Budget, Finance and Growth Committee Meeting April 18, 2025

001Monday budget finance and to start we will go around our table as we all do and we'll start with over Hi, I'm Don Federation. Good morning. I'm Karen. I'm the director of finance for activities beyond the classroom. Hello, I'm Sally Grimes. I'm the executive director of activities beyond the classroom. Morning. Mike Turner, career tech manager. Good morning. Cody Hutchkins, contract analyst. Good day everyone. Shauna Murphy, superintendent. Brandon Craig, board member. Keith Bolton, board member. Jim Crosset, board member. Michael Gustin, assistant treasurer. Nan Hagod, federal programs manager. Brandon Alexander, manager of position control. Lauren Roberts, chief executive. Phyllis Davis, board's administrative assistant. Robert Wilson, technician. And Rob, if people want to participate at the end of this meeting, is there some process that they can go through? Yes. If you'd like to speak at the end

002of this meeting, please click the hand icon. We'll ask your name and association to the district and we'll invite you to speak for two minutes at the end of the meeting. Thank you. Thank you, Rob. Everybody welcome. Thank you uh those watching and also obviously everybody that's here that help us have a positive and good meeting. Uh our first item on the agenda uh is for an insurance update, but I do not see Mr. Mo yet. So why don't we move to policies? Is that okay? Um Mr. Assistant Treasurer, that's fine with me, ma'am. All right. So Rob, it's slide 49 in your program. What's up? All right. Um, two policies that we wanted to discuss uh bring back to this committee. So, the first one um which is a cash balances policy which we've

003we've talked about a couple times here, a couple iterations here. The idea is this is a best practice throughout the state and so state and kind of our kind of you know groups have been really pushing that every district has a cash balances policy. You know what to do when your cash balances go too low. Also I guess what to do if they go too high. This is very topical now because of the house budget bill. So, those of you who aren't aware, uh, the House version of the current budget bill puts a 30% cap on school districts. So, that so that the idea is any school district that ends the year with more than 30% of the prior year's revenue in cash that the county budget commission, including the county auditor, would then be

004directed to reduce property tax rates uh to decrease the amount of money that that school district would collect in future years. We are not in that situation currently. That's fact. Um it's kind of aspirational for us. We're we're we're at about 10 11%. Um we're not situation currently. A lot of districts are um we heard a lot at the um kind of treasures conference last week. A lot of a lot of a lot of our colleagues are very very concerned with this. You know, it's it does a it does a lot of bad things. It really hurts people having sound fiscal policies. is it hurts people trying to save money to do big projects. It probably will force school districts onto the ballot more often. You know, you know, a very common ballot strategy. You

005know, as you size as you size a levy, you collect more money in the early years and as expenses rise, you end up, you know, spending through that at the end of the year, at the end of those that period, say it's five or 10 years. Um, so all that said, we did do some changes to our cash balance policy. Uh the biggest one is we added an upper limit. So we did not have one before. We add an upper limit of 180 days of cash or a shorter period if required by law. So that would keep us in compliance if this makes it in if this makes it into law. Um and and B and what what that would be is if we hit that upper limit um superintendent and treasur would create a

006plan uh to how to spend that down to get within compliance. There are some things you can do um other than just spending money like if you know you have capital needs you can move money from a general fund to a c to to a capital improvements fund to kind of kind of set that money aside. So there are things to do. Other things we added in the policy uh we added the phas in language which has been discussed at this committee multiple times you know to start this year in fiscal 26 um with between $500,000 and a million dollars to get the to get the to get the building back up of cash balances started um and then just put put a sentence in that the board would then determine how long they want

007the implementation period to be. So overall idea of the policy is is we try to stay with 90 days of cash. We're obviously not there now. So the first part of the policy is how do we get to 90 days and then from there what happens if we see we're going to get below 90 days or get above 180 days. Any questions for what board members? Um so thank you again for doing the hard work on this. Um one I have two questions. one is really around kind of putting the cap at that 180day limit. So kind of what would then be the kind of plan of action or what would happen as you got closer to the cap or if there was a period of time we ever were hitting the cap there. Yeah.

008So, so, so how the how the how the policy works is when we do fiveyear forecast or I guess three-year forecast depending on if that provision makes into law um we we would project out to those years and if we saw if we saw we're increas we're getting to that cap you know that would be a direction to say hey we can we can increase our services we can increase our spending uh on things I probably will not happen for us it's just historically like we we we don't ever get there. But it's important that the policy kind of anticipates that could happen and and has some plan for it. Okay. And then the second question, and I think this is more of the direction you need from us as a board, but us as

009a committee as well, is just as we think about those years of phasing in. I think part of the conversation we originally were going to talk through was potentially how do we use uh potential levy dollars to to help that phase in since we're at a point now we're not talking about increasing anything for this year. There's no additional funds that would come into next year's budget that would expand that opportunity to do any additional so something will have to get basically removed from our budget or cut in order to uh add any additional dollars in. But I guess the thought process is are we talking about phasing in from fiscal year 27 on? Is that the the anticipated conversation? And then is that also then thinking uh for future levies that needs to be

010something we would have to plan out as well into those conversations? Yes. To both of those. Yes. I I think I think one thing we talked about was was definitely putting a stake in the ground and saying we're going to start this even though even even though we can't put a significant amount of money in year one and maybe not in year two, it's making the commitment to start this and then as you said as we plan out future levies and future and future income, you know, making sure that's one of the things that we consider, you know, when when we're when we're sizing, you know, our future request. question about the 180day cap. Um, if it's not likely, but if we got there, would early retirement of debt be an option with cash? It's

011definitely something to explore. Um, yeah, I think that's there's lots of things there is. Again, this is like this is like perfect scenario, but if it happened, you know, is there are there capital needs? You know, could we retire debt early? Could we, you know, make make some long-term investments? you know, do we want to do we do a lot of things? We we'd have a lot we'd have a lot of great options. Any other question, comments? What's the status? We have the newest version is on the link. Um, yes, members have seen an opportunity. You've all updated the version based upon previous discussion. Yes. And issues. Uh, is it ready to go to policy? If if that's the will of this committee. All right. Okay. Please this will go to policy. Thank you. Thank

012you. Continue Mike. Yes. Student fees. So this is an existing policy 6125. Um so couple couple big decisions. The first big decision is and just kind of reviewing the draft or re reviewing the policy. There's a specific line that says the district will not charge district-wide fees in the 24-25 school year. That was that was a decision that was made. The policy does not speak what happens in 2526. So So I so I think the first thing you know without without a change will revert back to I guess the current policy because it was only a one-year carve out. So, so the first consideration is is is does the board want to charge grade level fees in the 2526 school year? Just for some perspective, the last year we charged grade level fees was fiscical

013year 24. We collected around $328,000. So, just just to give you some sizing of that. And so, the what we're looking for is whether or not we want to add the word commencing or not. commence convincing would do it. Yes. Right. Okay. So, I while I think it's uh nice that we did it for this year and I think it's something that's great, I I do have concerns with us not doing it in the context commit going forward because so much of it is also carved out by um our students are, you know, it's like 80% of the district would in some form or fashion have a way to wave many of those fees. So, what we're really talking about is for those folks who would not fall within those categories where those fees would

014be waved, would they be charged? And and I guess I just am meaning it's not a huge amount that we're gaining, but it's also not, you know, we don't have extra dollars anywhere. So, um I just am wondering how much of this is how much effort would be put into collecting is the only thing the only question I would have because I think otherwise I would be fine with saying you know we go back and then again if future years it looks like it's a problem we need to rechange again we can revisit but I do recognize that collecting the student fees and especially because the schools in the past have been the ones that did that and that has not been consistent and so you have students who get to the 12th with 11th

015grades worth of student fees to pay um has not seemed like the best use of our accounts receivable sign. I I I would say historically we've spent a lot of bandwidth assessing fees to all 35 thou or 30 some thousand students and then waving a good percentage of them. I I do think we could do it more efficiently. We did talk last year um when we were still considering these that we there are probably more efficient ways to do it and to to not just blanket everyone but to but to look at students who would qualify for for waiverss and not assess those but it it is it is a bit of work um and we don't it's not something that we have a lot of capacity to actively kind of work in AR you

016know I mean we work we work really hard obviously in the CRAAS we work you hard on other districts owing us money and collecting money um you know like COBRA payments from ex from prior employees and stuff like that. So it's really as you said it's on the schools and and how how hard the schools really push. Mr. Cross could you differentiate the fees we're talking about? Yes. These you said these this pertains specifically to district could you talk about what that might be versus the other kinds of fees that exist? Yes, of course. So, so these these are what we call the district level fees or grade level fees. And so, historically, the district has for each grade band assess the fee, I think it starts at like $28 for K to6. I don't

017don't quote me on that, but that but but I think that I think that's don't quote me on that, but that was I think that's right. $28 for K to6 and then it kind of went up and so every student it was just like a general fee for supplies and and those sort of things. individual schools assess their own fees depending on things like our monastery schools you know charge inter session fees for students doing inter sessions um you know there's AP test fees is another thing we've talked about there's fees for certain classes that have you know really high consumable needs you know you can imagine like a photography class or some of our art classes that require you know a lot of materials those things come in and then obviously there's also fines

018that come in for lost textbooks lost devices those also we get assessed. We're not talking about any of those things. We're just talking about kind of the across the district grade level fees. How of the fees that are assessed uh and not waved, how much of that becomes bad debt? A lot. Um if you remember a couple couple of meetings ago when we when we did the conversion from previous system to current system um and we asked you to look at the debt and I think we like 11 out of 15 million was bad debt. So I mean and and really like like how hard do you want to go in collecting these things? You know, if someone's someone's 25 years old and they've moved to Seattle, Washington, do do we really want to send

019letters from Cincinnati public schools trying to get $24 from them? Um, anybody else? Superintendent, do you have a particular comment on on student fees? I wonder about those students who who they have paid and if we then now wave, will they come back and ask for a refund? I'm sorry. I I believe I I can't I can't think of the exact word you said, but I commencing I think that is the key. Commencing with and I mean we did not see we did not see that for this year, you know, we did not we did not assess this year. we didn't see a whole lot of people coming back th this year with that. But I think commencing is is the key to that. Well, just want to I just want to add one other

020thought and I think again I'm inclined to support going commencing because of the additional cost of the trying to go and recover for those folks who don't pay. I think only thing I would also worry about is that there are ways for us to predetermine fees that automatically can be waved as opposed to folks electing to ask for the waiver or saying that they should be waved because I think that's the other part of the problem with the bad debt was a number of the folks who were bad debt were folks who in theory qualified for their student fees to be waved and had never made the request. And so if it's a smaller portion it's a smaller group of people who we'd actually be getting student fees from. I don't know if that changes

021how difficult it is to collect from those folks. Um but if it yeah again if it's an administrative task or burden that would not be worth the dollars that we get back I think it makes sense to uh have it continuing going forward. I just again I think it all goes into how we collect any fees whatsoever is that they're all somewhat level of administrative burden because if you're not paying your student fees you're also not likely to pay some of these other fees as well. I think that's a good I think a very good point because um uh you know it's uh you invest in the front side of something instead of uh bring it up at the end. Uh I'm very supportive in that you boost and I think stably wildly saying we

022shouldn't have districtwide fees. Uh people are paying significant amount of taxes and for the variation too I I really don't like means testing in public education. uh and I also doubt think that you know of the people that can afford that's uh an issue uh as to why they would have to be paying and other would not do. So, I I would like to see the policy go forward to u um using the word commencing and limit it specifically to the districtwide. We've had a year of practice, but to M Craig's point, it would be good if in the treasur's office or whoever is responsible for all of that to think in terms of dealing with superintendent folks, we know who is on lunch. we know the important things and we need to know at

023least some of it and that should just be it. I can uh I digress but this is an interesting thing. Some years ago we were investing in cash registers for um the cafeteria and that when a student's ID came up the promise was that their food restrictions would also pop up. I mean, we know what we know about our students and um even with all the mobility and because of the mobility, it's important to have that in the baseline. So, I I'd like to suggest we send it to policy committee to see how they are or is it already does it have to go to policy because it's already a policy or I think I think it would. So, does the board think we should send us to policy? Right. I I think that's fine.

