Budget, Finance and Growth Committee Meeting February 21, 2025

001e e all all righty call to order the February 21st meeting of the Budget Finance and growth committee um just as typical thing we've done uh it was a practice started by at least from my knowledge started when I was on the committee by uh our vice president uh board member Bolton here so just going to go around the room we'll start with Michelle and then we'll roll around roll around to Rob cell folks to are online how to participate ask michella Harris payroll supervisor good morning Cody Hutchins contract analyst good day shaa Murphy superintendent good morning Jim Crossett board member Bron Craig board member Eve Bol board member Kevin Ashley director of financial reporting and transparency Michael gust assistant Treasurer Jennifer Wagner Treasurer good morning Lauren Roberts Chief a executive good morning Rob Wilson

002technician if you'd like to speak during the speaking public session please click the hand icon we will invite you over we will ask you your name and Association of the district and we'll invite you at the end of the meeting to speak for 2 minutes thank you all righty so as the chair Pro Tim since last month we were not not be able to be uh we did not have the presence of our newest member to Budget Finance uh Mr Crosset here we did not make a selection for chair of the committee so I think the first things in order on Old business is to select chair um I'm happy to do it again but I again it's open to anyone who would want to be chair of the committee thoughts from Bo members I

003think we could probably have a co-chair situation what do you think uh I don't know we've done it on any other committee but is there any rule there's any rule against it let's do it because I'm figuring that finance committee these three right here are going to have to build a majority of fiscal responsibility in these next few months so the more we can work together I think the better it will be because these three are going to have to be three votes that Treasurer and the superintendent can count on in some of these difficult decisions arrang you should we could do a try chair too if youd like I'm happy not to be wise decision wise decision he um the next bit of old business is uh just update on the treasure search we

004did a series of second round interviews on Wednesday that included meeting with members of the um audit committee as well as staff in the treasurer's office and uh leadership from several of our unions and so uh and then the board itself and so um we will Pro you know hope to have some exciting news soon as to the the ultimate selection in that process but again I think it was a great opportunity to get members of folks who were um who've worked with or who've been connected with our Treasurer's Office an opportunity to view the two uh finalists um any other thoughts from the other board members on this yeah I want to uh thank um board member Craig for your leadership in organizing that whole search and and um making it smooth and reasonable

005and approachable so thank you for that one second that right and that's off our list once we make a item so that's part of the chart that can uh go away yeah it's a was it's a task the board is will have completed once we make a uh a selection in front of the public there superintendent may want to say I am very grateful for the process from A to Z thank you very much uh treasure do you have anything to add on whoever selected will be her successor I'm going to on Tuesday I'm going to start counting down excellent all righty um the last bit of old business um carry over from the last couple of meetings um or a couple of policy things I think they are listed in the monthly update slides

006um so we can certainly cover them now we can cover them when we get to that part um I think it's fine if we do it now let's go ahead and hit them now um slide 4 Rob 41 41 please 41 out of 98 no I'm just kidding well well Rob's will end up I'll give a little bit of a uh here for me but uh I work I'm working on recording some videos for a uh presentation and the person told me well just start where this slide is and never told me where that slide was in the deck so first five minutes was going through like a 100 slides to figure out where it was um but all right so new policies again these are policies that we've discussed in December and January that

007we're bringing back for further discussion here the first one again is the cash balances um turn it over to Treasurer to give us a little bit more background yes so we um we're trying to look for best practice in terms of what how much cash Reserve to keep on in on hand um to support daily operations of the district um and we made a recommendation to go with 60 days or try to build up to 60 days um feedback we got was a little nervous and so um we heard last Monday night that either the um goat come back with a smaller phase in or slower phase in so it has less impact on the daily the annual budget um or take it out and put it as part of a new money Levy um

008and so we wanted to have that conversation here as to what does the finance committee think is the best practice moving forward all right open up to board members for thoughts think U I like the idea of gradually building it up in the next few years possibly I think the number you've suggested was like 12 million a year to get us there that was to do 60 days over five year period so we can go take it down to a 10 year May six or even smaller than that but what concerns me about the future is the um language that's in the new budget bill um I think our state funding is going to continue to go down and that's going to put more and more pressure on the the property tax level and it's

009going to put more pressure on our current cash reserves so if we if we if we act too slowly it may not be helpful to us is what I'm trying to say yeah I I think The Five-Year Plan looks good to me I think we've got some risk and you know we need to have some protection for the district so it would be my view I think a gradual buildup but I also believe very firmly in building it into a new money Levy uh as part of our efforts regarding operations and especially I think that's important if we are going for new money um as early as I think we are going for new money uh so I would I would suggest the 60 days seems like a a challenge without doing it as part

010of a levy um oh absolutely so uh even over five years I think that's going to be hard and I think in this election in this in this budget uh the more I'm wondering as you point out about the state and now wondering too about federal government um this might not be the best year to start but uh we'll see so now let's speak specifically about fiscal year 26 because we're in the middle of the budget cycle we haven't kicked off central office yet and this has an impact on how we move forward so are we saying postpone fiscal year 26 or use a smaller number whatever whatever number we put there is going to have to be a corresponding cut in current spending I think we should postpone just because I don't think any

011of us know exactly what our reality is going to be in the state or the federal or even the the growth plan and everything else that we're doing or needing to do to change the way we do business but I may be a minority on that um so I I have a concern with postponing in whole and in part I would say that think we still need to do something to show a commitment to doing it and part of my frustration with that thought is that we ended last cycle by B by balancing our budget by going into our cash balance and even if we were this year to say we're not going to strive to do that I think we will still probably end up somewhere in the range of having to be very

012close to doing that and I would rather us have a cushion of maybe two million or three million as that first year and then every year after fitting up to getting us there that we could always come back and say this year we can't do this because of these factors then to not plan for it and then we still dip into our cash balance which would take us even lower than we already are see the thing about that is um Ohio Revised Code I think it's 5507 or 575 one of those 412 is the 412 certificate where I have to sign to certify anything that's over a half a million dollar contract or 1% of Prior year revenues have to certify that that funding is there for that time period And so we're heading into

013negotiations with threeyear contracts if we show a forecast with a negative balance in that three-year window I can't certify anything in those future years and so I'm concerned about even certifying a budget if we're dipping into prior cash so um it's it's going to be a very painful year in terms of Budget Building and and then the impact of that and operations of in the year of 26 so yeah I just want to put all the information on the table so when we making a decision we're doing it with all and again I think if we even did a you know what is I'm trying to do the math off the top of my head here because um but even if we were committing to a half Mill of just dedicated into increasing the cash

014balance or a million increase the cash balance which again I think is still a big number given all the other factors we have to do MH I think if we don't do something and if we are haven't pledged to do something it's nothing to hold us to doing it the next year so I'm sorry did you say a half Mill or a half million half million million million because a half Mill is four million no no half million Clarity okay so um I support Brandon I think we have to do something intentional that shows we're doing something to to increase those reserves whether it's half a million or a million I think we have to show that we're trying to be as prudent as we can regarding our reserves I figured I'd be the minority

015on this but I would also say on that I I think we can show that in the policy make a commitment in the policy as to what year to start because as Treasurer points out we are in the midst of negotiations that should have been concluded last year and she's got to sign off and we've got to be able to do what we need to do I just think that money is so tght and everything is so precarious all directions if I think you can maybe make that commitment and and mean it I think we mean it but make it in the policy as to when it would start rather than this fiscal year coming up as some sort of symbolic gesture because I don't think we're going to have $2 million to to put

016aside anywhere I I think though if we do that my only thing would be to say we would make also in that policy that we will not use the cash balance this for fiscal year 226 to make it Balan because I think again we keep eating into it as a means to make because we don't have Revenue equal uh expenditures compromise um you have a resolution that already says that but yeah we put it in the policy now um I just wanted to Mike did a really interesting calculation um the other day that the reason why we're where we are other than the the eight-year cycle that we're doing is that $48 million Levy that we passed for the first time with new money in 2016 the buying power of that 48 million is now

01764 million so that's why we're putting such a strain on say that battery [Laughter] Vice so in order to get the same sorry Jen in order go ahead yeah in order in order to get in order to get the same buying power there you go for the 48 million we would have to have 64 now right just just because of inflation and changes so these fixed sum these fixed sum levies every year get a little more impactful but the downside of switching to a fixed rate Levy will drop bring us back up the floor so it would be like a net law a net revenue because you'd have to make up the floor Revenue it's very complex so um we damned if we do and damned if we don't okay so that is kind of

018the summary so what I'm hearing um and tell me if I think I if I'm hearing what I want to hear um we'll try for a million dollar set aside for cash Reserve while we're doing the balancing budget um and then we'll at Le at least put half a million if if we can't get to a million we'll go to a half a million um for fiscal year 26 that would be where I would support I think we' ultimately would need to bring something to the full board for discussion on that but okay um you know I'm hearing at least in that that line from uh J as well so I would support what you just said J did you repeat it so I can know yeah so suggested motion language right a motion to

019set aside it come from a board member but I'm suggesting um implanting it in your mind that's right so um a range of a half a million to a million in cash Reserve set aside for the fiscal year 27 six budget to increase the cash to to start building the cash reserves um while we work on a new policy so set aside a half a million or a million the range yeah a range at the minimum a half a million we're going to try for a million 26 for 26 I think that's I think that's good and what about your comment about the policy you want the policy to say not or does that take care of not putting it in the policy I think that would take care of that and I think the

020way that the policy that theyve suggested would start with is to your point going forward the fiveyear plan would be that the first official year of that fiveyear full increase would not be till the 27th right fiscal year uh budget that also might give us a little bit of an opportunity again if we need to modify it or whatever to um based on what's Happening throughout our state and this lovely country we live live in these days um that we could didn't be able to have time to adjust the policy to reflect there those changes um so I think that language we can probably um work with have have uh General counsil work with to give language over for that to make it work that motion well I mean to send it when we send

021it a policy I guess oh it's not to policy oh yeah but we have to move yeah us so moved all in favor hi yay yeah okay all righty so that's one policy down um what was the second one I got uh the second policy is AG student fees yeah you want to talk about that sure um slide 48 Rob all right this is all the back up for that so just just want just wanted to give give the committee an update um we had talked about AG student fees for a bit um um board had made some sa some decisions in the last Treasures report to to get rid of some age student fees that were we deemed uncollectible what that left us with was we imported last week about $4.1 million a little

022over $4.1 million in student fees um from our old system into our new system so those are anything assessed before the current school year for active students for active students only and so they're out there um parents can pay parents can get on and pay um everyone can look at those we are doing a research into how we can maybe centralize student fees so that's kind of an internal thing that we're kicking around as part of the whole centralization decentralization conversation I if you guys have any questions about that there's not really a policy for it were we able to isolate the 12th graders no about those are getting ready to graduate and what their balances are so you can have we can plan for how we're going to handle that yeah a little additional

023backup to this conversation is that the other part that was discussed when we first talked about it was the fact that to where the treasure was going when students at 12th grade go back to pay these fees these fees are kind of received at the high school level towards their they're the ones collecting it though those fees may have been accumulated over years at other schools and and how do those fees go back and forth to those schools where they would have originally been charged to um so there's a little bit of that from those grade level fees and other things but you yeah yeah you're you're you're absolutely right um we did clarify of the schools the process for waving fees um a lot of times depending on depending on situations those fees get

024waved as well so that's out there um if you go to the next slide rob you can just kind of see see what we brought in by type most of it um as you said Mr Craig was the grade level fees that are out there there's also some tuition some intercession Etc that so the tuition if parents aren't paying their tuition we're supposed to withdraw those families I don't know how I don't actually know who polices that so we have to look into that apparently no one 79,000 so it's not huge but I think one of our yeah one of our conversations um in the centralization thing is who really works the AR part right like like and and and my my wife this is her whole career is his accounts receivable and so and

