Director cowlin, Director Bucha, Director emeriti here.
Thank you. We have a call. Please Let the record reflect that Emmett is participating via interactive technology. All words will be taken according to the roll call to help with the sound. Please unmute yourself when recognized next, may I have a brief motion to approve the agenda. Is there a second? Our agenda has been moved. And second, is there any discussions?
Seeing no further discussion. Brian, will you please call the roll shanty?
Callahan. I him Bucha Emmerich. I
that motion cares, and we have approved agenda next, next group of minutes for February, 4, 2025, meeting. Can I have, can I please have a motion to approve these minutes? There a second, the minister have been moved and second? Is there any discussion? Any corrections?
Discussion? Please call the roll motion to approve the minutes. Shafty
Callahan, Bucha Emery,
Chair Avi, the motion carries and minutes are approved. Next, we will move the report and discussions under which we will have two items, the January financial statement and update of the fiscal year 2026, budget development. But first superintendent doctor says items, would you like to make an opening comments? Please?
Yes. Thank you, charity and good evening. Director of Staff and those with us here tonight, as we continue working on proposing a recommended budget for the upcoming school year to this committee and the board chief officer, Jap will begin tonight with a brief status update. Following that, we will dive deeper into the methodology and the associated budget for what we call school allocations, the direct budgets managed at the school level. These school allocations were provided to principals last week, and they are working now with their teams, communities and site councils to review and propose a budget plan with any available discretionary funds. We also plan to run through some key funding sources and programs, including Title One, compensatory education, achievement and integration, special education and English Learner Services. I cannot emphasize enough how devastating these reductions would be and how disruptive and proved to be. Would we be forced to immediately revise the budgets we just provided to principals as the majority of our title one funding is directly allocated to schools for interventions, preschool and school specific strategies to support students. The current reality of adequately funding public education is already tenuous, and the prospect of further reductions at either both the state and federal level would have substantial impacts on MPs and all school districts, despite the budget challenges we already face and the additional risk of funding cuts, my team and I are committed to proposing a budget that as much as possible aligns With the board's values and priorities within the constraints of available resources. However, I want to emphasize once again, that, as you will see in tonight's presentation on schools, NPS, will still be able to provide amazing programs and services to our students. That said there will be an impact both throughout the organization, both at the school level and notably at the central office, where substantial reductions are necessary. We appreciate the opportunity chair Avi to be here in the committee to share about the various components of the budget following the presentation of the financial statements, we're looking forward to sharing more about the school allocations, which, of course, are the primary focus this evening at the next month's meeting, will be prepared to similarly walk through the department allocations in detail following the presentation this evening, we stand ready to respond to questions or provide information and future at future meetings if needed. Thank you.
Thank you. Status. Adams, applause. Senior officer deal team, please go ahead with the financial statement, which we will have questions after.
Director Abdi, Chief members of the Finance Committee, Director sales items, when it comes to the financial statements, Aaron Gilbert is our controller finance. She prepares every team prepare the financial statements. I'll let her make the presentation, and then we'll answer the questions that she would have.
Thank you. Senior officer, dia, good evening. Superintendent, Dr sales, Adams chair, abke, members of the board and others attending this evening. Finance Committee meeting our presentation for january 2025, financials will follow the format that we have in December. We will keep we're going to highlight from the PowerPoint.
The numbers in the financial packets that it's posted should be considered unaudited. These statements have been created using a combination of cash basis and modified both basis of the county. So I'll now go through a few highlights. So if you look at the first slide, our district general fund balance, fund balance. And in January 1 2025, was approximately $62.9 million who services a negative 4.1 million. Community Education was approximately 11 million.
So now we'll go through the revenues and expenditures for the general fund. Revenue for January was approximately 57 point 3 million your date. General Fund, total revenue was $279 million compared to the 270 point 8 million during the same time last fiscal year. Food Service Revenue was approximately 3.6 million. Year to date, was 9.1 million compared to 8.9 million last year. In the same period for community service, it was approximately 2.6 million for the month, year to date, 19 point 3 million compared to 16.1 during the same time last fiscal year. So if you look at the revenues for general fund last year, you'll see the federal revenue was higher significantly, but that is due to the COVID or Esser gallery staff the district was entitled to that we do not have this fiscal year for expenditures during the month of January, general fund total 60 point 5 million, approximately your date expenditures for January total approximately 360 point 2 million compared to $353.4 million and the same time last fiscal year, something could to consider for January. This includes our scheduled debt service payments that the district made this year, it was about $84.4 million in January, which will see the increase in expenses compared to the previous months. For Food Service expenditures total 2.6 million. Year to date, 15, approximately 15 million compared to 13 point 3 million at the same time last fiscal year, our community service is approximately 2.6 million for the month, the total expenditures for their year 19 point 7 million, compared to 18 point or $18 million same time last fiscal year, if we go back to previous month, we talked about full Service Revenue probably will be seen coming through this month in January. You can see that compared to last point, it was about 2.2 million. This point is 3.6 million. So we can see that those revenues did come through this period in January.
