001e e e the um March 24th 2024 special called meeting at the Robson County school board meeting will now come to order if you would please silence all your cell phones and electronic devices and join me in a moment of silence thank you if you would please stand Mr Clint Corbin is going to lead us in our Pledge of Allegiance salute Al to the flag of the United States of America and to the repic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with libery and justice for all thank you you may be seated okay board members you have before you a uh an agenda for this special called board meeting and I think our first item is review of substitute contract board members I know you had uh requested that we gather some information
002uh regarding our substitute contract with ESS and I think our representatives from esss for being here tonight and uh I know that you had asked us to gather some information I know uh we had sent a PowerPoint presentation with some slides to you uh I think we'd also sent some other information to you I do have a hard copy of that for you if you'd like and I'll share that with you again we also have a summary document from ESS and I will send that to you I'd also like to share with you a document that came from our HR department I think this was shared with you I think at our October um planning session we had during October I think it has been updated and present some information from the HR department I
003do have a an estimate from our finance department that if we were to to uh leave the substitute contracting service and go back to inhouse I do have some cost of what that would be to the district I'll be glad to share that with you if you want that now or if you want to uh have that along with some discussion and the last piece of information I have for you is a uh survey we had asked principles uh four or five questions regarding substitute teaching Ser survey of substitute teaching Service uh we asked them their overall satisfaction with the service how many Subs were available for their building uh the training that the substitutes receive uh responsiveness of the provider uh number five we ask principles uh if we were to consider going back
004to a or using a vendor or managing that internally you'll see that uh responses from the principles there and then the next uh one to two three pages just had some comments from our principles regarding uh their their input to the question to ask about uh substitute services so i' be glad to uh answer any questions that you might have had or discussion they might have come up again we have our vendors here uh I call them more than vendors they're our partners they work very well with us and they're here if you have questions of them and we'd be glad to uh let them provide any information or discuss anything that you would like to well I've kind of said U you know my piece of my my concern is how we're going to
005look on the budget coming up uh because one thing that's missing in all this wonderful information is what does actually cost us you know for $1.2 million which is what I'm assuming it is are we getting what we pay for so I like all the presentation stuff but that's always good to know what it cost to taxpayers and is it worth it that's my question the budget looks good we're good but we're going to have constraints on the budget I just want the board to be able to make a decision before it's too late um so maybe you can give us a little insight on how we're looking on the budget side I know it's early I know there's a lot of figures we got to look at but are there programs we're going to
006have to cut are there programs we're not going to be able to do and that'll help me decide which direction to go sure and board members uh the document that's that's coming around to you is what our finance office has compiled for us um regarding substitute costs substitute services and then what uh what they believe would be additional costs to the district should we re resume using a resume that inhouse uh so for the audience purposes in 2022 23 uh we spent 931000 a half on salary and benefits of substitutes uh the system adopted ESS in 2324 and that was an actual cost $1.17 million for substitute services and in 2024-25 we have through this uh through June is estimated uh to be 1.016 million um those are exact costs that that we have incurred
007in the estimated cost I don't know if you want to talk about seal of the estimates that you provided there the 1.0 for the remainder of this year that's that's actual number of we have so this includes it's my understanding and maybe I just completely misunderstood that so maybe it's not as bad as I was thinking is whatever we were paying before there's an 18% fee on top of those salaries that we pay is that not correct this document says 32% there is an overhead fee that we pay in addition to that I think the 18% Mr rice is what we use when we budget a position if if we approve a new position um whatever it happens to be I budget 18% over that for their souring benefits I think the markup that we
008pay for the substitute services so this is roughly $200,000 difference what we spend in 20 real quickly based on the what we what we filled in 2023 24 assuming $75 a day it's like a $250,000 premium that that they would receive for the services rough numbers are youcreate well I was just going strictly off the fill rate if we were filling them ourselves not not not counting the additional spaces I was just saying we we our discussion was to figure out exactly what it was the dollar cost was I guess if using the service versus not so so I I think I think that needs to be considered and I think the documents that we talked about last time and the documents that you have have talked about an increase in fill rates and so
