d welcome to the board's third and final work session on the superintendent's recommended fiscal year 2027 operating budget. My name is Grace Rivera Oven and I represent district one. I will begin by asking my
fellow board members to please introduce themselves for the record. I will start on my right. Good morning. Laura Stewart from district four. Good morning. Buenos dias. Carla Silvestre, school board member at large. Good morning,
Julie Yang. District three. Good morning, Brenda Wolff, district five. Good morning, Rita montoya, board member at large. Awesome. And we also have our wonderful staff. And our superintendent as well. We'll hear from him soon. The
board held its first public hearing on the FY 27 operating budget on January 15th. The second and final public hearing for the superintendent's recommended FY 27 operating budget will be held this evening, Monday, February 2nd
at 6 p.m. to the. To reduce the need for late evening trouble and out of an abundance of caution regarding road conditions, the Board of Education has decided that to hold tonight's operating budget hearing number two virtually a
link will be available on the board website later today. Signups for this public hearing are now closed. At its February 19th business meeting. The board will take action to approve the superintendent's recommended FY 27 operating
budget. The board's final adoption of the FY 27 operating budget will take place at the June 26th. I'm sorry, at the June 25th board business meeting. With that, I will now turn over to Doctor Taylor.
Thank you, Madam President, and I'll come up and join you on the dais when we get to questions and comments at the end of the presentation. It's my pleasure to bring forward a pretty big, meaty topic for today, and also to address some
of the questions that the board has had in its previous work sessions, and to take some direction from the board to jump right in. Our Chief Financial officer, Ivan Alfonso Windsor, is going to walk us through today's agenda, and I'm
going to start on the main topic of today after that. Good morning. Members of the Board of Education today, like you mentioned, it's our third work session during the first work session for the FY 27 budget that we held at the beginning
of January. We went over our revenue projections at the time, the base reductions on our budget are nondiscretionary expenses, which are everything that is mandatory or contracted. And we also had a discussion
about prioritization. A prioritization of what we're going to do for the FY 27 budget at the January 20th. The last one that we held, we went over the blueprint for Maryland's future, what our requirements were and what we are implementing or or stating
that we would like to implement in FY 27 our discretionary expenses. We also went over a technology overview that included both the tech technology modernization and the operating budget. And we went over some of the follow up information that you had
requested from the hearing and from the prior work session at this at this today's work session, we are going to go over the most anticipated staffing standards that we've been discussing over the last
few months. We're going to do a multi-year budget sketch, a projection over for the next four years. We have also an update on state revenue following the governor's release of his budget. And we're going to again, go over some of the follow up
information that we had from the last two to work sessions and the hearing. Additionally, we will need to discuss, again, prioritization and what we're going to do for FY 27. As you all know, on March 1st, the board has to transmit the
budget to the county council, and decisions have to be made early on so that we can meet that deadline. And now I'll turn it over to the superintendent for the staffing standards. So it's a little uncharacteristic that I'm
joining you at this table. But this is a big topic and it is consequential. Nearly nine out of every $10 in the school system's budget is spent on staffing. There are two critical questions to ask when
building the school system's budget is how many people we have and how much do we pay them? So we spend an awful lot of time discussing how we staff the school district, and also how we address compensation for our staff to remain competitive.
But there's another topic that we want to introduce into the discussion. It's the two words that are prominent in our budget but seldom talked about. And it's time that we elevate this topic to the board. And
that is position control. Central to the decision making about how many people we have and how much we pay them is position control, how many people are assigned to specific areas in the school system, whether they be schools,
central office or maintenance department, transportation, all should have metrics that are driving their staffing. And that brings us to today's topic of staffing standards. Presently, we do not actually have staffing standards. As a
matter of fact, we have a system of guidelines that we follow loosely and apply broadly, and we are introducing for the first time a somewhat new concept to M.C.P.S. but not
new to other school districts in the country, something that would be a little bit more consistent, a lot more transparent, and more equitably distributed across the county. How we staff our our schools,
something that I heard very early on as your new superintendent last year, was that parents and even school staff members didn't have a good handle on how their schools were staffed, or why their schools were staffed in a certain way. Today, we're
hoping to answer that question. This also presents a unique opportunity given the timing of where we are in the life cycle of the school district, and that we happen to be in a period where we are declining enrollment, that this is a
really good time for us to address class size and an opportunity for us to make some gains in reducing class size as we're thinking through our next steps as a school system and how we use some of our budgeted funds. We have a lot of issues
that we're trying to address with this. The first one is something that gets pointed out from time to time is our position control and its relationship to our financial responsibility. One of the best ways that we can demonstrate
financial responsibility to our community is to have a set of rules for how we staff, and to follow those rules, to take a hard look at our strategic plan and target resources in
specific areas, and differentiate those resources based on need. We also need to take a look at how we're performing in terms of class size today, to try to find that optimal class size where we get
the most return on our investment for class size. This is a big jump for us currently. Right now, we have a set of guidelines that are liberally applied and not tightly monitored and tightly held.
There is some discretion and even some politics that find its way into our school staffing. This can be mitigated by the adoption of staffing standards. We also hope that this becomes an annual discussion for the board and
for our community, about how schools should be staffed so that we can build a model that is adjusted each year to meet our changing needs as a school district. Some goals that we have in laying out some staffing standards. The first
and most preeminent is consistency and transparency, financial stability and predictability. Principals should have a good understanding in the spring what their staffing should look like going into the fall, and
it shouldn't be a guessing game. We also need to align our staffing to targeted areas of support, and be very intentional about how we apply our staffing from the board table, down to the school and to the district office.
Staffing ratios and balancing workload has an impact on our staff turnover and our staff culture and climate. These are factors that influence our district that translate into academic achievement. We need
to be mindful of that, and we certainly can leverage performance data as well as other data points, to drive and improve equitable distribution of staffing. Finally, you'll see a slide in here in our
conversation today about regional competitiveness and how we might be regaining the title of the preeminent school district in the region in not just one way, but in many ways. So with that, I want you to
know how aligned this is to the work that's going on in other places. It, of course, is directly aligned to the blueprint for Maryland's future in terms of creating adequate staffing in every school and optimal class sizes where we
have even career ladders, where educators can perform many functions in our school house to really elevate student performance. And of course, in your very own strategic plan, the Montgomery County Public Schools Future Ready Strategic Plan highlights the need for us
to invest and support our staff by establishing and maintaining staffing standards that align with program capacity. I'm going to pass things over to Alan Francois, who is our Deputy Chief of finance, and he will talk a little bit more about this and lead you through
a couple of other key data points. Thank you, Doctor Taylor. Good morning. Members of the Board of Education. As Doctor Taylor said, I am Alan Francois, the deputy Chief of Financial oversight. On the following slides, I'm going to
briefly walk through the process and approach. Oh, it's okay, it's okay process and approach. We took in developing the proposed M.C.P.S. staffing standards and provide some key highlights. I do want to make some additional notes as it
relates to this work and the strategic plan. First, it is important to remind us that this work establishing staffing standards that provide consistency, sustainability, differentiation and targeted support for our students is in direct support of our vision and mission. Our mission is a
daily challenge for all of us, school staff and central services staff to create environments and opportunities for students to unleash their potential. Our ambitious, yet attainable vision is to ensure that all students are future ready. Taking that as a cue,
being ready for the future means that we have to do some planning and make some investments and changes. Today, the development of the proposed staffing standards is part of the M.C.P.S. strategic plan and blueprint. As Doctor Taylor mentioned, I just want to highlight that objective two
requires that we establish and maintain staffing standards and program capacity standards that meet the needs of student and effective operations. On the next slides slide, we're going to look at the phasing is enter. There we go at the phasing. So
implementing our staffing standards strategy and taking a forward looking approach to where we want to be as a district in the next five years and beyond. We will require significant investment over multiple years. We recognize that we cannot accomplish
everything in a single year due to funding limitations and the planning needed to support programmatic and operational changes. With that in mind, the proposed implementation plan follows a phased approach with a coordinated cascade of changes and rollouts across
school levels and programs. Our first phase focuses on elementary schools, as they require the greatest level of investment to support our long term goals and to build a strong foundation for student success. The second phase centers on middle schools
ensuring continuity of support as students transition through this critical developmental years. The final phase addresses high schools aligning resources to prepare students for post-secondary success and again, future readiness throughout all phases of
implementation and within the framework of our five year strategic plan. Special education, including special schools, English Language Development and Central services will be implemented on a staggered timeline. This allows us to sequence changes thoughtfully and provide
targeted support where it is most needed. Our theory of action is simple by investing early and strategically at the elementary level, we create the conditions necessary to achieve our vision of every student being future ready. As with any strategic implementation, we
will continuously review, monitor and adjust our approach as needed. And FY 2032 we will intentionally assess implementation progress and make improvements to ensure the staffing standards are effective, equitable and sustainable. On the next slide
here, I'm going to talk to you a little bit about the approach that we used in standing up this project. We mostly followed a a basic strategic plan approach. As part of this process, we conducted approximately 30 hours of
intensive engagement with staff, with staffing workgroups representing all school types and levels. The purpose of the workgroups was to first have members provide input on the challenges, pain points, and best practices, and then provide feedback on potential
staffing standards and metrics. In September, we kicked off this work with the full staffing workgroup to outline overall objectives and define the role of the workgroups. The full staffing workgroup included over 60 M.C.P.S. stakeholders, including school based staff from all school
levels, elementary, middle school, and high school and our special schools. Representatives from all of our Associations and Central Services Program staff. The kickoff also provided stakeholders an opportunity to provide input for the school level workgroups. In October,
school level workgroups were held to discuss challenges and gaps specifically related to that school level. We looked at general education, staffing, special education, staffing, English language development, building services, and security.