024I think again I I would only caveat I would put into it is just that there' be some information provided to policy is to like kind of the costbenefit analysis of how you would of of why it makes it difficult to to uh collect these fees because I do think that's for me that's the deciding factor. I don't share the same thoughts as regards to who should pay or who shouldn't pay because I think there's a number of people who get a lot of benefit from our district without having to pay a lot of dollars for it even though you know they could. Um but I think that the cost of us bringing these dollars in is is a is a big deterrent for me. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Um I think you made

025the point see if I say this correctly. probably the folks that are not qualified for the waiver are also the folks that are probably paying pretty high taxes. Would that be fair to maybe? Don't know. But uh also we are in a competitive environment with other schools, charter schools, private schools. So this is one thing if we're charging a fee, this is one thing that maybe makes us a little less competitive. And so you know for what that's worth. Well, thank you. uh then we'll we will move it forward and when we do the minutes for this meeting we'll try to be as precise and specific as possible so the policy members have most of the arguments before them. Superintendent may I just for my clarity this will be effective for fiscal year 25 for

026the current um class of 2025. Class of 26 fiscal year 26. Yes. So is already in effect for 25. Thank you. Okay. Next. Um one last slide here just and we can go just briefly. Um we just want to bring back to you current balances for for seniors. So kind of see where you are where we are from last meeting to this meeting. Um who dropped about $80,000. So that was good. You can see some you can see folks are folks are paying away there. So business season business season I don't know that we need to have more come for graduation the fees doing it's it's the last moment. Yes opportunity. Oh thank you. All right. Um do we have uh treasure? Yes on. All right. Great. Uh let's uh let's go while we're here

027in old business if we could. Um Mr. August, what about CRAAS and TIFFs? Sure. Um Rob, if you'll go two slides, please. I think I think this slide deck is no slid. No slides. So there's this was quite a full agenda. So So I wish legal council Hoyen was here for this part, but but because he was he was he was intimately involved in creating these slides or something. Okay, good. So So talking about expiring tiffs and CRAAS. So So just so people just people set level set a little bit. Um TIFFs are tax increment financing districts. And so those are those are created by municipalities where they put a series of parcels together um and and the municipality collects the increment of taxes. So taxes get held at a rate any new values um

028the city or county or township would collect those dollars and then there's an agreement with the district that we get some of that money back. So usually it's between 25 and 35% but it does vary. Um, community reinvestment acts are called CR what we call CRAAS. Those are agreements with individual um, property owners. Um, again, it's an economic development tool. Same concept that property values get locked at a certain amount. The increase in property values is abated and then for commercial properties, there's an agreement with the district again where the district gets to bill them and recoup some of that money. And then there are residential CRAAS which we get we have no seat at the table with and so those the the property owner gets the abatement and and and no one sees a

029benefit from that. So all these things for the city of Cincinnati are wrapped up in an agreement. We have a tax incentive agreement. It expires as I think as I think Miss Dun's mentioned multiple times here. It expires at the end of this year December 31st 2025. Um and so right now the requirement is a city or developer reimbures CPS at 33% um payment 33% payment in le of taxes based on their tax rates. Um C tiffs generally have a little bit longer lifespan or so those are 20 25 years are more in the 8 to 15 year period but they are variable. If the agreement expires, which it which it could, which it would could happen, if the agreement expires, any new request for a TIFF or CRA would need to be approved by

030the district on a project by project basis. And this is how this is how small school districts work. Smaller school districts who don't don't have a lot of these, they would approve them one by one, have a meeting, work out the details, you know, then the board would approve that. And that's for commercial. Yes, that's both both tiffs and CRAAS. So if you'll hit the next slide, Rob. So that's the big agreement of the city. Then we can talk about individual parcels or individual properties or districts. So just to give you an idea of when things are when parcels would expire. City of Cincinnati is kind of the first, they have two buckets. They have a bucket that expires in 2023 and a bucket that expires in 2036. So, so that's kind of their interest

031in extending this agreement um with us is is that those tiff districts don't expire. Delhigh township will roll off in 2032 and the other ones you can see there. Um city of Cincinnati is really our significant tiff district. They're probably 90% of all the tiff revenue we get obviously because they're 90 plus% of all the parcels in our district. So if if a tiff when a tiff expires, the district expires, um we collect for one more year after that. Remember tax collections are always a year behind because we don't do anything simple in Ohio. Always a year behind. After that, those property values get added back into the regular tax roles. And and I'll I'll come back to what that means when we get through the other slides here. Um next one would be if

032you want to go next slide, Rob. Um of our build CRAAS. So these are the CRAAS we bill we bill for. They're commercial properties. You can you can see when things expire. Uh you can see the annual revenue there. It's kind of a wash. Um when these expire they will come back into the property tax roles. We should get at least that if not a little more but it's the our our agreed rate on rate is pretty similar to to what we would see from them. And then the third slide would be the residential CRAAS expirations. Um, I pulled this data. I want to verify if our friends at the auditor's office. I I I went through it a couple times, but I want to talk to them. So, but over the next five years,

033probably an average of about $43 million in abaded values expiring annually. So, it adds $15 million of assessed values to our property taxes. Now, what does that mean? So, this and this kind of applies for all these things. What does it mean when these things come back onto the tax ro? So, there's good and bad, right? You would think, oh, property values go up, we're going to get more money, uh, except for House Bill 920. So, House Bill 920 is is the inflationary thing which then pushes the actual rates down because values go up. But then we have the 20 mil floor. So, House Bill 9 So, so if House Bill 920 will push your rates down till you hit the floor and then once you hit the 20 mil floor, then we do see

034more money. This is why, and I think President, this is why Senate Bill 66 and House Bill 186 are so dangerous to us because they changed the 20 mil floor. The 20 mil floor allows us to see some some property tax increases. Um the other now the other thing is beauty of it is because of the state funding formula adding these values to our property tax values also makes us appear richer in Columbus which means we will see a decrease in our state share of aid because we're now a wealthier district. So, so it is the one benefit I will say for these things expiring is for for fixed sum levies for example for example the $48 million levy that that's coming up in November for fixed sum levies because you have more taxpayers now

035paying it it spreads it a little a little better across all the people. So you know there's there's five of us have to pay $48 million now we've added two more people now now all of us pay a little bit less. So it is helpful there. any questions, comments, and what's the uh purpose of the discussion today? What is the action that's required at least from the angle of the treasures department? My perspective, this was more of just an awareness just just to get some info. I know I know we've had some conversations about re-engaging with the city and so I think I think that would be that would be where we are and just Yes. And then we'll just keep you up to date. Okay, great. comment questions Craig Mr. Cross. So I know

036one of one of the things with uh TIFFs as we look at that as we talk with the city about those things. I know there's some ongoing conversations about how those rates will look and what those things. So I think it's just helpful again to keep us kind of updated as we see those negotiations happen, right? That's stuff that background there. But I do think this again plays a weird balance uh in in how schools are financed. And this is one of the things that in one of the uh the treasures town halls at the just as gen sessions we've done. Not every increase in revenue results in an in or not every increase in value results in an increase in revenue to the district. And in large part that is because of how inversely

037connected the funding formula is to the belief that you now have a richer district so you can go grab more money from those folks who your it's in intent is to give them some benefit. Um, so I think that's the one concern I would have especially with the CRAAS rolling off is just whatever messaging has to be very clear as to whether or not it actually brings in and that it's not the amount simply of what the assessed value of the property is because that gets divided out and for fixed some levies we don't get more money because the property is worth more. We get a different divide. um but that it may in fact inversely affect us if they go back to using a formula or if they use the formula at all because

038it's currently looked at in the budgets proposed they're not using the funding formula. So there is no formula to how they decide to fund public school districts other than total money's less. Um, so again, I think that that does it presents a little bit of a challenge to figuring out how does this truly affect the district because again, if they don't use the funding formula, then maybe this isn't as pressing of a decrease in our value in the dollars we get. But if they are using the fin formula for something, it could be. I had a question on the um upcoming build CRA expirations. Yes, sir. uh you your assessment is what we're getting revenue for those now if they expire the revenue will be still be about the same to the district about it's

039a wash it'll be about so it's a benefit to the city to continue these but for us it's about the same I don't think I don't no one's really pushing at least this point to extend the CRAAS okay um I think it's kind I mean they're they're really kind of built to get a project going and get established and then it's expected to go way. I mean, I think the city the real benefit to the city is extending the tiff districts because they're keeping that money in a separate pot and then they can use that to benefit those properties. So, so you know, they get money in if oh, we need to add a turning lane. Oh, we need to add a red light. Oh, we have tiff money right there we can apply to

040that. We want to do streetscaping. They could do crosswalks. They could do crosswalks. They could do traffic calming devices. And then then my other question on the upcoming residential CRA expirations. You said it adds 15 million in assessed values to property taxes. So that there's a portion of that that is not or CPS. Correct. Yes. So just thinking high level assessed value is always 35% of your market value and then that gets and then all the taxes get applied. And I think it's an important point to realize that there are I don't know more than 10 less than 25 other taxing entities that all get a little piece of your property taxes. Okay. Thank you very much. Thanks. Appreciate I would I would like to to add a couple things. First and foremost, and just

