Wickliffe Conversations For The Commons - Lew Galante
8:49PM Dec 11, 2023
Speakers:
Julie Ramos
Joe Spiccia
Lew Galante
Keywords:
wickliffe
efficiencies
district
lew
conversations
talk
stakeholders
students
joe
people
funding
resources
community
perry
treasurer
idea
work
innovation
important
transportation
The Campus of Wickliffe is a community of learners. We invite you to become part of this community by listening to our podcast, Conversations From the Commons. When we think about what is the purpose of education, our responsibility is to help students along the path to becoming not to tell them what to become. We work to inspire students to learn, lead and serve. And through our conversations, we hope that you find inspiration and opportunities to connect with us. I'm Char Shryock, an educational leader partnering with the district to facilitate these monthly conversations. Today, I'm joined by superintendent Joseph Spiccia, Julie Ramos, the Director of Strategic Innovation. And Lew Galante, Treasurer, as we talk about Wickliffe schools on the path to becoming. So Lew, it's so nice to have you with us today. Tell us a little bit about you in the district. How long have you been treasurer here?
I've been in the district since I think January of 2020. And prior to that, I have experience as a school district treasurer since about 1993 94.
That's excellent. And I'm so glad to have you and Joe together, because I think a lot of people don't realize that in a district, the only direct hires by the board are the treasurer and the superintendent positions, and that the two of you are such partners in the work. And I think the role of treasurer so often people see solely from the financial lens of the district. So I'm wondering how you see your role in supporting students on the path to becoming? Because you're not just a member of the business side? I know you're an important partner for Joe, how do you see yourself in that role?
So you're right. Typically, the business side is is really what my role and function is. Where's the money coming from? Where's it going? But we have conversations on a regular basis to talk about what are the needs of the students? What are the needs of the staff? And what are the needs of the stakeholders in the community? I look at my role as saying, Okay, how can we be more efficient on the business side to be able to provide those resources to meet those needs. So I can provide ideas, I can provide support. But really, it comes down to my ability to find efficiencies in the budgeting and the planning process that enables them to be able to provide those resources.
It's interesting when you're talking about efficiencies, you know, Julie, you're the Director of Innovation. Right. And Joe and Jullie have talked in the past about the innovative spaces here. So I'm just wondering, as you started to talk about the Campus of Wickliffe and looking for efficiencies? How did you wrap your brain around the innovative learning spaces? Because this wasn't a typical building project or typical funding model? Are you asking me here? Yeah, well, I know. Yeah, Julie, I think looked at it from an innovative way. But really, your funding and your input, I think was important. So how did you approach that whole financial process, when planning for such an innovative space,
A lot of the planning took place before I got here. But with any project like this, you have to engage the staff, the students, the board, the parents, the stakeholders in the community, anybody who has a stake in this community who pays tax to this community, is a stakeholder. And you have to look at what the needs are of kids today and tomorrow. And that's really, I think there were hundreds of meetings held with the different stakeholders to say, what are the needs? How do we support those needs? And both Joe and Jluie do a great job at the innovative process, because so often, people following a model for education that's so similar to the next district and everything else. What's happening in this district in this building is, is the innovation that you just don't see in other districts. So again, it happened beforehand, but it's evolving stakeholders, and how can we educate for tomorrow?
When you talk about involving stakeholders, you know, now that the building is here, and the teachers are teaching and the students are learning? What's the sustainability look like for you? Now? What kinds of conversations are you and Joe having now thinking about continuing that stakeholder support and continuing to support the innovation?
So here it is 9:31 and we've already had two of those conversations today. And it revolving around the efficiencies and things that we've talked about. So education evolves from day to day from year to year. And we're just not stagnate in our ideas. And so we look at, again, going back to efficiencies going back to the innovation, how do we sustain it, well, we look at multiple options. And you can, you can plan for one idea. And if you if you're in a tunnel, and that idea is either sustainable or not, but you have to get a look at upside there and say, Hey, there's, there's 10 different options to get to that same goal. And so then we think about, is there a different path is there a different funding model or different funding source? We're not locked into to just the local and state revenue, there are,and again, Joe and Julia found so many different sources of revenue to bring in to help support this.