025so we have lots of conversations at home about work in AR and making sure that things are collected um remind me how much was written off about 11 million top of my head I think it's right around 11 11 million was written off yeah wow and they dated back to prior to years to PRI of Co so they they've been hanging around for a long time went back 2002 or something like that yeah yeah um so is the current balance do you think a typical balance that we would have carrye in the future or can you can we shrink that or um yeah we shrink it shrink so we we've stopped charging the the student fees the grade level fees um at the request of the board um and so you know if we're not

026if we've made a decision not to charge it are we going to spend money trying to collect what's out there so you can reduce it that way by waving those um but the other fees are for loss textbooks and you know activity types things there's some intercession fees I'm concerned about the tuition though because that means we're educating students we're not getting any funding for and so we need to get on that the only other area that principles raised concerned about is the AP testing fees would that be something then the district is going to be picking up I I don't think that the school-based fees was under consideration for eliminating it was just what the district level charges is what was [Music] waved there's an old AP teacher um I I would hope that

027that many ways we we pay AP I know um College boards I know that's a lot of money but there are there are families in some of our schools that may not have any but some that may have one and they may be really that's a those are big fees to pay for a tests and AP tests cost a lot of money and there are families that where their kid is taking five of those tests and that's really a lot of money and I just think that it is part of the responsibility we have I don't know if it's based on need or based on number of whatever but I I I I would I one way I'd approach the AP things is that I would much as we do or used to do I

028don't know if we still do for act and sat on a particular grade level we pay for it or we used to or we pay for the ACT every year but not the AP courses at this time so the only the only thought I would have to us doing that so one is I think that's something the board should make it a as a as a policy or announcement or or resolution um but I do think we would want to have a number that that looks like before so we can be able to say what that what that dollar that we're going to dedicate to that means and then what else are we gonna take out to do so right um because I do think the one concern that I have with like some of

029these fees the tuition for me is is one that I think it isn't amounting to being like a million dollars in tuition fees but the the quite honest truth is that there does mean we're educating students in a manner in which we did not pledge to do um and that gives them a benefit while great but that's also something that we've committed to them that they need to do something in order to be able to stay in our district and and stay in our schools um but I I I'm cautious about it only because I know we have students who sign up now based on what they're you know the resources they have the things they can do and would that necessarily change how many students would sign up for an AP or how many

030students would take it and how much dedication and effort would be put into do you just sign up to every AP because you can right and is there an expectation on your performance in AP class that's attached to that Fe I mean I think that's one of those things that maybe we should have that part of that discussion as well because what I would hate to see is a bunch of students sign up for AP classes and we have a bunch of ones and twos on AP exams which brings down you know the the return on investment yeah so um I I'm all for making things more accessible to folks to be able to have that access but I also want them to have a little bit of a buyin commitment and this is similar

031to what we do with CCP courses which is you actually have to perform in the course and if you fail to do so that dollar comes back to that dollar can come back to you I'm glad you mentioned the college whatever it's college credit plus or whatever it's called we pay a lot of money M and I don't know why we pay a lot have to be paying a lot of money for college credit plus and then we're not necessarily interested in doing that for AP because the college credit plus is very expensive uh for us for each student so I think that that would be that's the precedent that I would look at I hadn't even thought about thank you uh to try to make the argument about AP again we just need to

032attach then the same standards that we do for college credit plus which is your performance dictates where the not you pay for the fee but it actually help um and again I think that is a commitment though that it's a little bit different with a with AP classes or AP test because it's a one test tells you whether or not you pass or failed and TCP but I think that's something the board can make a we can make an assignment to policy at the meeting on Monday to uh look into creating a policy that work towards that I'm trying to think of the operational impact of performance-based fees because once you've taken the test there's no incentive to actually pay for it if you didn't do well so we'll spend more money chasing that money

033down um we could reimburse the district but then you have the same issue of the parents being able to afford that many tests um so we'll look at it um I like the idea that you brought up Brandon having the student have a little skin in the game essentially Maybe instead of a performance-based for AP maybe it's a discount maybe it's a 50/50 that way the student is paying some and the district is paying some maybe there's another way to do that that's administratively easier maybe okay we can pull the data together and then work with a superintendent on on a recommendation yep language and again we can uh give a a an assignment to the policy committee at the meeting on Monday to begin the process of looking into review of that I think

034the other question are things like the Athletics field trips some of these other ones that are going to be smaller amounts and I think that was part of the other conversation around what we would do as a policy for age student fees is that at some point trying to collect on the $200 for the field trip kind of loses its value in the collection process right yeah um good say so um I think that may be another thing that we can look at in the future and in in addition to kind of looking at what we're going to talk about in this minute here which is the uncollectible accounts um because I think that gets into a question of if we're centralizing some of those processes we may have a better idea if it's a

035$5 fee versus $15 fee versus $1,000 fee so the difference between that and the next policy is the uncollectibles these are on adults prior employees ow money um I guess it could be applied to student fees as well moving forward um but I we keep carrying these books for people who declared bankruptcy we have no hope of ever collecting this money so um we just wanted some language to give the treasur authority we suggested anything under $5,000 and anything over $55,000 would be put in the treasures report for approval by the board okay you have any thoughts about the I think that's fine policy as long as there's some documentation that we we've proven that the person that owes money is bankrupt yes we have that documentation yeah so sure I think it's a good

036policy okay so you're okay with moving it to policy committee awesome thank you good I go back there one last thing about the AP rather than it being dependent upon whether or not you get a one or a five or whatever I think the AP courses you know it's whether you're attending whether you're doing the work there's ways to to evaluate prior to that test anded if we're going to pay for that kids test and you'll know that you'll know that pretty soon but I do think we have to emphasize more and more with the community that we're paying as much attention to the kids that are doing and excelling in that way as we do as rightfully so the kids that need as much help as possible so I just think that it's a

037something to think about and glad you all follow and again this is something we can give into policy to kind of look at what are the policy implications what are the potential needs within the schools themselves um you know we we have certain schools when we looked at the AP numbers of what's being offered and taken at schools with some schools that have very few at some schools that have a lot and you also need the courses to go with some of those AP exams so it's it is definitely a conversation for you to have them there Lauren just suggested that maybe the grade the grade of the class dictates the percent of the share of the test so yeah be a great way to do it as well so um but whatever policy we

038actually come up with I think the important thing is for us to yes this is a value to have to to to ensure that students are able to take these courses but we also want to make sure that we are also paying attention to that that's a dollar that comes out of something else because we have we just keep saying we have very little dollars because the state don't want to give us more and a lot of other reasons um but this is a good way to show that we're caring about the folks who we're educating and trying to work better with them sounds good all right made it through policies now we go back to the top of the slide deck rob me Rob and while he's doing that we'll keep I think Kevin's

039starting us off yeah um so this is just our monthly Financial update so U as we always include this kind of summary sheet but we'll kind of go over that as we go through the slot slides um so the first slide that he's going to pull up there is general ledger all funds cash and investment balance so always pointing out this is not just general fund we have and we'll go through that in a minute but we have funds that are set aside for Debt Service there's a little bit of funds for uh Food Service some Grant funds Etc but the key difference you'll see on this slide is the blue is our more Liquid account or general checking account um and then the orange slice is star Ohio so you'll notice that it's it's

040rather small this month um but when we get to the end of February we're actually going to grow that one back up um really December and January are kind of our low cash points in the year um we're waiting on those property tax advances which we just received in February um once the once the tax bill date passed the D date um the other kind of key thing here is the yellow slice is U what's set aside in our re our um syncing funds for debt payment we do have one of the syncing funds related to the 20110 issue that will come up in June and all that money that's accumulated it's a almost a $22 million payment that will be made and that will come right out of these funds that have been uh

041restricted for that uh the gray is our longer term investments where we um try to get a better return on those through our advisers at red tree next slide um this is probably you're not advancing on my computer I got to do that myself or flip the page one or the other I was like Rob Rob I know I can't I I appreciate that um I can't see that one very well so I have to do it on here U so the next one is threeyear history of our liquid Bank balances um again this is kind of varies depending on our strategy of how much we keep in Star a versus um in our liquid accounts uh we did move a little bit over there in January you can tell so next slide again uh

042let me do that um so this one shows cash balances by fund group um so at the end of January we had 57 million in general fund um 64 million total in debt service so that includes the syncing funds as well as other funds that are set aside because we do have just generally we have about $17 million that will be due in June and so that some of that has already been set aside and we'll come out of there uh internal Service uh which is things related to remittances and other uh things it's kind of a holding fund that we process those through so at that point there was 21 million in there um and then you see the others we do state and federal grants were slightly positive uh at the end of

043the month so before you move on I know several of you received a copy of a picture of a cash that was in the caffer or the AFC acfr I can't get my tongue to do that um just as a point of of instruction um is that that's not available cash just to spend that's all the cash including what's been set aside for the debt right so I just don't want anybody to think that we're misleading them but just saying you know um there's $50 million in the cash account there's 177 million in the report but 79 of that is set aside for debt so or it's in the in the what you call the rotary fund where we've held withheld taxes from employees we don't we don't we can't spend that money it's we

044got to pay it to the state and federal government so um I just wanted to clear that up and we can show you in more detail but just take this opportunity to teach yeah honestly this graph kind of showing you that general fund has 57 million I mean that is what is available for normal operations um and again a lot of that is encumbered or set aside for a coming payroll and those type of things um but yeah that was a good point of clarification um next slide uh so these specifically relate to general fund uh looking at cash balance uh and encumbrances uh on the right our cash balance was 57.5 there's a pretty significant difference to last month or last year at this time and it's because of that $75 million in tax

045anticipation notes that we had issued in December repaid in March um all of that kind of relates to the timing of when we were getting tax advances you know like in FY 23 we had received our tax advances a little bit earlier so there's some timing issues that kind of pop up on this one uh next slide again general fund three years of cash history uh you can see at the end of January it's 57.5 which relates back to the other slide um and you can see how that is obviously lower than the last three fiscal years uh next slide is the threeyear revenues by Source uh the total revenues the third column there 352 million um with our budget in the far column of 628 so I feel like we're pretty well on target

046with our revenues um as it relates to the fiscal year again we'll get a big bump this month with property taxes and then it'll just be those regular Foundation payments that we get each twice a month um we get eate we get uh Tiff dollars CRA dollars all of those things will still come in uh you can see that the green slices that take the second column and the third column it was 97 Million last year and 92 million this year so at this point about $5 million reduction in what we're receiving from the state the property tax at that point we are up uh as it relates to that just caution in the future at with the reappraisal that will have a lagging effect that will drive down our state funding so while we'll

047see the tax revenue go up we'll continue to see the state funding go down in relation to that but the state funding goes down faster than the property taxes go up yes uh next slide is a three-year history of Revenue by month so it's just kind of a knowing each month where our Revenue comes in um this graph pretty much stays consistent uh from Year from month to month uh next slide is three years of expenditures with the budget at the end uh we did increase the budget by 500,000 uh and it's some early steps for the growth plan getting some a couple contracts in place I think for that uh so that is reflected in the working budget column um you can see our salaries um blue columns 286 this year versus 253 last

048year uh and everything else is is fairly consistent between those two years next slide um this shows our expenditures by month and the biggest fluctuation here is if we have a three pay month versus a two pay month and those fluctuate from year to year you will see the repayment of the tax anticipation note obviously created that large cone in uh March there the next slide is uh unencumbered uncommitted expenditures um so what we're looking at at the end of January when you take out what we've actually spent of the budget so the working budget 664 includes the carryover encumbrances we spent 369 actually out the door uh 49 million is currently incumbered about 195 million of the budget is assigned to Sal and benefits remaining for the rest of the year uh we'll be

