o the March 23rd, 2026 meeting of the Fiscal Management Committee. I would like to start by introducing ourselves. Hey, good afternoon, Julie Yang. Glad to be here with all of you. And Miss Zimmermann is on her
way. And I'm Carla Silvestre, school board member at large. Okay. Informational summary for committee. For the committee's December 2nd, 2025 meeting is posted on board docs. Any questions? No. Okay, let's
begin with agenda item 3.1 state Revenue and cost drivers. As staff come to the table, I would ask that you please introduce yourself for the record. And as you're getting
settled, I did want to say that I am very excited for this presentation today because the community often asks, what is in that $3.6 billion budget? Why is it so big? Where is the
money going? And so I think the focus for today is to understand some of the things that have caused our budget to increase in the last few years. So that the community can understand better. You know, this is these are real costs. This is what it costs to fund
public education in the 15th largest school system in the US. And we're going to learn some of what those cost drivers are today. So that's correct. Good afternoon. Ivan Alfonso Windsor Chief Financial Officer Yes, and I know that this is, you
know, like you mentioned, it's it's a big discussion point that we always have with our stakeholders. You know, where do our dollars go? So we want to approach this presentation today in two parts. We're going to talk a little bit about the state revenues so that everyone understands what it is, but also because sometimes the
state revenue does drive the cost for the local educational agencies like M.C.P.S. because there's a local share that is attached to any state revenue. So for any amount of money that the state provides us, there is a local share that we have to either match or surpass, you
know, the state revenue. So let's talk let's start first with the state revenue. There are several components of state revenue. And the biggest amount, the biggest portion of the state aid is in part for the foundation's grant. And this really helps us, you know,
support the needs of our school system, our teachers, you know, our parent educators, and so on, specifically around general education. But it's nowhere near, you know, and you're going to see that later, nowhere near the amount of, you know, based on, you know, the the budget that we have that is
3.6, $3.7 billion. The other another component is the comparable wage index. And this is really is a little bump that Montgomery County gets in state aid to account for the high cost of living in Montgomery County. And that is, again, everything in a state aid. And I just want to make sure that
everyone understands this is relative to the other school districts in the system. Everything is relative in terms of our wealth and and in terms of our enrollment, we get funding for multilingual
learners for our compensatory education, which is based on the number of students that qualify for free and reduced price meals. We get two types of funding for our students with disabilities. One of them is a formula based based on
enrollment, and the other one is a reimbursement. And and I want to bring your attention to the students with disability, the reimbursement. In the past, we used to get 70% reimbursed, you know, for some of the costs based on legislation that happened in, in the Federal
Assembly last year. This year, we're only getting 60% of the cost reimbursed. And in FY 27, it would be 50% of the cost reimbursed. Then transportation, we get a small portion of funding, you know, for the transportation of our students. And then there's another big
piece that has been added to the state aid over the last few years, which is the Maryland the blueprint for Maryland's future. And there's different portions. There are different aspects of the blueprint that is part of our state aid. And we'll go over that in this presentation as well. Alfonso
Windsor, using the example of multilingual learners, for example, we get some money for that from the state. But each of these items, it's a percentage of the total cost. Some of it is a small
percentage and some of it is a larger percentage. So just because we get state aid and we might get federal aid, but it tends to be small percentages of what it actually costs to run these services. Is that correct? That is correct. And again, you know, each of this components have a local match.
So let's say they give us $50 million. It means that we also have to match, you know, from our local government, let's say $70 million. So everything, every single aspect of state aid has a local match, a portion higher portion than what they actually give us that are local, that are local
government has to provide. Thank you. You're welcome. So this is just for, you know, a visual. I'm not going to go over all the numbers, but this is what we're getting state aid from, you know, from MSD from
the state really. And then including the blueprint for Maryland's future. This doesn't include what we were just talking about our local match. But if you look at this, if you go from 2023 when we were receiving $863 million, and now that we're getting about $1
billion, a little bit over $1 billion, remember our total budget is $3.6 billion. That means that $2.5 billion or more is the local match that we must provide to align with the state aid. So we get one third of
state aid and two thirds is from our local government that we that we must fund and that we must match. And if you look at this just to talk about one, you know, really quickly the
Foundation grant, which is the biggest portion that we get, hasn't increased that much, you know, from FY 23 to FY 27, you know, it's about a $40 million increase from then until now. And then the comparable wage index has actually reduced
since FY 23. But we know that the salaries in Montgomery County and our cost of living is a lot larger than, you know, than $35.4 million. That is just a small portion of what they provide to us. And then the other one that I want to bring your attention to is our students with disability
formula. It has increased substantially. That's the one that has seen the biggest increase you look at it from 23 to 20 4 to 27. But our budget for special education is over $600 million. So this is a very small piece of what we
actually spend in, in, in our on our students. Any questions on this slide before I move forward? So then I want to move to the cost drivers. And this is where we're going to look at those different components of the blueprint as well. So as,
as Miss Silvestri mentioned, everyone is really interested. And, you know, and it's something that we have to make sure that it's very transparent for our stakeholders. What are the cost drivers? What is driving the increases in our budget? And the main cost driver is going to be compensation and benefits. And
although that is separate listed here, separate from the blueprint for Maryland's future, if you remember, there is a lot of items in the blueprint for Maryland's future that is aligned with compensation. We have to make sure that by this
past July, every new teacher in Montgomery County was making at least 60,000 actually in the state. But getting to 60,000 is not alone because we are competing with other districts, you know, for those same teachers. So we have to make sure that we are ahead of the
curve so that we can recruit the best, you know, the teachers to serve our students. Then we have the blueprint for Maryland's future, and we're going to go through the different aspects of the blueprint or different components of the blueprint for Maryland's future. We're going to talk about Esser cost
because that was a significant increase that we had to fund through the local funding. Once the effects of the pandemic or the funding for the pandemic, the effects haven't gone away, the funding has gone away, and then the inflationary changes.