That's really what's powerful about, I would say that triad is really those ideas of when it comes when innovation and efficiency comes together, and you have to work out that, you know, Option A or Option B, Option C, there are times that I'll bring an idea to Joe and to Lou, and, you know, there are other perspectives that I haven't considered, but from a financial standpoint, and from also just the engagement and policy and procedure and how that plays out from the campus side. Those are the sides and the information that Joe and Lew bring into it so that when it's coming, we've thought about the different layers, you know, all the things that go into making a decision on how you're going to implement moving forward. So I think that's very, powerful.
And very rarely is there an idea that says, hey, this is great for kids, and there's money already available? So what happens is, here's the idea, how do we get there, and so sometimes the idea changes into something better, sometimes maybe not as good based upon those resources. And then it's not as you talk about sustainability, it's not just the resources to get it off the ground, it is the continuation of resources to make it sustainable. And sometimes when you do that, maybe it's the general fund that can pay for it, because we found a better way of doing something we're already doing until then you replace it with a cost that's there. And sometimes you just have to find additional resources.
I know Joe's spent a lot of time building those community partnerships. We talked about that last month with Leah and the Community Resource Center and how important partnerships are there. When you're talking about looking beyond local and state resources for funding, what kind of partnerships are you thinking about? Are you looking at corporate partnerships? Are you looking at foundational partnerships?
We are we continuously look at foundational partnerships, and we have some things in the works. We are looking right now at the Cleveland Foundation, a recent grant that we received came from the governor's office of community and community initiatives and so forth. But I think when we talk about sustainability and continuing to grow it from an innovative perspective, we also think about what we have to do, what are those compliance things that we have to do? And how can we creatively manage those things, which frees up money for some of the more creative things? I think where Lew brings a lot of expertise to the table he's a broad, creative thinker when it comes to the financial end of things. And actually, when it comes to the educational end of things, too. He he certainly could have been an educational leader from the perspective of curriculum as well, if you come to know him, but but from the financial perspective, he'll look at a situation say, you know, what if we were to partner with a another school district to manage this particular issue, or what if we were to partner with a local corporation to manage this situation? And are there things that aren't done typically? Because typically, school districts feel handcuffed by the rules, and I don't mean we break rules, because we don't do that. But we see, you know, so for the funding streams, there's local interstate, and there's federal funding streams. That's all we have, what we think about and what Lou does a really nice job of looking at creatively, how do we take advantage of those three funding streams? Okay, by maybe changing the way we spend money? And what are the funding streams outside of the traditional ways of funding a project that we can make happen? I think it's also fair to say, we're not afraid to say to an organization that either it's a corporation or a foundation and say, Hey, I'll tell you what, fund us for a year on this. And if you don't like it, take your money away. But if you like it, keep helping us. And we've been successful with that. You know, and I think that's going to help us and that, that puts I will say this, it also puts a stress on Lew's department. Because, you know, I may call him and say, hey, we have $25,000 for this project, which by the way is a project we currently just received $25000 for, by the way. So this is what we want to do with it, how do we need to do it, and then his team goes to work on making that work. And, and I have to believe somebody on his team is thinking, wish those guys would stop that. But but you know, the very nature of how we do businesses is a team. So even though it'd be easier to do it this way, you know, loose team will always come back and try to find a way and in fact, not try to find a way, actually find a way to help us make something work.
