001I'm fired up and tired of the way that things have been. The way that things have been [Music] second. I'm the one at the cell. I'm the master of my co the master of [Music] my me taking my [Music] message beauty. [Music] pain. You bring me down. You be me up believer. Let the bullets fly. Let them rain. My life, my love, my drive, it came from me. You made me [Music] ones up above. All the hate that you've heard, I turn your spirit to a double. Ooh, your spirit up above. [Music] Choking in the crowds, loading my brain up in the clouds, falling like ashes to the ground, hoping my feelings they would drown, but they never did. Remember vibing and flowing inhibited limited till it broke up and it rained down. Rain down
002like you made me. You made me a believer. You break me down. You build me a pain. Oh, let the bullets fly. Oh, let them rain. My life, my love, my drive, it came [Music] from the grace of the fire and the flames. All the [Music] fins in my veins never did ever live. I began flowing inhibited limited till it broke up and it rained down. Rain down like you made me. You made me make me believer. You me down. You build me up. Hey, don't let the bullets fly. Let them rain. My life, my You made me a believer. Yes, Lord. Yes. Yes, Lord. Oh, they can hear me. I was so quiet. They can hear me. I was saying yes, Lord. All right, give another round of applause for the Rob Fire. Thank
003you very much. All right. Thank you. Here's our agenda for the evening. We have a full agenda tonight where our intentions are to go over um not only our budget with you all, but have an interactive immersive experience. So, you'll have a chance to hear from our superintendent, Dr. Carol D. Burks. We provide an overview of our school district's priorities, our goals, and demographic data. And then you also have an opportunity to hear from our CFO, Mr. Jeffrey Cuff to learn more about the district's plan for the upcoming school year 2526. In addition to that, throughout the evening, our plans are also to engage you in immersive activity so you have a better understanding of how we as an organization budget for um the school district. But before we go into that, the first thing
004we're going to do in the true Allentown School District way is to have a community builder. So, we have a community builder that we would like to start for this evening. And the intention is to kind of ground us in the work. So we have as you see on the tables each table is named AFA key budget term. So I'm looking at the front table you see the term expenditure revenue savings. So one of the activities that we have for you you see on your table there is an activity sheet that should be one for everyone. And the idea of this activity is that you'll see a list of different key financial terms and there's on the other side definitions that are jumbled. And the idea is that every table will have a piece of
005paper, but that each table will have one individual who will serve as the recorder and that you will agree as a table the correct term and definition. The first table that yelled out matched will and if they have all their definitions correct, they will be eligible to receive some a swag. So the not bingo, we're saying matched tonight. in that first group. So, I'm going to count down. Five, four, three, two, one. The first group that gets all of their um activities correct and yells matched for that table. And you must agree as a table that the on the definitions and terms All right. Should I bring this All right. So, the budget table says that they are matched. Is there anybody else? Okay. What table are you? All right. So, we're going to give
006them an opportunity first and we're going to see how they do. And if they miss one, then we'll move on over to the next table. All right. There's the speaker. All right. So, we're gonna go down the list and see how they did. One, revenue is D. Two, expenditure is M as in Mary. Three, balanced budget is L. Four, state subsidies is E. Five, priorities is the letter N as in Nancy. Six is deficit, letter B as in boy. Seven is surplus, letter K. Eight is fiscal year, letter A. Nine is capital expenses, letter C as in cat. 10 is operating budget, H. 11 is grant, so the letter would be J. 12 is stakeholders, letter G. 13 is allocation, letter F. And 14 is line line item, letter I. All right. So, how did
007you think they did? All right. So, unfortunately, there were quite a few incorrect. So, we're going to move to surplus. Let's see how the surplus table did. You had the same exact thing. Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Is there any other table that completed? I see. Okay. Savings. We're going to go to savings. Who's the speaker? Are you the speaker? Can I just run down? Yes. One D 2 I 3 L 4 E No, I'm out already. You're out already. Jen, you could go. All right. So, one D 2 M 3 L 4 E 5 N 6 B 7 K 8 A 9 C 10 H 11 J 12 G 13 F 14 I No, so I didn't realize it was going to be as difficult as it is. So, how about this? I'm going to
008read off the answers. It No, you're still trying. You got one, but okay. All right. I give you guys a few more minutes, but then I'm going to see who matched. We have See, you think you got it? Did you You think you have it? Okay. So, we're going to go to allocation table. Okay. So, the allocation table thinks they have it. So, we're going to give them an opportunity. All right. But if you get the first one wrong, I'm going to um stop you with the first one. One D 2 M Hold on. Wait. You said one E. One D as in dog. That's incorrect. That's incorrect. Yes. All right. Expenditure. 7 K 8 A 9 C 10 I missed one. Yes, everybody missed the first one. So, I'm going to just read to
009everyone. We're going to start revenue. So revenue is actually a Yes, it is. Okay. All right. Yes, I think you were right. So The answer is the budget team table has won this evening's activity. The budget table has won this evening's activity. Let's give them a round of applause. Yeah, they had the right answer and they so um the budget table. Hold on one second. Yeah, I'm gonna tell you the right answer. Thank you. So the correct Answers are D, M, L, M for two, L, E, N, B, K, A, C, H, J, G, F, and I. We thank you for your patience. Thank you for your patience. So, Miss uh Misdus is going to visit your table and you'll have an opportunity to pick from our Allentown School District swag bag and different items
010that you can choose from. Thank you. All right. So, at this time, I would like to turn things over to our superintendent and CEO, Dr. Carl D. Burks. Thank you, Miss Miley. Good evening, everyone. How is everyone this evening? How did that community builder feel? So why don't we use the term community builder instead of icebreaker? We use that term in our organization. Curious to think why we said, "Oh, we're going to engage in the community builder." And I was a sixth and seventh grade language arts teacher. So I have something called wait time. So I can wait for an answer. Got plenty of time. Why did I say it's an icebreaker? Why did she just then Miss Molly came up here? She said, "We're going to work on our community builder. It's a way
011of getting to know one, a way of getting to know everyone." Very good. Thank you. Anyone else? Yes, ma'am. Can we Excuse me, ma'am. Can somebody get some microphones? So, superintendent steps are kind of ordered tonight. Okay, we'll give me give we'll let you come. Give us one second. We're going to bring you a microphone because we everyone wants to hear what you have to say. So, thanks my friend for being here tonight. Okay. So um my understanding of community building is building an entity where every person has their part to play and it's the whole community youth parents children you know administrators police everything right it's a whole community and everybody has a a role yes thank you coming to we're coming together as a community unity getting to know everyone one, you had
012to work together to solve the community builder, the assignment that we gave you. As a collective community, we are coming together to ensure that we provide adequate resources, meaning the people, time, curricula, conditions for the 17,000 students who attend the Allentown School District. And it's going to take the collective community, all those groups that my friend uh mentioned to work together so we ensure that our students get what we need. I want you to please give yourselves a round of applause for being here tonight. Now, this was for yourselves. We're going to try this again. Give yourselves a roaring round of applause for being here tonight. Yes. Okay. There we go. Now, tonight's discussion is very important because we want to engage all of you in one, we want to show you what we do