041in the news, as you all probably know, um Norwood City Schools has taken a position, a new position, a good aggressive position uh regarding this kind of uh funding and uh relationship with the municipality uh superintendent at Norwood for whom this building is named. Uh I am I recall a meeting with peaceful promise when there was too much talk back and forth. Too much talk back and forth. Too much talk back and forth. And finally Superintendent Ronin said it's my money. That attitude probably needs to be replicated in that the reality is they're saying in Norwood, hey, you're making some decisions here uh that are not helpful to our funding and we're already in a war regarding our funding. So, I think I think that's something for us to think about and I be happy

042to put it on the public record that we ought to think about the Norwood plan and thought uh as we begin any negotiations with the city. I also remember clearly when we tried to decide whether or not we would just automatically accept the CRAAS because when there were so many of them it's not the way that the school board wanted to spend its time or effort was looking at that and having to have public hearings about that but in the view of the Hide Park development discussion that had now taken place I sure wouldn't have minded to have had an opportunity to say no to that developer but that's one board member. But so there are some we might need to expand our our perspective a little bit politically and financially now that we are

043in a difficult situation uh and exercise whatever role we could play possibly but again I I I still believe this is not what we're supposed to have to be doing if we're on a school board but um the world has put us in the position. Any other comments, questions? Uh we'll move on and um let's uh do the um monthly final I don't see Mr. Ashley who's doing the monthly financial Yes, I love it. Mr. Mr. Ashley is enjoying some some well earned vacation time vis visiting our nation's capital. So maybe talk to the president and uh that's what that's what that's what we were thinking. He would just stop by for just stop by for coffee and get something because they'll say, "Oh my goodness, this is talking. Go ahead. I need a second

044now. Hold on." All right. Um so so we'll so we'll go quickly because there's a lot on the agenda, but please please feel free to have questions. Um Rob, if you go to the next slide, just high level talking about our cash and investments. Yeah. Um you can see anomalies more than than Yeah. Yeah. You can see we have we have a good amount of 265 million across all of our funds. Uh we have a lot of money in Star High right now, which is a good thing. That's a high interest earning check, high interest earning savings accounts for us. So, just like some of you are probably doing at home, putting some extra money in there because the interest rate returns pretty good. So, the next slide, Rob, you can see our bank balance

045is low comparatively again by by design again as we're using as you're using the Star Ohio to get us a little more interest income. Next slide is the overall kind of all funds balance. You can see general fund has a cash balance at the end of March of 125.8 8 million. Very good. Now we you can this is this is the after we got most almost all of our tax money. So that's you can see it over the top there. You can see all the other funds. Um nothing really different. I will point out if you ever if anyone's clicking through there's a fund activity report at the bottom of this slide. U and it goes through every single fund state, federal, and local. How much revenue, how much expenses, all of those things. All

046right. I am going to turn it over to Mr. Hutchkins who's going to take us through general fund and I can take a drink. Thank you, Mike. Oh, water. Of water. Yeah, drink of water. I'm not Kevin, but I will also try to go quick. Um, so talking about this first slide here, we're just looking at the general fund. This is just a pure focus on the cash for general fund um at the end of March. As you can see in the right two columns over there, we are pretty consistent um with a slight increase to incumbrances right now. But if you add those two columns together and compare them to last year, we are very very consistent. Um not a big deficit there. Anything to call out there. Next slide, Mr. Rob. And so

047this is just a three-year history. Shows our our cash balance uh month by month and just shows the comparison. We did have that increase in February that was due to the property taxes um settlements. So, nothing to note there. Um, pretty consistent to last month. Next slide, Mr. Rob. And then we start talking about our revenues and comparing those by source. In the in the third column there, you'll see this year's. We can compare that to the budget. Um, we are sitting, I believe, about 85% of our budget. And then we did receive our spring settlement in March, which we saw or in February, which we saw on the increase in the last presentation. Um, but just just to note that there. And we are pretty consistent with past years, right? And then kind of

048the same graph consistency here, just showing the month-by-month comparison to year prior years. Um, looking here, this just shows out the the historical comparison. You can see the peaks. This is pretty consistent. Um trying to see if there was any anomalies here to make sure that we called out if anything Kevin would call out but I don't see anything. See the February spike that we already talked about with the property taxes which he has noted there on the graph. And then next slide Mr. Rob we'll get into expenditures. So expenditures here you can see the only real increase from last year. If we ignore the ant the payback of the anticipation note last year um we are up a little bit in salaries and fringes which is pretty consistent with prior years as you know

049cola and things like that we pay more. Um we're sitting at about 73% of our budget so pretty on track with no real anomalies there. And then we get into the monthby-month comparison. Um try to see no comparison there. No peaks here. Um any of the other peaks that you see across the board in prior years or during this year typically represent three paid months. So that just kind of points those out. And then last year we paid out our tax anticipation note. So that's why you'll see that big big triangle there in 23. Then next slide Mr. Rob. And then a good point here to point out on the unencumbered or uncommitted expenditure budget is the we are about 3.3% of our budget is unencumbered or unallocated which is exactly where we were at

050last year. If you see that little note at the bottom in March 31 of last year we were at 3.3%. So we are very consistent with the way we do business. So um nothing to note there. [Laughter] You always do as you do, Miss Bolton. Um, before I I'll let that one stay with you. That's right. Before I pass it back to Mike for a statement of cash flows, was there any questions over the general fund revenue or expenditures? Mr. Cross, questions, comments? Mr. Craig, keep going. All right, Mr. Mike. So, all the stuff that Cody just said summed up in one slide. our statement of cash flows. So you can see, you know, we got we got another tax advance. Um just to not to correct you to Cody, but our tax settlement we

051just got. So all the other payments have been advances. So we will have the final settlement, which is nice because that's part of the things we build into the five-year forecast that we're going to do next month. So it's important to have that this good actual data from the auditor's office. Other thing you see other revenues were kind of high for the thing. A lot of that was some CRA payments. We got a bunch of those. We got about a million dollars of those in which is good. And then just tuition. We got our e rate. So a lot of miscellaneous stuff that comes in. So those are good things. You look like you look like you want to say something. I want to ask about that. So there's somewhat increase in the revenue for

052the more miscellaneous. Is it what was it over over other months? Yeah, it's a little higher this month than but that's was that over other months? But is that normally happening this time of year as been mentioned or is there something else happening there? Pretty normal. The the one thing that's always hard to to time out is the rate reimbursements. They just kind of come when they come and we say thank you and we deposit the money and we move on. Yes. All right. So, continue to preschool. No questions about what we just had. Now, we're on to preschool. On to preschool. All right. So, first slide you can see um students over the last couple months. Um all funding sources did have a slight increase. I think we went up 10 kids. Um there's

053some movement between the buckets, but you saw you saw the big jump in ECE plus expansion and ECE plus federal. So, it's kind of how those kids are funded. If you go to the next slide, you see where our tuition assistance sits for the month. So, we're a little we're a little less than prior years, which we'll talk about here as we get to the next slide. Um, preschool expansion budget is there. I mean, it's very much on trend with what we've been seeing. Yeah, we continue to make our payments to United Way, continue to pay our salaries and benefits and those sort of things. And then slide 20 is the graph and you can see we're below prior years. Um, and most of this is because of the expansion of the full day pilot.

054So, so, so those are kids that we're getting the state grant money for. So, we're obviously not using preschool promise money for those. preschool. Remember preschool the preschool expansion money is always the last dollar in and which is a good segue to the next slide which is which is one that you just said that's good news. It's not bad news. That's good news. It's good. It's good news. Um this is preschool by spinning by fun. Rob, can you click on the full document if you don't mind there? Maybe click on the image thing. Maybe or maybe Oh, yeah. Thanks. I know. Okay. So, this was a request, I think, from from last month or some previous months to look at to look at how the district spends their preschool dollars. And so, and so, Mr.

055Ashley worked with Director Brooks and her team and some other folks from the superintendent side uh to kind of pull us together. So, we looked back um two years plus the budget for this year and and you can see there all the different funding sources. You have Head Start, you have the early childhood grant plus the full day pilot, you have title one. Um there's special ed that comes in through our state foundation. Um we do get funded for preschool disability classrooms as part of the state funding formula. So, that's in there. Uh there are kids there are students who we pay who are paying tuition. So, so we put all those things together just to give you guys a summary of what that looks like. And then as we often do, we did cost

056per student. If you'll scroll down a little bit, you can see our you can see our cost per student per year. And we also put in our payment um to CPP. And then I got them to provide their students. And you can see kind of their cost per student. So I might like to ask on the on the click on the link. Yes. you just demonstrated. I think it would be very important for the board members to see that slide just to we can even do it as a memo or something from okay and you should have a copy in your packet as well. Any questions about preschool? Can I make a comment? Oh, sorry. Oh, Treasure Wagner. Good. Good morning. Sorry, I'm having car issues. So, um I just wanted to point out we're

057spending $21 million on preschool. [Music] Say, say the next sentence. Yes. That means what? It just means we spent a lot of money on preschool and most of it is non preschool expansion. That's the second sentence. Yes. Thank you. 14 million of it is from other funding sources. Thank you. And that's probably a good segue to whatever Mr. Craig's going to say. Well, not exactly, but um I do think, you know, again, it's worth pointing out as we often talk about what percentage we get from the state for students. We get zero for the most part for most of our preschool students outside of uh anything they would have with regard to disability needs. Um, but even the dollar per student we spend on preschool is from what it's looking at not even in alignment

058with what the state would say we would get for every other student that comes through our district because their dollar per student or their Yeah. dollar per student that you would spend as a district is a little over 8,000 or somewhere around there. 8101 or something. Yeah. And so what we recognize is that again we're not getting funded, but even if we were getting funded, the amount of money that we would be getting funded still does not cover the needs of our students. And I think that's an important part when we go out to parents and talk about why things like the levy we will be pulling forth this year are important is because the reality is for preschool is such a connected part to how a student achieves when they go forward and as

059they go up to those higher grades. I think it's a helpful thing to note. Um, the other thing I just want to kind of reiterate to maybe the discussion we have with regard to going forward with preschool is that the conversation really should be about quality and improving quality. And the reason I say that is also because we technically are not really increasing the numbers even this year of all the students who were receiving preschool up to this date because we are still by the chart below the total number of students that we cover for the past two years. um at if the number is if I'm reading the numbers correctly from uh what I was seeing because I think we were at I mean the the best total numbers the bottom of slide 18.