In November, we had a follow up with the workgroup to consolidate input, confirm key challenges and identify potential solutions. In December, we held a special schools workgroup to discuss unique challenges for those five schools. And then we also held a full workgroup follow up
to review the proposed staffing standards. We're now in January, and we're finalizing implementation decisions for fiscal year 27, which is part of why we're here today. Beyond FY 27, we will annually, annually review and adjust to meet new needs and receive more feedback from stakeholders on
effectiveness. This is not a one and done. So on this slide and the next slide, I'm going to voice over a summary of what we heard from school level workgroups at a very high level. Again, this is what we heard as challenges and pain points
across school types and levels. They have been summarized into four categories leadership, administrative and operations, general education, special education, and English Language development. On this first slide are the first two categories leadership,
Administrative and Operations and General Education staffing. So for leadership, administrative and operations, we heard challenges around having adequate support at the front office, main office as it relates to clerical staffing and having financial
specialists. This was mostly at the elementary level to support budget management, staffing or testing coordinators. I'm sorry. This role is performed in some schools by members of the school based staff that are in other positions, and then at
the leadership level, assistant principals having adequate and more streamlined standards for how assistant principals are allocated, and then safety and security and building services, both of those needing adequate levels of support to ensure
that our buildings are safe and that they are ready for students each and every day for general education staffing. There was there were some pain points mentioned around streamlining of Paraeducator allocations. If you look at our current guidelines, there are there are many thresholds for
how those are allocated. And so there was a desire to have those streamlined class sizes being too large in some areas. So this is referring to our ratios and then having more support for intervention intervention staff in the areas
of math and Ela. The other two groups or the second set of categories, special education and English language development. So here for special education, I'll try not to read all of these, but you can see here staff to support
IEP administration to promote more instructional time, shortage of resource teacher special education teachers or resources as they're referred to. Staffing ratios are inadequate in some of our discrete programing behavioral
support. So providing professional development and training for teachers and peer educators around behavioral strategies, having school mental health professionals, and co-teaching and caseload sharing between some of our content areas for English
language development under allocated teachers and staff. Having the ability to support the administrative work of supporting our ML students. Program structure and scheduling inconsistencies. Limit equitable support across
schools and then having co-teaching and planning gaps between content and teachers. So, beyond what we heard from our stakeholder groups and our work groups, and these are all comments that the board has
heard time and time again from constituents who have reached out to you as well. So none of these ideas are new. We want to feature a couple of really important themes that are present in our staffing standards that make this more than just ratios, and I want to
stress this part enough so that this is really present in future conversations is that this is not just about class size, it is about trying to find the right investment and try to find the the optimal
class size, the optimal workload for not just classroom teachers, but every position in the district. It is about investment with intention and with purpose behind that. So with that, our first theme is
about how we differentiate based on our free and reduced meals services. And what we know is that one of the most concrete predictors of academic performance is correlated to farms. So we have designed a
tiered system that supports staffing based on our farms rate something else. We know that the federal government is changing its approach to how it supports our schools, particularly our schools, that have some economic needs as
well. So, Alan, if you couldadv. Before we dive into this, I want to point out that that none of this is designed to to supplant what we already have in title one funding, but rather to supplement with additional support beyond what
we have in title one funding. Should the federal government make changes and they make adjustments to title one in the future, we would need to revisit this and we would need to look at additional investments beyond what we already have presently. Right now, we don't have a structure
that augments beyond what our title one support already does. So this would be a substantial enhancement to our approach to support schools that have higher farms rates versus schools that have lower farms
rates. And so, Alan, if you want to talk through this some more. Sure. So. So as we look at this slide and as Doctor Taylor said, it's not enough to distinguish only between title one versus non-title one focus
versus non focus. Because many title one schools also have substantial numbers of students participating in farms. But as we look at this, we have two tables, one on the left and one on the right. The table on the left is the tiering that we're proposing for elementary
schools, and we begin our tearing at tier three. These are the schools that may require more intensive, differentiated support. And these are schools that have students participating in farms
at where 75% to 100% of the students are participating in farms. And then as we walk down tier two, 35% to 74% of our students participating in farms, tier one, 20% to 34%. And then at our base, this is where we have the fewest number of
students participating farms, 0% to 19%. As we look on the right side of the slide, this is reflecting our secondary tearing. And you'll notice immediately that the ranges at the tier three and as you walk through the tiers are different than at the elementary level.
So for tier three on the secondary level. And the reason for that is because there are fewer students participating in farms at the secondary level. So to capture that distribution, we. Created a wider range for
the tier three for the tiers at the secondary level. So for tier three, 60% to 100% students participating in farms, tier two, 40 to 59%, tier 120 to 39 and at the base 0 to 19%.
Students participating in farms. Before you move on, a critical point to draw here is that our current cutoff for title one is at 40% farms. And so our tier two elementary schools, we would be expanding that band to
include schools with 35% farms or higher, which is an expansion of our additional support that we already provide. And to to drive home what Mr. Francois was talking about in terms of secondary participation. Basically, our
secondary students don't bring the farms form home and it doesn't get signed. And so we have to account for that participation gap. Occasionally adolescents can be forgetful and we need to account for that forgetfulness and incorporate
that into our model as well. We also know that size matters. School size, specifically in terms of how we need to differentiate support for larger schools and how we need to differentiate support for
smaller schools. We recognize that there may be some economies of scale that come with larger schools in terms of programmatic offerings and the ability for us to expand course offerings in some regard. But there's also an additional
challenge that comes with larger schools and making sure that we account for size in a really meaningful way is central to this staffing standards approach. So, as we all know, enrollment is one of
the primary drivers and metrics in determining staffing allocations in schools. Although this may seem like basic information to display, it's important to show our school size information in the M.C.P.S. context because in addition to determining teacher allocations, enrollment
projections also determine our whole school support. And so this involves administrators and support staff at our schools having an understanding of the average size school at each school level. The large size school small size school
allows us to provide adequate and equitable, equitable staffing at every school. So I took a look at according at an official enrollment report completed by the Office of Shared Accountability ten years ago and elementary school enrollment was 76,275 students.
Today, we are down approximately 6000 elementary students from ten years ago, middle school enrollment was 34,957 students. We are slightly down under just under 300 students. And then high school enrollment was 47,131
students. We are down approximately 3000 students. I only mention this because it's the IT in the context of our proposed staffing standards, our staffing methodologies have to reflect the current state of our enrollment and student demographics. So this goes back
to the point Doctor Taylor made earlier, that we should be reviewing these annually and consistently to make sure that they're sustainability in our staffing standards. So just to note on this slide, very again, simple information, but just want to highlight that our average elementary school size
is 517. Our average middle school size is 879. Average high school 2002. And for our special schools the average size is 65. And I'll just call out quickly for each of these school levels, the smallest enrollment and largest enrollment. So our smallest
elementary school is 168 students, our largest elementary school at 823. At the middle school level, our smallest enrollment is 455. And at the our largest enrollment at the middle school level is 1271. High school smallest is
1376. The largest enrollment is 3152. And then for our special schools, the smallest school is 40, has 42 students, and the largest school has 77. So before we leave, before we leave this slide, I want to drive home a point because a
lot of this that you're going to see is going to be targeted to the classroom environment and trying to find that optimal class size. But there are other ratios that we need to consider different data points as a contributing component to how we staff schools. So you may
see minimums for the first time introduced into our staffing standards, which is a change for us. And I'll give you an example. You have the same number of events, whether or not you have a small high school as you do a large high
school, you have the same number of sports, you have the same number of theater productions, you have the same number of evening events, but the number of administrators that you have to cover those events varies wildly depending on the size of your school.
Having some type of minimum staffing for positions does make a big difference, even when we're considering the services of highly impacted student groups like our English learners or our students with disabilities. So a different
switch that you'll see is us taking into consideration how we treat not just large schools, but also how we treat small schools. One last theme to focus on, in addition to the the stakeholder feedback that we reported to you, is taking a
look at class size, and there's an abundant amount of research that says that class size doesn't have a direct impact on student academic performance, and that there's a lot of research behind how to draw a
direct line between student academic performance and class size. And though that may be true, it does impact several other critical factors that do influence student academic performance. One of the most critical things that this does
impact is staff turnover and climate and culture. So when we have a high degree of staff attrition, when we have a dramatic impact on climate and culture because of workload
imbalance, that does have an impact on student academic performance. It is critical to us that we reduce and that we address and differentiate staffing ratios to better account for workload considerations, to not only
promote equity, but also long term sustainability. So I could also add to that and say that better staffing ratios will promote and improve learning
environments for both our staff and students. I think that's an obvious attribute of having good staffing ratios. So as we look at this slide, on the far left are our current guidelines. So that blue shaded column
reflect our current guidelines and staffing ratios for K to five. And then on the far right it reflects where we will start in FY 27. So again this is our this reflects our current thinking and may change as our student demographics and our
district evolves. The staffing ratios on this slide reflect our our base ratios by grade. And so by base in our current guidelines we're referring to non focus and non-title one ratios. And for our proposed staffing standards the base
we're referring to the new base without any tearing without applying the tier three, tier two or tier one tiers. So on the next slide we'll show ratios for M.C.P.S. only and how our staffing standards will
differentiate by tier. But before we move on from this slide. So in between the blue shaded columns, our nearby district ratios, according to the Washington Area Boards of Education, Howard County Public Schools website and Prince George's County Public Schools
report presentation from 2022. So our current guidelines are not very competitive based on what's on the slide here, our ratios are higher than most districts across across the board. When we're just looking at the base. Our proposed
staffing standards make improvements compared to our current guidelines, and at most grade levels are aligned or more competitive with our neighboring districts. So I just want to mention here. So if you look at the current guidelines shaded blue column
for kindergarten, we're currently at a 1 to 25 ratio in our in our guidelines. And then for grade five we're at 1 to 29. We're proposing to be at 1 to 23 for kindergarten and FY 27, and then 1 to 27 for grade five.