013with the money. People, I see all those my Facebook friends. Oh, what are they doing with the money and this that and other we're going to show you tonight what we're doing with the money and how we make decisions and how we receive the resources. People have this mystical thing. I don't know where they think the money comes from, but we're going to tell you tonight. We're going to try to debunk some of the misconceptions and we're going to talk about our way forward and all decision making. As an organization, we make decisions based on our mission, our vision, and our core values and our strategic plan. As a community, we have worked 9,000 people, not Dr. Burks, 9,000 people participated in our strategic planning process. How many people will by a show of hands
014and I'm not going to look because so I don't want to shame anyone but by a show of hands and my rest of my friends out here keep me honest have heard of our strategic plan lighting away a blueprint for innovation and excellence 30 2030 how many show of hands do I have a adequate amount of hands up yes okay good shoot okay now we worked as a collective community we said this is what we want to have for our children not me, the collective community. So, if you weren't in the room, we we sent out tons of surveys. We served with families and students and staff and everything else. So, tonight we're going to show you an overview just quickly of our thinking about how we make decisions and then we're going to show
015you how we receive the resources. And then the fun part of this because we like to be teachers and my role as a superintendent CEO. I'm also chief teacher in the organization and we know that people learn by doing. So we're going to get engage you in an activity when you get your money and when you have to decide how you are going to spend your money to fund an organization with more than 20,000 people. Think about your own households. How you have to make decisions. We do the same things and sometimes the decision you might say why they doing that. There are lots of rules, policies and procedures that we have to follow. Also some of the resources that we're going to tell you about they are called restricted funds. That means either the
016federal government or the state government they tell us how we have to spend the money. Everyone with me still? Okay. I'm still being a great teacher. Okay. Because it's important a teacher. So there's our mission, vision, and core values. Next, we're going to talk about give you an overview of who we serve. We have approximately 17,000 students. It changes every day. People move around. They move to different states. They uh move around the country. So, as of today, we have 16,712 students who attend the Allentown School District. You see the demographic makeup. As of today, last week we had 77% of our students Latino. Well, this week is 74. You hear me give a presentation next week it might be another number, but for on average we remain about in the 70s as it relates
017to our Latino students. If you see there are or Hispanic students of our students who are 11.5% identify as black, you see two or more races and such. We are making decisions for these students, our staff, and I think, and I'm not sure if we mentioned, we do have translation services in the room. So, if you need translation services, we have our team in the back there with headphones. So, I just want to let you know, and Miss uh Gonzalez is raising her hand. Here's our staff makeup. We have approximately, and again, it depends anywhere between 2500 to 2600 uh staff members. Some of our staff, they work for organizations like different staffing agencies. So when I say we have 2600 staff members, some of them may not work for the district, but for example,
018there are psychologists. They're very difficult to find. So we may contract with an agency for a psychologist or we may contract with the agency for with um to hire pair of professionals uh initially and then they'll come work with us. So those are the classifications of staff. We only 6% of that 100 everybody say 6% are administration. So people like you have all these administrators. If you see there, the majority of our staff are in the teaching ranks. And in most organizations, that number is about 75%. But as an organization, we spend some of our funding on charter schools. The way the funding formula works here in Pennsylvania. So we spend about 80 and Mr. Cuff is going to share that with you. We spend about $81 million of our budget in charter funding. So
019when you see the 67% we're counting their teachers who work for our charter schools. So that's why it's not in the 70s like most districts. Okay, here are our goals as an organization. This is how we're going to our goals for the year of how we're going to use our resources. And I'm going to let someone read that out loud for for us. Present a balanced budget that support the district comprehensive plan and the recommendation from the strategic plan by allocating resources toward increasing a student achievement in reading and math, decreasing chronic absent rate, increasing graduate rates, increasing language acquisition for English language learners, aligning priorities that emerge out of the strategic planning process, creating multiple pathway them then based on school that is how that that's how we're going to spend the money. So
020if you say well why are they doing that? These are our goals for the year. You're going to see us create more theme-based schools. We're going to put more heavy investments of course in reading and mathematics. We're going to try to combat absence uh chronic absent rates. and we're going to all those seven priorities that we decided and goals as an organization. That is how we are going to allocate our money. Okay, any questions? Before we get into some of the money, I'm going to acknowledge who's in the room because I want to get us back on time. So that's why I raced because I know we were, you know, getting to know each other a little bit longer than we had anticipated, but that's okay. So, how many parents are in the room? Raise
021your hand if you are family, a parent. Abella, Aba, Tia, you know, aunt, uncle, someone who takes care of children in this district, please give them a roaring round of applause. Woo! On behalf of my team and all the staff in the Allentown School District and all the children, I say thank you. Thank you. Thank you for allowing us to serve you, to serve you and your children, and we really appreciate you being here tonight. I also um want to acknowledge that our school board of directors are here today. So, can you please stand? You are a school board director. We have our board president here, Miss Brown Noel. We have Miss Ortiz, Miss Tersio, Miss Mat. Thank you for being here tonight. Now, you I wanted you to give them a a bigger round
022of applause cuz they're my bosses. So, give them another round of applause. Woo. I'm honored to serve you and thank you for being here tonight and for your commitment. They volunteer and they spend a lot of hours. Some of my friends who have school board directors in other states, they get paid. My friends in LA, they paid their board directors make six figures. They make over $125,000 a year and they have staff. They volunteer. So, give them some grace. They volunteer. Okay? So, I thank you. If there are any elected officials in the room, can you please stand that I did not acknowledge? And I know my friend Mr. Patrick, I think, is uh here representing Senator Coleman's office. So, thank you so much for being here [Applause] tonight. Oh. Oh, hello, Commissioner. How are
023you? Thank you for being here tonight, Commissioner Shayla. Thank you. Uh, is Miss Millie here representing Senator Senator Miller? Thank you so much, Miss Millie. Okay. Make sure I do all my I want to thank my my family advisory council. If you're here tonight, these they serve as advisors to me. So, if you could please stand, I I thank you so much. Can you please stand if you are on my family advisory council? Why are you not standing up? That's you. Thank you. I really appreciate you. They keep me honest. They give me great feedback about what representing the family. So if you want if you're interested in my family advisory council, we meet quarterly. We really engage in activities not just you know Dr. Bur give me a piece of chicken. I make them
024work really hard. Okay. So I want to say I thank you and I appreciate you. And so if you're interested please see your principal because we are recruiting for the next academic year. Okay. Most importantly I want to thank my team. So if you could please stand. Thank you so much for planning tonight. I get all my acknowledgements up here. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. I can't do this work without you. Thank you. Okay. Anyone who is a community member, if you're here, you're part of the community. You're just here tonight because you are committed to and you're on my interfaith advisory council is also here tonight. So, please stand. If you're a member of my interfaith advisory council, that would be this table over here. That's you. Thank you for coming tonight.
