All right. Good afternoon. Buenas tardes, and welcome to the January 28th, 2025 meeting of the Fiscal Management Committee. I would like to begin by giving my colleagues a moment to introduce themselves, starting on my right. Good afternoon. Laura, Stuart and I representing district four. Thank you. Good afternoon. Perennial student, member of the board. And I'm Carla Silvestre, chair of the committee. Can I get a motion to approve today's agenda? Move approval. Can I get
a second? Second. All in favor, raise your hands. And that's unanimous. Thank you. And while members of the committee have changed, I would like to acknowledge that the informational summary for the committee's November 18th, 2024 meeting is posted to board docs. So, committee members, if there's any questions regarding the summary, it can be forwarded to board staff. Okay. We will
begin with item 3.1. The Capital Improvements Program update. Before staff begin, I would ask you to first come forward and then introduce yourselves. So. Hi. Good evening. My name is Adnan Mahmoud. I'm the deputy chief of facilities management for M.C.P.S. I wanted to come
here and thank you for the opportunity to come and provide a quick, very quick update on our CIP. As you know, the County Executive Office has provided their recommendation out on January. So we're in the process of reviewing the numbers that was presented in the county executive's proposal. And we're kind of comparing that to our request. So we're finishing that analysis. As soon as we have some update, we will inform the board if there are any any
recommendations for any, you know, future projects. But at this point it does not look like that. We will have to make any recommendations, but we're finishing that analysis. We have been meeting with the county budget staff as well just to understand all the numbers. So that's where we're at at this point with the CIP. Okay. Any questions from committee members? Mr. Chairman, do you want to say hello? Introduce yourself. Hi. Natalie Zimmerman representing district two. Happy to be here. So this is just part
of our enrollment process, right? County executive reacts to the proposed CIP. And then you all make adjustments based on those actions. And then what comes next. Yeah. So based on the analysis if and there are, you know, some scheduled meetings in February for us to come in front of the board, we will look through the analysis. And if we do have to make any recommendations, then we will ask for that work session to present our findings. And then we will keep the board updated.
And if we have to go through that discussion process, that's what you know. That's the next step in this in the CIP process. Okay. Well thank you for that update. Thank you. Next on the agenda we have three reports relating to the M.c.p.s. Operating budget. First up is item 4.1 Financial Monitoring
report. And I'd like to ask staff to please come forward and get us started by introducing themselves. Good afternoon. Members of the board. Yvonne Alfonso Windsor Chief Financial Officer. Good evening, Rob Reilly, deputy chief of finance. Thank you. And just for my colleagues, I wanted us to go through this 101 on the financial report because I see it as kind of the bread and
butter of this committee is us making sure that the operating budget that we approve eventually in May, will the final budget will be approved, that the role of this committee is to monitor the spending that's happening every month. A monthly report is put forward, and this board needs to be very well versed with that report, understand it inside and out, know what's going on, be able to talk to the public about where we are in the red, where we are
not where we're doing well. The forecasting is for the year where we're going to end up. And so that's kind of the purpose of this short presentation is just to give us an intro to the report so that we're able to keep up with it throughout the year. So I'll let you take it away. Thank you. So we will go. We're going to start over, going over a little bit of the process that we use to financially, you know, part of our financial and
monitoring for, you know, our for our finances. Like Miss Silvestre said, you know, this is this is our fiduciary responsibility. We have to make sure that we're using the funds that are appropriated by the county council and adopted by the budget, you know, the way they are intended. So every month is starting in November, we produce a financial report. And the reason that we start in November, as of October 31st, is because really, the expenditures, the majority of the expenditures in the system
is start or are encumbered in the month of September, once the teachers and the paraeducators and the school staff returns to the schools. And that's when we start encumbering the majority of our budget. So prior to that, it's just the, you know, the operational needs of the school system during the July and August month. So when we look at this report and when we talk about financial monitoring, we really monitor our local and state funds. The grants and the enterprise funds are monitored as well, but separately, they're
not part of this financial report that we do every month. And this really provides you a state of our finances and also tell us where we are. So the process is that every month the offices let us know what they're going to spend through June 30th of that year. And then the budget team reviews those projections and make adjustments based on trends that they're seeing and so forth. As you all know, we must not be in a deficit. The school system must
end up in a positive. It's part of our fiduciary responsibility. Once we finish this report, we share it with the board, we share it with the county council. And it's just to let you all know where we are, you know, in terms of our finances. So this year when we started, when we did the September 30th, as of September 30th report, we identified a deficit. We identified that we would end up in a deficit at the end of this fiscal year or the projected deficit, as we say. And that
projected deficit at the time was about $5 million. And there were two components to that deficit. Mainly it impacted several categories, but it was really the salary lapse when we made adjustments for salary lapse, when we were projections, when we were developing the budget, we were very actually in a way fortunate because we were allowed we were able to hire a lot more teachers and paraeducators that we were originally projecting. So we saw that there was going to be a deficit in our salary lapse, along with special education
expenditures, special education needs, as you all have heard this year, are high, you know, as every year. But we needed a lot more money to meet those s. And as a result, you all approved a supplemental appropriation from our fund balance of $17 million. And that was not additional funding for special education. That was just to make sure that we were able to provide the services that we had guaranteed as of that moment. And so since then, as
soon as we found out about that, as you know, the superintendent implemented a spending restrictions in central office only. This only impacts t central office to make sure that we would make some gains throughout the year and ensure that we did not end in the deficit. So make sure I'm understanding. So the $5 million deficit was caused because we were relying on lapse, and then we didn't have it because we were filling positions. Correct. And then because we had to spend to meet the needs of students for special ed. And that was more than what was budgeted.
Correct. Thank you. Yes, 100%. So we are continuing our spending restrictions. And like every month we're monitoring that very closely. And the next slide I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Reilly who is going to go over where we have been every month as we as we go through this financial monitoring report. And as you see every month when we submit the, the, the finances, state status. So the way we're presenting it here is kind of unique. We usually
don't present the monthly differences in expenditures, revenues and fund balance. But this gives you an idea of kind of how we progress by month to month. As Miss Alfonso Windsor mentioned, as Doctor Taylor said that -5 million that technically I believe that was the first time we were negative in expenditure projections ever. So that's what we were working wit. And that's as Mr. Windsor said. That's why we enacted the spending restrictions from the superintendent. So this slide
and if you're following along in your monthly report, basically it is broken up into three three sections revenue expenditures. And then we talk about fund balance too. So those of you not familiar with our fund balance, basically that's where we end at the end of the year. So that 17 million that we did a supplemental for special ed that was largely from savings from the prior year. But if you do the math, the expenditure projection here in September was
negative five. We've got that down to -3.8 due to the strategies that that have been enacted to kind of get our spending in line revenues a lot of times that that kind of stays the same. As, you know, our revenues are are the county's our biggest revenue. And that's pretty much we know what that is. We can kind of project that same same thing for the state. For the most part, what these revenues are are miscellaneous or other revenue. So portions of it is July settlement, some of
it's interest. And that's how we might see some revenue changes there. But when you do the revenue and the expenditure variances, you get to fund balance for the current year. That's going to be added to whatever's left over from last year. And then at the end, that will be our fund balance at the end of this fiscal year, as Miss Alfonso Windsor said, we do want to end the year in, you know, we don't want to be in a negative. And that goes for categories as well too. So one of the things that the county allows us is that at the end of the year in,
you know, once we're done with our June, we can go to the county and request a categorical transfer that's called. So this way, our categories, you know, don't end up in a deficit because that's another requirement from coma. Next slide. So as I said we're showing progress in the expenditure side. We're showing increases in revenue. These are some of the ongoing deficit reduction strategies that we plan to use for the rest of the
year. We just took took a supplemental for special education. That's 17 million. That's going to get special education, which is category six, a better footing to go from now to the rest of the year. We're also identifying savings, you know, in each of the different areas as as Mr. Alfonso Windsor mentioned, the process is on a monthly basis. Our budget specialists, along with people within the departments and divisions, look at what spent so far, what the
plan for projected spending is, and they come up with what our estimate is at the end of the year. That's part of that process. Any areas where we can identify savings, we're grabbing that and keeping that aside as savings to help us to make sure that we don't end up in a deficit. Again, reducing spending in those areas will decrease the overall deficit. And then finally, the plan is to continue our central services spending restrictions in order to do the same. Let me ask you a question. So I'm not understanding how we could have
17 million leftover from last year for a 17 million appropriation, yet have a $5 million deficit. How do those two things, the $5 million deficit, already took into consideration the $17 million supplemental for school system, just to make sure that we continue to support the needs of the special education students. So, as you know, at the end of last year, we had some interest revenue that we had accumulated that our plan
was it was part of the fund balance, and our plan was to use that to support our employee benefit plan. So when we understood the needs in the special education, we use all of that funding in addition to additional savings from last year, instead of to support our employee benefit plan to support the special education requirements. But that $17 million is not additional. It's what we had committed through September to support our special
education. So we were projecting the 5 million we were already considering the 17 million supplemental. So. So to be clear, we were like closer to like 23 million. If we if we would have been if we kept going with the special education spending the way we knew that we needed to go with the special education spending, if, if we wouldn't have had the $17 million for special education, we would have had to reduce the services in special education. But you had $17 million left
over from last year, correct? And then immediately when you started the fiscal year, you were spending more than what you had budgeted. Okay. So correct. Fiscal year. Correct. So and then just keep in mind that whenever we have a fund balance for the school system, we can't spend it until the county council appropriates it. That's what we had to go through. The $17 million supplemental. And the great thing for us, in a way, is the county council can reappropriate funds from other
agencies for any other purpose. It doesn't have to be for that specific agency. In the space of M.C.P.S, any of our fund balance can only be used for M.C.P.S. Gotcha. And if I may, I'm sorry. No, sorry. Continue and then I'll ask. No, I just want to indicate that unfortunately, you know, we still have issues with our employee benefit plan. So our goal is to increase our fund balance for this year so that we can support the employee benefit
plan. Additionally, we've had a tough winter already in the month of January. So we have, you know, experienced some additional emergency expenditures that we're really looking to see. How can we offset those to make sure that we don't go in the other direction moving forward? So you want to build your fund balance. That means you're going to cut, cut along the way so you can put some money away for later. We're going to be working with our offices to keep identifying additional savings so that we
can increase our fund balance, and then we will need to probably use some of it this year, you know, ask for another supplemental for if needed for the employee benefit plan. It really does. One of the reasons we, the superintendent, started the spending restrictions is because we really do need to have a little fund balance at the end of the year, not just because of the legal requirements, but that's also what helps us the following year when we expand, you know, have emergency spending that we have
to, you know, absorb. So we need that buffer in order to be able to continue with the operations. Supplemental is a misnomer, right? It's more like a it's really it's a reappropriation of our fund balance. Yeah. That is true. A supplement a true supplemental is when we ask the county council for additional funding. Yes. Okay. So I'm just following the trajectory of the fund balance here. And I see you have, you know, September, October, November of the
projected fund balance. So, you know, starting at 537 previous slide. Oh sorry. Yeah. Previous slide. Yeah. So what what's the goal here I see it's going in the right direction. But then you mentioned there might be other spending that we're going to have to dip back in. And so and you said you want to end up with some what what's the goal.
