001e e e good evening and welcome to the cincin public school audit committee meeting on Wednesday February 26th uh um we'll go ahead and jump uh right in we've got some um some committee updates that we have to do including uh potential new member appointments as well as review of our Charter um going over the meeting schedule and uh reminder about our conflict of interest so we'll go ahead and jump into those items here first uh this year we uh we have uh up to three uh member positions open uh excuse me Community member positions open and thanks to efforts of those in this room and outside of this room uh we actually had four people apply for that position um which is actually rare so we typically don't have more apply for a committee
002position and we do uh have seats so we're in a little bit of a different position than we normally are where uh we have historically looked to see qualifications and if uh we feel like someone was a member that could contribute to the group we admitted them um generally speaking um and so we we do are in a different position this year with four applications for the three positions so um Clarice and I both met with all four of them um actually we didn't meet with all four of them one of us met with all four of them uh both of us met with two of them uh they're resumés are in our packets for and hopefully everyone took a look at them um each of the candidates had unique qualifications they're very four different
003very very different people with different backgrounds um and we found them to be um I won't speak specifically for Clarice I found them to be um engaged uh have a relevant background uh they were all uh uh live reside in the city of Cincinnati um Rick Janette Addie Carson has a very unique background that's not something that is currently represented on our committee um she's a project manager with clinical data so a little bit different background and what we would consider to be represented typically here with mostly Financial professionals uh I found that very intriguing uh John Young is a future CPS parent so I've I've always found future parents or parents in our district to be you know interesting contributors to our group he also has a financial background Laura Ola um is a
004IT Auditor protiv so I found her background to be very interesting and very applicable um and Carrie Rous is an internal auditor uh at first student who is a vendor of ours so we do want to talk about that for a minute um but her background is very relevant um you know having been at first student she's very plugged into um the transportation World which is relevant however there could be a potential conflict or a perceived conflict with her representation on the audit committee um she was fine by the way if if she were to be appointed to the committee she was fine with recusing herself if and when um transportation or first student ever were to be brought up in front of this group um Clarice would you like like to add anything about
005any of them I disagree um I think we had a um diverse group of um applicants coming with um experiences that would be um beneficial to this committee um um my only concern or the biggest question I have was the um with K and her and the possible conflict but um again that's a where to ision on how that's supposed to run but um it was a pleasure meeting them and and talking with them and um getting to hear their passion about uh the audit committee and and Cincinnati public school so it was it was a great opportunity so um I guess I would like to pose a question to the members of the board that are here and um get their perspective on um a employee of a vendor of such a significant vendor
006uh now one of the interesting things about her as an employee is that first student or first group is A8 billion doll multinational corporation so she she doesn't exactly you know have a financial interest necessarily direct financial interest or nor does she have a any voting power or any power within an organization that would be so significant that it would impact our relationship at least the way I perceived it it but I I certainly ultimately if and when we do decide to uh vote on new members as this group it goes through budget and then it goes to the board and the board ultimately has to make the decision to approve or to not approve so it would be pretty silly for us to uh put forth someone's name that the board might have a
007problem with um so is there any thoughts uh Mr Craig or Mr Crossett um I think how many positions are we trying to fill we have three open positions four applicants po applicants um I I uh um you know feel the same way that you do that you know it's a for students a big company and she wouldn't really have much influence over the contract that we have with them and all that I do worry about the optic and I worry about having to explain it I think um those would be um you know just to have to pause and explain it I think would would would be could be a challenge and so it'd be nice to get people appointed and have it you know be smooth so that's just Brandon yeah I I
008would share somewhat of a similar thought isn't that I don't know that there's necessarily a conflict again in her in her giving en rooll with even within for student I don't know there's a potential I don't know there ever a matter in which she would be deciding something that would also be something we would be deciding or the also uniqueness of the audit committee is that you are not a decisionmaking committee and that you are not uh like deciding not whether or not we have a contract with first student or not or for that matter even deciding how much of a contract we have with first student or not so I don't know if there's any added benefit that she would get from their end either for being on um this side I think the
009nor I think she does any work based on what I remember her resume I don't think she does any work on like advising on anything related to our contract at all so I don't think there's necessarily a conflict there that sense I do think to uh Mr cr's point though and I think this stuff we've talked about before is there a perception issue that could be present uh yes but you know again I think that's a decision that the committee has to decide as to how much of a lift are they willing to how much of lift is the committee willing to do to Ure you know if this is was the person we wanted to go with um you know it's also again the other three candidates didn't there's no one that seemed to
010be like a clear we don't want that person so which would have made some of this easier right was one clear no um but I I do think one of the things that may need to be just kind of discussed as we go forward regardless of whether or not we select this person or not is if a person on the audit committee were to ultimately change jobs into a position and I think we talked about this again with like folks who might move or other things if someone were to take a job in which they would be working for a potential person who's either a vendor or looks to be a vendor um to the district how do we want to handle those as well uh because I think we want I do think we
011want to have kind of a clear line that if we're saying this is not acceptable because of her being working for a vendor that everyone in the future be held to that same standard uh but again I don't because the committee is very unique in a sense of whereas the like a board member would have a very different relationship because we would be a decision maker I I don't see it as being a direct conflict although again I think it's whether or not the committee would want to do the lift of explaining anyone else have any questions or thoughts on that topic or on our meetings with any of the candidates it's great we have four candidates uh you know that the process isn't overly prescriptive it's not you know you must qualify for these
012various things I mean it's not I've always said that the if you can be a contributing member of the organization then we would welcome having you and so we're in this unique position where we have four and I only need three um I was gonna ask were there was there any and again not to put you both on the spot there but was there any thoughts or or leanings towards any one or two or of those four that you in that that you met with that you thought um might put them above the other but but above any other the other applicant um I felt like John was the most interested in um what we did and how we did it and how he could contribute to the district um I mentioned I think he
013had a young child who will be a future CPS student um so I thought that stood out to me um car's experience as an internal auditor I thought was intriguing we do have um we have Auditors on the committee but and Kevin's a former internal auditor and so we we do have that experience but not you know not overly represented so that was intriguing um uh Rick Janette uh was a former PTA president which I thought was intriguing she has has firsthand knowledge of you know School dealing things at that at the school level which I don't know that anyone here has um so I think those those stood out to me on for those three um above uh Laura's purely it audit Focus I don't know what you think Clarice um well I didn't
014meet Laura but um I'm with you with John John um was very impressive very passionate about um uh the work of the audit committee and his contribution to it um was eager because of the the child um um being uh almost part of CPS um Rick Janette she I was also intrigued initially I was like well wait a minute she's the president of the PTA how will she be on the audit committee but then learned that her uh two children um are now at Walnut so they are not they're no longer at the school where she was the PTA president so she's no longer in that role um but to Dan's point I think that brings a a very different perspective to this group that we have in hand um and may provide some uh