025And now, let's get a drum roll. Let's give it up for the students. All the students here tonight, please [Applause] stand. Thank you. And I want to thank Rob. They did a great job. I had to take them on the road. I was like, uhoh. They're believers. That time was so that song was so timely because in the times that we are in such unprecedented times in public education, it's going to take the collective belief and hope and love of all of us to make sure that we continue to move our district forward. I think I gave everyone an acknowledgement. So by I I love everyone. We're all important. We're going to get back to budget. You went over some key terms. We're going to use many of those terms and that's why we tie
026the community builder to what we're going to discuss. That was intentional. So you be like revenue, what are they talking about? Now you can go look at your paper. Okay, good teachers do that, right? You're like, what are they talking about balanced budget and all that kind of stuff? Because right now in the country, we are in a fortunate position as an organization. A lot of my friends and colleagues who are superintendents around the nation, they don't have balanced budgets. They're saying they have to cut 40 and 50 million dollars because they didn't do a good job of spending in some cases in previous years. So, we're presenting a balanced budget with no tax increase for the homeowners. Okay. Thank you. Also, my team, I thought I covered everyone. I think we have some teachers
027here tonight. Do we have teachers here tonight? We do. Oh, some teachers. Please stand. If you're a teacher, woo, we got one teacher. Okay. Now, we should be really excited about the teachers because we all had a teacher. That's one job. That's a quite honorable job because we all have to go through and learn from you. So, thank you for being my here, my friend. She's and she's new to the organization. So, thank you, doctor. I appreciate you. The parents are here. Okay. All All my paras stand. Woohoo. We got a lot. Woo. Woohoo. Thank you. I thought they stood up with the parents. No, I know. No, but I thought they stood up with the families when I stood parents. Okay. Okay. You did. All right. Good. But you are parents as well. Okay.
028All right. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you. Okay. Did I cover everyone? Everyone's important. I want to say that's why I don't like to sing out groups and I miss someone then I feel badly. So, but I honor you and I appreciate you because Thank you. All right. If tonight we're going to talk about historical trends in our funding, we're going to talk about historical trends in our funding. If you see here as an organization, we went from 2021 and we're going to talk about 202526 next academic year. If you see how our funding, what do you notice? What do you notice? We've had some increases. Now, there's a protocol we use in education. It's called notice and wonderings. So, you notice then what do you wonder how how did it happen? One,
029I'm going to commend our elected officials who have been great advocates at the state level for Allentown. They they brought home the money. They did their jobs. They were able we were able to get additional resources to support the district. Also, uh, Pennsylvania was, uh, identified as a state that had an unconstitutional funding form for formula and that the state was not adequately funding its schools, particularly a community like Allentown. I was told by board members, school board directors, and former directors, and even my staff that there were times that they were scared that they couldn't even pay the bills because we didn't get our adequate funding. So I'm happy that we were able people across the state advocated. I even when my first year they're like you have to speak at a hearing. I
030was like what do I say? I guess I said enough that we received a national award for for whatever I said as an organization. But we advocated for not just our children but all the children in the state of Pennsylvania. And fortunately for Allentown we received great benefits from it. So, we're going to talk about but as the number went up, what else happens? Just like your household, what happens when years go by and the gas bill, does it stay the same? Flight bill and sometimes the rent changes, right? So, inflation I know somebody said, "Oh, no." Yes. Right. Well, that that also happened in the school district. Things went up. So, we fortunate that we're able to fund some of the efforts here. Okay. So, Mr. Cuff, I believe in strength-based leadership. So, this
031superintendent was a language arts teacher. I know the finances and all that kind of great stuff. But I do believe in distributive leadership and building the capacity of others who have expertise in areas that I know, but why should I go tell you this when I have someone that he's the CFO and that's his job to do. So, Mr. Cuff is going to come and he's going to talk a little bit about how we spend the money and then we're going to engage in an activity. Everyone still okay? Okay. I don't you know sometimes some teachers do that thumbs up thing but you don't really know if the class is really getting it. Oh, thumbs up. Everybody put the thumb. Okay. Thumbs up. So, we're going to ask questions. So, we're going to make sure
032that we're checking for understanding. Mr. Cuff. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. [Applause] Burks. I I want to thank Miss Mley for that opening community builder. It helped a lot. to help lay the groundwork for a lot of the terms I'll be using and a lot of the topics that I'm going to discuss. I'm going to try to be brief and explain. So, we talked about a balanced budget. A balanced budget is composed of two sides. It's composed of your revenue and your expenditures. So, I'm going to quickly talk about our revenues in the district. This is that table. What is What is revenue? Correct. So what it is revenue is the money we're bringing into the school into the school district. So our revenue comes from quite a few sources. I'm going to touch on
033those. You'll see here that we receive a combination of local revenues, state revenues, and federal revenues. So I'm going to touch on each one briefly. I'm going to describe what they look like, what they're made of, and how and where it comes from. And as Dr. Burke said, you can see through our past slide, there's been a constant investment in our school district over the last couple years. And you'll see this year coming up, that investment is still happening. So, at a tone of approximately $481 million for our children, our community. So you'll see here where we're composed where the bulk load of our money comes from state sources. So as Dr. Burks stated, we are the beneficiary of a lot of support from our legislators. So if you get a chance and you see
034your legislators, thank them. They've done a great job in supporting the Allentown School District. And the more important factor with with their support, what it's done is it helps us try to stabilize the impact that we put on the local homeowners and local taxpayers. So you'll see here, these are our local sources. So the the major one is real estate taxes every and 511 taxes which are your earned income tax which everyone who lives in Allentown pays a portion of that. LST tax everyone pays a small portion and we have other interest money that we earn on our local taxes which are interest and donations. But I want to focus back on the local real estate and delinquent taxes. So as Dr. B um stated she kind of stole my thunder there. You'll see in
035the next couple slides. The good part we're having is that we have no increase in taxes locally. And again, that is a direct result of the support we received from our local legislators. And you'll see here we we collect approximately a hundred million dollars in local real estate taxes. These are from property owners um within the Allentown city. Um and you'll see the major other portion is act 511. Does anyone know what that is? Those are transfer taxes and and EIT taxes. So if you live in the city, this is the money, the EIT tax that comes um from your um pay. Okay. Are there any questions on local revenue or how is how it's um devolved? Thank you. So our next source of income is our state subsidy. So in the past our major
036subsidy used to be the basic education funding and as Dr. BS had discussed there was a major lawsuit that went out for several districts within the Commonwealth that it wasn't funded properly. So what has happened in the last couple years is they've had a new process where they calculate what is um the subsidy that the school district receive. So right now the Allentown school district is the great beneficiary of what's called the RTL block grant which is the ready tolearn grant. This is where a lot of that additional funding has been coming through in the last couple years. So, this is um it's an adequacy funding that basically goes through and what it does is it makes sure that districts that look like ours are funded fairly and we get the proper funds that we
037would get versus other parts of the state. So, the other subsidies that we receive are our FICA subsidy and we receive a portion of our special ed subsidy as well. So the special just so you're aware the special ed subsidy is bless that sound good I can say bless you with everyone okay so our special ed subsidy is a small portion of what our special ed costs are but these are these are areas of increase that we're working for we're advocating with our legislators to get additional funding as as we progress through the next couple of years we also receive a portion back for our transportation services that we provide in the district so there's a boatload load of subsidies that the state actually reimburs the school districts with. Sorry, that um that they load.
