good morning everyone and on behalf of the board administration and education finance committee I call this meeting to order may we have a roll call please mr appel Mr pel is present dr armstrong
here dr armstrong is present mr berken here mr berken present mr castile mr castile not present miss Champine here miss Champine present dr clark dr clark present mr harris mr harris present mr hollis mr hollis is present miss
Holloway miss Holloway is present miss Meerine miss Meerine is present m morris m mars is present you have a call thank you um the first item please the consent agenda is ready for approval adding items 6.1 and 7.1
i have a motion please dr armstrong second Miss Holloway um any discussion seeing none motion any objections seeing none motion passes
next please your first item is on page 16 item 4.1 consideration of LDOE contracts greater than 50,000 the recommendation is to approve the motion please Miss Champine Mr morris any
discussion any objections motion carries next please your next item is on page 23 item 4.2 Two consideration of a report from education finance staff concerning Bessie authorized charter school budgets
and expenditure reports including irregularities or concerns the recommendation is to receive motion please mr harris Miss Melerin any discussion just want to point out uh Mr berkin that that
information is in your packet uh should you have uh any questions uh deputy superintendent CNO is is available uh both here today or beyond today any discussion any
objections seeing none motion carries next item please your next item is on page 30 item 4.3 consideration of federal state grants and allocations to LEAs type two charters type five charters approve nonpublic schools and
community-based organizations competitive and other the recommendation is to approve motion please Mr appel second Miss Champine discussion please uh Mr burken
this uh particular item uh also affords considerable resources to school systems uh through our competitive process uh that we utilize uh really proud of our team's work on aligning u this opportunity uh to the priorities of
Bessie and the priorities of the agency to drive uh student uh academic outcomes and so we certainly um recommend approval of this item and I would remind all of you that our team provided you a
breakdown per your bestie district of funding that was being made available to school systems okay any other discussion on the deis so we have uh one person wishes to
speak miss Caroline Romer Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools miss Romer good morning caroline Romer Louisiana Association of Public Charter School uh Charter Schools i usually come up and know exactly what I'm doing i don't
today is this an item that would be appropriate to I know this is not a Q&A session but to ask some questions about preK specifically LA4 seats and the allocation of those seats through the department to eleas is this an item in
here um we're I'm not I'm I'm not necessarily going to take questions from uh the public um because that's not what this is this is public comment period but if a board member would like to ask a question uh I'd be happy to answer my comment would just be then without
asking a question i see there is an item in there related to the allocation of those seats to districts to charter schools and it's concerning to me to see when a district has lost seats um when I
don't see the state as a whole losing seats but I do see some of those allocations are less than what they're currently serving in that district and so it's just concerning to me how that process works and I again I understand resources can be limited and sometimes
that happens but I would hope that for any school district uh I can't believe that there isn't a demand for those seats and so when I see a district losing seats in this case Orleans in particular I think is down 17 seats from
what they're currently serving that's concerning my work is generally charter schools K through 12 but we do have charter schools serving preK students and I just hate to see a loss of those seats and so it it's not again my world
normally so when I saw it I just felt the need to come up and ask um that that be considered when these allocations are are being done thank you Mr burkin i I specifically like to know what's going on in Orleans Parish if we have that
information today i understand I've heard it was a a bigger number than what Miss Romer suggested uh of lost LA4 seats if you're able to address that I'd appreciate it if not we'll do No thank you Mr appel thank you for your your
question happy to give some uh u history to that i would ask uh uh dep um assistant uh deputy assistant superintendent Karen Pal to come up from our early childhood team and if if she needs anyone else to join her please do
so uh but the the short answer to that and Karen can elaborate is basically that that we in many ways work on the request from the systems um and if a system doesn't make a request then we can't honor a request because it was
never made um and in this particular uh item in in Orleans I think that what you have is a is a system uh that was for for whatever reason maybe not operating as efficiently as it should have been operating in a number of different uh uh
financial elements um not making a request for something that they had previously had uh and we were not able to honor something that they had not requested and so those seats were shifted elsewhere uh Karen if you wanna provide just to clarify for the board uh