060So so you know a lot of our graphs are on the kids receiving tuition assistance but if you do look at the bottom of slide 18 at the end of at the end of March CPS had 2008 preschool students enrolled. Um prior fiscal year was 2070. So there's a slight slight difference there. Yeah. So we're not like it's not like we are even this year continuing to expand or grow. We what we're really doing is making sure that those students who come through get a good quality education that because we kind of saturated in some places what they can do and can't do. Um, so I was just I think that's maybe the other part I wanted to maybe stress out is that we are now at a point where it's no longer about per

061se preschool expansion, but more of preschool quality, you know, the quality of education expanded and the quality of offerings expanded within those preschools that we are able to serve. And I think that's a similar truth for uh where preschool promises at this point is is looking at how do you best maximize those spaces that are available for the kids for the kids that live in our district. Um, may I add a comment? Earlier you said we were talked about the 8101 that the state calculates. The funding formula calculates 8101, but we're only getting $3,000 per child because of the um state share is only 36% on every dollar to add to that. um preschool I think it's important that we we say that uh I think in the preschool promise last uh their I think

062their last annual report or presentation they talked significantly in uh and and in their report their publication that uh in the state of Ohio it's a certain percentage of kids that are actually taking or in preschool and there's a national average and any of that is whether it's Ohio or the national the national numbers the highest any place else is somewhere 20%. And according to preschool promise folks we are at a saturation point perhaps at around 47%. Uh and and that's that alone is of of great value if that is indeed the demographics. I've not seen the the data that proves that, but they cited and I think they felt comfortable about I think we even asked their chair when they were here last uh for last board meeting about that percentage. So that's remarkable,

063but also the fact that the amount of money that the voters have given us now does not even come close uh to what's really costing. So that does mean that an expansion or quality if it costs more dollars it's it begins to be a burden for the rest of K12 budget that we have. So these are big big issues. Uh, and I do think for all intents and purposes, although I believe preschool promise uh, folks still believe that there are some preschool deserts, um, I think our data kind of shows, especially if you cite the hundred or so classrooms that we have within our district, we've we have over time uh, not only created preschool generally available, but also have eliminated the preschool deserts that once existed. Uh, and if the state ever wanted to

064do anything for us, they would count the preschool kids as part of our enrollment. They will never do what's best for us. So, don't hold your breath. But that would make a significant difference if they could be part of our enrollment numbers. Uh, other questions, comments about the preschool treasure, Mr. Cross. This is sort of an anecdotal, but I've been touring a lot of schools this past year, and every kindergarten teacher I encounter, I ask about can they tell the difference between a student who's been to preschool and not, and it's always definitely yes. It has a very good positive impact on the on the quality of the student coming into kindergarten. So, continue. All right. All right. I'm going to turn it over to Miss Hagood for state and federal grants. All right. So,

065we're on slide 22 and I will try to also go quickly since we have such a packed agenda. Thank you. Um, these are just pretty much my slides I present every month of our progression of our cumulative spending in our federal grants, federal and state grants. And this one, as you can see, we're still trending up at 54%. We're slightly above our target for this month of 51%. um still doing I think pretty well compared to previous years and making our last stitch efforts to to get things spent. Um the next one, this is our um again just showing what our percentage is for the month and and how many have met the target. We're again doing pretty good on our major funds as far as hitting our targets. um for this month. We spent

066a lot of time planning ahead for spring and summer as our um purchasing window closes at the end of next week. We still have a lot of school year left, especially with um activities going into July. So, it's really important that everybody's really thinking ahead because anything you have planned um through July with our extensions, you know, basically has to be in place by the end of next week. So, we've really been just doing a lot of meeting with people and making sure everything's where it needs to be and continuing with a lot of monitoring. Okay, the next one, this is just um updated slightly. I had thought last month that we had all of our money in from the state, but they generously decided to give us a little bit more money in a

067few places. So, we did get um about 900,000 in idea B money, which we desperately needed. So, that was great. and a reallocation. That's a fund that never goes unspent because we have great need there. And so I'm going to say again that these should be our final numbers for the year of the money that we get unless they decide to randomly throw some more money at us. So we're always grateful for anything they release back to us out of the sweeps. Um so Nan, is this just a quick question come up earlier today. Is this about what you would expect for next year? Yeah, the we're we we're budgeting at 95% but um for the most part and I'll get to that a little bit in a few slides further for next year since

068this was a two-year you know budget already. We're kind of doing business as usual. I don't think anything's going to happen. So high high level you would say about $50 million for these consolidated grants. Yeah. Is it that the new money as well as carryover that gets us to 50 or is 50 new money? Um the 50 is is our initial allocation based on entitlement. So these are mostly entitlement grants that the government, you know, calculates based on our student numbers. And so as we work at spending out our our grants in the year of allocation, obviously our adjustment carryover should be going down because the target is always to use it when you get it. But we're expecting you we're expecting, you know, pretty flat allocations um as far as what our entitlement shows

069all based on, you know, the numbers that go to the state. And for the benefit of the public, uh it's these dollars that have been placed perhaps at risk uh regarding a mandate interpretation by um Trump administration uh regarding um uh DEI and whether or not according to our own general counsel whether or not we do things that uh impact others as a result of our DEI practices. So this is a threat that these dollars as early as this coming school year would not be in our budget if indeed the threat was maintained that we would not sign. So that does enter into the discussion as to whether or not to sign a document. I did notice that the Dayton school board decided not to sign. Oh, really? Yeah. I also learned this this morning.

070I learned Columbus has decided not to sign. Right. Wonderful. And and definitely that's that's the impression we're getting. If there are cuts, it'll be kind of at a title level. Each title, title one, title two, title three has a specific target group of disadvantaged students. And so, um, again, I'll get to that a little bit in a minute, but that is the anticipation that there would be targeted cuts rather than broad, you know, depending on what happens with the federal department of education, right? So, it's a lot up in the air. Yeah. Um, as far as our spending summary, um, the next slide. Um, as I did mention, we've got one more week for non-personnel spending, um, for everything to be in place. And so, we've been busy with lots of wrecks and POS and

071contracts. Um, trying to just make sure that people are in the place they need to be. For the most part, um, we're looking pretty good. You can see, you know, with carryover, our goal is 51%. we should hope to be at least at that point with all of our grants. Um, again, just as a reminder, that last column, the minimum spend to avoid possible sweep, that's basically based on carryover from the prior year. All of the fiscal year 24 carryover expires in September. And so I highlighted those columns in green. So basically, you know, the the measurement we're looking at is the amount spent plus the amount encumbered this year should ex at least exceed that last column. Good morning, central office staff. At 1:00, central office will be closed again. At 1:00, central office

072will be closed. Well, I better talk that are left. He's spending that bus. I might have to even talk faster. I guess you've been you want to talk about your conference, man. Yeah. So anyways, that that's how you look at those numbers. I don't know anytime you all come back with a conference bad news. So um yeah, three of my team members and and several other people across the district went up to the um Ohio Association of Administrators of State and Federal Programs conference last April. This happens twice a year and um it's really a a teaching, you know, programmatic and a financial conference. But um we were blessed to have um Brew Man present, which that's a federal, you know, it's a law office that specializes in federal education. They're they're based in DC,

073so they they were the one everybody was waiting to hear from. And really, the best they could tell us is what everybody's saying. You know, nobody really knows. It changes every day. Um they did look into some of the laws around this federal department of education, but basically as we just talked about a minute ago, they're saying to carry on, you know, cautiously business as usual until something definitive happens. She did point out that um based on the current proposals in the president's budget, these are the programs that have been identified for elimination. And so they they suggested a 20% cut to title one, 100% cut to title two, again, is his proposal. I'm I'm not really sure why title two was called out and then less surprisingly 100% cut to title three which supports

074our English learners and immigrants. So definitely the the information she gave us is it would be a targeted um you know and that's not the additional threat regarding the signature or signing something that's his budget. That's the budget proposal. So, we know those are, you know, proposals, but it does give us insight into the mindset of what's going on, whether or not that happens. You know, it does and we do have, you know, quite a bit of, you know, we do have staff funded out of some of these grants. So, it is something to just keep in mind while we wait for better information. Um, we did see a lot of great ideas. It's a great opportunity. Um, most of the state support team is there. lots of other districts come in and share ideas

075of how they're spending their money. We saw some great um information on career tech things that are happening across the state, even at the elementary level. And so that's always just really motivating, great speakers. We do have new federal guidance released for several grants that have has come out through January, in particular these grants, school improvement, neglect and delinquent, and parent engagement. And I would just say in general the trend we're seeing um with these new guidance is more more oversight and and more stringent guidance. So for example in parent engagement a lot of things that used to say you know this should happen the district should be doing this a lot of that terminology was changed to the district must do this you know this must happen. So, I I would just say in

076general, and we're seeing this in our monitoring visits as well in our reviews, that we're seeing a little more oversight, a little more in-depth, you know, digging into what we're doing to um make sure that we're compliant. And then one other thing I thought was noticeable, um Jeremy Varnner and Jeremy Marks are both um with ODW. Jeremy Varner oversees career tech, but they both spoke to career tech education and they both really, you know, I thought was relevant, really stressed the importance of we're not providing seals and and career tech classes and licenses and certificates just because we that gets a kid out of the school when they graduate. They really address the idea that we're trying to prepare these kids to go into the workforce, you know, instead of college. And we should be

077doing that thoughtfully. And again, thinking of the goal is getting this child in a career they can thrive in, not just getting their, you know, diploma to them and setting them free in the world. And so I I just thought that was, you know, something to always keep in mind that really made an impression on me. Thank you. Thank you. And that's pretty much it. Questions so far. Um, so one I will say I just appreciate again the continued effort we do every um, meeting every year on really trying to expand us spending money early, getting things paid early. Um, that increasingly becomes a con, you know, a a important thing to do as we look at potential areas where there might be potential cuts in budgets from the federal level. Um because again I

078think some efforts will be made to allow states to dictate certain things and I think it looks better when we were able to come in and say we're ahead of the game. We're spending dollars. We are paying for our students to do well. And so while I don't think it's a great idea and I think it's a terrible idea to start cutting dollars, I also am reticent to believe that there are some efforts not every district does the way we do. Not every district spends the dollars upfront the way we do. Not every district gets their dollars in on time the way we do. And so there may be thoughts of that's their first steps of trying to do some things within cuts that again bad ideas but at least we're preparing ourselves to be

079in the best place to make our strongest arguments. Um I think the second part for me at least and some of the the the thoughts around um as we keep going forward I I guess my other question is all this money is stuff that we get paid back after we spend. And so I just am very also cognizant of the fact we could end up in a position where if there's a delay or if there's something else that things may have to be paused or things may have to be stopped that falls within those particular areas. Especially for our students who are uh multilingual learners and our students who are coming in where basically we're you know what little dollars we do get from anywhere else besides us um is not exactly breaking the bank

080but it it is a lot of dollars we put into the efforts there. So, I wanted to maybe ask the question of how are we having talks with those folks who support those particular programs to ensure that they still continue to provide the services, but that we're really able to kind of be nimble at times where some of those things might need to um change out or we may have to rethink of how do we come to those conversations. Um I mean that's that's definitely a concern on both cases. you know, if we're if the government is looking for places to cut money and they see that nobody's spending the money anyways, that just justifies their position. Um, and and also your point about not being able to access the money. We saw that I

