances decrease until July. So we're just going to continue to go like this as we burn as we spend through um the taxes that we have. So nothing really um substantial there. You go to general fund, you can see uh cash balance is down a little from last year. Encumbrances are up a little from last year, but nothing nothing hugely significant there. But that's good that the encumbrances are up or is that bad? I don't know that it's good or bad. Um, this is it's it's really it's so so one of the things that we do is we have our cuto off for entering new right requisition request and that's always right at the end of April. So,

045so usually you would see like depending on how well people follow the deadline, incumbences might be up. So, it might mean that more people follow the deadline. It could mean that we haven't paid things. So, it's it's hard to really It's hard to really tell if it's good or bad. It it is. How about that? Uh, it is. It is. Um, it is in being. Yep. You can see. Go two slides, Rob. So, there's revenues. Um you can see there we were up a little on taxes, down a little on state um aid. Imagine that. What a surprise. A surprise there. Anything else, Kevin? That's the revenues. I feel bad taking your thunder here, but No, but you but you also get the five-year forecast, right? Two more slides. Rob, we'll look at um expenditures.

046You can see we're we're higher than last year on salaries and benefits. lower than last year on on everything else, but that also includes a tax anticipation note. So you get so you take that out. I think we're right there, I would say. So So every every year there is some anomaly that that we have to put in these reports. So the tax anticipation note will be for the next couple years. Before that, it was the schoolwide pool. So just know it's there. And if you go two more slides around the pie chart, you can see where we're at. We've spent we spent the we're over about twothirds of our spending has spent our encumber or already spent I'm sorry have our encumbrances there. We have our you know remaining um money that's dedicated for

047payroll. So that gives us a tiny little percent of unencumbered budget. So 1.3%. Last year we were about 2%. So, but we are we are getting to the end of the year. Yeah, as we said, you know, we should be done with new incumbrances and you know, we have I think three payrolls left, I think. So, we're getting as long as you know that, you know, need to remember. I'm like, well, we didn't get paid this week, we'll get paid next week. Okay, perfect. All right. And then to sum it all up is a statement of cash flows. Since people always look at negative numbers, I will explain the negative and general property tax. So that is a um that is our settlement. So so every time we get advanced, we just put it in

048general property taxes and then when we do the settlement um the county will tell us where to put different line items. So really the big one is you move some money from general property tax to tangible personal property. Do do members have any questions about this thus far on these monthly financials? Mr. Craig, I just uh not so much a question, but I think it's just something that for us to really keep in mind is that I know we talked about it before with regard to the policy on cash balance and I think the earlier slides with regard to revenue or good example of why this is something that we as we go forward continually need to be paying attention to um because you know again we have ability to move some funds here and

049there but the longer term health is when we don't have to do those things in order to maintain our our status and so I I think again it's worthwhile pointing out that that is something we need to think about as we go forward in future years. Mr. Crosset, any comment? Continue preschool. I'll let you do free school. Oh, okay. You were the pres. That's all good. Um just, you know, a couple highlights here from March to April, minimal change. Um, I think we've talked about before February, March tends to be the high mark I think for for the number of kids enrolled. So, so that's good, fairly consistent. And then, of course, they'll be done after May. Um, and then the next slide shows the tuition assistance calculation. Um, pretty much the same trend as

050this year. um because of those pilot seats for the ECE grant, fewer are falling down to that last dollar in uh calculation for tuition assistance. But we we know what that's based on. Uh the next slide just kind of gives um an accounting for the um the levy portion that's designated for preschool expansion. Um and so you can see that's fairly consistent with the prior year as well. I think we've made all the United Way payments for this year. Um, and we'll have another month of tuition assistance calculation and then we'll have to do a journal entry uh for those as well. Uh, next slide shows the number of students benefiting from tuition assistance either full-time, halftime, or however they're categorized. But, uh, it's been fairly consistent this year at 780 was for April. And

051then and those are years that we're looking at or what? Yes. So the the darker blue line is the current year. And so you can see monthtomonth what the level of number of students was. Um last year was the green. The year before was the orange. The year before was the light blue. So every year it was increasing until this year. And again, those pilot seats captured, you know, at least uh 120 seats. So, if we hadn't had that funding source come about this year, that number would have been more up with the green. Considering if I could considering the the levy or the renewal, this is the kind of chart that will have to be explained to somebody because everything else is showing growth. And then and so just kind of as we look

052at these make sure that this is the kind of thing to pull out as people get real specific about the preschool piece. Mr. Cross you might even want to do a chart sort of an as if chart so that maybe there's less explanation you have to provide. Okay. Thank you for that feedback Mr. Craig. Um just one quick question with regards to the uh tuition assistance and it which it appears at this this point you were a little bit below where we were expecting to be with for the total amount for uh and so I just wonder are there more are we expecting more to still come in uh that would get us up because the budgeted amount was like I think we had seven million on the one chart go back one off um

053for the full year. So that's the expense. That's calculating the expense. The revenue we budgeted 155 and it's at 156. No, I mean I guess the expense of the tuition assistance. Oh, gotcha. I It's definitely going to be lower because that budget was based on not having those extra seats, extra funding. Um so that should come in. Last year the actual was 6.4. Uh which I believe was a little below the budget of the prior year as well. So, but the key takeaway probably from this chart is the revenue that's designated for our share and the portion that goes to United Way and used by CCP is 15.6 and we are spending that carryover that was there and so the the expenditure budget was 17. It may come in closer to 15 this year potentially.

054Um but in the last few years it's kind of been a deficit spend. Any other questions, comments about that? Miss Pton. Yes. Gotcha. So, in relation to your conversation about the levy and presenting that line chart. Uhhuh. I think it would be more bene that's uh good. But in addition to that, it would be beneficial to show a stacked bar chart that shows the number of CPS students supported by those funds. But then all the other CPS kids in preschool that are support sorted by other funds. I don't want to show the public that we're only supporting 780 students. I'm saying yes. Okay. No, I think that's good. I think the more information the better and the more we can um be boastful very frankly and people really understand the kind of investment that's been

055made. I mean, we've made more investment and the community has too in preschool than anybody else in in the tri-state area, let alone in the state of Ohio. I mean, we lead the way on preschool and we have a a great thing to message, but you're right, Jen, we should the numbers we've got, we let's show them all. So even a historical perspective would show how we are being diligent of doing last dollar in because we've brought in new sources to support like the pilot program for example and and we honored that pledge. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it. Jen, of course. Mr. Crosset, question. Jen, to clarification, are you talking about including like Head Start classrooms? Yes, we have, you know, we spend um and don't quote me on this, but I think it's

056like 1316 million a year on preschool. The levy, the students that are supported by the levy is like a very small portion of that. So, um we need to keep honoring the whole picture um and all those other funding s how creative Vera is incredibly good at maximizing funding for our students and so thank you. Thank you. Got it. Thank you. Okay. Excellent. Good point. And frankly, as we prepare for the renewal, um hopefully the administration is is putting together that kind of package uh to be able to present to the community and the best foot forward. Continue. All right. I think we're up to state and federal grants. Grants, Miss Hagen. All right. And I will keep this short and sweet in the interest of time. Love it. I don't have very many slides

