I love peanut butter. I love jelly. September 15 on this beautiful evening at 05:30PM. And welcome everybody here tonight to the Haven Park board meeting. Sorry, Committee of the Whole. There's so many, meeting titles. On with Gateway, Roehkop. Here. Becker? Here. Coardess? Present. Here. LaFromboise? Here. Vertine? Here. Vincent? Here. I need a motion to approve the agenda. I make a motion to approve the agenda as written. Support. Motion by Heidi and support by Monica to approve the agenda as written.
Are there any comments? Okay. Hearing none. I'll roll call, please. Porter? Yes. Regine? Yes. Bean? Yes. Becker? Yes. Fox. Yes. Wilcox? Yes. Yes. Vincent? Yes. Moving on to public comment. Seeing none, and I'm not going to read the little paragraph about public comment. Somebody joins us later in the meeting for the second time, I can review it then. The first thing is, financial report, and I just wanna say a few things. Mister Don Sobe, has been here to review our, department, and he's with I remember
Rochelle, but not her last name. O'Malley. O'Malley. And so they're gonna give a report. Don has long history. He is the, CPA and, CFO. Let me look. It's a long title. School Municipal Advisory Services, BC. And, he's written many articles for the Michigan Association of School Board Administrations, the Lansing Journal. He becomes highly recommended by Department of Education. And so he's gonna give us a review of, his findings when he's was here.
Thank you very much, Chuck. I appreciate it. Glad to be here. Beautiful day today. Let me give you a little background on the firm. I've been in the business for fifty two years, starting in the CJ World a few years ago. And then I became dedicated solely to public schools long term projections and budget process
in finding scarce CFOs. So with that, I'd also tell you that your district is virtually the same size as the district I was in for thirty four years. It started with more students and and now it's it's under 3,000, so I'm very familiar with this this size of district. The report, you're gonna have a copy of it a little bit. I'm gonna talk for a while and then we're gonna look at some more details. The report is prepared as an aid for you in decision making going forward.
The tone and approach is to be part of the solution. I want to help you solve challenges moving forward, and it's based on research and proven national best practices. And we're gonna bring you all kinds of documentation and background and experience. I did 27 interviews, they're conversations, I call them conversations. I'm amazed at how happy people are to be associated with your school district. The community and the school district are one.
And we know that because of that, relationships matter to the entire community. We need to see everybody come together and work together. The business office staffing, I am absolutely thrilled you have this young team. Monica and Crystal had good conversations with them. Their credentials and past background is really good. I think they're gonna be able to do some great things for you going forward. Some of what we're talking about today, we've dealt with the same situation about about
a half dozen districts. Bay City is is one, Lons Cruz, Lequontinesville in Wisconsin. I'm gonna talk about that a little bit more. So in the report, and you're gonna have this all in writing. I'm giving you the overview right now. We're gonna get into details in a minute. But the overview for immediate implementation, I have four recommendations. And the first recommendation is develop systems to enhance collaboration. Much of our observation is the strategic planning and budget process is centralized and does
not include a wide range of input. There are areas that are in need of modernization using current best practices. So the first point there, district strategic planning, should be refocused to include the community, employees, and board of education in the development of a three to five year strategic plan. An independent facilitator should be contracted that will include a community survey and a wide range of independent input resulting in an updated vision, mission, and strategic plan.
The board of ed should be involved in discussions in selecting an independent facilitator with action by the board. The new plan should contain a significant message on financial position and the role that sound management can play in student achievement. There are often times I'll look at a strategic plan and they don't mention finance. It's a problem because finance is what is gonna allow you to present to students and be the best school district you can possibly be.
I also have in here an exhibit on governance standards from MASB. We're going to talk about that a little bit. The second big point is budget development and monitoring, must be redesigned to include annual grassroots budget input by installing a collaborative zero based budgeting system where all district budgets are developed with the input of school leadership and employees. Zero based budgeting requires each department to reset and request new budgets annually. In conversations with district personnel, we observed that principals, supervisors, and much of central office
have not been involved in budget development and were never informed of what their budgets are. They also were never informed of the current status as they go through the budget year. Budgets are not being monitored, by buildings or departments because they don't know what they are and they haven't been able to look them up. So financially, the district has been somewhat flying blind and are unable to view and understand the current budget to actual status. So budget to actual status is a term you'll hear us talk about.
When we look at the budget, we want to know month by month what is what is the actual at the end of a given month, second month, third month, and how much funding do you have left in that particular line item. So that budget to actual is something that ought to be transparent to all of the leadership and the board. So that was, budget development and monitoring. The next big point is modernize district financial systems so that principals and supervisors have real time lookup access to their school or department line by line budgets and year
to date expenditures to include salaries, benefits, purchased services, supplies, and equipment. The real time access is currently available to the district through your current software according to Oakland Schools. It just hasn't been installed or implemented for wide use internally with the principals. Modernizing the software will be one of the first steps in moving your budgeting system to a zero based budgeting system, which will involve all principals and supervisors. Modernizing the financial reporting systems, we'll start by breaking up the general fund budget into
cost centers, so it's manageable. Instead of 5,500 lines, we're gonna break it up into pieces that are really related to buildings. Another cost center might be transportation, another might be custodial and maintenance. So we'll probably have 20 or so cost centers that the budget will be broken up into and be able to be managed with real time look up ability. The other, piece under this recommendation one is facilities planning using a community based feasibility
study. Helps to provide various viewpoints on facility improvements with community input and buy in. We know that when we're working on facility improvements, we need to bring the community in. They need to be a part of the planning, along with your construction manager. And every ten years, you know, this is really some of the fiduciary responsibility of the board to make sure that this is gonna happen. Every ten years, you ought to be looking at an in-depth study of your facilities. Because just like a house, you have to be doing things.
The district I was in, it was decades and decades when I got there. Finally, we started bond issues working, and we were on the track of every ten years working on bond issues. But there's a science to it, and I've got some of that noted later in one of the exhibits. Recommendation two is monitor and address the district's structural shortfall going forward as a part of the new zero based budget process using a long range financial projection. All future budgets must, and I have that capitalized, must be balanced and begin to
restore the financial health of the district. A budget forecast of three to five years is desired. So looking back on your structural shortfall, it's been ongoing and started the year ended 06/30/2023. You had more revenues, more expenditures than revenues by 1,200,000. The following year ended 06/30/2024, you had more expenditures than revenues by 4,900,000. Then the year ended 06/30/2025 is still up for debate, but what was, submitted to
the board was $1,300,000 more expenditures than revenues. And then for the year we're in now, 06/30/2026, more expenditures than revenues of 1,708,000. And I know there's been some work done since that then that helped narrow that, But it's not really known until the audit is completed, you know, what that shortfall will be for the year ended 06/30/2025. And it may affect the succeeding year, but you have a pattern of a structural
shortfall that needs to be addressed immediately, cannot continue or your fund balance will be, will be deficit. And right now, you're bordering on a deficit fund balance. We won't know if that's the case until the audit is completed. Adding to that, we have great uncertainty in state and federal funding. Every school district, we talked about that a few minutes ago and it's just, just difficult. It's so difficult for school districts cause we, we don't know. They're all apart.
There's no consensus. Ordinarily, by now, we would have had a consensus on where they're heading and actually a budget. So once the funding is settled by the state and when the district's audit for 06/30/2025 is concluded, it'll be known if the above figures are accurate and whether the district's fund balance is in deficit and whether a deficit elimination plan will be necessary, according to the Michigan Department of Education. So right now, you're under the monitoring of the Michigan Department of Education. And depending on whether your year end is deficit and going forward, you may need
to prepare a deficit elimination plan that has yet to be seen. And Chatterchike, who who runs that department, is is very patient, he's been very kind with you, and he wants to wait until the audit is completed to see where you stand on your fund balance. But assuming your fund balance is positive, you will then still be referred back to the Michigan Department of Treasury because your trajectory of fund balance is heading less than 5%.
It's unlikely that even if you get a little positive at the end of last year, that it's gonna go up. There's gonna be significant work on your budget that will be required to make that balance. If a deficit elimination plan is required, MDE recommends the use of conservative pupil counts going forward. They're either gonna have you do a three year projection or a five year. Conservative foundation allowances, and that the administration, union leaders, board members, and others be involved
in the plan development for the deficit elimination plan. So that's the process. I've I've I've been through it, but it's it takes it takes a lot of work and conversation and coming to consensus on how we're gonna gonna get out of this this situation that we find ourselves in. It's all doable. Recommendation three, implement a strategic financial plan which will address all of the considerations that I just talked about and will focus the district on sustainability. Sustainability will be the goal moving forward.
So when I mention the word strategic financial plan, I'm gonna show you more about that later, it includes a site assessment, which is this. Gonna conclude that tonight. Convening and facilitating a financial leadership team, that would be a next step. Establishing and training the district, the entire district, for utilizing collaborative budgeting, which is zero based. And then a year from now, doing a long range financial projection. The strategic thinking in all of this will be driven by smarter goals, and I'm gonna tell you more about that.
But it will require the board action to proceed with these next steps, if that's what you desire to do. And at the very last document in this, manual that you're gonna receive. It has the letter of agreement to proceed if you choose to go forward with zero based budgeting and a long range financial projection. Recommendation four is reassess business office leadership roles to permit the business office leadership to concentrate on sustainability and finance issues.
We want them focused on sustainability and finance rather than custodial maintenance and transportation issues. If they're focused on those latter issues, there'll be significant distraction from their major responsibility of financial management. So I have some recommendations on restructuring the job descriptions for the top two leaders in the finance office that, relieves them of custodial maintenance and transportation issues.
Then I have another section here, for implementation within six months. Those were immediate. Those four recommendations were for immediate implementation, and they're doable. I've done them in other districts and worked with them, and they're all possible. But within six six months, we look to see enhanced transparency of district decision making with the use of additional metrics and more discussion to develop greater trusting relationships. Research from GFOA and Deloitte demonstrates the value of open communication and trust building practices.
You're gonna hear me talk about GFOA, that's Government Finance Officers Association, out of Chicago. They cover The United States and Canada. It's the top research organization, in my view, for public schools and municipalities. Deloitte is one of the largest accounting firms in the world. A tool that they bring to us is financial planning and analysis. An abbreviation is FP and A. It's a newer tool that includes activities which support an organization's health. Use of the tool in the development of new decision metrics for the board and
administrators should be considered. I have some additional reference books and materials I'd like you to consider that are listed in the manual. Consideration b, this is the consideration section. Consider consider district perceptions on financial foundations for thriving communities. We're gonna look at that tool in a minute. We have the tool, and I had this with the conversations we had with with the personnel. It was developed by GFOA, a tool that assists school districts and municipalities to measure
where they stand on five pillars of measurement. We held the one on one conversations and people were very open and communicated very well from the representative leadership. So this is on a scale of zero to five, with five being high. The results for the district are these. Number one, pillar one, establish a long term vision. It's at 3.1 out of a scale of five. Pillar two, build trust in open communications. It's at 2.9 out of a scale up to five.
Pillar three, use collective decision making, 3.9. Pillar four, create clear rules, 3.3. Pillar five, treat everyone fairly, 3.2. That summary is not an evaluation, but it provides you with some areas of opportunity for moving forward. Consideration C. Update and formalize the documentation of human resource and financial systems. This whole discussion was as much about human resources and finance as everything else because
those two departments are so important to work together. And the sense is that they are working together. They are, they are communicating. But there are new things that they need to communicate about. And some of what we heard from almost everybody is we want more rules. We want to know, you know, how we're supposed to do things. They don't want to make mistakes. They want it right. And with the turnover you've had in your district, just like every district, those rules kind of go by the wayside and they need to be put down in writing again.
So, that's one of the one of the big considerations you should look at. And it should include cross training. If somebody can't do payroll because they're gone or they're ill, who's who's scheduled for that? And I know you do have some discussion going on that to correct that. Succession planning, if something happens to Monica, who's gonna be there working on that? And who's third? And same with HR and other operations in the district. Additional considerations, are beyond that in the report.
And, most of those are practices I would like to see in every school district. May not be specific to yours, but they're for every district. It's an inventory. I'm gonna ask Rochelle to pass out the report while I'm gonna continue to talk about a couple of the districts we worked with. You have a wonderful district, a wonderful community, and what we're presenting tonight should be viewed as an investment going forward in allowing you to be proactive in managing the
district's resources. So I mentioned three districts that that we worked with. My one of my first significant clients in zero based budgeting was Bay City Public Schools, brand new superintendent coming in, some years ago. He got there and he received a letter from Treasury that said, guess what? Your fund balance is headed below 5%. So he was very concerned, invited me to come in and and meet. He actually held the door open as I walked in the in the building. And, starting then, we developed a relationship that helped correct a lot of things that
had been let go for a long, long time and open up the transparency to everything budget. We started the zero based budget process, but he also started a strategic plan with MASB coming in and having a really good conversation. So with that, we had the strategic plan going, we started to work on looking at that budget that looked upside down, and we actually spent time line by line
by line. Why is this budget here? What's the purpose of this account? And by the end of the year, instead of a deficit fund balance, he had a 10% fund balance. By the end of the second year, he had a 15% fund balance. So it worked great, but it's because everybody worked together, they knew they were in trouble, they had to had to turn it around. Mhmm. Yep. The next, large district was Lance Cruz, but I'm gonna talk about the one that I worked with last year, Mequon Tynesville in Wisconsin.
I try not to do much work out of state, but I did get a zero base budgeting assignment over there and they were desperate because their funding in Wisconsin was actually less generous than it, than it is in, in Michigan and they were gonna be in desperate straits. And this was a school district that was a very wealthy district, it was a proud school district, beautiful facilities, but because of the funding structure, they had to go for what they called a referendum. And they had to prove that their budget figures were right to the community.
So, they announced we're gonna do zero based budgeting and that's, what they did. And it took probably from October through June to to to get that done and we got it done. They restored trust with the community and the community felt good, a very highly educated community, and they passed the referendum. So, but without the process, it may not have happened. And then Lance Cruz, a number of years ago, I I was met the superintendent
there at at the time. He was interested in doing this. It it took a couple years to get that set up for, the zero based budgeting process, but we got it done. It's a district right now of 10,400 students in Macomb County. It was the largest district I worked with on zero based budgeting. When I got to the district, I was happy to find Rochelle, who had a background on zero based budgeting in her former life as a hospital accountant and administrator.
So she was ready and willing to translate that to zero based budgeting to Lance Cruz. I'm gonna ask, Rochelle to talk for a short while and tell us about her experience and what it meant to the principals, what it what it meant to the district, and the formality of looking at a sustainable operation. So for us, as Jen mentioned, I'm used to doing that. Hospitals, hate to say that it's easier, but you start with your volume, you, you know, you predict what your you know, how many stents you're gonna do and all
that, and then that drives, obviously, your supplies and your labor, and you you move on here. It's not so easy because, as of right now, you don't even know what you're gonna get from the state. I had started implementing, kind of like, why is I a portion of the zero based budget for the ancillary department? So for operations, technology, curriculum, because what we were finding is we were having as many districts some financial trouble, but all of a sudden you see maintenance contracts going up, and they're like, well, I don't have enough budget. Well, how come?