015insight and and um objectiveness that especially in this in this time that may be needed it's probably before anybody's time may maybe Lauren you might remember I think I can't remember his name we had a a member of the audit committee that was a pure it guy for a while and he gave us a lot of really interesting good recommendations for what it's worth that that was actually pretty valuable do you remember I think that was just before I started but I do remember the list of names of of the original founding members and I that that would make sense and in terms of where we're headed with expanding our it work there could be nice alignment there as well I kind of look at Emma she thinks about the future of Our IT program
016I'm sure having other it Auditors to lean on is helpful you did you did but it's a valid point so um okay well are there any other questions or comments gr okay well we're going to have to vote um I think the best way to do this uh Lauren would be you can vote for up to three and the majority based on a roll call vote would be the three that we would nominate and you could vote for none so um does that make sense I'm looking kind of to board member Craig and cross it to make sure we're on the right track here yeah I think so or you could I mean yeah that big sense you were gonna say or we could I me like if someone wanted to nominate a slate of
017three that could be done as well and then we would just vote on that slate but think this either way does anyone feel strong about nominating a slate of three it's not named Dan okay um I would um I would nominate um John Laura and Rick and um sort of encourage maybe Carrie to um reapply it another time when there's another opening um I do think all four of their experience would be valuable but uh like if it just feels like sort of an easy uh an easy one person to uh not include this time just because there is that conflict but not to say this is a rule you can't ever be on the audit committee but at this time maybe you know it's not a good fit so I would I would nominate
018those three I was leaning in the same direction oh I agree so is that Liz uh is that a motion from you sure yes okay I motion and Carol is that a second I second thank you thank you okay uh is there any further deliberation on that on this topic okay so now we'll do a roll call vote Warren could you do that please yes Dan yes Clarice yes Liz yes Seth yes Kevin Paul yes Mr Craig yes Mr Crossett yes and Miss Bolton there we go unanimous passage thank you okay thank you everyone okay the next item to discuss is the audit committee Charter and um in your packets uh there are two version did did everyone get both versions Lauren yeah okay so there was a version that we uh discussed at our
019last meeting and then another Redline version with edits based on discussion and other feedback we received um I would like to go over that um and kind of point out the changes the reason behind the changes at that after I go through everything we can have a deliberation over any further edits or thoughts put into this and then um at that point I would entertain a motion in a second to try to get this thing passed so that um we can push it up to budget and then to the board I would also like to point out that uh on the first page this was last revised in December 2021 on behalf of Miss Bolton because I know she'd say it if she were here that it was like every year we were revising this
020thing so the fact that we went um three or four years without having to revise it was great and I think the board appreciates that uh and we would probably strive to make sure that we also go another couple years before we have to revive this revise this again so that's why there's so many changes um in this version so um the first page uh at the bottom is adding the word community to clarify that the 10 members that um are on the committee in addition to the three members of the board budget and finance committee are the 10 community members so that that makes sense to me to add that there um just for clarification uh there was a clause in here that said all members must reside in the city limits um we
021did uh we had some feedback and this is probably one of the areas that there might be further deliberation if I have to guess on the paragraph at the very bottom we added in candidates who reside and or work within the City cincin Public School District boundaries may be preferred uh calling out that uh while we may not make it a prescriptive you must live in the city we feel like there are people that don't live in the city that could still contribute to the organization and to the committee um however there may be a preference to that based on um where you do reside uh possibly even where you where you work if you are an employer that employs students that will come out of our district you do have a vested interest in
022the district uh so that's a consideration for an update to the [Music] Charter on the next page uh there was a clerical update to delete a duplicated word uh second paragraph down um was some clarification of what we might do as a committee if um if we do need to determine that we need to add community members during the year uh gives gives us a little bit more flexibility previously it was if we fall below eight we had to do something if we now under this wording we would have the ability to do so but it doesn't make a lot of sense to try to ramp this process up in the middle of September when the normal process might take place in December so adding a little bit of flexibility here for us uh slightly
023further down the page under audit commed chairs was just a clerical typo that we are correcting uh further down in meetings uh uh there's a clarification of what uh constitutes Quorum uh calling out all of the committee members versus uh maybe some ambiguity of whether it's the community members or or all of us um further down uh we are going to leave we we're recommending that we're leaving in is expected that you attend the meetings which I think is a standing expectation we only have five a year however there was language put in there I think at our last iteration where there would be a a strict process of you know reviewing membership if you miss two meetings in a row which I think um is very prescriptive and could be harsh depending on people's
024personal circumstances and and their needs so uh we certainly would consider that if someone missed a bunch of meetings we would still consider their membership but not make it so prescriptive um the following paragraph We would delete the sentence that says further the audit committee appoint one of its members there's already language uh above that was added around the chair and vice chair position so this was redundant language so we would recommend removing that um there's some clarification about meeting agenda and meeting mimit minutes and how those are um how those are provided to us and so this is just really a clarification of what we're already doing um so nothing really too too daunting there to change um um next on the third page are three passages that we are recommending to delete these
025are things that we've historically not done however they've been in the charter uh we've never been asked nor have we ever reviewed the complete annual financial statement that would be task uh of St substantial task we don't even bring it to this meeting anymore because it's hundreds of pages um also we would remove the paragraph around um reviewing other sections of the annual report and regulated regulatory filings uh just not really in the purview of this group to have to do those things further down under external audit um it implied that we would uh every year meet with the external auditor prior to commencement of the audit which we have not done nor do we plan to do uh as an advisory community board or committee excuse me um and right above that we are
026recommending to uh had a a sentence around supporting the internal audits recommendations um and also encouraging manage Management's timely remediation of those findings which is an area that we have been um involved in and uh decided that it would be a good idea to call that out um lastly on the fourth page would be to remove paragraph around reviewing and confirming the independence of the external auditor uh as I discussed this with Lauren it's um the independence of the external auditor is on the external auditor to determine that they're independent as well as uh the the the state and not an obligation of the audit committee and lastly uh the paragraph below that uh instead of saying on a regular basis meet separately with external Auditors it's on an as needed basis so we would
027not want to preclude ourselves from meeting with the external auditor if they had something that they needed to report to us um but we would not uh obligate that to be mandated regular occurrence if it's not needed so sorry try to get through that as quickly as possible hopefully everyone to had a moment to read these before we got here today um but um with that I would like to open it up to any discussion around what we're proposing here and we can discuss and uh go from there yep Jim one thought on the U review and confirm the independence of external Auditors um I think it might be a I don't know whose job it would be whe whether it's the committee or maybe it would be the internal audit department but I think
028we ought to get some documentation from uh the state or something saying that it's that they're independent just so that it's not our duty to do it but maybe we have a duty to confirm it or something I mean because if we end up someday we end up we have an auditor who's not independent they're going to say say well what was the audit committee do it I mean it might still come back to us as a question so just a suggestion and my the likelihood of it ever happening is so rare but still I mean I just that's the only thought I have all the other changes I thought were great Lauren when we talked about that was that something that you had read that was a statutory requirement of the state because the