I the end of January,
the district California, and our missile account, our asset fund accounts, 247 point 5 million approximately represents per bond proceeds there are only used for our capital expenditures that has been approved by the board. The district also held various counts that are not means law, such as student activities. That was approximately 757,005 157,000 we also hold our cashmere fiscal agent to pay our obligations to various debt and sinking funds. That was 36 point 1 million. I'd like to now open up the questions.
The directors questions for this highlight. Director
amrick, thanks, Chair. I
have just run from this presentation. I know that we have the budgeted amount for each expenditure line. We have our year to date, year over year and percentages, which is helpful. My question is, in our current year spending, are there any significant differences from our projections in any area over our under, where we are seeing that our our actual spending For this year looks different than what we projected. I
thank you for the question. Director emerit So with the analysis, there are a question, what could be contributed to salaries in fringe compared to previous fiscal year? We have less vacancies. So previously returned about I have the numbers upstairs, but I remember about 10% but when I got the numbers, it was about little, about 5.2% so salaries will contribute to that branch associated,
thank you, executive.
I just have a question for the food services. I know in January, we can more than our expenditure, but the year still, it's 4 million. Now is there a strategy to to get that balance? It Up
in slide five. You know the $4 million
Yes? Thank you for that question. If you remember, when we brought the budget, issued the budget resolution for FY 25 was the projected transfer from general fund to which is our nutrition services and so and so, the debt transfer until It is done at the end of the year, you'll see a negative thumb down, scared by that funding. And at the end, when we before we close the book, step before the transfer that before the resolution to
cover that negative and in the slides to come in the presentation. I made the presentation here. We made the presentation here last week, saying that for FY 26 such transfer, wouldn't that be the case? Because we expect our enterprise funds, which would be fun, to open for community services, to use their revenues to meet their expenses.
Another quick question, similar with Director Emmett asking, given the expenditure exceeded in January, the year to year. Is there a strategy in place to address the short falls for like, for every month? Because right now, the total, if you look at the revenue was 57 and the expenditure is still 60 million. I know you mentioned so many times, the way we fund it is, it's kind of different, but when we going to cut that up,
thank you for the question. Director hockey for January, in August of the district, we'll see our expenses that will seed revenue. Mostly each year we pay our debt service payments. Those are pretty much we pay our highest debt service payments, and participated by the district to cover those payments. Okay?
And directory, I would add to that. First of all, thank you for the question If, while we monitor month to month, we also do forecast to see where we would end by the end of the fiscal year. And if we see that there is a area where we would have to come up with a decision to cover so that we can avoid any shortfall by the end, we would bring that up to you all to say that we are expecting a shortfall here coming June 30. And these are the strategies that would be we are proposing to avoid that deficit, if,
okay, we can proceed the monthly financial next
slide that was the end For the financial statements. Question. So now I will be joined by my colleague, Thompson, and chief Academic Officer, or senior officer of academics, Dr West. I
we have a budget update now, yeah, our next item on the final item will be budget update. CEO officer Diop, please go ahead.
Thank you, Director, Abdi. We're studying, as we did say, the disappointment mentioned it earlier. We would be using any opportunity that we have, Finance Committee, Committee of the Whole regular business meeting of the Board to provide updates about the budget development for FY 26
we would start with an update on our overall budget proposal, focusing on general fund or fund one next, we will go into more detail on our school allocations, focusing on credit for staffing model and associated costs, followed by other investments and costs. We will then provide an overview of some of our key funding source allocations. We will provide a high level update on our department allocations, with plans to go into more detail at our March finance committee, as we are focusing primarily on school budgets, we will then have time for questions and discussion
our revenues are estimated at the beginning of of the fiscal year. I and any change in funding from state or federal would impact our budget development and the numbers that you would be seeing from us through our presentation and our updates. There is a current, currently, a talk in Washington that there may be cuts or reductions in our title allocations. The main title allocation that we receive is Title One, which is the largest federal grant that we, that we receive, but also those changes or those reductions may very well impact title two, Title Three, or any other federal funding that school districts receive across the country. There are also noises that we hear at the state level that may compromise our compensatory and aid funding. And any of these, if any of these happen, we will make sure to keep you up to date as to what the impact would be on our budget. And so we moving forward, we are monitoring these things, and you can see that on the these documents, they are the extent, because we want to make sure that we track the changes that would be occurring during this budget development phase, and be able to track those changes and bring them to You for more clarity and openness in this process. You
This slide will go through the budget overview, and we did make a revision last Friday, and I'll go through one of the reasons for that. Changes would happen, and you know that the final vote would be taking place in June, and between now and June, we'll be working on the budget development phase. And changes may happen. And as those changes happen, we would update you as we go. And last week, there was a technical error that resulted in a 2.7% decrease in school allocation. So we thank our principals for signaling that to us, and we made all the corrections that needed to be made. And when we say technical, it can be spreadsheets not feeding properly from one spreadsheet to another. It may be also the system just taking too long of a time to process something, and then the process would time out, and then we'll come back, and the data may not be the same, so we're monitoring all those to make sure that at the end, the numbers that you have are numbers that are correct and are the official numbers that we do our batches. And those make most of those changes came from English language learners at ELL side. We had some adjustments that we made in special ed, in grant School grants, and so those changes resulted in 10 point 4 million, that is in addition to the school budgets. So department reductions will be necessary because where we are right now, as we said, that we would be respecting the priorities of the board to make sure that we minimize any impact, budget impact, negative impact on schools. We will be focusing on development budgets to make sure that we close the remaining gap.