So we started doing that technology software. That's you know, they go to redo in in the middle of the year, and it's a 30% increase, and where are we finding the money? So we did that, but when we engaged with Dan, we were able to take everything a step further. For our buildings, we had 17 buildings. They were all getting a budget. They always saw what they got. They had monthly reporting, but it was based on current pupil allocation based on the fall account. So elementary got a certain dollar amount, middle school, and and high school, but that
even then, they kinda knew what they got, but it was like, you know, you start seeing things coming out of supplies that was really purchased services. Well, why? Well, because that's where I had the money, and it's like, Well, you didn't plan for it. So we started working with Don, with the principals as well, and we just expanded it in the ancillary area, but what happened with the principals is they started talking to the teachers and the parapros. Well, what do you need? And the first year, I have to tell you, we did pie in the sky.
Tell us what you need. You know, if this if we had unlimited dollars and everyone's like, why are we wasting our time doing that if you don't have it? But the idea is for when we have our presentation, the superintendent and the other cabinet members knew what they were looking at, knew what they wanted, and then you have to align that with your strategic plan. For us, that was a challenge because our plan was outdated. So it was a little bit harder to do that, but we eventually got there. But everyone presented in front of the superintendent and cabinet.
They felt heard. And then, of course, you have a lot and because we had dwindling bond dollars, we hadn't had a bond since, 02/2010, so it was well overdue. We were running out of that. So we started spending general fund money on, replacements, bus replacements and things like that. And so you've got, you know, transportation competing for the same dollar technology is, the technology is, the same dollar that the high school principal is because they need money for their art room or they need a kiln or they need etcetera, etcetera. So we went through that whole process of presentations, and then we had a committee
with a representative from each level along with cabinet and the superintendent, and we just nailed it out. We just sat there. We talked. We had Don was there for several of those. It's like, what is important? What's gonna happen? And I have to say, the principals, while it was a lot of work, they felt heard, and everyone got a little bit of something that first round. We found elementary aids were needed at the elementary school for behavior issues because the teachers were overwhelmed and the principal had all these kids in the office.
Well, here they had an aid that would help them, like, you know, just, I hate to say, a professional break taker, but, you know, bring a kid out, talk with them, get them going, things like that. In secondaries, it was supervisory aids. They needed more aids in the hallway to help prevent, you know, things that happened at high school and middle schools in the hallway. You know, technology was able to explain to us why their software costs were going up. So it was just a good communication. It was a collaborative process. And when we went to the second year, it was a lot easier because they
all knew. And, actually, we designed some forms. I think, hopefully, you're still using them, that a lot of it's just on Excel. And they just, you know, do their notations on Excel, and then they prioritize it. You know, what is a need? What is a wish? You know, what's a priority? And then you take your priorities. Okay. You know? And you just kinda line them up. And yet everyone doesn't get what they need, but they were heard, and that was really important. And involving the teachers, and John even conducted a meeting inviting the rest of the
employees to come. So, you know, I think that might have been a Zoom meeting at the time because I think it was right after COVID, but, you know, you had food service staff. Even though their budget's different, they wanted to be heard. And then you, you know, you had some drivers, you had some custodial people because they were concerned about, you know, the aging bus fleet, the aging buildings, and, you know, what are they going to get out of it. So in the end, yes, it worked really well for us, and, you know, we continued to do it. And each year, we kind of fine tuned it a little bit better that it
wasn't as much as work, but everyone seemed happy because they at least felt accountable. And our our, building administrators, all our, departments always got a budget to actual every single month. They knew exactly where they were. They had access to the real time on and they could do a purchase inquiry. They could do an account inquiry and know at any given time where their budget is at. And so that's really important too for a tool for them to be able to manage their budget. So my world, when I was a school business official, our administrators became to expect
this budget discussion and they look forward to it because they knew they could get input and they could affect their own world. It's the only way that they could. Rather than being told what your budget is, which the majority of school districts in the state roll over budgets and the people are told what their budgets are, and there there's a lack of ownership with all of that. What we provide with this process is all of the forms, because if if I said to a business official, just get this started, there wouldn't be any place to
go to get the forms. They'd have to develop all the forms. There is, there's no college instruction on zero based budgeting that I have ever found. There's no formal instruction anywhere. So we've developed this and we're happy to work with one district per year. That that's all we can do because it's it's a significant process. We have good backup, GFOA, develop best practices in school budgeting, and I gave Monica
the assignment to get these. She ordered them, I don't know if she's read them yet. And then A Better Way to Budget by Nate Levinson, which goes together with GFOA best practices. And this is all about why the principals ought to be involved and how they can contribute. And then the second book, Smarter Budgets, Smarter Schools by Nate Levinson. So all of that is really good, reading material. You could do a book study on those. I'd like to turn, I'm gonna not spend as much time on this, page 14.
This is going back to the recommendations and talking about a little bit more detail. It helps you understand the strategic plan can have a significant impact on bringing community and stakeholders together. It should be an effort that includes a broad range of input and has the board of ed involved in selection of facilitator participating in the input process and receiving periodic reports since the plan once the plan is completed. So I've been involved in a lot of strategic plans.
Those that are successful get periodic reports back to the board, probably quarterly. I'm a vision chair. I'm the vision chair for Southwest Michigan Rotary, and I'm in charge of doing strategic plans with clubs. And we've embedded in that you've got to bring a report back quarterly to the board. MESB, describes, this process is one of the board's main roles in adopting the mission and vision through a strategic plan.
And this is, right below there, is directly from MASB at the bottom of 14. Why do you wanna set these goals? All about district mission and vision, etcetera. On the next page, GFOA does research. They have a major report on rethinking strategic planning, and there's the link right there. But this was their conclusion on why you should do it. You need to accept uncertainty. There's uncertainty out there more than ever on everything we do.
Define the problem before the solution. Provide a focus on introducing constraints. And develop a rolling planning process. This is the main thing out of this study, a rolling planning process. So you will come up with a strategic plan one year. Year two, you got to look at it again because things have changed a lot, so you might have to roll some things. Year three, roll some things. By roll, I mean revise and adapt to the changing conditions that are out there. Make sure it's collaborative, make sure it's fair.
So please take a look at that. Three to five year plan is what's recommended. Board of Education must be involved to take action on the selection. My recommendation, in this consideration, in this recommendation part, is to have some bids come in. One from MASB, one from Michigan Leadership Institute. I've used both of them. They're both good. There might be somebody else out there. Next page, 16. Budget development and monitoring. The budget that you adopt is the most important document that the district is going
to adopt annually because it really defines what you're going to be doing. MESP defines the budget as that it reflects the student achievement goals of the district with curriculum driving the budget discussion. And then, of course, they do more study. Rethinking budget. GFOA's rethinking budget. And they're they broke broke down the whole budget piece into three big pieces. The planning, you know, how are we gonna articulate what our future is? And some of that will come from the strategic planning, but it comes from the
zero based budget process itself. And then the actual budgeting, which starts in January, February, or March, and once it's completed, then the monitoring and reporting. So, what you're very, very weak on right now is monitoring and reporting. If you had the monitoring and reporting, you may not be having this conversation. Take a look at that website. You can see the whole report. It's it's really good. Why do we need to rethink budgeting? Page 17. Our local governments have long relied on incremental line item budgeting where last year's budget
becomes next year's budget with changes around the margin. So in other words, they take last year's and say, well, what do we need next year? And it kind of is the same. Nobody asks the question in rollover budget, what's the basis of that number? Nobody asked the question, what do you need? If you just rollover, you have no new thinking, you don't have your goals or your mission incorporated. So that's what this does, rethinking budget. And their research research supports all of that.
The bottom of this page, is is a graphic that we've prepared in in in my firm. This is how we we break it down. It's in planning, we call it budget development goals and decision making parameters. This is what we do in November, December, and we define all of these categories that are listed there for your district. Page 18, the definition, if you need to repeat this to somebody here, zero base
versus rollover budgeting. Rollover budgeting is historical patterns. Page 19, the levels of collaboration. I'd like to see some input from teachers in building support. Principals and supervisors need to absolutely be involved. They become the the foundation of this discussion. The superintendent and central office receive from the principals and supervisors their input and their budget request, and then it comes to the board and the community. We involved the board at the beginning of this process in helping to develop those
budget development goals and decision making parameters. We also check-in during this process. So the board is not involved in the process day to day, but you'll know what the goals are going forward and you'll have periodic information coming. Page 20, my language on on why a recommended budget system, proactive, transparent, user friendly data, cost centers, everything that I just talked about. We we come up with various levels of service, and that's shown on the next
page. We break the budget request down into the must do, the should do, and the wishes. So at Lance Cruz, they went off on a little different path than we had seen in others. The principals in each building decided, we want to do that for the whole building. And they included personnel. Remember that? And that really wasn't our structure, but it was really great and I actually carried that forward to the the following district. It helps you reassess your priorities.
The bottom of page 21, this creates a climate of a culture of change. Principal supervisors become responsible and accountable. Spending is tied to district goals. And one major point that I emphasize all the way through this, every budget dollar has to have a job. So if I pull up a supply account in, let's say, transportation, and I ask you ask, what's the job of that that account? What's it supposed to do? And if nobody knows, the account goes away. We did that a lot in Bay City because nobody had any history and knew
what what that whole budget out look looked like. Page 22, a comparison between rollover and zero based budgeting. On the right, zero base is a clean slate, examines all activities, new approaches. Page 23, up at the top, smarter school spending and best practices in school district budgeting is largely this. But this graphic shows all of the audiences up above that need to be involved and it brings the academic and the finance person together real well in this process
more than ever. And you go along this path and you're basing it on smarter goals starting off. And you create a strategic financial plan at the end. The last section on this page, Michigan budgeting law, Uniform Budgeting and Accounting Act. You can look up this this law down there. It requires that school districts and municipalities adopt a balanced budget. Superintendent is the chief administrative officer of the school district and shall have the final responsibility for budget preparation presentation to the legislative body and the control of expenditures.
So even though Monica is here, it's Amy that really is in charge of developing that and making sure that that is balanced. Monica is the right hand that is gonna bring this all together and make it work. On page 24, modernizing district financial systems. If you look up Milwaukee Public Schools, just within the last couple weeks, they had horrible financial system problems, very large district, and they talked about modernizing. They feel that they did modernize them, they got them up to today's standards, and
they talked a lot about budget to actual. You know, what is the budget? How are we doing to actual? And the implementation of those look up look up screens will be critical for you. Here's the facilities planning that I I mentioned, earlier. There's a toolkit, Exhibit O. If you wanna go way to the back, Exhibit O, is something that my firm developed over the years for working with bond issues, developing feasibility studies. And there it is, Exhibit O.
We'll talk about that more another time. Page 25, Recommendation two, monitor and address the district's shortfall, structural shortfall. You have a 5,560 line detailed budget. The zero based budgeting, we'll look at all of that, help to address that shortfall and get rid of those negative trajectories. Page 26, reasons fund balance is important. It's hard to articulate to a lot of people why should we have a fund balance. You're starting to to yawn because you've I mentioned fund balance.
I'm sorry, I had to do that. But fund balance is not everybody's language. And, but here's why you need it. It's critical to an operation. Those are all the reasons. '27, we had early warning law. Ten years ago, the governor signed that July 1, and it really is a good thing. But it says if your fund balance starts to dip below 5%, you have to do certain things. And here's more of the law later that most of what I've talked about, the 5% in the projections you need to make.
Page 28, potential for fiscal stress. That's where the state treasurer gets involved. And even if you don't have a deficit elimination plan requirement, you'll still have the potential for fiscal distress, which will need to be worked with and corrected. So what is a good fund balance? Here they are listed the recommendations out there. MSBO, 15% to 20%. GFOA, two months of operating expense. That's about the same as Michigan School Business officials.
I'm recommending 20% because we have so much uncertainty out there today for school districts. We'd feel much more comfortable when our revenue, we have no idea what it's gonna be going forward. There's an example fund balance policy exhibit J. I'm not gonna go to that, but it's a whole page. Should review with your auditor, is this what you want to adopt? The new policy services that attorneys bring to you do not have that in there. You've got to have a fund balance policy. Recommendation three, we talked about the strategic financial plan.
This is a little bit more on it. It has these three ingredients: the Business Services Site Assessment, which is this right now, collaborative budgeting, the zero based budgeting, and the long range financial projection. Off on the right, I talked about SMARTER goals. I didn't tell you what they were. They're specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time bound, engaging, and resourced. And I looked at your district. If we were going to put all that together for a strategic financial plan, this
is what it would look like month by month by month. And the who is off on the left. Who would be responsible? The, business official is is involved a lot. The superintendent is involved. The administrators are involved, all the way through. And then the what, the when, and the resources. I could spend an hour talking about that, but I'm not going to. It's up to you to decide if you wanna proceed with that. Moving forward. Page 30, reassess business office leadership roles for success. I mentioned this earlier.
I'm afraid your job description for your top finance officer is too overloaded. I talked with Rochelle earlier today and she had the same situation. She had, finance and operations and then it was determined she could not handle operations all at the same time. It was gonna drain too much of her time and that she needed to concentrate on operations. And because you are having some fiscal stress right now, that's what I'm recommending for you that that job description be modified. And those detailed job descriptions are later exhibits A through D.
Then the consideration, enhance the transparency. More information on that. I think you're on the right track. You have strong new leadership in the business office. I'm really happy about that. There's the financial planning and analysis on page 32 that I mentioned to you. Here are some more reading materials, the four factors of trust, more research, and then the consideration, the Financial Foundation's framework. If you go quickly to Exhibit E, this is the framework and this was how
we talked about these various pillars, about the long term vision, the trust, collective decision making, clear rules, etcetera. On the back is more detail. This is one of my favorite documents from GFOA. I get really excited when I see that document. Update and document the HR and financial systems. I'm gonna quickly go through the rest of this and see if we have some time for questions. Page 35, this is financial best practices. This is topics for consideration. These are long term things.
The budget to actual needs to be ingrained long term. The business evaluation summary prepared by Terry Less from Oakland Schools is really well written. That needs to be implemented. And just one small note, for everybody in this district, date all district doc documents. A lot of documents I saw, I didn't find dates. Page 36, operate a fully active purchasing system. And I think you should look at that whole purchase, policy. Once this is installed with budgeting and people know what what their budgets are, everything
needs to be approved by the business office, through the business office. And even those items that are going through payroll, reimbursed through payroll must be reimbursed, must be approved. Page 38, Assistant Superintendent for Business must be intricately involved in contract negotiations. When I had that job, I would not let the negotiators out of my sight. Because I was responsible for keeping that fund balance up. I even had to negotiate with the superintendents and tell them no, you can't do
that. So it takes that strong business, almost autonomous business department that's gonna help keep this district solvent. The business office should sign off on final hiring. There shouldn't be any hiring without the business office knowing about it and know where it is in the budget. Continued training and ongoing education. This district is really good about providing, allowing people to get trained and get their certification. There's cross training at the bottom that we talked about. Need a lot more work on that.