So we want to make some incremental changes in FY 27 at the base tier. On this slide, we are looking at grade level teacher to student ratios when we apply the firm's tiers. So as a reminder the firm's tiering allows us to differentiate support and
better address equity. We begin again with our highest tiers and intensity of support at tier three and go down to our base. So I want to start with kindergarten and just, you know, talk through quickly what the
ratios are based on the tiering. So starting at tier three, where we have 75% to 100% of our students participating in farms for kindergarten, we're proposing a 1 to 18 ratio for schools that fall into that tier. And then if we look at
the base for kindergarten 1 to 23, for first grade, 1 to 18 at tier three for base, 1 to 23 for second grade, going from left to right, tier three, 1 to 19 ratio, and then at the base
tier 1 to 20 for grade three, 1 to 19 at the base, tier 1 to 25. Grade four 1 to 23 at tier three, and then at the base tier 1 to 27. Grade five, 1 to 24, base tier 1 to 27. Again,
it's worth noting that long term, we want to see kindergarten peer educators in every single kindergarten classroom. And so that is going to dramatically increase the total staff support in the classroom at kindergarten level, and then also provide general
general education Paraeducators for grades 1 to 5. Before we move on, I do want to drive home a couple of points. You may have noticed on the previous slide that Fairfax looked awfully similar to Montgomery County. One of the things that's not reflected in
the Fairfax comparison is the fact that of how they leverage general education paraeducators as a commonplace practice as compared to us in Maryland. It may seem different and as as
compared to other states. It is commonplace in many states for kindergarten paraeducators to be in every classroom or split between two classrooms. As a regular practice, many of our students come to us in
kindergarten that need additional support with even basic functioning in terms of toileting as well as behavior management, as well as some academic needs. And an extra set of hands is a real competitive advantage for the districts that have
kindergarten, general education, pair educators and a real competitive disadvantage for Montgomery County that we don't get our students off on the right foot with that additional support. We don't think that that is the end of the conversation for general education. Paraeducators we
think that a staffing ratio of in an average elementary school of at least one per grade level, providing additional support, would allow for better differentiation of instruction, reading groups, behavior support, as well as social
skill development, and really be an accelerator to to how we can advance our elementary curriculum. Now we're shifting to the secondary level. So this
is set up similar to the elementary slide where we're looking at our current guidelines in the shaded blue area on the left. And our proposed standards for FY 2030. And again, this reflects our
current thinking based on our current context of enrollment and student demographics. So as we look at this, you can see at the middle school and high school level, we roughly allocate based on a 1 to 28. This can range from 20 to up to
30 to 33 students. For the future. For 2030, we would like to see this allocation for middle schools at 1 to 27 and for high schools 1 to 27. On this next slide, we are looking
at grade level teacher student ratios when we apply the farm's tiering. So for schools that are tier three where they have 60% to 100% students participating in farms, we like to see a 1 to 24 ratio. And then as you walk down, there's
basically a stair step from 1 to 24 to 1 to 25 to 1 to 26 and 1 to 27. On the next two slides, we're going to look at the proposed special education staffing standards. The
proposed staffing standards for special education will use a least restrictive environment, or LRE based model, for both comprehensive and special schools under the individuals with Disabilities Education Act Idea, the least restrictive environment ensures that
students with disabilities are educated alongside their peers without disabilities to the maximum extent appropriate, so least restrictive environment a just as a reminder for some of us is or reflects students who
spend at least 80% or more of their time in the general education setting. Least restrictive environment B or B these are. This is where students spend 40% to 79% in the general education setting. And then LRC, this is the most
restrictive environment. So this is where students spend less than 40% of their time in the general education setting. On the next slide are the new proposed staffing ratios. So the proposed special education staffing standards will begin
at the elementary school level in FY 27, and implementation will continue through FY 2031. As you all know, Doctor Taylor's proposed FY 27 budget includes implementation of the LRA staffing standard ratio at
the elementary level and adding special education resource teachers or resources at elementary schools and special schools. The table on this slide shows the least restrictive environment setting, teacher to student ratio and
Paraeducator staffing standard. So just want to walk through this a little bit as you start the top on the on the left, the first column is our least restrictive environment. LRA A, B and C. There's an asterisk there. The LRA staffing
standard also supports our special schools LRA a beginning at the top. The proposed teacher staff teacher to student staffing standard ratio is 1 to 15. We would also provide one Paraeducator per
teacher for students in this setting. LRA b we're proposing a 1 to 8 teacher to student ratio. There are two levels depending on the intensity of support needed based on the student's IEP, level three and level four. And so for level
three, we provide two Paraeducators per teacher level for two and a half Paraeducators per teacher, and then again LRA c we're proposing a 1 to 5 teacher to student ratio as part of our proposed staffing standards.
And there are four levels that are reflected here. So level three four and five, three, four, five and six. And you can see the varying allocations of Paraeducators per teacher. Again I'll just note there's a
fine line between LRA B and C. And so you'll see level three and four in both of those. Allocations. On the next slide we're going to look at emergent multilingual learners. So I
just want to sort of lay the foundation for this one in terms of, you know, reminding us what English language proficiency represents. And so because this is a key factor along with gray band for how we
determine. Teacher to student ratios in our proposed standards for English language development. So students at the E or English Language Proficiency level one are considered entering. These are
students at the initial stage of English language acquisition. Students at ELP level two are considered emerging. These are students in the early stages of English language acquisition. Students demonstrate understanding and usage of
English with support. Students at ELP level three are considered developing. These students move beyond basic formulaic language and can now demonstrate increased complexity in English language use, and then ELP level four.
These are students who are considered expanding. A student who demonstrates increasing proficiency by using specific and some technical content. Area language. The proposed
staffing standard for emergent multilingual learners, or MLS, focuses on providing intensive, differentiated language language instruction by English language proficiency level and grade ML students at LP levels one and two are typically
require more instructional time and smaller group settings than ML. Students at the LP levels three and four, National and state guidance generally recommends 25 to 50 English learners per English language
development. Teacher ratios near 30 are considered appropriate when teachers also manage program coordination and compliance duties, so at each grade level there are two groups. As you look at this slide, there's a group 1 or 2 groups at each grade level. And
so group one are students at the LP levels one and two. And then group two are students at the LP levels three and and four. We typically see our newcomers and students at beginning levels at levels three and four. And so that's
where we provide more of the intensive support. So again I'll just walk through a couple of these. So group one and two at the K to five grade level. We're proposing a 1 to 30 ratio for group one group two a 1 to
40 ratio. And then for grades six through eight, group one a 1 to 25 ratio. And group two for grades six through eight, 1 to 35 ratio. Student to teacher ratio. Teacher to student ratio.
Group one at the at grades nine through 12 LP levels one and two A 1 to 1 teacher to every 20 student ratio, and then Group two LP levels three and four, a 1 to 30 ratio before he
moves on really quick, I want to point out that this is cascading, and the reason for this is that English language development at the elementary level has some additional supports and is more likely to matriculate ML level earlier on
for our younger learners than it is for our high school learners. So there is a more generous and tighter staffing ratio at the secondary level as compared to the elementary level, by intention and by design. I think we're going to
stop here to ask questions because this is a lot, and I'm just going to get ahead of probably a couple questions. So you. So in some of these that you presented on the multilingual and then the other
group before you had. The current standards, you had what is recommended, and then you had what you would like to see. I don't see that for this group,
and I don't see that for special education. I don't see I don't I don't see that that breakdown with that. That's why we gave you a handy dandy decoder ring, a 2020 page
document of every position in a working draft. And we can highlight and I think it's not quite 20 pages. It's what I was looking for, actually 25 pages. What I was looking for, Doctor Taylor, is what kind of what we saw with the staffing ratios
for. And it will compare what we currently do to what the proposed ratio would look like. And there is kind of A11 page short decoder ring for your your comparison as well. Both of these documents are also
attached on to board docs for the public to take a look at as well, so that they can kind of compare current state to future state. The the one thing that I'll, I'll add to this, and then I'll join you on the dais to make room for for subject
matter experts. Here is presently us having a current ratios and guidelines. As wonderful as they they may be, we don't follow them. And this is a little painful to to point
out that even though the numbers are what they are, we we are not hard and fast in terms of our adherence to this. So when the numbers change dramatically from the spring to the summer to the fall, we don't historically have a great
track record of updating and adjusting our staffing to be in line with those guidelines. One of the things that we are proposing, and we can talk all day long about what's the right ratio and the and the wrong ratio. And I think that that's a very valid discussion. The more pertinent discussion is
having a system and sticking to it and having rules that we that we have established, and then following those rules and having internal controls for accountability. To us, this is a critical step forward and making sure that that we can
demonstrate that that financial responsibility. So I'm I'm actually going to thank you. I'm going to open it up to my colleagues. But I guess what I was looking for and if there's answers to it, I would like to hear them, is what are the
current ratios right now, today in our classrooms for special education and for ML, because I don't have anything to compare it to, to say if we're going to be getting better. Because when I look at these ratios, it concerns me because I see 1 to 40, that doesn't seem to me
like it's it's a goal that that I don't know, but it just doesn't seem. Especially since we got the grading for our schools and the fact that special education and ML
students were the ones who lost ground on education in the last year versus everyone else. So that is my concern. So that's what I'm looking for to see. Okay. That is you know, 1 to 40.
Is that a goal that it's you know, so that means that we do if we're going to do 1 to 40, that means what are we doing now. 1 to 60? I'm just I just want some clarity. So with that I'm going to start on my left. So let's answer that question because that's a very good
question to answer okay. Thank you. So I want to point out for special education very briefly. And I think this is on the eighth page of your your working draft of this document. It says it says various models. And I think that that is part of the challenge right now is
that our current staffing guideline is various models, which is not a concrete staffing direction. And it is a lot of, quite candidly, guesswork that's applied. And and so I'll, I'll let you
borrow and read off of mine. Okay. So our current staffing guideline for elementary special education is various models. And we're moving to this eight eight. The subsequent page, page nine talks about English language
development. And you also have some ratios that that are really kind of all over the place and don't give you a hard and fast number. But the problem is, is that it ranges between 30 and 80. So very
painful. Nine, nine. No it's no it's it's the same. You should have the same night. There you go. The building service. There you go. So the the system that we have in place right now averages out to be somewhere in the neighborhood of between 30.
And I said 80, but it could actually be 88, right, in some locations. So us creating a system that we stick to that actually follows this guideline is is preferable. So then this goes to your staffing standards.
So you want to do is this follows that because those rules. Because I guess my question was like rules why now. And I think we're because I'm trying to make sure that the public understands how at least
those of us who are elected by the public when we hear things, why, you know, is there like 50 students and my son's ML class? And then I'm like, I look at the standards and I'm like, it
shouldn't be that way, right? So that's my question was, why now are we doing the standards? And this is the reason why. And when I look at our neighbor neighbor jurisdictions that they have had these standards
and I don't know what it is with special education and ML students, because he did a nice comparison with Howard and Fairfax and others. Right. But and I think that's the idea is just it was really easy, like slides 2021 and 22 of this
presentation were really easy to understand because you had current comparisons proposed. And so just like the uniformity of the presentation of information makes it really helpful for us, because then when we come to the special education and the ML slides and it's just the proposed, we don't have that context to know,
well, is this getting better or is this getting worse? Is it staying the same? Right. But but now I get it. In other words, it's I get it. Why? It's because it's all over the place. Correct? Right. Let's just be honest, right? It's all over the place. We want to make it better. And this is really the
whole the the court of equity in our system. Right. This is why we have an equity policy and why we want to make sure this changes. So I can see I can see that. So I think Miss Porter wanted to say something. Miss Porter, you want to say
something? I was going to agree. Yes. It's all it is all over the place. And when we look at other districts, we also find the same. There's not really a federal mandated or state mandated number. But when we look at other districts, the
numbers do really range anywhere from 20 to 50 or 60. So we are we are really just looking at what we believe is best practice. And this is the number that we recommend. And
at the elementary level, as Doctor Taylor suggested, our students are demonstrating that they can exit ML, the ML program, at a faster rate. And so we do want those numbers to be decreased as they get older.
Yeah. And I guess my, my my issue is that they're the same students who are, you know, exiting and so on. Some of those same students are the ones who are dropping out. And that is a huge concern of mine.