081think earlier when the the initial freezes came out and head starts, their system shut down and they couldn't access their funds for a minute. We're not anticipating that with the way the funds flow, you know, between us and the state, but everything we do is on a reimbursement basis. So, it's really important for us and they did stress that at the state as well to make sure you're always, you know, like some districts, I guess, you know, only do their their cash requests, you know, quarterly or every six months. So, we definitely do ours monthly to make sure that we're keeping the money turning over. Um, but really, you know, the best way to manage that is is to make sure that we're just keeping up on on everything, getting our receivers in, getting our

082vendors paid. We don't want to owe a vendor, you know, a million dollars of title one and then title one gets frozen. We want to just keep all of the wheels turning across the departments to make sure that, you know, everything is processing timely and and we're getting the money back. And I think that goes to why the cash balance policies and things like that are also so important because a delay in a month or two of a reimbursement can also have a substantial effect on your ability to do other things with the district because we are expending those dollars first. the slower they get in responding, the slower they take to to provide those things or god forbid, you know, we have a shutdown or something to that effect where it would delay it

083for an extended period of time. It really would have an effect on our budget as well. I just wanted to get some clarification. So, we need to spend 39 million this year in order to avoid a sweep. In other words, if if we haven't spent that much, it's some of that is use it or lose it, right? So all the grants have a 27month life cycle, you know, if they have carryover and so um across these particular grants, that's the m the money that's kind of at risk just due to timing. And you can see the difference like if you look at expanding opportunities for each the very last one, um that whole grant, you know, is is basically needs to be spent or swept because there's no carryover. So it is 100% use or

084lose it. Most of the other ones we have one extra year to spend it and so um which in theory shouldn't really be a big problem but we just always want to keep an eye on that. We don't want to go back to seeing any sweeps. And the the end of the year is June 30. The end of the reporting year is 9:30. 9:30. Okay. Okay. But the end of getting it obligated is required by June 30th. Oh, right. Mhm. Yeah. So even if money gets swept, they collect it all and then reallocate it back out. So it's not like you might not get all of it back, but you'll get some of it back. Right? So that's where that extra 1.5 million that we just got came from the money being recirculated. They sweep

085it away, but they also have to still spend it or we'll give it back to the feds. And the state doesn't want to do that. So they, you know, pull it all in and then they redistribute it again um back out to the schools. So, we did get some, you know, some back this year. Thank you. Any other comments, board members? All right, let's keep going on the agenda. No, you want to go Mr. Hoy? No. Okay. All right. I think the next All right. I think Jen, you're next. Yeah. Let's uh we have uh the budget update. Are we prepared for that or do we want to skip the budget update and move down here to where we have some guests and some other folks? What are your thoughts? It's whatever your pleasure is.

086But um don't forget Cody is hasn't gone yet. Yes, that's what I'm talking about. Treating Cody as a guest. No, he's family. There you go. Not gonna go that far. Actually, the family members in this building for you. does. I mean, in that case, we'll take the segue Nan did with effective, impactful career tech education. Yeah. And we'll turn it over to Cody and Mr. Turner. And we'll turn it over to the guest over here, and these guests will go fast. Um, I first I want to say thank you to Mr. Turner for coming in today and collaborating on the efforts of putting together this presentation. Most of the information found in this presentation was given to the board on September 9th as a full presentation. So, if anybody would like to view that at

087their pleasure, please do so. Uh but we'll get started. So the first two slides here just really show the impact and the footprint that CTE has on our district. Just the vast majority of our schools that they're in, the the large number of career clusters that have been created, uh the different pathways that students have and just shows the diversity of what's going on. Um next slide, Mr. Rob. So here you can see we have a very diverse population of students within CTE. uh which I think this slide was really cool, very representative of how diverse the district is and the the opportunities that we give. Um and I also thought another cool stat here that we added from the September 9th was that 53% are female whereas 47% are male. So just to kind

088of show how the different impact is next slide, Mr. Rob here just kind of focuses on the national and state focus on CTE. it is a priority of the nation and the state to create these pathways and these these uh segways for students to be able to get into the workforce, get into different career clusters. Um it talks about the federal Perkins funding. It depends on the funding cycle of what they get, but it shows a number of about 1.2 to 1.5 every year. Um just like I said just depending on the cycle and then with the state level um this also really depends on the cycle and what the state is going as we're kind of talking about with everything else but they they provide money for um industry recognized credential pathways and that

089number is there as well. Next slide Mr. Rob. So this slide was really cool. Um Miss Randolph and Mr. Turner added this slide in here from the September 9th, but this just shows the increasing percentage of students that are becoming um college, career, workforce, and military ready. So, it's not it's on the report card, but it's not start it's not rated yet. Um, but OD does require the information to be provided. So, it's just a really cool piece of information that shows that the hard work that we're doing is paying off and that we are having that increase in student percentages. Next slide, Mr. Rob. And then here, I want to preface this slide. This is the budget by fund. So a big preface here is the USS the auditor of state office uses the

090USS manual to code things. Um based on the code of 1300 is anything vocational, agricultural, careerdriven and that is why you see multiple funds here. Not all these funds point to stuff that Mr. Turner runs or overseas in his budget unit. So I just wanted to make that point out that there are different programs within different funds that use that function. But really this is just a display of the overall budget the whole district budget and how much we are spending towards that particular function and how it's coded. Yes. The question then real quickly on the total is that then the total on CTE that is the total based on that function that 1300 function. Okay. And would show up any place else is that do we believe that's the total budget based on the

091reporting? Yes. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. What is the description of function 13? It is. I actually wrote that down because I had a feeling that was coming. I just got to find it real quick. Slide 33. So, it defines it as vocational instruction is what the USS defines that as. Thank you. Yes, sir. Old vocabulary, but we'll take it. We're getting a new one of those hopefully soon. So, um, we can get rid of stuff like telegraphs and stuff that we don't use anymore, but so we might have some updated codes coming for any. Yes. For any people in the treasures office watching, this is why you keep your USS manual handy. Yep. Because you'll get a question like Mr. Crosset. Yes. And so I wrote that down because I had a feeling that was

092coming, so I was prepared. Excellent. Thank you. All right. Next slide, Mr. Rob. So this slide here, this is what this is how the state shows their FTE's uh calculations. So this is data reported by EMIS to the state. So you can see our unique number of students is 5,238. Um whereas the FTEEs that the state funds is only 477. There is a slide after this that kind of shows the calculation. Well, what we wanted to represent here was taking the total budget divided by the unique students and compare that to the number of FTEs that are funded by the state to show that large discrepancy discrepancy. So, that is really just information given there. And then um if anybody would like to see it, linked to the bottom of this slide is the actual

093state funding payment uh report as of April 1st or the April 1st payment. So, all that information is reported directly on there. Next slide, Mr. Rob. And as we can see this is the this was provided wonderfully by our EMIS department. So shout outs and kudos to EMIS for uh compiling this for us. But this is how the state calculates their FTEES. It is based on the number of uh course days that a student is offered and how many days that students is is in a course. So it's not a onetoone ratio. Um where you can see is an example of a student that attended for 180 days. A course is offered for 180 days. when they do that whole description that FTE only comes out to.166. So there's quite a discrepancy there in the

094way the state funds things and the state calculates things, but we just wanted to make that public information and pass that along. Next slide, Mr. Rob. And then these next few slides are all pretty similar, but we wanted what we really wanted to do is take a deep dive into the different career clusters that are offered and the uh students that are in those clusters. So this data was also provided by EMIS and just an important note here this number is not unique whereas a student can be enrolled in one or more clusters um or pathways. So this is not a unique number of students um and the next dive we're going to be taking on this. The data is kind of uh hard to gather because it's very detailed, very oriented, very descriptive, but

095gathering the student cost. trying to take out those individual costs that we're doing on the pathways and dividing that by the number of students in that pathway just to kind of show what each pathway is costing. So, and if I could piggyback on that, so like at Aken for example, they have three pathways and it's not uncommon to have a student at some point in a year in two or three of those pathways. They may start out in a foundational course and it's student choice and they may say I don't want to be in this course so they go to engineering instead of agriculture and then they may end up in education. And so that's just practically what Cody was saying as far as how there is duplication because students do move and it is

096their choice in career tech to do that. So, um it's hard to calculate a student cost by pathway because of that because there are duplications across pathways. Thank you, Mr. Trainer. And that's actually a perfect segue because I believe the next few graphs are yours to show the the awesome outcomes that CTE is capturing. So, so I know when you're looking at ROI, I mean, obviously outcomes matter. And so, uh, Rob, if you can go to the first graph, the four-year graduation, these I'm not going to spend a lot of time because this is exactly what you saw in September, but every single area that that we're evaluated in for career tech with compliance, we are moving upwards. Uh now we may not be at the level that we should be in some areas but

097we are moving upward graduation rate for four-year I mean we're above the district number on that. So that goes to show that if students are in career tech they are more likely to graduate the ones who are not technical skill attainment which is our like end of course test um like the English and math and science and social studies every single career tech course has a different test that is statemandated and we have risen dramatically in the last three years on those work-based learning we also are rising dramatically. I do uh I do just want to say about the workbased learning number, the federal compliance number for that is 15%. And so you may look at our number and say, well that's pretty low that you have this percentage of students. It is really really

098difficult to get 250 hours for a large number of students because they have to go somewhere. We need partners for that and we have a lot of partners but so so we are above we're actually compliant with the federal government overall with workbased learning hours. So we are above uh the federal level on that industry credentials continue to go up. We have more than half of our uh students who are concentrators in career tech and that has risen dramatically in the last three years. And then finally, internships uh have an updated number. So at so what we believe we're going to finish the uh this school year with which is not on that graph is about 320. Uh so we have shattered our expectations once again for this school year. So we are extremely happy

099that we have over 300 11th and 12th graders and solid internships. And then finally, report cardwise, we rose a half a star uh for our last report card. And so we're very pleased with that. Um so just in summary, as far as data goes, uh ODW loves Sensei Public, but when it comes to Career Tech, uh we are uh definitely one of the districts that follow what they ask us to do. We're in compliance. uh we don't have any like red flag issues that arise with career tech and they also are very pleased with the progress that we made in moving moving kids into what uh Nan talked about. There's a big push at ODW for um every kid to have opportunities for career tech especially in seventh and eighth grade and we're doing that

100with our new middle schools and junior highs and some of our other programming. Uh so we're excited. Thank you. Uh board members have any questions, comments presentation? Uh we did mention this during the board meeting, but I do want um Mr. Turner to take a moment to mention to mention the acknowledgement of our BAC. Oh yes. So our uh business advisory council uh which again is every district in Ohio is required required to have one. We were uh we received the fourstar rating once again. We received it three or four years ago. Um we got it this year and out of uh all of the districts in Ohio, we are one of three who got the four-star rating and excellence with distinction on three categories. One of the categories is providing work-based learning experiences for