Page 38, clearly communicate with employees on where the district stands financially and provide suggested talking points for their understanding. I have found that when districts understand where you're at, where you're headed, they're gonna help you solve the problem. And you need to have them involved in that discussion. Page 40, HR, not a lot on HR, but, you know, the procedures again and date all all district documents. These are a collection of best practices. I'm not gonna go through those, but you should look at them because they've, it
took years to collect those. I think they're really good. Page 48, finance and HR have been inundated with new regulations, new laws, new rules. And this is just, probably not all of it, but it's a good start to give you an idea of how overwhelming it is to deal with all of this. The most recent on page 49, the section 147, MPSR state aid accounting. There are superintendents that lost their jobs because that accounting was not handled properly.
Some right in this area for the section 147. Human Resources, some of the new challenges that they have to deal with. Page 51, the business office structure, I've already talked about that, the cross training. Page 52, human resource structure, collaborative to meet with the finance office and discuss those budget to actuals. Page 53, there are a lot of revenue sources available to school districts. Sometimes we don't access them and we don't access them timely. This is the latest list that I could put together.
Page 54, under audit and internal control review, the Uniform Budgeting and Accounting Act, make sure that you're complying with it, understand internal controls, and consider forming a board audit committee. I'm also at the bottom middle of this page a consideration that a board finance committee, board finance subcommittee meet three times per year with agendas prepared and facilitated by the assistant superintendent of business. That person actually runs the meeting, but it gets good conversation from the board, gets
you to understand, you know, what we're having to deal with, in in the business office. Page 55, this is from the auditing world, formation of a board audit committee. I did this in one district that I was interim superintendent in and it it was very helpful. It allowed the board committee to talk directly with the auditor in in advance of the audit and have some conversation so that you can have that direct link with
the auditor. Page 56, board policy, fund balance is critical. The purchasing policy We look financial planning analysis. The MASB governance standards, go please go to exhibit h for one minute. This was so well written. And if you go to page four of that, guiding principles of the Board of Education, that's the board. And then on page six, individual board member governance standards.
Has anybody seen this this before? It was out a few years ago. You remember it? Okay. I actually just got a copy of mister Frederi, but I forgot to give us. You forgot. It's great if the board can adopt it because you ought to discuss it and have MASB, if you need to, monitor that a little bit. But it's a great document. For the board, focusing less on transactional detail and more on strategic issues, rather than time spent on individual purchases. Look at the bigger picture.
I have a recommended board financial summary. It's Exhibit L. It gives a little more detail and a little more history than yours. I'm not gonna go over it right now. Collective Bargaining, 57, page 57. Recommend a contract review of current agreements by legal counsel. Should be practiced regularly. Those are the big dollars in your district. Assistant superintendent should be integral to the negotiations. Something on collective bargaining, consider a process that includes long range financial projection. You don't have one now, because you don't know where you are at the moment.
But once you have that long range projection, that can be a part of discussion on collective bargaining. Here are some metrics. The bottom of page 57, if you don't have these, it's real they're really critical for negotiations. What does 1% cost? How will it fit into the entire district? Can you afford it? It might be 2%, whatever the percent is. And there are the other things you should know. Sustainability, I'm all about sustainability. Page 60, conduct a conversation with your community.
If you do an independent, strategic plan with independent facilitator, Reaching out to the community community as a part of that is is critical. Seven tenets of sustainability. This is what I've developed over the years. If you're having trouble balancing your budget, I would go to this right now, GFOA, fiscal first aid resource center. There's lots of ideas on budget balancing. There's the website. You can practice amending your budget as soon as you know that there's a material
deviation. It's really hard right now because we don't know what the state aid is, we don't know what a lot of things are, but as soon as you know there's a deviation. District points of pride, you've got a lot of points of pride. People love this district, they love this community, there they are. But when I ask the what are the potential single points of failure that could happen? You know, every entity is gonna have potential single points of failure. One thing can affect everybody. Here is what they said.
Going on to exhibit A, I am almost completed here. Exhibit A, all the issues that accounting office and finance office has to take care of are listed here. And lot of those are embedded in Monica and Crystal, in their jobs, and the other folks in your office. But all of these have to fit into the four employees that you have right now. And this is kind of written for a commercial business because it has Treasury, but
we have so many challenges. Here, the, Exhibit B is the rewritten job description that I am recommended for the assistant superintendent of business, actually changing the title to business and taking off operations. As I said, that happened in your district. Tell us what that situation was, Michelle, if you would. So we, got a new superintendent and we were having, as many districts at that time, challenges with our financial position, and operation takes that's where you get the call
because the bus is late or something happened on the bus and they escalate, you know, the parents, the call, and then you're as an assistant superintendent, you're taking the call, and it just it started taking up a lot of time. And then there were issues with building, and then they're calling you know, the principals were calling me, So a lot of my time was being directed to how to manage that area and really what we needed to focus my expertise was finance, and we wanted me, along with my director, to focus on our operations because we didn't wanna lose any of that because if you're not paying to and, you know, paying
attention to what's happening in the business office in your church, that internal controls go by the wayside, things there's more ripe for misappropriation, so we just needed to to kind of move ops out of my wheelhouse and and it went over to HR for a while, and I think it eventually ended up going to the superintendent. And truth be known, our business officials in Michigan aren't necessarily trained for operations. It's a whole different, finance so that you can be stable.
You have two or three years of digging this out right now. That's gonna be full time, setting up modern systems, getting you on the right track. So we're we're almost to the end. I'll take some some questions. Exhibit p is if you want to go forward with zero based budgeting, there's service B. It's it's the letter of engagement. It's an addendum to the letter of engagement that was adopted to start this process and that describes everything that we would do getting that zero based budgeting going.
And then a little further along is service C, long range financial projection training. And that would take approval. It's dated today, it would have to be completed a week from today if you want to proceed, because we need to know if you're going to wish to have those services. So with that, we did a lot of talking. I probably should have stopped and asked for some questions, but what can I help the board with, questions? I have information. I'm glad you're giving us a week to decide. Mhmm. So if we do plan on moving forward, is there an estimated cost for the
services to do the zero based budgeting and to finish the process? I look back on a couple of the clients. This district may be totally different than those. It's an hourly rate. It's based on an hourly rate, so the hourly rate is going to govern. But for zero based budgeting, I think it would be 35,000. And for the long range financial projection, I think it'll be another 16,000, bringing it up to a total of 51,000 to get you through this tough time.
And if you compare that to your total budget, your $61,000,000 budget, that's one tenth of 1%. Not 1%, it's one tenth of 1%. So do you question is, do you want to spend one tenth of 1% to fix this and have a long range projection that a year and a half from now you'll be happy with? Can you explain to me, how the process would work with working with the ISD? Would you prefer that the ISD come to you and work collaboratively with you and
because my fear is there's gonna be too many hands in the process. So how would that can you tell me how that might work with Well, we'll we'll certainly with the ISD? We'll we'll communicate with them, but generally in the budget development, in the training of zero based budgeting, the ISD is not very much involved. It was involved somewhat in Bay City and we had some some meetings there because they were responsible for some of the funding. But our firm would, would take the leadership in organizing all of that communication.
Okay. So there's, there's not a lot with the ISD. So so but there I mean, I guess she talked about mono modernizing the computer systems. So it's all departmentalized. Yeah. Wouldn't the ISD be involved in that? Well, they would. Terry will help the business office and set that up. So I don't think it's it's gonna be that onerous. They So you'll be working parallel and not overlapping? The ISD would be working directly with the business office. So we would have a conversation with Terry Les and and Monica and say, how
can we get this going? Maybe you've already had that conversation, you probably have. So she's probably way ahead of us. It's nothing to be nothing to worry about because it will just happen if you decide to go this route. My fear is that it's gonna be said, well, the ISD said this. Well, Don, so we said this. And the ISD said this. Well, Don, so we said this. And that's kinda what I'm avoid I would like to try to avoid. So I'm trying to understand how we would be working. Well, I, you know, I I saw Terry Less' writing on the evaluation.
It it was really good, and it has a lot of what we we have in here. I had a hour conversation with her, and it went really well. I have no concern over that not working. I would love for the board to give an opportunity since we didn't have a time ahead of time, which often happens, with the superintendent to sit down to talk about some of the things that have already started or some of the things that maybe we didn't know about are already happening in approval processes to kinda clarify so that as I speak with Beth, that we can look at the whole picture of
both pieces as you're talking about position was it or zero based budgeting, Terry Lee's talked about going to position based then to zero based. We've seen a lot of so that we can have that conversation about pros and cons as we're doing this. So position budgeting, Terry said don't do it now. It's it's too hard. But in the process we have right now, we look at every single account in your budget and we determine how many employees are in their FTEs. That's gonna be right in the document. That helps our discussion. So we're we're really looking at position budgeting while we're going through the zero based
budget. We're looking at the numbers and the positions. So when we look at the salaries and benefits, that's how we control those salaries and benefits by the number of positions that are in each category. But again, it seems like you're working and Terry's miss Les is working and it seems like they're overlapping. How are you going to bring those together if we decide to move forward with you? We just have a talk. Because once once I hear the And I guess I'm just trying to understand how the relationship with the ISD, the work you're completing, and our business office is gonna
look like. Because what I don't want to do is overwhelm our business office with, well, Terry said to do this and Dan said to do this. I'm not sure where to go. I don't wanna leave them at that place of unknown. Does that make sense? No. I I hear what you're saying. In in in most situations, the ISD has a relatively minor role. The main thing we need the ISD for is helping with getting this kind of structure up and running. Once that's done, the ISD is pretty much pretty much done with the the process.
If you're good now, that is if you're gonna have us do the zero waste budget. We will need to have cooperation, and we will need to have good communication and listening and follow through. So that's all part of the original agreement that we have. We have to have all of that. So I'm I'm just saying that the the ISD will be relatively minor. How can we get started?
I think Bob can like this. Oh, okay. Yeah. I was just gonna say that, right now, working with Terry and not having, John's report yet, Terry and I look at what was logical for us to start with and, you know, what pieces we would start working on. And so Terry is very flexible and I think would be more than willing to work, you know, with Don or or or work around that. And I think Terry is really critical in this process because she knows the system
and she's working on the same system, so she will know how to implement some of these things. We're already working on cleaning up our account stream coding so that we can get reports ran for, you know, everybody can run their own reports. So we're we're working on some of the things already that that Don has recommended. So I think it would really just be a matter of coordinating myself, Terry, and Don that, you know, what we need from Terry. She's not gonna give us more than what we need because she's got other things
she's working on. Yeah. She's she's got a full time job, not not this district. Yeah. But she's been really helpful and and just on our terms, so I think it would just be a conversation, with Terry and Don and myself. And don't forget, Crystal is really gotta be a critical piece of this. She's needs to be your right hand and she needs to be in all of our discussions. Lanz Cruz, the business manager, was that her title? Director. Director of business, was right there with us on everything and she helped all of
the details. So you don't get overwhelmed with the numbers too much and we have to some somebody else do that. And that would be Crystal in this district. And on that note, I wanted to mention, Crystal is not here tonight. She's he has a final exam. So she's kind of the sound of the background at home, but, just make sure she gets a report. We wish you luck, Crystal. We'll go over your exam. Did that answer your question? Yes. Yeah. Because that is I could just interject just for a second. When I was the SIS manager, student information assistant manager, we utilized Fulton Schools for
the guidance and reporting, and and they were always very helpful, very accommodating, of course, the head of the districts, but, they were there when we needed them to explain the system how it worked. Then also I had a consultant that I was working with late at night, and she would come up with some ideas, and then I would go back to open schools. I mean, the two of them, you know, we we all three of us work together to get the job done. And that's the way open schools works. That they're there for us.
They're there for Oakland Schools is, you know, our Oakland Schools in this sense. And, you know, they've always been very helpful. They have a great reputation in the state. One of the best in the state and they have the best people there. So I don't anticipate any issue with Oakland Schools. I think they just wanna help you solve it, but they don't wanna run your district. No. They can't do it. They just can't. I guess and then I have one more question. When would you wanna start the process of the zero based budgeting? Well, it's You said that you wanted to have it completed by I thought I'd
run-in here January 31. Well, that's when the principals start. Okay. Oh, that no. That's that's the, strategic plan strategic plan. The principals will start and that's in the in the small print, the, financial strategic plan strategic financial plan. It goes through June. You're right. So it starts in October and goes through June. Okay. So we would have discussions at the mostly the business office level for some time.
So when would you start the zero based budgeting process and get Well that's that's all part of it, the discussions with the business office. And once we get our feet on the ground, we convene that financial team that we would, well, some people from this this room right here, and we would talk through how we're gonna proceed with this. But the initial discussion will start with Monica and Crystal and get an understanding. We want to be their best friends. We want to take as much pressure off them as possible.
One business official where we installed this said this was actually easier than other things because we provided all the forms. Rochelle is going to be available to help with this process as well. Because she's done it recently in her capacity as director, assistant superintendent in Lance Cruz. So I plan to have Rochelle in a fair amount of the detail, particularly when we get to the budget part and working with principals.
I was gonna ask her role. So how often would Rochelle be here? It depends. We'd have to schedule that. We don't have it scheduled. Mhmm. On some of the basic planning, probably in there. But when when the principals are involved, probably almost every time the principals are involved. Madam president, if I could ask maybe putting on the agenda, for you to ask the superintendent to put on the agenda to change the title of our director of
finance and then come up with some sort of plan of how the rest of the title, how we can fulfill that with an employee so that's taken away. Because That to me is gonna have to happen. It's already been removed. It was removed from Jason in the final year. And if you look at the organizational chart, all of those positions already fall to me. Monica, as I shared with you, has no responsibility for that at this time. And then the hope would be, if that's appropriate, then we would slowly move that back on. But currently, she she doesn't have transportation business or any of that on her plate
and has not since I've been back. I've handled it all. So that's Yes. No. And you know what? It was I handled more than that when I first started, but we have Greg. We've been moving Greg along to handle some of those things that maybe Jason did before. So to give, the board leadership as well. And when information to know. When you get started on a bond issue campaign, it may be time where you have some other professional help, a different position that is facilities, transportation related. Because in other districts this size, that would often be the case, So the superintendent
doesn't end up doing all of that. It's too much. And we do have a director of buildings and grounds. So that's where we're talking about building his capacity and things that maybe he wasn't he wasn't doing that leadership. And we have a director of transportation, which will be doing over. So giving them more growth and leadership too is what Right. And their their job descriptions are important. You know, what are what are their what are they supposed to be doing? What's what's the outcome? You mentioned that you work at an hourly rate. What is that hourly rate? Two forty five. I'm sorry? Two forty five. Two forty five, thank you. That's in the original, document, the engagement letter that you would have seen at some
point earlier. And both? Is $2.45 an hour for either one? No. Rochelle is $1.25. Thank you. She's included in the 55,000. Right? Did you say 51? What? 5151? She will be. Anybody have anything else? I think it's a great report. I'm I'm it's very detailed, it's nice, it gives good direction. So a professional, I think it's very, very good report. Thank you. I have a quick question. So these recommendations, that's not for you to do, that's for us to do on
our own? No, the recommendations are for the district. Correct. Yeah, that's for the district. The the recommendations are the main ones. And then we have those that are to be implemented six months. Those are less timely. And some of those you have we have in our plans, you talk about you just have to decide as a board if that's how you want to continue with AASA and those kind of things as well. That means that there is a conversation, which is why I asked to have a conversation. Well, thank you for coming out.