That's that's the innovation that you talked about bringing in is there's 610 school districts in Ohio, there's probably 600 of them, that are just doing business the same way they did it last year, in the year before that, and, you have to find a different way of doing business. And we talked about efficiencies, we talked about sustainability, we talked about innovation, and those all go together. Because the way, if nobody changed the ways of education, we would still be in a one room schoolhouse like we were in 1930. And now, years later, we're not and we're not because of the innovators who change and push the limits a little bit to do things better and more efficiently. And that's, and that's what Wickliffe is doing. That other districts aren't.
hey, you're talking about efficiency, and you've used efficiencies multiple times here. Can you give an example of where you took a look at your budget or where spending was and found a way to do it better to free up funds to do a specific thing, because I think that would help people really understand when we talk about budget efficiencies, what that looks like.
Too bad people cannot see the facial expressions right now. So I am going to make note of this, the excitement of both of their eyes just lit up because it's not just one right now they could rattle off. So I wish, I just want everyone to get the visual of the excitement.
I will jump into this one. I take us back to about 2018 or 19. I'm not positive, what year it was, matters not. At that point in time, though, we had a full time in the district., we had a full time treasurer. And we had a full payroll accounts payable, we had an entire Treasury staff. Okay. And we looked at our district and said, do we really need all of this? So I think the first conversation that Lew and I had was at the Ohio School Boards conference in either 18 or 19. And, you know, we tossed out the idea of what if we work together? And what if we created an efficiency for the financial operation? So that came together? Like we said in January of 2020. That move alone, save the district $150,000.
Yeah, probably at least that. And the way we did that is I was in Perry at the time. And, so I had the same staff, we have people doing accounts payable, people doing payroll, people doing grants people doing, and in a small district, like Perry or in Wickliffe, you don't necessarily need a full time 40 hour a week person to do function A and Wickliffe didn't need it, Perry didn't need it. So we were able to utilize existing staff members, kind of consolidate them, and then have a reduction to, to those full time staffing. And we did it mostly through attrition, I think it was all through attrition.
We didn't lose a single staff member, nobody lost their job.
It was due to retirements and people leaving that we were able to reduce the full time equivalent people by a couple people, which saved $150,000 plus on an annual basis. And it's just too,and I'll do it to myself because I was I was a shared treasure at the time too. If I'm going to a healthcare consortium meeting for both districts, rather than two treasures, going to that same meeting, or a county treasurer's meeting, or an OSBA conference or anything else, you're only using that resource once rather than twice. So we're able to look at those as efficiencies and able to reduce the time that it takes to do that. Now, certainly all the functionality, everybody has to get paid in both districts, all the purchase hourse have to be paid, that stuff all has to happen. But some of those things can be done by, if that's a 30 hour job and a 30 hour job, you don't have two full time people you have 60 hours, that's a person and a half. And that and those are the efficiencies that we looked at. And so So, in addition, Perry was able to reduce their costs as well.
I'm going to share one more that I think sometimes our listeners don't know about and don't understand is so a year ago, we were paying three principals and three assistant principals, we have reduced our cost, we have actually reduced our administrative costs by moving into the big space. Not a single administrator lost their job. But we reduced administrative costs because we looked at, do we really need three people to work 260 days a year? Okay? Do we really need other people to work 220 or 240 days a year. So what we're able to do is now we have none of our administrators, none of our building administrators work a 260 day contract. So we gave them the gift of time. For example, Lori Rodman is the head of school, she works a 220 day contract rather than 260 Day contract. She, she received, okay, by taking a new position, the gift of 40 days. And every single one of our administrators went from, another example, Shila Urban was a high school principal was working toward a 260 day contract she now works a 200 day contract, we gave her 60 days back to her life. Now, it did result in in a little bit of a pay cut, it did, and she knew that going in. But the trade off was you mean, I'm gonna get all these days, that work life balance back, that's what we gave. And that was an efficiency. And I will add another another piece to the efficiency, it also was an effectiveness result, they became more effective. And I think, happier people, I mean, they, they're busy people when they're at work, but they're happier, because they have more time off. And that matters a lot to people. So that's two examples of how those efficiencies came together.