So I'm going to start exiting. Are doing quite well. Yes. Exceptionally well. Not dropping out. No. When they exit the program of ML. But my question is do they actually make it to graduation? Yes, actually our exit students are the ones that demonstrate
proficiency at sometimes higher than non MLS. So our goal is to get our students to exit the program and exit. There's a certain time frame that is considered appropriate depending on their level and their grade. And so yes, our
goal is for students to exit because they do quite well. And you're okay with the ratio in kindergarten for ML students to be 1 to 30. Because currently, yes. And just to clarify, when we talk about the ratio, we are talking about a caseload, not necessarily the number of
students sitting in front of a teacher. So it it is a teachers is responsible for 30 students throughout the course of a week in front of those students and also all of the other paperwork
and duties that are responsible for that particular student, the classroom teacher, in addition. Correct. Because this is not tier one instruction. I'm going to go to Miss Zimmer. Did you want to say something? No, no, no, I'm going to go to Miss Zimmermann. Thank you. And
I am really glad to see some more concrete guidelines coming out for our class sizes. As I've said before, the most important commodity, despite popular belief in a classroom, it's not principal, it's not pencils. It is teacher attention. And that moments
with your students. So I'm really happy to see that. But here is my concern. Looking at the tiers when we're looking at our class sizes, when we're looking at the percentage tiers of farms rates, there are some
schools that are currently listed as title one that are in that tier two range. Percentage. Correct. Definitely. Okay. So current guidelines that we have like for I guess they're FY 25
and 26, we have 1 to 18 students K to two. No I'm seeing a head shake. Currently the guidelines is 1 to 1944. Title ones and focus schools okay. So looking at some of
these numbers I'm still seeing an increase in that ratio. For some classes I see 3 to 5 being lowered. Other areas are getting an increase. No. So that that's not correct. So if you go back, Mr. Francois, if
you go back to that slide that shows the different tiers. So back one more. There you go. There we go. You should not realize an increase in anything actual to what the students and the schools are experiencing.
This is this is a decrease. So if we're saying 1 to 19 K to two is currently the the the standard. So when I look at tier two and I go across and I look under two I see 1 to 20. So again that that assumes that
we actually follow the guidelines that are printed. Okay. I and what the actual is I hear you I guess though, if we've set what should have been a standard and we're looking at this, I see an increase as really my, my point. So the,
the rationale for what appears to be an increase is that we're not meeting our guidelines. We are not meeting our guidelines. So my I can go into a classroom in that tier two next year. And
I can see 1 to 20. And they'll express that they're seeing fewer students in their class. You will probably not see a ton of change in that one tier two grade two classroom. But one of the pieces that you will see that is different in this
approach is and this is reflected in your working draft, our class caps, we presently right now don't have any class caps. We could we could have infinite number of students enroll in a school without us making a staffing adjustment.
And no real mechanism to do that doesn't mean that that's what we do, but it could happen. What we have instituted with this, and what we're recommending is that we hold to class caps, and that once we meet a certain threshold in a
classroom, that we add an extra staff member, because we have seen how that can spiral and get out of control, something that we've also observed in. And even though we're declining in enrollment overall, there are still pockets of growth in Montgomery County. And where we
start at the beginning of the school year, or we start in the middle of the summer, and we look at staffing, that enrollment can change quite a bit between the summertime and January, and we're not really responsive to that. This would
create a system that where we would be responsive to, to those environments. So your your concern is really well founded because presently right now, once we kind of start the school year, we just say, good luck, we wish you well. And
regardless of what happens in in terms of enrollment, we don't adjust. What we are recommending is a system that does adjust for that. Now let's take, for example, your second grade classroom, and it's a tier two classroom. And you're
also benefiting from some additional supplemental title one staffing. And you hit that 21st student in the classroom. And it's maybe October. Do we want to disrupt the classroom by adding a full on classroom
teacher and establishing a new classroom and splitting kids up after the school year started? Maybe. Yes, it kind of depends. Maybe not. And maybe it's to the advantage for the school to have an additional full time
FTE to provide, perhaps math pullout support or literacy pullout support or enrichment on a different level, but that extra staffing being allocated, even if it's after the start of the school year, could be a game changer for that school.
And trying to manage some of those additional expectations that come when there's an influx of kids. And we do have periods of time. Start of the of the calendar year in January is an influx time for us where
there are our family changes that happen at the at the calendar year mark and at the end of a calendar year, as well as in the spring. So those are things that we need to be sensitive to and that we're not sensitive to right now. So to follow up with that, I'm I'm
imagining a school where one class has 19 because someone moved away, and then we get to our next class that now has gained a student has 21. Or are we taking the average of 20 or are that I mean, that one class
is over the cap, is it not? Let me just follow up on that, because I think that's where I'm having my difficulty. It's it I hear what you're saying, but it sounds a little inconsistent to me because if you're going to put on a class cap, you either are or you
aren't. But like like Natalie says, what do you do if only two teachers get two kids over? It's not enough to bring in another teacher. So I'm wondering, are these really just going to be averages again, or is this going to be real
numbers, real caps? So I think our our current approach right now is that we would look at your whole school average. And if you had multiple classrooms and every single classroom had to be over for us to even talk to you about that. And I think
that we're in a different place where we would be looking at additional staffing augmentation if you were over in one or maybe even more classrooms. But I think that that one classroom is enough for us to trigger some, some questioning of us as to whether
or not we need to allocate more. The tricky part for us right now is that presently we we we just kind of don't have anything. We don't have any mechanism or any rules to make any of those decisions. We just kind of look at it and if we feel like it's gotten bad, we
might add some additional staffing for us. And this is, I think, to to Miss Wolf's point is if there's tweaking that needs to happen, the board should consider this every year. You should go back to this every year and say, how well did this rule work for us? And
did we overstaff too many people? Or should we take a look at this and peel this back or add more here? That should be a part of your annual discussion at present. Right now we have no discussion. So we're we're trying to create a
starting point for your consideration, not an ending point. And I think along with that and part of the continued concern from our, our partners and our educators and our community is that with us not having something concrete that
now if we're coming in with something more concrete, how are we to know and trust that this is what our class sizes will look like? So I think that's something for us to consider as well as we move forward. Thank you, Mr. Zimmerman. Miss Montoya, thank you. I just want to clarify
what I think I heard you said, Doctor Taylor, before I ask a question. So in the event that there's 1 or 2 classes over, let's say in the third grade, that doesn't. But if but if the class is working fine, they're gelling. If there's 21 kids, but it's all working out okay, they still the school could
still receive the additional FTE to use it for focus areas, not focus in the educational term, but areas where they want to hone in. They don't have to necessarily okay, now we have to create another classroom. But in some schools that might be what's the best decision.
And we'll leave the principals and the school team. And I'm sure they'll consult with our central office staff to determine what's best for that school population. Precisely. Okay, great. I appreciate that because a lot of kids do come sometimes, and my own kids have been in classes where now there's 33 kids because there
was five new kids that came over the break or something. So my question is, and I know in no way minimizing or negating the need for lower class sizes in elementary, especially in kindergarten or for additional adult support. So I want to be very clear, but I'm also
wondering if we have so many children entering kindergarten with what I would consider as a parent, very basic needs that we would hope would be addressed prior to independent school entry, which is what I would consider kindergarten. Right? Like toileting and just
basic functioning and social interactions, etc. that I know can make it challenging for education to take place. Why are we not investing more in pre-K? And maybe we would like to do all of it, but I'm just
it just it was the one thing that really struck out at me is like, well, yeah, that's where that's supposed to happen. Yes, yes, yes, yes and yes. I think that there is definitely effort afoot to invest more in pre-K. One of the challenges with pre-K is, of course, we can't
we we can't make it compulsory. So that that is not something that we we currently have. There is there has been expansion that the board has already done in pre-K, and we haven't even filled all of those slots in terms of what we
have available. We do need to do some pre-K expansion and more. Pre-K expansion is tied to the blueprint that absolutely needs to be a part of every future budget conversation. We were trying to launch one pre K center as part of this budget, but there's
some things that we need to do to the Burtonsville site to to bring it back up to an acceptable level for, for pre-K center. That needs to be a part of the conversation. But we also need to deal with the both the non compulsory and the
compulsory end of education, so that when they do show up, we have adequate resources to support. So one of the things that that might help support that really significantly is paraeducators in kindergarten classrooms. We have this tagged
as a fiscal 28 proposal and something that you can expect because it's a very there are 500 kindergarten classrooms, so that's 500 paraprofessionals. It's a very large expansion of the paraprofessional footprint. It may even be something that you have to consider over
multiple years. But we think that that there are things that that, that this board can do on the compulsory side, as well as the preparation side to assuage some of the concerns with toileting behavior and academic
performance. You know, the achievement gap is not created by public education. It shows up on the very first day. And I guess that's what I'm looking at, how we make it worse and we make it better depending on the school setting. And we definitely have an influence over the achievement gap. But
one of the ways that we can to kind of close that gap early on is pre-K and then to support it more, more concretely earlier on. So I think you're on the right track. And that's what I'm looking at too, is like some sort of and again, I don't mean this. I know we have a
program called bridge, but some sort of bridge or transition services into because this feels very much and again, it might be needed even without some of these challenges, right, that it would be helpful to have a paraeducator in the kindergarten classroom. That being said, this feels very much like we're treating the symptom and not the problem. And when we talk about our
fiscal challenges in the coming years and needing to maximize our dollars and making sure that we're not simply delaying increased costs, it just seems like perhaps we might consider investing more money in our community outreach to get folks
to fill these pre-K spots, because we also know we have a childcare shortage in this county. And to then that might help us to decrease or minimize some of these other costs in the later grades, where we can focus more on the education piece with our parents instead
of how to go to the bathroom. Ms. Wolff, if I may, I'm sorry. Really quickly. Pre-Kindergarten. We have been working on pre-kindergarten expansion. Per the blueprint. We have to continue expanding through FY 30, but I also want to remind everyone that there's
also a component of the private pre-K providers that is also part of the blueprint. So it has to be a combination of our investment in pre-K and also, you know, the local government and the state, because we do have that requirement that it
has to be a collaboration pre-K, private pre-K, and then our pre-K. Thank you. I just want to thank you for the work on this, because every year it comes up that we need more staff, but we're going to have
to eliminate some positions. And then we talk about workload adjustment. But it still seems to me that this is an average. I mean, it will tell people, give them some basic information, but it's not going to be true numbers in every
classroom. And I think we need to be honest about that to people say this is an average. My question then becomes what is it that you need? Are you adding a teacher or are you adding a para? We don't have any guidelines for what that's
going to look like when we do have to add something, and what is actually going to trigger that? Yes. So and I think that that is precisely what we're trying to get at right now, how we have it positions is it would be full time teacher
equivalent unless the standard says differently. And so the standard communicates what we would add and at what tier. What you can expect is that this is think about it like a large division problem. You
have 100 kindergarten students and your staffing standard is say 25 to to one right now, as it is right now, or the guidelines are 25 to 1, that would equal four kindergarten classrooms, because you divide
25 evenly into 100. But if that staffing standard drops to 23 to 1, or 22 to 1 or 18 to 1, your division problem actually equates to more sections. And so now all of a sudden it's five kindergarten classrooms.