009we've discussed um with our HR department with our assistant directors we've talked about ways to incentivize more teachers to and encouraging them to be here in terms of our perfect attendance program and things like that um the other programs that that have been shared that we would have to pick up the costs of uh would be uh the recruitment training and onboarding that ESS takes care of at the current time uh as we talked about Medicals insurance right now our the service does not provide medical insurance if we have employees that work uh on average more than 25 hours per week they would be eligible for um for our in insurance and Miss Kleiner has estimated that around $500,000 so if a substitute regularly works you might as well say three to four days per
010week they would be eligible for our insurance and so that's an estimated cost of 528 I think that's uh probably on the low very conservative side saying because again even if they're eligible for it does not mean that they would be able to to accept it or to take it uh we would have workman's cop we would have insurance um um for the substitutes that we would do and then we would need to provide a calling system that we um that currently again is provided through our contract with ESS and last year I believe that calling system was an at a cost of $177,000 and that's that was last year's cost so we would have to pick that up along with the additional manh hours in our HR department I have a I have a
011question on so in 2022 23 if I'm reading this right we spent $931,000 to fill 7,000 assignments and in 23 24 we spent 1.17 to fill over 10,000 am I reading that right I think the other two things that have been brought to my attention that were I've heard mentioned in discussion and one deals with uh our retired teachers uh I think there has been some misinformation out there I'm not sure where it has come from but we tried to find the source of that um currently a retired teacher can work for ESS as much as they want to so they could work every day is my understanding that that's correct uh if a retired teacher were if if they were under our purview and they were then our came back as employees of the
012district they would be extremely limited uh based on their retirement benefits of what they could receive so I know that's one thing that that I think there have been some discussion about the second piece I think uh surrounded apparently I went back and looked at some minutes and there was a lot of discussion when when the board took over this program and there was discussion about uh paying uh substitutes on a weekly basis and again right now uh ESS pay subs weekly and you you do direct deposit as well and those are two pieces that our system cannot do we we cannot pay on a weekly basis and we cannot do direct deposits for for substitute teachers um again I think the Board needs to know those two things as as you consider the contract
013that's out there okay I just think the bottom line it boils down to my interest is which way can we pay our subs more but I mean to me the way that we're going to get subs is to pay them more so which one of these if you can just tell me from the bottom line come on you got you got a magic ball or something you got to be able to tell you know what I'm saying I mean I think that should be our goal I think the only way we're ever going to be able to secure more subs is to up the P am I wrong I mean I think that's one approach to it I I do believe that that that's something that we've had in preliminary budget discussions and and and
014I'm like Mr rice we we're not at a place in budget preparation right now where I can say this is what it's going to cost if we raise subsid pay $5 $10 or $20 you know we we know that's going to be an additional cost uh but we just because of timing we've not put that budget together sure and it's complete form to have for you I guess what I've always talked about is the coverage and I hear that there's not good coverage that we have classrooms that are having to be split instead of having three classrooms we're having two which the numbers are way too high uh for those teachers and all these numbers in this survey look great except for one what's that one number please rate the availability of substitutes for your
015building M and it's not even average it's 2.61 now the rest of these numbers are wonderful but what is the bottom line what do we need we need people in the seats So based on the numbers from what I'm hearing it cost us around 250,000 Josh I think that was right that's if you if you assume a $75 day pay rate at the number of folks that we actually had fill positions last year it's like 246 and some change is the 32% of what that number is and I know that's not going to be exact just because that's probably not the average daily but it it and if you take the 1.77 from ESS actual cost and subtracted it was right at 245 so I mean I think and that and that even I mean
016I interested to see that just because that was filling 3,000 more requests year over year too so it may not even I mean I I don't know personally I I don't know why I had in my head that this was costlier than it than it is um I uh if you're 46% increase in fills year over year I mean if I'm understanding right I mean it's just from the projected from 2425 if my math is Right $ 85,000 $423 more but the fill rate's a lot better than it was back in 20 22 and 23 words I'm just taking that number and that the fill rates this one is I I think the one thing that as I was studying this the first time that y'all brought this to us was that I was surprised
017by the increase in the the amount of vacancies that we were having and that has that that completely surprised me so it's it's not it's not a true cost when you go back 22 23 24 because the increases are going are going up every year so so a dollar amount um budget arily you know is is is probably not the way to look at that when we start looking at the the requests that we're having and the percentage percentage that they match that and I think you have a sheet or two that that show fill rates and the number of requests I think we talked about that a little bit at at the last board meeting U you know that that's a concern too the the number of staff that we have out um I