029state appoints platin Berg as the auditor yeah so I maybe it's super for us then okay I just didn't know if we needed to that's a good question Che box or anything Isa just mentioned it may be certified in our single audit and then our acfr state I didn't bring the whole um acfr with me but I think they certified their independence in those documents okay so I think that should give us good coverage the only thing I could think and as you're reading these Dan is if we engaged in additional supplemental Consulting Services you know those are the time with the same Auditors ensuring that we maintain Independence and avoid conflicts there so maybe that's something we can just you know conclude in conversations as we vet external Auditors so uh never mind well
030also typically those representations are in representation letter which would be signed by presumably the treasurer uh a board representative probably yeah I think it also could roll up into the bullet that's above it they review the performance of external Auditors I think in theory we would be reviewing whatever information they provided to us and so there would be a level of confirming that they are an external auditor in that process of reviewing them um so I mean I think it could definitely fall within that bullet point to still still be done okay any other thoughts I have a sort of a grammatical clarification on the bottom of the second page so I'm in the the yellow one not with the purple one um and there's some language crossed out it's like half of prepar yeah
031my arrow didn't move so I was doing these all with lines in PDF really quickly before the meeting so that line should strike via the written audit committee report and replacing to the member it shouldn't be striking a line where it's currently plac I apologize yes I shifted things my line was in the yes I know of course I see that as soon as I I always notice after I print so thank you thanks for catching that Liz so a question on the subject around candidates who reside in the district is there a reason why we said maybe preferred instead of are preferred it's still preferred why did we say maybe just a question um I don't have any preference I just I'm wondering if there is a difference in the two languages I think
032we were as Dan and I were just talking before the meeting trying to leave it clear that it's an option or a consideration rather than a requirement so I think we chose the word may just to drive that home so that way in the case that let's say we are comparing two candidates and chose one that doesn't fulfill that over one that does we don't want that to be a cut and dry where someone to go back to that okay thank you any further considerations okay can I ask for a motion to approve the audit committee Charter as written I'm motion thank you Clarice can I have a second I second thank you uh Lauren can you do a roll call vote Dan yes Clarice yes Liz yes Seth yes uh Kevin Paul yes uh
033Mr Craig yes Mr Crossett yes Miss Bolton thank you Miss Carol Carol this was my this was my handwritten version so Carol I apologize well you on the last vote let's do the first one the first one for the members I was going to say cuz I didn't vote on that one either okay let's do your vote on that real quick yes yes and your vote on this one yes sorry my handwritten scribble real quick thought because I second I didn't need to all right thank you then that will go up to finance for approval and hopefully board approval at the next meeting um the next item I had was just a list of our our meetings for the remainder of the year I don't really think that we need to go over these in
034detail they're there um so just everyone please take note of those was there any changes yeah one change scheduled the October meet initially at the same time as a Bo meeting so we move from the 16 to the now so that okay and uh lastly uh I think in everyone's packet if you hadn't already signed your conflict of interest forms um you know please do review those and sign them do you have everybody's okay all right Perfect all right so we've run over a little bit of time my apologies um and my apologies I do have to leave a little early today so I'll be passing the Baton to Clarice tonight to finish off the meeting I'm my my child pickup Duty that I didn't plan effectively around so um but uh we'll move along
035to uh external Auto reports so we have a guest with us here tonight and of course in the mix I left her name tag upstairs but Bernice Ria is here with us this evening from our itm department and uh we are so grateful for her coming to share her work around the eate program as well as our most recent eate audit so uh thank you for joining us and I'll turn the mic over to you as Lauren said I manage the E program for the district and um I'll give you a bit of information about this program uh what is erate to begin with it's an FCC program designed to assist schools and libraries and obtaining Telecom Services the program provides um discounts or reimbursements for those services from 20 to 90% and those discounts
036are based upon whether it's a rural versus Urban school district and also on our national school lunch program data um reimbursements to CPS would be funnel directly back into the CPS bank account and back into general fund and then those funds can be used for anything there are no strings attached Point um how CPS benefits from this program is is that per funding year we receive approximately $3 to4 million in reimbursements and that's generally on three different services our Network Services our managed Wi-Fi services and our internet access Services um we have received approximately $94 million in reimbursements from this program then on to the next part our challenges in this program it's pretty challenging dayto day and at the FCC um frequently makes changes to the program um to program rules to processes to
037systems so we do have that challenge but overall our biggest challenge is probably our audits we are pretty heavily audited for example in 2023 we received five small Audits and one very large audit that large audit was from Regis and Associates um typically usack which is the universal service administrative company which manages this rate program for the FCC they hire outside firms to do their larger Audits and this is ours was done by Regis and Associates in Washington DC um that audit lasted from April 2023 through July of 2024 and thankfully during that time we did not receive any small Audits and we haven't received any since then either um but all the five small Audits and that large audit were all no findings at all and that's what I have for you but if
038you have any questions I'm happy to try to answer them how many hours do you feel like you and others in the district spend on these audits I spent a huge number of hours on these audits a lot of hours I couldn't give you an estimate of an actual number but it but it is significant um the smaller audits are ongoing what the sld and usack has done in the last probably five six years is the number of large audits has been reduced and what happens then is we have a large number of smaller Audits and that it does take up a lot of time there are there are others outside of myself that have to contribute to these Auditors I will contact Jen Wagner if there's something that I need to prove that we
039paid a particular invoice um I'll contact someone in another department if I need to prove that the district is um um in compliance with CPA the children's internet protection act and things like that does anyone have any other comments Jim three to four million is a lot of money it is thank you very much for doing those Audits and having no findings thank you thank you thank you that's three million $4 million means a lot to the district so thank you much appreciated what you what you've been doing I enjoy the job thank you are these federal dollars that's a very good question these um I'll need to give you a bit of background to explain it when the program started the program was set up um allowing the FCC to Levy fees on Interstate
040Telecom carriers AT&T and those fees go to a big pot of money to the FCC the FCC then divides that money up into several different programs uh four to five eate is one of those programs so when you go home and look at your telephone bill or you will see there's a USF Fe on there stands for Universal service fund so as of right now those those monies are still viewed as not taxpayer dollars but instead as fees levied on Telecom carriers I say that as of right now because last year the fifth Circuit Court ruled that that funding mechanism they found that funding funding mechanism as unconstitutional and that that that the government had given third party access to taxation to someone that who did who didn't have that Authority basically you sack the
041universal Service administrated Company I know this is complicated that the FCC uses to manage the program um two other Circuit Courts at the same time ruled that it was constitutional that the funding Mech mechanism was fine so the Supreme Court now is um taking up that argument and going to give us a a decision at some point hopefully this spring but as of right now it is not taxpayer dollars it never was taxpayer dollars until recently it has always been outside of the focus of political parties one or the other it's been because of that the way it was set up and funded so those dollars are only for these programs they aren't and they can't be shifted to another program do you know if um depending on you know how that lawsuit shakes out