That's not a lot of work for you. Thank you. And I cannot wait to sit down and to get him to read this. Yeah. There's a lot of details, so please take a look. Okay. Thank you. Okay. The resident committee put this Okay. Thank you. So can the president committee put this on the agendas for next Sunday, chief hold on if we plan on getting calls to put it on the agenda? Sure. Thank you. Thank you, Ed. It's nice meeting everybody. Thank you. Alright. Next under MGH business is the district improvement plan. Yeah. So, for the district improvement plan and the strategic plan, we brought it to you,
last month and, and asked, you know, we reviewed it and asked if you had some specific ideas. If you remember, our district improvement plan comes off of the strategic plan, and the strategic plan, has the strategies. Your strategic plan goals are the area of finance, curriculum instruction, community relations, and school climate and culture. That hasn't changed for quite a while. We hope to do that second semester. But, our strategies are up and underneath that we are working to focus on moving
forward and and so we wanted to see if there were any additional questions, from the board. This is all done collaboratively with the administrators, in the spring, and they give input from their dis their, building leadership teams. Did mister mister Sobe just say that we should use a third party and we should be involved in the strategic plan? Is this the same strategic plan that he was talking about in this? Okay. So that we did do a strategic plan, and we utilized Susan Klein and I
can't remember her name, but I can't even see her. She's at Oakland Schools now, and they came or at Oakland University, they came to us from Oakland Schools, and that that is exactly what it is. But what's up and underneath here is really not you approving the strategic plan the board already approved several years ago. And many years, we asked for the board to do it again, and you didn't want to, and we kept the same goals. So the goals are what's up here. That's the strategic plan. What we have up and underneath that we bring to all of you are the strategies to implement those goals.
If you remember, we talked about we would have done strategic plan last year second semester after we finished the portrait of the graduate. I think this board is gonna have to decide, do you want to finish the portrait of graduate work? And then from there, you bring in a third party, or we could do it ourselves. Third party, it's always easier to be two miles away to be the expert, but you can bring AASA in, you can bring MASB to collaborate that around the portrait of a learner.
So these are strategies that we've developed with the administrators. If you remember, you developed those, we developed the items up and underneath. Then the district improvement plan aligns with the strategic plan strategy. So this isn't a strategic plan. It's a strategy plan. This is a strategic plan that has been adopted. The strategies are how we go about it if we brought it to you every year. And then I used to give you quarterly updates, but the board found that overwhelming. If you remember correctly, those of you who have been with us during this time,
we utilized we gave those we can go back look at them. We gave them quarterly on what we were doing on all of these items. I would like to finish that portrait of a graduate show. We already spent money on it. Me too. And I would love to finish it. It was it was a lot of fun collaborating with everybody, and I would love to see it finished. We had a lot of community input. And so, yes. And and it has been on the agenda since last last fall to do a strategic plan, and then it would lead into an evaluation of what you would like
to see done with your buildings because we will have a drop in, mills again in a couple of years. So all of that was the plan, moving forward. So what I meant Tuesday with you, I mentioned putting portrait of a learner under September. You said you put on the calendar under October, but it's not on the new calendar for tonight. You didn't add portrait of a learner. So it wouldn't go on the board calendar because that's not a yearly thing. But the date that we had picked, I think that we I'm looking at you.
It's Jamie. We had we had looked at is October 9 given the fact that, we'll be and I remember we talked briefly about looking at October 9 and sending a letter out. And the strategic plan okay. For a number of years, when we did our board self evaluation, Julie Kosminski and Debbie Stair, they were our facilitators, And they said that we needed a new strategic plan. And Penny that just did the training for your evaluation said we knew we need a new strategic plan.
And now he said we need a new strategic plan. And we agree. And we have this. This is not involving the community. This is not what a strategic plan that these people are talking about. When you have a strategic plan, you get buy in from people. Like when he explained about zero based budgeting, people have input, they have a voice, and they'll go out and sell it. They'll go out and sell it, then you use their idea. President Hint, we agree a 100%. We've been saying we need a strategic plan. It would have been done last year. At second semester, we can go back to the meetings.
This is an update of the strategies that we're doing with the concern current goals that are in there. We have to have a place of working for this year of things that our administration are. But, yes, we agree about a strategic plan after the portrait of a graduate student. I get it. We're just misunderstanding Yeah. That there's two strategic plans and, and this is the this is I know this is old. This is towards academics. There's a lot of academics in the in the strategic.
So our hope would be there'll be a new one, and this one will go away, and you'll rebrand it, and you'll do all those things once the the we redo it again second semester. Is this the my KIPP also? My KIPP is your district improvement plan that you see up there, and that District improvement plan on my KIPP? Yes. Yes. Okay. Yes. On page 15 of his report, it clearly states a new three to five year strategic plan with a completion date of January 31. You're talking spring. This report is telling us the January 31.
Yeah. You couldn't get it done by the January 31 given the fact that you need to do the portrait of a learner, then you have to do an RFP. I think he talked about a financial report. I it is it would be impossible to get a whole group together and get that completed by January. You might get a start on it, but it took us three to four months last time to do a group. Yeah. I think we just need to talk about it. It's a lot of conversation, more. I think we need both. We need we need to do portrait of Monarch. We start paying for it. But if mister Sobe doesn't know our scheduling, that that's on the table.
And so I think we just need to, like, reschedule some of it and have a goal that we're gonna do it. Mhmm. On on the documentation that we have, it says draft revised strategic action plan. And then within that document, it says strategy one. Is that I mean That's what this the administration develops in collaboration with the ad council, and they've done it with their teachers to go back up and underneath. So if you look here in that, the climate and culture at Haysom Park Schools
will provide a unified system of support. That's what's up there. That's what you guys approved. We're bringing to you the strategies that we're working on during the school year. Okay. Then and it would have been enough if we had done a new strategic plan, this is what you would see for year twenty five, twenty six, twenty six, twenty seven, twenty seven, twenty eight. But since we haven't done new goals and done a strategic plan, we once again brought to you what we'd be working so we had a focus Oh, you test correct? Yes. Right. Okay. Alright. Just making sure. I'll make sure I see him what's the vision.
I think we're talking around each other, but it really is the same thing. Yeah. Yes. We've got a house. How do new business? We have, personnel, bookkeeper. Yes. So one of the goals, one of the pieces from Terry Les is that we can't have our business office focus on the big plan, like he was saying, when they're having to reconcile the books and they're having to, make adjustments that they need to focus on the big picture. And so this was one of her recommendations, and we're bringing it to you for
your consideration. She gave a job description and her original stuff to us that's up in your folders that I shared with you. And so we're recommending that we bring a bookkeeper into the hold, in order to allow them for more planning, especially if you're gonna have them continue to reclassify and then do zero based at the same time. This will give them more time to be able to facilitate getting done what they need to do. This is your recommendation. Correct? Yes. It is. Okay. Because it says staffing and structure, consider hiring the county secretary, which we had already
done at our last meeting to support timely reconciliation and initial reporting and budget monitoring. Maintain and then I'm skipping one. It says maintain current staff levels at minimum. Can I, I need to recorrect that that we did not hire a secretary? We actually removed the secretary and Ryan was doing some of those reconciliations for us. And when we talked with Terry, she recommended the additional bookkeeper and actually sent this to us. So it this is from Terry specifically. Okay then. We hired a secretary accounts payable person.
No. Miss miss Coons, I think that the person that you're referring to, the secretary from last month was, the to that one's secretary was the approval secretary from last month. And prior to that, we had moved I saw a job description for a secretary and accounts payable person. Am I we moved the accounts payable person, so when our when our old accounts payable person decided to stay home with her family, that position opened and we had a person apply and we approved that a couple of months ago. But that is not, what this position is to reconcile.
That's just using the old accounts payable and clarifying that she would do some secretarial work because, Monica no longer has a secretary. Greg does not either because that position supported Greg, and Jamie has taken on all of the secretarial work from, Ryan. It used to be Chris Lupton. So that position is the same. This is a bookkeeper to reconcili to do reconciliation of the books that, the accounts payable does not do that. Okay. Then I guess I need a new job description for everybody.
If I'm if you want because this is everything in here is just it's it's to me things that Crystal normally does. So what's Crystal gonna be doing if these duties are taken away from her? So I guess Well, you know what I would recommend is that before the board does anything, you take an opportunity to talk to Terry Les and hear from her because these were her recommendations as well. So you can hear both parties and how it intermingles very closely together with the whole conversation. And this was a recommendation. She spoke with Bev about it when Bev and, Bev, you met, about the need
for this as well so that they have more time. With the amount of grants, the other option is having a grant coordinator. We live on grants. And so, Crystal does a lot of that grant coordination as well. It is a lot of work for all of them and they're here way past the norm the normal forty hours because of the amount of work that they have to do in the small district. I was gonna suggest to have Terry come here and give her a report like he just said. Yes. So that's perfect. I think we need to hear her. I heard her. I think everybody should hear her. I I think that will help hear the very much similarities, and then that's why
I said it would be helpful to talk as well with him so that we could talk about the pieces that we already have planned in this. And I'm not sure he ever we never had that conversation in his evaluation. We talked about culture and climate and, stressors and those kind of things. We didn't get a chance to ask questions and say, oh, no. No. I I do all of those things. She doesn't. Here's and and bring that together. So I I do think that if he would extend his time a little bit and allow us to bring Terry in, and then we have another conversation, it would be helpful, or we could utilize a special board meeting for that.
Okay. Anything else on bookkeeper? We'll move on to paraprofessional. This position is new paraprofessional at United Belk Elementary. As the continued need for students coming in the district is being exhibited, we are just asking for this position to be added over at that school. I just want to add also, I know that, trustee LaFromboise asked about the numbers. We have been moving peer professionals this round as students are moving around. And, one of the things that I said we would supply for the October time
frame, and I talked with president Hinton, was an update about where that staffing is because we have certified staff that we didn't fill, and we also have paraprofessionals that have been moved so that the board can have an accurate setting of where those staffing positions are. Is this a one to one or will they work at large? Yes. Yes. And both. So this is actually an additional position. We've had some move ins, from outside of the district, from different districts, but they are Hazel Park residents now, and they do have a one on one peer professional
written into their IEP as a current need. So Okay. We have to fulfill our obligation as we accept their IEP. Okay. Anything else, anybody? And if we don't, then we don't get our money. Right? We'll don't get a violation of real grant in big trouble. Yeah. We get our money, but we probably would lose some money in the meantime financially Yeah. When we get sued. Alright. Which we're not going to. Yes. No. Policy wellness committee. I think that's miss Kales? That is me. So, I've given you guys a step by step timeline for the wellness committee, for
the this year. It looks like this. It's in the front of the bag. It's just single page. It's two sided single page. And I just wanted to provide you guys with an update of where we are. So I have hosted a call for volunteers. I've had, 13 people from the, community volunteer and then several internal people volunteer as well. So that community that committee is being formed. I have a letter directed to get out to these people to schedule our first meeting for next week. And then if you look at this September 2025, so next week we would do
things, like reviewing our old wellness policy which was tied to Neola, assign roles for the participants, and then draft our meeting calendar so that we can make sure that everybody is, you know, available for these meetings. I've already identified where the MDE and USDA requirements are, and we have a wellness policy assessment tool. Being that we're moving policies to Miller Johnson, I went ahead and pulled some current
wellness policies from districts that are using them right now so that we could help you know potentially use them as a template since you know we're no longer with Neola. And that's kind of like our September plan. And then as you look through, this is just like a monthly, it would be a monthly meeting with the committee members and we've moved through with the deliverables being in June as the full wellness policy being completely updated. Questions, anybody? It's a nice report. I have a question. Is there, I don't see anything about board members.
Does a board member? I think the letter went out to everybody. They went out a complete blast to the community and board members. I didn't have any board members answer on the form that they wanted to be part of it. So it's not a requirement, but if someone would like to join, I'd be happy to have one of you. That's right. I didn't know the difference with the parent and the board, so I was like, do you want us to be next? Mister Fox, if you'd like me to put you on the list, I'm happy to. Our first new meeting next Thursday from four to five is 05:10. It is scheduled right now. Okay. Yeah. We'll send you an invite. And it's gonna be, virtual, so it should be easy to participate then.
Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I must have missed that one. Are all the meetings virtual? That's sort of the plan at this point. Because of the community members and I just wanna make sure that they're available, once I, you know, see who participates and comes, I'd like to try and schedule some of the meetings maybe a little earlier in the day, maybe a little later in the evening in case people have fluctuating schedules so that anyone who wants to participate can can participate. I know it's really hard with with, community members making sure that the meeting time
works for all of them. But there were some really great, people who applied, you know, a registered nurse, some coaches, parents, grandparents, so it was a nice, collection of community members that that replied, this is, I mean, 13 is pretty I thought it was pretty nice, people who I wanted to do this. You don't mind being on my 85 inches TV, do you? I, you might mind me being on your 85 inches TV, but if that's what you desire, I'll keep everybody on my 15 inches screen. Just kidding.
That's a nice group, 13 people. That's awesome. You might wanna have a 14. Now 14. Well, you have 14. That's right. Sorry. That's right. A better number. Nice to have board. Thank you. Okay. Junior high roof repair. Buildings and grounds. So, as we've been talking, we've been having some struggle with our roof, one of our newest roofs at the junior high. So this is the highest amount of our proposal. I asked Greg to get a couple more. One of the reasons why is because this company that we have here, would not make it the same color as the roof is, and so he has somebody else coming out that's able to make the color the same.
So, this would be a not to exceed. I think the other individual is coming out this week, so that's why we are not to exceeding this and it'll be this is the lowest that we have now and hopefully we'll have something lower. Can you say the amount? 7,875. Okay. Thank you. Yep. I really appreciate. Greg has been fantastic about going out there and getting multiple bids and really balancing that work. That's such a high roof. It's like, how can you see the different the different color. It has to be right in the right spot.