I'll throw third one out there as well, just when you have people who might serve in multiple districts, and whether it's myself, or it's a payroll or an accounts payable person, and you start looking at how you're doing business and vendors that you're using and everything else, you could look at things and hey, why are we spending this in this district for this product, and we're doing it over in another district for less for the same product, you can actually see and say, okay, we can reduce cost on the vendor, for the same product for you know, and you do that across the board a number of areas. So it's hard to pinpoint how much that may have saved. But it's just something that you that you can see as you go through.
But in a district where you know, a cost of a curriculum, adoption of new materials might be $50,000, or adding an additional support staff member to support the needs of students might be $70000 or $80,000. When you're looking at efficiencies that are saving $100,000, saving $50,000 in one area, it's allowing you to have access to other people resources or other material resources.
And, whatever the needs of the kids in the building are, it puts more options on the table to better serve those needs.
So we've talked about vendor deals and community partners. Let's talk about the budget process. Because I think people when they look at their school districts see the academic lens of the school district, but they don't often see that it's often the largest employer in the community. It is a major business in the community. It has a business side to it. So Lew, you're running really the business side, Joe, you're looking at the academic side, and then you're partnering together to make those two pieces come together. How does that work for both of you? Because you know, Joe's lens is usually student teacher academic focus and and his vision and your lens is five year forecast budget meeting the needs of my stakeholders. What are those conversations look like when you come together in in building that like whole district model?
Well first of all, our existing staff, our existing utilities and insurances and everything else that we have, covers more than 90% of the budget. So in the grand scheme of things, a lot of that's already covered. The other piece of that is, is really is Joe, in meeting with his stakeholders and meeting with his teachers and his principals, and kids and says, here's what our needs are and and it's it shouldn't be a conversation, should never be a conversation, that says yes or no, there's not money, but it's really comes down to okay, how do we make that happen? And there's choices and those are the choices that, and sometimes that's where the innovation comes in and says, Okay, we'd like to do all this. We only have the resources for X and Y and Z's still hanging out there, so that do we find additional resources for Z? Or do we get a little more creative and say, hey, if we, if we just kind of move this over a little bit, we could actually hit it both targets here. And so those are the conversations that ensue. It should never be, no, we're not going to do this, or we can't do this. It's how do we do it?
Well that's clearly how you're so successful in the model that you have. It's and what I'm hearing from all three of you, Julie, you use the word triad, that it's it's all three perspectives that are coming together around the table to take a look at what are the needs for the kids. And the respect, then I'm hearing from each of you for each other's perspective on what you're bringing to the table, I think is why you're being so successful in this work. What are you excited about? Like, we're all about innovation. So what are you excited about? What's noodling around in the back of your heads as, I can't wait to have this conversation! This is really where we're trying to find funding, or where we really want to go next. Is there anything that you feel that you could let out in this podcast of what might be looming?
I would say something I'm excited about is looking at transportation and the ways that we can partner and be innovative with transportation and what works for multiple organizations and the cost, and what that could afford school districts to do if your dollars weren't locked up with with the cost of transportation. So I'm excited about those conversations and how we can maximize opportunities in a in a possibly bigger way. So more people win more districts win.
I'll agree with it. I know that state legislators in our area, have, for a number of years talked about a different model of transportation. And we've had a couple of conversations already about when we look at the costs that are tied into just getting kids to and from school, there has to be a better way to do that. And so so we're starting to engage in those conversations. I think there's, again, a funding source available for the some of that. And, and it's one of the things that we sit there and say, Hey, we need to do better for our stakeholders in that area, because that will free up some resources. And so that's an area that that helps us better meet the needs of kids.