042would that could that end the program entirely or would it just cause it to have to be reorganized it could end the program um and that that may be a political question also at this point in time um I would I would haard a guess to say that it will not in the program it could but I don't think it will only because I think more than 90% of the school districts in this country and libraries are dependent on these dollars for those for those Services I think there would have to be something else put into place to replace that so you say library so does every school have a library public libraries oh public okay got it like when you go into the the public library downtown and you use their Wi-Fi okay their
043Wi-Fi is supported by those dollars the program was first started to support rural school districts because they were so far away from those service providers that it was just prohibitively expensive to try to buy those services for their students so that's the way the program began but then it expanded to to all schools and any schools all public schools and libraries are eligible to apply for the services regardless Indian Hill gets reimbursement for some of their services maybe 20% um and CPS we receive 85 to 90% reimbursement of eligible costs related to those Services really nice well just another example of being a highly audited District by many of EX many of uh external folks um but also having a clean opinion is very important um because it shows that we're we're doing what we
044should be doing with the dollars that we we are awarded um and trying to find ways to to fund operations outside of the taxpayers of our district which is all very important stuff any final questions or comments so Lauren is that a department that your team audits we have not historically audited eate just due to the coverage and the exemplary outcomes of those audits so uh we have not historically I do however keep Lauren apprised of any audits that we receive you know any issues whatsoever Lauren Jen Jeremy Mike they are all kept in the okay thank you for coming tonight thank you very much thanks Lord I'm gonna head out that's okay okay uh next up is Jen I think she's joining online I'm here good evening everyone um uh before Bernice leaves I
045just want to say that she's an absolute rock star I've worked with Bernice for many many probably 20 years now yeah so um and she's gonna be hard to replace when she finally retires for the second time so we need to we need to find somebody to uh replace her anyway so I'm talking about the single audit um we had an unmodified opinion I won't go into it because you you may or may not have read it at all but um with no management letter no management comments it was just it's very clean audit um and uh that's it celebration they did audit our Esser dollars this year so that um that was fun have any questions doesn't sound like it a lot of kud we have do a lot of kudos to Mike and
046Kevin who Kevin Ashley I think you've met him or you've at least seen him present um is Kevin in the room he is not okay he's usually there well he he's he's kind of our coordinator lays on with the audit and he actually used to work for the St Ohio state auditor so he's very uniquely uh qualified to help us to get through our Audits and coordinate and he also manages a collection of the um what used to be called the caffer the one that's like a billion pages long um it's now called the annual comprehensive financial report the acfr and so he he produces helps produce that yeah there's I I don't envy his job by any stretch um of the amount of time and effort that has to go into that but Jen
047how many years in a row do you think that we've had a clean audit from our external auditors um for at least the last 10 years that I've been the uh treasur we've had a couple management comments um but no real findings that I can remember off the top of my head prior to that I don't know I don't I don't know that I ever looked but we have we have won those awards for our cfer acfr um I think for 18 19 years in a row something like that we're almost running out of wall space for the awards upstairs so good problem to have they they've switched plaque a year to like a fiveyear plaque and they just give you a button for each year so that's yeah yeah all right well thank you
048to all those involved uh it is continually important to have clean audit opinions um to continue to show the public that were good stewards of their money Brandon do you have anything else yeah I was just going to say you know and some of this information we've presented in in budget and finance as well to the board but I think it's just again really important to show the lack of conversation we have to have is because there is nothing to have a conversation about and I think that's true to the hard work that they are doing but also uh to the hard work that we are developing on the lower levels of how we report information up how we're collecting information how we're keeping track of things um that that is also part of the
049work that this committee and the uh internal audit team really is focused on as well so I think it's important to give every level of this process uh a good Kudos because of the hard work that Kevin and Mike do but then also the hard work of the folks who are out there uh keeping track of things and making sure that we don't have to report something or nothing is is of a concern on the audits we have all right thank you everyone thank you Jen and uh now we'll turn it over to Lauren and the internal audit team thank you everyone so uh I want to first start by welcoming and introducing our newest team member Justin blowman is our new internal audit intern uh he joined us at the end of January and
050I will turn the mic over to him to introduce himself well as you know my name is Justin blowman a little bit about me I'm a fourth year student studying accounting and finance the University of Cincinnati I'm also a goenda looking in the future a little bit for myself I do plan on sitting for my CPA exam I do plan on uh graduating next year so I have one more year for the 150 credit hours um I do plan on getting my masters as well and taking that time during the year to sit for the CPA and study um I've been helping out Emma and Isaac with continuous monitoring and while I've only been here for three weeks I mean I would like to use this platform to thank everybody that they've been more than
051welcoming and in the three or four weeks I've been here I've learned so much and I and I I look forward to keep continuing to learn and getting to know each and every one of you individually and then as the meetings progress throughout the summer and the rest of this year maybe taking more of a role and helping this District progress into even more extraordinary things thanks Justin so we've been having trouble keeping up a work for Justin so he's flying so this is good problem to have and not to say we don't have enough work by any means he's just moving so it's great um so wonderful so we're gonna jump into a brief presentation about our internal audit reports our approach uh with our presentation is assuming that folks have had the chance
052to review and read the reports and for the public and those I'm sure the thousands watching giving them the summary in the high highlights of the work that we did so to start it's interesting both of these projects the first being our business plus audit and the second being our records retention audit albe it they sound like very different projects they actually were very similar as we got into them so what we mean by that is these are two areas that we have not previously audited which these days is kind of hard to come by we have really gotten through a lot of our core processes so with that being said we've been considering the feedback that we've gotten from the audit committee around auditability and the amount of time we spend on our procedures
053and getting the most value out of that time so what we've devised are these set of audit procedures and kind of a a decision-making tree if you will and you know feel free to look through in more detail but the the key takeaway is at what point do we stop at what point do we have enough information to give a well-founded recommendation so we start our process with inquiring what is the procedure do we have documentation if yes then we progress we move on to Observation reviewing that documentation understanding the controls and from there if there are well-defined processes with well-defined controls uh we move on to the testing aspect so what you'll find through both of these reports is we predominantly focused on the test of design so do we have those procedures do
054we have things welld designed a future phase of these audits could be more a test of Effectiveness how well do those controls function so uh I just wanted to start by sharing that because I think that's the flavor you can carry through both of these projects so uh I'll turn it over first to Emma Mueller to go through the business plus audit and then Isaac K will lead the records retention discussion yeah so um our business plus audit like laurren kind of mentioned this was our first time looking at it it was also Management's first time working with us on anything with business plus as a system and not just us asking for data so what is business plus um it's an Erp system that's designed to support Financial human resources and administration operations throughout
055school districts we use it a lot for managing Financial transactions payroll budgeting procurement accounting lots of things so we would consider it a key system and something that internal audits should be looking at um we broke our audit objectives into do two very simple and straightforward objectives um the first being establishing a baseline understanding of one business Plus in its environment here at CPS and then what is the control environment from under from the first objective we sorted it out between three sub objectives so we were looking at gaining an understanding of our logical access change management and authentication processes those were the three we thought would be the most easy and transitionally the best to probably go into having not kn what this environment is going to look like in working with management um