So we know we have additional spending for the emergency operations. We are you know, working with the offices to identify additional savings to offset those expenses. The goal would be I'm going to be honest, we haven't really determined a goal. We just have to work with the offices to absorb the most we can or increase the fund balance the most we can to put us in a really good place, especially if we need the
funding for the employee benefit plan. While we don't stop any operations that are critical to our school system, right, we want to make sure that we continue operations that are critical and we don't impact that. We are not impacting schools, but we want to make sure that our central services are able to be able to continue doing the work you know, that they need to do. We're in a little bit of new territory here. If you recall, a couple of years ago, we used $25 million in our assigned balance, which was kind of a for saving to help
balance the next year's budget. That's gone well. So we are dealing with smaller amounts. That's one of the reasons why you're seeing smaller amounts here instead of normally when we had that 25 million goal we were at 29 million, you know, 30 million at this point. Right. That makes sense to me. And I guess as we move through the process, I think we I would like it to, to see where are there savings actually coming from, how is it impacting? I know
you're saying it's not from school budget, but obviously there there's some pain involved and I think we should be informed on what where are those pain points. So thank you. Sure. And examples that would be great. Sure. And we can you know, we can see that when you look at the financial report at the at the end you'll see by category how those are changing and what is causing those changes. But we can definitely, you know, point out those to you
as we move along. Thank you, Miss Zimmerman. I actually was hearing the same. Oh, we're trying to keep you know, these like critical functions, blah, blah, blah. I was also looking, you know, especially for the sake of the public. What are some of the examples of the ways that you're reducing spending or finding additional savings? So when we do a spending restrictions in in certain central services, the first thing that we really look at is any travel for professional development. That is not critical, right. That can be postponed for other years. We're
looking for, you know, supplies and materials. You know, if you can afford not to purchase something that you know, you can do through other means, you know that you can, you know, that's a savings. The other piece in Central Services, where we are identifying savings, is we are not advertising or filling positions this year unless they get a special approval in central services for those positions. And sometimes one of
the strategies that we use is you can fill the position, but you can fill the position after a one month vacancy, because that will give you additional savings towards your fund balance. So some of those are some of the strategies that we're using. And it's not pain free because there's a lot of positions that support schools that are officially central office, but they're going out to schools. You are correct. Spending restrictions are not pain free because we are asking
for a budget that we need. So we really need everything that we have added to our budget is critical to our functions. It's just it is not being free. We have to make tough decisions and that's where those tough decisions come in. Am I remembering correctly that math coaches are central Office? Math coaches are central office, but I'm happy to report that those are all filled. So and those would be considered a critical yes. You don't think of it that way, but it is. Yes. And they're budgeted in Central office and they go out to the schools. But
yes, they spend the majority of their time at the school supporting students. Yes, 100%. So every single we consider a lot of positions, central services like, you know, the bus drivers, the bus attendants, you know, the instructional assistants that support, you know, schools. But those are really, you know, student facing positions, even though they are reflected in our central office's budget. Yes, Mr. Sivana. Yeah. So I'm looking at this slide again. And so when
we're looking at the expenditure projection of -3.8 million here, is that after the fund balance, after we use what the fund balance is here, or is that just assuming not using the fund balance. So we start from zero right. When we start projecting this we base it on what our budget is. So when you're looking at September 30th, that was our projected deficit. As of June of 2025. And then so you can see how we have made
progress. We went from 5.1 through November 30th of three, you know, $3.8 million. That is that's a starting from zero. That's not accounting for the fund balance that we have as of last year. Okay. Got it. So if we were to continue on the path, even if we were in a like, like the expenditure projection was -3.8 million, at the end of the year, we would have the fund balance to cover it based on what we have right now, because that this fund balance
reflection is off right now. Correct. That is as of right now. That's correct. So yes. So we would go for a supplemental because we're getting an additional $7.8 million in revenue. Right. So we would go for a supplemental of, let's say $4 million to make sure that that expenditure projection gets zero. And then we would have the leftover as fund balance for FY to start FY 26 with, okay, we're hoping that that fund balance number is going to increase over time, because this is very tight
for the $3.6 billion budget, as you guys know. Yeah I mean we're looking at what like 200,000 for 3.6 billion. Like yeah I don't know if that's the best number to have. Every little bit helps. So you know we look for every single penny that we can save. Yeah I was going to go back to one more time. And can you just explain to me like what the revenue changed, like how that comes to be. So revenue change here. It's impacted by several things. One of them is the jewel settlement that we're getting
payments, you know every year it's a three year. That's the smallest amount here. The other piece is our interest revenue. So our Comptroller Department has really worked on working with our banks to get us a better deal. So in the last couple of years we have received significant interest revenue. And that's the belief is about $3 million. Don't quote me on that. I have to look it up in the financial report. The other aspect of this is we are receiving additional reimbursement from the state,
from the state for our nonpublic placements. So that is another aspect of this fund balance. So, you know, and when we had the board session the other day, we talked about how our the governor's budget represents a reduction from 70% to 60% on what we get for in reimbursements from the for special education placements. So this year, we have actually received a little bit more than we had projected. I think we
have received another $2.3 million. So that is not something that we have to re-appropriate or have to go to the county council for, because that is really just a change in the reimbursement of our expenditures are for special education. So those are the three main components. When you look at the revenue change. Okay. Yeah. And then just to be clear, like when we're talking about that increased, you know, revenue for nonpublic placements, that's still money that we have to like. That's only 50% of whatever the cost is. So we still have to put put out a big chunk of that.