057this week. Um this is just showing where we're at. As Mike already pointed out, we had a kind of big rush of contracts and requisitions come in in April. So, we're just on the general upward TW trend from the end of the year spending, but still well above our goal of 57%. Next slide. We are again continuing to spend out and encumber. I just would like to give a shout out to our non-public specialist Jill Blair. She's worked really hard um with our non-public schools to help them spend their money and that's that's really helpful to us because they get their carryover kind of first and so they have really done a great job of spending out their grant funds um through a little I wouldn't even been thinking about that. Yeah. And can I

058just say this is the first time we've ever had a 100%. We've been doing the same slide for a long time. A long time. This is the first time we've ever had a 100%. So, well, I think that's super. That's pretty awesome. And again, the interfacing with us and the private schools and parochial schools or nonCPS schools, this is a message that does not get out to the community at all that we are. They're still our kids, you know, and we all our kids and that's the way it it should be. So, she's like I said, she's just made a dramatic improvement this year. Absolutely. Kudos to her. Um, the next slide we could just kind of that's just again our kind of our position. we have very few changes, you know, with amounts coming

059in. And then the last one I have here is our um current position. I went ahead and just to make these numbers a little more clear since it's kind of a confusing process um ticked off the ones that were clear on as far as sweep. So you can see most of the grants were in great shape as far as spending and and no threat of any kind of loss of funds um when we file our FES. Uh we've only got a few that are kind of down below our goal of 57% but they have a lot of things scheduled for the summer. So we have a lot of summer activities especially at our satellite location. So I expect those to tick up as those charges come in. We've also got quite a few contracts out

060there. So um I I think we're we're looking good. We're trying to you know not just spend the money but spend it in a thoughtful impactful way. So our goal is not to spend the money. It's to spend it in ways that benefit the kids. And so it's, you know, I just want to emphasize that we want to spend it carefully and thoughtfully. Thank you. Questions cross, Mr. Craig. Sounds like a law firm, correct? Good job. I do love the check boxes. I love that. Yeah. Very clear. You can see you can see which ones we can go on and which ones we're stuck. That's great. Return on investment. summer school readers digest version, right? You know it. All righty. Next slide, Mr. Robin. Hopefully, a lot of this information um is not new news

061as it was in a summer summer fast document. So, I just kind of summarized the information that was in there. Thank you. Um first one is just talk about the students registered. As you can see, we had a little spike there in 20 21 and 22 following COVID um and all that. So, summer school just ticked up naturally there. Next slide, Mr. Rob. Uh this one just kind of summarizes budget. First slide up in the upper left corner just shows how the budget has trended over the past few years since 2019. Um just some clarification. 2019 and 2020 look a little low. I did put the numbers together for the budget. Some of the coding was a little inconsistent. So some of that could be a little higher. Could be I believe I captured it

062all but I but I could be safe to say that 2019 2020 could be a little higher. But okay. Um just putting that out there. Then per pupil, what I did there was just took the the students registered divided by the budget divided by the students registered that year to give us that. And then the orange bar there is the average per pupil. So taking the average cost based on the budget over all those years and all the student enrollment over all those years and kind of just compared to see how each year to each other um and just kind of see how we're trending. Put a question about Mr. Cross. Does that mean in 2021 2022 the uh I guess student teacher ratios were much better. Does that mean that I don't maybe you

063know you can go back and answer that another day just curious student teacher ratios during 21 and 22 I can tell. So this is the number registered that may make a difference in what that actual ratio was in terms of actual attendance. just say remember the program for those years was a little different because th those were the years where we did like the full day with enrichment um and that that was using the esser dollars. Yeah, we needed to take a film of that because that'll never happen again. Okay, don't waste any time on getting the answer to that. No, no, no, do that. We need that information. Jen, did you have I just wanted I just want to make a point that from year to year the students who were eligible to participate

064summer school changed. So during those COVID years all children were invited to participate while previous to that we just focused on third grade or nth grade or graduation and then now that the funds have estra funds have disappeared we're going back to being a little bit more specific about who invited to participate in summer school. The pool was a very much more restrictive. Correct. Continue. All right. Next slide, Mr. Rup. And so continuing to summarize the data, just high school credits earned are just something to focus on when we talk about ROI. If we're spending money, what is our outcome? So looking at the diff different years and how they compare to each other. Um, that just kind of gives a a summation of the of the high school credits earned each year. And next

065slide, Mr. Rob. What I tried to do with that data next was just uh use the the guides that were in the document already and from the wonderful teams that collected the data. It was already segregated out by school. So, just representing that in a uh chart type. Only did back to 2022 just because if I put back to 2019, it got a little crazy and the d the graph was really hard to read. So, uh thanks to my team for that feedback. But uh so yeah, this just going to shows a comparison of uh three three years of what the schools have earned. And I believe the final slide for me. So this one was something I tried to do. So in the US u manual there's a function called 1910 and it talks

066about um credit recovery or recovery money spent towards recovery for summer for summer school and then different programs throughout the year. So, what I wanted to do was take the the money spent during summer school and look at anything that was coded to function 1920 to see if I could get a per pupil cost on what it cost to um have those high school credits recovered. Um that doesn't include like transportation or social work services or anything like that that is coded to a different code or a different function. That was only 1910. So, this is at minimum what it would cost for those. Um and that was just my attempted to show a per pupil cost questions. John, Mr. Craig, I just say uh really quick. I think one of the things that we

067are we do see with regard to summer school is the nature of which we offer it also has been a determin of how people participate where when it was open for everyone, we'd have folks who would sign up and start the year. We make investments and then as that summer went along, they disappeared. Um, and I think that may go better into what we think about how we think about summer school in the future is that is this something specifically for a purpose such as credit recovery or graduation more so than opportunity because I think that opportunity costs. we don't really see the benefit coming in when the student doesn't complete it or we have to pay out a teacher for an entire summer who has a class of 30 or 20 students one day

068and then by the end of the summer it's one right and I think that's the other thing is is just changing that nature of it is helpful to understand how it can be beneficial because there is still need for students to get the additional requirements and we need staffing to be done in a way that gives people kind of clarity as to know what they're going to do. I just I worry when we do it more than just what is necessary to get people to passing that we are going to be offering something that folks love in the beginning of the summer but by midsummer are like I got to go my family trip I got to go kids at this camp my kids doing that that they're not participating any further much more the

069traditional view of summer school instead of I think something that was invented 15 years or 15 years ago which was fifth quarter where you basically had year-long school if you chose to participate. Lots of enhancement and enrichment and lots of remediation piece. Uh it's a glorious time. There was money to do that. I think it was actually some of that came from the um Obama administration. Uh similarly, so any other questions about summer school? I'll keep going then. Here's one CR. Thank you very much. There's one CRA, so I'll submit as written. How about that? Well, that city better get busy. Yeah, man. No real com no comments. I'm not going to say a word today about the city of Cincinnat I'm getting very very reserved. Continue. We took care of this part, right? So,