049doing a debt transfer this month so that will take out most of the uh dark green piece of the pie and then that leaves about 36 million as as I mentioned as things that have not been encumbered uh as of this point but some of those things will pay out even though they don't have to go through that process so uh next slide is Mike oh yes the statement of cash flow for the month um you can see there we're starting to get some property tax advances in we got some more since since the month's closed so thank you to the county auditor and County Treasurer's Office for for assessing and collecting the property taxes um other things for the month that were kind of interesting restricted state grants and Aid was higher than previous

050months I think there was a bit of a catchup you know as we've gotten some of our data updated um in the system and then on the expense side you'll see um salaries and benefits are both higher just because as Kevin mentioned it was a three pay month little bit of a blip there and then the next slide is something we were trying to do quarterly um so this is kind of our quarterly October through December uh object level report um within the general fund combines all of our cost centers and so it's but it does give you a little more detail in that area area uh if if you click on the you don't have to do this WR but if you click on the full record it shows a full breakdown it's is

051it just October through December or July through December year to date but it's just the second quarter that's a good question uh it actually is your to date okay that's what I thought yeah it is your to date I hope we 31,000 31 million in um I think I ran the report the way I ran the report it reflected as a quarterly report but it is your to date thank you through December through December through December yeah July to December we'll get back on the quarters here it probably should have a column that shows the quarterly spend but we'll work on that for next time uh next slide is [Music] um is this yours Mich it is so just go ahead Jen let me just introduce it so these are values that we use to

052help help balance when we're developing a budget so we know every year that we Budget on average salary for the schools but because of vacancies um we don't always spend that budget and so we what we try to do is balance it to say how much we really going to spend B you know we carry this average vac vacancy rate through teachers and peros and even in central office we'll have positions that we budget for people quit and we it takes us a while to fill it so then we have savings for that time period so this year we calculated it to be about 11.3 million and related benefits another four um Department of students and services has this tuition that they have to budget for but they don't always spend it and so based

053on history we knew that they probably didn't need about three million of that for tuition um and then they have this unique thing where in the IEP if it requires a one1 Pera if that perah is either vacant or absent they have to hire a contractor immediately and so they we realized they were kind of budgeting both sides of it so we put a negative contingency in there to kind of offset that they're not going to spend both sides or either one or the other we just don't know where so we put a negative in to kind of offset that um tuition and required encumbrances so other than special ed tuition there we have districtwide tuition that we have to pay for and so um that kind of es and flows and so we put

054in some money for there then the ECE Grant so we pay the Early Childhood teachers and then at the end of the year we joural entry money into a grant we have to spend the money in the journal fund first and so that's that offset and then the CFT office has their own budget we pay them on our payroll um and then they reimburse us so that's a net effect so that was an offset to the budget and then um we had positive contingency well we used to set aside $2 million in the budget just to sit there for things that popped up that we didn't know about right and so we tried to do that um but it just got offset by all these negatives so we're just trying to be very transparent when

055we um are talking about our budget we have to make sure that we cover these negatives in order to stay balanced do you want to add anything to that okay I think you I stole your show okay I'll hand it back to you on preschool all right Jen I have a question so yeah on salaries what that's about a 3% vacancy rate on average during the year is that about right um I don't remember I don't remember the calculation remember prior to covid it was more like six to seven million a year and then during the years of covid it was 18 million a year um and so now we're starting to settle back a little bit okay thank you yeah so the first preschool slide it kind of gives a breakdown of the funding

056sources that are used to fund the seats for preschool um just for CPS just for the CPS portion yes these are these are students educated by CPS preschool um the yellow column is January and I went ahead and included the last two months um we've talked about I think January February is kind of the peak of when we have the most kids in seats uh at preschool but you can see it was about 1,976 at that point each of the funding sources that mention expansion those are the seats that are um receive some sort of assistance through the the preschool Levy portion so the way Vera does it is it like that first line it says the ECE plus expansion so the morning session will be covered by the ECE Grant which is title Grant

057and then the expansion dollars are last dollar in and they'll cover the afternoon so that's how they pair them the different pairings all right and then the next slide is the um breakdown of the calc showing the calculation for tuition assistance so again this is funds um from the expansion dollars that are used uh in some manner for those students uh so in this month 761 students receive some level of assistance either full-time or halftime and then depending on the number of days they were in session uh the year to date's 3.4 million compared to 3.1 last uh fiscal year um the other thing that caveat we noted before is the EC Grant did provide a pilot that is funding some additional seats and so that's one reason you see the drop in the number

058of kids because those kids are actually receiving full grant funding for their their day uh and so that reduced as Jen mentioned last dollar in next slide is uh kind of showing the revenue and expenses for the preschool expansion um the middle column there is actual 8.9 million has been received and 9.3 has been spent um I think in February we have the an additional United Way payment uh so those expenses will be obviously higher next month um the next slide again showing the number of students that receive some level of tuition assistance CPS students again um and again the explanation for why that is lower this year and that concludes preschool so before we move on to state and federal grants I wanted to do a little circle back for some of the preschool

059numbers yeah um because I think we've had this conversation around like the number of students total who were using preschool but the dollar amount of tuition assistance that we've done for this year uh at least by the chart um is more than the dollar amount for previous year with more students and so I don't know if we want to say something to why that might be or what who are those students that we are now the master agreement allows for a 3% increase in the dollar value per student um I think we're still hold to 3% but CPP went to 10% increase last year so um now the master agreement next year we're going to a per pupil basis so that'll look significantly different I think and again it's just something to note that like

060even though we may have a different number as the tuition assistant number you know in some cases we are providing more assistance for student or at a higher cost to ensure some of these students are getting quality uh preschool which are things that we were trying to work through in our discussions around the master agreement last year um other questions before we move on to I don't have a a question um I I think this has been a very successful program um and I think the first giant decision that this Flor is going to have to make is about the preschool renewal even more so necessarily than about the budget um and I know that there's a lot of different opinions on the on the uh board about preschool and it's I just think that

061it wouldn't be a bad idea for finance to spend even some more time uh talking and thinking about it uh as we move on so that indeed Finance could try to come with with some sort of recommendation I know we don't usually do that but I I just think this is a going to be a lot of community pressure about this as well as we we have to be going to the folks to vote on this and um we need to be clear and I just another question as I know we spend a significant amount of money for special services uh for kids that are within CPS and I think also outside of CPS we provide the special services and I think that's something to emphasize and I continue to be dis disheartened about the

062last dollar in from the um preschool promise providers um and maybe you can help me understand that or maybe correct some impression I have so it was it was my understanding at the beginning of time with CPP the agreement was last dollaro because they didn't want us to use up all the general fund Levy money um when we had all these other grants available to us so the agreement was last dollar in on their side they were supposed to fund raise for other funding sources and um because I think their turnover they just weren't able to do that make it happen so we I think um and it's been a while since I looked at it I think we are their only source of Revenue where 90% of it so for next year when it's

063based on enrollment do do our dollars go up and theirs go down the the preschool promise go down we we have about 2,000 students and they have well but they only have to be they have to be qualifying students right so it's it we right now we're supporting 761 students and so depending on when that pilot ends I'm not really sure sh do you know top my okay so assuming that that pilot continues next year 761 students would benefit from um we would add their total number of kids divide it you know and come up with it per pup so we've each agree that A administrative cost would come off the top which would include our special ed services because our special ed team that was added as a result of this expansion is supporting

064both the expansion students for both organizations so um then we'll come up jointly with a per pupil cost value start off with the $15 million take off the administrative set as sides divide out the rest of by per pupil and that's our per pupil value they spend it as they seem the appropriate and we do the same we use that money to support you know to reimburse us for salaries on teachers sure so we have about 2,000 students and they have about do we know how many didn't say 920 is I think we have 700 though 760 that are qualified qualified I see so so the the breakout will remain relatively the same um projecting right now they're getting bigger share of the money so it their share will probably go down one of the

065things we talked about when we did the conversation around the master agreement was in part portion of their fun was supposed to be dedicated towards student tuition and other portion of it really was supposed to be trying to get programs that were close to being quality programs up to being quality programs folks that were quality programs to be higher quality programs that kind of deal we had a lot more of an expectation in the way the mass agreement was originally written to like how that divide happens and I think what we moved towards was giving a little bit more freedom in that sense but then that meant also you didn't have the same dollar at the end of this at the end of the day the original agreement was very strict about the students who

066econom economically needed the help the most and that language was removed from the agreement much to my disagreement okay thank you it isn't the same that the voters voted for originally the language and the master agreement you're saying yeah correct the second edition of or the Third Edition yeah Third Edition of a master agreement um is so much different than what the original vote was about particularly that it is the issue about the kids and the families that needed it the most and indeed we have much as they've done now with vur and other things they've taken some of that away as to uh categorizing or reaching out or marketing or whatever and um it's a great concern I I will say though and this is part of the conversation we had with preschool promise

067when they did their presentation in I think it's either November or October you know again large portion of what we're tapping into to provide that assistance in those communities are students who either potentially could become CPS students which is another thing that we tried to drive as part of this is that we did not have the same touch into those spaces before that we can now and that the expectation is and this is where we probably have just not lived up to the agreement that we all say we red do is that we have more regular conversations about that transition of their students who then could become CPS students and more act I I want to say and that may be something that we can always asked to Vera is the access to be able

068to promote and communicate with those outside locations but I think the other thing that we we kind of committed though is that we all lived under the expectations that we'd work together and as we go to the renewal the the at end of the day the big thing was results right to get better better quality preschool more places so all of our students would be benefiting and not just CPS buildings but also other buildings that would feed the students into our programs in our schools and I think that's the one thing that as we look into what we're going to do for looking at the future grants in dollars amounts we've now probably saturated as much as we can do as far as getting students in the doors that were not in the doors before

069now we have to look at what does that mean once they're in the door what kind of quality of Education they're getting in the door how are they more kindergarten ready those type of measures that I don't know that we've ever really attached to the dollars right like the number of kindergarten ready students we we know it for CPS students but I don't know we've ever had that kind of information from CPP which is something we did kind of negotiate into this agreement to be able to connect up so I think there's an opportunity to still look at the goal for what many of the community voted on which was we needed expand access to a lot of students a lot of kids in the community who did not have access to preschool and it

070was about only quality seats we were supposed to be increasing quality seats and we were not supposed to be providing the taxpayers weren't supposed to be providing child care it was all about and frankly we used the Denver model and the Denver model said that the best thing you can do is that the outside providers uh use the curriculum of the major school district and that never happened so I think that transition is there's I mean again all things considered this has been a great thing thousands of children have had preschool that wouldn't have had it to to begin with but as we try to go to the voters maybe there's some return on investment effort to be done on preschool because uh well I think the starting point though would be to live up

071to the actual agreement that we signed just last year which is our part also so that means going and getting information that means regular meetings with them the things that we said we wanted to do which is why we put it into the agreement so I think before we and again I think this is all a part of why we have to do these dollars to keep going before we start we have a lot of conversations about Roi this year we got more stuff coming from those folks but the end of the day we made an agreement we signed an agreement and all of us have to live up to it at least for now until we sign a new one from a jurisdiction it did fall to finance committee to worry about the financial

072part of preschool and the instructional part fell to student achievement but when we again made some changes there I think part of that fell to the Wayside to your point about what we need to be doing y NE we'll continue on there Craig can I I just wanted to share um this conversation this would be really easy for us to implement on our end because it just reminds me of conversations we have with the parochial schools our auxiliary Services people meet with them on a regular basis um to just make sure all of the alignment is good and so we could very easily implement the same process uh for our friends at CCP CPP so many acrs in our district continue right next slide Rob try to go without acronyms for a bit um so