there's been a change in uh superintendency in Orleans Parish the original superintendent who wasn't there that long had resigned some months ago uh and there's a new superintendent who just obviously just started
literally just started so if that's what you're inferring uh perhaps that's part of the problem and maybe she could address that but uh I just wanted to clarify that yeah so the so the challenges in Orleans financially
um have been well documented in the media um I'm not sure they have been um I would have liked to have seen more public engagement in asking questions of the Orleans Parish system uh for some of
the for some of the financial uh issues that we've seen in the in the media uh but this particular item for which Miss Romer is asking is specific to early childhood seats so Karen you might can provide some light on to what happened there yes Dr brley and make sure your
microphone is on and that you introduce yourself is my microphone on i believe it is you may have to pull it closed Karen the lights on okay thank you good morning i'm Karen Pal i'm deputy assistant superintendent for the Office of Early Childhood Care and Education
here at the department god bless you and the way that the LA4 seat requests work is that each community network submits a coordinated funding request identifying how many seats they are requesting for that community and so that community
network in Orleans is called no it's the New Orleans Early Education Network and it's a partnership between Agenda for Children and the New Orleans public schools and so there has been a reduction over the past several years of
the seats awarded in Orleans based on lower asks and then also after the preliminary allocations are made our team asks networks across the state do you need any additional seats do you
need to decline seats because you cannot use them because our first priority is ensuring that all seats are utilized and Nola PS has actually declined seats in recent years so what you're saying is there's been a
trend a downward trend in requests for seats even though we all have to believe the demand is there maybe growing demand greater than that there's been a trend in an increase in seats being declined most years declined
by who by NOLA PS i'm sorry I couldn't hear you nola public schools oh why would they decline seats opportunities any idea i don't know um what what I can say is that they are not the only network and parish to decline seats in
the state so in the spring when networks work to coordinate enrollment and they find out what local demand there is sometimes they find that there is there are fewer families looking for that seat that year and so typically they might
decline one seat five seats 10 seats could and I'm asking you to speculate but could it be a budgetary issue where they decline a seat because there's additional resources that the school board must provide and that's speculation i realize I I do not know you don't know i could not speak to that
i also Mr appel we go off what is requested of us right and if they don't request and we have a greater request elsewhere in the state we we feel that need and so I I I just think it's important for the public
to know that we didn't just wake up one morning and say "Let's give New Orleans less seats." It's that they were not even requested well not only requested but also declined it sounds like so it's a double a double hit of some sort excuse me but may I ask Dr dr brownley is there ever a
time when the department asks the district why are you declining certain seats or many seats i is this something that we are responsible for to ask i I don't think
we necessarily require an explanation for why they decline the seats um we do want to make sure that they are certain they want to do that and then we we move to give the seats to networks that have said they have additional need so it is
possible for example that Orleans could get seats added back in the coming year because already there are networks saying that they won't be able to use their full preliminary allocation so many it's
when you when you say how many we have declined okay what that's important clarification yes I'm sorry how many seats has par Arle's parish declined in the last couple years we're looking but I know that it's more than a hundred
wow Well I think you know at this stage I think following up on Miss Holloway's statement I think it's appropriate that the board uh specifically make a request of Orleans Parish as to what their plan is why they're declining seats uh why they
haven't made requests for seats um I I mean I don't think that's necessarily a motion but it should be something that we can direct the and how can we help to or facilitate them getting those seats filled is it and
just just the reasons behind this trend obviously it's a growing concern and uh uh we need to we need to know the facts and we don't know the facts obviously so in the past our our staff has absolutely explained to networks what they might do
if they aren't sure how to fill the seats and so we can ensure that our team explains again especially as there's a new superintendent um if you if you for example cannot utilize all the seats at one location here's how you can transfer them here's how you can utilize them i I
I just think it's it's a little bit concerning when we get to the place that uh the department uh needs to make determinations for local systems of how many seats they need you know you you should have the capacity within a a