And also you can see, we will see one of the slides that will be coming shortly here that we are still relying on vacancy rate and fund balance. So the goal that we have is to in cabinet, under the direction of the superintendent, is to make sure that we reduce our reliance on fund balance one and two try to bring that vacancy rate at a much lower, much lower rate than where it is now. So now for the slave 14, and for many more slides to come, I'll transfer the microphone to my colleague, deputies Fenton and Ty Thompson to cover the school budgets, which is our focus of Our presentation today or tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Applause.
I thought that I covered this slide, but so again this you will see here that the main and it has an asterisk, and that is the 19.2 9 million for vacancy, which is 4.04% the goal is to bring that by the time you get this budget for a final vote in June, that number will be down significantly. And so that's the main thing in this main piece of clarification that I wanted to bring here, the total revenue stands at six, 686 million, and the expenditures at 725, which brings the 39 point 5 million in gap and good resources and Use of fund is showing you how it is that, what is it that is the plan to cover for that 39.5 and if you add all those figures to the right, they will total 39.5 and we'll try to make it better by reducing the reliance on vacancy and maybe even on unbalance. With that, then I'll transfer the microphone to my.
Programs, magnet schools, fifth grade instrumental music and advanced learner programming, our caregiver priority survey notes, advanced
learning programs, academic interventions and diverse election options
as the top three priorities for our families to address the priority of supporting student mental health and well being. We are using some of our restricted funds to help maintain mental health supports to address our fiscal and programmatic equity goals. We are expanding the
number of Title One schools and increasing the amount of Title One per pupil funding at all
title sites. One of our overarching goals is to minimize the impact on students, classrooms and schools funding for all school based programs and staffing may see slight declines, but we are excited to share that there are no complete eliminations proposed to student facing programs and school allocations.
Additionally, there is
an overall increase to school allocations and an overall decrease to department
allocations, representing another directive from our school board as
we close this year's budget gap, equity remains a driving factor in our budgeting process, every MPs student receives a base level of support. This perfume funding comes in the form of predictable staff, which ensures a consistent foundation for all students. We allocate additional funding
based on student needs through Title One, compensatory education, achievement
and integration, specific staff for English learners and students with the IEP, and finally, through some of the services that support our schools through department allocations. Here you'll see more detail about the various components that make up school allocations. Many of these formulas are driven by student enrollment. Other factors impacting these formulas include staffing ratios, state recommendations and collective bargaining agreements.
Here you'll see an overview of classroom and specialist allocations,
as well as the methodology you used
for those allocations. So we have our class size, which can be impacted based on the percentage of students receiving education benefits, otherwise known as free and reduced lunch, our compensatory education, and also title $2 which help to support class size, as well as some other areas, are
referendum dollars from our voters and specialist funding,
more than 30% of school allocations and dedicated to classroom teachers and specialist time. Here you will see we are focusing on prioritizing small class size, again, seeing no splits in k2 minimizing
splits in grades three through five, where fiscally possible,
prioritizing varied offerings and leveraging our CTE courses during high school master scheduling process.
It's important to note the criticality of families completing the application for education benefits. It is also important to note that our class size during budget
seasons are based on projections after the
first day of school we monitor attendance at every site and with every classroom, and we utilize
our staffing adjustment process to ensure that schools are staffed appropriately,
this current fiscal year, MPs saw enrollment increases for the first time in over a decade and.
That there are additional questions later about self and welcoming entrances that we're happy to answer those offline, so as not to put any of our schools in a vulnerable position.
This slide highlights two areas that
are site level decisions. All schools have additional 80 hours, which can be used for any general education, allowable expenses to meet the school's needs. Additionally, schools receive a $50 per student allocation for supplies, which can also be used in this way,
as we consider the priority of mental health support all of our schools have at least one full time, social worker, and counselors are available at our middle schools.
Some of those positions are
nurses school psychologists food service, custodians, are some of the largest examples. Our principals received updated budget information. Last Friday, we will be processing school budgets through March, 7. principals will be meeting and consulting with their school communities, including site councils. Our caregiver priority survey is open through Friday, February 28 we encourage all MPs families
to share their feedback. I'm now
going to transition into the specific topic of achievement and integration. Funds.