070we have the budget update and the forecast left. All right. I love it. We're much on schedule. Forecast. All right. We know who owns this. Yeah. With with a lot of input and help from Mike and Jen as well. Team wants to join in. Absolutely. Go for it. But on we'll just go through the slides real quickly. Um and then we can talk more specifics. Um the first slide is is pretty much repetitive information. So considerations that go into any forecast. just to kind of set the stage. Um, one of the things it's the current year plus four years and so if you're looking at five fiscal years, you're touching three state bianial budgets because they're each for two years. Uh, so just to again set the stage, it kind of makes it uh a

071little bit unpredictable. I think you're all aware of that. But um, other thing is inflationary rates over that period of time. I think there's more precision when you look at, you know, year one and two. Um, a little less predictability for years three, four, and five. Um, controlling spending levels in the general fund at the district level. Um, emphasize this again. um previous board and and I believe the current board supports the fact that um the district will try to live within the means of the annual revenues as we hope to kind of keep our cash balance up as well. But that's a really a key factor and one of the things we do build into this forecast is the assumption that we're going to control spending within that level of revenue. Um maybe the

072last time we'll talk about the cliff plan, but um just to reemphasize that this year there's still an effect of that those ESR dollars coming back and there's going to be residual effect of that for the next couple of years um since we don't have those additional funding. Uh district student enrollment projections versus actual enrollment is always a somewhat of a hard thing to predict. Um so those things do change. Um, I think Jeremy's team does a great job of of mastering that um, process and and he understands how that's a an estimation uh, because there are factors outside of our control that we we don't know. U, but anyway, that does play into our projections as well. And then obviously with this being um, collected bargaining time, any outcomes from that obviously will affect

073the the future budgets as well. The next slide um is kind of new information. This is kind of um a synopsis of some of the potential state budget changes along with others. But just to highlight a few things that um have been discussed, key changes from the governor's budget to the house approved budget. Um, as we've talked before, you know, the governor's budget included the fair school school funding plan, did not ad update the base cost factors um, and continued the phase in of the plan. The House plan essentially suspends the fair school funding plan um but then freezes funding so that except for some changes in enrollment and that kind of thing that the guarantee continues and and basically our revenue will remain flat or a little bit of an increase. Uh one of

074the key things in this forecast that we were presenting is based on our current enrollments, our projected enrollments as well as assuming assuming that the state budget will be closer to the House version. Um obviously that's an unknown. We have the Senate version uh and then they'll have conference committee and then the governor will have line item veto. So So we've got a long way to go in about six weeks. Um, so we'll see how that plays out. Um, another thing that's been a big discussion in the school district uh, treasurer's world is a cap on cash carryover for districts. Um, good or bad, that's not really an issue for us because we don't have that much of a cash um, accumulation. They'll find a way to make it pertain to us, I'm sure. But,

075but it it it really just in my personal opinion makes doesn't make a lot of sense because, you know, schools and all entities are encouraged to have a safety net, have a rainy day fund, that kind of thing. And this legislative proposal basically throws that out the window and doesn't um anticipate the timing. is we've talked a lot about how, you know, we we're cash heavy when we get our property taxes, but then we're really cash low at other points in the year. So, so there's discussions that was 25% moved to 30. It it may go away. It may go to 100%. I think I heard that at one point. Um, the key that they're looking for there is to then say, well, you have too much cash, so we're going to reduce your levies,

076uh, which have been voted on, etc. But just wanted you to kind of, you know, make the public aware of that factor. Um, another proposal which may go away is shortening the forecast requirement from 5 years down to three. Uh, again, not sure. A lot of discussion about the 5-year being based on levy cycles. And so that's probably where the five-year forecasting came from. Um, so we'll see that rumors that may go away or be changed. Uh some separate legislation that we know could have a negative impact uh would be changes to the 20 mil floor. Um one discussion we are currently at the 20 mil floor which means it keeps some of those reduced levies from falling below that. Um one of the discussion is adding the emergency levy millage in there which would

077then have the effect of allowing us to go down even though we are currently at the 20 mil floor. So that's one proposal. Um, and I think that's separate from the state budget. So that could come in a different format, but um, so anyway, that was a lot, but I think that's an important slide to go over. Um, the next slide is really updates for this year. So from when we did the November forecast to when we did now, I know Mike's mentioned some of the areas we were looking at u with tiff, CRAAS, state budget, property taxes, all of that. So I just kind of wanted to summarize there have been some changes if you look at the November forecast to now. Um the primary thing is, you know, property taxes and and p

078public utility personal property um overall increased slightly from what we were showing in November. And we have all the settlements now. So that should be um pretty much done. State aid, we will get u three more settlements because we get that twice a month. Um we do have a pretty good projection now based on what the enrollment data was in April. So there's a little bit of a lag in that calculation, but overall we do have a you know a little a moderate increase in state funding for 25 compared to where what we knew at November. Um other revenue again we're one of the things in in doing the projections is we get a pretty large tiff payment from the city in June every year. Uh it last year was a significant increase to 19

079million. Uh so we're anticipating that'll be the number again this June, but again that's one of the things we won't know until until it hits. So um so we pretty much have that flat compared to where we were before. Excellent. In terms of expenditures, personal services and benefits, uh we did do a a little bit of an increase. you know, we always have an offset for vacant positions in terms of budgeting. Um, just based on what our actual spend has been through April, I did increase those amounts slightly. Um, based on that, um, transfer for debt service. This is probably a good news piece for this year. Um, we budget the bless you. Thank you. We budget the full amount as if we were not. We get federal interest subsidy on some of the Build

080America bonds that we had. Um those are sometimes delayed. They've been reduced through federal regulation. Uh so we budgeted that we're going to have to cover those that the district would have to cover those if they didn't come through. So when those do come through, it provides a little bit of a budget savings in terms of what we budget for debt service. So I did make that adjustment because we're we're good for this year. So that was a savings um of about $3 million I believe. Um so went ahead and reflected that. You'll notice if you look at the forecast for the future years of debt service, it's less and that's that's not because of this factor. It's because of our payment structure. Um we do have the $21 million bonds um that will be

081paid off next this month, next month. Um so that will impact how much has to be transferred. Um okay. And the next slide is um a summary. This is just to kind of summarize what's on the larger sheet. Um the key thing I'll point out here from November to now. So if you recall our current budget expenditure for 26 is 624.6 six, which was based on our revenue projection in November. Now, I feel comfortable raising the revenue projection for next year based on those factors I talked about to $6286. So, that's approximately a $4 million additional revenue number. In the current forecast, I left the expenditure levels the same because obviously we do want to build up cash. So it's considerations for the board and it's a discussion to have. No. And so so yes,