Well, what is going to happen is your by school average is going to be equal to or less than the stated standard. So that is what you can expect is that your actuals will be equal to or less than the stated standard when the positions are
staffed. And so the adjustments should always follow an equal to or less than ratio, which is very generous and not at all what we do right now. So it's creating hard ceilings and and also the opportunity for you to
say that it would it should always be this or better. Okay I appreciate that. But I still don't know what's going to trigger what kind of position. And I know you might have to work on that some. But also you said something that was very interesting that it's going to make us more competitive. I'm
not seeing how these staffing standards that we're looking forward to in FY 27 are going to make us more competitive. That's the first thing. And the second thing is where are our immersion classes in here? Because right now they're at 1
to 27. And I think that's the standard they've been using. So that's quite a few more kids than we have here for kindergarten. Well this is a very expensive but baby step forward. I think that the idea here is that you start and that
you and that you make incremental changes every year. This effectively in the board may recall that just a couple of years ago, the board got stuck with a gap that they had to fill in their budget between
what was adopted and what was approved by county council just a couple of years ago in fiscal 25. And one of the ways that the board closed that gap was by adding a student, on average, to to class averages. This
walks that back plus some. So you you are you are able to restore a little bit of ground in in this at least at the elementary level. But each step that you take and each one of those numbers that you reduce that, that it's going to have a
price tag to it. And so the next part of the budget presentation talks about a multi year plan and some of the costs that might be associated over the next five years with making improvements to to staffing across the board, but also how you may look at this. You may prioritize and say
instead of focusing on special schools, we want you to focus on reducing elementary even further at base or tier two. You know, you could you could be very pinpointed and very targeted as to what you would want us to focus on each year,
instead of the game plan that we've cooked up. And so they'll talk through some of the implementation of that. But but all of this is really like a menu, so to speak, of, like what you would like to, to, to prioritize. First, what we're
presenting to you for your consideration is that you prioritize elementary school. Then you prioritize middle school. Then you prioritize high school. But you may have different ideas about what that looks like. We did not actually write a staffing standard for immersion classes. There isn't
one in here. And so there are also not staffing standards for special schools that are different than our A, B, and C. There are not staffing standards for central office, but we will have staffing standards for central office.
My point with this is that there should be a metric that drives the existence of every position in the district, and that there should be data that creates a position in the district for every position in the district, which is a very
different way of thinking than how we've been thinking in the past. I want to thank you for that. I still am a little bit concerned that schools that have immersion programs in them not be negatively impacted by this. So thank you, Miss Yang.
Yes, thank you. And also for Mr. Francois, is it the first time you're at the board table presenting to the board? Thank you, Miss Yang. Yes, it is outside of the Financial management committee. Fiscal management committee. She's doing great. It's wonderful.
You're doing great. I'm glad that, first of all, I'm really glad we're doing here. Right. Data driven decisions. It's always give us clarity, give the community transparency. And, you know, it's like when making
decisions in the sunlight, take out the guesswork. Okay. Now I'm glad we're going to talk about the budget. I know you're going to give us trajectories of the costs in the next few years, but in your presentation, if you have not thought about
or if you can think about ahead of time, is if we don't get funded fully in a given year. How do you evaluate what to not to implement? We can get to that or what gets delayed.
Right? Okay. But for this section that we have so far is. A have you done a model of this to look at all of the schools that now that what are some
schools actually might get less staffing because of this change. Is there any schools. No. Okay okay. So that's good. That's good okay I'll get that. And then my other question will be
how often do we do. We calculate the farm tiers for relocation. How often do we do that. And how do you pivot in the middle of the year when things change. School shift
from 35% and drop to 33%, or school was 33 is 33%, but increase to 38%. So how often are we calculating farm rates and and and and what do we adjust. So I'll let Miss
Alfonso Windsor fill in some of the gaps we calculated annually. One of the things that we've noticed and why we expanded tier two to be not just the 40% cutoff at title one, is it's
crowded at the 35 to 40% range. And we know that schools have lost out on title one opportunities because they're like right at the cusp. You have to draw the line somewhere. I think that it's in our best
interest to to be more deferential to when a school meets the threshold versus when they might lose some tier of support. And so that's why, again, title one support is supplementary, not in place of
other support. So for us we would review that information annually and make those assignments annually annually meaning end of September end of October. So yes. And and so you can fill in the blanks. Correct.
So we do the state requires us to submit farm information for the end of October. It's a little bit different than the official enrollment which is at the end of September. But we're really not seeing that much difference between September and October. And during the year. Farms might fluctuate a little bit, but it's not you're
not going to see huge, you know. But at the same time, when we staff a school, we really want to provide as much stability as possible. So if a school farm rates changes substantially over the year, especially if it goes down, we don't want to take resources from those
students. So we really just focus on that end of October to make sure that the schools have stability. And obviously if a school has a greater need, it's a conversation that we need to have to see how we can provide them additional supports. Okay.
Thank you. And when you get this farm rate and with this staffing standards, what assumptions right now in your budget are baked into? Bake into supplies or substitute
coverage. So in your budget in other words, if according to this ratio we might add teachers, we might say the same amount of teacher but our enrollment drops. So in terms of supply and substitute coverage or training, have we
calculated that cost into our budget. So yes, that is something that we look at as we build the budget. I also though if I can go back for a minute, I want us to think that we are allocating staffing now, right. Our staffing is going to go out
at the end of February for next school year. So we're always behind a year in what our populations are going to look like, our farms rates. And that's why throughout the year, throughout the current fiscal year, we have to make allowances for changes in the
school, changes in enrollment and so on. We keep reserves in positions to make sure that we're able to meet some of those demands and supplies. Like you mentioned. You know, when we're looking at the needs of the schools, and that is something that we're really going to have to reconsider how
we do that as well moving forward. Now that we're going to have the standards to make sure that we have sufficient reserves to be able to meet those needs. But yes, we we calculate based on the number of teachers that we're projecting for the following year, substitute coverage and
so on as part of our budget. Thank you. Mr. Bester. Thank you. Bear with me. This is a lot of information I'm just seeing it for the first time. So I have a lot of questions
here. I guess I'll start with what's the problem we're trying to solve? And slide eight talks about the goals. So I'm guessing that those are the problems we're trying to solve.
But ultimately when a parent walks into a classroom and they see 28 kids and one teacher, you're going to go, oh my God, how is my child ever going to get some individualized attention? So I kind of see that as the number one, because we've already established that
class size reduction does not impact academic achievement unless you go way, way, way low 14 or less, I think is what the research says. So I have questions about our investment
in the tiered system, given that those schools, we're not seeing academic achievement increases because of the long established class size reduction in Montgomery County public schools. So we're just adding additional layers, I
guess, to reduce workload for our already maybe smaller group of students. And my other question is, what are the largest classes that we have in the system? I think those might be some secondary subject area.
And how will those be impacted by these changes. So I can so as we have mentioned, this is going to be a multi-year multi-phase approach. So right now we are focusing on elementary and right now on the class sizes or the class class
ratios as we mentioned. Right. So we right now we're seeing elementary school at grades four and five based year. We're going we're seeing classes going up to 29, which as you can imagine for fourth and fifth graders that, you know, that's a big higher load. But you're going to see also in the staffing guidelines in the
following years, you know, in the next few years, also additional academic supports, you're going to see math specialists that are going to work with a special group of students to move the needle. In terms of mathematics, you're going to see additional academic intervention teachers.
We're going to see a consolidation of supports so that we can move the needle in those targeted areas and where the students need additional support, a smaller group instructions and so on. So it is not a one year. So it's
going to be a multi-year approach. And you're going to see those changes as we're able to implement, you know, the plan moving forward. Does that answer your question. But the the the tiered system is the classroom teacher. And you're saying in addition to that reduction, so that teacher is
going to have a smaller workload because you have correct students with greater need but smaller class size, then you're also going to give additional intervention teachers to support them. So I got another answer to Miss Silvestre's question. At the
secondary level in particular, some of this is, you know, better management on our end of high school and middle school master schedules and taking a look at middle school and high school master schedules to see that they're making sections
that make sense based on the staffing allocation that they have and that they're not disproportionate in one enrollment versus another enrollment. And sometimes and I'm speaking from the experience of of a high school principal, you may have an
influx of enrollment due to the popularity of one particular course or one particular teacher. And that inflates enrollment in one particular subject area, and it deflates enrollment in other areas. And there's not not always an
adjustment that's made to account for that. On the master schedule side. Now, it's very difficult because you've got, you know, sometimes some upwards of a thousand different sections that you're trying to schedule into unique places. And sometimes it works well to
have, you know, fifth period English here, but not at third period, the same section because of what other things are available. So it's a little bit of a, of a puzzle that you have to put together each year. And I don't think that we've had the expectation until this
current year that we actually review those master schedules and that we send them out to be used and utilized without some type of review this year. I know that that that directors did review master schedules to
see if 1 or 2 classes was more proportionate or disproportionate than others. So some of this is not just about staffing, it's about the administration that happens after the staffing and what our level of responsibility and accountability is about the administration of how we
utilize staffing, I would say. And the principals still have the discretion to be able to say, I'm going to make this math class 35 students, and I'm going to make this math class 15 students. So I think we're trying to to get a little bit away from that, unless that
there's really good and concrete rationale behind why they would want to do that. Again. Sometimes it may be some of the constraints of this is the only period in a day that this works versus you're trying
to to create lower class sizes in one place by having higher class sizes than another. But again, that may that may be a bit of a fool's errand. In the aggregate, the focus for elementary school is a little bit easier, but different than what we've done in the past,
because what we've done in the past is we've made a general education allotment to the schools, and schools have said, I want this many kindergarten teachers, this many first grade teachers, this many third, fourth, fifth. And we are actually taking a very different approach where we are
drawing a staffing standard for kindergarten. We are drawing a staffing standard for first grade, for third grade, versus taking all the students in the school and dividing it by a ratio that should advantage schools substantially. But it
does take some control out of the principal's office, because we're saying staff to this standard, not to the standard that you think is the right approach. Just want to make sure families understand that they're not necessarily going to get another classroom teacher with a small class size.
You may be seeing more people in the classroom, and it may still be a large classroom full of students, but with additional adults in the room. Lots more questions, but I'll have to ask them as follow ups. Yes, one really quick question.