Correct. That just means that when we build the budget, we projected that we were going to get $19.1 million in reimbursement. So our revenue for FY 25 budget when we appropriated was $19.1 million. And we have come up to about 20, $22 million in reimbursements for that because we've had more students. Absolutely. You know, our special education has increased from 12 below 12% prior to the pandemic to almost
14% now. So, yes, so those public placements, you know, do require more reimbursement revenue, but more expenses as well. Yeah, 100%. All right. Thank you. Mr. I know just sounds I don't know if this is obvious or not or just for the blic. So, I mean, it seems like tell me if I'm wrong, but the revenue change minus the expenditure projection is the fund balance. Thank you. Know,
that is correct. Yes, absolutely. Okay. I think next we wanted to go through the last financial report so that you can walk us through the tables. And everybody should have a copy of the last financial report. Yeah. So this should sound familiar because what we just went through is, is you're going to see this in the detail in these pages. So the first page we're just talking about the attachment. So we do a special
slide for revenue that speaks to the changes in the projected revenue that we were speaking about. And then we look at expenses in a couple of different ways. We look at which of our categories are in a in a deficit, and then we look at our expenses on a month to month basis over over years. It helps us project and we think it helps the, you know, the users of this to kind of see where we're at year to year. And then finally we look at what we spend by
month. So as Miss Alfonso Windsor said, we can kind of get a good projection on what that monthly spend is going to be based on what? Based on historic. So. So for revenue, what are you consider a revised budget versus original budget? Any change in projection? So we mentioned interest. So we had a budget in there for interest. But based on you know we're using a sweep account. We're we're trying to put any money that we have available into
savings accounts to earn that interest. So the projection changed over time. Okay. So that's first page. Second page, you know, which which attachment are we on? I'm sorry. Which attachment are we on. Well I was just going to page two showing that bottom grid because that kind of goes oh you are on the, the, the narrative of the. No, I think, I think he was saying from attachment one to attachment two. Oh attachment
two. Yeah. And I'm sorry. Page two I just kind of wanted figure that grid at the bottom of page two, not the attachments. Okay. That gives you a pretty good summary of where we're at. So we were we were talking about our original starting fund balance so that we always show which was the 18. And then we show the projected surplus revenue and then less the projected expenditure balance that gave us the 22,000,898. But from that, since we did that supplemental
that came from fund balance, we had to subtract that. And we're also making the assumption that we're going to eventually assign some of that fund balance for spending on the July settlement that we recorded as revenue. So that's where you get that bottom line of unassigned fund balance. Of the $3.94 million, which ties to the that summary we showed you. Yeah. So as for the attachments, attachment one that that's going to give you detail of revenues. So we break that
out by the source which is county. And you'll see there's no projected variance there. We know what we're going to get from the county. And there's not going to be any change in that. The state. We were just talking about that we had increase in non public. So along with that comes increase in expenses as well too. But we do show that the revenue side as well. And then federal really kind of stays the same too. Because if that's grants the revenue is
going to be offset by equal amounts of expense. So that's usually just a zero variance. And then finally other. And that's where you're going to find that July settlement. We had an increase in summer school revenue compared to budget. And then we had a surplus of interest income. If you look down there we kind of put these on there, but we rarely record a variance. These are our enterprise funds and our supported projects are grant funds, which as I noted before, that's going to be the zero
balance. So there's no variances there. Attachment two that's a detail of our expenditures again by category. So this is where you can go to look at the changes from the prior month. And also that's broken up by object. So category one administration you can kind of see where we did for salaries and wages contractual services. And then you can kind of see how we adjusted our projection. And
then the explanation or what we base that revised projection on is in the right. That's attachment two. Attachment three is just basically what we're showing in attachment two, but in a picture format. So you can kind of see at a glance at what point different categories were either in a surplus or in a deficit. Which one is attachment three. Oh, the bar graphs. The bar graph. Yeah. Package
attachment for another bar graph. And what this is showing is our year to year change in expenditure projections. So this is where we're talking about the very first or the fifth column there shows that -5.1 again first time. That's kind of first time that we kind of were showing that. And then if you follow along October and November, you can kind of see that going up. And as I noted before, the expenditure projections were higher in previous years because of that,
built in $25 million. That was kind of a forced savings that we were doing to balance the subsequent year budget. And then finally attachment five. That's the one where we're just showing percent of year completed. So we can kind of kind of look by category. And they're pretty pretty steady when you look. But if there is any anomalies, we can kind of go in and research that of why that might be more spent than it was in, you know,
in, in prior years. And that that should be it for the attachments. I just want to make a clarification. The revised budget is it will change when we get supplementals. So our beginning budget is what you adopted in June, when we get the 17 million supplemental that the county council actually just took to public hearings today, then that will be the revised budget would indicate that additional $17 million. And then
once the budget is approved and you have your categories and you have an emergency where you have to spend, you have to find money, you need to find $5 million to fund something. What flexibility do you have? You're going to have to pay for it, and you have to steal from one to rob Peter to pay Paul. What are the rules in terms of where you can pull that money from? So the
county council, we have to reflect the money where the correct category, we're going to spend it. So what the county council allows us to do at the end of the year. And, you know, you see this, I believe in August is we look at our budget by categories and you're going to see minus and positives. And then they allow us to re offset. So if category three for example that has always been our biggest surplus which is not this year has a $30 million surplus. But you had emergency you know and
snow emergencies, weather emergencies that would reflect in category ten with a -$10 million, they would allow us they will reappropriate or approve our budget by doing a transfer from category three to category ten. And they always do it for us at the end of the year. They don't do it by month. They let us proceed with our expenses aeeded and then just do that reconciliation, you know, at the end of the school year. Yeah, that's different when you go district by district, some districts actually do a categorical transfer if they're aware of a
negative. One of the reasons that the county lets us do that is because of this actual report. If we're reporting to the board and the council that we know that we're going to be in a deficit, that's kind of allows the county to give us that permission. Okay. So it's this way it's easier for us, rather than going through the categorical transfers on a, you know, bi monthly basis. Mr. So this this is different than, than the $75 million salary lapse and turnover that we have in our budget right now. Correct. So, yes. So the 75
million lapse and turnover, you know, like Doctor Taylor talks about is the most difficult, you know, portion to explain. Because what really is we're double double budgeting. So we know that our our salaries are going to be let's just use a small number $1 million. And we know that we're not going to fill, let's say, 3% of the vacancies and that 3% of the positions, and that's 100,000. We really cut our budget by 100,000, and we budgeted 900,000
for positions. So when you look at our budget, salary lapse has already been it's already been factored into the amount that we requested from the county council. Okay. Yeah. So that transferring at the end of the year has nothing to do with that. That's just a matter of we overspent in one category, underspent in another, and split the difference. Correct. Did you tell me that we're going to go deep into. The salary turnover,
the lapse and turnover in March, is that correct? That is something that we talked about as a as a potential option for discussion for this group. Okay. Sounds like fun. Well, just as as a as a mechanism for at that point the committee's next meeting is March 20th. So at that point the budget will have been approved and we'll be with the county and we'll be further along in the year and could have some additional updates on that if that's something the committee wants to discuss. Okay. Just in the in the revenue
section, things like food services, real estate, field trip, entrepreneurial instructional, television. That's just that's not really revenue, is it? It's just money that we collect. And then those enterprise funds, technically, from an enterprise fund perspective, that is revenue within that fund. But there's offsetting expenditures in that fund too. So we don't really, you know, consider and it's not part of our fund balance in the operating budget. But we show it here, I think partially because
we want to tie out to the original budget and the revised budget at the bottom, which includes those other enterprise funds and special revenue fund. What's an example of an entrepreneurial activity, a field trips. Field trips are an entrepreneurial activity on the side of transportation. So as you know, you know, the schools have to pay, you know, for the mileage for the gas, for the bus drivers when they request a bus from our transportation. And
that is revenue that is coming in to that particular fund for field trips. Another revenue is food services. It's the money that we're getting in reimbursements from the federal government, plus a la carte items. That's our revenue that comes in for our Food Services Enterprise Fund, which is it's like a business, right? When we're looking at enterprise funds, it's like a business run activity in a way is self-funded. So the field trips is the money you collect from the families for a field trip. Is that what you meant? So the
schools collect the money from the families, or if they get a grant and they want to pay for that bus through the grant, they have to pay their field trip fund, our enterprise fund for, for, for thoseoney coming from our students or the money coming from any grants, the way it's paid into that fund is considered a revenue source. Okay. And I had mentioned that we don't show variances, but each of these funds do actually have a fund balance. You'd have to find that in our annual financial comprehensive report.
But each of those enterprise funds have have a fund balance as well. So we talked about these funds being self self self-sufficient. So does that mean like we're we're putting in little to no money in the operating budget for them. Or does it just mean that that yeah that's a good point. So the definition of these enterprise funds is there is no operating fund infusion. It's either going to be from fees or from, you
know, charges or food charges for food service. So but they can't be really any operating budget. Contribution. Okay. And then on the flip side of that, it also means, you know, if we're talking about if like the money can't be shifted from from like food services or the field trip fund back into the operating budget to fund something else. That is correct. So the money has to be used for the purpose that is intended. And that is that is one of the reasons, you know, when we talk
about universal meals and the cost of universal meals, the Food Services fund for M.C.P.S. Enterprise Fund, it is like we just talked about self-funded. So if we go that route, either the state or the county would have to fund that. And it also becomes part of our maintenance of effort as well from the state. Any enterprise funds or any of this, the field trip fund, the camera, you know, the pass through for our busses, for the bus cameras. All of those
are outside of maintenance of effort. Perfect. Thank you. Yeah. And that's an example of the entrepreneurial one of the funds in one of the activities in the entrepreneurial is the school bus camera. Could you take us to attachment two and show us where how special ed the increase in spending over spending in that category is reflected in this table? Is that the right attachment, where we would see that? Yeah. So that
that category in special ed, it did. The deficit decreased a little. But still we're showing a deficit in the current year report of $5.5 million. It's a category six, category six. So you budget authorize 417 million. Correct. Yeah. And then you have actual expenditures.