073this is the um year-to date Grant spending so this is this is the dip from recognizing our carryover so every every year you can see if you look at the history there's a bit of a dip we're still on target but this is a dip from having carryover and we just kind of go back up through through the end of the year if you'll hit the next slide Rob and kind of see where we're at as far as meeting things um superintendent Murphy mentioned the non-public schools you know as just a reminder you know we do we do a lot of support for them both on academic side and the financial side so so we make sure help them spend their money as well um all things are looking good there we are in that

074we're starting in that two two fiscal years at once thing so we're working on budget planning for next year plus spending out this year you hit the next slide Rob um just a reminder of where our grants go and we don't really change this much um and a reminder of how of the non-public share does stay on theme here so there is quite a non-public share of the money that we get and if you go one more for me sir thank you um you can see the percentages spent here um with and without carryover so again overall things are things are progressing um the one thing I did want to mention here so kind of a kudos to to the academic side of the house um second second to the bottom there is the title

075one non-competitive school Improvement grants so those are given to the district um based on kind of academic performance back in the 22 23 school year and so each school gets gets a chunk of money to spend to improve performance um and over the last couple years we have graduated out quite a few schools so so coming into this year 18 of the schools have graduated out um for this year Al going in next year another um 11 will graduate out so which which is awesome credit credit to our schools for sure for improving performance so that's the good news the bad news is we don't get that money anymore but but but it's I think that's a good thing it's a good problem to have right you know it's this is a good problem to

076have so wanted to wanted to shout that out to superintendent and her team any uh questions stop statements on federal state grants um on the agenda the qit report goes next I don't know is that a separate PowerPoint yeah it's no we're it's a different PowerPoint Rob yeah yeah so while Rob's doing that um just want to introduce Michelle Harris anyone doesn't know her michella is our awesome payroll supervisor Superstar yes yeah so so every every time you look at your bank account and see a direct deposit from cincin public schools thank Mich thank thank michella and her and her team for making that happen for us um and michella is actually one of our two um two employees that are doing the um Children's Hospital impact U course um this year so she's she's

077been working with those folks and taking the class and she's here today to present on her um Extended time extended time Q project all right thank you Mike oh a little closer okay sorry I'm short too there we go all right Perfect all right so yes um like Michael said um I am leading the QI project to um help reduce the frustrations that are going on with our extended pay process um and this just to provide a little bit of background um if you want to go to the next slide um this process is basically where our um Educators or our employees are providing additional services for our students like home instruction um tutoring um attending PD days to elevate their skills um and they are compensated for these type of roles um and unfortunately

078some of the frustrations that they experience is having delays getting paid for those additional um roles and so what our job is as our kyy team is to try to reduce those frustrations by making sure that we can um get them paid in a timely manner um so that they are not so frustrated and are continuing to provide those Services because unfortunately as a result some of those IM Educators do not want to do the additional roles because they're not confident that they're going to get paid on time uh next slide please so the team that I am leading um is comprised of multiple employees throughout the district um and different departments that are currently involved in this process um we have employees from the treasures office as well as um HR and talent um

079DSS curriculum some of the um main people that um participate in these additional um processes so uh we're currently meet on a weekly basis um and discuss the challenges that we're facing and some interventions that we can um Implement so that we can try to um fix all those issues that we're experiencing next slide please um what we have here is our sfmea so this is us um breaking down the process um and identifying the failure modes that we are seeing with each step and then brainstorming some interventions that we want to um Implement so that we can try to help um fix those issues um so for example like the quisition is created and submitted um some of the problems that we see is some of the requisitions don't get created and approved until

080after the job is worked which is already putting that teacher in the in the hole um for delay of payment so one of the things that we have discussed is providing additional training to the secretaries that have to create the requisitions so that they know that they have to do that upfront so that those teachers can get paid as soon as possible next slide please um our key dver diagram um so our goal for this year is to try to increase the percent of time sheets that we receive and get those paid within 14 days um from 71% to 75% by the end of May um and one of the biggest things that we've been focusing on right now is the time sheet submission um So currently our process is really manual the secretaries take

081the time sheets upload them um complete them and then upload them into a email box and then one of our payroll te technicians has to go through and manually pull out the data in the system and then create a upload form um so that we can get it processed through and so that causes um more delays because she has to do that manually um room for error because again she's typing in things um a lot of numbers in manually um so some things that we have done is we have created a um testing smart sheet so that we can have the information get submitted to to us more electronically so that she doesn't have to key and all that stuff so it'll help reduce the amount amount of time that she has to spend um

082and she could just do more copy and paste and be able to analyze the information that she's receiving as opposed to having to rush and key all that information in um next slide please so our run chart um is a Year's worth of data so we are showing the percent of time cards that we are paying less than 14 days um one of the things that we are wanting to narrow in on with the Run chart data is how to identify where our interventions are actually helping us and um what interventions are not helping us um right now the data kind of shows um a little wonky just because we're just looking at the Baseline as to everything that we're receiving we're not really specifying um what interventions are impacting certain time sheets so that

083we can see see uh whether or not those things are working or Not So currently our learnings that we have experienced is for me personally um how important it is for having cross Department collaboration um because if you don't have everyone that you need at the table there's not really a good way for you to create a better process um using some of the tools that I'm learning at Children's Hospital has helped us a lot because it's identifi some of those root causes that have been creating those challenges that we're experiencing and also consistency is key um if you're not meeting on a consistent basis there's no way that you're going to be able to move forward and Implement changes because things have the way to drop through the cracks if you know if you're

084not always on top of them you're going to forget about them um but our biggest steps that we're focusing on um like I said is creating a more electronic process to submit the extended um hours um create an escalation process for some of the repeat offenders that we're seeing and a tracking process to ensure that only the approved amount of hours are being submitted and being paid and we're looking at our assessment of where our team is um I'm putting this at a four just because um we have some changes that we're testing but we haven't seen any improvements and that's why I want to focus on our run chart and the data so that we can um get a better way so that we can see those changes and how that's meant um helping

085us out Michelle you showed a Year's worth of data but you just recently started this team when did you speak in um the years worth of data we were pulling that to see where we were before we started the team um so we started the team officially in October right so you wouldn't see any changes prior to October but they just used that to help identify what the root causes are where the highs and lows are so we shouldn't be mad at not yet but I will tell you that I have not had one extended to pay complaint phone call this year now what's year though talking January one the whole school year I have not had one phone call about extended time so um and I typically get quite a few so anecdotally I

086think the process is already being improved so give giving a little background also to this these presentations as a whole and specifically this you know part of the effort was to show how we are trying to improve systems and processes because we were recognizing there were things that were causing errors there were things that were causing folks difficulties and as much as we can get rid of it it proved to be kind of two levels one is that it's a calls saer right so we were correcting things and not making mistakes on things and getting stuff done quickly and that kind of deal but the process part made it easier for us to ask others and to work on other things and to do other things at that time time because I think that's one

087of the things we've been learning with some of these is that we are spending a lot of time fixing mistakes that happen as opposed to doing the actual work so these have been great presentations to kind of demonstrate some of that and the the real intrinsic value amongst a lot of these projects is there are so many cross points between handoffs and between departments um for example when somebody sees an error on their paycheck they call payroll but the error could have happened three in three departments away and so the key to learning is that that person three departments away their work and how it has an impact on the whole process and so the whole every team that starts there's not one person that understands the process for beginning to end so it's a

088huge learning step at the very beginning to document what really is the process for beginning to end and so um it's it's more about process learning um and um just understanding how we all Impact each other and depend on each other to be accurate J I had a couple questions so this uh process that you went through is in collaboration with children's hospital um the QI project is yes and is that uh Qi project is that learning that we can keep and retain for future project projects and so we've partnered with them for probably 10 years um and every year they they let me have it at least at least one seat in class I've had two or three at one time um and I'm trying to talk to Dr Khan about letting me have

089my own class so I can finish the whole department but um how many people have we trained now we counted them recently raise your hand yeah probably probably five so it it's becoming P because we have nine quality improvement teams in the Treasures Office alone yeah that are using these tools some have gone through the training and some haven't yet but they're learning as they go and so it's really the whole continuous Improvement processes become part of our culture right great but yes Dr Khan has been an incredible support um and he comes and visits with us at least once a year and all our teams get to present to him and he uses that information with his funding Partners so he can continue offering the class to us great and I I heard you

090mention the word cut and paste would there be a an option in the future for download so our Pie in the Sky idea is we want it to actually go into the business plus system which is our payroll system and so we don't have to do any type of cutting and pasting we want all that information to just go directly into the system when when you when you do that will you have the ability to put in some software parameters that would highlight what possible errors that at the entry point um so when we do the upload it does show us if there's any errors with the data that's been uploaded great okay thank you and prior to every payroll cycle they do 13 different audit reports looking for anomalies in the payroll before we

091send the file to the bank so we we try to Capt them ahead of time Mich other questions good job michella so as always when new visitors come we let them know that you know once you present it you're welcome to leave but please feel free to stay and enjoy the rest of these faciiities um next up is uh go back to the big slide yeah there you go Cody our much anticipated long awaited the hot topic of the day or why heard that term a couple times but we're going to go back to acronyms I guess but yeah Roi return on investment so here we're presenting a tentative and I say tentative just because obviously if there's any cons or any topics that come up from the board directly or from finance committee those

092can be added on here substituted in we have a schedule developed from March through December of different topics that will be coming up um you can also see the request origin over there on the right so many of these were from a Google form which did include input from board members directly and those were captured on here um different budget managers across the district that have talked or that I've done Roi projects with just to get the the full scope of what everybody would like to see and these are the topics that were the high highest um priority topics and and July is left open if we have a meeting in July we can pick a topic from the additional list that is on the next slide but um yeah that's that's the tentative schedule

093for what Roi is going to look like for this year and next slide Rob and there's just some future topics these were also captured on the Google form I did not want to leave anybody's input off so if there is room in our schedules or agendas um if if a topic needs to be added we can pick from this list or come up with new ones any question on the schedule before I move on to kpis I have a question but I was had a conversation with another board member um on return on investment and and I took a different position than they did not surprisingly but they it was a question about uh return on investment by school now I'm I'm wondering is that the the catch all per pupil document that I might

094have heard from before in the past it might be I think the the per school thing and the per student cost those sorts of things are I think of interest from an equity standpoint you know another word we're not allowed to use any longer that we will continue to use um but I how do you you know and and I think that's kind of dangerous because schools are so different from one another um but so I don't know how the standard would be but I think there is a an interest in that I mean we like reported 18 schools are no longer on this other list and and whatever and I do think per student and per school and even when we talk about Transportation the actual cost of each of these schools and let

095alone the result so I I just that might be surfacing um I'm not supportive of it but I do think that there's a growing interest in that particularly in the community and the more as many times as we're going to be going to the public in the next five or so years that's something we're going to have to be able to have an answer for and and a elevator speech about so it would be an intriguing uh analysis we did send out the cost per school um at Mr cross's request last night so you got to he last night without the self-contained right well it's both it's with and without okay so um but when you start adding the academic performance you have to stop and think about the why as to why you may

096not be seeing the results you want there been so many factors that would drive into um and so i' I'd be very cautious to analyze the data first before using it to determine any decision-making but because it could be that they're implenting a new program and it's the first year and you you need time to get something going before you see the results or it could be a lot of different factors um and so it it's fascinating The Da Geek in me is like oh that's so cool I want to work on that but um I we were cautioned because if you look at third grade reading for example if reading scores goes up was it because of the teacher the quality of the teacher or the experience of the teacher was it the involvement

097of the parents that they're doing reading at home was it the curriculum was it the tutoring was it the pair professional in the classroom there's so many factors that go into that one test result that have to be really cautious about how you use that data I I completely agree and that's part of my problem with it but again we are using basically one assessment as we are measuring our schools or as the community is hearing about our schools and that's that darn state report card which for me has almost no credibility because of the thing that you just mentioned as well as bad attitude about all of our kids uh from Columbus anyway so I I think we're being assessed and we are being evaluated and we're in a process of trying to Market