I don't know. It would just I don't know. It seems like it needs to match. Oh, I agree. It's just kind of weird that it's so high you can tell. Are we gonna talk about these other things? Asbestos resolution? Yep. A designated custodian and who's the best of them? Oh, yeah. We do have to talk about all of those. Yes. Yep. So, we, mister Zurnas was our asbestos, person, designate, and we have to have a designated person. So Greg, who else? Jamie? Ryan? Ryan? Thank you, Jamie.
Ray through. Yep. Because Jamie organized it. We have I believe you got right. Okay. So we have several people that got the full training to identify asbestos. Greg will be our identified person. That means every six months, he will go through and document the fact that he's looked at the areas that we have asbestos and make sure that it hasn't been disturbed. If it's been disturbed, then you call Nova out to look at it, and Nova comes every year out for a reinspection as well. So we've signed the contract. I think it was $1,500 to have them to come out once a year.
That's been taken care of, and we now have everybody trained. So on Monday, I'll ask you to, approve the resolution for, Greg to be in charge of the asbestos. Any questions? Will the other names be also on there? No. Just you just have one person that's in charge of it all. We'll have to read the resolution. Yes. We'll have to read the resolution. You might wanna practice your boss. I'll practice. Or I'll just pass it to my friend. I got you. If it's okay, I'll keep going. Oh, my god. Just go ahead. So, we have a request for an additional custodian at Longfellow.
The person would not be full time. So the purpose of this individual would be when there are things in the evening at Longfellow, they would be there. So for example, in November, so we would wait till we get to that point. Wrestling will start at Longfellow. And so that individual would be there. They'd be available. They'd be doing any cleaning that might have happened from during the day. That it will be a full time position from, like, eleven to eight. If there's nobody at Longfellow, then they will go out and help. There is not a day that goes by that we don't have several people out or somebody injured, and so we have cleaning and work that has to be done.
This person can go and do extra things at the high school. They can do, things here if they need to wherever, the open position is. You have two substitutes currently that we keep employed that try to fill those positions. We often have to send our maintenance people to go in because we have so many people out. So this would give them a little more flexibility as well and keep one fellow covered in those evenings. Evenings. We couldn't make one of those substitutes the custodian? Like offer it first or Well, they he certainly can. You'd be approving a position. We wouldn't wanna get rid of our two substitutes because, we need those people.
One kind of works in the morning, one works in the evening. So we might be able to put two during the day then when kids are present, and and then this person is in the evening to support might what might not have been filled in the afternoon. Is there people currently in Longfellow Building during the day? Not at this point in time. We have not finished Longfellow. There's some pieces that need to be done. Then we will do a tour for you guys and for the administration. Then we will make a determination about a a building opening maybe with the community and such so that they can come in and see the building as well. I'm, next Monday, am I take am I going with the Naperville Park District?
Or that Naperville. The Hazel Park Park District? I believe we are going next Monday, I'm touring, the Hazel Park Park District. A couple weeks ago, I toured the Ferndale Park District. And then we will have Oakland County Health and other individuals starting to utilize the building as well. But we will have a plan to to you before that's finished, before we do it. So when do you anticipate the the it being, like, a grand opening, let's say? Oh, I am not sure yet, but the Vikings might be in it before the grand opening. Correct. No.
I I get that. January. We would have a grand opening, so we've other pieces we're behind a few months planning. And so I would think January at the latest. But once we get some of this stuff done and, the audit done, then we will all sit down and look at, a proposed schedule to president Hinton to bring to the board. Now since this custodian's part time at Longfellow, would part of his salary fall under the community grant? No. No.
No. This is not written into the community schools grant. And it wouldn't necessarily be part time at Longfellow. On the days that somebody's in there, let's say Monday through Thursday day of wrestling, somebody would be there. If they canceled, they would be off in another school helping to facilitate that. On Fridays, they would work in another school. When it opens to the public, is that would that be mostly like, would we have to have another custodian for the daytime there, or most of the stuff would be evenings? No. But, right now Jason knows in his job description, if there's an emergency over there
during the day, Greg said that he's informed him that he would go over. It's a little easier to leave here sometimes. He would go over and support that. We would keep going. Hopefully, we'll find some additional grants to fund more things there. And, you know, perhaps we can find a grant for the custodians, but right now we don't have any. No. I'm just wondering because with most of the stuff that takes place, there'd be in the evening and we wouldn't have to have someone there during the day. I think it would be yes. There would it could happen in both spots. Okay. But I think cleaning doesn't have to necessarily happen during the day. That can happen if the bikings are there, then they're cleaning up the spots of
the buildings, and, we'll have to play it by ear and see how often that's actually needed. Okay. Okay. Alright. Maybe it's center. I sent you beautiful pictures today of Hoover. I apologize for that. We were, trying to get them to you, earlier. And in your packet is the proposal, for doing this. It is $13,005.69. If you can see, this is something that we've been talking about for about three years. And Debbie's like, please take down. It is hanging. It is a mess and it should have been done.
It just never rose to the top before, and it is to the top of ours. And I believe when Wylan comes, it might be important to have that looking nice and having that back up on the wall. So hopefully, he might think about fixing it. Or Darren had a great idea the other day that I haven't floated and that is take it all the way down and then mail it to him and see if he will finish it in Florida. So, we're gonna we're gonna or in Hawaii. He's in Hawaii now. Right? We're gonna we're gonna try some different ideas. I thought that was a great idea. And so maybe we won't attach that.
We'll get that painted back there and have it at least tacked up for when he comes and see if we can talk him into finishing it for us and then framing it up at Hoover. That's our plan. I hope he's not watching it. My first note is just to remove the, wallpaper, but I did notice in the pictures that they have a sofa that's pretty beat up and torn up. I was kinda surprised to see that. Is could we look at maybe getting From a replacement. Couple pieces of furniture for Oh, I think they would love for the board to approve a couple pieces of furniture.
How about we next do a notch with seating? Let's kinda look around and see what cost might be and give them the opportunity. They're willing to be the team to pick it. Yeah. That looked really I was I was already. In in regards to that just need some things. I was concerned by the fact that that, you know, all the community walks in there, and if they see this, like, what we saw, it was like, woah. What is going on here? They're not taking care of the place. I mean, that's the first thought. We're just totally involved. There might be some extra furniture in another building or whatever.
No? What I can say is that, again, our allocations to to do buildings. Right? We did the high school because we had a grant, and we were able to access a grant. We don't have a a lot of extra dollars for doing that. We can set an allocation and say we're gonna do this much, and then we just have to focus on making sure that, you know, that might be our building of focus this year is that Hoover is we're gonna spiff up their media center. But then that's part of the buildings and grounds three year plan that's coming in November. Well, we're gonna have to talk about how those plans are gonna come in place
now, if Don Sobe comes in here so that we can plan all of that out again and bring a recommendation of timelines to the board because we don't wanna be overdoing. That's why, again, we'd like to have a conversation so I can understand the process and we can come back and talk about ours. Okay. Moving on to finance. Audit update. I think that's me. The auditors were out, over the last two weeks, and, everything so far is going really well. There's no they'll always have recommendations, but there's no findings or anything of concern, to
this point. If I could do a cartwheel, I would. Yeah. We were a little delayed in getting them some information. And part of it was just trying to find both work papers on Jason or or Matt's computers. But then we got to the point where we found reports, and we had no idea where to get them out of Business Plus. We had several people at Oakland Schools working through that to tell us which reports they were. So I made the request to Oakland Schools that when we download a report into Excel, that it either put the report name, it's the tab name in Excel, or
that it inserts that in the report. So with some delays and, they were really understanding with that, they will be back out Monday and Tuesday of next week to finish their testing. Next week they're gonna finish their testing? Yes. Okay. And it was just, most of the people are at a conference in Chicago this week, and, they it was just a matter of their scheduling, but they should be able to finish that up in those two days. So are we gonna have the outage done beforehand then? October. It'll take a little time to go through their levels of review.
Mhmm. Yeah. But we would have some, I would say, solid preliminary numbers to go on with that. Very good. Nice. Very good to hear that. That's just quarterly flow through. Me as well. Questions, anybody? Go ahead, Monica. Something, as Crystal and I were looking at the reports and, I'm not sure if you saw the final for, twenty five school year. So if not, we'll make sure we It's in there back. Oh, it is in there. Okay. So something that initially when I looked at this and thought looks made it a
little confusing because the revenues don't match the expenses. And there's prior year revenue in there. So what we discussed today is that we're going to make a a program code that says prior year revenue. And everything else will be the same in the coding, but that way when you look at the report, you can see current year revenue against current year expenses. And the prior year revenue will be detailed separately. I I think that'll just make this a lot easier to look at. Because I can tell you that, on both the Coalition and, the DFC grant, our
revenue for '25 does equal the expenses. It's just hard to see that with the way the reports are are generated. So that's one of the things we'll be working on. Questions? This is what we're looking at, right? Yes. What is at your table is is June 30 as opposed to The quarterly one. So at your table was what, trustee Lathronboise requested today or last night. He requested June 30 and that's what's at your table. And what's in your packet is the first quarter reports as requested every quarter.
Okay. I guess that you're I don't know. I I don't I'm sure this is a computer generated report, but like when it said budget, it's like budget as of when? Actuals as of when? I mean, I know it says as of June 30 up on top, but is that the budget as of June 30, or is that the original budget? I guess and I think Don Sobe mentioned it that things aren't labeled and dated very effectively in his report. Is there a way to add more detail to the heading so we know kind of what we're looking at?
I'm not sure we can exactly with this because this is a system generated report. Okay. You can't like, I know when I do report sometimes, I download them to Excel. I add stuff to them. We're attempting to try not to do that. I think what would be better is you requesting what you're looking for and us seeing if we can have Oakland Schools generate a report, for us so that we're not and and that's one of the things Terry suggested. We need to learn how to work inside the system Yeah. Versus downloading and uploading again. I used to download and upload all the time when I did it, and that
was one of her specifics. I don't do it. Yeah. Heidi, just for your information, it says WB budget, which is the working budget. So that would always be the last approved budget. Not that that takes away the need for clarification on that, but, Yeah. But shouldn't we always the budget shouldn't the budget always be the original budget? It's the last one approved. So it's the I know, but we should always be working with the original budget. And we make amendments to the budget, but we should always kind of I think
that's a conversation to to have. Maybe that's something that you can talk with Terry and Don about. You have your original. They're gonna be way off. So if we work with this year's budget, you have your original, and then we amend in October, that's your new budget. And then you wanna amend again in January, that's your new budget. Because that original budget for us is gonna be so far off. I understand amending it, but, I mean, there should be, like, our original budget, the amended budget, and then we have that print out for you monthly that we used to do. So we could I I think I know what you're talking about.
He has an example in in his book that I saw that is very much like what we used to give. It has your first budget, your amended budget, what have you, but chunks differently. And maybe we can see if we can run that report for just these account line items. I think that's what you're asking. I I looked through his report. Yeah. It looks a lot like what you're talking about. I didn't I went through his report right there as quickly. So I just, this is what you requested. I hope that we can build upon Yeah. Other things that you request. Yeah. We do wanna make it as easy as just writing a report for them, because
we don't wanna give them more work Yeah. As we're trying to clean up items. Absolutely. Okay. Anybody else? No. Alright. Finance plan. Okay. I believe you have your packet. Sorry it didn't, upload very quickly. Yeah. But it will look something like this but without my scribbles. Yes. Is that the right one? Yes. Well, it's on our phones. This one? Yes, it's on the table. We apologize for not giving that uploaded too. I I think it was free that she changed it. Yeah. It is uploaded. It just looks weird. The upload looked weird. So I just changed the formatting for printing it.
So what I did with this, and this is not entirely complete, but I picked the pieces that Terry suggested we work on and get you started on and give you a little bit of an update with that. And then in there, there were some, maybe notes on some extra or additional pieces that, we had been working on as well. I, at the time, didn't put everything in here from Terry's recommendation list because it was late at night and I we I mean, we needed to get it uploaded.
But, also, I didn't know if this would be the format that we would be using. So, I think the plan would be to the right of this to put line ups what Don's recommendations were, and then, you know, we can kind of respond to both of them. And there's so many parallels that I think that would be helpful for that. So, right now, we're just looking at Terry's recommendations and then what we have been working on related to those. I'm sorry. Brad, we have a live mic somewhere.
It might be in there. We hear noise. We hear scratching going on. Yeah. Like, we have a rat. Yes. It was what I was doing. So is in the the middle between Terry's recommendations and my response, there's a column and you'll see some purple x's. Those were the items that she and I discussed and said where we would be
starting at. So, there are some things in there that we haven't formally started, but perhaps, Crystal and I have already been working on some things with that. I can prepare a more inclusive update for you for the board meeting next week if you'd like. So these are the quarterly reports and our hope had been then we would add a line item for Don Sobe and look at the intersections, what was in the same piece to talk about where we are. I I would hope that maybe we can wait maybe till next month before you
try to do a report in the next four days given the audit. I wasn't gonna add Dan. Yeah. I was gonna add Dan on that. I just was gonna make it more complete than our A Terri's, but I agree. We can make That was nice, though, when you have this. Yeah. Thank you. I I believe when we went back to our notes, those were the things that you were asking for quarterly updates on. If there was something else, if you could please let us know so that we can make sure for the next quarter we have everything included in there. We went back to look through our notes to make sure we were hitting them. Okay. Good. Winter Sports. Yeah. So, we had some questions.
I hope that you received those answers. So these are the requests that, mister Plentes has, gathered for the winter sports. It's important to do that now so that we can make sure that we have those items in time when those sports go. And then in January, we'll have things ready for you this spring sports. Obviously, we're hoping that we will have a three year plan at some point this year on rotating those, what we're doing, where, when, and why. But do know that a three year plan is only as good as the wear on the uniforms that we perhaps might have to make some changes as we go
through that due to falls being lost and, uniforms being lost or, you know, holes in them as well. I just had one question. I wholeheartedly believe that tumbling is needed, but did we get just one quote or did we get multiple? Because $4,700 is a lot. I'm not sure what the tumbling is for that. I had asked Chuck and didn't get that answer back. So let me get that for you before next week. I wasn't sure if that's tumbling lessons or if that's tumbling maths. So, I think we just missed each other today. I could tell you that I didn't have a second, today.
There was a lot going on. I thought it was a full moon. And, but I did send that to him and I didn't get an answer back, but I will get an answer be and I will send it to him. I was thinking it was, stunt doubles, tumbling stunt doubles. I thought it was tumbling. I had assumed it was for the competition portion of it, but it's having someone come in and do That's what I thought. I just No. I've never had that in our bill. It's always happened, but I'm gonna double check what it was. I texted him and I just I guess this is just adding on to my question. When my daughter did cheer, we had to fundraise for tumbling.