Yeah.hose are actual. And then we look at the encumbrances, which is an accounting term. But that's going to be a future expense. So I just want to specify that the $17 million are already included as part of the budget for category six in that. So the $5 million deficit is already assuming that we're going to get a $17 million supplement for special education. So if we if we looked at this number before we made
that appropriation to county council, it would be 17 million higher. That is correct. Stuart. Category 12 fixed charges is another place where there's projected deficit can can you talk about category 12 because it says fixed charges. Correct. So it is fixed charges because all our benefits, our employee benefit plan is reflected in
category 12 are FICA is reflected in category 12. The other item that is reflected in category 12 is tuition reimbursement. Because that's a benefit to our employees. So that deficit reflected there. It is a combination of a little bit of tuition reimbursement and FICA. We are not the category 12 would not reflect any deficits in our employee benefit plan. In the Employee Benefit Fund plan
fund that we have been referring to, that we know that we're going to have a deficit. So we have our budget for our benefits, and we have an employee benefit fund, which is separate. What we do is we take the money from our category 12 fixed charges benefit and we move it into the fund, or we pay into the fund as expenses come in. So it's a little bit the tracking. There is going to be a little bit different because there is the fund that is the one that is in desperate need of
additional and then there is the operating budget aspect of that category. 12 benefits. Does that make sense? I'm not sure I'm. A little bit okay. So let me try again. So let's say our benefits is about $464 million for employee benefit plan. The employee trust fund. We ended up in a $65 million deficit. So think about like your bank account. Let's say that this month you have you overspent by
$10 million, and then next month only $20 come in into your bank account. So you're still at a deficit of minus ten. So think about it that way. You have the budget for employee benefits here. And then our as our expenditures hit or our are charged to our employee benefit fund, then we transfer budget from our operating budget into that fund. Once our once our budget you know hit. I mean we have when we have spent our budget, then we cannot keep
transferring that money into our employee benefit plan. And that's where, you know, we are really have to look at where we are and to make sure that we're able to absorb all our expenses prior to June 30th. And we've been putting that employee benefit plan in this monthly financial report. But we discussed that that that kind of warrants a whole meeting by itself. So that's why we didn't mention that today. I understand we're working on it. Yeah, we're really working on it. You know, it's going to take a combination of budget like we have discussed a combination of agreement with associations that we're working
on right now and also identifying, you know, working with with our vendors to identify, you know, how we can reduce some of the expenditures. Thank you for explaining other appreciate it, Miss Zimmerman. So I'm going to go across a couple different meetings. So we've heard Doctor Taylor say quite a few times that the proposed budget for fiscal year 26 is reflective of what we're actually spending. So it seems like a lot of the things that
you're describing, you're saying, well, we're spending more here. And that's kind of the reality that it's, you know, we're we're asking for more money for other things. We're asking council for more money. So it seems like this is kind of some of the nitty gritty of what he's explaining. Is that accurate? To say that is 100% basically, as he said, you know, the budget that he's proposing is really truing up what our needs are and what our expenditures are. So we are spending, you know, if we were looking at our real expenditures
without the expenditure restrictions, we would spend a lot more than than we have in our budget. You know, and as I think Miss Stuart, you know, asked at the last session, you know, in the past we had $400 million in grants. And that's really what got us through the last 3 or 4 years. And we no longer have that funding. So yes, it's truing up our budget to what our needs are for FY 26.
I don't understand why the special ed line doesn't reflect the $17 million. Like, what's the use of that chart if I'm not seeing the full picture? So when we have to project based on what we know with the steps that we're taking, what we're going to end up at the end of the year. So if we were reflecting
the $24 million, let's say, you know, deficit without the $17 million, it would really, truly, you know, reflect where we're going to end up at the end of the year. We can make changes. You know, if that's you know, if that's what the board feels that we need to do once we get by the next board, by the next financial report, once we have that appropriation, you're going to see that budget increasing, which is really, you know, where you're going to see that additional $17 million. But our projection really reflects where we would be, you know, assuming
that $17 million, which we know is part of our fund balance and the county council, you know, should be appropriate for us. But we can take that into consideration if you want us to reflect it differently. Yes. So for attachment five, for example, special education. What do I need to know from these from that attachment five like.
What is this telling me? How much is spent per month? But like what? What do I need to look out for when things are going well? And what do I need to look out for when things are not going well as special ed, since we know that had a lot of activity, I'm assuming that I should be able to flag something. And I'm not. I'm not seeing it. So let me walk you in September. So the budget right
now is consistent, right? Because we haven't received the $17 million. You know, we haven't reflected in here the $17 million appropriation. So it's $417 million in the first month in September, we spent $36.3 million. That is the actual expenditure. But if you look right below it says spend encumbered by month 418 million. This reflects the salaries for all our special education employees already encumbered through June 30th. When you get
to the last line for November, we have continued to spend. When you see between 417 and 423, you're going to see that $5 million difference. You know, that that we have in our budget, the $5 million additional expenditure that we're projecting that we're going to have, you know, by the end of the year. Okay. And what percentage of special education salaries are not or positions
are not filled on average. So this year they actually, you know, we are we are in a lot better place than in prior years. I think we the majority of our vacancies are sitting in Paraeducators right now. I think we have a little bit over 100 Paraeducator vacancies right now. Most of our teaching positions have been filled this year. I don't have the numbers with me right now, but we can look at that. It's something that we track every month so we
can indicate, you know, we can let you know or we can add it to the report as needed. But would that be would that be under the category six. Absolutely. Anything that is that is a special education specifically would be category six. Because remember that special education has its own Mo. So we have to meet Mo for a special education in addition to the overall Mo that we have to do for the system. So every year, in order to meet the federal guidelines for a special education, we must
spend more than the prior year at least the same or more than the prior year, in order to meet Mo for special education. So in order for tracking all the expenditures, that's what we what everything that is aligned with special education is budgeted under category six. Okay. So the paras that are not filled, that's giving you a little bit of savings. But that's where the salary lapses coming in. And that's what we need. Those additional $17 million. Correct. Thank you, Mr. Sivana. Yeah. So from for the
for previous budgets, I mean we, we always hear like, oh like like special education might be cut or is cutting and so can you explain that in terms of like what that means from the budget perspective and then also from the maintenance of effort perspective like can you like if we're cutting it in the budget, but we still have to spend this much amount like, is that just basically saying, well, we know we're going to go over what we're spending in our budget. So special education have always the budget for a special
education, at least over the last five years, have always increased. I think what you're hearing is it has been reduced from their original ask. So we know that when the superintendent recommends a budget and the board adopts the budget, you know, in February we might budget 400 million, let's say, for a special education, an increase of 25 million from the prior year. At the end of the year, you know, when it might result in budget cuts and so on. We might have reduced that
budget by 5 million, but they still received an increase from the prior year. It's just that it might not meet all the needs that the special education students, you know, have. Okay, I understand, so we're talking about cuts to the increases okay. Mr. Stockton or just to maybe clarify, it could be hearing about cuts or changes to specific elements of special education programs, but not overall special education
funding. Is that accurate? That is accurate. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Well thank you so much for that overview. I know you put out the report monthly, but and then we see it in our consent items every month as well. Yeah. So thank you. Thank you for that overview and looking forward to going deep on to the salary lapse. Next time we'll be ready.
That'll be an interesting conversation. So maybe just to confirm based on conversation in terms of how in this case, the 17 million supplemental appropriation or in future cases, appropriations like that are reflected? I think I just want to make sure I understand the committee's position. We would continue to do that in the manner that that it has been reflected here, but it will look
different once the total budget number, once it is approved. That is correct. And, you know, if the committee decides we can put an asterisk or put a note, you know, when we make those kind of so that is very clear what the assumptions are when we're looking at these projections. But I get the feeling that because it hadn't been a we haven't gotten the what's the term. So it has not been appropriated yet or approved by the county council. But we are already accounting for that funding when we're looking at our projections. But
but the budget has not changed. But the it it's reflected to you on this table. It's not like it hasn't happened yet. So it's going to appear in next month's know. What is going to appear in next month is when you look at the at the tables at the end where you see the original budget and the revised budget, the revised budget is going to have an additional $17 million. We're shown in that grid on page two because we know it's coming. Same thing with the Jules Bend. Thank you. Okay, next up is item
4.2. We're going to get an update on state funding for fiscal year 26 operating budget. Thank you. Can I have the power that the PowerPoint. Yes. So you know, as M.C.P.S. Is probably one of the leas the first Leah to recommend their budget or put out its budget in the fiscal year. And as a result of that, because we have to send it to the county council by March 1st,
when we're when the superintendent is recommending his budget, we just don't know yet what the state aid is going to be like. So we use projections. And, you know, the state aid has many factors and we'll go over that. But the governor releases the state aid the third Wednesday in January. And that's when we first get a chance to look at, you know, what we're going to get. The proposal is based on existing law. But we know that they're going, you know, the General Assembly over the next month or so is going to be looking at the
different proposals from the governor, and that might reduce our funding, you know, for M.C.P.S. But we thought that we would go we would start going over the components of state aid just so that everyone understands, you know, what is state aid we received and how it has changed from FY 25 to what the recommended, what was indicated in the recommended budget by the superintendent. We're still analyzing, and we're having a meeting, a technical assistance meeting this week with MSD to really understand what our state funding is going
to be like. But we can go over it, you know, as we go through all these elements. So the biggest portion of our of our state aid is really our foundation grant. And that is a per pupil allocation. And as you can see in FY 25, we receive for $26.2 million in FY 26 where we identified or we thought we were going to see an increase of about $5 million or $4 million, we are probably going to see an additional increase there. But we're but if the General
Assembly, the governor recommendation passed, this is going to be impacted as well by the collaborative planning time. There would be a reduction in our foundation formula, comparable wage increases and other portion. It's another component of state aid. And this account for, you know, areas of high cost of high you know, the cost of living is high like Montgomery County. So we get 37, $34.7 million. And as you can see, it's a decrease from last year to this year that we're
projecting. Because keep in mind that a state aid is relative to all the other areas in terms of student enrollment and in terms of wealth, and it's also a weighted formula. So we never really can predict what we're going to get because it's comparative to the other areas in our system. Limited English proficient. We are seeing an increase in the in the allocation for this portion of state aid. And this has to do
with our students that are identified as as ESL students. Compensatory education. About 2 or 3 years ago, we got a huge increase in compensatory education. We used to be at about 130 million, and we had a large increase. That's when the direct certification for students that are were receiving farms. The state started using the direct certification. So we had a lot more students being represented with farms. So that's why you're seeing an increase. And this year we have
an increase in our number of farms of students receiving farms. The next one is we talked a little bit about is the students with disability formula. So the state basically is giving us we're seeing an increase in here of about $9 million. We think from the from a state aid for FY 26 above the $81 million. That is that that the superintendent projected that we projected in the superintendent's budget. As you can see, our special education budget is $434 million. And
that's only the special education, the category six. That doesn't include the benefits associated with that budget. And yet we're only receiving really $80 million from the state. So the local share of special education is quite high. And that is something that that we have been looking at. Just to give you an example, if you look at the foundation formula before between FY 23 and FY 26, the
state increased the foundation formula by 7.92%. Yet the local share that is, that is that has to go along with the with the state, aid has increased by 9.12%. So the local share and the reliability on the local funding has increased substantially in the last few years. Transportation as part of state aid is mainly for our special education students.