Achievement and integration is a program focused on pursuing racially
and economic integration, racial excuse me and economic integration to increase student academic achievement and to reduce achievement disparities. This funding has specific guidelines that we must follow. They're also called allowable funding uses, and so you will see them here
as you're looking at the list. It also might be helpful to note the bullet point on the bottom,
which is that 80% or more of the funding does
need to go to direct to service for our students,
no more than 20% spent on professional Development and no more than 10% on administrative costs. I
We are currently in year two of our
achievement and Integration Plan. Next school year, we will be conducting an evaluation of programs and completing a needs assessment in order to start the work of developing our next plan. You
in the coming year, we expect to be receiving $13 million from MD. This is an overview of our goals and the funding that will be allocated to support these goals. So you can see here the amount of spending. I have a little bit more detail on the following slide, but the goal areas that are specific to the plan that, again, we are in year two going into year three of
so here's further information about the goals. Goal one is around magnet schools. It supports site based allocations to align and ensure magnet curriculum residencies and experiences in corporate and also incorporates SEL as well as our magnet transportation. And Goal two is about reducing disparities in academic achievement, which prioritizes our k8 racially isolated sites, which includes teacher and ESPs as well as training opportunities and literacy, math and equity. Our college and career readiness is goal three, which includes early college and career readiness our CTE programs and courses, transportation for those opportunities that we offer, as well as mentorship and
summer programming. Goal
four is around student equity and voice. We have focus groups, listening sessions, student leadership, collaboration and family engagement, just to name a few. In goal five, equity and climate that involves our system support that push into buildings and into professional development around change in practice and then again. Goal six are racially identifiable schools. They do have some specific allocation that they receive to support family engagement as well as academic achievement. Title One.
Title One is a federal program that provides extra funding to schools and districts to assist students who may need additional academic support, as has previously been shared, we are excited that five additional schools will qualify for funding this school year, and all Title One schools will receive more funding in this current school year. Here's an overview of the various ways that we are proposing using our title one dollars so you can see the funding allocated to school level activities, our family involvement, intervention, preschool accounting and title one office support to allocate all of these funds and get the work done. Our support for students experiencing homelessness, our non public share, which is a required pass through in our contract, alternative share,
compensatory education revenue. Compensatory education is revenue that must be used to meet the needs of students who are considered under prepared for school. The funds can be used for remedial instruction,
additional staff to reduce class size, parental involvement
and student support. It can also be used for non instructional student support, such as counseling and social work. 80% of comp Ed revenue must be used at the sites where the students generate the funding. MPs will be utilizing a portion of these funds to address class size. 100% of compensatory education revenue will be distributed to schools and those specific schools where the students generated. Here's an overview of our compensatory education revenue funded areas and the associated costs. So you'll see the district school allocation that goes directly to sites, the portion used for class size reduction funding for counselors, social workers and El supports, as well as our contract alternative share, which is in the past, really close to those schools. I will now pass it off to Dr Clayson to discuss Special Education. Thank you. Thank you. Chair Abdi, Superintendent, sales, Adams and members of the board, I'm here to provide a high level overview of how our special education funding works. So this slide will show you how special education services in public school districts are funded with the following including state, federal aid, third party billing revenue, state and local general revenue, which provides the major share of funding, funding for students served outside of the district or residents can be Positive or negative, and it's called tuition, tuition readjustment. Basically it works this way. Other districts who have our students bill us and we pay them, and for those who come to us, we bill the other districts and they pay us. State aid is the most nuanced and is based on a combination of formula types, so percentage reimbursement, census based, which means per pupil identified,
and then student weights with an adjustment made for students with IEPs who are served again outside of the student's district of residence.
Other sources of funding, we have the alternative delivery of specialized instructional services that is called ad says that currently funds our check and connect program. I do want to say that ad says is a partial reimbursement. We have
other funding from
the other areas that are listed, including Active sped,
early childhood home based, travel out of state, tuition, tuition for court place, special education, revenue and full state payment for students who are wards of the state. I want to take a little bit of time to talk through maintenance of effort, maintenance of effort, which is lovingly called Mo, requires that a district that receives federal funds to demonstrate that the local level of funding for a particular program remains
constant from year to year. Federal funds supplement state and local funds they do not supplant.
And then two required mo levels for budgeting and spending. It can either be eligibility, which is budgeting or spending, which is compliance. Failure to meet mo requirements may result in losing federal funding, a reduction of the amount that a district would receive, or a repayment of funds, and then going over the amount spent the previous year would result in meeting mill requirements. However, that would become the new baseline, and the district is required then to spend that new amount every year. And so I have an example here. It's a fictitious set of numbers from a fictitious district.
So I just wanted to give you a visual of, you know, you start out at the left your you know, the district's Maintenance
of Effort is $100 million they actually spend $110 million so the new Mo is $110 million then they're they're budgeted, or they're forecasted, to spend $130 million
and if they spend that 100 and $30 million that becomes their new baseline.