018think that carries over into our other contracted services that we've talked about of of having a viable Workforce and again when you're looking at a 2.73% unemployment rate it it is tough to find people to work um Miss Hogan you mentioned you know raising those rates and raising those uh those things we we do hope that would help and we hope those uh those programs along with the incentives that sometimes they provide to substitutes um would improve that but but also I'm like Mr White do hear from from buildings that that regularly have to to split classes and and share teachers and share students I guess the question there is I I don't know I don't know how that's going to change if our HR department is doing that on a daily basis we're still
019going to have to be out recruiting we're still going to have to be finding those people um we're going have to purchase a calling system we're going to have to take that over ourselves and then and U start trying to find those people and recruit those people in addition to our other staff that we're recruiting as well again we have our HR department here if you'd like to hear from them we have our vendors here if you'd like to hear from them have our finance office here if you'd like to hear from them I've never heard y this it's not really a motion I mean it's just discussion there's nothing on the table I just I just want to make sure that when it comes budget time um I don't want to use the word
020like I mean I know this makes certain things easier for people but you spend taxpayers dollars and if they're going to be tight this year I just wanted to have the conversation and if everybody's fine with it I've got that's fine I just I don't have to make a decision in a couple of months on not funding something when we're F funding something that makes our job easier that's the only problem I would have and I understand the business I understand how it works I'm like Jeff when I see 2.6 the most important factor on there I know we re BET our cleaning servic is because they're out of three just having some discussion is our estimated June 2025 number is that estimated on only filling so many classes or filling a percentage of the
021classes what is that estimate on she tell me that again it's it's what we've spent two dates plus a regular estimate a add number so monthly average for SE uh why I said September April May well if they're making if they're going to make less in 24 25 than they did in 2324 is that because they're not filling as many classrooms or because we don't have have as many classroom openings this this estimate 8296 that's only year to date I'm I'm sorry I'm not looking at that page I I was looking at this are we are we on Pace to have few requests this year to prob more request because we're looking to increase based on right now our bills will be increased 16% so usually request will be more as well we're already at
02212,000 bills at the end of February or excuse me 12,000 request February had 14,000 requests last year so how are we spending $150,000 Less in money that's just well that's all we got to go on right now and they didn't average their numbers the same way the money was averaged is that is that correct yes I took the am exact amount ofs that we've done so far dived okay okay again an average it's kind of you know depending on what the job is it pays different amounts on that P different amounts um so that can have some you know discrepancy there we tend to have a lot of request towards the end of the school year and so even though Sheed average for the whole year it might even be more as we finish out
023the year I would have to look at last year's request and Mar to look at that but that also might be a reason why it's not exactly the same the schools individually that are in the yellow now were those any the ones I'm just looking at this this page on here that breaks it down by school the few of those that it's kind of poor was were we doing any better at all on those theate by school yes the first school year prior to us coming in is on the right and the First full year completed is on the left okay and so we also have this year's data as well so have anybody that's has like a struggle area is out in their schools recrui we focus our and our sub to try to
024drive even our incentives to try to drive them to those particular schools so we do a lot of gift card drawings you'll see stuff towards the back of the packet that's all included baskets anything we can do to get folks to work one Lear that this is just for my own I guess information out out of out of any any school district that you guys help what's the what's the fill rate that you think man we are just blowing it out of the water here what's what's that Target where you guys are thinking we're doing an excellent job I know it's not 100 it's really difficult to say because it depends on the district and locations of the district you know is it Urban or Suburban so it's it's really difficult but we always want
025to be in the 9s right so um you know we have Dixon County which were 0393 so we would consider that like that's definitely know thumbs up so yeah so we always try to get as as as high as possible but also once we get higher in the fill rates right if we brought you up from 70% to a 90 definitely would be you know obviously more fs and more costs sure oh yeah absolutely another thing not having enough Subs Carly has always said that she would love to have 350 substitutes in our pool and we're around 250 so that's why we can't fill as many because we don't have enough people to fill them so it's just a struggle to find people why are we not retaining people have we are is it exit
026interviews being done um yes so we did um what we always first of all there's always a turnover in this in this field we always see that turnover sometimes that means they're being HED by District sometimes that just means this is a temporary position until they so it's something we do expect budget for especially over the summer months which is cral for us to however answer your question we do interviews we did survey subes recently to see what reason would best influence them to accept more positions or to stay on longterm and results it's mostly okay that's what I was going to say the counties that are having higher fill rates is it because they're paying more and it's in addition to yes in addition to all the other incentives that we do the weekly