That's where we see the $56 million and then the reimbursement right above that. I'm sorry, I skipped that. That's what we're talking about before is $19.1 million. That's the revenue we were assuming. But this year we have received a little bit more. And that's what we're seeing reflected in the financial report. This is what if the governor's recommendation moves forward. This is where we're going to see again, another decrease because this
represents a 70% reimbursement rate. He is recommending a 60% reimbursement rate. And for FY 27 a 50% reimbursement rate. So between 25 to 27, we could see a 20% decrease in this part of the state aid. And then we have received for blueprint for Maryland's future for everything combined is about $40 million. We're going to see a big increase in this in the concentration of poverty and community schools. As you know,
we are getting an additional or the state has identified an additional 22 community schools for FY 26, an increase of in local aid of $11 million. But that also comes with a local share. So this the local LEAs have to provide an $8 million additional for those community schools. So that is going to be an impact to our budget. The
components of blueprint that are part of the state aid are the career ladder and national board certified teacher salaries, and that is all embedded in our compensation agreements. Right. And as you know, part of the blueprint was making sure that our teachers would get paid more than $60,000. And we the first year teachers are starting salary, $60,000. And we are way above that, you know, to where we need it to be. So we're in a good place there. But the investment in that is substantial in pre-kindergarten
is another area where we're seeing that between FY 23 and FY 26, the state contribution has increased by 12.20, I'm sorry, 22.8%, but the local contribution has increased by 148%. So we are basically getting, I believe, $13 million from the state for pre-K. Our pre-K budget is over $30 million. In order to meet the needs, you know that that we see
forth a concentration of poverty. We just talked a little bit about that. Those are our community schools, and we know that we're going to see a big increase for FY 26. It has been confirmed that as of right now, the governor is recommending a freeze on community schools and concentration of poverty for FY 27 until they determine what the impact is. We're not sure yet what that freeze means, is it they're going to freeze it at the level that we are now, or are they just not going to
assign additional community schools? Because if they freeze it at the level that we're now, we know, you know, there is, you know, cost of living keeps increasing there. There's inflation. So that is going to put us a little bit behind on that college and career readiness. That's another portion. And this is where our dual enrollment you know our AP IB. And we know that the Montgomery County delegation is going to recommend some changes, you know, to that aspect of it. We'll see if we're going to.
Mainly support our farm students in that area. But you know, that is you know, that that's still to be seen. Career advising is our work with Worksource Montgomery and positions in our system that support students of all ages moving forward. The transition transitional Supplemental Instruction and Blueprint coordinators. Those are small pieces of our blueprint. And the transition grant is going to go away, you
know, in about two years. And that is just to help us transition, you know, into the blueprint that has been additional funding that has it's about $5 million, that has support, is transitioning into the blueprint. And then the transitional supplemental instruction that supports our K through three readers. And then obviously we've been talking about it. There's the local share component of blueprint, which is substantial because everything has a local share basically for Montgomery County Public Schools because of a wealth factor. We get about 30%
of the blueprint funded through state aid. The rest is really local share from our state government, from our local government. Could you go back to the previous slide? You mentioned the governor's reduction, recommended reductions in transportation was one of the examples. This is based on just his net transportation. The it's going to the program, the
collaborative planning if that reduction goes through to the collaborative planning is something that we've been working on to ensure that our that our teachers, you know, have planning time, that they're able to collaborate. Obviously, the blueprint takes it, you know, a lot farther than that. We are at that point. But Montgomery County is one of the LEAs that are further in that aspect of the blueprint. If they put a stop on it right now. And one of the thoughts behind it is that there's not enough staff to
keep hiring and staff to, you know, to get to where they want to be in career ladder, that is going to have an impact on our foundation grant, on our comparable wage index on our English learners and on compensatory education. They're holding a special education harmless, and that could be a reduction of approximately $15 million. So by pausing the collaborative planning, is the funding, by pausing that funding, it's going to hit all of these categories. Yes. Because remember that the
blueprint funding is embedded in almost every aspect of the state aid, okay? It's not just the specific restricted line items for blueprint. The formula is embedded in all of these components of state aid. So we're getting blueprint funding. For example, the foundation grant includes a little bit of the funding for the Foundation fund grant is to get to that $60,000 teacher salary. Okay. Increase. And can you remind me that the total impact of this
decision in dollars, about $15,000,000.15 one five yes, $15 million. So right now, the way we're looking at state aid, we're going to get for FY 26, approximately $53 million, more than than for FY 25, but that would be reduced by $15 million as a result of the collaborative teacher planning, if that goes through, you know, in the General Assembly, the other portion of the General Assembly,
if it goes through, is the I'm sorry, just I just lost that train of thought. Well, yeah, the pension contribution, it's one of them that is going to be about $21.9 million. We actually have that amount. But it's not. That is just a shift right from the state to the local. But the other piece that would impact us here would be the reimbursement formula for students with disabilities. That would be decreased by 10%, that by
reducing the reimbursement from 70% to 60%. That is another aspect. We don't we don't have yet what that full aspect will mean for M.C.P.S, but I'm estimating between 3 to $4 million. Okay. And so that point sorry. Go ahead. So that pension contribution shift impacts us greater than most other counties in Maryland because we have the highest number. Correct. So 20 the total reduction, the total
shift, the state is shifting about $93 million of the pension from the state to the local governments. And our impact is $21.8 million. So, yes, and again, that's the impact this year as salaries keep increasing and so on, that is, you know, will continue to increase. Mr. I wanted to ask about the I believe there was $11 million in aid coming in to increase
community schools. But you said then we have to come up with 8 million. And so is that reflected in the budget? So it's not. So this is 8 million more that would have to go into the budget. But are we still kind of waiting on this or is this a for sure. So we are that is something that we would have to include, you know, when the board is, you know, us adopting the budget. Because if we know
that we are going to get an additional 22 schools, that the state is going to give us an additional $11 million, we have the local share is mandatory to increase for community schools, but that's where, again, we're getting $53 million projected $53 million of aid. That's where we're trying to figure out those numbers. You know, before the superintendent comes to, you know, to recommend to the board based on these changes as a result of the state aid, those will be built in so that you
would understand what the impact is, and so that that's not I know you talked about other money and losing 15 million of it. So this is a whole nother layer. So think about it this way. You know like we discussed on Thursday, an additional 53 million reduced 21 million of that. Right. Reduced another $8 million and take out another $50 million. We're probably going to be even we're going to increase the revenue by $53 million, but our expenditures are going to be
substantially higher as well, just to meet with the mandates that we have. Okay. So we have to be ready. Thank you. Okay. Let's finish up with the last slide. Yeah. So this is we're just showing you the timeline just on Mr. Vernon's point. So you know pension we have a separate pension fund. But when we talk about that pension shift it relates back to category 12 where we were talking before. That's that's one of our fixed charges. So that's why it's a direct effect on our operating
budget. But as for this timeline, the bottom you've seen many times before, that's that's our board timeline. What we thought we'd add here is the timing of the state funding. So in January, that's when the LA receive our draft state aid many years. There's not too much change to that this year. Obviously there's a lot of balls in the air. So this you know when we might not find out until General Assembly ends in May. And then so that's why we're
showing that normally the board has a good idea of what the estimated state revenue is. But this year is going to be different. So okay. Thank you. That's the last slide. Any further questions about the state aid before we move on to the next presentation? I think I just want to say thank you. I think this is really kind of a great deep dive into you know, the number might say it's going up, but what are the other
things that kind of factor into it that, you know, sometimes in other counties might not be as impactive? I don't know if that's a word, but but really can can make a difference right here because the number of people we have, the number of things that we have to do where we are in the blueprint schedule. But I think that was really helpful just to the public. And the state pension shift, I think, might be a good topic for a future meeting because I'm thinking it's going to be. Huge. It is going to be
huge. You know, it is. I mean, 20 an additional 21 just this year is a huge commitment. And then as our salaries keep increasing, you know, we're seeing the rate of the pension, you know, increasing substantially I believe one year went up by 1%. So it could have a significant impact in future years as well. Okay. Great. Thank you. So we're going to move on to our next presentation which is item 4.3 staffing Allocations and guidelines. And
again if the staff could introduce themselves when they get to the table. And I wanted to have this discussion because since 90% of our budget is staff, we need to understand how high level, just a high level, how the staff is allocated to our different types of schools. The title one schools focus schools and non-focus schools. We often hear, oh, this part of the county gets more staff and
resources, and that part of the county. And so I just want to kind of level set in terms of how, how are we using that 90% of our budget, and how is that reflected in our schools? So I'll pass it on to you. And I just want to I'll start I just want to indicate. So yeah, let me I'll enter this in and then I'll pass it on. They're going
to review K-12 staffing. And again you know there's still a special education and there's ESL students that are impacted as well. So this presentation will concentrate on the K-12 staffing. But also Doctor Taylor has given us the task of we have to look as as you've heard about our staffing standards. So we are going to what they're going to present is our current state and the state for FY 26. Moving forward, we are going to establish work groups that
probably will start between March and April to look at staffing and what that means in the future for our schools. We're going to benchmark with other LEAs, and the work groups are going to include representatives from the finance team, the division of Leadership, and as well our association members, you know, to make sure that we get a stakeholder input as we move forward. But the goal would be that when we present the FY 27 budget, you know, we can come up with, you know, we have those
standards established and we can base our budget based on the new standards. And I'll pass it on to the team and also the discussion around class size. I think Doctor Taylor wanted to have this work done before making any adjustments. Correct. Making any adjustment to the class size allocations. Yeah. Yes. Absolutely. Okay. Good evening. I'm Nicole Sasic. I'm one of the directors in the Office of School Support and Improvement. I'm joining Diane here to be able to support some of the practicality around once
schools receive their staffing, just to provide some examples. So you're able to become familiar with how they're using the staffing and the impact and the return on investment. Good evening. I'm Diane Gomez. I'm the director of the Division of School Finance and School Support under the Office of Finance. And I will go ahead and start the presentation. And then, you know, we'll move on from there. If you for any questions, the first slide I wanted to talk about is just how we try to be. And again,