I want to
really emphasize that we are an MPS committed to providing the services that all of our students need, but we must be mindful of how we are spending our money and keeping in mind our
maintenance of effort at all times. This slide provides an overview
of the funded areas, including our citywide federal setting three,
our federal funding, our special education resource teacher and third party billing, and then our federal setting
one and two teachers, I will Transition to English Learner Services and provide a high level overview of how we are funded for our English Learner Services. So English learner
funding is allocated based on per pupil count of identified EL students with seven years or less in the
English learner system and program. So our current and school year 2026 funding equals $1,228 times the total el ADM that was described in the bullet above, and $436 per el pupil units, which is a concentration, which
is concentration funding for districts that have a high percentage of El learners, and we are identified as one of those districts, Starting in 2027 the funding will increase to $1,775
per times the total el ADM and $630 times or per pupil units. Also, we will receive a 25% el cross subsidy aid reduction based on the second prior year qualifying services. So the 25% cross subsidy will be a two year lag. What we spend in 2025 is what we will be reimbursed at 25%
for in 2027
districts also receive a point six per pupil el funding for early learners identified as English learners. And Below you will see the allocation and the amount of allocation for English Learner Services in our buildings. And now I will pass it back to the
uh, Department Budgets. Our
plan is to focus on department allocations at our March committee of the hall and Finance Committee meeting, we did want to take a brief moment to provide a status update on pertaining to department allocations. Our focus,
our focus for department allocation, is to make additional
reductions to minimize or eliminate the need for vacancy savings in using fundamentals as has previously been shared, we are committed to fulfilling the board's priorities. That means that we make budget reductions while making sure that our schools are protected as much as possible of any disruption or budget cuts that would impact our students.
Here is an overview of our current department allocations, again or allocation and again. The plan is to make additional reductions. One thing there that you can see for FY 25 we have 343.5 7 million. And the projected FY 26 was 379,000,000.71 and because of the reductions that we're making to close the gap now the proposed budget for departments, FY 26 would be 340,000,000.17 which is actually About 3 million shorter than the current year allocation. You
This is again a reminder we had this slide previously of how department allocations work, including Central Office services and functions and school activities and staff that are funded centrally in Department Budgets. Applause,
we went again through
major reorganization
last year. So this is a high level view of the proposed budgets by department As of last Friday,
next steps and timeline.
Yeah, our plan is to focus on department
allocations. As I said in March at our committee of the whole and finance committee meetings, we didn't want to take the brief
moment to just provide the status update for
our departments. I
this is the key milestones in terms of deliverables that we would have for the board, and to also say that as we go, you'll see that the check marks
would be next to
the bullets to show what is it that we provided, and what is left, and Then on the right would be the ongoing activities. I
again, this is throughout the budget development phase, we would be providing you all the documents that we've used to make our assumptions and to make sure that we are open, transparent, so that you understand what is it that we use in terms of assumptions, proposed development allocations and corresponding expenditure plans and on. So this slide would show the
would show the pieces of information that we would be providing to the finance committee, to the Committee of the Whole to the board business meeting to just make sure that we want to make sure that we provide all documents that we are using so that you can have a understanding of how we arrive at the budget that we're presenting before you for May and June at the last meeting.
This slide you can see it has crossovers, and that just means that after we pass a meeting, we cross that and then you can see that our next meeting would be at the committee of the hall where we would review The Post budget tie out school and department allocations. Applause.
These would be the timeline or the plan for the
regular board meetings, February 11, last time
we covered the budget development process, we made an update on that, and at the Marshall level would make a budget development process update again. So these are, this is the plan or the schedule pertaining to the business meetings as we go through the budget development phase. This is a familiar slide as we did get the board priorities in December, February and where we budget, the building department budgets and school budgets, taking into account the board's priorities, the March BTO board budget die out would struggle. We sent the budgets to schools last Friday, and as those budgets come in, along with Department Budgets, finance and human resources, would go through the BTO process to make sure that the budgets are tied and that there is no money left and allocated at the school level and at the department level so that we can prepare and get the budget
finalized that we would bring before you all by way of a finance committee meeting, Committee of the Whole and ultimately to
the full board meeting, business meeting, so you would have them a opportunity to review the budget in April, and May would be the first reading, which would be an opportunity to review the budget again, and then the final approval would be in the last and the end second reading, or last opportunity for approval, would be in June. Now, our presentation is done with it, and we're waiting for any questions that you may have. Thank you,
directors, there's any questions you could not
director, thank you Chair, thanks for the presentation.
So my first question,
when I was looking at the documents the projection shared tonight and at the committee level last week, compared with the performer from last winter, it looks like we have about 15 million or so
increase projected revenue. Did anyone speak to where that revenue increase or the sources of that revenue increase projection is?