027pay when you combo that with a little bit more money yes but I guess my bottom line question was they're paying lowerre okay previously this District was a little bit higher Hamilton County which is shanoa and the pay rate is $59 a day struggled until we were able to implement a bonus program so it was basically if you work four five days a week you would get a kicker based on each one of those levels hit and that's been tremendously successful for us there so it's still $59 a day but if you work three days four days or five days um get that at the end of the we and that kind of pushes people to work more so they definitely get more incentivised so that that's been successful we we've rolled that out from
028a couple different districts to try and help boost that base pay rate it is difficult to change because we are able to hire the I think we we're at 41 on this paper I think we're at 462 now since we started 80 of those substitutes came from the district the difference of that is all new hires that we've hired since then so we do expect turnover in this industry but we also a little bit more and I can speak to the pay being advantageous because we increased our daily substitute pay for vacancies in special ed CBC classroom special ed preschool and the star program and we were able to fill a lot more vacancies that way really helped out our special Department um because that's it's a hard day at work and by giving them
029um better pay were incre those bill rates specifically in special Li so you guys are able to they're able to pay subs differently based on the job so to speak Bas our BAS at when did we start basing it on the job what which year was that the special CC we did that just this year because I I don't remember passing anything about that paying more to anyone I think there's something that they can do that we couldn't do no because we pay more when we pay out more we have an agendum to the contract back and see how that was I thought we paid just the grades of whether you was a retired teacher or had a college degree and then if he was just here to help us as a sub there was
030three different levels is is what I remember voting on to begin with and if you if it's a vacancy and she can help me you get the state rate if it's if it's a if it's a position that does not have a teacher so these positions where we have C we can't hire a CDC assistant so it's a vacancy meaning there is not a staff person hired for that job it's an opening that's where we're paying them the greater amount because it's the job are we still trying to hire for that job absolutely yes I would almost rather raise that up or we're hiring that person instead of paying an extra 32% of of what we're spending because it's like today if we if we were decide to raise all of the salaries of of
031all of them yes it would help them but it also their pay increases too so we're stuck at a 32% no matter what we do we're paying 32% more that's where I don't know if a new contract might be better it goes back to that cleaning contract that we discussed earlier about performance and people not showing up and deducting so if I'm at a 2.6 satisfaction rate on providing Subs you know there's no penalty there um I mean they're still getting paid whether they fail 50% or 100% their paid percentage is the same but at what point you look that you know performance Falls below as I looked at these charts and there's several in there with 50 and 60 is night and yellow and I think I would probably include anything below a 70
032in the yellow if you look on the leftand chart there's only one school in yellow but there's 54% fi rate 63 67 55 67 i' put those in yellow because I'm assuming yellow means not good well I haded yellow if they went down from the previous year that's why it was in yellow oh not because it's satisfactory just because if it was up or down correct so like from when you all had it in house and then when we went to ESS the first year if we oh I see you did okay and we had one that went down so you're not really saying the 55% is acceptable you just didn't mark it because it was actually up from the 33% from the previous correct okay only gets paid for the jobs are filled so
033it benefits them to F more because they'll get paid only not we can just sit here guys unless there's a motion I gu so unless there's a motion I guess we can move on move on all right we'll move on then members item two on our uh agenda this evening is to look at our Landscaping bids and as you'll recall um we bid this out by quadrants so we've divided the county into four quadrants uh Northwest Northeast South and Central and uh it's part of the bid specs uh a contractor is only able to capture two quadrants and so from Reading from the first page as an example we see the Northwest Quadrant uh you see the names of vendors through there uh what they bid for that quadrant we budget for 25 regular mowings
034we budget for some mulch uh we budget for bush hogging on some certain properties uh twice a year finish mowing some properties and some Landscapes at at other times so you see from the uh uh the first vendor in the Northwest Quadrant uh three C's Lawn Care uh would be the recommended uh low bid 47725 and also three se's lawn care in the Northeast quadrant price of 48475 um page two the South quadrant you see uh same structure Stewart's Lawn Care who's one of our current vendors 32688 would be the low bidder there in the central quadrant uh halfway down the column dunbar's lawn care 47650 and so that would be those would be the numbers that uh we would build into the budget based upon uh three C's receiving the two quadrants Northwest and