038Is anyone aware of these other subsidies or these that this comes from the state? Probably not. But this is good. So now you know as you go forward where some of our revenues are coming from that provide for the district. Sure. Sure. No problem. Great. So, these are the list of the major state subsidies and I'll run through them quickly. As I stated, basic education funding, that's the bulk load of what we receive, approximately $200 million in basic ed funding. This is basically a coverall for all the education, all the education initiatives within our district. Next is RTL which is ready to learn grant which I stated this is the adequacy funding the additional funding that we received as a part of the lawsuit that happened with the state. FICA reimbursement is a prrated portion
039of what we put out for our teachers and the state actually reimbures reimbures us on a pr-rated basis of what our out output is in expenses. Special education funding. As I stated, this is a small portion of what our overall special ed costs are. You see, we we receive approximately $17 million. One might say, "Wow, that's a lot." It is a lot. However, our special ed costs total are close in the 60 almost $70 million range. So, there a lot of that gets made up with the BEF funding. So there's a lot to be made as we progress forward transportation funding. So what that is, we get reimbursed on our transportation cost and the services we provide. So what we've been able to do over the last couple years, we revamped our transportation services. We
040went back through and did a lot of retooling and we were actually able to increase our transportation subsidy this year by approximately $1 million over previous years. So we're in a good situation. We're keeping good records, better records of where we were and we're actually doing a great job. Part of the reimbursement, part of the new contract we had, the reimbursement is generated off of the newer buses. So the more we have newer buses, the more reimbursement we receive going forward. And pension, which is similar to the FICA, pension is the retirement that we pay for all our employees. We do receive a prorated portion back from the state which this year is approximately 38 $39 million and property rebate. So this is a figure I just received a new figure for next year. So
041someone does anyone know what homestead is? You want to try? You want to say home? I'm sorry. Cor exactly. So what he said was Homestead is it's on your tax bill. So anyone who is a homeowner, if you fill out your Homestead application, you actually receive a a PR-rated discount on your tax bill. And the money that we receive is distributed throughout the state and it's given to each homeowner. It has to be your primary home. So this year it reduces your tax bill. So last, this is the figure we had prior to today. I just received a new figure. So this figure is 141. I just got the figure for next year it is 15,300,000. So that's great again for our district. An increase of approximately 1.3 million for our children. Okay, which is
042good. Which is good. So, so you'll see here, as I stated before, the bulk load of our revenue comes from state sources. And and a lot of people ask, I've been in another district and I was asked last year, how does Allentown not raise taxes? It's it's not an easy task. And one of the things that makes it difficult to progress forward is that we get a lot of support from our legislators. So, I can't understate how important this is. in other districts. As I stated on other slide, you'll see that we have approximately 67% of our revenue comes from state sources. 67%. Other districts are down in the 45 40% range. So Allentown, we are very fortunate that we have legislators that are looking out for us and working on our behalf. The last
043source of money is federal sources. So federal sources are lumped and I'll just categorize them. We have what's called the main title grants. There are title one, title two, title three, and title four. Title one is for programming for students from lowincome families to improve academic performance. Title two supports teachers, principles, administrators, staff, professional development, and class size reduction. Title three is for English language learners. Title four is student support and academic enrichment. So, those are our major uh federal subsidies that we have there. They're not exclusive to those four, but those are the major four, and you'll see what they're composed of. You'll see here, as I stated, title one is the bulk load of our federal money and title two, three, and four, you'll see going down. Medicaid reimbursement. This is a reimbursement
044we get as a um for uh students who receive medical access. We do receive a portion of that from the federal government. And the other federal is unfortunately the state has this is the other 2.6 6 million is money that we receive for investments we have through federal bonds that we have. They're called, not to get geekish, they're called QIP bonds, but the state makes us coded as federal subsidy because they're federally supported. Okay, so I ran through a lot. I ran through local, state, and federal. Does anyone have any questions on any of them or what's what they're composed of or anything that I stated? Sir, retirements, what we gain on attition, what category is that? Rephrase. I'm sorry. When you have a lot of retirements coming up, I think you have that number
045already. How many future retirements? We gain attrition money. So, where do you put that in the revenue? So that that is that is built in to the Yes, no problem. Great. So that's built into when we start doing our um staffing for next year. So that's built into it's not in this slide, but it's built into our staffing for the following year. So we have an as you stated we have an idea what his question was and I apologize his question was correct me if I'm wrong was that how do we budget or how do we account for teachers who are coming off the records and then how do we deal with the new ones coming on is that fair and the savings we should get from obviously retirements what is that revenue that we're