Thank you. Director Emery, one thing that I would have to remind all of us is that the pro forma is the document that when we made it again, that was a projection based on the information that we had at that time in terms of revenue and expenses and expenditures and the expenditure we really didn't get a more clear picture of it until the audit was finalized, which was done on January 6. So I would say that in terms of revenue, the area that I would see is we talked about the stabilization of our enrollment. So that would mean that, then our state aid would increase, and with an increase in enrollment, not only the state aid would be positively impacted, but our federal funds, or compensatory would also be equally impacted, positively
impacted. That's where I would say the
increase in revenue came from, I would also say that, yes, we got a an increase in revenue, and the 20 million double that we had in when the pro forma was shared, that was prior to the election. And with the election, the voters in Minneapolis thankful. We're thankful to them provided us with a $20 million additional revenue. So that is factored in now the numbers that we have in comparison to the reality of the district of many districts across the country, and we share that before is that the revenues that we receive don't match or don't keep up with the increase in operation acquitional costs, and that's why we are here. But thank you for the question. It's a good one. You Thank you. My next question is, and
we didn't get, we didn't get the, like, a spreadsheet
of the site allocations, right? I didn't, I didn't miss that somewhere. Okay, that would have been this error. So since they have gone up to sites, and I hope that we will get them as soon as possible. But my question is, when we are looking at our year over year changes in our site allocations, and we're talking about sites having increased allocation this year over the last year, I would want to understand what portion of that is represented by increased salaries compared with increased FTEs. So what I've been like to
have our answers to these two specific questions. Number one, how much of increase in the site allocations is due to summer rate increases. And then number two, I would like to see a year over year comparison for each site in terms of the FTE that that site allocation being purchased within that school. I
thank you for the question. So just to clarify a couple of things, is that I do believe that the site allocations
were sent out. I don't have that exact date,
but I believe it was maybe the 18th, that's when schools had their initial information. So I can follow up by I believe the 18th we have the specific school allocations in regard to the question about increasing increased salary and how that may have impacted the increase to the site allocation is, Did I understand your question correctly? Director armor, I can clarify that. I want to know in the site allocations, which should be experiencing a year over year increase for next year the increases, how much of that is going to pay for salary increases, and what are your over year? FTE comparisons that are purchased with the site allocation this year versus next year for each of our sites. Does that make sense? It does. Thank you. I misunderstood. I apologize. I was thinking that you are looking for something else specific to the school increases what they received based on enrollment or compensatory funding shifts or things of that nature. So I will need to get back to you and that I don't have that information. And director Emeric, if I could as well. On the 21st we were sent an email that does have the school allocation spreadsheet. If you don't have that, make sure you let us know we can make sure we get that to you. Thank you, Dr Bucha, I'm double checking sure I did not see it, but I am not perfect Sure. No, just, just let us know I want to Okay. My next question is, I was wondering if you could speak a little bit about under the predictable staffing model, the AES. And my specific question is, are all sites going to be seeing an increase
to increase funding in that area? I'll be really frank. My concern is, I know that we have some sites. There are some of our states that are virtually identifiable. Sites are title sites that have had, as far as I as far as I remember, some funding for AE, there's an allocation there. And I'm wondering if we are adding to everybody's allocation, or if we are adding that to schools that have not previously had that validation. That's the first part of the question.
Thank you for the question in regard to the principal discretionary funds that they have, similar to this current school year, all schools receive 580 hours per 100 students that they have. And then, in addition, the change for this school year is that the majority of and I can explain the difference, but the majority of our schools then will receive no more, I'm sorry, no less than 37.5 which is that 80 allocation that you're referring to, amount of funding for principal, Principal, discretionary.
The one caveat to that is we do have some specialty sites that are considered differently, because they they don't function the same way as our as our typical brick and mortar schools, but across the board, the majority, beyond our couple of specialty site Schools, do have that minimum allocation of an AE. So
so my clarifying question there is every school going to see an increase to account for added 80 hours across the board, or are we going to see schools that have already utilized discretionary funds, principal discretionary funds for AES, continue to do that without an increase, as long as it meets those minimum hours. And then to schools that have not historically had or not this year have enough of an allocation to meet that predictable staffing power threshold to get additional funding. Does that make sense? Are we going to get more money to some schools and keep some other schools the same because they were already buying thank you for the clarification. I wouldn't say that we're keeping some schools the same. There are many schools that have more hours than a full AE, so they always will be getting all of those hours. So if a high school, as an example, has 1500 students, they're going to be well beyond that, 37.5 But what this does do is it helps to ensure that some of our schools that did not have enough students to be able to have an AE to provide those academic supports, or other supports that are crucial just for the functionality of a building that they're able to do so. Okay? My other concern with adding these 80 positions or funding them more widespread that we have in the past is and I know that we weren't here for this RW super netted, but when we initially implemented the intervention triads, wonderful program, except when we were able to implement
it more widely because of our new semester
funds for the first year of that program, what we saw is that we had almost a migration. We had some educators who had been at our North Side sites, sites that were rescinded and viable lower income sites. Take jobs, interventionist jobs, more on the south and southwest side of the city, and then we saw that we could not quickly, directly staff those intervention positions at the same schools that have suffered from the highest rated rates year after year after year. And so what should have been a really
great program that would provide increased equity in terms of our literacy, numeracy, education, it actually in some ways widening up a little bit, because we're able to provide something to our students who have already, historically and contemporarily been the most resourced, both in and outside of our district, and we had sort of a combination impact of long term vacancy rates in certain sites and then not being able to execute the triads because of staffing vacancies. I know
that vacancies aren't as much of a concern, but I would just want to know that we have a plan for how we're not going to repeat a mistake that we just made a couple years ago as we're providing funding for increased positions.