Can you remind me what the cutoff for focus schools are? I know we stated title one focus schools are going to be on that on that tier two ratio. But what's the current cutoff for focus schools? So for focus
schools it's the same as the title one. I mean I mean percentage of farms. Oh I'm sorry I believe sorry. Oh it's 40 right. I don't have it with me. We have to come back to you. Do you have it. No. My memory
says 30%. And is anyone want to confirm that? Anyway, we can get back to me on that because. So that means some focus schools would be in the might be in tier one and tier two. So
if you go look at the staffing standards, tier one moves up a bit for focus schools because right now they're at the elementary school they're at. I just want to make sure I'm getting this right. We'll get back to you. I believe right
now, title one goes all the way to 35% and focus starts right after title one. Title. Title one is at 4040. Sorry, because there will be some schools in this little pocket where
they're going to see a bigger change. And so I want to get a and well, I mean according to these charts what they see on the paper. And so I just want to make sure that they understand exactly where they land in the planning. Okay. So
the good news is, and I want to be crystal clear, is not an implementation. They only see advantage. Great. I love to hear that. But sometimes, you know, we just want to make sure that's very clear in the way we're presenting information okay. So beyond that that was
just a clarity question. The I noticed another clarity question and the special education slide, which is page 25. It says the LRA is 1 to 15,
which an la A is 80% or more in the general education setting. So most of these schools are in comprehensive. Students would be in comprehensive schools. So that 1 to 15 is caseload. And I just want to confirm that that
115 is caseload. So it's caseload and resource. But go ahead. Yes please add to that. So thank you for that question. It is both caseload and also how we're going to have our students. LRA is where our
inclusion inclusion students are. So I want to make sure I point that out okay. And B and C are more discrete. Programs like LFA are those types of programs where we are providing
more support based off of our data. And then you have the one FTE per teacher. So you will see. That the the general education teacher rate would get that para, para or
inclusion teacher depending on the core subject. Okay. So I just want to make sure like parents wouldn't expect, that you would walk in classroom and see 1 to 15 necessarily. It's more about resource allocation. Correct. So in a in a general
education classroom where we have our students with IEPs that are inclusion students, you may have 22 students in the room and eight of them may be students with an IEP. So you will see a general education teacher and a special education
teacher or para okay, great. That that really does clarify this chart. So thank you so much. And my last question is about small schools. Again we're maybe even talking about small focus. Schools are title
one schools. And there is a range right that we see. For instance for grade one classroom teacher range 16 to 21. For tier two. We talked a lot here about Caps, but the
range for very small schools could it might go down to 15 instead of 16 if you take that cap. And so we are talking more about caps. And that low end could be flexible. Absolutely.
The the high end the end of the range is not flexible. Yes. Thank you so much. Awesome. We're going to move on if we can go to the next section. Oh Miss Zimmermann sorry. Can you write your question for later. Because we have a lot to cover.
Totally. So thank you. And I'm going to nudge my team to pick up the pace. Yeah. We still have a lot a lot, a lot a lot to go here okay. So so this slide has been up for a bit. And we've talked a bit about FY 27. So this is implementation for FY 27 across all school
levels. So again we're adjusting our standards for assistant principals at the elementary school level. We've talked about class size special education the resources. And then something worth mentioning is the partial security assistance. So adding additional assistance at the
elementary level no implementation for middle schools in FY 27 first year is 28. And then at the high school again adjusting the standards, proposing standards for assistant principals and adding a point for regional program teacher coordinator. The next several slides, we're going to
look at the implementation by school level. And at the top of each of these slides are the FY 27 proposed implementation, which we just covered on the previous slide. So I'll just focus on the proposed implementation highlights for each school level FY 28 through
2031. So for elementary gradual implementation of the kindergarten Paraeducator math specialists at each elementary school, gradual decrease of counselor to student ratio. So by 2031 we want to be at 250 for elementary schools and gradual implementation of
security assistance so that all elementary schools by 2031 have security assistance and then streamline intervention and academic support positions at the middle school level. Again, focusing on the highlights for FY 28 through 2031,
discontinuing the assistant school administrator and having a proposed standard for Assistant Principals testing coordinator at each school, a decrease of class sizes from 30 to 33 range to 27.
Consolidation of multiple intervention teacher positions into one staff development teacher from point 6 to 1. Increase in paraeducator allocation increase in some other school wide support positions, and then again,
metric driven allocations for building services and security. Then at the high school level, decrease of class sizes again like middle school, adding a testing coordinator. Again, same thing with the staff development teacher increasing
that from point 6 to 1.0. And then again consolidating and focusing our intervention support around the intervention teacher positions that we have at the high school level. And I just want to point one thing quickly. Middle schools and
high schools haven't had a tier system prior to now. There were staff the same, regardless whether they're farms not based on farms tier. So that is going to be new for middle and high schools. And for special
education and emergent multilingual learners. We have on one slide. So again focusing on the proposed implementation highlights for each area. So for FY 28 through 2031 for special education, with that idea of laying the foundation
at the elementary level and then going up to high school. So elementary Ellara B and C ratios for teachers and Paraeducators in FY 28 at the middle school level, LRE, A, B, and C for teachers and
educators, and FY 2029 high school LR, A, B and C for teachers and paraeducators by 2031. And then special schools for all students. FY 2029. The Emergent Multilingual learner
and English Language Development teacher ratio implementation, beginning with elementary and FY 2028 middle schools 2029 and high schools 2030. And looking ahead, we're
also going to take a look at central services as Doctor Taylor mentioned before. So we're going to look at why and how positions are created, what metrics drive a position success? What metrics drive a positions funding, and what metrics are used to grow or shrink positions in central
services? Also, looking at metrics that determine how we evaluate positions for success and how we know we're getting return on our investment. And with that. I'll take the foot off the gas. If there's room
for more discussion. Oh, no, you're going to have to apply the gas for the next section to all gas. No brakes. Let's go. Yeah. Okay. All right. You're ready. What do you want to quickly before we go. Is it a quick question? It's actually like two quick requests.
They're quick. They're quick I promise. Okay. Go for it okay. The the first looking at article 18 in the MCE contract we see special Ed ratios outlined in section ten. It looks like we are meeting or like having lower ratios than
this but without like with the phrasing of various models, we're kind of missing that key information. So just asking for additional clarification there. Second request with looking at like these overall staffing ratios in a school, could we
please see like based on what we see in FY 26, can we see a change of like what a school might look like from FY 26 to FY 27 to get a more concrete example. Very nice. Thank you. Okay. Quick, quick. Okay, Miss Montoya. Quick. Thank you. I'm
looking at slide 32 and I'm looking at that in relation to slides 25 and 27 which are the charts for special education and ML based on groups and levels and etc. I just have a request for future budgets or
charts. If so, what I ended up doing was going back and taking slide 32 and marking on these charts when the implementation year would be, because when I look at the chart, for example, on 25, I'm like, okay, great. And I do see that it says continuing implementation through 2031. I don't want to
negate that. You noted that, but it's helpful for me to see exactly what I'm dealing with this year, because also, just as a practical matter, right when I get emails about why is this program happening to this or why is this happening over here, we're not looking at line
items and appendices and all of these things. They're just like, why are you getting this program or whatnot? So if we can just kind of as a presentation, that would be really helpful. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. All right. Let's go. Okay. So now we're going to
work on the talk about the multi year budget. And so I know we have to go fast. But I want to make sure that we all understand that this budget is a sketch and is based on multiple assumptions. It's going to be based on you know
what our revenue is going to be. The enrollment changes that we and we will talk a little bit a little bit about that. The demographics. Right. You know, our school looks very different from ten years from now even from five years ago. So what's going to happen in 2031 from
where we are now? What are going to be our overall needs? What are going to be our priorities? How are boundary changes going to change? You know, the enrollment changes and so on. So this is really working from our current student population and where
where schools are right now. We're going to talk a little bit about compensation that is to be negotiated year to year. So that's why you don't see a number. And our current contract ends in FY 27. So in FY 27 we're going to have to go back and negotiate. Again the
benefits. Benefits is something we've been talking about for a long time because of the issue with our employee health plan, and that we need to have some deficit recovery in there, but there's also cost increases, enrollment changes. You see how
part of our enrollment changes is going to help fund other priorities in the in the future years, and in FY 27, if if the trend continues, if we're projecting the rollout of staffing standards through a multi-year implementation, the blueprint for Maryland's future,
what is currently required, and what our future requirements are going to be, are inflationary changes, because inflation, as we all know, is very real right now and we don't know where we're going to be in FY 31. And then last but not least, our strategic plan initiative, you know, that's going to be determined by the
board and what we're going to implement, you know, in every year. So those are some of the factors that we're going to be looking at as we go through through all of this. So when you look at compensation, this is just to give you an idea of what our costs are. So if you look at general wage
adjustments, let's say that 1% right now, this could change year after year, you know, based on negotiations. But right now the 1% cost is is about 21 to 22 million across all three unions. If every union were to get a 1% increase,
it's about 22 million. And this is not inclusive of the benefits associated with compensation. This is strictly the compensation piece. A step increase is about 45 to 46 million overall across all three unions. And then except
for MCE, both Mccampbell and Siu has longevity. Longevity increases as part of their contract, and that is about a $2.7 million increase. We are recommending for this year. The superintendent is recommending a decrease in the no work, no
pay days by one day. That is a $1.6 million. That only impacts SEIU members at this point. There's other things associated with compensations. As we negotiate. There's what we call working conditions, and those are based on what our
associations bring forward that they would like to address. But overall, this is our cost of of compensation by, you know, based on the different elements. If we go then to benefits us.
When when the superintendent presented his budget, when Doctor Taylor presented his budget, we are proposing that in in FY 27, we're increasing the employee health benefits by 40 million. And in FY 28 potentially 70 million, FY 2940
million. And after that, when we do the voice, when we finalizing the deficit recovery, then we can just do a maintenance, you know, after the year 2029. But it's always going to need continued investments in our employee benefit plan. And we're working
on items that hopefully will decrease some of the costs. But as we know, the cost of health benefits just keep increasing. The state state pension plan is another part of benefits that is a little bit hard to project. So we're using the increase for this year. But because of the
blueprint has required us to increase salaries. And we negotiate every year obviously to to increase our employees compensation, that impacts the pension and it impacts, you know, what we're going to have to pay in future years. So there's a direct correlation
there. And then the other components that are part of benefits are our employer taxes. Whenever we have additional salary increases we have to pay more taxes. There's the self-insurance program that supports workman's compensation, our auto insurances and so on.
And then when we grow positions, you know, if we add more positions to our budget as a result of our staffing guidelines, that is going to have a correlation with, you know, the employee benefits that we're going to need to to
fund next. So talking about enrollment changes between FY 25 and FY 26, our our enrollment decreased by over 3000 students. And it was more than we were projecting. So that was a surprise. You know,
and this is geopolitical. You know it has to do with birth rates. But there is a lot of impacts, you know, around enrollment between FY 27 and FY 32. As you can see, we're projecting another 6000 student decrease. And that is also
going to help us fund some of this initiative, some of the staffing standards. You know, that we've been talking about the state funding fluctuates based on overall enrollment. And it's also relative to the wealth of other districts. So,
you know, the state revenue, it's it's directly linked to enrollment changes and our maintenance of effort as well. So we're going to have to keep a close eye on that. Luckily, if you know, if we see increases in specific
populations that can result in revenue increases as well. And then the the enrollment decreases will have an impact to what we're now projecting. We're going to need to spend in a staffing standards as well, because the staffing is based
on a school by school analysis. So although we might see 2000 student decrease across the system, it the allocations really depend on those particular schools. If a school only sees a decrease of ten students, that's not going to really have an impact on that
particular school. And so as we look at staffing standards, the staffing standards projection that you saw earlier is based on enrollment in in being offset by the enrollment
decreases, basing it on the current population, we would see approximately 1500 positions, additional positions in the elementary schools over the next four years, almost 700 in middle and special schools,
and about 24, 1200 in our high schools. Again, that will depend on how enrollment works and the impact to each one of our schools. So it's something to keep in consideration. When we were talking about the implementation plan for
staffing standards and when things are going to be implemented and whether we're going to be able to fund it or not, that's why it's an implementation plan. We can make changes year after year based on our revenue, based on what the priorities are, and the implementation plan can
change as needed. Based on the Board of Education decisions and the superintendent's recommendation. You said increases or decreases those FTEs, those are increases in FTEs because of staffing, because of staffing standards.