082I we were happy when we worked through everything looking at where we are and mainly we I'll give credit. It's it's state funding. It's improved enrollment numbers that have driven that. Enrollment's critical. So that'll be a consideration we can talk about in terms of the current year the target for 26. Um but then in this graph the yellow so what we did is like I said made minor changes for FY25 in the yellow the fund balance after incumbrances at the end of this year I'm projecting to be 43.5 million for the general fund. Again this is only general fund. Um, so if you look at next year, I'm letting that grow by the additional $4 million in revenue at this moment. If leaving the expenditure target at 624, then going forward, the green at the

083bottom shows the amount of the renewal levy. So they have you pull that out because if the renewal levy were not to pass, they want to show you what the effect of that would be obviously which would be devastating um if the $48 million were not to pass. Um but then the other thing with the yellow the 47.5 so again keeping that flat in year three that is the point the level at which OD looks at to determine if they think you're showing fiscal distress if year three was a negative cash balance after incumbrances that would then trigger a review by them to say how do you plan to mediate remediate that um next slide again just shows state share versus local share as you know we always talk about the burden is really on

084the local taxpayers primarily um at a 63% level this hasn't changed since November next slide has enrollment projections uh again for 25 this is about 500 students higher than what we were projecting in November good job um so I that's definitely a positive um positive move. Um and then again we it shows a slight projection every year by about 60 students and that's just based on our historical uh it's a trend that'll get bigger but you have to do it this way. So you know trying to be um not be too optimistic but not be too pessimistic as well. Um the next slide is a projected revenue analysis. I think again I think this is fairly consistent with November. Uh you can see 50% of the revenue sources is real estate property taxes. Uh 7%

085public utility. Um about 30% in state sources and then tiff CRAAS Medicaid reimbursement at -ate all of that is in the yellow category. Um these slides I mainly focus on this overall. Um one of the things I like about these slides is it gives a longer trend. So it goes back five years and it goes forward current year plus four. Um so you can kind of see there's not a whole lot of unexpected wiggle room here. Um, the one blip there is the fact that we issued $75 million in tax anticipation notes for cash flow purposes. Uh, but if you were to, and so I've starred that and footnoted that. If you were to take that out, you can see the trend is really fairly flat. Like those first five years are actuals. Um, some

086other anomalies, you know, um, in 2021, and I didn't footnote it on this particular one, but that's where we had the pass through funding. So, there was additional revenue, but we actually had additional expenses that offset that. So, um, and this may be a little more evident in some of the others, but the other thing I'll point out is the orange is again the effect of the renewal levy. If it were to pass, you include it. If it were to not pass, you would have to exclude that, which would be again devastating. Um, next slide. Again, this is showing just property tax revenue. um kind of the blips there go along with the reappraisal cycles. You'll see a little bit of a blip, not a major blip, but that's really what one of the things

087that helped us in 25. Uh next slide, same thing, public utilities. Um and then the next two are state funding. Again, I I noted there the pass through funding just to explain that that's a blip and not um an ongoing thing. The next one is restricted. Um this one shows a little more of a blip last year, but part of it is the the scale because we're looking at 33 million versus 31 the year before. Um but the restricted is based on categorical enrollment and weighted funding and and all of that. So this one probably looks a little more but again it's the scale uh that's leading to that other revenue on the next slide all the things I mentioned that go in there. We've had a little bit of an increase which primarily was

088TIFF related. Uh again we're hoping that will continue uh and maybe build on that just a little bit. Next slide is the expenditure analysis. Um which is another thing we talk about. You know really 74% of our budget and expense is personnel uh related. Um and then purchase services which are you know a number of things but primarily contracts um is about 19% and then the other categories there. Um the next slide does an expenditure overview. again the in 24 the $75 million repayment of the tax anticipation notes if you were to take that out um and you can kind of see again the pass through funding in those first two years and then you'll see the projection is pretty much holding that it's fairly flat. Uh, next slide, personal services. Um, this is, as

089Mike mentioned, the schoolwide pool. So, those first three years, personal services that were covered in the pool, schoolwide pool were done as a transfer out in the general fund and not showing up as personal services. So, that's the reason for that difference. Same with the next slide. employee benefits um purchase services again had the password funding and then other financing sources uh is where you can see or other financing uses I'm sorry is where you can see the um schoolwide pool again okay so almost there bringing it in the next slide this is very good okay thank you um the next slide is the forecast sum summary. Um, and we added for emphasis that and and this is something I already talked about, but for 26 through 29, this is under the assumption that uh

090we're able to fulfill our commitment to hold expenditures at the revenue level. So, you'll see revenue expenditures are flat going forward. Um, at the end each year, we also have incumbrances estimated at 18.3. We were at 20 million last year. So that obviously affects our cash balance. So we want to make that clear that that's where the 47 million that shows up on the forecast, it's the difference. The difference is the incumbences there. The next slide is we ran several different scenarios um to see um what would the governor's impact have, what would the 20 mil floor changes have, um all of those factors. And what we did here basically is we did not reduce the expenditures. We let the projections kind of roll and assuming historical increases. Um this is almost like a worst

091case scenario. Although a worst case scenario would also be if the levy didn't pass and and there's could be other scenarios, but in this case, if we were just to let expenditures roll at the end of 29, we would be 64 million in the negative. So basically almost $und00 million swing. Uh obviously we hope we'll be closer to the previous slide. Um but we just kind of wanted to give some perspective of what that could look like. Um the other key thing on here is you'll see about 27 uh is where that kind of our cash balance would be eroded under this scenario. Uh so it kind of emphasizes the need for new money potentially uh as a discussion or in the alternative you know significant cuts at that point up to that leading up

092to that point. Um okay and then the next slide um is it does a calculation based on cash on hand. So using that cash balance um actually I had add oh the notes at the bottom because I wanted to include the incumbrances there as well. But basically, you know, we're looking at 36 uh days of cash. That's kind of averaged out, but I think we want to be closer ideally to 60 or 90. So, kind of hopefully can work towards that in the future. Um, but I think that's all I have as far as the presentation. Outstanding questions, Mr. Craig. Um, so kind of two questions. One of is is with regards to our state portion or state funding I should say candidate portion because I would assume we were using a funding formula which

093may not be the case. Um if we are keeping that dollar amount so if we go with the house version would that mean though that that dollar amount still determined based upon enrollment or is the house dollar amount not attached to enrollment? It it's tied a little bit to guarantees as well. Okay. Because currently there are still 20 guarantee and 21 guarantee. Um there's talk of that a proposal to reduce the guarantees going forward. Um but basically the house version keeps the guarantees and keeps funding basically flat. If you go back to the governor, if you reinstate the full fair school funding plan, it would actually be a reduction in the short term. But um advocates for the fair school funding plan, obviously it's a consistent, predictable, never fully phased in because it needed two

094more years to be fully phased in. So, um, yeah, I think I think the thing that the thing that's conveniently, not conveniently, the thing that is intentionally omitted from this conversation between all these budget plans is what is what the fair school funding plan should fund, you know, and then the house budget is a we'll just give you what you got last year and what is it? $20 per per student or something like that. There's a tiny increase, I think. So, so we can actually say we gave you more than last year, but but the thing that no one's the thing that's not they admit from the comparison is if the fair school funding plan was fully implemented and they updated the cost inputs to the most recent year that gap and and that's and