Can anyone speak to that? I Yeah, thank you
for the for the and the further information.
What I'd be happy to follow up a little bit more just with the specific number of schools. However, what we what we saw and experiences
here in our intent is certainly not to be having staff move around as a result of this. What happened quite often this school year is
that sites would have enough for maybe half time of an AE, but not not a full time position. So there were areas where we would want to see more support, maybe in the lunchroom at recess, and so part of this
person's role might be providing intervention, but we actually still are continuing all
of our intervention supports that we have academically through title funding, and then schools do have the option to continue to buy that up. So what we believe that this will actually do is involve allow the schools that only had a partial funding to have full staffing and a consistent person throughout the day, yes, for academic supports, but oftentimes it's a combination of other security and monitoring support that we that we would like to have for our children. Okay, I would thank you. Super happy. I would love to follow up with you in conversation, so just make sure I understand all the plans that are in place and considerations. One last question is about special education, when we start on slide 52 when we look at some of the different expenditures under special education. There's a chart where we see a city wide federal setting asterisk there at the bottom of the slide, we see the federal setting describes, you know, the percentage of
the day students in special education,
just as a note, first of
all, it offers
me the wording, because
we know special education is a service not That's right. So it's not a it's not a place where students can be in students can be in more restrictive setting. Students can be, you know, overall with general education, students can have a certain percentage of the day that they are away from peers, but they're not in special education. Special Education is right? Yeah, I know. So I wanted to not see that living in your sons anymore. But the bigger issue is, and I have been asking questions about this, literally since I was needed, and I still don't have a great answer from anybody,
if we have Sammy, a fifth grader, a fictitious fifth grader, who, you know, at the beginning of the school year, was pulled out of general education 70% of the day. So if I was having three placements, and the school and the IEP team managed to
figure out how Sammy could actually be
in general education for 70% it only pulled out 30% of the time, which would be to their credit right now that Sammy is a thorough study and two students, how does that site allocation for that student for their special ed services change, what a student has was a federal setting placement. Get more per pupil dollars than a student's with a federal setting one or two placements. That is what I want to know.
Thank you, Director Emerick, for your question. First off, I want to thank you for your perspective. You are 100%
correct that words are
powerful, and my apologies for the wording with the asterisk. It should have said, receive special education services so that. So I appreciate you bringing that up. And so you're you're asking me, would the
would the allocation for the teachers or the funding? I just want to get a little bit of bit of clarity here. Are you talking about a change in IEPs quality change at the bottom of the IEP but the needs would stay the same, right? It would just be that we had figured out how we could educate that student successfully and provide a great and appropriate public education in a less restrictive environment, which is what we should we're always aiming for. We should always be aiming for. And so if we succeed in doing that, is there a financial consequence to the school. They get less money for the same student if that student can move, say, from federal setting replacement to a federal setting to distance. I think that that's a relatively complicated question. I'd be I'd be more than happy to follow back up with you on that. So if that's, if that's good for you, I'll follow back up with you on that. That would be great. Thank you so much for the presentation and all the answers. That's all my questions. Thank you, Director Callahan, thank you Chair. Okay, I have a few random questions. First, when will school allocations be public?
Thank you, Dr Callahan for the question, all budget information would be public after we've done and presented to the board, and once we provide that information, it's posted a few days before the board meeting, so it becomes public at that time. So when will it be public? And again, when would school budgets to be public right now we're finalizing them. Once we've done with all the corrections that we're making,
they will be public as we get to close to the meeting that would be happening
in March. So it will be public once we're
done with that right now. What is
public would be what we provided
with you, whatever
we covered in the finance committee or the Committee of the Whole and now and so once we've done with all again, all the corrections that we and adjustments that we need to make, they will be public as of a date, I would say that we sent the allocations to principals on Friday. So there it is. And then when we get it back, that's when the BTO process was struck. And then after that is done, we'll be coming to you all and saying that this is the final these are the final school budgets for
your review. Closer to the business meeting in March,
I would, I would say that, okay, thank you. And this is just a quick ask that can definitely be taken offline, but in Slides 32 and 33 I'm wondering if I can, or we, as a board, can get the years prior those numbers as well. So that's not something I need somebody to find now. And okay, when looking, this is probably for Dr Costin, when we were making some of these department cuts, what engagement did the committee have with community or department or leaders, with individually affected programs? Well, the first thing that we did was take a long look at the board priorities, and we've also been looking at the caregiver survey that continually is updated as more of our caregivers are completing it.