035Northeast and then the South quadrant going to Stewarts and the central quadrant going to dunar uh we would recommend those low bids are we doing business now with all three of these uh no sir we are not we have checked uh checked references uh I know on the first page 3 C's is they provided business references and we've checked with those and did we follow up with dunar as well yes Ste steuarts has been doing one of those so it looks like only we'll have two new vendors I mean if we go this rout two new vendors and then stewards which is a previous okay are we open for discussion um I I've just talked to um Ed E Robertson with Coach Chapman and he was he loves what he's got right now and it
036may not be something that we can do but um he just said in there had been two others in the past and with one they only did it for just a you know for a few weeks and then had to make a change but it was terrible and U anyway when I talked to him he said please don't just look at the lowest said in other words get me somebody that's that'll do the job right with one they were uh mowing it early in the mornings and this isn't who they've got now they love who they've got now but they were mowing it early in the mornings and it was blowing grass on the sidewalk and then the buses came and then it all got tracked in the school and then that didn't get cleaned
037up and it was just a mess and and couldn't really communicate with them and said he likes who they've got now because they've got a good communication and they've got schedules the way they need them and we may not I mean that may not be what the vote is tonight but U who do they have there they've got whites and they had had two different ones before I remember when we had to change after a couple of weeks on that's been a while back but I do remember we had a low bid get the bid and then they couldn't do the work and anyway he just said they've been so pleased that the two before them it they certainly weren't pleased and everything's been so good that was that was his request was they're doing
038a good job and they listen to what they say who was it who was it again at East Robertson you remember the name Wes it's like 16,000 more expensive and this is for the northeastern uh quad sorry I was looking Northwest North you should be the Northeast right am I wrong or there five new ones I mean I don't some these names are just not familiar to me and I'm pretty familiar with grass what are you familiar with oh [Music] ohcap do want okay I mean I just kind of surprised that are are the these local people mostly I believe D is alumni of our am yeah I believe and that's kind of unusual isn't it coming out okay that's what I thought are you familiar with any I mean you may not want to
039tell me that see okay I got you so how do we compare these is it in the Northeast quadrant out beside this one it says this does not include Robert F wood all he did not been on all schools in that quadrant so we wouldn't want to we I did not include him in the numbering because he wouldn't Mo the one school you would have to add in that school for all of the needs the 25 and all the other and that's not a true representation of where he would fall first second third because he didn't include that one okay well here we are you want a motion for all for individual the kind of motion you want give me I'll be happy I better than nothing okay Ian I guess motion to approve as
040recommended I mean okay if we want to change one I'm assuming somebody could add to it so motion to approve as suggest okay right now we have a motion on forward do we have a second second Motion in a second okay now what else would anybody like to say do we have anything more as far as um we probably ask when this is all that we're being given out do we have anything more as far as I know y'all check their backgrounds do we have anything to check their references or like do they do other schools does is there anybody that can speak for any of these others just to let us the city of okay they cont and so the the references they provided were contacted and I believe that was part of the
041B pack they to provide references so also had references city of G and Williams was there anybody on the list that didn't have have references that you could that you got did you get good reviews from all the references I guess check all their references gotta still have a motion in a second I me I would love to be able to go with what they have requested but it is over $2,000 difference and it's one school left out completely so be kind of hard to go with that one to be able to justify why you would go with that and that's the only way you cannot go with a low bit the way I understand it you anything question okay question's been called all those in favor of approval make it known by saying I
042I oppose no motion passes 5 Z comments I think I'll pass I think I'm good comments I'm good okay um I'm gonna go back to the very first one we was talking about um I think we do need to be looking at what other companies can do looking at it maybe less percentages um if we go up on our substitute teachers it makes it y I understand y'all work very hard so don't take this personally it makes their job easier to hire people if we go up to $120 a day but it also cost us a whole lot more because we're still paying that 32% and that 32% is what I'd love to see drop so we can what is the difference in the two so the long terms are lower because they work you
043know steady long you work for 20 plus days so it's a low markup so we we could look at doing something like that the other thing I just want to kind of mention because you know we pay the substitutes it's $75 right plus like sud workman comp know all that other stuff is kind of added in right so I like to try and tell customers and I did an analysis on your account about 85 cents of every dollar goes towards that substitute and taxes right so 15 cents gos and Becky andring and incentives things of that S software Prov software right yeah i' love to see something like that Josh I don't think I have much nine weeks left right count the days welcome back yeah okay I don't have anything either so meeting [Music]
044is but are there other commission expenses besides for