056our next sub objective was to document any existing control processes any s system limitations that we saw um and then areas where maybe formalized documentation for procedures or processes uh were not implemented yet and then lastly we would evaluate the effectiveness of the control environment the second objective would then be to make recommendations which we do in every audit so kind of stated for self um and you might be asking yourself what what is logical access change management and authentication so logical access controls are essentially security mechanisms they regulate how users applications and systems interact with different data um so why does a user have this type of access versus another user having this type of access your change management controls are more of a structured process they ensure that any modifications to the system
057um or to the environment our system automatically reviewed so they should be reviewed approved and your segregation of Duty should be involved with that as well authentication is more of verifying an identity so if there are certain areas within business plus I shouldn't be logging into because I'm internal audit it should stop there versus somebody who might be in payroll who can log into a further part of business plus so those were the three process areas we looked at um for logical access controls we looked at role-based access we looked at access revocation and then we looked at privileged user access reviews um we did inquiry and observation and testing for role-based Access and for Access res revocation so we tested a very small sample we were able to talk with management um observe the
058process documentation that they provided and then eventually request the support we where we could go and test for the privileged user access review we talked with management so we did inquiry OB observation and then we also looked at um who was a privileged user within the system didn't see that there were any issues with anyone who had privileged user access but ultimately there was not a process or a procedure documentation with that so we did not go through with testing um similar with change management controls we had four we could possibly uh go and test that was segregation of Duties with workflow changes segregation of Duties that are system enforced and then change authorization and change testing we did inquiry with management and ultimately decided that those would just be recommendations going for further and
059then for our authentication controls um we decided since SSO is within business plus and ultimately um manage through active directory which is an itm and network security audit we're going to just tie that in with them so I'll be working with Jeremy on that um but our recommendation we had five for logical access you can read through them but really it's just writing their process and procedure documentation we're not saying that these things are not happening but for us to go and do an effective audit we need to be able to audit against something um and then same with change management so just defining what your roles and responsibilities are what the workflow management would look like and so on and so forth um we've discussed with management they were on board with prioritizing this
060documentation and then working with us to potentially close any further control gaps when we do go back and test um all in all I think it was a really good first step into figuring out what business plus does and is capable of and what's there for us to look at and then I think having these discussions with management ultimately leads them to being able to get that process documentation for the other areas that eventually down the line we will be coming to look at so um I don't know if Adam and Jen had anything else to say but more than welcome thanks Emma um so Adam is online with us he was going to be there in um person but unfortunately he broke his ankle a few days ago so um he's trying to recover
061from that but he is online so I don't Adam you want to um speak on this or Thanks Jen um yeah I can speak a little bit to it so first of all thanks and uh thanks to the internal audit team team uh for helping us through this process it's been very enlightening um it helped us jump uh start a lot of our process documentation while we had some of it already ironed out um it's really T it's letting us to take a step back and um really look at our procedures and make sure it's documented properly um so wanted to thank internal audit for helping us through through that that work um um we have started finalizing the documentation that emo is referring to and we are also formalizing some of the processes uh
062for change management um we had a process but it just wasn't documented and we're going through the documentation process right now so hopefully uh Within by the end of the school year we'll have something finalized for inter internal audit to take a look at and make sure it's what they're what they're looking for other than that um I think that's all I had Jen did you have anything no I'm good thank you any questions from the audit committee I'm sorry our cameras are locked down so we can't show our faces um as we're talking to you so I don't know Rob if you can unlock our cameras for us yes Jim thank you for doing this audit um I can see where there would be you could have significant risk but I'm just kind of
063curious um just in your initial look at it and initial findings it seems like uh because we've had clean audit opinions and and uh background checks and all kinds of things that we've been able to this risk hasn't U surfaced I guess as a problem correct yeah so I think with the clean audit bindings that's with the data side of things and the financials that are being plugged into business plus so what we were looking at it is more of like the system enforcements and what the system is doing um which from what I have seen I have not come across any glaring issues um so I think that's the difference there I do think it's important for our team and then management to kind of get our heads wrapped around of what might be
064coming down the pipeline with the state auditor and potentially what are the what's the red book guidance when it comes into question on your systems and any um it audits that they could potentially do I I'm just kind of curious does does the profile of privileges of a person working in the system is it linked to a job title or job description yeah so um and Adam can answer too if he would like I guess um so yes we did see that base on your job description you do have certain access within the system depending on how it's set up and then if you're privileged user you would have uh like almost backdoor access to then do certain things within the system and with the privileged user access uh what we looked at we didn't
065find any person who was not supposed to be on that list we did suggest that if somebody had financial reporting capabilities that they had readon access um but that's something ultimately management can decide to do or not do um I don't think at this time it's a risk thank you so are the Privileges granted like when a person is hired and they're put in at the position level so is it at the position level is it granted through HR that it is a systemic granting of access or does someone have to go in and actually Grant access for that position or that role so um if you're a privileged user you're going to be set up to have different capabilities than someone who just has um a typical job description user access and depending on
066what your job description is or your job title is in the system the system already has an idea of what you should have access to that being said there are going to be some principles who have certain capabilities than other principles like if they have a PE card they're going to be able to do certain things within business plus that has to do with a PE card that would be a little more customizable um um so I think Adam and his team have already been going through that list and making sure anyone who is a customized user has the appropriate access and then anyone who would just be a typical user um also has that appropriate access but it was set up in the system correctly from the sample that I looked at so one
067of the things that we've learned through our Audits and our continuous Improvement projects is that um the first one we have to to do is document because nobody really understands any process from beginning to end especially if it crosses departments and so excuse me um that's usually the first step and so our audit um internal audit team is is bringing that to light as well we just need to do a better job at um documenting and keeping those documents in a good place that's accessible so um and I was Will Echo a little bit of what Jen just said there I think one of the things we've been talking about in the committee is about the ability for the audit team to be able to actually do a true audit of a part and I
068think one of the stages we talked about is do you have systems and processes in place so that we then can look at to see whether or not that process is actually functioning and working functioning and working correctly or whether or not there are factors that are involved in the process and so I think this is a great step to get us back into or get us more in alignment with the goal of what we were talking about with regards to the purpose of the audit team right and do some of these audits because I think that was the other major finding from the last couple years was that we were doing a lot of audits of places in which there was no system in place and so how effective is an audit that tells