focusing just on K-12 right now because that's my role as far as applying for just to give you a little bit of my role, I apply the formulas. I work with a lot of different offices. We're actually doing it this week to talk about what the formulas kind of put out, because we don't want to just rely on the formulas because there's a lot of different stories at different schools. So today, for example, we met with with the
Office of School Support and Improvement, with security, with counselors, counselor staff, because we were talking about certain positions, and we want to make sure we go school by school to look at each of those and make sure that we're being consistent. So if I have one school that's just like another, not that they're going to have exactly the same, but that we should be able to answer that question of, you know, if we are like schools and we're different, why? And if we are
like schools and we're the same, that that's great. You know, because it's the same type of school. We also want to be very transparent to the principals, to the community. So we do put the staffing guidelines in our budget book from the very beginning. It's always appendix C, and many of the positions are listed there for K 12. We also have some positions in there that are not k 12 like pre-K, just so we can have them all in one spot. And then we you will
see some differentiation. So we might have three schools. And I'm going to show this later on a slide that are the same enrollment wise. But they might have differences in, say, the students that are qualify for free and reduced meals or the number of ESL students that are in the building, things like that. And then we do try to work very hard to be flexible with principals. So if a principal has a grand idea and they want to try it, they'll bring that
forward to, you know, appropriate people. And we might do some conversions of staffing to make that appropriate for that, that, you know, whatever they're trying to do. And also let's say we, you know, we're trying to hire for a 0.2 teacher and we can't find any candidates. But the class size is okay if we can have some para support in that room. So we might do a conversion. That's an example of doing a conversion as well. So thank you. So I wanted
to give an example of this is at the elementary school level we have three different categories. In elementary school. We have non-focus which are schools that for three or more years are below 35% for their farms. Rates focus schools for three at least three years. They have maintained a 35% or more farms
rate. And then title one that's determined each year. As far as the percentage. But these are three of our current elementary schools that are all pretty similar in size. You can see that across the top row. And then you can see the difference in their farms rates. And then underneath that and I'm sorry it didn't line up properly. But underneath that you will see different. These aren't all the positions that are in schools, but some of them that will
change because of the type of school or because the formula recognizes different farms rates. We might have tiered, tiered formulas to say, okay, if I'm between 0 and 20%, I get this much. If I'm 20 to 30, I get this, you know, so we do that as well. So that allows you to see let's just pick Classroom teacher, for example, in a Non-focus school is going to
have fewer teachers because the class size guidelines are higher. We staff focus and title one classroom teachers the same. Where you'll see some difference in title one is the additional funding they get from title one, where the principals have a decision making as far as if they want to add positions, there's guardrails. I'm not the expert in title one, but there's guardrails. I'm sure of what
they can use the funding for, but a lot of times you'll see them maybe get focused teachers to actually and Nicole can talk a little bit about kind of how the staffing is used. But you'll see them use them as classroom teachers to. So let's say their class sizes are meeting the guidelines. They're 18 in second grade, but they realize they need them to be a little bit smaller. In second grade. They might add a classroom teacher. So again, that is not my area of
expertise, but it is additional funding. We just have to make sure we're not supplanting. So I'm not going to say to a title one school, oh, I don't need to give you that. Those guidelines for focus because I know you're going to add more teachers. We have to make sure that we are staffing them, just like a focus school. And some of our tiers go beyond that so that we are not saying the title one is going to cover what we're not giving, if
that makes sense. Okay, so at the bottom you can see the title one school has more staffing in just these areas. Again, this is not all the staffing that we have in elementary schools, but a big, big chunk of it. And we'll go to the next slide. Are you going to jump in. Oh yes. Yeah. I can just provide a little bit more context around for title one example. Right. So in elementary school, one of the elementary schools that I have within the Gaithersburg cluster made a decision around adding a focus teacher with title one
schools. And many times what principals do is they look at their trend data, performance data, and identify. There might be certain grade levels that haven't been making the same amount of progress academically, so they would assign that focus teacher specifically to the grade level. So one, for example, that's assigned to fifth grade, fifth grade specifically the class sizes then look a little bit different because they've decided to add additional teaching support there. And they're able to do their small group math interventions much more explicitly for the fifth
graders, because that's where they have some trend data that they needed to be able to accelerate some of the progress and momentum as well. That could change. Then the following year, if they say our school data is now looking at, you know, our third grade rate, so that focus teacher might ebb and flow. And the decision that they made within the title one, it might not stay within that fifth grade. It might ebb and flow based upon when principals are making decisions because of responding to student data, results. And so the word focus
teacher just means a special intervention for the most part. Yes, I think it's a broad. It's an umbrella term that's used that. Then principals do have some of that autonomy to say, how is it going to be used because they've made that choice that particular year to use their title one money to go ahead and also support additionally? Okay. And is there any do you go back and return on investment. So they did that made that decision. How do you
reflect on hey, this worked marvelously or it didn't work. What what's that conversation look like. So conversation looks like for me right. As a principal supervisor, we will sit down and as we go through supervisory visits throughout the year, we ask schools. I work very closely with principals to say, well, you you put this in place, you need to develop some of the oversight structures to then monitor and benchmarks over time. We say the supervisory
visits throughout, because if we say in the middle of the year or a quarter, one quarter through that, we're not seeing that return on investment. We work with principals to say you need to make some adjustments necessarily in how you're using that person and the time that they're spending. Or it might be who the students they're working with. So if there are students that, for example, in elementary school, when we look at their beginning of the year dibels data, and then we look at their middle of the year dibels data, if they're making progress and there's less students that they
need to be able to continue to work to support, then we will work with them to say it's time to make an adjustment around where that focus teacher is spending time with, with different students. So we really look at it throughout the school year, similar to how we ask the principals to look at even just overall grade performance right before even a quarter, because at the end of a quarter, certainly if we don't want to just only look at the four quarters throughout the year, we want to look at it throughout.
And then the example you gave about the Gaithersburg Elementary School, where they chose to use a focus teacher, was that to create smaller, more classrooms with smaller class sizes, or is it to go into the existing classrooms to provide the math and the small group math intervention? Both. Usually it's used to go into classrooms because a lot of that model to be able to plug in model specifically with our schools that also do have higher ESL students, and there might be the plug in support while the classroom instruction is still
going on is where it's most advantageous. So if you think of it as far as you're having an additional teacher. So when teachers go into small group instruction, there is a second adult that's already provided there that can be designed during their collaborative planning. Makes a lot of sense, because I always wonder how teachers are able to deliver all those interventions. When you have a room full of 20 students. We can go on. No. Stewart. Yeah, I can go back or I can ask now I
see the reading initiative for the Non-focus school. And so are the focus and the title one schools just choose not to. Is that being absorbed somewhere else. So that is driven by we want the guidelines right now for reading classes in grade. This is just focused on grades one and two right now. This was an initiative the board brought forward early on. This is my
eighth year, but early on in my time in this position where they support the reading component for schools that have bigger class sizes than 20. So because our guidelines are at they were at 18, they're now at 19 for the focus and the title one schools, they already have class sections that are less than 21. So that's why you don't see it at the focus in title one. Actually, my
child went to one of those schools and had the reading initiative teacher, and I think when it very first started and it did really help, but I just wanted because it's blank on the other side. So I just figured we'd yeah, it's a great point because there's, there's pockets of need all over the system. Right. But the yeah, the reading initiative guideline right now as it is, is, is to create reading classes that are under 21. And that's already evident in focus in title one because
the guidelines are under under that. They're not that that's the only reading support we have. There are reading specialists. We do have a reading support teacher right now for some of our high farm schools. So thank you. So I did mention this already that we do include these in in the budget operating budget book. It's in appendix C. So that is something that I didn't provide a link for
that because we're doing the budget a little bit differently this year. But it is in your book. It's just the link won't go directly to appendix C like it will when we get the next budget book. So the staffing guidelines, we will see changes with those as, as there becomes availability of money and also the changing needs of schools. And one example I will give is when I first started in this position, pre-K was not as big
as it is now, and so many of our guidelines did K to 12, K to 12, you know, enrollment of K to 12. So and that had a big impact on elementary schools. So if you only staffed for administrators with K to 12 or K to five and only staffed for counselors for K to five, it caused it as pre-K started to expand, you might have a school that has 80 pre-kindergarteners in their building, maybe not all at once
because of half day programs, but those numbers were not being included in the numbers when we were determining some of the positions. So that is one example of over time change because of the different needs in schools and the different makeup of schools, a majority of our staffing allocations are driven by formulas. But like what I said earlier, we don't like to just rely on what the formula spits out. So if I may add, I think that's that's some
of the items that, you know, Doctor Taylor wants to look at in terms of establishing a standard staffing standards that are more apply more evenly, obviously with delineations between focus schools, title one schools and non focus schools. But that it's more if your guideline is you at the 26 student you know you get an additional teacher then that's what will happen. So that's what we're looking for. Of course there's a lot of work to be done in that area because we have
been like Diane mentioned, we have changed guidelines. You know, tweaks have been made, you know, to accommodate the changing needs of our populations and, and so on. But we really need to look at at everything and really look at how we can change some of those outdated, you know, formulas, which is very exciting for me. So I'm really happy about this. So I did mention this earlier too. We call them staffing retreats. But when I said retreats, it made it sound like
we were going to like the Eastern Shore for meetings. And we're not we're having them right here within M.C.P.S. So, so we have staffing meetings where and I mentioned this already, where we involve the people that have knowledge about the positions. So obviously I want Ossi to be a part of that because they are in schools and live it every day. They're in schools a lot more than I am just because it's part of their
daily work. But we do ask other offices to come and take part in these because they, you know, like, I might not know as much about how many 504 plans are in an elementary school. And, you know, I can look at the data, but what's the impact on the school and where those that are working with counselors have that information? So we do like to involve it's not something that's done in isolation. And it's always what I say to schools about master schedules.