101students. The other one is uh strengthening partnerships and I forget the third one to be honest with you, but uh we're pleased to say that we were one of three that got that and actually the only urban in the district with that distinction. So, we're very excited and our uh we have Mr. across it on our BAC and just in the short time already uh this year he has provided so many connections even as recent as last night at like 6:00 or 7 o'clock after the innovation council meeting. Uh so it is great. Uh we also had a really good uh meeting with some members of the CRBC which is the education arm of the CBC. I think they left with a very positive impression of what we're doing and Mr. Crosset was there and

102I'm just so excited for his support for BC. Would you would you maybe talk a little bit about this the difference? I think it's Columbus is a compact arrangement those two and whether or not that's a possibility for us because it does relate to uh increasing funding I believe. Correct. Yes. So there are three models for career tech in in Ohio. One is the joint vocational school district model which is Butler Tech, Great Oaks, and then there's a variety of others. It would be extremely difficult for us to switch to that model because that is uh definitely uh not necessarily a school district the way that we are. They provide career tech services for surrounding districts. The other uh district or model which we are is comprehensive and most of the urbans across the state

103are comprehensive. That means we do our own career tech. It's high schoolbased. Columbus, however, is a little different. Columbus has kind of a a compact type model where they provide they have a couple big career centers at uh in Columbus. They provide career tech services to their community schools that are under their career tech planning district umbrella and they also provide some career tech services to their neighboring districts that touch them. Uh that's kind of what compacts do. Compacts you'll see a lot in the rural parts of the state because there's just not a whole lot in the rural parts of the state. So they'll all join together. So, one of the ways I think for us to look at in the in the future is how do we increase our footprint and quite honestly

104our community schools that fall under our career tech planning district are getting no money from the state because they're not doing anything uh broad enough with fidelity and they also uh are really not contributing any data to our career tech planning district report card, which quite honestly is a good thing uh because they have unlicensed teachers and they are not following things in a a compliant sort of way. And some of them are closing as we just saw with the most recent one. So, it's really an interesting conversation to have about could we do something similar to Columbus. Thank you. Any other comments or questions uh about this, Mr. Great. Um, so you know again thanks for bringing the presentation and again co always appreciate these things. This is a different way of thinking about

105these things because we're now looking at how do we use the resources that we have in the most efficient way possible and the best way to do that is find out how we get a return on that investment. Um I think career tech is one that I have appreciated uh the desire for us to move towards getting our students prepared to go into these different fields and I think that's a constant goal. I appreciated the folks from ODW saying that that is a goal of theirs as well. I know that is not necessarily matched by the standards that are required for folks to get certifications which is also part of the problem right is that for too many of the students for most districts getting the certification is also his first journey. getting them to

106a position where they can be certified in the industry, right, is a different journey. And so I think we're we're moving towards kind of combining those journeys together and getting more students both certified for their graduation purposes but also certified to go in. And I just wanted to certainly propose it, you know, the more we're able to touch into some of the different industries and some of the different fields who can provide those resources. Um, I know there's a lot of effort from some of our different union groups and some of our other different um, companies and businesses in the community who do some of the work that our students are learning to do. the more we can partner with them, the more some of those resources cannot come necessarily from our general fund all

107the time, but also come from those partnerships and those relationships because I know they bring a lot of uh resources and and facilities even and spaces for us to utilize for some of our students to better become equipped in in there. I think the only other thing I was going to just ask and maybe just kind of really quickly because I know we're short on time and filled with a budget or filled with the plus the bill closes at 100 p.m. uh is just really quickly speaking to you know how we can also make sure that our students as they go out are able to leverage those certifications and those things that they have learned through those career tech programs because I think that's the other part is selling our students to the communities around

108them is the best way and that's one of the things that uh when hearing from some of some of the unions that's people come to Cincinnati to get some of these workers who have been trained in some of these different programs and I want our students to probably to be those at the forefront of those uh folks that are desired. Yeah, it's really really good point. Um, so we we definitely have started taking an approach where we are drilling down in the pathways with partners who are able to assist with that because in different parts of the state different credentials are valued depending on the geographic region. Manufacturing is a really good example. So, we were able to apply for a grant that will address credentials, address work readiness, uh all of that. Uh we

109were uh one of 10 districts out of 65 in the state who were awarded $170,000 manufacturing grant. Um that's through the Ohio STEM network. And so through that we're uh we are connected with AIP which is a local organization the um advanced manufacturing industry professionals. They're almost like the clearing house in the area. Also Clipper Industries up up on Corine Avenue in that area. And so we're excited about manufacturing. But what it what we realize it's taking is having to connect with solid partners in the area. The other interesting thing that that we see with credentials is even though we do have some partners who value very technical credentials, we have more partners who value students being able to come into their workplace with leadership skills, uh, work ethic, collaboration mindsets. And so we spend

110a lot of effort in doing that as well. uh because we have more industries who ask for that than they do the technical which is interesting because I I think all of us know that people want people are going to come on time they're going to work together they're going to be able to problem solve and so we are trying to get that balance better as well any other comments thank you all thank you on just again vocabulary Community schools are charter schools, correct? Yes, they are. And I try not to say charter because everything that we are always drummed in from a career tech side of things is community, but yes, charter. I try not to say charter. No. And and that's one of the confusing things about community learning centers. It's just nationally

111charters are called. So, and we have several who do offer career tech, but they do not get anything for it because they're not following through with it. Well, I think part of the issue for Columbus being the compact kind of model is that they are even more so than us a metropolitan district. Yes. Very frankly. Yes. uh and so they their geographic lines bleed you know into an area whereas we have with the joint vocational which is totally separate from us because the state some generation ago decided to pull vocational out of the urbans and in the suburban uh uh neighborhoods. Uh, so I I I'm not really interested any further kind of partnership at all with any charter school or system of charter schools here locally, but I do think it's interesting to think

112in terms what are the values of all three of those models. And I do think that it's it's great to see the expansion homegrown. Yes. Yeah. It's exciting. Yeah. Because I know we spent a great deal of time, rightfully so, on a number of years making sure that we were not tracking kids to vocational versus academic. That we wanted every child to be able to have an opportunity to decide colleges for me uh junior college, four-year college, advanced degree, and also we want everybody to value a career choice. Yeah. So, I think I think we're finding that balance. I appreciate your Yeah. And just your leadership. I appreciate that. One last very quick thing of our graduates last year uh who were concentrators in career tech about out of about 700 uh of the ones

113who graduated with that focus in career tech 45% went to college 45% are working and the other 10% were like other like military or peace corps or something like that. So it's interesting that there are career tech kids going to college but there's career tech kids going to work at about the same percentage. That's great. So, it is very balanced and we we don't know when the report card's going to actually super count this. Uh the earliest was ever going to be this coming year and they don't think that's going to happen yet. But I appreciate the administration and the board preparing for what is on the report card and even in even more significant. It's even tracked by school as well. I mean Cody gave the overall but it's tracked by school too. Very

114cool. We'll go now if we did a great job. Thanks. Thank you. Uh thanks. Brief update on insurance. Uh we do this I think most years around this uh time of year. Um so this relates to our property and casualty insurance. uh health uh life and other benefits are done through HR, property casualty um which relates to our liability, auto uh educators liability and then property uh insurance uh comes through our office. Um the story of our insurance has been a really over the last 10 years an increase in cost with a uh decline in the amount of insurance we've been able to buy. So last year you reme may remember we had a big issue with our property renewal. Uh we had that flood in the Rothenberg basement where there was a pipe that

115burst and caused a a very large loss uh like $3 million loss at uh Rothenberg. Um that was fully covered or or covered with the exception of our deductible by our insurer. However, uh after that, we were cancelled by that property insurer and had to go out on the market and find a new uh policy at much greater cost to the district. Uh we also made changes to the auto policy last year, restricting our auto coverage to just our facilities fleet vehicles. Um this year, uh we had relatively modest increases in our liability, property, and auto coverages, but we cancelled for lack of funds our excess policy. This is the policy that is sometimes called an umbrella policy, the policy over and above what we carry in liability. So, next slide. Again, if you're if

116you're looking on the materials online or um or on the slide here, again, what you'll see is a a continual increase in our costs with a reduction in uh the insurance we purchase. So 10 years ago, uh, essentially when I started taking over our insurance program, we were getting uh, uh, in liability coverage up to 15, you know, our our insurance covered anything over $250,000 with a cap of $15 million. So that's a big sort of range of claims that were covered by our insurance. As of this year, we are down to claims that are in excess of $500,000. So, anything lower than $500,000 is all on us and capped at $5 million, which is a exceedingly low limit for a district of our size. But it is first of all we've had a difficulty

117even placing insurance coverage over that cap and it's been exorbitantly expensive uh for us to purchase it. Um so that's where we are and and each each kind of red indication or red note on on this slide shows where we have had to make changes to uh change the coverages that we've had. So again, it's just been this shrinking of the the coverage that uh uh we've been able to purchase. Uh last slide is just a summary of where we stand now for our coverages. Again, we we still have comprehensive liability insurance uh for all kinds of claims that would arise uh in the operation of a school district. Uh we've worked with Michael Fischell from Assured Partners now for close to 20 years. And the advantages to working with that firm for such a

118long period of time is is he's very familiar with our operations, what we do, and he's able to place insurance coverages that sort of cover the full world of experience of of what happens in CPS schools. example, we added drone coverage a few years ago because we have drone clubs and we have um and and so, you know, again, having having that experienced broker or that experience with our broker, uh he knows very well kind of what risks we should be insuring against. Um not great news with our insurance, but that's the update for 2526 or for what's coming in 2526. Glad to answer any question. Mr. Hoy, any questions, Mr. Craig, you want Mr. Cross? Yeah. Um, is there a possibility um we could do something with um regionally, in other words, join forces

119with other districts in our area to to try to get better coverage and lower maybe spread the cost? Was that is that ever a consideration? There are risk pools um and lots of smaller districts um have gotten into those kind of risk pools. It spreads the uh risk out. CPS being so large and so different than some of the other districts that are our uh neighbors and and we're just very different and so it's hard to form a risk pool where uh you know with us as a part of it. You know, it's one thing to have 10 rural districts in the same county that have one high school, one middle, one elementary joined together. It's more difficult for us to to be in those pools. Only thing I'd add to that is the state

120has talked a lot about doing a risk pool for medical insurance. Um there's a proposal again with the uh uh I think the latest budget. I don't know whether it'll go through but yeah. Okay. Thank you. Uh maybe I'm curious maybe Dayton maybe would could partner with Yeah. It doesn't have to be geographically adjacent or Okay. Thank you. Yes. Uh I just a a question especially with our our audit chief here. Not that co insurance is costing us so much more, but the fact that we're getting such little coverage that somehow if that it becomes a it's a risk issue that maybe if if if um not an assignment but for the chief uh and the audit committee to begin to think about that because uh we are assuming tremendous costs when something goes wrong.