Yes. Again, the hope is that that would be offset with our enrollment. You know, that we could fund that through enrollment decreases if the trend continues, then the blueprint we so our existing requirements right now for
pre-K expansion, we are currently spending in FY $2,749 million. That's the total budget for pre-K. Pillar three dual enrollment AP IB is approximately 14.4 million. And pillar four community schools
is 54.9 million. That's both a state and local. That's a total budget. Every program in the blueprint has a local requirement. So whatever the state gives us, we have to add money to it differently at the
different programs. But there is a local requirement that comes with the blueprint for pillar one. In the future years, we are going to need to create potentially additional duty centers. We added a duty center last year. We are adding one
for FY 27. We're moving forward with that requirement. We also get grants to fund the centers pillar two career ladder with salary increases based on positions. We talked a little bit about that at the last work session. When we talk about the lead teacher positions, there
is a career ladder implementation. They're going to be lead teachers, distinguished teachers. There's there's different layers for teachers moving forward in the career ladder. And each of those positions is going to require supplements as per the
blueprint. And then for pillar two we haven't gotten there yet, but in FY 29 we're going to have to do a seven year phase in where non-instructional time requirement for classroom teachers, where they're going to be required to have additional planning time and
additional collaborating time. So that is something that we're going to have to start taking into consideration in FY 29. And then pillar four, which is something that we haven't really discussed a lot, but minimal school funding, reporting requirements where we have to make sure that 75% and
that's something that already started, 75% of our budget is directly impacting our schools. M.c.p.s. Spends more than 75,075% directly impacting our schools. But this is a
requirement that is at the individual school level. So we're going to have to make sure that we are meeting that requirement moving forward. Then inflationary changes. This is something that we also have
to consider. Like I said before, inflation is real. We try to align with the consumer price index in the region, but that impacts our instructional materials, our operational supplies, technology products. As you all know, technology keeps increasing year after
year. And then any contracts that we have, we have to review those yearly to see where the increases are. Again, bass fuel and utility costs and increases are influenced by market supply and demand. So geo political
events and environmental factors. So the projection that you see is where we are right now projecting that things stayed as they are. But that could substantially change. And then the employee employee tuition reimbursements is another inflationary cost that
we would have to absorb as tuition increases at higher as our at our higher education partners and the employee tuition reimbursement is a contractual obligation that we have. Then last but not least, our strategic plan initiative.
I did not put we did not project a number for strategic plan initiatives, but we know that we're going to have to make some investments in the future, in the next three years, based on the strategic plan and as the strategic objective and
goals are determined, the the activities for those, there's going to be some financial impact to those as well. And so I run through that pretty quickly. I'll, you know, if you have any questions, I'll be
happy to answer them. I think we're going to just go through the next section. If you have a question, just write it down and we'll do it. Okay. Great. Let's go okay. So estate revenue this is a quick update on state revenue on for the
superintendent's recommended budget. We we provided a projection for state. And on last Wednesday on January 21st sorry the two Wednesdays ago the governor released his budget for the state. And I am
very happy to report that it wasn't as bad as we were projecting, because I was really thinking that we were going to see a decrease of about $10 million. But what really the increase is really based on our special education,
because special education enrollment went up. So we saw an increase in state from for special education, it's about an overall increase of $12.2 million, but the additional requires, as a result of the
state aid that are placed upon the the you know, the local LEAs M.C.P.S. is going to really see that increase reduced to a net increase of a $3.4 million. And the reason for that is and we'll talk about it is our local match
that are required. Also we all the LEAs we met last week and we're seeing some discrepancies in the data that MSD provided with their state aid, specifically around national
board certified teachers are the allocation. So we are working with MSD so our revenue might fluctuate and we should know, you know, shortly it might go up or it might go down. We'll see how that plays out. But I should have an update soon. One of the reasons that
we're going to see that net increase in state aid is because our community schools are also increasing. So, as stated, includes $3.3 million specifically for community schools. And that is a combination of schools moving
into phase one of community schools, meaning that they receive additional allocations to schools that were identified last year, received additional funding this year. And it also includes three more community schools. So we are currently at 77. We're going to have another
three schools for a total of 80 because the local match, the 3.3, also means that we have to increase the budget for community schools from the local side by $5.5 million. So that is why the revenue
decreases. It's not we're not going to see a total of $12.2 million in our increase overall. So that is I think that is the last slide on on a state revenue. And do we want to
continue? Okay. So we are going to continue with the follow up questions from last time. One of the questions was what are elementary school counselor staffing allocations and how many are split. So all elementary schools have at least a 1.0 counselor. 36 of
those elementary schools have two full time FTE assigns, and those depends if they're title one schools, if they have a different educational load, and then 41 have a 1.5 FTE allocations. I don't believe at
this time we have any split. That is where we are. What is the cost for reinstating all positions proposed to be reduced in the FY 27 operating budget? The cost of reinstating the ten pupil personnel workers
is about 1.4 $1.5 million, including employee related benefits. In terms of the case load for for the PP, are we? I think one more. Oops, sorry.
The next one. Okay. Yeah. And you. Yeah. There you can also pass to okay. Yes. Thank you I do just jumping back briefly to the counselor I do want to clarify that we do have a few
schools where where a position is shared. But each school does have a minimum of one dedicated counselor. And then there are some where the additional supports may be shared. We have provided here based on the board's request, a number, the
next several slides, and I won't go through all of them individually in the interest of time. But we did provide a an amount of backup information related to caseload and workload for PPD, as well as
for other support positions. And this is a good slide to land on here, because what we wanted to do was show, in addition to the PPD workload, which again is summarized in your slides, please do work through the cross-functional teams and are really assigned
with schools under their responsibilities. And so on the one hand, that can be a lot of students. On the other hand, they do work again in conjunction with some of the positions that are shown here. And while each of these positions has an individualist
to their work, there also is some significant overlap in some of their areas. Their responsibility, including linking the schools and the communities in terms of providing some counseling and
additional supports, and in terms of addressing crises and conflict. What we do know that we need to do is, again, a comprehensive look at how much of all of these different functions is needed and what
are those staffing metrics? As we've been talking about, the pupil personnel workers specifically, one of the questions was regarding what does the state of Maryland require? There's not a required caseload for PWS in Kumar. It
speaks generally to support services. And so again, that's where really taking that look at the support services is ongoing work that we know we need to do. In the meantime. Again, we wanted to just provide this contextual information for the board's background as as you're
deliberating. So go back to the slide. Yeah. That's it. You're done. We have one more piece of follow up information, which is there was if you go to slide 52, there was a request for
information related to security staffing. And this this shows the allocation there. In general security positions are not shared. There are a couple of examples, as we've highlighted here where we have schools in close proximity. And so that does work well. But in
general that's not a methodology that we use. Okay. Now that's it. Okay. I am going to go to my last Miss Montoya. Okay. Thank you. In regards to slide 50, which was in response
to a follow up or a follow up to a response question. Is it possible? Obviously not at this time because there's many different positions listed here, but just to get a list of vacancies that we currently have in those positions. So for example, it says 80 social workers. That's what we that's
the budgeted amount I presume. But for example, if there's seven vacancies then can we just get that info. Thank you. Okay. Miss Wolff, I just have one question about the blueprint. Under local funding, is every district required to
do local funding? No, because I was under the impression that some were not. And so I know that's correct. But why not? Why don't they have a local funding match? So some local some districts are not maintenance of effort. They're
local share. And our district is maintenance you know maintenance of effort. But also it's based on wealth. You know what they consider relative wealth. So for most of the programs, you know, except for 2 or 3 districts, there is a local share community school is
one, for example, where we have our our highest local share, and there's only six districts in the state of Maryland that have to provide a local share for that. Right? That's what I thought. But I was just trying to understand why. And my second question is the the
wealth factor has not been adjusted in years. Is there no way to get that looked at? So they look they look every they look every year at the wealth. You know, the revenues by county that come out in
November. But the formula itself has not changed like you mentioned, you know, in many years none of the state formulas have really changed in many years. And it's something that, you know, a lot of LEAs are have been thinking through and conversing about. One of
the things that I do want to highlight, like you mentioned, M.c.p.s receives, I think the third lowest per pupil allocation in terms of the blueprint. It is very low compared to other districts. I just wonder why our needs keep increasing and we can't seem to
get that adjusted. Thank you. Schools in community with Yang. Yes. Thank you. First, some clarifying question when you on that on that sheet of psychologists. Social worker
135 psychologists 80 social workers. This is the overall system half or all. Does this exclude special education, social worker and psychology? It includes it includes inclusive of special education
social inclusive. Okay. My other question is now we know the state funding that it was a little bit better. But we have also local share under the blueprint. Can you that with
with this information for our our understanding for the blueprint expenditure and the total because that is under our non-discretionary requirement. What would that total be? What's the total change? I
believe we're still waiting for some of the numbers, but right now it's about $12.2 million. Is what we're getting more in state with the local share. It brings us down with the local share and the requirements for
community schools. The $3.3 million that have to be used for community schools. It brings our increase by 3.5 because we're going to add to the budget, need to add to the budget the $5 million in local share for community schools.
Does that 3.5 million also include special education spending. And is it like okay my second part is question. After all that is it a 3.5 million? Is it's a surplus in a
way, from the state funding to our proposed budget to the superintendent's proposed budget. In a way, although our increase is mainly for special education, the state requires us the state funding, plus what, you know, our local matches for
special education. I have to I don't have the exact number, but it's between 200 and and 300 million that we're supposed to spend in special education. Our budget for special education is close to $700 million, so that money just goes towards funding what we
currently are budgeting for. Okay. So okay. Thank you. Okay. I have just a very quick follow up questions. I'm sorry. Carla did you put yours? I'm sorry I missed you. Yeah it was down. Oh yeah I couldn't see it. Go ahead. So with the state aid,
were we held harmless for enrollment. So right now they're saying that it's something under consideration that that they look to hold districts harmless for enrollment. The state aid does not reflect that. There's also
a consideration to hold districts harmless for compensatory education. Compensatory education is the funding that we get for students under, you know, in farms. But that was not reflected in our state aid.