Don't do it in isolation. So it's that same concept of getting the experts in there to help with that decision. And then it obviously, you know, we had a lot of good discussions today in our first one and just hearing different people's points of view, advocating for schools, that sort of thing. And of course, we monitor. So once staffing goes out, it will go out to principals. The in March.
And at that time they they obviously need to make some decisions about staffing based on what they get. But we don't just give them the staffing and then it stops. We constantly then we switch to monitoring. We go from projected enrollment to monitoring their actual enrollment. Because we're able to do that in synergy. And we keep an eye on that. I probably run Reports Weekly. We meet from March to September, sometimes
every other week, but then it can be weekly as we get closer to the end of June and we I will provide data for them about with the actual enrollment, and then also comparing that to what they have in staffing. And then we can make adjustments, principals can make requests. We have a nice smooth process for that. And basically we make a recommendation as a team and then push forward those recommendations to Mrs. Alfonso
Windsor for final decision. And if I just may add, this is something that Doctor Taylor has also mentioned in some of the meetings. And as it's not so much of an impact to K-12 because of the way enrollment projections are made, but all the other areas looking at projections, not necessarily through September 30th, because we know we get more enrollment throughout the end of the year to projections that maybe we account for December, you know,
up to December or January. We have to really determine what that would look, how that would look like. But that is something that he really wants to explore as well, to make sure that we're budgeting for all those incoming students that we get throughout the year. And I will add to that, that, you know, being in this position eight years, you tend to start to see the trends in different schools, you know, a school that you may be the first couple of years pulled back a kindergarten teacher, and then you were adding it back in August. And so I'm a real strong
proponent of telling principals to keep historical data trends, because you might have a school that gets 40 kindergarten enrollments in August, where if we're looking at the enrollment in May, it's not going to be, you know, it's not going to reflect what really is going to happen. And so if that's consistently happening at a school, it's something that we keep in mind. And also we I encourage principals to hold on
to that historical data as well, because there's 206. Yeah. Yeah. And I would add from, from a school where the school rience looks like so they get their staffing, principals get their staffing. And it looks a little bit different from secondary to elementary school. So an elementary school principal, you know receiving their staffing, it's really necessarily by who are the students that are articulating to the next grade level, fifth graders that are leaving. They make decisions as to like where teachers are going to stay with
students, or they need to shift because it might be your third grade class is your largest class of students together and now moving up to fourth grade. So you might need to have more teachers at the fourth grade level. So it's a little bit cleaner for elementary principals. Their decision making is more around. Like Diane shared, if they're a focus school title one school, what are the additional positions that they're going to shift? As you said, because of the data is looking different as they monitor it throughout. And how are they going to necessarily
add some other positions for certain grade levels? So things like how many are reading with a reading initiative, where is that going to live and which grade level and response to the data at the secondary level, it's really driven by students. And so where students are registering and they have just completed their registration at this point in time. So when students have done their course registration, that drives more where they're going to be allocating and moving their teachers. So how many teachers, how many students have signed up for certain courses? And that
really drives, as well as where their leadership teams have developed some guiding tenets. So guiding tenet for secondary school could sound, for example, like we have a high number of ESL students within our school population. So we are going to design our master schedule and make sure that we have the sufficient number of sections to support the English classes, depending on their level, as well as having electives. And we
schedule that first. Another guiding tenet could be we value that. We know that we have our most vulnerable populations, that we want to be able to make sure our class sizes stay smaller. So we're making that decision as a team, and we're going to have more sections available, smaller class sizes for certain courses versus maybe some of their other other classes that they can still run them at 32 exactly where they are. So those are the decisions that secondary principals, principals go through as an
example and meeting with their leadership team throughout. Then as they might go through their numbers and they find that they might need to either ask for staffing, we have a process for that to go through the request. That process is formalized for them to make the request, they have to bring data attached to that. As far as what's the justification for that staffing and then directors, we will meet with them to go through their data and justification. Particularly, it happens more intensely with our newer principals because it's the
first time they're going through it. Our more veteran principals know their trend data. Newer principals haven't had that experience yet. And then and then, as Diane shared, as we look through the enrollments, we do have conversations as well around where will your enrollment projection you're not at the enrollment where we projected and you're not. And we haven't seen that over time. So we do pull staffing and we do that early on and throughout so that schools, by the time they get to the summer time, are able
to have a master schedule that's ready to go to receive kids. Is there any differentiation for high schools in terms of more highly impacted schools versus not so much? Yes, there there are so in categories like the academic intervention is one category where there are schools that are highly impacted. That's one category. And their staffing. That would be an increase at a highly impacted school versus one that's not
that gives high school principals some more flexibility around because it's not attached to a specific content. So they have flexibility. We find more so more recently that that's used for math in that area as well. The other flexibility that exists within not just high school but secondary is they have resource teachers for the high school level where they're teaching within their content. At the middle school, they have
content specialists that are by content. But middle schools also have team leaders. So how they use team leaders, most of ours, I think we're all of them are now they have six team leader. Well, those are those are some principal and leadership team decisions about where the needs are. So what they teach and who they support is very strategic. I can share one example. When I was a principal, I had a team leader that specifically was also a math teacher. Team
leaders come with a supplemental stipend as well as summer days. So the decision to support math specifically was because we were then able to the person was getting a stipend, was able to run some after school math support that was free to students as well as during the summer. That teacher then was also assigned to run some summer boost courses, because they were already factored into our staffing, our allocations, and
again, it was a free opportunity for students. So that becomes the principal autonomy around those decisions and flexibility that they can have. Mr. You mentioned supporting newer principals, and I know we've had an influx. So two questions. Did that affect the stability in what you were doing in staffing, adding and removing, or how you're planning? And is the
trend becoming more stable? And also your example of what you did as a principal? I mean, I presume some of that came with experience. So how are you advising newer principals to take advantage of getting the bang for your bucks? So they will start with the bang for your buck question. We do within our secondary schools
specifically, and we do also coach within our elementary schools, but it's a little bit more detailed within secondary, we have master schedule reviews with them. So we have a format that we go through, you know, a series of questions to really, really interrogate some of the decision making. Because even with a new principal, right, there may have been decisions that were made by the prior principal that might surface and might look different. And so when we go through that process of the master schedule review,
that uncovers a lot of that as well. But part of what I do as a principal supervisor is through those coaching sessions, you know, to share the experiences with our new principals. I just sat with two of my new I have three, three newer, two brand new secondary principals, and we go through a lot of the examples and intricacies around how can you use some of that autonomy to make some of those decisions based upon responding to the data that you have? So new principals, really, it is
important for principals, supervisors to sit and have that conversation early on, because timing of making those decisions is really important. I think your second question around new principals and the stability in staffing, because you said it's helpful to know your trends, but if you're new, you might not always have as much information. Yeah. And Diane has a lot of information because you share a lot of information. So a lot of
times that is coming from from us, you know, because if it's a new principal going into maybe that school I was talking about, I'm not going to try to pull the wool over their eyes and, and, and you know, we're going to, we're going to do what's right for kids and what's right for the school. I do keep some trend data, like kindergarten enrollment, for example, because that's kind of a little bit of an unknown, a little bit of an art, some of some of a science. And so I will keep that data over time and have an average so
that it gives us at least something to start with. So if right now they're only showing 55 students enrolled in kindergarten, but their average over time is 70. I don't want to make a decision on pulling at that time because their average is 70, unless it was involved in a boundary change, which is my favorite because obviously the averages will start going down for that. But we also ask that
principals, if they can, when they're coming in and if they can still have a conversation with the former principal to try to get that information as well. But there's a lot that we have kind of internally, whether it's in our head or it's on paper, because we've been collecting it. Cimarron. Thank you. Hi. So I wanted to go back to the Reading Initiative teachers for a second. So it says it's saying
the first school is receiving additional staffing for class size reduction. And grades one and two. Is that including like our focus schools and our title one schools? Because the other side of that is that our class size guidelines and title one and focus schools are 25 and third grade and 27 and four and five. So that's over 21. So the reading initiative is solely for grades one and two I see. Yeah. Then a principal, if they feel they don't need it for grades
one and two, we ask them to look at kindergarten. And that was a that was a directive from the board. Yeah. Thank you. I just wanted to clear that up. I was like, wait yeah, yeah, totally makes sense. 21 kids. You're like classes. Yeah. So I was also curious about you know, we're talking about end of January for staffing and that's, you know, projecting for the following year that as we're projecting, if we're imagining that there's, you know, it's