095that's the thing that they've taken out of the debate and I I think you know again part of the reason I was asking also is that we what we also know is that when you do a straight aligned dollar budget of like this is what you'll get. It is a lot easier in some ways to say come back and say well budget's not working anymore so we're going to take two or three million out of this as opposed to when you do a formula where all these different factors or how you're deriving that dollar amount. Um, so I think that's one of the things for us as a as a board to be just very aware of when we think about the five-year forecast because it's already a weird thing to do a five-year forecast

096given that you don't know what the budget spending will be oftent times past year two. Um, but that the reality could be that year two or three could have a significant difference in revenue based on what the state legislature decides to do. Um so it is important to think about how do we keep the expenses committed to that. Um the other uh point and I just thought is it's interesting to see how our revenue has changed in some ways and how our expenditures have kind of grown but the idea with the second uh summary chart would be just that idea that you held the pattern that we're currently doing with expenditures without any kind of commitment from the board to change anything steady while you did the fluctuations in the revenue. Right. So yeah, we've

097we evaluated the revenue based on the projection modules uh and known factors um and kind of did that independently of the expenditure level because that's basically going to set our ceiling. Mhm. Um, in terms of expenditures, when you look at that, the kind of the allocation is just a kind of right sizing to what our prior and current year levels are in each category. But the total was dictated by what the revenue was determined to be. Gotcha. And I again, I think that smart for us to be able to see it that way so that we understand, you know, again, there's hard cuts that you would have to put into the budget if you were losing revenue to even keep it. and to have to go $64 million below even what the normal cost would

098be with growth of other programming and pay and all that kind of stuff. Um you're really probably talking about that full hundred million difference in reality when you get to year 20 was it 2029. Um, so I appreciate all the hard work you all did and again I think this is just something for us as a board to truly commit to monitoring the expenditures and much more tied to what will happen out of our funding resources because we're also potentially not keeping some of the federal level. There may be federal dollars that don't come in that would then we have to make a decision as to whether or not we keep this. We don't. Those are expenses that don't change because our revenues didn't increase from uh our safe resources and others. Any other comments,

099questions? You good? if for our members uh or or the superintendent, are there any things that we could tell the treasures folks uh regarding the presentation um regarding things to maybe emphasize or or what have you? Any recommendations as to how to present it? I this was really good. uh but uh in a wider audience I I don't know there are things that you found particularly interesting or fascinating or the curious or the only thing I would say is I think you will want to really distinguish the summary that is the actual summary that we would be potentially forecasting is the five-year forecast again holding that we would keep revenue or keep expenditures equal to revenue clear to the other one which is the alternative summary and distinguish what that means so that it's not

100thought of as these are the two options being put before you but it's to say this is the option that we're based on these things now if other stuff happens that does not match it to the presumptions we're relying upon this is what potentially this could look like u because I think some members will read it as either you have option A or option B. You could have option A or if the revenue is option B, then we'd have to change what option B's expenditures would look like or something to that effect to commit to as a board for our forecasts. I think that's a good point because we, you know, again, we we looked at four different scenarios. Uh, and that was kind of like the worst case of those, but it is a

101reality that, you know, could happen if all of these negative pressures affect our revenue. Um, you know, it could happen. But that's a good point. I think I can try to clarify that a little bit more on Monday. We have more scary scenarios, right? We just pack it. But there is there a series of scary scenarios. Gold for the levy. Okay. I think the gold bars for the levy uh is very helpful. Not too much. Not too much. Great. Thank you. Anything, Mr. Crosset? Okay. of your listener. Um, just to follow on with the idea, you might want to change that alternative forecast chart, maybe even just present it as a chart of uh expenses only that an expense trend that would ex exceed revenue something so that doesn't look like an option that anyone's

102talking. Okay, we can look at that because we could we could still capture maybe what that negative would be, right? um and just show an expenditure growth kind of I would want I would want just from the narrative piece um how shall I say it I want the board to know that you guys okay and gals looked at four other alternatives or I I don't want them to think that all you do is plug numbers in the more you can show the board and the community that you pro you doing an analysis as you're going you're you're making some judgments. I just think that that would be very helpful and I think that's reassuring to people. Uh and and it makes sense. Jen, you had a comment or two? Yes. Just two um two points

103of conclusion. one is that the increase in revenue in 25 um is less than 1% change and um so for those accuracy the forecast and I would I would guide against trying to use that to balance next year's budget because I don't think we all behave we all behaved around the table I heard them loud and calm I said no okay the second point is um I think this forecast clearly says we need new money in 27 so to be on the ballot in 26 for new money. I um I would agree with that and I I think we've been saying that and then we occasionally board has a discussion. Well, we're not ready to decide that but actually it it in it its own way is decided for all intents and purposes. Um, but

104for what, you know, it can't just necessarily be capital improvements. It's there's some operational money that obviously is needed as new money as well. I think there's outstanding presentation. I appreciate it. Um, and we look forward to Monday. Really good. And again, the more you can help the board understand the all the work that you guys are doing and all the brain power that you're using, I think would be be useful. Oh, to that point, one other thing I should have said, um, in talking with urban treasures and other treasures, most of them are using the house version for their forecasting. So, that was another factor that kind of led us to to go with that scenario. Good. So, again, just kind of an outreach and and getting other inputs in that area. So, I

105think that talks to that point as well. Excellent. Good, good, good. Then our next uh uh topic before we uh go into the executive session that we did mention uh early before we began uh is this budget update from the administration. Mike has some uh items for us to think about and um with superintendent here as well and and I'm particularly interested in in uh being able to share with uh President Moffett uh a way to start to think in terms of formatting this discussion and preparing for actual votes uh that uh the board can feel comfortable in uh in doing. Um what have you got Mike? Sure. Thank you. I I think it's a good segue as we move from from forecast to budget and we talk about controlling expenses and how difficult that

106is and and we're feeling that through the budget um process. So if you go to the next slide uh Rob so so what we tried to do here is there's a list of topics that have been floating around. I think I think you and President Moffett contributed some of them and there's some other things um and trying to get some some time for discussion or some time time for guidance from from the finance committee. So I tried to I tried to break things into you'll see the next three slides break things into research items. So these are items that that we've been asked to research. Um some of them may overlap with the with the list of 100 that we've talked about in the business meetings. Some may be different. Um, and we won't go

107there, but the next couple slides, one, um, is things we've already realized. So, I know some things have been discussed. We can talk about we've some of the savings we've already realized that are built into the current budget. And then, and then the final one that that we'll kind of get there is data to review. So, so I think it's important as you mentioned, we talked about packaging and preparing a budget for a vote to to get a sense from from this committee as represent the board of what data what data they'll need to see to feel comfortable moving forward and and so so we can start um wherever um obviously first slide talked about extracurricular cost um Cody which will go to the next section if you go back a slide Rob sorry Cody