local school system to know how many early childhood seats you need and if if you're making those declines I just think you should be answering to your public locally around why we we certainly don't have the the bandwidth to to run you know early child care for every school system in the state nor do
systems want us to do so uh but I do think it's appropriate as Mr appel is asking to find the answers on why yeah i'm not asking us to run the system i'm just asking us this sounds like a very specific case and why why can't we come from an official position and say do you
know what's going on here and why are you doing this and then report back to us uh as to the the answers but I think I think I think you're you're right about that but I think it's the particular Orleans issue is bigger than than this it it there are other
financial um engagements or activities that are also uh of question i have a question i understand that it's more than a hundred and it's more than 200 seats that are down can you get
please get us the accurate number it's it's the number that has been declined versus other seats were lost because they were not requested by the district but can you please get us that number
total number Dr a lot of seats so I have a question uh related if but Dr if I may one sec Miss Holloway I don't know that that we're prepared to like here's the number they're doing this on the table so it may be that we
have to get you that number beyond this moment for the whole for the whole board members absolutely totally understand that it's a reduction of 234 over time but we can also check on the number declined correct that reduction some
were declined some were not requested yeah by the district absolutely thank you so in declining the seats we're basically I'm asking okay declining children what other options are
available to these children so four-year-old children are eligible for Head Start programs in the parish and they would also be eligible to apply for the childcare assistance program so those are two other funding streams
and we would not know if they go into another program we don't track no we don't have that information um it's possible that the district tracks that but we would not know whether they do or do not and that would be something that
we would like to know from the district as well i think it also speaks to and I think it also speaks to the fact that when you operate a system that is spec as specific as Orleans which is essentially an allcharter system you have to have
extreme coordination at that district level because you have so many different LEAs essentially existing within your system and if you don't have really tight organization at that system level then you run into challenges like we're expressing today or Mr or appel or are
or uh may express down the road um and so just want to point out that there there is a need for uh stronger system level organization and efficiency there any other questions on this topic
yeah Mr chair I'm not sure we ran this on the ground so I think there's going to be a broader conversation a little bit later today but I I I'm happy to offer a motion uh to ask uh LDOE to follow up and come back to the board uh
with some uh better understanding of the why the rate has been declining over multiple years i think that's a reasonable request if someone want to second the motion is there a second to that motion miss Champine any
discussion any public comment hearing none any objections seeing none that motion carries i do have a question um Dr brumley so are we going to make a motion to approve contracts first that was the
first okay so any objections to the original motion on 4.3 that motion carries um recently uh President Trump's administration sent a letter that um you
are to certify nondiscrimination in our schools could you um what's going on there could you address that please yeah thanks um so you you may have seen you may have clearly you have seen this uh
the the president uh through education secretary Linda McMahon uh has sent a notice to all state education commissioners uh chief state school officers in our case state superintendent uh basically giving us 10
days to certify that there are no discriminatory activities taking place in schools uh across the entire state which could include some uh diversity equity and inclusion type activities um
that's a certainly a a significant ask uh to make of a state commissioner around every single school or school system in in the state of Louisiana so the way in which we are going to approach that is to just have um uh make notice to all of the LEAs throughout the
state of Louisiana uh about the request upon us um they have most recently uh in alignment with a an act of the legislature from last year had to report all uh such activities to us and which we in turn reported to the state
legislature as we were asked to do um but what we will do is ask that all of the um uh school systems across the state uh provide an assurance to us that they do not have discriminatory activities uh within their school
systems uh we're not going to go into and define uh you know what those particular activities may look like or what policies or practices or endeavors for which they're engaged uh might need to be ceased or halted but we will advise that they work with their local