Yes. So how much is this? Are we requiring basketball cheerleading and then to do a fundraiser? They're not fundraising for these things. They're fundraising for other items that they wanna add. So if they wanna add another jersey or if they wanna add, like, a a a larger device, like, one year, I think, baseball did for a gun, that's what they're fundraising for. These are the basics that we feel that Chuck feels are is the district's responsibility. But we made football fundraise for their their their football uniforms.
No. Actually, the approval that you did was that we would fund them and at that meeting, and so they have not fundraised at all for those jerseys. Because we went back several times because there was some conversation with the head coach, with me that it was recommended, but I think your motion then is that you would purchase them, not that you would partially purchase them. Can we get some, backgrounds on this? When was the last time we purchased uniforms for? Yes. We it is on we did it all through our questions. May gave a little yesterday, all the questions that were answered. Yeah. I've never had a chance to I can't imagine why.
But we did. We answered all those for you. And if those aren't good enough so at the junior high junior high basketball was eight years ago for girls. They've been sharing with the boys' uniforms for basketball. Boys' basketball has been eight years. High school varsity boys, two years ago. Varsity girls, two years ago. But they are boys' uniforms, so we're handing them down. High school, cop cheer, the warm up service team. Can you repeat that? Yes. So we had boys' uniforms and we The girls were wearing boys' uniforms, so they had to put shirts underneath them. They were really ill fitting and uncomfortable for them.
Because they weren't purchased as girls. They were purchased as boys. I wasn't here during that season. I just know that right before that, we had them purchase shirts underneath to go underneath them because they had the long, underarm. So they're going down to what length of pressure? So they're moving down. Yes. And then high school comp chair, the warm ups are stained up, and they do not have enough that were purchased three years ago. Where's the uniform cycle? We pass old uniforms down to the sub varsity teams if they are in good condition to do so. We also will work to show a three year plans from athletics.
And then what is the budget for the season and the year for the athletic department? 3,000 budget for 2025 junior high volleyball. Junior high girls and boys basketball budget for 2025 is 7,000. Budget for top tier 2025, we did not have a plan for that. High school basketball, after giving their uniforms down to JV, is 4,000 for the budget. And you have this sent to you in your email so you can click on any attachments that you need. Can we see what we did just shortly, Retemplin? Because Faith was in Tumbling. Correct? And we paid for it.
Maybe it's a fundraise. We have not paid for years for that, starting back with Stacy, I think. But we will go double check and confirm that. Okay. They've had a person come in because I was shocked that she was a week or they had to fundraise. Yeah. And they and we had to drive them someplace. They didn't come here. They've been coming here for quite some time. No. When we when Faith First was in it, we have we went someplace else. Yes. We did. And then Jim They came here too. And then they came here after that. You probably have some good individuals to talk to about what they recollect for that time period. They might not wanna remember, but we can then talk about, with the current cheer
coaches what happened last year and then what happened, we can ask reach out to Stacy what happened then. The other three sports haven't replied or they don't need They're this is all he said he needs for winter. Okay. Alright. How will we do it? Yes. We have the Huddle that we purchased last year, and the conversation for Huddle was, let me get to the right page. Sorry. You're on mine? No. I got it. I just have to get to the right spot. Thank you. Maybe I'm gonna get to maybe I might need yours to get to the right spot. It's a I asked how many times was this utilized by our teams for review
for improvement of the team. And the response was, after every every home game, coaches will break down film and then have sessions with their respective teams to go over it. It was one of the most more valuable tools created to help coaches and student athletes. And then I asked, is there any other reason the team would need this? And then and the response was coaches can easily share video, notes, and comments with their team, which helps bridge communication gaps. The platform also acts as a centralized, easily accessible repository for all team videos, which
eliminate the need to manage files individually. It also helps our student athletes in recruiting, allowing them to create highlight reels for college coaches, providing them with the direct way to showcase their skills and accomplishments. Finally, parents can stay connected by accessing game videos to share. Can I tell you that, last year, in the first part of the year, I would take a picture of the huddle and send it to Jimmy just to continue to to ramp on him a little bit? Like, look at all the school districts that have huddle. Look at all the school districts that have huddle. You are Remember I would send you text messages of the huddle cameras last year?
I have the huddle. To share it sounds like you remember. Too. I think they use some food for also recruiting if they, like, recruiters are there and they want some feeds and stuff. I know that the kids can make, like, their own, like, paintings. They're all highlight rails. Yes. Yes. And it also does the, get charts for the coaches, the place as well. Now we did get feedback this weekend when I was at the, painting of the
parking spots that the last huddle from the last game was very fuzzy. And so I do think that we need to get out there ahead of the games and make sure that it is, you know, clean and, you know, there's not something on it. So I did speak with, Chuck and Chris about making sure that we are really looking at that football field. But we also have them in the large gym and small too as well. Okay. Next is monthly financial report. Any questions? I have a lot, but I got back to you. You got Paul answered? Mhmm. See, I don't wanna re answer, ask.
If if you do, we'll say answer in the paper. Everyone asks who Debbie knows what she has. She I hear I hear too. She's they printed that part. I'm putting on the thing. I'll if I have questions, I'll just come back. I'll go over Debbie's. I don't wanna waste time. Thanks. I'm here. I'm out. There is nothing major. Moving on to other. Grants. Hey. Super excited. You know, there was questions about the 22 I. This is, school transportation funding and there was an amendment for, I think, like, $94 that we got extra than the year before this comes in state aid.
I think they look at what's left over and make adjustments, but we've been trying to give you every single thing as requested that we're getting funding for. So that's that just offsets transportation costs for general ed. I was also asked, do we have a cost, for, transporting Webb? And I feel like we did that somewhere in the last several months, and it my head hurts trying to think about it. But I will be stepping back and having that conversation with Gina, and we'll get it to you shortly. I can go back and look to you. I don't I don't remember, but maybe it was there because we did a lot of information.
Yes. So I think it might, but I will go back and relook at that and get that to you. So that's a follow-up I have. And it's actually in my weekly notes to follow-up. The career readiness budget plan, you know, doctor Domich has taken over career readiness. I don't know if you wanna speak to that. Thank you. So career readiness is an allocation that we receive from the ISD every year. It's not something that we fund, it's funded by grants, through the ISD. And essentially the career readiness is meeting the requirements that we have opportunities for students
to think about, be exposed, and experience different career pathways. And the budget is basically set, as you see, the back of that memo, that we have career readiness leads at elementary, junior high, and high school, and those career readiness leads are essentially, tasked with making sure that all the things that we say we're going to implement in our budget are implemented. We also support our junior high and high school counselors that support Xello. Xello is a platform that allows students to perform and explore different career pathways.
In addition to that, we have some dollars allocated for purchase services with oversight and that would be, allocation of dollars toward my salary and or Sam Galpauz who is working and supporting that piece. And then the last piece is supplies and materials. We have an allocation for supplies and materials and, again, various STEM based tools you might wanna put in, media centers. We can look into additional tools you might wanna put in their CTE courses. We can also look at, expanding out some of the books and resources students would
utilize. This is a preliminary budget. The allocation is allocation. $41,660. For the most part, those things are pretty standard in terms of what we're going to be doing. The only things that we might change a little bit would be the resources and materials. We may transition some of that to some field trips and some other funding pieces. But essentially, this is our allocation. We're bringing this forward just so you are aware of this, and we're certainly happy to, bring any information back at the later time to talk about what we do in the district to support career readiness.
I have process. Can you explain to me what career readiness allocation is? So, essentially, it is we are required by the state to provide career readiness activities. And as many things that we do in the state, there's dollars that go to the ISD, and then ISD is responsible for giving those dollars to districts. And that allocation of that budget amount, every year, I think that was the amount that we got in '25 2425. It'll be in the amount that we get this year, and it will also be the amount that we get in 2627. So this is isn't coming out of our funding.
It's coming out of the ISD funding. Correct. That's why I just because it's not a grant, so we can fund it. It is. I I wanna clarify when you say that. The ISD the state gets funding, then they allocate it to the ISD. The ISD takes a portion off for their administrative oversight, and then they keep some of it for their funding, and then they flow them to the districts with allocation. So it is absolutely a grant from the state, but it doesn't flow through. Well, the word grant is not there, so I was just trying to see where the question is. So does each district get the same set amount?
No. They do not get the same set amount. Okay. What is the amount so the public can hear? $41,660 k. Thank you. Anything else? Anyone? No. Right. The next grant, 54D. Doctor Compassing, would you like to explain 54 d? Would you like me to? I would like you to. 54 d is a birth to three, grant that we've received for a very long period of time. We, do a total salary sitting in there. This year, it's Julian Clark that's there.
It's a total benefits of a $102.54. This as well flows from the state down to the ISD through into Hazel Park. And it's how much? 1,000 a $100,254 It is salary and benefit of a staff member. Is this early on? This is early on. Yes. I'm sorry. I said birth to three. Early on. Yes. Great. 2026 fresh fruit and vegetable program. So, we were awarded with the fresh fruit and vegetable program. We've been lucky to get this for several years.
Our expected, award is $49,000 and this helps us to just continue to serve those fresh fruits and vegetables in the buildings. Does this go to the, food and service? Does this go to them? It goes to us. It doesn't go to them, but then they expend it and utilize it. So yes. So it it'll be in the food service budget, but they don't get allocations of it. It they spend it. They spend the grant. Isn't this what the grant say they're looking at to get rid of? No. This one is not.
This one was just allocated to us. Maybe in the future, but not right now. I'd like to put another item on if we can that we'll ask to approve at the next, board meeting. And that is the 39 school districts were awarded the refund for innovative literacy programs, and Hazel Park was one of those 39. Funds? What was that? What funds? It is the innovative literacy programs. And we will receive, we just found out today well, actually, we found out over the weekend, but we were waiting.
We will receive, a $187,500 which will support literacy services at the junior high and add another MTSS teacher to support. And so we will be bringing the request to hire an MTSS teacher, from this grant. It's, we're super excited. We should be very honored at our teaching and learning department to get this grant. What will happen is that we will compete for next year to get over $350,000 from the grant for the next school year. And if we are the top three performers, we can access up to a half
a million dollars next summer. So I think Julie had been asking for another MTSS person and we're like, we can't. We knew we had written for this. And so when I talked to her this afternoon, after a very long day, she was so excited and she said, we will win that half a million dollars next summer. So I believe her too. Yes. Look for some, good improvement to continue with that, the middle school model that we are working on and really digging in, with our students. And kudos to doctor Dolmage who did some pretty long writing of this, to get
this in in a short period of time. We turned it around very fast. So kudos, doctor Dolmage, again. And this is two months in a row that we've got really substantial literacy grants then. Right? Yes. Okay. I I 35 MB and 35 MB. Okay. And I again, I know that people sometimes look at scores and say, that is not what we're seeing, but you need to remember that we have many school districts in those or many, programs on our scores. But we are continually showing growth, where, that's a struggle all across the state.
And so, we have been doing the science of reading, and so we are being mentioned and notarized for that work that we're doing. And kudos to doctor Pozian and, Doctor. Dolmage as well. So Just just for clarification for me. Now we receive the grants, then we draw down the money from the grants and some some probably just give us the money, some don't. This is through the state, so this will be a draw down. Okay. So we will hire the position, and then, once we get all the items in
there, which we already have it in there, then then Crystal will do the drawdown. That's that conversation with us. Yeah. We now do monthly drawdowns as opposed to that wasn't being done before, which was probably part of the issue. But that takes a lot of time every month to run it and to upload it. My question. Crystal is doing those. Yes. And that's why a bookkeeper could be helpful because she's busy doing and working the grants. And I remember, oh, who worked with Dan? Josie. Josie. Josie took over a lot of the grants back then.
Right. And so we write Yeah. Which is not often happens often that especially with the amount of grants, you have a grant writer. But we split that grant routing up, into all of us. Now doc, missus Gresley has been able to write some grants. Doctor Papazian has been writing some grants. Doctor Domage and I still write grants. And so we split all those up, and then Crystal happens to meet with all of us over all these grants to make sure that the finance are aligned. And then Monica's been working to make sure that we have aligned our budgets for each of those grant differently than have been in the past. And and aligned, you mean, drawing down the money, making sure that she's she's, like,
running the show with the grants. That's what we're awarded. She's running the finances. We're running the show. Yeah. So for example, there will be a line item specifically for the MTSS teacher and an accounting code that'll go specifically for that. So then she can run a report and then put it in monthly so that we get those dollars back. And that's so if we get audited, then the auditors will see that this money, yes, it did go to this line item to the right. Yes. And that is position budgeting. Alright. Thank you. That is not aligned in our books right now. It's gonna take some time. Right.
Yeah. Thank you. I just wanted to clarify. Thanks for that. Alright. Next is Playlabs. Speaking of running the show, should I speak? Absolutely. So as part of the community schools, and as part of my position, I look for low cost or sometimes no cost, afternoon and enrichment activities to give a hook to kids that, might not come to school except for they wanna do drama. Well, PlayLabs is one of those things. Michigan State has been, a partner to us, several times over the summer.
And, what we are asking for is it'll be in, the three elementaries and the junior high, 12 program, one day a week in each. It is three teaching artists, and at the end on December 8 and December 9, there will be, a show, a program for people to see. I know one is on a board meeting night, but it's 03:30 to five. I was gonna change that, and I thought, okay. It's not during the board meeting. So December 8 is the junior high performance and December 9 is the elementary performance.
I just got a question. Sure. I see that there's one community rep on on as the program partners. Why isn't the elementary ones involved in it? All of them are. Oh, they're just not listed. They're just not listed. They're listed on this. Those with the packet. It's got all the written No. She's saying that one promise navigators on here, but not the other two. Yeah. For the elementary schools. There's there's Three. They're they're all they I I that was probably my FOPA. All three elementaries and the junior high.
So They're all involved in it? Yes. Okay. I just wanted to make sure because they Each of them are are overseeing it at their buildings. How many days a week did you say? It's one day a week, for an hour and a half. So it starts in the elementary, 03:30 to five. And at the junior high, it's 03:15 or 03:10 to five. So we get they they go down to the cafeteria, they get a snack, and that's where the promised navigators come in. They get and then we have to take attendance, so I can see who's coming
and then we're you know, it's data. And then they go off. Is it limited to the number of students that can participate? They are upwards of, well, 15 as many as 20 if we wanna push it. But, honestly, we're having you know, we put the word out and they haven't United Oaks is full, Webb is full. The other two schools, not so much yet, but we are recruiting. Okay. I it's funny that you've given us to us because over this weekend, I was, at a football game and I was talking to somebody there and she runs a
not I don't think it's Michigan Stage Playlabs, but it's a different one. Mhmm. And we were talking about it and she was saying that kids have such a hard time making eye to eye contact and public speaking because of COVID and they were so isolated that they have a hard time communicating. So I think this is a really good thing. I see it. Good work. I think this would be fun. Oh, yeah. It's really fun. They love it. All these after school programming, we don't have the money we did before, but we do still have they have loved it. From that to the radio to I mean, all of that has been really great
for our kids. We are also have secured a partnership with Detroit Zoo. It's a no cost to us, and they they will come in. I do have a staff member that needs to come with them, but so that's another after school activity. I know teachers have stepped up and are interested in doing some after school enrichment activities. So, stuff that our kids might not have the opportunity to do except for this grant and these opportunities. It's pretty wonderful. Yeah. If the zoo happens to bring in snakes, missus Hinton loves snakes. Oh, yeah.