Some of the conversations that I've been hearing is that they've holding school systems, that the that all the schools are in the CIP, you know, that's the community eligibility provision. Those are the schools that everyone is getting free and reduced lunch because they're in CIP,
that those districts are held harmless. But we're not seeing that yet. When we looked at state aid. So we're meeting with Msde on Thursday to talk through it, and I'll have more information after that. So to follow up on that briefly, that could be a significant increase to your state revenue line if
those things actually became a part of the final adopted state budget, is that it could reduce your your revenue gap with local dollars substantially. If we were to be held harmless in any one or all of those categories. But the current
numbers as were released dinged us for the decreased enrollment. Yes, they do. They they do for both areas, while we're seeing some of the increases again, is because of the special education increase in enrollment and because pre-K
and foundation, the per pupil allocation in those formulas went up a little bit. So that's what helped us with that revenue. Okay. And there's no there's no free money. Any additional money goes to either increase enrollment in special ed or increase enrollment in
farms, students and so forth. Yeah, okay. I think that's all I have for now. Thank you. That's one question. Sorry, Miss Stewart. Back on slide 39.
The multi year budget sketch staffing standards. It says the estimated additional FTE assume FY 27 enrollment by school. And then it says does not account for future enrollment decreases. And so is that meaning future
possible adjustments. I just want to clarify that. So correct. So once we know the enrollment in the future years you know that would align, you know, that would change the staffing standards based on how many positions you're going to have to add when you're looking
at the multi year sketch though, when you look at the numbers, we did take a decrease, you know, for student enrollment. So that that offset some of that cost for staffing standards. But that could be impacted even further once we look at a school a school in terms of enrollment changes
moving forward, we don't know it could or could not. So anyway, I just kind of wanted to make sure that we know that this is for future consideration. When we look at our multi year sketch, you know, three, four years down, we're
always making a lot of assumptions in how we do our projections. Thank you. Okay Miss Montoya thank you so much. I just have kind of a clarifying question really to help hopefully clarify some things for the community because this is an excellent
budget document. I'm confident this is exactly how budget documents are supposed to look. But for us normal, regular people who aren't like, you know, delving in, immersed into financial happenings, it makes no sense, really. And it doesn't. It's hard to get the story, but it's in there. I
know it is. Right? Because when you're presenting, I'm like, yeah, this makes sense. So for and I just want to do it as by way of example, because I've gotten some inquiries specifically on this point, the autism program. Right. Why are we cutting staff from the autism program? Why are we getting the autism program? Many, many emails. I'm sure my
colleagues and all of you have gotten them as well. And to be fair, when you look in chapter four, which is for 21, for reference, I could understand because when you look at it, you see all these reductions of FTEs, right? Psychologists, multiple psychologists, like
that's really important. Now, I know because I asked just me personally, I was like, wait a minute, what's going on here? Well, it's actually about centralizing where our psychologists are going to go. Right. Which makes sense. There's a lot of benefits to that. So we're not actually.
And then I found out actually we're even adding staff to that program, but it wasn't apparent to me on 421, which was the place where I thought to go look to figure out, well, is this program being gutted or not? So I'm just wondering whomever and not specific to that point, but maybe Miss
Alfonso Windsor, if you can just help the community understand where they should look to see what's going on. Because my understanding is, well, if you go to chapter one, then you can see those add ons. And so we're actually bulking up the program. But I can understand the confusion. Sure.
And we'll work on that. You know when as we talked about earlier, chapter one really reflects all the positions that are based at the schools, all the allocations that we give to our schools. And that's really where you see the bulk of our
of our staffing and where our increases are going to be specifically this year, as we're looking at special education, we there was a reallocation of resources, a streamlining some of those resources to make sure that, for example, the psychologists
you mentioned that they go under somebody that can clinically supervise all the psychologists so that they can also be reallocated or be sent to where the highest needs are. So one supervisor that we will be able to say, okay, so right
now I need to concentrate those resources in this program. So that's what we saw. You know, special education moving forward as they looked at, you know, at their budget and where their resources are most needed, but basically how they can be more managed more successfully
and the resources get to where they need to be. And I'll just add to that a little bit. I am not a budget math person either. I don't think I've balanced the checkbook in 20 years, but I can tell you the way it looks
is very deceiving in chapter four, because it looks like we moved our lost a lot of people. However, what I was charged with was coming in and aligning the resources. So I'm going to talk about two things I'm going to talk about. Speaking of the
movement of some staff under certain areas. What we are trying to create is a student support service department where everybody understands the work that is happening. We have
a level of leadership hierarchy where we don't have 85 people making decisions about the whole. And also when things go awry, ownership is important as well. So there is an accountability and compliance piece that's also happening
here. The other piece to it, as we've heard many times about our SLPs, to to use that as an example, having them under someone that understands the work, one of the carve outs you'll see in chapter four is a
related service provider director, supervisor and coordinator. And Julie, who is my business person, my business director. And I was just talking about that specific component, ensuring that the leadership roles are the people
who assume those roles in the director, supervisor and coordinator position in those areas, have that clinical supervision model, and that boots on the ground experience to be able to lead that body of work. We also looked at it very
clearly, identifying those positions, aligning it to the IEP. So that's how those extra two director positions were created. And what seems like a collapse of supervisor positions. But it's not. We've had a lot of people move into
other areas that we didn't fill those positions over the year. And we've also had a few people retire. So through attrition, we were able to reduce those positions down. However, to get back to answering your question,
we are not reducing the autism unit. I want to be very, very clear about that. We're actually increasing services for autism unit and looking at how historically our services have served or not served our
students well, and ensuring that in this realignment and repurposing of staff, that we put the focus where the focus needs to be. Thank you, Doctor Cage. Well, with that, I just want to say a couple of things.
One of them, thank you for your work. To all of you. Thank you for being for being here and answering our questions. One thing that I think would be helpful for me is when you look at page 50, when you have the positions, it would be, for me at least, and maybe some of my
colleagues. I heard if we can break it down to whether it is whether, you know, they are out of all those counselors who is in a special education and who's not. And I would also like to know the vacancies that
currently exist in those positions, because I'm looking at the ML transition counselors 27. That seems very low, and I think our standard is 30. Is it 35 that we're supposed to have minimum for the need is
something in the 30s, I believe. Right. So that means we have vacancies. We actually don't have a standard for that. Yeah. There's no there's no standards. Imagine that. And there's no. And that is a position a specific to M.C.P.S. we don't have. There's no state standard
for that either. Okay. Which we talked a lot about today having those ten minutes anyway. Okay. So 27 seems very, very low to me because we also know that the cage that in special education we have across of ML and special education, which is a population that has increased
tremendously in the last few years, and I would kind of like to also see that in here. The presentation of that as well. And when it comes to the people, I know that it doesn't specify in Comar how many students are
supposed to see and so on. But I also think it's important when we look at standard stations, that when you are saying, you know, you have a p.w that does cases for high school and Watkins Mill High School and you compare it to school, you know, people that
might actually have 4 to 5 schools in the Chevy Chase and Whitman cluster that we actually compare oranges to oranges because we know that they are very different because we're comparing schools that have a high farms, high ML,
high poverty. And so I think those standards, I'm looking forward to making sure that we're allocating right what our schools need based on need, not just go across and be like, everybody gets this because I
know of principals that my cluster that have to beg halfway through the year for positions, even a half time position to be able to answer a need in their schools because we had an increment of certain
populations that came to that school, that then they have to wait to the following school year to do that. So I kind of like the idea of having these modifications, right, and evaluate the needs in certain schools. So we don't have those
situations. So I'm looking forward to those highlights. Colleagues, I'm going to close it. If you have just a clarifying question you want to clarify question, is it clarifying questions? Okay. Because I know our staff and other state they need to go
back to work. So Miss Yang, yes, if you don't have it, you don't need to give it now. But as a follow up on our budget sheet, line 63, it has student extracurricular activity. I see
some wonderful things like Latin, dance, robotics, student climate action group. I want to learn a little bit more about what's entail in that line item. And I believe those are the things that our community have advocated for a very long time.
And I can I can answer that. So specifically, you know, for the robotics and the Latin dance right now, these are negotiated activities, just to be clear, but there is a whole list of extracurricular activities that our schools can offer that
would be adding for our middle and our high schools. The Latin, dance and robotics. For every school to have one ofse clubs, every middle and every high school. So yeah. Okay. So I want to clarify that a little bit. And I want to piggyback off, are we starting new clubs at schools that don't have them
yet. So I want to piggyback off of something that Alfonso Windsor said, that these are negotiated items as part of contract negotiations with MCE. And and so what this does is it creates the capacity for us to
fund stipends for these areas. So one of the things that typically happens is we could negotiate something with one of our association partners, and then it's a year before we fully funded it and that we could actually pay for it. We're doing this kind of on the
reverse, which is we're creating the capacity for the funding with the intention of pursuing these as potential things to have as as part of our extracurricular portfolio. And so that's the request is that we're we're in a, in a
sense, showing our hand, saying we would really like Latin dance to exist in our middle schools and in our high schools. We would really like robotics to exist in our middle schools and our high schools. And so we're creating the capacity, capacity for that to happen prior to a negotiation taking
place. So much. Thank you. Just quickly slide 35. The multi year budget sketch I really appreciate seeing where we're going. And also it's really scary. The numbers are huge.
And so commercial. On February 10th the Fiscal Management Committee at 5:30 p.m. online is going to go deep dive into the cost drivers. What is where does the $3.6 billion budget go and what is driving our costs
up significantly. So going deeper into some of these items. So tune in. Okay, Miss Stewart, quick follow up on the autism services. It was very clear that you said we're increasing
services. Is there a way we can quantify that for the public? I don't know if that's already been done. Okay. Thank you. If you can take that into account with that, I want to say, Doctor Taylor, thank you very much. And to the staff and to
our staff, this concludes today's work session. Board members who may have additional questions or feedback, please forward them to the board. Chief of staff. Madam president, if I could take just 30s. Sure. From a process standpoint, typically you've had your last
work session after your second budget hearing. And so your board, the board is hearing its second budget hearing tonight. We recognize that the board may receive feedback tonight. That may inform some direction that comes to staff after the fact.
We will hope to receive some some of that direction in writing from the board after it's had time to process today's presentation and your your budget hearing tonight. So we know that that that public input may influence some of your direction. So even though
the last bullet here is for board direction to the superintendent, we recognize that because of the snow delays that some of that might come a little bit later and a little bit out of sequence, how it how it has typically done in the past. So thank you. Yes, we had a scheduled session. Mother nature had other plans for us.
So thank you so much. And with that we are adjourned. Do I need to take a motion? No.
Right. Yay! We're adjourned.