council to determine and ensure that they do not have anti-discriminatory practices in their school systems uh and so that uh those assurances will be forthcoming to school systems so that I can then uh comply with the the the
certification that I have to make back to the US Department of Education um because otherwise um because otherwise so much the funding that flows into Louisiana is endangered if a school system would have anti-discriminatory
actions uh taking place and and certainly uh I do not want any school system to have an anti-discriminatory action taking place in their school and I wouldn't believe that this board would either so uh that's an update on that Mr burkin um and we will be making notice
to uh school systems uh in the very near future uh because we originally received 10 days for me to sign off on this form uh and then yesterday we were granted a 10-day extension so questions discussion
okay next item please your next item is on page 62 item 5.1 consideration of program and budget revisions on 8G statewide grant programs for 2024 2025 the recommendation is to
approve a motion Dr armstrong Mr harris any discussion any objections motion carries next please your next item is on page 288 item 8.1
consideration of revisions to bulletin 1929 Louisiana Accounting and Uniform Governmental Handbook regarding business administrator credentials the recommendation is to approve okay uh motion Miss Holloway Mr
morris any discussion on this i have a comment Mr burk okay um just in order to help make sure that um financial operations are appropriate and effective and and seamless in school systems what this particular item does is it requires
the school business administrator or chief financial officer of any uh school system applying to both public traditional public and public charter that they either uh obtain their CPA license or uh what is more common get certified through their um trade
organization uh lazo uh as a certified Louisiana school business administrator uh we think this is is good best practice to make sure that these individuals overseeing million-doll budgets uh have this required training
on uh best practices in finance and accounting procedures okay discussion seeing none uh any objection to the motion seeing none motion carries next item please your next item was added to the agenda and has been handed out item
9.1 consideration of a discussion regarding a request for a financial report and documentation from Orleans Parish School Board the recommendation is to direct motion Mr repel the second Mr morris
discussion mr appel thank you um for those of you that who may not be aware uh the last several months there's been a uh a number of media reports and a lot of discussion um about a budgetary revenue shortfall
in Orleans Parish somewhere I'm not even sure the actual number but somewhere between 30 and 50 million which in turn affects schools of Orleans Parish um it's become a lot a very politicized issue uh because there's some funding
issues related to the city of New Orleans as relates to uh the school board uh it's my belief that it's Bessie's constitutional duty to evaluate what's going on in this situation and gather information to that effect uh so
that we can u execute any potential actions we wish to take so to that to that end I I have prepared a motion which uh y'all have to bear with me because it's rather long but I think it's appropriate that I read it in i move to direct Bessie staff to forward
the following question to responsible officials of the Orleans Parish School Board by the end of business on April 10th um giving Orleans Parish School Board until the end of business on April 30th to respond to Bessie and to the Department of Education
number one what is the nature and actual value of the error and/or shortfall in the Orleans Parish School Board current fiscy year budget number two how did the budget error or shortfall escape review by the Orleans Parish School Board and its staff does the Orleans Parish School
Board employ generally accepted financial accounting principles in accordance with Louisiana law number three what actions has the or have the Orleans Parish School Board taken to remediate the impact of the current budget error and shortfall what further
actions are anticipated number four in the remediation of a current budget shortfall if the use of rainy day funds is anticipated which has been announced then how and when will these funds be replenished number five what actions have the
Orleans Parish School Board taken to prevent future recurrence of this or any other error or shortfall in the budget in its budgeting process what further actions are anticipated number six what if any obligations are owed to the Orleans Parish School Board by the City
of New Orleans if there are any funds owed or committed by the city of New Orleans when will they become due and how will they be allocated number seven what were the potential impacts or burdens on schools in Orleans Parish resulting from an Orleans Parish
School Board error or shortfall to what extent and how if any uh if any have these impacts been remediated number eight if additional funds become available such as from the city of New Orleans how will and when
will these funds be allocated number nine based upon the corrected uh current Orleans Parish schoolboard budget is there any expectation of reduced future recurring revenues and I want to comment on that a little bit further in a second and then number 10 should further