098ourselves so I don't I think there has to be some way that we can not respond to that card but that report card but be able to have confidence about what each of our schools are achieving I I do but I I don't know that the the community is going to have to be educated yeah so um in thinking of the profile of the schools so there's so many fact when we try to get to an equity budgeting formula we looked at you know the number of students with disabilities in a building the number of elll students in the building the number of gifted the number of homeless students in the building discipline attendance um size of the building you know all those factors and so maybe that's something that I don't know we can

099come up with it would be a pretty large but fun project and and in in response to that those things that you just mentioned are actually part of the state report card that drives us down by Design so we have to be able to talk to the community and and reason with them because those are the things that the tend counts against us uh you know the kids that have um learning disabilities don't we they can't get enough uh support for the testing or whatever that anybody else would be giving in a normal situation so all those things that drive us down are the are the things that the report card emphasizes and then of course let alone their analysis so I just think that maybe we have to figure out how to present our

100schools like everybody most people love their school but but they don't think CPS might be developing this or delivering or whatever because of that report card so it just it would be intriguing to try to figure that out just want to note though um one of the things that Cody has done a great job of over the last year and doing these presentations is the breakdown per school on some of these things and what it has spurred in conversation is for instance if we look at how we are spending on uh particularly like facilities products right or or we look at groundskeeping or something like that where maybe one school has a ton of it and has a big need for it another school doesn't but as a district we buying these products so maybe

101it actually makes more sense to centralize certain processes those are things we've had conversations around these topics um again another one that comes to my mind was when we did counselors and what we were noting was okay so there's a standard and how many counselors do we have for school do some schools are we almost on the verge of being at that second one you know do we have social workers or stuff like that that we were looking at I think at one point we also did AP um the assistant principals um or we were doing some of these other factors that we were looking at on when they were at targeted schools that we were saying these need to be done that same sense I think one of the struggles we're going to have

102and doing those kind of conversations of a universal to your point is that our schools are very different and our schools have very different buildings they're not all the same shaped they're not all the same look to them they don't have the same floor plan and format and that creates differences in needs um I think you know again president Mofford has been big on on trying to create some type of per school or per building uh documentation I think it's important for us as somebody point from a fiscal stance to be able to see and this is maybe the great part of Roi is okay so we spent that extra dollar in this building to do X Y and Z did that make sense for what that dollar was being used for right and I

103think that's the harder conversation that doesn't fit on a nice one sheater times which is a great work that Cody's been doing so I want to make sure he gets time to you you know tell us a little more about what's going on but that is the hard part that we've been trying to have that conversation for the last year is yeah we know this is valuable we know this might be really good but for that next dollar we're going to spend on it are we going to see a measurable result and if we don't is there a better way to spend that next dollar somewhere else to make sure that our student results which are ultimately what we should be measured by is how our students improve our students grow what our students go

104on to do um each of the buildings is they're better set up so I think that's one of the wonderful Parts we've had on some of these Roi conversations because it did trigger than th our head of like a times where you're going okay well this makes total sense right to have this person there and you're like oh wait a minute that's 700 kids to one this other building got 200 kids to one huh maybe one ain't the number for this it's the same way but um but You' you given us a schedule of stuff and I think that's awesome to get back on track with some of the different yes sir I also will give Cody a lot of credit because there have been times where he's had to pull people along with him

105to get him to these meetings to be able to present and so it is it is both a hard work to do the work and a hard work to get it here um but you want to tap into the kpi yes and before I move on to kpi there's just two other things I want to mention that the ROI process has really done for me personally and how it's helped me grow um and what I think is spreading throughout the district is that topic and idea of Roi you hear the the term Roi in more conversations and people in my mind are thinking hey if I spend that what am I really going to get out of it and so there being there's the intentionality with the dollars that we've talked about so spreading the

106awareness and the education that Jen alludes to a lot um and also increasing that collaboration across from the financial side of the house to the educational side of the house to sometimes there we look at dollars and may not always know what the results are at times so really creat that those relationships has helped um helped me and grow and I think it's just really important of the foundation we're creating so thank you we can go on to kpis Mr Rob all righty so this this time around we're doing the midyear evaluation on contracts under $200,000 if you recall in the earlier months or the later months of last year we did um over $200,000 contracts so going to the under 200,000 if you want to go to the next slide please this slide represents

107a graph of how the results were being self-reported so the process that I had was I reached out to all the budget managers principles anybody that owned a contract that individual contract that was less than $200,000 and had them self-report on where they thought their kpi was at this time of the year whether they were that kpi has already been met that contract is ended and they met that kpi um if that contract was on track to meet the kpi and there's still more data to come or if they didn't meet it and even I wanted to include missing kpis because there is always an opportunity to get better and to grow um and so I think that that piece is important to note I also want to highlight this does not include non-public contracts

108I kept those out I do not require a kpi for nonpublic we cannot measure that performance but um about a $25 million value across all these contracts and the big important part I thought was pretty neat here we used a total of 464 different vendors for these contracts 69% of which identified as either local minority or women-owned or a combination of the three so just a just a vast um best use of our vendors and then there is a link there you have a print out copy um of the contracts themselves if you'd like to print out but there is a link there for the same print out next slide Rob so kind of highlight what we've been talking about this Qi so I just want to talk a little bit about the learnings of

109what's going on and just the The increased collaboration that's happening so quantitative or qualitative so using that mindset when looking at some of these contracts it's not always about how we feel about things um but looking at things on a quantity how can we measure what our performance is but also teaching me how how to feel about those those contracts and it's a reciprocal thing um and opportunities for improvement so as I was getting to meet with these different budget managers the different principles the education and awareness piece so making sure that new staff is hit um they suggested things such as quarterly kpi updates that would help the principles a lot um um including their semiannual trainings training their their senior account Texs and their their staff on on this stuff and just offering

110refresher so just more opportunity um to grow there and like I said earlier about the ROI this is also just increasing collaboration so for me understanding what individual contracts are not just looking at things from a dollar amount or what this this system says the description is but understanding why we have that service what that service is doing so that way we can really measure the impact that it's having on our district and next slide yep so what I wanted to do with the under $200,000 contracts not including non-public so the contracts we're talking about currently is just provide a list of vendors with multiple contracts across the across the district there's a full list but I pulled out the top 10 here just to kind of highlight vendors that we use prominently and the

111amount of dollars that we're having in those those contracts so you can see the pie chart there that kind of breaks down our top 10 uh vendors with the highest dollar amounts not necessarily the most contracts but the highest dollar amounts next slide Mr R and so you on the previous slide you'll notice that the biggest piece of the pie was Hamilton County or HCC so I wanted to just talk a little bit about what was what was that breakdown looks like um just from a under $200,000 contract mind you and not in including any of their non-public contracts just breaking that out seeing that they had quite a few there's high dollar amount just seeing where those contracts were throughout the district and just showing the different site locations and how many are at

112each location um I did look into anything that kind of stood out if you talk like for example looking at data or some of the other schools that have two contracts with Hamilton County one is a data cont data coach contract and the other is some kind of PD service for whether it's El training um was some scaffolding training going on but just to kind of look at make sure there was no duplicative Services going on but that they were actually using those contracts for other things next slide Mr Rob so these next three slides I shifted the the the scope of what we were looking at a little bit because curiosity always gets me so I wanted to dive into Hamilton County as a whole so these next three slides represent all of the

113contracts as of January 31st that we had with Hamilton County across the district District without regard to dollar amount and without regard to whether it was public or non-public um the first slot here represents anything that was at a central office budget unit so it just shows any of our central office folks that had contracts with Hamilton County you can see we have quite a few with non-public um and just highlighting where those were and those locations of those and then there is a link there at the bottom that has all the contract detail for each of these so if anybody wanted to dive in look at what he contract was for it's all in the detail one of the reasons why we're looking for multi contracts of the same vendors to make sure that

114we're in compliance with our procurement policies um and and mostly it's it's natural growth so one school will get a contract and they'll talk to another school they'll say oh I want I want that contract I want that cont and pretty soon we're over the limit for an RFP and so we just have we're trying to make put tracking mechanisms in place to make sure that we're following our own policies before we get an audit finding to to that point the number of contracts that we have I mean when you have them all listed whether they're above 200,000 or below 200,000 or whatever I was stunned I didn't see a complete list but I was stunned at how few contracts we have that are over a million out of a percentage M it seems like

115as big as we are which is that duplicity of contracts perhaps all these small contracts that just that can't be that can't be helpful or efficient I mean there's just it's again I I can't remember the exact number but I ended up out of the how how many sheets but there was maybe a side and a half of you know 20 uh each side uh that actually were over a million and everything else with 20 more pages was less than very much less than a million right so you're right because that those little those little bitty ones get touched the same amount of times it's ridiculous and it's um it's a lot of internal work and so we need to think about so we use this information to feed the purchasing so that they can

116maybe negotiate brute contract well we've talked about that for a couple of years and and it's it's been part of the Outsourcing in sourcing but also the the getting a hold on getting a you know a grip if you will on on these things and all these other contracts from from the schools and from even central office uh I just I'm fascinated by that I thought that this that just doesn't even seem efficient Cody did you remember how many vendors have multiple contracts is it in here somewhere it's on the let me see here I can pull it up it's on slide 34 with a with a link let me access my link that link working for you Rob because it's not working for me I'm the one that put the link there yeah there

117is there it go one cool 108 108 vendors have more than one contract yes ma'am yeah the good majority of those have two though yes there's a big big chunk of those that only have two maybe three um so we can dig in and look for the low hanging fruit absolutely there's only there's only one or two that has over 10 one of those being a multivendor order which is stuff like PNC and stuff like that okay I do think one of the things we had a conversation around when we did the contract when uh they previously did the big contract review was trying to improve um you know schools are Contracting out for the exact same thing yes and there's multiple different vendors who do it and that is definitely something we as a

118board probably also do need to give a little bit of direction on um because we have made that process be left to some level at the school level to make some of those decisions and whereas it we I mean I know one example at least comes to my mind is about um some of the maintenance equipment and and things we're using for those things where we said it just only makes sense to order all of these things at one time and then be able to divide them out and as schools needed for certain resources and certain materials in part because we were switching to being more green and how we were keeping some of those material so you had to get a vendor there's only so many vendors that you can do and once you've

119now got the two vendors who can do all of for the District you're now at a where you have to do a um where you have to put out a bid and so in RFP for it so I do think it's something that's been a long conversation that I think it would be helpful for the board to at least give a little direction as to the expectations that we go forward with that because I think to Bo remember B's point if you're touching 20 different vendors to provide pencils at a school because you know we got 20 different people doing it throughout the district while each one of those contracts is below the the $200,000 or below your need to Beed and then the challenge becomes once you do a bid and somebody wins a

120bid you have to direct all their work towards that bid because the it's not fair if you let the losing vendors continue to sell to our district yeah right and so um we've had that criticism too damn if you did that chart that you had up it it would be interesting to add a column or two to that chart of the type of service that they provide that might be a good starting point great idea and maybe maybe even the schools the school Callum for the number of schools or something absolutely Rob if you want to go to 37 sorry I got yep so that was just type uh finishing off where the Hamilton County are throughout the schools um and to Mr crit's point I that would be a great idea to add for

121the types of service just so we can keep overlapping so I I will do that as well and then the last slide Mr Rob so I know we had a lot of talk about a lot of contracts with Hamilton County but I also wanted to point out their funding source just to to spread awareness um each piie there each piece of the pie represents a different fund that you can see but on the right there's a summary that says general fund is only 6% fund 19 which is principal fund or something like that is less than 1% our auxil funds or our funds for our non-public schools are 6% and federal funds are 88% so yes there is a lot of Hamilton County contracts out there but majority High majority 88% are funded by federal