046going to gain on retirements right so as he stated so it's and ideally what he's asking is if a teacher is a senior teacher They're probably at the higher pay scale. They're coming off at a higher rate. So, what's happening is when we hire new teachers, more than likely they're not making the same level as the older teacher. Correct. So, what happens is we we build that into the the um cost and to our expenses, but it goes back to the same concept that Dr. Burks has said with when we talk about inflation. While certain other costs may go may go down like you said with salaries, we still have an increased cost with special ed and some of our transportation services. So a lot of that gets eaten up in other areas is what
047that happens. There is a line item for your attrition revenue though. You're going in the budget, isn't there? But for let's say we have 100 retirements. You're going to know how much you're going to gain from that. Is that somewhere put in the budget? That's all I was asking. Yeah. So, so that that's that's all in our staffing calculation is what we do. So, it's it's not in this slide unfortunately. Okay. Yeah. But yeah, but that is part of our staffing calculation. Do you anticipate a reduction in the federal funding? That is an great question. I don't want to say awesome question, but it's a great question because it scares me. So there has So just so her question was this, do we anticipate receiving the same level of federal funding that we have in
048the past? Is that fair? So just so everyone's aware, there's been a lot of discussion from our new administration about about cutting some of our federal resources nationwide. And some of the areas that have been discussed are cutting back some of the Department of Education, some of the funding So that is a concern that a lot of business managers have had for since February. It's been a lot of talk. Um no one has given any clearcut answer to be honest with you. So the last information that we had was that to go with the status that you currently have. They don't anticipate anything being cut, nor do they anticipate getting an increase as we go forward. So, I believe that the federal government, correct me if I'm wrong, I think Miss Smith is here, but
049I think at some point in June or July, they'll probably release the allocations for next year. Right. Okay. Yeah. Late May, early June. Okay. Yeah. So right now the the word that we receive, we talked to a lot of people up in the state level, a lot of people on the federal level and the the direction we get was to keep it constant. So you'll see the federal money we have here is basically the same federal money that we had a year ago. That's a great question. Thank you. So in the program in next year 25 26 year we are working ahead based on performance because the grant will be based on performance. Correct. I couldn't hear the latter part of the question. I apologize. I couldn't hear the latter part of your question. From
050my understanding the uh the grant that the state will receive will be based on a school performance. So that's why we are focusing on English and math. Yes. So your question was the funding that we're receiving is based off of our performance on English and that's what why we're focused on English and math. Yes. should probably speak to that to kind of distinguish what to respond to you. So, we're going to get those dollars. However, some schools receive additional funding based on their performance on reading and math. And so, she can speak to that more eloquently. Miss Smith. Thank you. Good evening everyone. Our title one fundings is basically to improve reading and write reading, writing, math for our students. That's the funds that are directly given to schools. Most of the money goes to
051schools to do their um to do their programming. CSI funds, as you see there, that's the second line. That's a designated school designation from the Pennsylvania Department of Education, and that is based on low performing test scores. So, we have several schools that are CSI status, which means they're in the bottom 5% of school districts in the state of Pennsylvania. So, currently, right now, we have William Allen High School, we have Building 21, we have Rob Middle School, Harrison Morton Middle School, South Mountain Middle School, and Harrison Morton Middle School. So, there's specific funding to support those schools with evidence-based strategies to improve performance for their students. Can you that what you just described has nothing to do with the federal funding that he's talking about because they're getting additional funding based on CSI and
052all that. That's the question. Correct. So CSI funding is a three-year designation of funding that we receive. responded to your Okay. Um uh speaking as a student from South Mountain Middle School, I can tell that especially with the um the state test, the PSSAs, um a lot of students do just um they guess on the tests instead of actually trying. So, I feel like that would um affect the funding if students aren't trying. There's a question on that side of the room. I'm sorry. I don't like speaking in the mic. Um, my question is about the IEP, like she was saying of Alan being down in the bottom. The IEP, is it coming out of the state or the federal? And if so, how can we better next year's IEP classes? Because a lot of
053students have IEP, but not only behavioral, they are straight A students with great testing scores, but they're mixed all in one class. So, how can we better that in the IP area? So, I think that there's a two-part answer that I'm going to answer the first part and I'm going to let Mr. Sik answer the second. So, your question no first part what I got was where does the funding come from for that? So, it comes from two sources. If they're receiving Medicare, Medicaid services, that's where a portion of that gets channeled through. Also, there is If there if a student there is also is coming through the the subsidy that I talked about the special ed subsidy from the state. So we get a small portion from state subsidy and a small portion from
054the federal depending on what type of services they're going to receive. But I'll ask Mr. Sikot to answer the other part of your question before he gets there. How can we know which one it is? which like I'm a parent to one IP but I don't know which one it is and I want to know what exactly is given to him because we have the IP classes and we have the IP meetings but it's very brushed just sign and that's it I'm sorry I I think I can address this can you hear can you hear me okay yes Okay, there you go. I think when it comes to each individual child and when we sit down and have the IEP meeting, never once have I been to an IEP meeting that we discuss dollar figures.