And I agree with all of that, but also say the potential to share other services with other organizations to help our students becomes critically important to an effectiveness and efficiency process. And what that requires, because anything like that is going to be looked at with some level of suspicion. Okay, so I'll use transportation as an example of the ladders thinking about some some educational services, but transportation as an example, when we first privatized transportation in Wickliffe, I was just coming on board. So this is better than 10 years ago, our buses that showed up with community bus services, our vendor, said community bus service on the side, the community didn't like it, they wanted to see what city school district on the site. Okay, so we change that and put Wickliffe City School District on the side, but it's still community bus services, buses. So as we look at shared services into the future, educational shared services, do they have to be Wickliffe educational services? Or can they be educational services with a partner from outside of Wickliffe? And I think what the community needs to hear and understand is if we can say, let's pretend , we could save a half a million dollars by doing this, but it's not going to say Wicklfife, okay, or do you want to spend a half a million dollars, so it says Wickliffe. And I think part of something I'm excited about is the idea of having those conversations with the community. Because it's, you know, taxes are an interesting thing. Everybody wants services, and they want the best services, and they should receive the best services, but nobody wants to pay for them. So if we can figure out and we're in the process of looking at a variety of options, how to provide some of our educational services, okay, and save the taxpayer, hundreds of 1000s of dollars potentially. Right, then people have become okay with the idea that it's not a Wickliffe staff member providing that service, for example. Now, there's nothing that's right on the top of my head that I can think of.
I could give you one. And this is from my experience in Perry and Perry has a building next to the Board Office. And for a long time we had a vendor in there called reeducation services and education services provides services for students that have autism or have any sort of other disabilities that require a specialized education. And I would sit my office, I would watch buses from every single district pull up there at the beginning of the day and the end of the day. And I don't understand why that one bus or two buses can't from, let's say, it's from Chardon, can't pick up students from Riverside, Painesville, and Fairport Harbor, on the way to that building in Perry, rather than sending 4 buses. And so it takes some partnerships and takes some creativity. But now that there's a shortage of bus drivers available anyways, jeez, if we could, if we could say, Hey, we're going to cut that 4 drivers to one driver and four buses to one bus for that route, then it's going to save everybody some money. Now, it can be one route that's a little longer. But that's less expensive than for buses and for drivers. And that's the example that I'll use. And there has to be, and I know there's funding for it. At least there's discussion of funding for there has to be a better way of doing business than the way we've always been doing it. And not just us, everybody.
Well, I think the what it comes down to is that relationship building, you know, you are all working to build relationships with the surrounding districts, you're working to build relationships with your vendors, you're working to build relationships with possible funders, so that you can accomplish some of these things. You know, offering services that maximize resources across multiple districts, or keeping the emphasis on the quality of service versus the brand name that's attached to it, you know, does it have to be branded? Is it important that it says Wickliffe? Or is it more important that it's a high quality service and resource that's meeting needs for the kids, because that's what Wickliffe? Does? Is the the name that's important, or is it the quality of what comes behind it?
That's important, and in a case in point, and I didn't think about this still you started talking, Char was was this, I don't know that people know that the Wickliffe Emergency Medical Technician Program, the instructor is a University Hospital employee. And because EMT is really important, to University Hospital, they don't charge us for that instructors time. So University Hospital provides us with the instructor to teach the EMT class. And those are the kinds of partnerships that that could be, you know, beneficial for students and the entire community. So the kinds of efficiencies that we look to, you know, if we think about a full time staff member teaching EMT, that's a $70,000 - $80000 expense. Yeah. Right now, it's a zero expense.
Well it's a unique skill set as well. Right.
Right. Right.
And I think that a lot of businesses and EMTs and hospitals and, but other businesses are also finding a shortage of workers in specified fields. And I think as if we're going to continue being creative, innovative in education, I think more schools, not just Wickliffe have to look at building those partnerships, to prepare not only students for the world, but but it's actually helping the businesses as well, because you're actually being able to train these kids before they become a professional in that field.
Well, I appreciate Lew you taking time today to talk with Joe and Julia and I and I'm going to go back to the Triand comment again. It's very clear, the benefit to the students and the staff and the community, by the three of your willingness to look at things in creative and innovative ways to find those efficiencies and best meet the needs of kids. And think outside the box and not do it just because it's the way we've always done it. So thank you so much for your time today Lew. Joe and Julie as always, it's great talking with you. Thank you for joining us for conversations from the comments.