108Cody, which will go to the next section. Cody's pulled out some vendor information. This topic's come up a lot in a lot of different conversations, so thought we could we could maybe maybe put a pin in that one and be done with it. Um, third option on here is talking about pair professionals. I don't know if the superintendent wants to wants to share any discussions we've had about that at this point. If you'd like, I'm happy to. Uh, a couple of things. uh one we're looking at how we utilize our pair of professionals and how we train them and then um send them out into the classrooms. And so because of the conversations with the treasur's office, there may be some adjustments we're able to do um with uh funding them either from the general

109fund or being able to move them to um the title uh fund in particular. Oh, thank you. Do you want to just for a rudimentary kind of thing? Can we just go down the list and if there is so board the committee members see anything in particular or the administration sees something they think needs to be emphasized. I I'm on the extracurricular I mean is that how many millions of dollars do we spend on on extracurricular uh both personnel and and the programming itself? Somewhere I've seen something like seven million or It's pro. It's probably I mean I can tell you I can tell you the personnel side what we call schedule E is is about $2.8 million salaries and benefits and that number has been consistent for for some time flat like our budget.

110It has it has it has been and and it's been you know there there's been talk about changing that. I don't know that anything has really really come out of that but we've definitely been discussed. Do extracurricular folks have only one-year contracts? Yes. Yes. There is a I guess yes, it's a one-year contract. There is a longevity kind of increase. Sure. So, if you if you've done the same thing for I believe it's five years. I'm trying to do this from memory. I believe it's five years. There's a bit of a bump you get. So, but in every I mean every school district I'm familiar with that the the extracurricular piece is that the end of that particular school year that's the end of your contract and they and the district decides if they want

111to renew it or not. So, that is something to be thinking about. You know, I don't think May extracurriculars are about primary dollars. I think those are the best dollars we've got. Uh but but still, that's they're one-year contracts. Let's be real. um the top 10 vendors. Can we talk about the that uh we can a little bit because I think at least when I hear from board members that there is this emphasis on the contracts uh and the amounts of money that are being spent okay in the contracts the big ones especially or the multi or the ridiculous number of contracts we have which is about 16 or 1,800 different contracts. Um maybe if you could talk some more about whatever your thoughts are about the vendor piece and does any committee member have

112any issue about the vendors issue or contracts? Okay, administration. Sure. Um Rob, could you go to slide seven, please? So appreciate appreciate Cody's work on this. So I might have him have him kind of tag in. Yeah. Um, but one one of the things Cody did just as a quick request was look at top tens in a couple different ways. So, the first one here is top 10 vendors by dollar value. Uh, one one of the things that that I think will come up through this is is we talk a lot we talk a lot about vendor contracts. A lot of them are not things we have a lot of control over in somewhere in some regards. And so just there are obviously some but like the first one top 10 vendor Huelet Packard financial

113services those are our device leases. Now we have control over that but but it's something that has to be planned out over a period of time. You know a lot of these are three or fiveyear leases and and and there's kind of a rolling series of them. I'm sure Jeremy Jeremy can probably talk better to anyone about this. If you want to jump in Jeremy for the h for the human package leases had said they're basically leases so it's more of an obligated for the contract ones we've agreed to that we have to make payments over a number of years so it's not while we have control on the number of devices and how we execute the leases the ones that we have already executed but carry out over a number of years we don't

114have control over or being able to just well we're not going to make payments this year on the license we've already received two years ago so it does limit some of the uh lead time that we need to make adjustments to those contracts. It's really not a one-year factor. It has to be multiple years been dates. Thanks. Uh and then you'll see a group in there um you know that are the transportation contracts. So first student UTS Peterman those are all those are all our con. So, so obviously we've had discussions before about about change about changes to the transportation environment and and obviously change of those, you know, you're not going to see one of these contracts eliminated, but there is a potential to adjust the amounts. Okay. From there, United Way is the

115is the presence payment. I mean, that I mean, we will we do, you know, look the master agreement. There's some adjustments. Is the city in any of that top 10 or No. No. No. Okay. Um, you know, Duke Energy, that's obviously keeping the lights on. So, I mean, you can see Alta Alta Fiber is a is a group of things. Some of the Alta Fiber things are related back to -ate. So, some of the money that we spend out, we get reimbursed. So, you also have to watch out for that. Okay. You know, some of your contracts bring you money. So, what about the next slide? Okay. Is it you have you said next slide is individual contracts. Oh, sorry, Jim. Oh, sorry. the top 10 contracts, what percentage of the total contract spend investors

116that of the top 10 contracts, what does the total percentage of the total contract spend is that is that like 50% of our contract dollars, do you know? Off the top of my head, I don't know. I know. I'm just asking find that out very quickly. That's a that's a great I'm just asking you know you say top 10 but is it is does does that get us the coverage that we're looking for to see where we can make an impact in them? Yeah. So so what are you thinking Kevin? I'm sorry. Well just looking at high level like purchase services are about 123 million and that's 4 94 million. So I mean that's a big chunk of but but the wait this is all funds though. Oh okay. Yeah. So if you go to

117the next slide. One last question. But that's a pro that's that number is probably better. So that's 63 million out of the top 10. Go for it. Sure. One one last question. I don't I know in in the in the uh profit world they've look done some rearranging of capital leases and I think our I don't know if that's coming into to any of the accounting standards that we have to do now as a school district but certainly the Huelet Packard uh contract would look like it would be a prime target for account re um accounting for that as a capital lease. Is that something that you've heard about or It is one of the things that we provide to Plattenburg who does our gap conversion. Uh we do provide all those lease terms to

118them and you're right there is a new standard in the last couple years and they do an evaluation that some of it is like individual devices may not meet the capitalization threshold. So there's some considerations like that that go into that. [Music] Uh beyond the vendors then uh what's the next slide that you thought would be of interest perhaps? I mean these these are all kind of vendors. I think they're things people can can obviously look at. I think one of the things that's interesting is we look all funds is is how much money we spend we spend for student dining. Those those contracts tend to bubble up as well. For student dining. Yes. Yes. To Yes. to feed our students. So, it is it is interesting how much money we we spend to feed

119our students and obviously that's part of the federal program. So, we're getting we're getting reimbured for we're getting the money from the feds. Well, that's another federal question though. It isn't. Uh because that's not coming out of the education department. That is coming out of the agriculture department. And they're even talking about cutbacks from the agricultural department uh agricultural committee both in the Senate and the House. And that's always been a bipartisan committee. and it no longer is. Uh it's kind of scary actually. And you know, two our two strongest supporters in Washington uh have always been our our previous two senators uh who prioritized education and the agriculture very strongly, but one Republican and one Democrat. We we don't have that setup anymore. It's a pro. It's a very I'm very worried about the

120whole food piece and the agriculture uh committee and budget. What else do we have? Um do you want to go back to slide three or just look at other research items? Yes, please. Um let's focus there for a minute or two. So So one idea that's that's come up I think is to is to freeze vendor contracts or to have some sort of committee executive committee for review. Oh, I I didn't know if the if this committee wanted to talk about that. Say I think correct. One of my concerns and and again I think this is I think there are efforts to do things to put layers in to to create a review. But my concern also though is that we lose opportunity cost with some of these vendors and especially some of our higher

121dollar vendors where we're not actually going to make any significant difference but we're just going to spend a lot of time. And so I think there may be stuff that may be challenges that are new contracts or new things that we have new vendors we may not have worked with in the past and things. But I also worry that sometimes what we are doing is just creating a layer of uh red tape that at the end of the day just limits who our vendors would be. Um you know again especially for certain things where it's it we're not really going to significantly change. I was one of the things I took from you from the top 10 vendors. Like probably one of those top 10 vendors are something we're going to significantly change anything on.