121I mean money we can't really afford uh without having better coverage and certainly our our person that does that for us official is just the best completely thus uh to have found us the best possibility but just as an idea regarding the increase of risk regarding insurance coverage this way. Welcome input. Yes. And then uh while you're here, Dan, a followup question uh about uh we got a great summary of uh TIFFs and CRAAS uh but want to just again for the teenth time tell us when negotiations begin or just quickly quickly quickly the parameter of the negotiations with the city. So, so we actually have an update uh for for the board and and we'll be sharing that. We had there there have been conversations started even last year. Um we talked about it

122uh at some length at the board retreat last year uh where the the city has come to us with an interest in extending the older TIFFs. uh and the board gave us authority to go back and say we're willing to do that if the city uh brings up the new tiff districts that were created to the current rate which is 33%. Uh we've made that offer to the city. We believe there's some interest and uh should be reporting back to the board very shortly on that. Um, the current agreement expires December 31, which I think you shared. And, uh, if there's not an agreement by December 31, again, as as I think Mike shared, each individual TIFF or CRA would need the approval of the board. The the advantage to the city of this agreement

123is that they have a a sort of cart blanch approval. Yeah. So, which is a value to them and and a sort of something that we are giving up by entering this agreement. And so it has to be something that's worthwhile to the board. I just shared with the public that I'm very interested in rethinking that from the standpoint of what we just lived through regarding Pine Park development. And I kind of did a little history as to why the board is really not interested in having to do that and we're here for other purposes. But I don't know. I I think that's a possibility for people to be thinking about with this particular board. um that'll be shared uh in we will continue to share updates as we receive them from the city. Thank

124you. We have two other items uh on the agenda uh particularly uh besides I mean uh besides some of the two things we're not going to get to uh very frankly uh but uh if we could uh the overview regarding the foundation budget we have still uh unclaimed funds and quality improvement uh I know Brandon's here for quality improvement what about the unclaimed funds uh Mike is that two seconds. Probably five, but sure. Yeah, I think. Okay. All right. Slide 59. Rob. Yes. We'll hit Brandon and then we'll I like this. I can probably do I can probably do websites very quickly as well. Um Well, I was got to share try to get it all in two minutes. Um unclaimed funds. So, so a while back, um there's a policy that that after five

125years of unclaimed funds, we move the money back to the general fund. We've been working this for several years. This is a recurring update here. We always do it this time around. You can see um just give a shout out to Joe Porter and David Maya in our office who've done an incredible job. You can see the graph there of just cutting down the unclaimed funds. Um so we're going to move 20 29,000 was a little under $30,000 back to the general fund of stuff that's over five years. Um again, 98.8% reduction over the time period. And anyone who's out there watching, if you want to see if you have unclaimed funds from CPS, uh there is a link to our website. You can go to our website, go to financial information, go to unclaimed

126funds, put your information in and search and see if you have anything. Couple couple years ago, I got some unclaimed. Yes, you did have a check. I remember that. Okay. Okay, that's good. That's good news. Was that Was that fast enough? Wonderful. Okay. Oh, good. Kudos to you too because the last time Mr. Um, oh, we spelled last time he reported it was it an hour so of the presentations CTE slide presentation in front of the whole board if I recall. So, it's it's lives in legend. So, congratulations. Yeah, that's what we're doing after we take care of Brandon. Yeah. Yeah. She's had to wait feel badly about it, but What's your name? I just stepped out. Just to introduce Brandon while the presentations are switching around. Brandon is our manager of position control. So,

127we added this position a while back. Um to make to make sure that all of the positions that are budgeted are the ones that are filled and we don't have discrepancies. And that is the crux of this QI project. So, hey Mike. Yes, Jen. We did not add the position. We repurposed the position. Okay. Okay, we added Brandon. Yeah, but we repurposed an existing position to take on this job. Right. Thank Thank you. It's a clarification. All right, Brandon. So, uh just for a quick refresher for those of you who don't remember when I presented on this about three years ago. Uh so, uh the the objective of uh reducing our negative vacancies is what the sky theme is for. And uh what a negative vacancy is is basically just whenever we have a the

128number of people in a position is more than we had budgeted for. So if we have someone at let's say they're still at an old school that where they were last year the physical teacher move to a new building um that but that we hadn't updated their pace on we hadn't changed their position um then they would be a negative vacancy because that position that they are still in uh would be over budget. So, um to begin this year, um we had 183 FTE worth of negative vacancies. Um that every year there's a beginning of the year spike as soon as school starts. Um when we're trying to get all of the people who have moved uh from the prior year into their new position. Um and why that is important is because that is

129nearly $20 million worth of people of of positions um that are being overspent, misapplied, or just spent without intention. Um with along with that there's a risk that um because we're then showing a vacancy uh in the position where that person should be uh oftentimes um then that could be overhired if people are just looking and see hey oh there's a vacancy we can fill that let's put somebody there. Um so next slide please. Uh our team members uh mostly consists of uh our teammates from the HR department uh Shane Weary, Lucius Jones, and Shan Sanja Burkhalter. Um as well as Julie Andio um they helped me out there. Uh and then Janet Burlov is the accountant representing uh the treasur's office on our team. Um so for our KDDD uh the main focus of

130again resolving that ne those negative vacancies um is to spend with intention um to show the correct information when we report out vacancies say to the board during our budgeting process. Hey these are vacant positions. Um if we have people in the wrong position then not actually vacant positions that have some data incorrect. Um so we we strive to improve that um and make sure that again we're spending with intention. Um some of the key drivers with getting that information is correct is uh promptly uh communicating those updates. Anything that uh any position that changes um we have a lot of employees who move from one building to another um based on the the needs of buildings at the time as those change um and the uniformity of the data between departments. So making sure

131that what the treasur's office is showing is the same thing that HR has shown for for all of those positions. Uh next slide please. All right. So this is a our busy run chart uh for this project for the last five or so years um that where we've been working on it. Um so uh some of the interventions that we've had uh that we started up early with was some system updates um putting in hard blocks on sending people sending employee pay assignments that were over budget u to disallow that so that any correction needs to be made first and then we can uh get those those people paid. Um lots of daily huddles, lots of uh of work to drive that beginning of the year peak uh down throughout the year. So, um, this

132year was a little bit slower than last year. Last year we really got that number down quickly. Um, but this year due to some delays with the budget approval, um, going into TAC with some people who are still over budget when we have to reallocate uh, makes that particularly difficult to then uh, get those people in the right place because we have to do the initial correction and then any changes that that occurred in tech. So, um, but uh, we are down to zero negative vacancies right now. uh always a great thing to celebrate for both teams. Um and so that that way we can really focus on beginning in next year all the better. Um so that we don't have as high a peak as we've had previously. And there's my little bit emmoji.

133That is when we repurpose that position that Jen was referring to. Uh next slide please. All right. So uh some of the key learning uh some of the items that we um really focused on this year um is as the QI project and process extends over a significant amount of time over you know five years working on basically the same thing um many unexpected uh process or employee changes um that have an indirect result on this process. So, uh, for example, we've changed some of the ways that we, uh, grant access to employees based on what building they're in. So, that actually helped us out a lot because that way if their pay assignment isn't updated, they're not going to be able to see the right students. Um, so that helps us get some things

134corrected at least into the right building, uh, whether or not in the right position. Um, and the just the awareness and accountability, uh, being vital to the to really any process improvement. Um, which leads us to next steps. Um so we have gotten very good at not creating new negative vacancies throughout the year. That is one thing that we um have really nailed this year. Um so when we have gotten to zero really haven't seen anything new crop up which is always the best um best part of or best uh process. Um so getting that beginning of the year peak um is really key and uh we have we are taking steps to reduce that for next year. Our objective is to have less than 75. Uh and again with starting this year at 183,

135that'll be a significant improvement. Um and I think we can do that. Um we have more information going into our budget software for next year that doesn't just focus on the number of positions, but does uh update who is in those positions so that we can make sure that we know exactly who's where. Um and that can carry through to the start of next year. And uh finally uh where we are on our um with the description of how how far we've come uh we have us at an eight um which is substantial improvement um really just uh sustainable substantial improvement um really just holding up on that last improvement until we can get that beginning of the year number down. Um with those new things not cropping up throughout the year. All we have

136to do is is knock down that peak and uh then we'll just start low and stay low. questions. Any questions? Great. I'll be really quick because we are pretty close to the end of our time here. So, I will just say again, I appreciate the hard work you all are doing to uh improve our efficiency of the district. Um, and then also recognizing where systems um need the improvement to allow you to be even more efficient in how you do it. And so, I think that's a little bit of what you're speaking to of trying to go forward in the next year is to get us more equipped to be able to recognize and appreciate where position was. cuz I also just wanted to point out on the on the lovely run chart that you

137have there, there was a period of time where we never got to zero and the fact that we get to zero so much earlier is again a sign of growth. Thank you, Mr. Cross. Wanted to clarify for myself. So, an open position is a legitimate position on the books that's we're trying to hire somebody for. a negative vacancy. Is that a position where that we're paying somebody who's not in a legitimate position? Exactly. Yes. We're paying someone who uh either they're in the correct position but maybe have the location incorrect or um or just we happen to hire more people than there were positions. We and we tend to create a lot of those at the beginning of the school year because there's just so much movement happening with with all the people. Yep. Yep.

138Exactly. Very good. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Oh, nice job. Great. Great job. Much appreciated. Thank you very much. Um, Miss Bolton. Yes. So, Brandon, correct me if I'm wrong, but in the first year that we or the second year that we actually made a bunch of progress, we avoided overspending by 14 million. That's correct. Yeah. So, that that was that was the exact I think it was 14.7. Yeah. So, over you think over the years how much of that risk avoidance that we've been able to accomplish. It's a huge Absolutely. It's huge. And we're very proud of Brandon and his work. It is millions. Thank you. All right. Foundation budget. Do you want to introduce it, Mr. Grimes? Well, we have two guests here with us today. Sally Grimes and Karen. Thank

139you for being so patient. And um so the the uhou between Cincinnati Public School Foundation and Cincinnati Public Schools. Uh the way theou works is that uh they're we are going to fund their administrative expenses and part of that process is they propose a budget and then we review it and approve that budget. The reason that we are funding their administrative expenses is so that when they go out to fund raise they can go to all of their donors and say 100% of their money will not cover administrative expenses. And that's a big advantage in the fundraising uh efforts. Um, overall I I'll give some broad numbers and then maybe Mike you can talk a little bit more. But overall it's about uh a million4 is the administrative expenses proposed budget and their fundraising goal

140for that's for fiscal 26 and their fundraising goal for fif fiscal 26 is $2 million. So, the idea is that it's going to be about $650,000 positive um economic support to the district in next fiscal year is the projection. So, that's the big picture and I'll just leave it up to Mike and Sally maybe to fill in the details. Yeah, just quickly I think I'll let Sally and Sally and Karen present, but um appreciate their work on this. They sent over a lot of data. Um, I did I did ask them to to categorize it in the categories that we we deal with here at CPS. So, you'll see you'll see the subheaders very much match what we present as financial reports. So, thank you Karen for doing that. I know that's not traditionally how