069you that the non system is not working so um so I appreciate the fact that we what we are seeing is that there are some spaces where we have procedures that are happening that maybe we just need documentation so that for future years and for future folks who come through that they continue to follow those procedures that are working um I did want to kind of also give a little bit of a uh than to the the hardworking team for I think sometimes we also have some of these things where we worry that someone has access that should not have access or worry that there's someone who's slipped through the cracks and I think the fact that they're following a procedure you know now they'll do but they were following a procedure enough that it
070wasn't someone following through those cracks is a great sign so I just think that's a great great work for all those who were involved yeah and I just wanted to say thank you to Adam I know it's not fun when audit when internal audit comes in but the team was great um and I think it's going to be good going forward too now that we kind of have a first step which is always the hardest part um and I think if there aren't any more questions we'll go to Isaac with his records retention awesome good evening everyone so records retention uh managing the retention of Records uh is very important and even required throughout almost all governmental entities um both Federal and local entities have to comply and it promotes accountability transparency and Effectiveness in
071um day-to-day operations so internal audit received a board request for this area and District leadership agreed that it would be a beneficial to look into it and see how things are operating because we have never Ed this area either so internal audit's goal is to incorporate both compliance and operational Effectiveness and efficiency into the audit you can go back to the last perfect thank you so I created this visual to provide a bit of an overview and a little bit of context to the life cycle a record and kind of outline the Baseline requirements for the management of Records so from the approval of the retention schedule to uh the disposal or destruction of the record after its uh retention period that is the kind of entire process of how long we have to retain
072the record and there's a more thorough and detailed explanation of laws and regulations in the report under the project overview section thank you so upon the completion of various planning tasks such as preliminary research and obtaining an understanding of the district processes and procedures uh we developed these five objectives for this audit and all five objectives were addressed for both physical and digital records so for key findings um no specific compliance issues were found regarding specific requirements with the state which is a positive thing for us to find uh a majority of these findings related to the decentralized nature of the processes and procedures around records management so with departments having full autonomy and ownership over how they manage their records we found a lack of consistency in how they operate the audit also found
073that records are regularly retained uh well beyond the specific uh retention period that is required and there's a significant opportunity for uh record disposal and preventing a buildup of outdated or obsolete records recommendation so after identifying the those primary findings uh the 10 10 recommendations primarily address process improvements and opportunity to increase operational efficiency and Effectiveness so the first recommendation listed here is likely the highest priority with developing a comprehensive and a collaborative team from all areas of the district to manage this work this team will likely assist with implementing the remaining [Music] recommendations an internal audit also wanted to note that it's at Management's discretion to decide how to prioritize or address the recommendations and the amount of time or resources they would like to allocate to addressing them and we primarily worked with
074Jen on this one as well as well as our legal council Dan Hoin so if either of you wanted to provide any addition Insight yeah I'd like to provide a little bit of context to the the thing so by oh high Revised Code every school district is is supposed to have a records commission and the treasure is the chair of that committee and it consists of the treasure the superintendent the board president and we were required to meet once a year and approve any destruction of documents so we have a schedule that we've adopted we have a vendor that um takes our records into the salt mines and they're responsible for picking up records and then disposing them according to the schedule so where compliance with the state law the reason I asked for this
075audit was my it was my request was um because of the cyber security issues that we've experienced um and we we G came it became glaringly obvious that you know as we transition all of our records to electronic digital records on that are saved on the network that we didn't have any consistent guidelines to departments to say this is how to encrypt a file these files should be encrypted these files should be encrypted and stored in this location so that those smart criminals can't get to them so that was my my biggest concern and there's a a team that's meeting um and Adam represents our department um they meet weekly I believe now and they're to come out with some standards but Isaac is right this is something that's been decentralized and every Department kind
076of does their own thing and the risk of having all these paper we never throw anything away ever like in the Ohio viice code we have to keep a student record for a hundred years it's clearly defined I'm watching people's faces like yeah so um and employment records we have to keep for a long time we we have people that are um filing for social security retirement and they have to prove they would they need a copy of their birth certificate so they come to us to get a copy of their birth certificate because it's in their Stu student cumulative file so um I used to be in charge of those records hundred years ago so anyway we acknowledge that um we've done a very poor job of uh collaboratively or cohesively managing the records
077and then actually going and making sure people are doing it so we we agree we're going to take it on the problem is we spent so much time rushing from one board meeting to the next or one deadline to the next that this is just kind of something that gets set aside um and nobody really attacks it but we do need to make it a priority and work on it so I appreciate Isaac all your hard work just to add to what Jen said also and and certainly the what she discussed in terms of the importance of protecting ourselves from cyber risks uh you know making sure we're encrypting and things like that very important uh the Ohio Revised Code uh related to how you retain records and it has nothing to do with that
078it is to be very Frank anachronistic it's uh talks about uh on an annual basis what boxes of Records you're going to destroy uh or dispose of making sure Ohio history connections is aware of that before you dispose of those records um Ohio history connections we sent to them I think our uh records retention uh uh schedule for the year in October we still haven't heard from them so it it's it's from a time when uh public entities in particular had to be very careful about uh the disposal of Records because everything was kept physically Etc um now almost all of our records are kept electronically it is not a problem of of keeping of of of which records are destroyed it's that we have everything forever that's that's sort of our our current issue
079uh and we we can work through that we appreciate the audit team take appreciate the recommendations to start a records Management Group uh Mike and I have talked about developing a training that we can do on safe schools particularly for our Cass and cfop group they represent our administrators and clerks these would be the folks who have most but to reassure the committee I mean the district receives over 300 public records requests per year uh we uh respond to those in a timely fashion we've received Awards as a district for um our our timely and and appropriate responses for public records we receive subpoenas at Jens said we receive almost daily requests from like Social Security applicants disability applicants who are asking for their records from 20 25 years ago and and we regularly respond
080to all those records requests so feel good that we are retaining records well perhaps not disposing of records as on a more efficient basis thank you awesome any questions from the committee I have a question I guess more of a a comment coming from uh Healthcare compliance bless your whole heart with that record because of the highly regulated nature of uh maintaining the records and I know we would run into the same issue with storage um and also having to keep records in certain media and then making sure you still had the um device to be able to read that media so you had to store all this additional extra stuff um and you said you guys are now electronic with your paper we are though some of our older records are still uh microfish
081um and we have just a few folks in student services who have uh that's something they've had to make sure they're training a new generation of folks on how to use some of the so yeah that was very interesting to me so thank you for your work on that you any other questions yes one quick thing I might add is is Isaac mentioned about the resources and the where to go next it's kind of a how do we today improve things moving forward put more efficient processes in place and then all you'll see this in the report Isaac says then what's the how do we attack the old stuff the 10,000 box 10,000 boxes that are sitting there the 16,000 um I think in total that are sitting in SC strategic we do pay to