I'm out. It's a it's a Not the snakes. This this time it's, birds. Okay. That's even worse. I would prefer snakes over birds. I don't know. Thank you. Alright. Good. That's that's great. Testing high school, festival trip. Thank you. I apologize that in your packet, you did not receive this. It was the second page of the memo that was given to us. This is another, great thing. Our drama program has just, grown right by leaps and bounds, and every year it's better. I think I shared with president Hinton that, I was there last week, and, I
walked around the corner and I thought, who is here? And here are all of our dramas and little tables, and they are being self directed by an individual directing the rest of them. And I talk to them, like, hey. What are you doing? We're talking about hair and makeup. And then she looks at me and says, move on. You know? And I was like, they are just and I heard them say, like, alright. We have to be prepared when we go in there to talk. One of the things that we do for band is we don't ever bring to you every year the band, events that they're going to. My hope would be is that you would approve this as an annual event that
our kids attend on a yearly basis. It's the same thing as going to a yearly band pieces. This is their big event where they get to go and they get to show off and receive awards and go together. And I know that we've had several kids get scholarships. And so while we can bring it on a yearly basis, I'm just asking that we just assume that this is part while we have a drama club, this is part of what drama does. So that that's my suggestion to you. It is a cost of about $5,925. There's 12 to 15 students, two to three chaperones with them because they're running around.
They do stay, the night, Thursday night, Friday night, and Saturday night because it is a long event. And so it also includes, food provided them, as well. The registration is about $22.50, and it's about $252,600 dollars for their overnights and their food. Where is it at? Lansing's. Nice. So I had the same question last year. My my problem is is we don't know where we stand right now. I'm not opposed to them going, but we don't pay for dance to go.
And this is a club too. We don't pay for dance to go to their nationals. We don't pay for Banticle overnight. I don't I don't ever recall seeing something like that. Not now. They used to, but not now. Yes. Bant used to fundraise and fundraises, and they have a booster club, and they use their booster club for most of their items. I would like to see the them at least contribute a portion of this if each student could raise a $100 or something to go towards this. That's how I'm and I'm not opposed to them going.
They can go up for short. But I don't know necessarily if the district should cover this entire cost. So this is taking place I see the date. It's December. And so, that would leave them October, November to fundraise each individually for that. I I mean, so it's the will of the board. I just Fund fundraising is challenging, isn't it? No. I'm telling you. You. Because you can't sell candy in the school. No. You cannot. You can't sell the cozy nuts.
They they you can sell stuff. It's not that challenging. They could do a bottle drive. They could do something. I just I would like to see something. So they can sell candy in the schools? No. They cannot. They can sell candy. Outside of the school? They can sell it outside of the school? Oh. They could come up with a fundraiser. We certainly can speak with them about that. I just worry that that maybe we should consider putting that out. They can sell pumpkins. They can I mean, there's all different kinds of fundraisers that we don't wanna take moms from Jardine? Oh, well. Well, Jardine doesn't have moms this year. That's another story.
So we had this discussion last year. I recall this discussion that other groups raised some of the money, and they could sell flowers or carnations the night of the plague for a dollar. We used to sell them for a dollar, but they wanna raise tons of money. They do sell flowers at the play. Hopefully, they do. They sell a $100 worth. I don't know. We could look to see what's already what is in their activity fund. I don't I didn't get that. It's very, very very That's a great group. Very saying that.
I'm sure he could come up with something to offset some of this cost. Sounds like they need a boost. Doesn't hurt to ask. We had, I don't think they're gonna get a boost club. I think they're gonna get somebody. We should have one great big booster club for the high school. We had a mom, and we had a garden club, and they took care of the courtyard roses and the flowers out in front. And that mom would come after school and sell cupcakes with a couple kids. So I'm not talking hundreds of dollars, but it's an effort towards the can drive.
Oh my gosh. The money they make on one day collection of cans is amazing. Absolutely amazing. But anyway, so could you give me, does the board have a, agreement with what I need to go back and try to talk with them about before we get this in the packet on Thursday? I would like to see at least a minimum of a $100 per per student on Sunday. So you would like them to offset $1,500 of this? Yeah. I I mean, I just wanna see them. I've gotta go out to cans if they need them.
I do too. Of course. 10¢ at a time. We'll we will, have a conversation with them and get back with you next week as we're doing a snowball. Thank you. What's that? Would we then approve that if yearly they do a 100, that we go ahead and approve this for a yearly basis so they can plan on this and plan on fundraising on a yearly basis? Yeah. I mean, I I think they should fundraise and then we would as much as they possibly can and we would subsidize the rest if needed. K. I mean, we don't pay we don't pay for the, Washington trip for the eighth
graders, do we? We approve them to go, but we don't pay for the trip. No. But And that's a huge benefit for them too. The the board can certainly make the decision how they'd like to do this. This is just our drama club and the one activity that they go to. And if they may be able to give a $100 each out of their funds from selling tickets, I I again, I don't have the activity account balances here but we can take a look at that as well. Then they can have plans in the future about what the expectations are. Okay. PowerSchool agreement with Oakland Schools. So we're 18 of the 28 school districts are on PowerSchool at Oakland Schools, and
so they have agreed to, hire one person to help facilitate the 18 school districts on the connection for PowerSchool. And so this is, under, I think, under $5,000. I'm just bringing this to you so that you can, take a look at it and be aware of it as we sign this agreement. It is much like we have for, you know, b plus in our b plus system, trustee, Lebron Boyse, that these are the things that Oakland Schools does. Right? Like, they hold the piece for this.
They're be they're gonna be beginning to develop a PowerSchool consortium because we have more people on PowerSchool than we do on I Star. I It's about time. I I said, well, I didn't print that. But now I know why because it was a 100 page. It wasn't a 100 pages, but it was really long so I didn't print it. Yeah. It was a lot of I did record. I just didn't print it. Is there a hope that this will come with the cost savings if it sort of purchased it? Yeah. 17. Mass? I would hope that what we will see is a lot of the work that Josh, who's very talented, and Brad, who has supported him, have put into it, that
the collaboration will grow. Right now, there's a a group of a p sub group that you see people you see our people go to to look at that. This will finally have the ISD grab it like they do my star. So it'll make it better for state reporting. It'll make it better for other items that, then you have a systemic way about doing things versus 18 school districts kinda doing it themselves. So the answer to your question is yes. It will be cheaper as more districts climb on board. That's the way it happened with the the, the other stuff.
I see. Yeah. There's power in bulk pricing. I didn't mean that. There is. I'm just trying to help. Good time to discuss. Language line. Yes. I'm coming back to the board to discuss language line as, and you may recall back to February. We looked at this and talked about the importance of having this opportunity to, satisfy some requirements for title three. And those requirements really specifically state or layout that we are required in any important communication to provide that communication or language that's accessible or comfortable for our parents.
So there is lined in title three, and the district does receive title three funds. In addition to that, when the state came in last September to do an on-site review, it was not an audit but an on-site review, which they did in every district in Oakland County. One of the things that they cited was while we had a language access plan in place, it was not strong enough. So one of the things that we talked about was bringing this forward so we can ensure that whether it's a teacher doing conferences or we need to call home because the student is sick and it's hard to communicate with the parent, that we
have instant access. Because of some of the complexities last spring, we really did not use it at all. I mean, literally zero. So what we're really hoping is that we can move back into that pilot this for the next eight or nine months. This is when there would be more use to it because we do have teachers beginning to use it, but the principals begin to use it. While frequently, if we have a student that has an IP and they need a an interpreter, doctor goes to a service that has trained interpreters, really understand how to
navigate an IP. That's a different piece. But we also sometimes have situations where we may have a student who is engaging in some sort of behavior when we have a disciplined conversation, something that doesn't need a trained person. This service allows instant on demand service. So, you know, that situation happens, we can call them in service, we can communicate in a language that's comfortable for that parent and move that forward. We do believe that this is really important to, again, satisfying some of those type three requirements, not sleeves.
Maybe but must because we we are obligated if we have those funds to satisfy those. So what we're hoping to do is expand it. Back in February, it was agreed to do approximately a thousand dollars per month, and it was, approved for $6,000. Because we're asking to do the full year or through June, we're asking to expand that top number to 9,000 with, clear monitoring as we discussed before with the highway. So we're just coming back and hoping that we can move this forward. It is critical to supporting our families, and we think it's very important for our
staff members who, I will be honest with you, sometimes feel at a loss because they're trying the best that they can communicate. But if you have a parent, that really has limited English, we need to give them this opportunity to live into our obligations to support our families. Okay. So since we didn't use it, starting in February, we didn't spend the $6,000. So we're so it's an additional 3,000, but far longer period time. Correct. Okay. Any other questions? No. Just a request to see if we can take a five minute break. Done. I'll make the motion. I'll make the motion to take a five minute break.
Can I take a second? You're welcome to use my badge. All in favor? I got one down the hall and there's snacks there too. Do you have another butters? I do. No. I'm good. I'm gonna I gotta go with this. I already I told me three times it was time to stand up. Quaker Music renewal. So this is, really part of the yearly curriculum renewal. As you may recall, I tried to do my best to aggregate everything back in June. We knew there would be a few outstanding items that we need to bring forward
since this one is over the 5,000 mark. I'm just bringing this forward. This tool is utilized by our, music teachers k eight, and it really supplements the curriculum resources that they have. And there also is a student facing component to this as well. Last year was the year one implementation, and I received a lot of positive feedback from our music teachers. And, you know, often with our electives, you know, we we spend lots of dollars on books for ELA, math materials, and a lot of times things like that. And so sometimes we don't put quite as much into electives, and I think this
is really important to continue to support those electives. Plus, like I said, we have a lot of positive feedback. So this is really just a yearly renewal to support k five as well as the junior high. Anybody have any questions for doctor Domino? No. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. Really quickly. The renewal fees will be paid in December. Is that when we got it last year? Yes. It was actually they're actually due in January, but we wanted to make sure we brought the new the fees since forward to keep everything organized and consolidated. So we will pay until December. I just couldn't remember when we I remember voting for it.
I just couldn't remember when did The renewal is actually January. Okay. Or it's up. It's it expires in January. So, summer school incentive as bots. So our elementary students, a 105 elementary students, earned the right or earned the incentive of an OSBOT. That meant that they were in school at least 75% of the time over the summer. And, I I know they're probably eager to get them. That's fantastic. Yep. It's it was both 75%.
Junior high and the elementary did a a really good job. I just wanna can you just confirm that I just wanna confirm to the public that this is all grant fund dollars that are from Ballmer in in the summer discovery. So, these next two items are at no cost. They are part of the incentives of of us being partners in the summer discovery, which is pretty exciting. Which is the next thing that comes up, if I may talk. Additionally, I for anyone that attended summer school, anyone, we were able to secure Scholastic
Books. And of course, they're at, levels from elementary to eighth grade and above because some some kids read read above that. So we were able to order, a lot of books that I'm eager to give out, not only to the kids that had 75%, but anyone that, went to summer school. We're gonna offer some books too. Very nice. Again, refunded. And this is for that tea cup. The books are theirs.
Yep. Awesome. That's very nice. So one of the the goals is to build a home library, and there's so much research out there about making sure that kids have their own home library. So I know since community schools came into my life, that's one of the things we give away from every chance we get. Okay. 99 gs grant funded social studies material resources. So this grant actually was secured last year and we brought to the board. I don't expect, the board to recall that, but that was another competitive grant the
district, wrote for and was received. It was really on expanding and enriching our social studies programming to support, students sorting about a lot of diverse, cultures and having those different experiences and really living into and expanding our social experience. So this budget, the total budget for this grant is 81,000. That budget was already brought to the board, but these particular items are over that 5,000 mark. So we're bringing it back for that final approval, to move forward and expand out
the grant by the end of this month. So the first one is, not to exceed amount for 20,000 for resources and materials. And the wonderful thing about this is this really impacts kindergarten all the way up through our secondary. So this grant really allowed us to take our current curricular units which were rewritten last year, expand those curricular units, with a lot of support, some from our teachers as well as some from some of the team at Oakland University and deepen
And opportunities and materials kids have access to. So this is again a not to exceed amount for various textbooks and books to support our curricular periods in social studies. Doctor Dolmage, this needs to be expended by the end of the month, correct? September 30. Yep. Very nice. Everybody? Thank you. Are you matched too? I'm absent. Mhmm. So in addition to those dollars for material resources, it is also important that we build the capacity of our educators. And we have the opportunity for up to five staff members to travel to Washington
to go to the National Social Studies Conference. Miss Gellenhall has been to this conference in the past and feels it's very beneficial and again, will help our educators expand their capacity and really live into a really understanding how to effectively teach the curriculum that's been written. So are these teachers that go to the conferences? Are they administrators? It's teachers. Yes. It's teachers. Thank you for asking. Is it junior high, high school up? Is it all grade levels or So our goal is to spread it out. We definitely feel that this is better centered around secondary, but we want to give
at least one elementary person that opportunity as well. Right. And with Sam's work, side by side work with the socials, particularly it feels important that she travel with them because she's really helping to guide and deepen the work around social studies and and we are very excited and really very excited to come in, November and talk about the growth that we saw in social studies this year, which we we haven't seen before. And it was directly due to the rewritten curriculum and the deepening of those experiences
that we're giving to students. So it'll be five in total, Sam Elkhoff as the curriculum coordinator to guide that thinking as we're at the conference and then as I said, at least one elementary and then we'll talk through the balance between the other three across secondary. If if I may add, there was one additional board memo that didn't get in here and it is for the Teaching Diverse Histories grant. So again, it's grant funded but we had, some partnership with Oakland Oakland University and
they helped us write the curricular units. It was a powerful experience because we had k 12 educators and higher education coming together to write curriculum. Awesome. So in total, the amount that we're paying them and again, this is totally grand plummet. It all comes out of the 99 b grant, and so there's no impact to the district's general fund. It would be in total for $8,100. That number will come forth next Monday, but it's part of that same grant.
So my apologies that I didn't get that in the books. I'm sorry. How much was the the, the conference? The conference is 10,705 as a estimate. Doctor Thomas, in that game, it's going to Oakland University? The last one. Yes. Okay. And what was the total amount of the grant? I I know you said it. 81,000, and we've we've expended some of that last year too. Yeah. Yeah. So the total was in the grant was I just need an estimate. That's fine.