recurring revenues be reduced what will be the impact upon schools and their funding and so those last two items to me perhaps were the most important uh what we what we uh in a regulatory vein need to know is is this a recurring
revenue problem is this a one-time revenue problem if it is a recurring revenue problem uh what does that mean for the budgets as we all know with with very minor exception all the schools in Orleans Parish are charter schools uh
and they depend upon the school board for their funding um if if this is a recurring $50 million $30 million whatever it is revenue shortfall then what do we expect to see in budgets going forward for next year
the year after and so forth so um the to close my motion I say further the Department of Education shall report by electronic mail to Bessie an evaluation of said responses by May 15th so basically I'm saying uh we need to send this out this week we need to get
information back in about uh two weeks roughly and uh sometime thereafter before our next Bessie meeting we should get a report from Department of Education summarizing uh the information that that we've received uh and I might I might add uh even though that's the
end of my motion I would uh encourage the Orleans Parish School Board and as I noted earlier they have a brand new superintendent been there less than a week I think uh I would encourage them if there's any additional information not in this list that would help us in
evaluating the situation so we can seminate the the information to the public um that they cooperate with us and give us that information um my hope is that this was a one-time accident in budgeting uh and that next year
everything will be just fine my concern is it was not a one-time accident in budgeting that reflects a continuing decline of revenues available to the Orleans Parish School Board and then I we need to know what that means to the education of children in Orleans Parish
going forward so that concludes my motion and uh I'll open the questions so we have a second from Mr moore so u my questions in um where did the motion
begin and end i guess mo I I drafted it in a days on an airplane coming back from Japan um include those 10 questions plus some more you're going to give it to uh does everyone maybe understand the motion i
guess um ma'am and uh is it necessary you think to have any legal consultation prior to sending that those questions out personally having recon reconsidered the constitution I believe it's fully in our
our charge by the people of Louisiana that we oversee uh these in these institutions and Orleans Parish School Board is certainly one of them so personally don't think it requires legal consultation but I'm perfectly open to throwing it to them for consideration
too wondering your thoughts um any discussion on this does everyone understand the motion if I may uh Mr burken if if it's okay with Mr appel we're happy to meet your request here and just run the um the set
of questions we pose to them across our legal council's desk and you know we can do the same with Bessie Legal Council too if that's if that helps your Well I don't want to def delay the implementation of the I've only said in the motion that the request to the oil school board would go out in this week
so I mean I'm fine to have the legal council review it and if there's any comments that's great u but um certainly that would the items within the motion would be severable if you understand what that means so if there's one that's an issue I don't want the rest of them
held up yeah that sounds good we we'll um trying to meet the request of everyone here we we'll pass it we'll pass it across the desk of LEAL but we won't allow that to slow it down thank you okay so we're ready to vote any objections on M yes would you comment oh
I'm sorry i uh I I knew that and if we got uh Miss Caroline Ror again from Louisiana Association Public Charter Schools wishes to speak uh thank you Caroline Ror LAPCS i saw this item today and wasn't really sure what it was but I
am um pleased to come to the table as an organization back in October of 2024 lapcs uh basically blew the whistle on this item and wrote a letter to the Orleans Parish School Board about the
fact that our schools had detected and learned that there was this shortfall that is closer to $50 million um and it is not just for this school year but the coming school year as well we have schools that are facing upwards of a
thousand dollars per student shortfall in a current budget we're talking loss of teachers jobs cutting of programs it has been nothing less than a crisis i will allow OPSB and NOLs to answer to your
questions but I will say they have been working on the problem to understand what took place they use a calculator where they plug in the numbers that then spits out what the I'm simplifying it but spits out a per student number they
put a wrong number in the calculator they were given a number by the city of New Orleans at one date and time that number changed at a later date in time and they did not change the number you also have at hand here if you could also
ask the city of New Orleans to get their business straight dr brumley spoke on an earlier item about running a tight organization and being thoughtful and well organized and communicating we have a problem between the entities of city of New Orleans and our school board not