082retain those there and as budget becomes more and more of a concern $100,000 or so that we spend to do that um every dollar counts so I think it's you know prioritizing like like Isaac said the Management's approach to this is really critical and recognizing the resources to invest in this because I think we talked with management you could you know hire go as far as hiring a records officer but again we don't have the resources for that so what kind of few steps like they've brainstormed uh could we do to make the most impact with hopefully the most minimal amount of time and resources to do so um but I just think this was a really both of these projects were incredibly eye openening for our team I think we tried to approach things
083a little bit differently and lessons learned from all the audits we've done in the past and hopefully uh our team and and management and the board and audit committee feel uh we've got some good takeaways from these projects but huge kudos to internal audit team for all the hard work on this congratulations um next we have the audit committee uh dashboard so I can keep this very brief as I know we want to save a few minutes at the end to talk through financial discussion and other District business so you should have hopefully a color copy maybe not of the printer was acting up of the dashboard it is available as a PDF and of course also as a live dashboard so quick items to highlight you'll see at the top there under external audits
084you will see that fiscal 204 audit we just discussed is marked completed there are three other audits in the grants areas that are in progress that we will keep you informed of as they wrap up and then briefly glancing at the fiscal 25 progress of the plan you'll see that I believe we're about 55% of the way there but we are really just now wrapping up making that really hard push as we head towards the April 23rd audit committee to complete and wrap up and report on all of our projects so I think we're on track probably those tasks um will you know you'll see a big change between now and April um and then I'll skip over each of the individual projects unless someone would you know as you see something stop me I'm
085happy to dive in uh the biggest thing we wanted to discuss with you all today is the status of past recommendations so we are now seeing we're learning each year in each audit committee new things about this so this year we added estimated implementation dates those due dates so what happened next is is what happens when people are pastu what do we do about that and so you'll find in your packets a proposed escalation plan that Isaac put together I'll give the highlights and if you have any questions uh Isaac can certainly provide more detail but what you'll see um is at the very bottom Rob if you don't mind uh the very last diagram you'll see currently even further below that is the days past due yep just above there so the two bars
086of just above of it perfect so the days pass due currently we do have a few in the 0 to 60 days that means one audit committee update and then we have a few more or a few less I should say in the 60 to 120 so we wanted to mark this up as an example of what kind of steps we would want to take so you'll see that as I mentioned in the escalation plan this has been shared with senior leadership and then again shared yesterday with our directors and managers to get their uh input because ideally and this is a tool for management to speak directly to you all in the most efficient way possible so our idea is sharing this with you today getting feedback for the April meeting would it be
087helpful for us to allow that graphic on the uh dashboard to be a drop-down or an uh report so if you click it it would take you to those items so you would say what are those two things it would say um the detail of the recommendation the implementation date and then Management's most current update so you could read the detail so I'm getting some nod so I think that's what we'll do for the April meeting if that works well bring that let you play around we'll see how it works and then we're trying not to change too much Midstream but for the July audit committee meeting that would trigger the start of the New Year give us a little time to socialize this further with everyone and then start to put that into place
088come July so I'll pause there any thoughts or feedback and uh regarding that plan wonderful and we've been very cautious to inform management please don't mark them complete so you know it's not meant to be punitive quite frankly there are plenty of good reasons that things could be delayed um however we do want to monitor that and be transparent so great well any other questions on the dashboard wonderful oh yes some of these that are long past due I mean um do are you able to sort of rank them in terms of risk or are you are there things that give you consternation that aren't getting done uh in terms of uh you know possible failures or that's what we've been trying to balance because historically we've not always given our recommendations a risk rating
089so we try to go back and and you know assign things however what we're the more realistic approach that we're taking is reviewing the individual instances as they arise so I think at this point we've had uh thorough conversations with management they're well aware that this is coming down the pipeline as well um so I think to sort of answer your question I think this process will help bring those to light more clearly but in the given moment I don't believe we have ones that are are giving us significant pause I I always asteris that you know is if you want to add yeah I I would just also add that I think in today's terms when we issue recommend recommendations we try to be very descriptive in what success or complete looks like and
090I have found with some of these older recommendations that are still outstanding um the recommendations are pretty vague in the sense that they are ongoing and like they continue to strive for um in increased efficiency or increased accuracy and so I think that has to do it do with it and then also some of the older recommendations with being vague they are massive undertakings and so they have just um haven't quite got around to completely finishing up the work for it I know when you make a recommendation management gets to make a response do the do recommendations get um adjusted based on a management response in terms of maybe like feasibility yeah that's exactly right and we also always check it every time we check in and ask for an update we ask if it's
091still applicable or is this even still relevant um one of the most recent uh circumstances we ran into was around the student fees thing with the board kind of making some DEC decisions so that actually ended up um making some of our recommendations around cash controls um irrelevant because it was no longer a risk so that's one example yep any other questions no are you done you're good okay um next we have the financial discussion in other business I think that comes to me uh I'll try and be brief about this because there is a lot going on but um some of it it's still not decided yet so um the first thing I will say is that the board did make a decision and it is a great decision the board at our most
092recent board meeting uh passed a resolution selecting our own Mike Gustin to be our next treasurer yay the decision was so great it brought our current Treasurer Jen Wagner to tears in happiness there so I'm always happy that we make folks happy but truly is great to have Mike um as the next Treasurer it brings a lot of continuity to what the work is being done but also I know there's a lot of work within the team that Mike's been inter integral on doing and so we were very happy to have him apply and then be able to select him um we actually it was was a great search I know sever of you all participated in the in the interviews we had um five people in initial and last we got down to two
093I think it was I think it was five I can't um we got down to two for the finals there so uh we really appreciate you all uh and the folks from the union working with us tonight um the two major things I will update on also is that we are right now in the process is still finishing our budgets and so we are kind of building some budg building our prior prorities and so I know there's been a little bit of a reach out to some of the folks within the community and some of the folks uh within our staff to gaug their interests and the things that are their priorities and things that they value um while we're also trying to figure out Staffing and other stuff this is incredibly difficult also because
094we're in the midst of uh labor negotiations as well so all of this is happening in one big you know swoop of time so that's why we don't have a lot of definitives on that part um the other major thing that we are trying to begin the conversation around is uh we have a levy this year that will need to get placed onto the ballot um and so I think there's a lot of discussion as to how we want to go about it as far as a strategy uh but also as far as what is that Levy dollar amount um that what makes it work this Levy is one that is a operational Levy that also includes a carve out for uh preschool expansion and so or or preschool operations kind of deal expansion um
095for Quality preschool expansion um and so I know we are have in the midst of having conversations now to build up more of the um conversation with the Cincinnati preschool promise to ensure that we're getting a common message out there to the public once we've kind of brought a brought the levy to the to the Forefront um but those are kind of the two big ones to my mind that we are working through right now is really again the budget and then working towards 11 I think one of the other major things that I don't know that I would beiss without saying is that we also are looking at policies that are specifically set to address some of the other concerns and things that we've seen um our cash balance reserves um and in some