122in last year's budget reduction conversations heard on several occasions you know get rid of Helton County data coaches well their fun there doesn't doesn't help the general funds because they're in federal funds but then again maybe we want to spend it on something else it could be but it was just it wasn't going to help us in the general fund gotcha gotcha yeah and I know it's been again another part of the conversation point which maybe to war more across this point of having a better understanding of if you're providing multiple Services what are those varying different types of services you're providing May note that some of those things we have to decide if that's what we want to do and if we don't want to do it then certainly we can invest in others

123but if we still want to do it yeah it's kind of hard to be like get rid of and keep doing right at the same time but I think that gets a little bit into what I'm was doing I will want to commend and I think this is Administration and the Treasure's office on on one aspect of this which is we did have the conversation two years ago I think it was almost about how much schools were doing things in a ways to to get resources because they had to right because it was it was what they had to do to get it and there's at least been a lot more conversation about how we doing those processes and getting those processes cleaned up which is also made us more aware of what they were

124doing so I just want to like give both offices a a a pat on the back for that because I think that is something that's helped us with title $1 spending helped us with we were cleaning up what you can't buy those rules that I know Mike and the team uh did a lot of educating on um but it also meant that we have a better understanding to what Cody is describing here of how are we having contracts being done how are we having folks using resources um that we probably didn't have in the same way couple years ago and thank you for saying that because it's been a long ride but the when I took over the department 10 years ago the vision was to um change us from um you know like slapping

125people's hands kind of culture to being a partner and a planner with our our school partners and our our departments and um I think we've finally arrived you know it's not always perfect but it's definitely um we're in a better situation the culture on the second floor certainly changed a lot so um thank you for acknowledging that uh anything else Cody no sir that is all I have thank you excellent job as always Cody so if you'll advance two slides real quick um Mike do you have two two new CRA bring before the committee so they are what they are um I will say I will say these are wow okay great description there Mike yeah yes I I will do that I will say as as we as we usually talk here and say

126like these things are not these things will not be for you know students in our district these may have a potential these are affordable affordable living units of course that's how they're advertized um so maybe potential that some of our students will will end up living in some of these so and do you know if this made it into Monday night's Treasures report that is a good question not so but so it might be might be March 10th instead of February 24th um the next thing on the agenda was the annual comprehensive financial report which was already given out to all the board members so yes and it was just n we just wanted to announce that it had been given out so okay thank you and it does include an unmodified audit opinion and

127it is available on our website yes it's anybody want a digital copy hard to understand but feel free to read it all righty uh so as we keep M through I think the next thing on the agenda was the uh budget time update and then also um reference to the the survey that was time right so um as I said we're halfway through the budget cycle um working on central office priorities waiting for survey results so I I presented to the LSD districtwide lsdmc meeting on Wednesday night um and then the next day is when they kicked off the survey so they were hoping to get results back on Monday so we can share Monday night with the board um so that'll help direct some of our next steps um the virtual yes U thank

128you and so Monday night um we're also announcing and we're pre-announcing here that um superintendent Murphy and I came up with four different no six different four different four different yes but public engagement session starting with next Tuesday night's just as genen we repurpose the topic to be around budget engagement and then we've offered another evening an afternoon and a morning session bright early 7:30 um so we're trying to capture everybody who um before during after work um so that we can capture as much diverse opinion as we can and we'll share those results um as we get them I have I have a question about those um I think they're that's great and I think it's good to have it multiple times how long do you think those are you anticipating is that an

129hour is that 45 minutes what is it we're scheduling 30 minutes I'm sorry Jen no that's okay um so we scheduled them for an hour but we were thinking you know a couple minutes of presentation or um conversation from one or both of us and then just opening up for questions just like we do with just s Jen I think that's important so that it actually is engagement I mean much as we're trying to share where we are as little of that as you can right just hitting the highlights I think would be would be most useful and and looking back at some of the other engagement stuff that you guys have done or we've done there's there's been some good ones uh you know the questions to ask people so it'd be great to

130review some of those I came across one about um you know um I don't know what would be your big ideas or are there questions you have yeah we try to deal with that what are your recommendations um you're famous Untouchables but I I think I haven't received any yet so there's none if you yeah well if you I I just think very very strongly that we need very directed questioning instead of necessarily open air time uh I think it be important okay um given commitments for Monday and just as Jenis Tuesday we'll do our best to get it together before then um and and again other part to updating us with regard to the timeline is this is we're at the stage I think you mentioned it earlier we're getting ready to get into

131central office budgeting as well and so uh I do think one of the things that will be important for us as we keep going forward as a Bo is that we will have to make sure that we are again giving full Direction and answers probably quicker now as we get closer and closer towards date so we can get this done by June uh end of June um but just making sure that that as we have time at board meetings I think uh VI president B has said this a couple times in in more recent past that dedicating more time to getting those answers out the board at at some of our board meetings as opposed to some of the other things that we have slated in times to do and and spending a little bit

132more time getting a clear answer and I think this is important also because we've made some substantial changes to parts of our district and we want to be able to figure out and make sure that we're giving a clear answer to x y and z so that when the administration comes in and says here's what the we planned the budget for and we go and say yep that's in line with what we kind of gave a directive on or if we haven't given any directive it makes it really hard for them to do that so I think it's time for a lot of things to be put in the parking lot as we try to make this deadline regarding the budget and the deadline for negotiations uh many of the things we tend to talk

133about are not necessarily things that are um going to drive that drive that uh deadline and I think as much as Finance can help do that I think would be beneficial for all of us and again it's that's on us as a board to do our homework before we show up exactly to be prepared to move through parts of the conversations quickly so that we have time to do the other things that are necessary to keep us moving and also for us to make the hard choices and I know that's something treasure Wagner's been saying for since I've been on the board at least that we got to start actually making decisions on things that we just can't do anymore and things that we can't do in the same way we did before um because

134dollars don't seem to go down what people want to get paid to do or get charges to do um and that includes some of the stuff we going to talk about when it comes to Levy about future years you know there's things we need to do that we got to figure out a way to pay for it in the future you're absolutely right and we're in a very opportune time too because at least in the last year and a half whether we agreed with all of it or some of it or any of it or whatever at least we have made the effort to redesign what we've been doing and it may be good it may be bad but at least there's been an effort to restructure the place and we couldn't do all these

135things you know there here and there if indeed we kept having the same Auto to to to drive but I came across a piece of paper it's from 2016 uh 2016 2017 um uh and it's it's just a list of the magnet schools that had either wests side or east side or districtwide uh poll and uh We've basically eliminated 10 of them I mean and since then so there's just we have to keep reshaping ourselves and rethinking ourselves there a lot of change but with change comes important decisions that absolutely um anything else on the budgets at least for where we are right now on the standpoint of discussions I have a worry a concern just the interfacing of the budget and and negotiations because the negotiations have to be as as Monumental and as

136big as all this other has been and yet there's such a short timeline and if there if we don't have a big decisions on the negotiations the kinds of cuts that we would have to do to even be able to have a successful negotiations I think that is I think that's why it's important for the team uh folks who are working on that to get clear direction as to things that we're going to do and things we're not willing to do as a board and things we're willing to uh hold fast on what are um what are are under you know things that we will refuse to kind of not refuse to do or refuse to not do or things that we feel are important to do and I think that's also why our partners

137who are on the other side of the table are really also thinking about their roles in the district and working working with us in that discussion because I think you don't negot by yourself right so everybody's at the table everybody's bringing things to make the district better and that's how we've always improved right that we we've never done it by simply the board do a decision and then those other folks on the other side of the table take it it's always been about us talking through how do we improve B quality and that's why but again I think to your point it's it's important for the board to give some direction sooner with negotiations to ensure that our budget uh decisions are reflective of those things as well um want to move a little bit

138further to um just talking about Levy planning um I had put a document out there that was really just some ideas I had floated around and thought about as a plan but not necessarily something we would do or have to do or perfect way to think about it and I know the treasure mentioned having some conversations um with regards to strategies around um these of coming potential levies and other financing method methodology um and so I don't know if you want to start first or you want me to throw out the well what I could say is that Mike and I met with Brenda weer uh David connley and Kent Cashel all at the same time and we came up yes um because there's some creative ideas and we wanted to make sure they were

139legal with Brenda the room um and so we've captured that and we were preparing to present that Monday night um and um have costed out some of those con so you do have the ability to um so issue number one is the $48 million and operational need right issue number two is the how to fund the facility repair plan so one concept is that you could do a smaller Pi Levy and then borrow against the future earnings of that Pi Levy to ramp up your efforts and then so that could start things sooner um and then um same situation with the bond Levy so um it would definitely be a smaller it would be like a reduction in taxes when that Bond Levy expires and we ask the voters to replace it with for smaller

140projects we also cost it out um the benefits of income tax levy and what that would generate in funds for us um it shifts the burden and not just income tax but only on earned income taxes so those the seniors that are on um um thank you um fixed income is what I was trying to think of um wouldn't have to pay in and so um it you know a smaller revenue cycle but it's something to consider instead of just constantly going after property taxes um something it diverses diversifies your Revenue portfolio a little bit um so we we're in the process of trying to finish the slide deck so we can send it to the board for review before Monday night well I guess we should uh keep moving so you have time but

141uh um I'll throw out just the idea that I uh threw out there for folks to think about is really a three-step approach and it's actually very much in line with that thought process which is um realistically thinking about it as the first step in funding our district is this immediate Levy the second step is a levy to get us to the larger FMP right and that that larger FMP process is something we would build and and I've heard bolt talked about before um the pass building a group of people together to do the FMP I think that's something we should be doing in a strategy and I know again also some from some of the folks in the administration have talks about us doing some planning stuff so that once we have an FMP

142we're ready to go and not having to kind of wait to do that I think my thought was that Rob you can kind of progress to these but like you don't have to because I have to go that far but um uh here you go the thought was like my thought thing of doing it as all one big group though is that the Hope was that we would be able to touch every school by doing this in some form or fashion so that it's showing a collective thing within the district and it's not something that it's like we're doing only certain schools I think that's one of the things that we did feel a little bit of and I know B and I were in a meeting where it was a little bit of a

143conversation around why does this school get everything all the time kind of feel to it but there would be something we would be able to add a benefit to every school um whether that is construction whether that's repairs whether that's support and staff whatever um and then also the end of the day building up quality prek is still a priority to us as far as this next Levy coming up building up some of the uh operational needs and and being able to keep our building safe so we are not in a position as some of the some of the other uh areas around us are dealing with which are buildings that are falling apart or buildings that are a danger to the students um so I did in three steps you can click to the

144next slide Rob um the first one was about the operational Levy the second one was about a kind of planning process and then the last step is the new FMP and so help me out the operational Levy is the 48 million yes and then the two the second one is second step would be both the like a pi what have we decided to do to sustain us to get to the larger FMP for the big projects so that would be doing something both including the repairs that we need to do to buildings to kind of keep them in good working condition but also building in some funding to support the idea of doing the planning part doing community engagement doing all the stuff to build what we need to do for the FMP so the

145new FMP is is that the we get to 30 and the old FMP is gone yes which I is that's kind of that's that will sell like hotcakes and like so like we look at the first part I just threw an idea out there with if you want to click to the next slide Rob um these are numbers that I just came up with my head but these are not necessarily numbers we would go with as a board we always can decide what we want to do in the amount um but realistically and I think this also maybe something we at some point need to discuss with regard to preschool is what is the spend we are seeing and what may be the estimated spend that we would need um based on way our contract