055We talk about the student, the individual student, and what their programming should look like. So, to me, just in this case, it sounds as though you and I could talk privately somewhere else and we could But that would go for anybody else who has the same. Don't be afraid to call the special education office. If you want to discuss anything about your child with an IEP and their program. Oh, I'm sorry, but like you just finished saying, um, we never do discuss the money, which is true. It's there to speak about the children, but my son is one of those who's falling in the cracks that he is a straight A student. IEP Asberger syndrome goes to ROTC, goes to LCTI, but because he was in a class of behavioral problem, I had to pull
056him out. Now he's home because of this the our surroundings because IEP does not offer one class for behavior and one class that is actually for kids who are falling behind because they need extra help. So right now they're pushing all those students together in one class. You see what I'm saying? That's what we were speaking on. Sorry. No, that's good. I think there's a few things here. One, the I want to make sure we answer the funding question uh as it relates how much funding we received because we said we had $17 million we received and we spent about $60 million. Now, in terms of programming, we just recently had a special education audit and we will present the findings. We're going to have the uh vendor, the partner that work with us. They're
057going to come back and present their findings. what we're hearing preliminarily. We're doing some good things, but we need to strengthen our experience for our students because we know we have areas of opportunity for growth. And I'd like to have Mr. Sik talk with you specifically because I want to make sure that your child has the right programming. But as it relates to money, we receive 17 million. Our bill is about 60 million. So we use general fund dollars to help fund our special ed programming. But as it relates to specific for students, especially your child, I'd like to have someone from my team talk about it and then we're going to work together as a collective community to strengthen what we do for our special ed students. Thank you. Are there any other questions
058on revenue? Okay, hearing none, we're going to move on. As I stated with a balanced budget, the next side of the balanced budget is our expenditures. So, and we had some of this discussion already. Real quick, what does someone think is the biggest source of our expenditure? What do you think we spend most of our money on? Salaries and benefits personnel. Thank you. Yes. So, salaries, benefits, pension. So one of the the biggest area and that's all correct and you'll see that in a in a in a second slide I'm bringing up but one of the areas this is the area instruction where our purpose is we're here as an instructional service instru instructional source for our children. That's what we're here for. So our one of our biggest so these are the categories that
059the state makes us um break out the expenditures. They're instructional services which is basically being in the classroom in front of the kids in front of our students providing the service. The second area is support services. Support services are just that. You don't you cannot run a district or any district, particularly a district the size of Allentown without support services. And this is where we account for a lot of our support. This is where we account for our transportation services. This is where we account for the guidance counselors, the psych the psychologists, the counselors, the social workers. That's where a lot of that is is accounted for. Non-instructional services are provided for services that are helping our students and helping our community. This is a lot of the community relations areas that we cover in
060um instructional services. Facility is our obviously that's our custodian, our facility, our building and so forth. And the last question is our other expenditures and financing debt. Someone's going to say what debt? So every school district has debt. So if you think about I think someone made an analogy before about your home basically your debt is basically your mortgage in in layman's terms. So a lot of these buildings you don't we don't have the resources to go out and spend $100 million or $50 million on on a on a building. So what we'll do is the district will float bonds and the process and the procedure of re repaying the bond is our debt. So I'm going to show you in the next slide what what else is covered in these areas. So you'll see
061here as I stated in instructional this is everything inside the classroom regular education special education vocational education and postsecary. postsecary if you had come to some of our other budget um informations we did have the community college come out so we do pay a portion of that the district does we pay a portion of the LCTI bill um for our students as well you'll see in support services I as I talked about these are our guidance services counseling public health our business office transportation and our IT again think about think about a school district. Think about a business. These are all functions that are required to support services for our children. The third area or student activities and community services. Last year I just talked about was our debt service. So the question I just
062asked and I'll show you in the next slide. It'll show you what a typical school district spends their expenditures on. You'll see here and someone had mentioned the biggest costs the biggest driver one of our costs are all personnel related and you'll see here that we're more likely in about 62% of our budget is spent on personnel related. This is providing resources um putting people in front of our children. Next, you'll see a lot of our professional services, property services, contracted services. A lot of our contracted services, as we talked about before, is our transportation. Transportation is a it's it's a it's a heavy expenditure, but it's worthwhile. It picks up our children. It brings them in. It gets them there timely, and gets them gets them in school safely and gets them home safely.
063And you'll see 1% for um roughly three% for supplies and books. equipment and I'll go back to our debt. So, we're actually in a great position right now with our debt at 12% compared to a lot of other districts. So, you'll see here, this is our typical makeup of a typical school district. And I'll show you what our breakout is for the Allentown School District. You'll see salaries and benefits, professional services, supplies, equipment, other books, and our debt service at the bottom. One thing I'm I'm going to bring to your attention, if you go back to the original slide I had with revenues, it was Can anyone take a guess how much it was a revenue slide? It was $481,528,215. Coincidence? We're doing a balanced budget here at Allentown School District. We're trying to be
064fiscally responsible with the money that we receive. We're trying to be fiscally responsible with the resources that we put from the children. So, currently now, this is a balanced budget that we're putting forward. And again, as I'll restate what Dr. Burke just said, it does we're not asking for a tax increase for this year. So you'll see here right now we have for this year coming forward there will be no surplus or deficit in our projections for the 2526 school year. Jeff may I say something? Um, if you go back a slide where it says 62% of our salaries, 62% of our budget, uh, about 63% is um, salaries and benefits and our staff. When I first got on this board eight years ago, it was 73%. So, with this new superintendent, she's been able
065to cut out the fat, the overlapping offices and things of that nature and, you know, and um, and and do that as well. as then we put more money into the other things that we need for our students. So, it's not just that, but it's also making sure that we have more product for our student, more training for our teachers and um that way we can make sure our students are getting what they need to succeed. And even with the postsecary, you have to remember that we do, hey, Allentown was the first Lehigh County to um have students graduate, start LYC in in 10th grade, no 11th grade, their 12th grade year, they graduate they graduate from LRYC in May and then get their diploma in Dece in in June. So these are things and
066I have to give it to my uh Dr. Burks. She is um making sure that we are looking at the whole budget but also looking where we can cut the fat and that way we can give it back to our students. Thank you. [Applause] So, at that point, that concludes I'm sorry, you have a question. I apologize. Yes. Can you expand upon I know we have a balanced budget here. If we do not receive funding from the federal government, what is our plan going forward if that does not come through? So, the question was, what would we do? Help me if I I want to make sure I repeat it correctly. What do we do if we don't receive all of our money from the federal government? So, that's a great question. So, it's a
067there's several components to that. It would be a process and Dr. Burks will probably chime in, but I think It will be a process of evaluating certain programs that those revenue that they supported. So we have to re-evaluate those and determine which one of those programs we will pick up and fund through maybe all of them or we'll pick up and fund it through general general operations. So it'll be hopefully that doesn't happen. Um I don't think it will but I understand the question. But it'll be a process re-evaluating what those programs support and then we make the determination from there. I just have a question on fund balance. There's no fund balance. Zero. No, actually. So, we actually do have it. So, we have a fund balance currently um that will be approximately $32