122So that's not what we're going to see this huge amount of savings come from, right? And so um don't have a problem necessarily saying if there's a new vendor or there's a thing that we're doing differently or there's something that is a significant like concept to a vendor. I think a blanket rule of like reviewing that process may create more red tape than it would create a benefit. Okay. The point is to proc it. Um so this is just an idea freeze vendor contracts. It's what's proposal. Uh this is just an idea to freeze vendor contracts. That's just a proposal. What is what does that mean? It's yeah it's a it's it's one it's a proposal of a way you know because there is a lot of lot of eyes on contracts I mean I

123would say this comes up in every budget discussion yeah both internally and and at the board level and so you I'm still not sure what that means I mean you can't freeze the cost of utilities no you can't so I mean what what what are we talking about help me understand what that means I'm sorry well that's Yeah. So I think I I think the phrase freeze is kind of the idea of just rolling over things, right? So you could say, "Hey, we've done this for the past five years. We're just going to roll it over." So instead of that sort of roll over, having having a having an administrative review process that maybe takes a deep a deeper look into that. I I think we're at a place where we got to take a

124deep look at every contract we got. I mean, I don't know if we can just do keep Well, that's that's what that's that's I realize that probably takes effort and time does, but I think and and I think maybe there's a way to do triage on that. Look at the contracts where there's the best opportunity and the biggest uh uh lowhanging fruit or something, you know, some criteria and the ones that are more preuncter, you can maybe just roll over if it's not a big dollar impact. Yeah, definitely a dollar a dollar threshold would I could see that making some sense. I don't know. I I feel like personally I've looked at these contracts till till my eyes bleed. Like I like I I've I've done this but but happy to go back and happy

125to do more work if that's if that's the will of the board. I mean I I would recommend you go go back and do it at some time effective or coste effective level. I mean you know I don't want your eyes bleeding. we need you to do other stuff. You know, Mr. Craig, do I just again to reiterate though, we just did a review of all of the vendors like not even a year ago. And so I mean I get like one of the things I am very concerned about is that we're asking a less staff, less uh service central office to do more work and in effect to get some cost benefit that may be a couple hundred dollars, right? like there's not a sign like I'm sure there's opportunities as we review contracts

126as we're starting new contracts to look at the work being asked but isn't the real work to be done on when we're asking for work to be done whether or not this is work we want to be doing versus what vendors are going to pay for because I think that's to me makes a lot more sense if you're saying before we go out and say we want to do a whole new tech contract we're going to look at whether or not what we're asking for is what we need whether or not this serves this benefit the KPIs connected to it that you're expecting from it. I I just I mean I and again I think there's probably some value to it but but if we can't not do transportation right and the transportation contracts are

127kind of the transportation contracts until we get some better provider of transportation at a cheaper rate or gas prices go down to a level at which you can fill a bus or something to that effect. Like I mean I'm I I do think it's valuable to look at that that information. I think to your point, you've done it and then we we did a whole review that the budget and finance committee sat, you know, went through the presentation on. Cody's done several presentations on um the contracts over 200,000, contracts under 200,000. I'm just I'm worried that like if we're spending a lot of time on that as opposed to what are we actually asking people to do and if that's something we need to change, then that's on us at the RFP stage, at the

128request for services stage. Like that's the part I would be more to me that's a better space to look at. The other part to it and I again I think this is just my my philosophy might be different in some ways in this some of these contracts we have is because we've asked people to do more right like we did this with thinking about how like we are doing a lot of these things out of out of title one dollars or some of these other groups and and I guess I'm wondering just of the stuff that's actually general fund spending how much of that would this be significantly changed changed if we kind of reviewed or or went through because at least in the the one slide with the 96 or the 94 million, you

129know, we we keep talking about uh what is it? Um Hamilton County, but that that doesn't come out the general funds. So what Nick, we can keep talking about it all we want to, but that's not going to significantly change what our general fund number looks like. So that's the other I mean, I think it's helpful to see just the difference between the general fund and total funds to, you know, to that point I about this the the the separation between the general fund and the other other dollars. Again, we're we're being held hostage because we're not sure about those federal dollars. So, we may need that kind of review because we may not have those dollars. Therefore, we're counting on dollars that we may not get. We might get them. I mean, I understand

130the treasur's office is still anticipating that whatever the feds could do, they still can do for our 26, FY26. So, it that difference we might be keep that in mind is helpful if we were saying we have no more title dollars and we don't do title work, right? Like that's I mean I think the difference in how we evaluate those contracts are if we don't have these dollars, do we do it? general fund. Some of the stuff we still got to do like gotta pay due. You gotta pay some of the title dollars we would have to do too. That's and I think that's the the we'd have to decide at that point. And I think that's I'm fine with us reviewing is if there's a circumstance that changed for why the contract but I

131guess my issue is reviewing the vendor specific as opposed to the purpose for which we're using the Yeah. I just think that it's I can remember that last year and the year before there was a slide talking about the fact that what we need to accomplish we cannot accomplish by little things that you had to redo. And indeed that's all part of the the ad hoc piece or that's all part of uh some of the big thinking that we've had to do is that we're not going to reach our goal on continuing to do to somebody's point the thousand cuts uh uh just it gets it gets ridiculous. Do you have any more to say? Well, I I just think I just think on these contracts I I have the faith and trust in in

132our team to um use good judgment on where you want to spend your time. Okay. Good. Other slides. Um yes, there's some other ideas here, but for the sake of time, just if you want to go some next, Rob, just some and we'll quick keep go. Oh, some already realized items. Yeah, let's talk briefly about that if we could and see if there's consensus that indeed there is that agreement. All right. So, so one of the topics was savings on um the GDA redesign. And so, and so just looking at last year to this year, that's about a little under $500,000. Um now, that's not something the board has voted on, but it's something the administration has worked on and has achieved. And that you're counting that toward your budget work. Uh we did we

133did ask the board for support on the redesign. Okay. Yeah. Wasn't Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I'm not saying you did you went rogue on us or anything. But but it isn't something that was a line item vote, but we said go for it. Correct. You have not voted on this. We don't really want to do line item whatever. The board is not interested in doing that, but the board's also not interested in doing one, you know, thumbs up, you know, Julius Caesar in the coliseum about the whole thing. So, there's got to be something to work out. Keep going. I'm sorry to interrupt. No, no, it's it's great. Um, preschool reductions, too. We've talked about that. Now, when we talk about budget on Monday, like these savings are baked in. So, they're they're already they're already