141how a how an organization would do their budget. So, our categories are kind of are kind of weird, but appreciate you doing that. So, hopefully hopefully for the members of the committee, you know, it's kind of apples to apples to what you would see um from from our school budgets. So, I'll let Sally or Karen take it from here. All right. Thank you so much, Bo Member Creset and Assistant Treasurer Augustine. Um, I'm going to turn it over to Karen to really look at the numbers in detail, but just to give a little bit of an overview on what we're hearing and seeing out in the community related to the foundation so far, um, I would like to reiterate what board member Crosset said. We are as we're out in the community talking to people

142and sharing with them that um CPS is committed to this and invested with the administration. We are getting fabulous response from potential donors and it's definitely changing their perspective of how they would like to support it and how much. So it is already we're seeing um payback from CPS's investment. Um I without even starting our asks we are currently working with Ignite Philanthropy to build our fundraising strategy without asking anybody. So far, we've brought in $170,000 for the foundation. Um, so I can't wait to see what happens when we actually start asking people. Um, so I am going to turn it over to Karen to look through the individual numbers. I would love some guidance on how detailed you'd like us to go in this presentation. Well, I don't think it needs to be super

143detailed. I think, you know, some of the charts that you've shared with us already are going to be just fine. Okay, cool. I don't know if you want to put it up or we should get there. Um, but you all should have a handout. It's towards the back of the stack that you've been given. You want to find the one with the peach column if that helps um guide your eye to the correct um document. Um, our original ask was just shy of a million3 and that was based on basically a back of the envelope budget projection that I did honestly on the fly one evening because all of this has gone incredibly at the speed of light I think as you are all aware. Um and our normal budget process is to be doing

144budgets in April and May. And typically I wouldn't have a final number more to towards midmay. So this is a push up in our traditional cycle. It will become our new cycle as we move forward. Um so the new number is now a million3 excuse me 1,341,000 um 587,000. So, it's an increase of 48,566 from the original asks um proposed during the NE um negotiations for theou. Um I've def detailed for you down at the bottom our assumptions around um our ask. Uh we've got a 3% increase for salaries. Our increase always occurs for all employees every October. Uh we are currently projecting a 4% increase in our benefits. We are currently in negotiation. So I don't have final numbers on our benefits. So I'm going in with an assumption around that. Um and then

145the general cost of increase for other line items is anywhere from 3 to 4% depending on the line item. By way of example insurance, I went for 4%. Um that could be a little high, that could be a little low based on your conversations. I'm guessing at a minimum it's right or low. Um and again you can see uh the line items kind of up there the variances to the original ask. I've also detailed for you. Um we made some adjustments as we really dug deep around what we think we need. We've made some adjustments to a small number of salaries to account for um elevated work and elevated positioning of the foundation. They're not massive increases, but there was a slight increase above the 3% in in a few positions. We've also um put

146in additions to the budget that typically do not exist at um the former or original ABC. and that's um attendance at national conferences specifically the um national education foundation uh which we believe is going to be critical for the team both from a networking and an understanding the industry and being able to best perform for you for you. So there's um conference attendance dollars in there along with um some uh local dollars that we're putting in. We're anticipating for ongoing kind of education um sometimes fundraising professional association will have like a $25 fee for educating the advancement team. So there are some dollars allocated towards that. Uh we do have moving expenses projected far out in June of next year. Uh not knowing exactly when the new space might be available. So that is 15K

147and that is just an estimate. We do not have a final number because we're obviously not moving and there's some discussion that perhaps CPS might be able to help with us on that. So some of the numbers are very much um projected and not based on actuals. The vast majority that you see are based on actuals though as far as line items. And then we do did have to account for some uh small numbers around computers and it for new staff and or a refresh schedule for existing staff which again was not part of my budget because I didn't have that information to put in. So we feel like the numbers um are accurate and uh reasonable and reflect how we operate. We don't really have capital expenditures uh again because we're just an office

148team. So there aren't big dollars going towards any sort of big piece of equipment. So I don't know if there's any detailed questions around the budget. Do you want me to go in a little more specifically on line items? I would just um I would Thank you. I would just um talk a little bit more about the rent thing. I know that's one thing we've talked about and you guys are if I remember currently currently in your space until next March. Is that correct? Yes, we have our lease expires at the end of March and uh right now this budget accounts for an anticipated extension of that lease through the end of June and it assumes a move sometime in June with occupying the space as of July 1st of next year which would be

149the following budget year. Uh the following budget year we would anticipate then that the rent would go away because current conversations are is we wouldn't have that have to incur that expense. So there is some fluidity there depending on the availability of the new space and when we might actually move and dollars actually associated with that inside the line items you're seeing. Thank you. Do members have any questions? Yeah, I just want to clarify one thing and Sally, correct me if I'm saying this wrong, but in the very top uh where list the donations uh individuals, corporations, foundations, grants, there will be expenses related to um getting those donations to come in. Maybe it's an event, maybe it's a a a dinner, whatever. There's some variable expenses that are not yet determined, but those are

150not administrative expenses. Those are expenses related to fundraising. So those numbers there are the net that's a net of fundraising and the expenses variable expenses related to the to raising those monies. So just if somebody you you didn't see anything in here for and like a gayla or something like that, that's part of the funding. I was looking for them. Yeah. So anyway, I just thought that would be a a point to cl a point point to clarify that that yeah, there could be potential additional expenses um for a gayla depending again it's so unclear when we might be able to actually pull pull that event off. Right now the best case scenario would be very late next spring but um typically you would have fund raise dollars at the 80% level. Uh when is

151the public announcement going to be made? There's so many variables around that we couldn't even begin to project that for next year. So that that piece is not in there. And those are always considered not administrative expenses. Correct. We do have dollars in here though for the advancement team and for Sally for doing coffees and lunches, what we would call the normal um engagement activities around donors. So you do see day-to-day uh funds in there for that kind of activity. Other questions, comments? Miss Bolton. Yes. Um, just a point of clarity. My understanding on the rent was that it would be netted against the administrative costs, not given free. So, do I missed something? Oh, Treasur Wagner, would you like me to try to answer that? Um, we actually have a meeting scheduled with Mr.

152Burkhart soon to work through some of the details of what that could look like, and I'm I'm sure Mr. Hoyne will be involved in that as well as we work on a separate lease. Um, so the mechanics of how we record those dollars are, as far as I know, to be determined. Okay. Can I request that Mike Gustin attend that meeting as well? Of course. Thank you. Any other comments, questions? or uh for the uh announcement of the foundation or that's not even the right word, but kickoff or what have you. What's the the date that uh that everyone's looking at regarding uh a bit of a a presentation to the community that foundation now exists? We have our very first board meeting of the foundation on May 1st and a lot of these kinds

153of questions will be answered at that meeting um because that will be up to the will of the foundation board to determine what is the best timeline and what is the best um point for the first announcement. So we'll know that after May 1st. Thank you. Um any other items? Uh and this would be towards this coming year's budget what you've shared with us. Um we're at the time we need to conclude. Uh the two big items we didn't do yet are going to be discussed with the board uh on Monday night in full board which is more discussion regarding levy. Uh and then also budget updates. So I think we can defer to the whole board on that. uh appreciate that people got ready for that and and had a little bit of a

154dress rehearsal uh at least in creating the uh the slide deck, but we would like to uh uh talk and have revealed the um what are we uh Mike, what are we sharing? Not the checkbook, not Ohio checkbook, but Ohio checkbook. Okay, good. Good. Good. Okay. That's what it used to be called. We're going back to Yes. So yeah, the history of Ohio checkbook was it was a it was initiative launched by a previous state treasurer and then we switched state treasures and then they switched software providers and so we we kind of disengaged. I'll say that we disengaged for a while but we wanted we wanted to bring this back. Uh Mr. Ashley has been working hard with them to get to get the data updated. We are now live uh with our Ohio

155checkbook. You can go out to the website Ohio Checkbook. If you go back a slide, Rob, you can go back out to the slide. Ohio Checkbook. You can look us up. We're on the list. You can look up. It's actually kind of cool. You can look it up by cities, counties, government, school districts, and then just search by name. So, we put in our initial we put in all of last fiscal year and our current fiscal year up through February. Our plan for updating is to present our financials here uh first and then we'll upload that data um to Ohio checkbook after we present to after we present to the board or to the finance committee at least. Um so you guys have seen it first but it'll be out there. I know I know

156especially you know as we get into later in the year. A lot of people like to look at our books and see what we're spending money on and see where we're going. So this is an important step uh for our transparency so so that we're out there and we're and the data is accessible and available to folks and you have an idea of when uh it'll be up running and happening. It is it is it is up running right now in its entirety? It's like I said it's all of last fiscal year and through February of this year. Okay. Yes. Yes. I mean we Yeah. We Yeah. We we may go back and add some prior fiscal years. You know, it's a lower priority thing, but you know, um and then and then just the

157last slide here. Um just we are doing some other updates to our to our public website. So, um adding some more reports, um some pages. We're going to add the fund activity report, which is always in your packets. Um the thing we didn't get to today is we did do our third quarter quarterly object level expense report. It's again in your packets and in the slide deck. Those will be out there. We're expanding the bond rating page. Right now, it just says Moody's, but there's actually three agencies that all rate us, so we want to give them equal equal credit out there. Um adding a state and federal page to give, you know, parents and community members an idea of how our state and federal programs work. The audit page, we're retitling to internal audits

158so people know it's it's for it's for our internal audit. And the image there was just for those of you who've been around a while, all the old under construction graphics that used to appear on people's web pages back in the, you know, Netscape and Geio Cities days. Quite a selection. Yes. Yeah, it's quite a selection. I remember remember several of those. For the good of the order, uh, anyone present that has any comment they would like to make? Just done. Just Thank you, Mr. Craig. I was just going to say one quick thing just because I know we're going to discuss it uh the board meeting, but just um hoping that we can bring back that next level of the discussion we were going to have with regards to the critical expenses, the um

159required by law, required by collective bargaining agreement, all those things. So, because I know we were starting that process and I'm just hoping we can keep bringing updates to that process as we go along. Part of that is happening. Met with President President and treasure and superintendent yesterday. It looks like part of that process is is underway and going some aspect of it being reported out on Monday. Mr. Crosset Brandon, you're talking about the pyramid. Yeah. Yep. Great. Okay, great. Thank you. Um, do we have anybody listening? We do not have any requests. Excellent. How many people listened before they ran out of the building? Yeah, we had six, but we've had up to 12. All right, that's good for us. Yeah, double digits. Well, thank you all for the tremendous amount of administration work.

160Uh it's greatly appreciated on all levels. Um, we are adjourned if it's