068million. Okay. So, we have so for years we haven't had a fund balances in in recent years we are able we actually provide a fund balance of approximately 32 34 million. The idea I'm sorry let me say it for everyone here. His question was, "What do we do? We have a fund balance." So, currently we have a fund balance of $34 million. Someone may ask, "What is a fund balance?" So, your fund balance is this. If you if you look at your own finances, your fund balance is your savings that you have in the bank. That's that's the best analogy I can give you. So, you have a choice. And I, as Dr. Burke said, we'll give it to your home expenses. We have a choice when you run your home expenses. You all have
069you have revenue, you have income, and you have your home expenses. Ideally, you don't exceed your expenses and you don't if that's the case, then what? You run your household in a deficit. And the only way you can do that is what? Build more debt. Or if you have savings in the bank, you would have to use your savings. So, we have a fund balance. The idea that we're trying to do and push forward to strengthen the Allentown school district is not use fund balance whatsoever, but to have balanced budgets going forward so that we can have a stronger financial status. And what that will enable us to do is when we go to borrow, if we need to borrow, we'll have a better credit rating when that time comes. I I'm sorry. I'll get
070to your question one second. I want to repeat. So the request was that we talked about our bond rating. So in the last couple years, the district had a district's bond rating. Your bond rating is basically your credit rating in in layman's terms. That's what that is. Our bond rating had fell a couple years ago. Through the past couple years, we've been able to strengthen our fund balance and strengthen some of our operations. And we just had a what's called a bond rating because we borrow money to start initiate a building project which Dr. Burks will talk about but we started that. So you have to have a bond rating and our bond rating they came in the good news is that we had our bond rating increased by two what's called two notches. So
071basically what that is is saying that we are now a we are an entity that is an investment grade. Before if we borrow we were not investment grade. We are currently investment grade which what that does and you may say Jeff what does that mean? What does that do for us what it does and I'll go back to it's your credit rating. It means that we're borrowing at a lower rate. So due to the fact that we increased our bond rating, we saved approximately $300,000 on fees alone on our last borrowing. And overall on the on the length if we the duration of our borrowing, we can save close to maybe one and a half to$2 million because of our bond rating increase is what that is. I'm sorry, question in the back. Yes. Would
072you say the that fund uh what's it called again? The fund balance is contingency what contingency a fund contingency like uh an emergency fund if need be. So classic example one one question was what do we do if the federal government does we don't get the federal subsidy one possibility is you could use fund balance that is not the option I would recommend but there is there is that there so for example you may what we may have possibly we may have a flux of students next fall that we didn't plan on so at that particular point we have to do what we have to make accommodations. We have to provide additional transportation. We have to provide additional teachers with not additional resources. So that's going to be an area where possibly we may have
073increased expenditures that we did not forecast or we did not foresee. So in that situation, what that may do is that may cause our expenditure next year to increase more than what we had anticipated. So that may cause this one to dip into a our fund balance. So that may be your contingent area right there. So there isn't a contingency built in this budget that you that you're saying the 481 million currently right now we are budget we our budget is for what we forecast there is there's minimal money there for contingency money you you but you try to be as prudent as you can with public funds um as we can so I wouldn't say there's a lot of contingency money built in thank Sir um where is the food service department in this
074budget? The food service. So great question. His question was what about food service? Correct. So food service. So everything that we talked about this evening has been our general operating fund. So within the school district you have several different funds. You have your operating fund. You have a separate fund for your capital projects. And we have another another fund for food service which is kept totally separate from your operating f budget. So the good part great question is that right now our food service fund is very strong financially. They work they run independently of our general operating fund. And it sounds weird because we are one school district, but as far as accounting goes, we keep them in separate funds. So right now we have actually we have a fund balance, a nice fund balance
075in our food service fund as well. And the reason someone may ask that question. How did you get a fund balance in your food service? Couple two things, two quick things. One is currently the Allentown School District participates with in the C programs. So let me say what C and that's the next question. C is a community eligibility provision. So that is a program that allows us to have free breakfast and free lunch for our students. This is based off of um our poverty level, but it's also they put it out statewide. So we have a the other component of that you just don't get a fund balance by being on C. you get you get a fund balance by running your your food service operations efficiently. So we are fortunate to have a very
076great very good food service director who's in the back in the blue in the blue. But what we're able to do is we're able to maximize our student count our meal counts and turn that around into a surplus in our food service um fund. Is it that good? Can you transfer if you need that fund balance because we used to do I was on the board before and we used to get a transfer from that. You so you can transfer from general fund to food service. Unfortunately, you cannot transfer from food service to general fund. You're not able to do that. We're able to allocate some of the cost. Um, like for example, if we provide a a a driver or we may be able to allocate some of the costs for electricity, those costs,
077we can reallocate the general fund, but we can't we can't reallocate the surplus. Now, what we can do is we're able to take some of the surplus and we're able to provide upgrades to our food service equipment and things of that nature. That's that's actually that is one of the objectives that we're working on this year. Yep. But great question. Thank you. Any other questions? You guys, you guys are awesome. Oh, I'm sorry. So, I'll turn it back over to Miss Marley. Thank you very much for your attention. [Applause] Thank you, Mr. Cuff. So now that you've had an opportunity to learn more about our revenues, our expenditures, our proposed budget plan for the upcoming school year, we would like to engage you in an activity so you can actually experience what our team does
078on an annual basis to prepare in developing and building out of budget. So at each of your tables, you will find an activity bag and there is a facilitator that's going to walk you through our Allentown School District budget simulation activities. So I'm going to ask each of our facilitators to wave their hands at their tables. Right. All right. And so this activity is intend to be immersive so you can understand the work that Mr. Cuff, his team, and other district administrators um do on an annual basis to build out our budget. So one of the things you're going to do first in your group at your table, you're going to assign your roles. So there's key roles that are involved in developing and building out a district budget. So you'll find name tags that
079will represent the principal of a school, a teacher, a student, the CFO, the superintendent, a a family member, a school board member, and a community member. And so when getting those particular roles, you'll see with the role that you're assigned to, the responsibility that that role has. And I see there's some members sitting in the back two middle tables. We're going to ask that you got move forward to join a larger table. And the intent of your group is to to budget $3 million. You are serving on the superintendent budget advisory council and your intention is to spend $3 million, but the caveat is that you have different initiatives that actually total $10 million. So, you'll need to read the scenario, see the T district priorities, and as a team, determine what items you would
080like to budget for the school year. And so, your facilitator is going to walk you through the activity. So, everyone will have their roles. You'll see there are sheets within your packets that have the scenario about the district, the key considerations, and you actually have $3 million in play money in your packet that you will pay the CFO once you've determined how you would like to spend your money. You want to bring this So, how's everyone doing? Do you need a little bit more time? A little bit more time. Is okay. Is there any table that has completed the task, the activity? All right, we're going to give you a couple more minutes. So, we're going to get ready to bring us all back together so we can have an opportunity for some of those