134Okay. When the board actually sees the way this works on preschool, there will be board members that are not going to be aware of that and just be aware of that. Okay. But that's part of not asking for more money. Correct. I mean to to Brandon's point two months ago that if if we were just even to continue to do what we were doing, we needed more money and we needed to request more money. Isn't that correct? Don't I remember that preschool? Well, so the mass agreement that we reached with preschool promise was built on the idea that we were not we're going to work within the 15 million unless we got more money, right? Um so I mean I don't think there was I don't think we unless we were going to actually make

135an an opportunity and that was something we could have talked something we could have thought about doing. Um we still have a working standing as they would be working under that lower amount. So I do think yeah I mean I think that's the operating space we are in. So there you go. Do we have to kind of defend that point, Mr. Crosset? Uh why do we have 13 less classroom? These have essentially been rightsized. So for example, a school may have had three classrooms assigned uh and Vera her team feels that they can still do it successfully with two. I love it. It's not have not having half empty classrooms or more than 50% empty classroom. Does it represent fewer children? It's the same number of children overall. Well, I think that's the thing we

136have to say to get the board behind the concept. It you're right sizing. It's a logistic staff thing. Okay. Yeah, you could rehead. You could re label that preschool right sizing instead of reductions might be more helpful. That would be good. Yeah. Making a note. Summer goal. Summer school savings. And then summer school is is again generally pretty much almost all federal federal funds except for except for a couple of schools. So I mean you can see we've we've reduced every year, you know. I mean honestly a lot of summer school is is a dance between how much money do we have available and what can we accomplish. So so it's always it's always a what what do we have what do we have to to put towards this problem and then what can we

137accomplish with that. Well, and there again, the federal dollars we don't have, then there's choices to be made, right? I mean, we're doing it because we have federal dollars. If we don't have federal dollars, do we not do it or do we Okay, this is this is the in 17 years that's different for me. The question has always been, will the federal government give us more money? whether it's Obama or or whether it was whoever most recently on Esser, it's never been you might not have the federal dollars. Yes. This is a this is a scary time to talk federal dollars. Yeah. And I think the board needs to fully and you did a nice job on presenting that and I think this the community needs to know more. What else have we got? Well,

138one I think yeah just for sake of time. So, the last slide in here that I think was something to talk about um and I I know we we explained the the billion dollar budget um last on the 5th. So, so we got that out and like I said, I I did a cow a discussion about federal funds. So, so a lot of these are things that that had come up. Um and so and so the question is and maybe it's a maybe it's a thing to get back to us with is is what what data do you need to do you need to see to to feel comfortable about the budget proposal? You know I mean one of the items in here that I think everyone likes is the per per pupil per school

139cost. So taking every school and saying okay for this school here's how much we're spending. Here's here's a per pupil cost for that. So you can compare that. I think that's a that's a common thing. But other other kind of data points you'd want to see, Mr. Crosset. I think on that it would also be interesting to not compare between schools but also uh year-over-year changes. Okay, Mr. Craig, I was I I think the per pupil cost is a is a nice uh addition that we've added. I will say I think almost the opportunity cost would be a better measure to me because you know technically if you have 20 students in a class the cost of that 21st student is different than the cost of that 19th student right and so when we do

140just per pupil it kind of also ignores that there may be some classes that are jam-packed of students or some schools that have a smaller number and then we have other things in them so I mean almost some level of opportunity I don't think some people to do before Monday. But I just think it's in the future that may be also a good way for us to be thinking about this is what are the opportunity costs of a program or of a particular resource within the school because uh we did a little bit of that with I know with like counselors and with I think it was the APS of culture at one point we looked at uh where it was was the attendant or attendance. Yeah, attendance. And so like that idea of just

141what is that additional benefit gain from um when you add another student to a class or whatever because again like you have to have a math teacher regardless of whether or not you have 20 kids in a class or extra 25 but yeah but when you get to that threshold where if it's 40 kids now now you need a new math teacher that's a different cost than 50 kids needing two math teachers. So, okay. Other uh suggestions for the treasur's office and the superintendent. Superintendent have any comments? Treasure, Mr. Crosset, Mr. Craig? I just wanted to say I appreciate adding things to the list that were not just central office. And I and I say that because I think we really do have to acknowledge and recognize that the district has to operate differently to

142meet the budget requirements. And so being efficient, being good use, good stewards of the of our fiscal dollars requires us to look at more than just saying central office has got to get smaller. Absolutely. So looking at schools, I would add looking at personnel. I just we've I know we want to do that last thing ever, but the reality is I don't know how you do what we need to do without more emphasis on personnel. Mhm. So, schools, personnel, um, contracts. I think there's still great interest on the board's part, not necessarily this committee, but on the board's part regarding contracts. You think of all this stuff and finding a way to format this so that uh, we can be doing stuff. Um, well, thanks for throwing some of that stuff out there. appreciate our

143pleasure because I know you guys have been working incredibly hard and I know there is that list and what have you that we've seen some parts of that list and I know you're still working on that list so it's helpful. Do we have anything for the good of the order for finance before we uh adjourn into executive session for the purpose of uh negotiations? You haven't done hearing of the public. Do I have public? Oh, okay. Well, I got a few things to ask you, but go ahead. Yes, ma'am. Uh Michelle Denson, Federation of Teachers, just a quick observation, and you know, this is something I bring up frequently when I visit. Um, but the discussion around TIFF and CRA, just on page four of the PowerPoint of the five-year forecast, it's framed as a

144revenue. Um I just think there's some way that we can have this discussion around tiffs in at CRA that yes the revenues listed but we don't have the loss of you know in the absence of a tiff what would we be getting because we are losing with these tiffs and I just think it's responsible to make sure that that's reflected um in the discussion and I know we skipped over it in the interest of time under budget considerations but the reason I bring it up again is it is being negotiated with the city this year for another um you know multi-year ordinance that sets the rates and I just feel like we have to be careful about how we're framing this for the public uh that it's not simply a revenue. It it is something

145that's coming in but it's there's also some losses associated with it. So I'll just leave it at that. That's an excellent point. Thank you. Excellent. And we understand why it's listed as a revenue because it is. But the point is in the greater picture of things. It's a revenue that we would prefer to see even be greater. Sir, I mean, I agree with what Michelle said in terms of loss in terms of looking at it here. It offsets it's a revenue that would have been property tax revenue. So, it's a difference between what the property tax revenue would have been and what the tip revenue is. And over the years we've had some discussions about exactly what that number is and it's kind of hard to quantify sometimes but but it really is you know

146part of a discussion and part of the discussion with the renewal of the tiff agreement. Perfect. Thank you for the good order. I'll take a motion to go into executive session for the purpose of uh preparing for negotiations. So moved. Is there a second? Second. Thank you very much. Um, I I I All right.