146is set up because I do know we we've not seen the same administrative spend I think it was the last as we had seen in some previous years but that may be just because they're filling rols and other things that administrative turnover kind of deal um but that F this first year would just be about you know getting us in a good fiscal order with regards to the needs for our operational needs um but just for PR School operation well and and our district operation Le so we would we expand a little bit on the District operation up front to kind of uh address things like the money we would need for the cash balance or things like that that we we as a district are going to have to do at some point to

147to order be able to sustain ourselves and again also depending on state levels and that type of what the state funding model looks like some other things that if we don't do it we're gonna be cutting 20 30 million out of our budget kind of deals and so just trying to find ways to look at what we would do as the first is operational Lev is the first thing we have to deal with right um rob you go next slide this that's a proposal for this Levy coming in November asking for more money it that my thought process in this yeah was be that first one and again because in part we've done this on a couple other levies recently actually or that hasn't necessarily been hard to swallow in some ways but it's also

148because we do need more more things like we're going to do the cash balances if we're going to address some of the things like the negotiations and the increases in uh resources and costs that come in the district on our normal operation so if we just did the same things even at the same level they cost more the year the next year than they did the year before and so I think and I think Kevin you spoke to this a little bit also about the buying power of 48 million we' actually need more than what I put down so um because doing the buying power 48 million really 64 million us still then add the new needs yeah yes so the difference here is $12 million for operations for CPS operations and that's not going

149spread very far that's I said I I gave a number I don't know that's the number that we go with or that's the number we need but I thought the first part is that we do need to increase the operational um again it's something the board has to make a decision on give direction on so it's not something and then think about the time either go to 10 years ago continuing but those are all the first part right so the first part is to deal with the operational ly um and then the second part is to look at some type of facilities repair Levy that really is focused on those needs that the roofs that we need to fix the HVAC units that we need to fix the the buildings that have walls and painting

150and whatever that needs to be done we got a whole list of it from um we got a list of it nice oh yeah we got a list of it from Mr burkard uh who who gave us a number of things that need to be done in the buildings and that that's part of it that's the first half of it is really let's keep our buildings that we can keep them in together in good condition but the second part of that second stage which the next slide there Rob was really building up Community engagement around an FMP so getting a committee to work to to build what our FMP would look like um talking about how getting feedback on what are needs at the schools what are the needs of the buildings what are areas

151for instance you know we've had a large conversation about we need another building on the west side right but how do we do that what are the needs of that building what are the programming needs that they might want in that building what are the things that they would want to see and of our schools um there may be some needs to adjust some of the uh programmatic needs or things like we've already committed to doing um automotive and some other stuff with regards to Career Tech you know how do people want to think about that how do people want to be a part of that conversation of what the district look like I think this is also a way to get community feedback early so this would be a multi-year approach to getting feedback

152that really allows us to get better understanding be able to communicate with the public to get a lot of Buy in before we come to them and say we now have this new FMP need um and that to me is also getting the board to approve some stuff before we go out and ultimately say this is what our FMP is it more collaborative it feels a little bit more in line with what I've heard described as what some of the processes were done in the past to think about um a larger FMP and then the ultimate goal that would be to have the big plan at the very end of that like as we walk into 2030 what is our big plan the district and so that would be Rob cck to the next slide

153would be whatever that new Bond Levy looks like to support thisp they already had the community input and support and thought behind it it would identify the major construction projects that need to be done that would be part of that that would be what we're building up for have all the specific um connections to student achievement so by doing this our students will be able to learn better in the space they'll be able to be grow better we'll have these programming needs that be met for them it will really connect up the work that we do for structure for buildings and all this other stuff to how the students will achieve and grow and we'll see better results and I think that's the other part to it that we often don't get as much of

154a conversation Point around and I think that's maybe to um I think Dr moff has spoke a lot about this but that may be part of what we can build that conversation around is how does the work we did to build up skills resulted in our students being able to learn grow and do more and and they walked in and uh I also thought this is another great way there's some programming things that we could be doing um and I tagged into the Super superintendent's point of uh beyond the tassel um because I do think that helps us with Career Tech especially of what are those molds and models that we can think about that not only gets them able to do the Career Tech assessment for their particular areas but then also might give

155an opportunity to do jobs coordinate with some of the local businesses to build up um program needs internships externships all these things that we could be doing in that planning phase that really if we build up if we're needing to make changes to a facility to do that that's the FMP right like that's part of what the FMP would also be preparing us for so if you need a medical lab in a building just makes sense to do that as part of an FMP as opposed to us trying to find like an individual source to do that one off um but that's like again all of this was for me was just a way my brain was thinking about it and put it for us to talk about um as one Collective effort to touch

156every school to build every school up and I think I think Finance spending next month spending more time talking about this I think if we can find some Coalition coaling around it what what do you have for 26 so in 26 um want to go back to I think it's two things one is the levy to for the um facilities repair is one part of 26 and then I think 26 also kicks off the discussion around what are the different what do we have in the district first off and then what do we need what do parents and community members need where we can get Partnerships what do they need to be able to partner with us um that there's two steps that go in that 26 fiscal year 26 as we're operating as Academic

157Year things we would do in that year to start the process that would grow over the next three or four years right I think you meant 26 ballot is that what you asking there would be the facilities probably the pi Levy would be be your best bet and the difference between that and a bond and a whatever did you explain that a permanent Improvement Levy is an annual revenue stream um sized dollar value-wise to um fund whatever you need for your repair plan on that particular year um a bond Levy is a borrowing so you get immediate cash flow but then you debt that you have to pay back the I was say the other part is I shared the same idea that that you all had discussion around with is I I would almost

158rather do a slightly smaller Pi Levy to do a slightly less small F uh Bond Levy at the end if the bond Levy would if those needs are you know we can make it to that point right so Pi Levy would increase taxpayers obligations that's correct mhm and a pi Levy can be used for uh projects that have a life of five years or more assets that have a life of five years or more so either buying fixing okay but cannot be used for operations so you you cannot be used for operations so right an oper buy you things that will that you would be buying using your general fund possibly like there there isn't room in the general fund to do it that's why but so uh Pi L you can only use on

159improvements and operational Levy you can use on operations and improvements so you can might even go for bigger operational Levy I don't know but um that's the difference so You' said you had a meeting with three folks that are Levy experts yes so um Brenda weamer is our B Bond Bond councel David is our financial adviser um and Kent Cashel used to be an employee who um is an underwriter and so um they do a lot of financing for school district so they um have done some creative stuff and have long-term um really good advice to the district they're very loyal and committed to the district so did they have any sense that the uh taxpayers are uh open pay I mean don't we have to get some assessment of whether or not our community

160if we're going to try to build support you know would we get it I mean we there typically the business Community has helped do some surveying we can't spend general fund we can't spend our money on those kinds of efforts but other other organizations can have done that in the past um and so we can I'm actually scheduled to go down and talk to the r CRBC next week I think to give an update um so I can test the waters in that respect I think that to to also G gaining or gathering whether or not we have support I think that's is in part also why some of the things like including our negotiations so that we can then partner with the folks who we normally would be having at the table as we

161build these things um having others you know having a better understanding what we're going to do with some of the other things so we actually have something to give to them to say this is what we need funds for do you think we would be able be successful my look my quick look at that is that I don't think you're going to have to when when the big FMP is paid off which is 30 31 whatever December 1st of 31 31 so the so that works so it's 32 basically for fiscal year fiscal year 20 32 yes okay so you're not going to need to have a really big let's think and rethink everything necessarily because paying that thing off in a generation is going to create such goodwi and make us look so good

162that I don't think you have to really dig that deep for that one I think you have to dig deeper in the beginning of this thing I I'm telling you I don't I don't have any confidence that the preschool thing is going to pass when you just look out there in the world regardless of how positive our people are and how the city comes through for us and our outlying areas don't come through for us I I just I worry about about the preschool one and I I think I like going and doing something in 26 we we need that or to even get us to 32 but I think there's also on that front loading besides the the the facilities piece that we need to do first things first in Cincinnati you know you

163do do the conservative thing first you need to to fix things before you necessarily build new things I think we need some new things too to your point about different schools getting certain things um so I like that 26 before the valuation starts in 27 um but I think this these are good these are good steps Al also recognize we do have a levy that comes up in I think it's 28 28 yeah million part of the thought process at least in my head is getting these first two things done early while we still have in some ways this might be the year to do a a larger only because of how much people are recognizing the cost that is coming to them of everything else not happening right so like so many people are

164looking at and saying we're not investing in this we're taking a lot of things from their I mean I think it's a good thing what we're doing 26 I'm not sure it helps it's right now but agree with you yeah that's you know opin but I think that's part of why in some ways the idea the long-term thought for my produs is that we have to have something that is more than just one at a time and that was more to my point of doing this is that thing if we only bring one at a time to each they're going to look at it and go you're coming back again and now you're coming back again and now in 28 you came back another time and now in 31 or whatever we're GNA come back

165again and like in some ways of us putting a big plan together that we're able to talk through with them to the community early and say we're doing this in stages so we're not hitting you all at once we're coming at you in phases so that we can make sure that it's minimizing the effect on on our voters and then we have a plan that works and I think that's to to uh one of the questions J I don't know what the appetite is in any of it to be quite honest because I think our community is very fatigued on a lot of things right now so gauging their interests today might be very different than gauging their interests two months from now but I do think we need to have some type of plan

166I think this is great I mean I think it is a huge plan I think it is an eight-year plan and we start sharing that plan now and that eight number is important uh from a standpoint is every time we speak we need to say we have the last we've waited what it this is I don't know there's been two times now eight years for new money eight years for new money but I do think the Esser thing screws us over a little bit about that because people think we had all that money so that's another reason I worry about the priest the early the front side of this plan I think this a great plan but uh and I I but I I think um I'm not that worried about the end game because

167of the facilities master plan that was such a culture shock and huge thing for everybody to be proud of that would be that that'll sell itself but for this early part what can we do uh and what what would what would really like you say something for every school even there might might really help Jen when you're when you're downtown I'd be interested to see if they talk much about the preschool if you can get a read on there I'll report out y i I do think that's also again having preschool Pro again preschool promis is a wonderful video that they presented to us in in November I think it was when they were here that very much is a touching video like that really hits on why like a kid sitting there saying I'm

168so happy to see my sister get to go through the same program I got to go through to learn like it really is a touching thing that I think is part of the messaging to your to your question is that if we do not have a good messaging pth to get us there to touch on what we're doing in the schools why we need to do some of these things why we're looking out for our students I mean I think again things like talking about the amount of work do with our students who are multilingual Learners talking about the amount of students who are walking in today who are homeless and who have these other needs it really hit to we were talking with city council every time we've talked about um our students who

169are through Project Connect or getting services for being low income they're Blown Away by the amount of the students in our district who are um from economically disadvantaged households we say it every single time but I don't think people realize and that's part of the thing about urban districts too right like we deal with every kid who comes in whereas some of these other districts the the profile of the kid doesn't change a whole lot and I think that 26th date helps us that helps us with the 26th date because the prechool thing is still and Jen always gets mad when I call it preschool but and it's at 48 million that is so no you call the CPP yeah because shared it's expansion right it it's but but it's it's a specific thing people

170don't even know or care about the operational part of it it's unfortunately it's been so labeled is only that one thing right and that's how the voters see it and whereas we've got the like you're saying we could be pushing the the homeless piece the kids that need so much help immigrant population all the things that we've been doing yeah I think um I'll be interested to see what CRBC says about preschool because I'm not here on yeah I think too the new method where it's based on enrollment the preschool method that is something we need to highlight for the future as well and you know the the um we should be able to get results or outcomes of the preschool the last few years how does it improve third grade reading and which which