081of you who are interested in sharing out to see how the activity went, experiencing the role of our CFO and our superintendent. So, I'm going to give you guys two more minutes to kind of like start to shut down and so we're going to bring it back to the whole group. All right. So, we're going to get ready to have an opportunity from hear from those teams who are interested in sharing their experience serving on the superintendent budget advisory council. So, who would be the first team that would like to share their experience just to kind of reflect how it was serving in a particular role? How 10 more minutes? Our meeting is scheduled to end in 10 minutes. It's okay if you guys want to continue to keep talking. I'll have those share out
082with I know. Is there any team that is done that has completed the task? Okay, great. Wonderful. So, I'm going to ask the other teams to continue working silently and we're going to go to the teams that have completed the uh the task so we can stay on time. So, I'm going to go over to the expense table, the expenses table so we can all come back together. We're going to get ready to start and allow for the tables to share out. So basically what we did is we looked at each category. Everybody if we could allow for the expense table to have the floor. So of the 18 categories number two and number eight pertain to our card our uh scenario card and the mental health supports and the mental health counselors was about
083$1.6 million that we try to carve out. So what uh my eighth grade colleague here did was called Lehigh Valley Health Network and they donated the 1.6 million so we don't have to touch the budget. Okay. So can you have members of your team to kind of share with us how was the experience like so serving in their role having to make those challenging um decisions as either the super can we give the um the kind of come back together so we can hear from the table please? Absolutely. So I think a lot of the discussion was on need and a lot of the discussion for instance uh your eighth grader what's your name? Rosie said that uh you know new textbooks do we really need new textbooks because we're migrating more towards digital technology
084and stuff like that. So there's some potential savings there. Uh in terms of who we we had a we had a superintendent, Rosie was the student advocate. We had the CFO and then we have the parent representative too. So we went through each item. Sure. So how was it serving as the CFO? as her want to share who was a CFO about your experience serving as a CFO having to make the decision as a CFO. You want to share how the experience was? Yeah, I I think was very easy because I'm involved in this area for mental health. Um that's what I I give you my opinion where where we can the idea for example where we we can take off some money for example we can the physical books we can reuse we don't
085have to throw in the garbage re year and years and buy more so recycle and we can put a we need a lot of money in the infrastructure for the classroom. And we really need to put attention on that because is maybe the the building could be all but they need more maintenance, the walls, uh the wall and floors and the bathroom, the cleaning for the school. So I think so we had to put more attention on that. You all had to take time to go through deliberate around all the key top priorities and needs and as a CFO you collected the money. You helped us repurpose in their thinking. Exactly. Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you. Hold on. This table was next. So the first thing our table did was identify the first the
086initiative that was a priority for each person. We did notice that like mental health supports the number two also was listed as add mental health counselors in eight. So then they prioritized out of those two um which one when we added it up we were still over but we stayed true to the initiative that they believed in and we deducted money from each of the costs so that we have an allocation for each of the areas that was the priority. [Applause] I just want to say that this group here has really focused. One of the things that really came out though is our superintendent at this table was having issues because her personal beliefs didn't always align with what the priorities were and that conflict and everyone has articulated those conflicts to themselves. But the
087one thing about this group is they focused on the kids. It was always the kids. What's best for the kids? What's going to engage those kids? What's going to help those kids? Whether it be what you guys have, we have uh we started with um building repairs and safety, but we didn't actually start there. We started with um considering uh mental health counselors uh reducing the class size which right so we we we decided that adding the mental health counselors and the reducing class size would ultimately benefit the reading and math intervention at 1.2 2 million for a lesser cost. Um, and then we added in a bunch a couple other things here. Uh, what did we did? 13 after school enrichment. Uh, 15, family and community engagement staff, 18 special education support. Um, did
088I say 16? 16 curriculum materials refresh and 12 security system upgrades. So that that ended up zero zeroing us out, but I I think we uh covered all of our concerns here at this table. [Applause] Stand up. So, so what we did at this table, we focused on the strategic plan and thought about the whole child framework and each person at the table depending on what their role was, that's how they advocated for the part of the budget that they felt was important to them. Um, overall, I think we covered majority of the things that were important to everyone and we had a principal at our table, so she was very much advocating for what her school needs. So we had reading and math, um hiring teachers, facilities repair, special education, after school, parent engagement
089and mental mental health counselors. Now parent engagement and mental health counselors that was inind because we partnered with other organizations to pro to provide those services. We did the outreach there. We made sure that we were saving the coins and pulling in our our support um systems to take care of that. So I think overall we everyone was provided for. I think the students overall the entire the whole child framework was covered with this model that we did. This is fun. I did lower your classroom with the hiring of the new teachers. See, she's still advocating. So, we're going to go through this group in this table. It's it was easier for us to know which ones we had to add or to take out because we are parents. We know what's in the school,
090what's needed and what's not needed. It's hard. It's, how can I say it? In the office, you get to see it, read it, and you just choose. Us parents, we know. We can sit there and look at this list, and right off the bat, we know which five we need right away. Why? Because we are in there daily. We see what we need. We know what best for our kids. We chose, but we were still in between, but majority was. We definitely need the reading and the math. Why? Because most these kids will not go nowhere. They do not know how to read and do basic math. Please bring back the old school math. This new math is horrible. It's horrible. Most these parents can't even figure it out. It's horrible. Secondly, the um adding
091more teachers. Yes, but we can add more teachers if we had the budget because how can I say it? The schools need more teachers that are going to be there for the kids and understand the kids. The how can I say this? Not to be so crazy, but the the tech the the computer stuff, take it out and bring back the books. We don't need the computers that thing. I mean, I know the I know the world is changing to computers, but let them learn in a in a off in a class. This thing right now, I bet you on your money everybody's kids is going to get glasses now, right? We got to money for glasses now because of the laptops. But then we also did the expanding for prek because more kids is
092coming in and the family and community engagement. We definitely need that. But then everything else, like I said, at this table was still undecisive. So I'm sorry. We were undecisive because of me. That's why I was complaining a lot. Sorry. And thank you. Hello. Hello. Hello. Mic check. Mic check. So, we're team grant. And um what we did was we first looked at the budget. We realized what the deficit that we needed. We were lowered by 500,000. We needed to account day four. And thanks to our superintendent over here, she noticed there was excess fat in there as well. So, if you look at category four and 14, uh the roof and HVAC is in both categories. So that's where we noticed where we should lower our funds from first. Then we came and focused
093on what we can improve it on and where we can leave the money at. So we want to make sure we can improve on our mental health and the children's education as well. So what we did was we just lowered all 500,000 from there, especially since the buildings have been previously repaired as well. And we left that for classroom improvements and after school enrichment. We didn't we didn't cut anything else and No surplus. No. Great. So, question. How does everyone like being a CFO or a decision maker in a school district? So, so it was great. I I think this was a great a great activity that we were able to give give some insight on what it's