And then we, you know, we worked through what we currently had and and started to build out something that would still provide all of the current service, all of the services that we are providing to our students in just, you know, in a in different ways, but we we kept true to what the board identified as their priorities and as information coming
in from from the caregivers as well. Thank you. And then I have a question about CTE, kind of two different questions. I don't really understand the reimbursement process, so wondering if somebody can kind of walk us through that. And then I heard that 40% of CTE was cut, and I would just love some more information on why.
Thank you for the question. Director Callahan so in regard to just the funding and reimbursement for CTE, and I'm happy to provide further detail. It's a little bit nuanced, but there's
two different
ways that we can be reimbursed for Perkins and so our teachers, if they are CTE licensed, then we are able to apply for a reimbursement of 35% of their salary.
And then, in addition,
we have to, we are have the ability to report our funds that are towards CTE to Perkins. And then we actually Minneapolis public schools, our own Consortium. So there are some rules and guidance
funds. We have a little bit more leeway,
as Minneapolis public schools being our own consortium, to be able to
put forward our costs and expenses for CTE at up to 100% reimbursement. And so those are things that the Perkins, Perkins would say are allowable expenses either to get our programs up and running. So it's not something we can count on forever, but things to get our facilities up and running, to get programming going, those funds are reimbursable, so that's kind of the short of the two different ways that we receive funding. And then additionally, with your question around the reduction in CTE there. What I can say
about the CTE reduction is that we are not anticipating any reductions in our teachers or in the courses that we are offering right now for CTE. And I even actually just had a meeting, coincidentally earlier today, with our Dr luceni, our principal of CTE, so we are working through being able to make sure that we prioritize all of our pathways and our programs and student opportunities While working within our needs and our budget. Thank you.
Thank you for the presentation. I just want to have a quick question for the enrollment, and it was taken last October. Right the the one we are allocating right now for the schools, are we a dynamic enough to adjust it if, let's say school is that we're close to the 7069, percentage they were titled, qualified. But right now, their circumstance changing, and they are 71 or something like that. How do we plan those kind of changes? Thank you for the question. Director Abdi, so when, when considering a school, and I believe when, if you're talking about the 70% are you referring to class size, potentially? Yeah. So we, we do adhere to what we have shared and what we have budgeted for when it comes to class size. So any of our schools that have 70% or more students that qualify for free and
reduced lunch, it's now known as educational benefits, they are eligible for smaller class size, which does have an increased cost. Schools that have less than 70% education benefits or free and reduced lunch
have a different metric, which we have shared and budgeted for
and outlined we as far as I understand, it's not a new practice that we have used that 70% and so that is what we follow when it comes to budgeting, because that is what we're funded on. So I think that your question is about, if they are really close to the line. Do we know there is a schools right now in northeast that were borderline last year, but this year
they are actually like mercy, high school, Mercy elementary they were like 7969 or something like that. But right now they are seven, but that's not accounting of the new numbers, and that's emails that I've been receiving is like, how do we dynamically adjust those numbers? Thank you for the question. So we do budget based on the October one information that we receive, and so that school that you mentioned unfortunately had a shift in the direction that leads to a larger class size. We did also have a handful of schools that now have 70% or more students to qualify for free and reduced lunch, and so they are experiencing lower class size. It even if the numbers, the expected numbers, it's going to be with that threshold, yeah, those have historically always been budgeted from October one. So the information that we have used for all years and correct me if I'm wrong, has always been on October one of the prior year. You mentioned there's a five voice that it's gonna receive the title one, are those based on the free and reduced numbers, or they are qualified because of that? Yes, okay, I can specify if you like. And how do we how do we control the numbers of the class sizes, like we have a set right now, but we can increase students. Are we going to leave the school level to go those numbers, class numbers fluctuate. Or are we really here at the Davis Center, kind of implementing that so we don't really come back next year and say, like, hey, my class is like 35 or something like that? Yes, thank you for the question. There are a few different things that we are going to be doing to address this concern about class size. One of the pieces is that we are using some of and I referenced it a little bit, but I can go into more detail compensatory education dollars, which can be used to reduce class size. Some of those funds are being used to help ensure that we don't have classroom splits. So if maybe there was going to be a kindergarten or first grade that had to be split, instead, the school will be using some of their compensatory education dollars to make sure that they are able to have a whole teacher for kindergarten and a whole teacher for first grade in that example, and then additionally for schools that do not have enough compensatory education dollars. That's something that we would not have. We would have not been able to support with our budget, them not having a split and so there, there is an opportunity to utilize title $2 to support that. So that would be making sure that all schools have the support that they need, and then when it comes to students coming into the school, what we are doing with the Enrollment Center is that we are making sure, and actually, through the support of our program, our our management system of Infinite Campus, we now have the capability for our Enrollment Center to be able to see those live enrollment data in a way that they couldn't see before. And so they are very closely, will be very closely monitoring, so that if a school gets to is filled because they have, if we're back to this kindergarten and first grade, they have now met the class size for kindergarten and first grade, then that grade level, or those grade levels, will be closed, and the family then will be shared. We will share with the families the other options that they would have. Thank you. You're welcome. Any questions. I That concludes our questions with that I joined the meeting. I