171programs did better in that regard uh there might be some messaging around that could could be helpful I know the superintendent uh mentioned that we do have some information for our students at least on some of those results I know the kindergart Readiness is one that we presented on right and we're able to demonstrate the growth we also saw a growth number of students who've gone from our prek through uh K through six right so like I think those are also things all we can ask the administration do um but again like for me this was I think it's great putting a conversation out there for us to start talking about it we we've talked around what do we want to do for levies a lot we've never given a clear conversation to us so

172I think this is my effort to get us to think about it good good job we also have some board members that don't talk about that yet and it's like no we have this this is when we got to talk about it um the last topic on our agenda was for this um meeting is oh no I'm sorry two one is one that we keep pushing so I want to make sure we at least save some time so point but one is the work plan we put a draft version up with some of the additional updated dates um I think there's even a newer version because Mike and I made edits to it I don't think I captured in this printed copy so it's in the shared copy that we have yeah and so some

173of this is also because our administrative staff um both were out of the office uh today yeah and so they try to do a lot of stuff early which they didn't necessar catch all of the most updated things so what I would maybe suggest is um we can send it out to to the board members to take a review and make some edits make some changes on Corrections um but essentially if there are new things we want to add in or new thoughts we had in this meeting I'm happy to capture some of those thoughts and then we can always just just have a general thing looking at the and I didn't I didn't look at this new thing and it may already have captured but this I mean we took some great time naming

174this committee and I do think that it's it's uh you know it's what Budget Finance and growth um I think we spend certainly it seems at least I remember from the year before last when I was on finance we spend 80% or 90% of our time on finance I don't think we spend as much time I start to see it now with uh return on investment is is being starting to be about budget and I and I know that the whole growth piece needs to go before the whole board but I do think that there's the some of the I don't I I just think whether it's enrollment or the impact of enrollment on state funding or what have you I just I would like to see us spend a little bit more time on

175those two parts even just the title budget and um uh and growth rather quite I mean I think to the point that the Jen made we've done some great work on processes and culture and and how to do different things that we're doing and I feel that we've spent and and so that time we've spent has made has made some great progress but I'd just like to see more on on budget and I and I think the Board needs the finance committee to spend more time on budget when we have both the superintendent and the treasurer in tow in this committee so to speak I think that would be useful and I know this past year we spent you know we made it a part of our our meetings each time I think the difficulty

176was always that it's hard do budget conversations when the board hasn't given any directives so yeah we can have the conversation absolutely from here and we can start putting some thought and stuff out to the table to really push that conversation to your thousand years ago uh Finance did a lot more in helping direct the board in coming up when you have seven people trying to give direction about a budget when we've spent the time that uh you know I think so I think that would help us I think they we gladly do more of it if it if it changed our our behaviors I I find this to be really helpful to me in terms of thinking and setting some direction from the work plan today okay this is where the finance committee is

177going from your thoughts around the levy so what do I need to demonstrate on the instructional side to help people believe in us uh on the front end and so we can then tell the story the way through these next five six years so I find this extremely helpful Jen and I don't have a lot of time to sit together but I for me this has been helpful again I think you know you guys Jen knows that I sat there and said we need to be doing more on budget so I'm happy to have that added in and I think say that I think that's an actually you know absolutely great way to do it and I think also ta into some of the stuff that uh Cody and others have done uh talks about

178how these things get implemented into our budget for future years right so we say that we we recognize this great spending have but maybe this one wasn't great so now we got to to change our budget thought process that's right and I hesitate to say this because the other four board members that are on this committee but this committee will have the greatest impact on whether or not your plan yeah is g to work I mean it's it is I mean that because it's all every time you go out you can say all the good stuff you want to say but it if we look like we are financially solvent and thinking ahead that makes all the difference in the world um but yeah there I don't know you had any thoughts on the work

179plan well I think um I thank you for putting that longer term plan together and I think it's a good idea to not uh be talking about individual levies but a long-term plan and how these levies fit in and it's going to take a lot of communication a lot of messaging and uh it's going to take a lot of um Roi kind of talk U so that we're talking about what benefits you know what benefits the city as a whole having a strong Public School System um I think that um I'm a little nervous about asking for new money this November I almost feel like we're almost too late with that messaging especially after we've had a pretty big increase in taxes regarding the auditor reevaluation of all the properties I mean people are already

180paying more taxes so I'm I'm worried about that component not that we don't need it I'm worried about whether the appetite is there to to support us I do think though with with your longer term plan that you're suggesting 26 and future years I think asking for new money or chances might be better like with a pi Levy or whatever we need to do in that regard so um that's it's just kind of my thoughts about all this but and again I think there may be time for Jen we can certainly have some education also on on again repeating what types of levies we can do is part of these things as part of the conversation but um but yeah yeah um I was just going to say I'm getting ready to send the slide

181deck out the way it I'm still waiting on some information from Food Services because part of the state bill um has a a change in the way they're going to calculate poverty that's probably going to hurt us so what she's calculating what that impact will be I'm going to go ahead and SL send the slide deck as it is it might be speaking but between now and Monday but at least you'll have something to look at there is language in there about um the levy information um I hear what you're saying about delaying for new money but um you need new operational money and new Pi money so you're either GNA you can't if you do two levies in one year one's going to fail yeah um and so which takes the higher priority and

182I'm not sure we can wait for new money in another year so uh but we can talk more about that on Monday yeah with if we uh propose a levy and we're asking for new money isn't it kind of all or nothing I mean the levy fail fails don't we get zipped well we get another opportunity to pass that you can always go back to the old um I don't know just true yeah I mean there's so just I don't know that's a thought in my head yeah it's Gamble we if I will say this the last thought on this but my little last on this but if we are choosing not to go with higher money then we need to make harder Cuts this year absolutely and I honestly don't think we will do

183it we haven't done it we haven't been committed to doing it we refuse to make hard Cuts this is why we had to tip into the uh cash balance this year so if we're committing to doing that let's be honest about what we're committing to doing which is that we're going to make a substantial amount of hard cuts that people are not going to like and that they are going to come and say don't do and I just saw a slide that Mike and Kevin put in here that they the state s this forecasted simulation software has been updated we're going to lose another $10 million on state share next year so even my $624 million is going to drop by 10 million that's another 10 million we got to cut so and Shan is

184having heart attack about now um and so um it's what what I wanted to say this morning at the legislative breakfast is if we don't fix these problems and the and the state continues not to make educ public education a priority financially what are you going to do when we close our doors where are all these kids going to go they want us to I know but they're the the receiving entities are not prepared for that eventuality they want to not pay us they don't want us to close the doors they want their kids to sit in our buildings with no resources seriously we just our kids to have to go to the suburbs be we're gonna have to be be bear Bare Bones emotionally difficult but but but help me out with this thing

185that you and Mike learned uh in Columbus regarding our buildings so there's language in the state budget and we're going to talk about this Monday night for the whole board but preview here there's language don't have a nervous breakdown there's language in the governor's bill that says if your property it was used over and help me if I make this wrong if it was used for instruction over the last 10 years and it's not at 60% of enrollment either your FMP measure of enrollment or the highest over the last three years um if you're not at 60% capacity then you got to put it up for sale first offered to local Charter School High performing charter schools that are district and then after 60 or9 90 days I forget how many days then if they

186don't buy it then you offer it to the other outside District ones but only at not the fair market value what it is now it's at the instructional value which is much lower we'll lose big money if we are forced to do that now this is a bigger concern for Cleveland and Columbus because they have a lot of really small schools and vacant buildings public over the last 15 years right and so um I'm I'm really just to see how the fall enrollment of course I won't be here but Mike will be anxious to see and the in the future Treasures Department we we'll look at um the enrollment has it settled out as a reorganization I'm anticipating a loss of enrollment because change is hard and and people react to that they may come

187back you know but initially I think we'll see well we've been losing so well we lost last year with change so um and that'll impact Us in that year because enrollment now even though they use a three-year for the base cost for to calculate enrollment uh to calculate funding the when they apply the base cost it's to the current year enrollment and so if you've dropped that hits you immediately um and so I'm nervous I'm really concerned really really concerned so um you know we will fight so that's the language on the state and I've asked Dan to look at it um the treasures group put together some amended offering a language and um both represent or Senator blessing and um Isaac sen have agreed to help us promote that language um at least in

188a 10 minute or five minute conversation we had this morning but they're supportive and so we're going to try to go out with one big voice from the urbans because the urban districts are going to get really hurt they're also thinking about changing the way they do poverty which is going to hurt us all um if they don't update the base costs so if they want to continue to use 2022 average costs when I apply I put we put a slide in there that um that has a $200 million impact on us just for our teachers so because they we're already above the state share and we only get 36% of the state share yeah so there's that bigger Gap so it's a $73,000 per teacher G funding Gap multiply it times 2,800 teachers that's

189$218 million so uh and that's just teachers so I didn't we didn't look at the rest of the staff but um so that so them not fully funding the formula is going to be very detrimental to the urbans at least I just as you're talking I was just thinking if if we don't go for new money we're gonna have to make major Cuts if we do go for no money and we don't get it we're going to have to make major cuts so we kind of have to prepare for that anyway yes just remember that certification language we have to show and if I show a negative in that three the first threeyear window OD comes trotting down here to says what how you going to do what are you going to do to balance

190and you can't use a new Levy as your reason you have to show the cuts um and if you can't make it then they come in and start making decisions for us on how we spend money for executive session they I did ask to add the uh sale of property I know you guys can't probably on Monday get enough people together whether it's uh Jeremy and Mike and you or whomever to or and Dan to actually give us an idea as to what buildings those would be we wouldn't want to you know that's a that's a value in executive session to talk about property but I mean you already know that Cleveland and Columbus is in worse shape than we are yeah and people we did this whole growth thing for the last two and

191a half years people sitting out you're making that up you're making that up no we're not making it up no it's stronger language um I don't know based on what I know about the projections that were being made yeah I can't think of any school that's would qualify um and what I used to think I was afraid the Ed Center would qualify because it used to be Mary middle school but it has we don't use it as instruction right um to blow it up which you know somebody wants somebody wants to buy Jacob Center well we don't want to lose it but I think this is these are all things that as a board is is important for us to talk about uh I don't know that necessar spending too much more time here the

192last time we used Jacob Center as an instructional it was swing space that was temporary that's right um we used yeah that might be off the table that we we really have to analyze I doubt we'd be able to get it done by Monday night no I'm sure what I said in the beginning I doubt that you could do that but I do think it would be great to have a work group to figure that absolutely figure it out we talked about that as well as all this other stuff about irns and what have you since we're moving people around to different buildings and is that all that kind of stuff because the other piece is also the low performing piece a lot of pressure about from Florida but lots of great challenges um so

193only other thing I add is the next week or next well first is there anyone Rob that nope cool there's never us okay um well let me do just real quick and then I'll let Michelle uh we have planned on the agenda to add for next upcoming is the insurance update and investment update they're just the standard updates shouldn't take a lot of time but um they're just the standard information is given and then what we can do is bring back the uh work plan to finalize it um at that meeting Michelle Michelle C Michelle D CFT U just really quick and I I think I do this every month but I just want to remind everyone that we also have a renegotiation uh on an ordinance as it relates to commercial property tax abatements

194with the city of Cincinnati we have a currently negotiated percentage that we get a pilot payment back on Commercial properties that receive abatements from the city and you know word on the streat has been there's some in the city who think CPS should not be getting any pilot payments back on commercial property in an effort to Spur development of course I'm sure everyone in this room disagrees with that analysis and feels um well I could say all the way for my view I think we should have a 100% actually of the taxes that we are due on commercial property taxes but in any case um the Board of Ed will have to negotiate with city council uh on that ordinance it expires December of 2025 and we are hopeful that you will go to the

195mat hard to make sure we retain that pilot percentage or even grow it uh to our benefit for our children thank you all right excellent well with having no