doing that well poor leadership and so the city also has something to say and answer for on what's happened their collections are down on property taxes there are issues there i will compliment the New Orleans City Council they have
taken this matter up they are doing resolutions in fact I think they have some ordin ordinances they'll pass on Thursday hopefully so again some dollars are flowing to our schools to make up for that problem but the more important
and critical thing as your questions I believe lend to is what happened and this should never happen again you are impacting classrooms and it is irresponsible and we have very little
public information and transparency i'll speak for New Orleans now but I could say it probably falls across other places in this state where our schools fully understand what the dollars are that are coming in and what of those dollars should be flowing through our
schools so I appreciate the motion i think it's worth um this body taking a look at and understanding how school finances sometimes are not working on behalf of students in this state and creating a real mess thank you well I
suggest uh one further comment uh from what you'd said it's what if if this is a continuing problem and there is a declining school age population um which mean translates to reclining uh
declining uh revenues what is the strategy going forward i mean do we consolidate schools do we um take other steps necessary to reduce spending so that we get it back up on the per pupil spending side we get
it back up to where it should be uh I'm not asking you to answer that i'm just suggesting my concern is in the long longer term uh because if it's a a oneoff accounting error okay but I don't think it is i think it's a
representative of a declining population of stu of school age children um and there's going to have to be some long-term thinking about what schools look like in Orleans Parish to fit the financial constraints going forward that's all I suggesting and if I may you
are correct orleans is declining in enrollment we have more seats than we have students but I will credit um Orleans Parish School Board consistently reviews charters both on the accountability standards and we have
done renewals more so than any other district in the state um they are also looking to understand like long-term what is sustainable and what is not we work very closely um as a school board
as a charter association with other organizations like New Schools for New Orleans that is looking at that portfolio to again understand our population like this state we're one of what six states that loses population
year after year and Orleans is not immune to that um and as a city that is so reliant on the hospitality industry and those sorts of things you can see a lot of you know ups and downs so it is it is forward thinking it takes someone
understanding that this is not a superintendent job in New Orleans it's about operating schools that's not what they do their job is to ensure that we have the right number of seats and that we are getting all the resources our
kids need to the classroom mr chair yes sir yeah mr pel uh Senator Pel I know we're not going to solve this problem here today but I'm just wondering $50 million uh shows up somewhere on a balance sheet uh so if we're short one place I wonder where the
excess uh goes where does the $50 million go u that disappeared in the school budget maybe that's something it wasn't just a misplacement of funds it was a um an error in recognizing revenue streams so there is no other place they
just if the if the budget was balanced on the basis of X dollars in fact what they have is X minus50 million but doesn't that give you a $50 million surplus in your in your uh budget no it just doesn't exist that's what she's
saying that they used a calculator to calculate the uh total dollars of revenue and and we're speculating we're going to get those answers directly but uh the revenue just wasn't there but they anticipated that it was there so on
the spending side they spent that 50 million got it but it didn't exist got it so they overestimated by 50 million is what I'm hearing now okay got it thank you Dr breman yeah I have a comment and Dr clark knows this is true as I've shared
this with her a couple of times i I am concerned about what the summer looks like uh in Orleans if they are uh if school leaders are making decisions around can we have appropriate summer programs uh do we have the staff now to
offer uh tutoring academic tutoring support uh to kids um I am I am very concerned about what the summer looks like uh for kids in New Orleans if they cannot effectively and quickly come to a resolution on this issue and
unfortunately I don't think uh the city's administration and the mayor's office uh has done enough to work through this issue i mean the the the most important travel and trip this mayor should be taking is to a school to understand the impact uh of this uh of
these finances on programs for kids and uh I'm hoping that we can see more coordination uh between the council the mayor uh the Orleans board and the superintendent to get this right for kids any other
discussion any objections to the motion seeing none that motion carries next item please that concludes your agenda so prior to the adjournment real quick uh I wanted to thank Mr harris for allowing me to give that award to Miss uh uh Miss Hataway being that it was in
his district so thank you Mr harris and how five 10 minutes 5 10 minutes break for the next session thank you