It's, a family look, dollars 81,111. Okay. Thank you. That's that's family list. Lots of good news here tonight. Is it elevation? The elevation? Yes. I'm stabbing your knowledge again. It is it is it is elevation. I was writing a lot of work on this. So, Elevation is essentially a piece of software. It's a dashboard tool that really supports the work that our English language learner teachers,
our EL staff, use to support the implementation of the program. It helps us monitor and track. It helps us keep records that are, pretty detailed in Title three. There are a number of different things that we need to track and ensure that we have in place for the title three grant as well as for any of the state requirements around our second language learners. In addition to that, it also supports professional learning opportunities for our teachers.
One of the reasons why we looked to Elevation was because it is very specifically designed to support EL teachers in effectively implementing and progress monitoring our students. This was actually recommended, not not because they were, getting a benefit from it. But when the state came in and they pointed out some things that we could streamline or do a little better on, they mentioned that several districts use this to help support record keeping, strong data analysis, and training.
And I know that was that was one of the questions, trustee Mufromboise had. I'm sorry. Not trustee. My apologies. That's okay. You can say trustee. No. That's okay. I'm sorry, vice president. So, essentially, this was one we recommended to ensure that we were in compliance with everything that we used to be in compliance with. And I know a question came was, you have other platforms. Why this platform for EL? Well, one of the reasons is, as I mentioned, it's very targeted. And this allows our EL teachers, who we have you know, it's really the a
number of EL teachers for the amount of kids that we need to service. This makes sure that they're not spending time tracking things in spreadsheets and this document and that spreadsheet, that they have something that's streamlined, that allows them to get their work done quickly and easily, and stay focused on students. In the past two years, there's been a significant increase in the acquirers at the state level for the number of hours our EL teachers need to serve students. So this allows them to do their work quickly so they can serve students.
So the goal is to be able to use section $41, which we used last year, but as we all know, we're in a place of state where those funds may not be available. I believe have we heard any real guidance on section 41? No. Or 31, title three immigrant. And I was gonna bring this up with all of these EL discussions and ask you asked about the the dollars for them. The state sent a memo, and I thought I uploaded it. If not, I will this week. That really said even though the federal government is reducing the obligations, ours have not
changed. It's still in our law. So these will be some of the the things that no matter what, you're gonna have to take out of the pot to do for kids. So, we're we're mandated to have programs and services in place. An additional piece too that did not get in the memo is that, about 75% of the students in our district are at invest and just like we do with other things like subject or I Ready, they would pay a portion of this. And probably based on the numbers, they would be responsible for about 7075%, give or
take, depending on the numbers, of this total fee because they utilize this as well. Anybody? Comments? Questions? No. Thank you very much. Epic Math Initiative, year two participation. Another great opportunity for April Mark. This is year two, a program that Oakland Schools is implementing to support specifically increases in math in grades four through six. And last year, they reached out to the district to offer this service. And essentially, what this does is it provides an opportunity for our district to work
with a consultant, and that consultant was actually here today, to do some work with us and to also provide opportunities for our staff to be trained as well as for stipends for some of the programs and work that they might do. So I know there was a question about is there a fee from the district? Do we get money from the ISD? The answer is no. The money essentially comes through the services they offer. So it's a great opportunity. We have gained a lot even through last year.
That person was side by side working with our coordinator, even giving some feedback in the curriculum that she was writing. We had teachers trained in something called math recovery, free of charge to the district, and we also had opportunities to go to PD, free of charge to this district. So no money exchanged, but a lot of support and services from the district, from the ISD. Everybody? Very good. Great things. Board goals? Any comments? Okay. Hearing none. Board calendar. Any questions on that calendar?
We did make some corrections, and I'm sure if we look hard enough, there's probably some other things that need to move. So if there's some items that you'd like, let me know. I think we're in a good starting point. It's pretty organized. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Is this a fluid document? We don't vote on this, do we? Usually, it's in your board protocol handbook. And so we've made some adjustments and changed the way I'd love to include my evaluation and such. So, I mean, that's really up to the board of education and president Hinton to determine if you want it here next week, but you would vote on your goals.
Okay. Okay. First aid kits for coaches. So this isn't, any approval. These are the first aid kits that the nurses have voted to have, I think, a smooth teed on them. And, we've only been able to get five because they're, Expensive. Well, no. No. No. They're just not there. We can't get them. And so we will be ordering these for each and every one. The coaches were utilizing the bags that we provided for the first time last year, as first aid kits, and then I believe the pool does have their own first aid on top of that.
So this is what they look like. They'll be refilled yearly by the nurses just like they do the larger bags and make sure that everybody has what they need. Everything fall out. I'm not opening it. I I well, oh, I thought you said oh, don't open it. You're gonna make it fall out. Everything's gonna fall out. I know. Gross. Awesome. Little pockets. Okay. Wasn't quite what I had in mind. I had in mind, like, a backpack. Yeah. But this is what, the athletic director and the nurses picked out, so that's what we're getting. Is that a nylon material? It's like a nylon? Yes.
So they'll have one with them at all times when They're that'll be assigned to them during the season, and then they turn it back in, and it'll be refilled for the next people for the next season. Yep. Nice. How about just one of those? 36,000. Yeah. Wasn't wasn't very expensive. It's not a spare price. Yes. So it's under 500, I believe. Transportation is next. So this is really a conversation. We continue to hear about individuals having trouble getting their kids to school and just the other day, a parent, a grandparent who got her two children talked about the 10 blocks that they have to go to school.
And I asked Gina, I said, could we add, the elder elementaries to the bus to get transportation to the other elementary schools because it has made a difference. And there's about 25 kids at Webb who are riding the bus. She thought she could add one more school and so I wanted to bring up the idea of adding United Oaks to that. They have a big catchment area that individuals are coming from, and I would love to see that that we take one more step in making sure that our kids, have, secure transportation.
There's been a lot of individuals recently I've heard losing their cars. You know, someone was crying the other day. My car has been taken away from me. You know, so I think this would be one more help if even if we get 20 more kids to school. Oaks, we've got 20 more kids that are coming on a regular basis and have safe transportation to school. There's a As a reminder, at Webb, we allowed individuals to drop now at any bus stop. I don't think we've talked about the transportation enough out there for everybody. There might be more people that are, like, oh, I don't even know that it's
there. But I would like to see us at United Oaks and then we can see how that works and if that increases attendance at United Oaks as well. So I didn't write a memo for it. I just kinda wanted to put it out there for conversations. We wouldn't need any more bus drivers and we wouldn't need a bus to add United Oaks into the mix. So there's no additional cost? No additional cost. Just Hoover would be left out at this point in time. Would there be a a minute cost? Because we have to pay the bus driver. No. We already have a bus driver. We already have the bus drivers we have. We have the buses we have. It might be a little bit of gas cost because you're going to another spot,
but they're going Oh, so it'd be the same bus? Same bus. Okay. She'd add stops. They would drop it one and then drop it the other. Okay. That's I didn't get that part. And and you also in our teacher's contract so thank you for making me think. Would there be a small part? That's in the teacher's contract, there is a person assigned to be the bus supervisor when those kids get off the bus and come in. So we would have to add one of those T United Oaks as well. Is that just a stipend? Yes. Just a stipend. I don't remember what it was. 500 sits in my head. Per hour. It's Every morning. It's more than 10. Those kids got on the bus.
It's very minimal for the work they do. Okay. And there's no way to fit Hoover into this? She said she couldn't do all three. So maybe we can do United Oaks, and then then maybe in the fall, we could or in the summer, we can relook at it. We can talk about whether we could add him, someone on with the current buses. Can we maybe just get, like, a map of the city and just outline where these kids are, you know, like so what areas United Oaks. What areas we can show you what the area is. It's not like the older days, can I tell you?
In my previous job, I actually took a big board and put the map of the city on and put pins where every single student lived. Of course, there was only 871. And then I developed the bus routes, and we had four different buses for that. No. Just like the geographical area, the way we have that. What comprises United Oaks students and what where does because I saw the Webb's kids, and they were coming all the way from 8 Mile. I was like, wow. That's really Webb District.
I didn't Well, that's because they that part works out. They asked to come. And so we can do that zones for you, but they asked to go to different spots. And so the bus route for Webb is only in the Webb busing zone. The bus stops for United Oaks would only be in the United Oaks busing zone. And if you end up at a stop because you're going to United Oaks at one of the farthest stops, that's fine. But we wouldn't make a stop outside of the United Oaks. I can ask her to draw that for you. I'd love to be able to start this before in November maybe or before it
gets cold. Yeah. My concern is the cold. So I'll see what you can do in the week. I don't know if we can have it for you on Monday. So United Oaks student couldn't get dropped at a wet bus stop? Well, they they might be able to. But because it's the same bus, they may be able to get on at United Oaks and go to Webb. I don't see why we wouldn't do that or depending on the a Webb student at United Oaks. I don't know how that bus route would go. Right? It would have to be only one or the other could probably do it because you take the routes and then I don't I could ask her.
She's the mastermind of this, not me. You have pain tags. We'll bring more information. So if you're willing to bring that so we could announce that, I would love to be able to do that. I would like to see it. I know it's been really beneficial at Webb. I mean, I've just heard parents talk about it anecdotally, so I can only imagine that it would do the same at UO. I just the only my issue is I don't like, the quality of the Webb's or Hoover students. I don't like that. Because you're doing it for two, but you're not doing it for the one. Yeah. I just think we have to step by step.
Now listen, if you wanna do it, I could ask her what that would take to do all three and try to bring that to you. But I think it might include adding another bus perhaps. I didn't ask that question. She just said, if the current structure I have, I could do one more school. And it felt like Hoover is the bigger or United Oaks is the bigger catchment than the Hoover area is, because it's a bigger school and it has more kids. Mhmm. I'd love to do all three. Yeah. I think something is still better than nothing. I agree that I wish it was all three, but I just think even with
the, for the longest time, you know, like, United Oaks had the community rep in Webb and Hoover didn't. It just You could do one or the other. We have over 300 kids at United Oaks and a smaller number at Hoover. And so that is the only reason to try to grab as many kids as possible that might potentially get on that bus. 350. Or more. Yeah. Alright. Summer school, summer programming update. That's them. Is that you? I wrote the memo out, but I'm gonna say, miss Gresley really spent a lot
of time doing this. So do you want me to talk through or would you want me to talk through or would you want me to Underneath here, as I'm looking, are the memo for the handbook revisions. Yeah. The stickers can be reversed. That's why it's not there. So we could do this on Monday if you so choose and just talk about the handbook revisions. Oh, I think that's a good idea. I look at Going to Zendaya, when I was reading, I thought that there could be some involved talk there, so We could do it at the beginning of the agenda. We won't have, kids coming.
We'll have them in October, so we could have a little bit of, like, mini report there. I'm sorry about that. I got it. I think it'll be That's okay. We'd be happy to tag team Carmel and I. Yep. But we do have the handbook revisions that We do have the handbook. Yes. So, one, I'm looking at the memo. I know it should not be 43861231. Obviously, that's an error in there. Those are the pages that were updated. So as you recall, we, made some revisions and came back. It was probably in June, that we came back with some revisions and brought them
to the board and they looked at there was a follow-up email from a for a couple of additional revisions. And those have been made and, essentially what those are is on page four. I've been been trying to consolidate, so I did remove some names out. I had removed, the board of education. No disrespect to the board of education. I was trying to streamline and I removed the names of the principals and, you know, based on feedback which was important feedback, that was added back in. So, I added the, board of education names, the central office names, and put the
it wasn't It's not a big change, but I added it back in. So I highlighted it in red. One of the other things that is updated in here that is not highlighted in red is that, I don't know how closely you're following this, but the Cleveland office of the Office of Civil Rights is no longer open. There's only one office in The United States that's handling, civil rights complaints and that's the Denver office. So that's added in here as well. In addition to that, there were a couple of minor changes on page, 12.
I know that, there was a request to make sure that the introduction to the personal, technology devices was shifted and adjusted because it made better sense to be in a different order, so that change was made. In addition to that, on page 31 let me go back, doctor. Please page 31. I'm just trying to get this quickly. Thank you for your patience. Page 31, originally a while back, there was a missing number of credits for our
alternative schools. That was added I believe when it was approved but I don't know if it was highlighted so that's updated. And then there is one final update on page 38 that just clarifies that while there are a number of different guidelines related to any actions that may happen, if, there's some discipline in the schools, if a student is making some decisions and we need to take, action, we just added a line that says the administrative teaming up
retains the flexibility to tailor responses to student behavior based on individual student needs. So that was just a further clarification for families who may be needing that. So those are, updates in the panel. That's a lot of work. Thank you. No questions? Perfect. Thank you. I have a question. Too late. You are answering questions. Okay. I'm I'm moving up. It's fine. You gotta be fast. The latchkey handbook. That's all. Did you forget your question? No. You told me to leave. I just wanted did you mention the latchkey handbook one? Did I miss it?
No. That's the next one. Oh, okay. It it was the same memo twice. I was just done. Okay. Go ahead. So the last key handbook, essentially we're bringing this forward to make sure that it's in your hands, but there was really, really literally only one or two changes and it was really around names of individuals. So essentially the handbook is the same as it was last year. Everything had, we spent a significant amount of time reawading and realigning of last year with last year. So this is really just some updates on dates and names. This is all first reading.
Right? We have to do first reading and then second reading, or we just go on call? So at the next meeting, we will just approve it. They're here. Oh, thank you. But you're welcome to read the 100 page student handbook. Okay. Listen, I wanna remind us that we ten years ago, we didn't have any of these handbooks. This has made this tremendous amount of work by all the departments, so kudos. One session. Okay. One session. Missus Hinton, there is no reason that we have to have it tonight if you would like to have it at the next meeting. So you guys keep looking at the clock. We can do it tonight, or we can do it at the next meeting.
I don't think it'll be it'll be Is there an estimated time on how long it's gonna be? Depending on how long you wanna talk. Well, Debbie. I promise you, maybe I was gonna cry. I'm just saying you missed it. Really, the next meeting shouldn't be all that long because next week we won't have the voting meeting and we shouldn't have all this discussion. You don't. I don't know. What do you think? I say let it go for the next meeting. I don't think we'll reference. I want you to move it to our next meeting next Monday. Support. Can we do it maybe at the beginning of the next meeting so we're not pushing it away again?
Yeah. We can't push it though. Okay. You know what? That that would then cause the community to wait. So it depends on however you want it, but then the community is gonna have to wait for you to go in closed session. And this is not a decision making piece. This is a conversation for guidance. So we can decide tomorrow? You sure can. Shall we? Yes. I'll put it on my list. Yes. You can. Alright. Alright. Motion oh, any comments? No. My comments are for all next week. Schools are up and rolling. I'm telling you. They're busy, busy, busy.
I pay a motion to adjourn, I should do adjourn. Second. We move the roll call. Oh. Roll call. You need a roll call what? To move the