096of the efforts to collect aged fees and aged um debts or is is we we as a board are looking at that options as well as to ensure that we're not spending money on necessarily to try and collect when it would be uncollectable or also to address kind of going forward some of the questions around what our fees that we charge what are fees that we don't charge um because as we looked at some of our uh student fees especially some of our age student fees went back significantly to nearly when I was in school so I felt uh we may not need to uh have something 20 years old on our book still uh as a fee but so those are things we we've worked through and started talking about um through budget and
097finance committee I don't know Jen or Mike is there anything I missed um I just wanted to say to give context to the student fees um that's another area that was decentralized out to the schools so they're responsible for collecting their own fees and so um we are looking into ways of recentralizing that work um and and helping that process but there are um you know some people that declare bankruptcy so we don't have any chances to collect that money I just need a board policy to give the treasure the authority to write the off the books so that's what we're working through um I don't know Mike you want to give a couple comments on the governor's Bill budget Bill sure sure so um just a couple things the governor's budget was released a
098couple weeks ago so this is the first step in the budget state budget process Governor does his proposal it works through the house with amendments then it goes to the Senate they do their amendments then there's a conference committee to put the two together and you get you get a final budget you know right at the beginning of July um and so so there's opportunities for changes along the way um the governor's budget does a couple of things for us the biggest one the biggest issue for us is it freezes the cost inputs at 2022 values so if you think about how much things cost 2022 versus how much they cost now you can see the problem so multiply that times the size of the school district of ours and you can see so so
099that that is a big deal for us there's also some guarantees that were built into the into the funding formula um that kind of came around in 2020 2021 for schools that lost enrollment and so they're trying to roll back those guarantees as well that's also an issue for us so put the put those things together you know the first simulations we would stand to lose about $10 million um next year you know in state aid and then probably in add five the next year so so obviously everyone's kind of coalescing around some some issues and you'll see a lot of you watch the news especially the state news you'll see a lot of a lot of things going on there's testimony there's hearing people be offering amendments but but people are trying to kind
100of you know circle the wagons rally the troops you and put some pressure on the state legislature to do the right thing for schools and just as a reminder um and I think the the budget presentation he did is in the files that we have um from the last board meeting but just as a reminder our share of the state our share of our the formula the state uses to determine um how to fund the schools dropped significantly uh this past year and it's you know basically according to the budget plans and what we're looking at will potentially drop significantly going forward absent a large growth of enrollment um that will have a significant effect on our our what we received from the state to educate our students and even the portion of which the
101state says we need to educate is below what we utilize actually to educate students so I think the state says it's like 8,000 or our base cost is 8101 so um you know this it's going to be a continuous struggle of of figuring out what's that balance in addition to that we will have to look at again future levies and other things that will be a part of the discussions as we go forward for facilities needs as well as um we you know again the the major construction projects that are needed than districts is we do have a lot of buildings that are older and we do have a lot of population change within the city that has shifted a good portion of of some of our newer areas that are of congestion of students
102to one side of the city and made changes on others and so we we're constantly looking at those types of things to make sure that we're putting together budgets that will help as we go forward but also when do we need a levy when do we need these other things and so I know that's going to be our next those are our conversations for the next few weeks months uh the wonderful thing that Mike signed up to take over so um but that that's kind of where the state of things are right now um I don't know if there are any questions or can I jump in for just a second so um the urban Treasures we we huddle every Thursday morning and Mike has joined us for the last I don't know five or
103six months I guess we all met together face to face in Columbus and went through the budget Bill and and we are trying to come up with amended language to introduce um so that we can have a big strong Urban voice because all the urbans are going to get hurt a lot in this bill if it goes forward now um I've been around long enough to know that the budget bill that gets passed is going to look very different than it does today but uh we may have to do some letter writing campaigns and testimonies and if we do um a work through Lauren to see if we can I don't know if the audit committee like in April could pass a resolution or are willing to sign letters or whatever but so we we'll
104keep you informed and also we have a couple of uh so we have a budget uh just as Jen coming up for March and then I think we are still are we still on track Jen with the we're doing the legislators in April are we GNA move um so March we changed the budget we pushed internal audit to April and so probably in may we might okay I did talk to um Lou blessing and and Donny isacson and they both agreed to participate so I just got to send and we'll just and you know and uh Miss Davis we'll just kind of send something out to the folks who had have responded already to let them know we're going to moving the date back um but again we're trying to keep some of these different
105things in there so if you are available to tune in to and join in April I believe that one Falls is it still falling on April 1 uh the date for I believe that actually is when the it's scheduled for please join us at the J gen session April Fool's Day yeah I think so and just a quick logistic note uh on the dashboard I tried to link the last two fiscal 26 budget presentations directly to when they start in the board meeting so if you want to just kind of watch that section those should be linked um on the dashboard as well as uh Mr Craig said the documents are handy as well or uploaded thank you for that okay any other questions or concerns do we have to do a motion I'm sorry
106go ahead so I so I hope this is an appropriate question to to ask but I was curious if there was any impact to the school district's um financial position based on the current political environment at the federal level thinking that say that is a to be determine yeah I think there's a lot of so one is I think there is a lot of question as to what actually is being um or going to be coming out of the federal federal government uh both from a uh what are they going to dollar amount and then also from a administratively how they are operating on some of these things I think the state level um there are some legislation things that have come through that are working their way through that could have a significant effect
107on the district I think that's another thing to for us to just be paying attention to um but as of right now I think we are still in a wait and see mode as as Mike said I think to back to support what Mr Craig has said that in state levels is kind of is what it is we you know it's the normal process but I think it is important to note that the state I think I got these numbers approximately right but the increase in money for the or the money for public schools in Ohio is about a billion dollars and for vouchers is about two billion I think is the numbers that I saw so the the state is pushing more and more money towards vouchers and that's I don't see that Trend
108stopping for what it's worth are we going I know the dawn school district is is is struggling and collapsing uh are we doing something to go after those students um to get them back into the public Cincinnati public schools yeah Dan bringing in an attorney so our understanding is they'll continue as a school through the end of this school year before they dissolve we uh have already received quite a few students from D we expect to continue to receive and we welcome every D student uh coming over to cinan public the other thing is there some of their property because it's purchased with funds that otherwise would have gone to Cincinnati public we get a first right of refusal to purchase to date there's been nothing even close to attractive to us in terms of
109uh purchasing there's a building on um McMillan that we walked through I believe that's one of the only uh properties they owned most of their properties they leased uh but we walked the building with our facilities team uh two weeks ago and uh told them we were declining on the right of first refusal for that property so but we'll continue to have open ears and eyes on uh on that and we we did take in uh we are are in the process of taking in a number of the students with regards to the Xavier Monas right uh school that is now going to become a lab Monas School within our district so uh K through six school or I guess prek through six technically I think it's pre through eight yeah through eight okay yeah
110any other question do we have to do a motion to adjourn yes okay um well can someone give us a motion to adjourn a motion to adjourn [Music] second all or do you have to do a roll call all in favor any oppos all right well thank you all very much our uh next meeting will take place on uh Wednesday April 23rd have a good evening thank you