November and all of the fourth grade classes at a title one school have 28 students, like, is there a date that we say, oh, it's November 1st, it's too late. We can't give you additional staffing. Or we say, I can imagine that. Like if it were June 17th or whatever, that we would say, no, no. But is there a do you have kind of a cutoff or at any point during the year we so we don't have a cutoff. The only cutoff we have
is we stop meeting weekly, usually by the end of September. But we like recently we've kept the form, the request form open until the end of December. And then we close it because the requests are really, really slowing down. It's almost to nothing. But we put a note on there that if you are experiencing, you know, if you believe that you need additional staffing, please reach out to your director, you know, director directly, and then the director will work with me and
with whomever, because sometimes the requests are for special ed and we keep them within the same request form. And so we just make sure we get it to the right person to look at data. And those are more just onesie twosie conversations. If we got a big influx, I'm sure we would meet together, but it really slows down. Okay. Yeah, I just I, I don't know if it was rumor, but I had heard before that there was a cut off date. And I know that a lot of educators at
schools would be so relieved to hear that there's not a cut off date that they I mean, the only time pressure. Yeah. You know, I obviously I don't think anyone would say, let's disrupt all of our classes and at the very end of May. But that's still, I think, would ease some minds to hear that the last thing that I wanted to talk about was that we're about to completely change all of your trend data with an upcoming boundary change and study, and I just wanted to kind of bring that up. And I don't
necessarily have a question or a directive, but just to like, bring it to the forefront of everyone's minds that this is a lot of this work that we're talking about right now is going to be really different really soon. So I've been through, I think, two, 2 to 3 boundary studies in this role, not as big as the one we're doing, but for example, Clarksburg. I was involved with that. There's been a couple up in that area and we basically have amazing folks that work in capital planning
that can show us this group of kids once it's decided where where the boundaries are going to be, they can say, okay, here's a group of kids that were at this school, they're now going to this school. And that helps me. And also the demographer is working with that person as well. It helps us all to know kind of where the kids are going to go. So yeah, it's going to be a lot of fun. And if I could also add to your your question around the rumors of
like the cutoff. So there's different scenarios that also exist throughout the year. So there might be a school who puts in a request for, you know, let's go for a third grade. And the guidance is at 25. And they currently have three teachers and they have one class of 25, another class of 25. And then another kiddo has arrived. Right. And now they have one class of 26. The request might come in and we might just pause on it because they have one student. And so we don't want to
we're not looking to allocate a full teacher, because there's one of the three classes that has one student over. And so we and it depends on the grade level as well. So there's more likely we see trends in in kindergarten and one that you know is throughout. But you know, third grade and increasing your third grade throughout or getting more students rather throughout that time might not always happen. So sometimes what happens is they're paused. And so we kind of see some of the data. The other thing that happens is as we are going
through those seasons that Diane shared, that we might be pulling staffing, we are pausing. And so we're able to pull staffing from another school to be able to bring that back into kind of the pot of to be able to redistribute. So there are periods of time where we might pause to be able to make some of those other decisions or make some of those shifts. And I do want to add to that. So as it gets later in the school year, and they're asking for additional teachers when those requests, recommendations for
additional staffing come to me, some of the questions are. So you might have it's December and you're asking for an additional teacher. Are you going to break it now you have a three classes of third grade. Are you at this point going to separate them and put them into four classes? Because if not, then the staffing might look different, right? It might be just additional supports, you know, for those teachers. So those are the conversations and the considerations that we have later in the school year. Thank
you. I know we're running out of time. I consider this part one. So I'm happy to hear about the workgroup. What did you call it? The. Yeah, there's going to be work groups for the staffing standards. So there's not so much, you know, perception in some ways or, you know, sometimes whoever advocates the loudest, we want to make sure that there's equity and there are real standards in staffing. And as a follow up, if we could get the formula so we can see
what the formula looks like. And I get it, it's not a hard and fast, but it would be helpful to see what that looks like for elementary and secondary. Sure. So I can expand on what's in the guidelines if it doesn't have an exact formula in the guidelines, like I'll give an example. Focused local focus. Teachers don't have the actual formula. I can give you what we're using this year. We're still having conversations about next year,
but I can certainly give you what we are using this year. And have you have you somehow documented the additional supports that like community schools get because they get additional staffing? Right? Is that documented anywhere in the budget book? So community schools, we community schools work a little bit different because the funding we get for community schools and they're changing the guidelines. You know, they're working to update some of their guidelines, cannot be used for academic supports, have to be used for wraparound
services, and it's more about needs assessment. So every school has to complete an assessment of their needs of their of that particular school and determine whether, you know, they might need a parent community coordinator or they might need, you know, additional funding for field trips. So it's a little bit different for community schools because the funding cannot be used for instructional staff. MSD is looking into that. I think that's part of the parsing, because there's a lot of funding that goes for community schools. That is not going for those academic achievement. That won't
be in our appendix to the budget, because it's kind of a yes. It's based on academic intervention. Yes. And it's more like it's like title one where, you know, it all depends on, you know, what the school needs assessments are. Yeah. It's not they're not necessarily instructional. Yes. Mr. I'm looking forward to more information about the workgroup. And if community members are going to be invited, because this is something we hear a lot
from parents is especially class size across the board, but especially kindergarten is one hotspot I've noticed. So yeah, if we can get more information at some point, then I won't have to put in for a resolution. That would be great. Thanks. No, we will we'll we can come back to that again. We're looking to establish them by, you know, end of March, beginning of April and
then have the work completed by the summer so that we can bring the recommendations to the board and then to the budget. That's great news. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for being here on an evening, and looking forward to working with you in the coming year. Thank you. Same here. Ditto. Thank you for coming. Yeah. You're welcome. You as well. Okay okay. So we're almost there. Next item is our informational item, the Sami
annual board expenditure report. Mr. Lockman, is there anything we need to know about this? This is just an information item. Is. My understanding is something that every six months comes to this committee as a just as a printout of, of board, office expenses. Do we have that as a printout? If it is not in the packet, it is on board docs. I will confirm that we have it. It isn't something that requires action. It is posted to board
docs. I will make sure that we have copies. We do have it. Yes, it is in there. It's the it's got the blue coating on it. Okay. Do board members have any comments or questions about that? Okay. All right. And just for closing, I wanted to since we're kind of taking over this committee, I just wanted to get your thoughts as we plan the committee meetings for the upcoming year. If you have any
feedback on topics that you'd like to see us consider as we plan for the upcoming year. Miss Stewart, I would like to dig in on our HVAC program. The way we pick how, when, when to replace HVAC systems, maybe the spending that leads up to that. Also, are we have indoor air quality
monitors in every classroom. How are we using that to guide repairs? Is that do we see a benefit in saving us some money there? Because then we're able to fix systems before it becomes chronic? Anyway, a general review and how we spend our money on HVAC and also looking forward right to how we should
be. What's the Q? How will be coming up in future years, and what community can expect based on funding that we have or don't have? So maybe just to be sure that I'm clear as we think about things for the future, talking about both the HVAC program itself as well as HVAC and systemic renovations as a component of the overall capital budget. Would that be correct?
Yes. Okay. And also, yes. And just how are you making those decision processes? And if we have to, you know, there's costs to delaying, you know, and so maybe trying to do some analysis there if we can. Mr. Suvarna. Yeah. I would like to, to do a deeper dive into our pension and opeb funds and with a, with a
more of a fine tooth comb on what specifically we're sort of investing into and how that might align with, you know, what our standards are as an organization, as a school system, in terms of the initiatives that we want to see put forward and really, really making sure that we're we're investing in the things that as a school system, we also believe in Zimmerman. I believe we've already talked about this in
more in a budget context, but I'd like for us to explore what things, either federally or from the state, I suppose even locally, are kind of our unfunded mandates. And where we're making up that funding, how much we're spending, all of that. I'd also like to see how much we're spending in like outsourcing of staff and services and M.C.P.S. And kind of dive into that and see what, what spending is going on there and all of that. Okay. Am I
allowed a second? Yes. Go ahead. I know that we only have so many meetings so we can talk about how to prioritize later, but the other issue that comes up a lot is maintaining our fields and how we where those expenditures come from. And I did ask this question before, and the answers haven't come back yet. But for
instance, I have heard that maybe the secondary fields. A student said that the students went out to weed the field. I'm just a service learning project. Yeah, yeah. So okay, well, we will look into that. Okay. I'm interested in following up with the Staffing Standards workgroup and really focusing on return on investment of our, our staff. So yeah, I'm just going to go back
to, to what I said before to provide some a little bit more clarity. More specifically, you know, what we're doing in terms of like, what our investments in private equity look like and how that relates to, again, what are the impact of our money is doing out in the community at large based on what our and we can always retract back to you if we need more clarity as we move forward. That concludes today's Fiscal Management Committee meeting. Do I have a motion to
adjourn? So moved. Seconded. All in favor? Raise your hands. Meeting adjourned.