These are really the main components of our cost driver cost drivers moving forward. So we're going to start with compensation and benefits. And this slide is a little bit different to the to the ones that are going to follow it. Because if you're going to see,
you're seeing what the compensation is for 23, 24, 25, 26, and 27 and that's based on our negotiated agreements as opposed to other slides. This is an increase every single year. So when you add up all
these years since FY 23 in compensation and benefits alone, our budget has increased by $655 million. So this is, you know, this is incumbent incumbent also of our benefit
plan. And as you can see in the very last line, this is the recovery. But we haven't really made investments every single year onur employee benefit plan, which is really impacting us at all as well. And then when you look at laps and turnover, you know, that's the amount. We keep talking about
that, right? This is when we double budget where we say this is what we need. If every single position was filled. But if we know that not every single position is going to be filled. So we're going to reduce our budget by this amount. If you look at this in FY 23, our laps and turnover
was $37 million. If you remember at the time, that was when the county council said that they didn't want M.C.P.S. to hold that fund balance. So in order to also balance the budget, because if you remember, they were reducing us by almost
$90 million between one thing and another. We increase our laps and turnover. We took it to the max that we could take it at $70 million and then 74.3. But that has really impacted our ability to have a fund balance. And when you run into issues like we run this year where we have five days, you
know, if no event, a weather event, you know, or our electricity bills go up, you know, we don't have a lot of room in order to, you know, to access funds for those emergency items in our budget. So eventually we really need to start decreasing the amount that we reduce for laps and
turnover, but that if you, if we wouldn't have increased that our investment in compensation and benefits, not investments, the amount in our budget would have been more than $655 million. So over the course of five years, including next year,
really the bulk of the increase going from $3 billion to $3.6 billion. It is, you know, salaries and benefits. So.
These are just annual increases. So this is the money that we add to the budget year over year. So it's it's you have to add all of this up to come up with the total that we have added from FY 23 until now. Yes. And over $3.6 billion budget
compensation and benefits each year is about $800 million. Benefits is about $800 million. Yes. Benefits. Benefits alone? Yes. It's about $800 million. When we look at salaries and benefits, which is about, you
know, 89% of our budget, you are talking, you know, over $3 billion in salaries and benefits. Okay? That's when we talk about it being a people, institution or budget is mostly people. $3 billion of it is to
pay for the people that do the work all over this county. Correct. We are a people's business, you know, to work with our students. And just to explain again, the labs and turnover. So this means that you're not filling positions and that's how you're getting
this. That means that we. No, sorry. It means that we know that every single position is not going to be filled at every single day of the school system. So this accounts for positions that you know, that are not filled immediately. It accounts for when somebody leaves. And
then between that time and the time that somebody else is hired to fill that position, you know, the savings during that period of time that accounts for that. How are you able to increase it from 37 to 70 million in one year? Well, remember, if you remember, in
FY 23, we used to use $35 million of our fund balance to fund the next year's budget. And that was part of a position salary surplus that we used to have, you know, based on laps and turnover. So when you we
had 37.8, we added another 30 million and we keep increasing positions. Then that made up the 70 million. But that's where we're feeling it right now because we don't have a fund balance. In order for it to support any of the emergencies that we have. But I guess to to get to a number
that big, are you purposely not filling positions in order to make some savings? When you think that we have over 25,000 permanent positions in the school system, right? When you think about that, $3 billion of our budget is in position, $70
million is a very, very small percentage of that. And usually companies see between a 5% and an 8% savings you know in labs and turnover in terms of being able to fill positions at any given time. So it's normal. It's an industry normal. But
what is not industry normal is to actually reduce that amount from the budget, that that large amount of money from the budget. Okay. Thank you, Miss Yang. So I just want to state that actually we have been doing very well with hiring,
and that is why we won't have that much less internal money to save for emergency. And so sometimes you create an issue that you don't have cash flow to help you pay for stuff along
the way. So it's something that we, we, we need to continue to explain to the public and to our funders, our situation. And that is a great point because when we made that decision,
when we were asked to make that decision in FY 23 of no longer having a fund balance, and we make that decision for FY 24. And then we were reduced further by $40 million. We reduced positions by. That meant that a lot of our vacancies were filled because
we had to place employees in the vacancy, you know, in the positions that were vacant. So you are really right, Miss Yang, we have done a really good job in filling the positions. And unfortunately, that also creates a different problem for us in a way, or a different
challenge because our laps and turnover is not as high as we used to in terms of being able to save those fundings. We can continue. Okay, so then we're going to go over the cost drivers for the blueprint for
Maryland's future. And there's really five components for the Maryland cost. You know, that that we're going to look at career ladder or national Board certified teachers, you know, and these are two separate things. One is, you know, the additional bump in salary that our teachers that are national
Board certified get. But there's also a career ladder component where we need to build this positions like lead teachers, right, to, to be able to create new leaders and, and make sure that our teachers stay in the classroom or that, you know, they keep supporting our students. The other piece
is pre-kindergarten, concentration of poverty or otherwise known as community schools, college and career readiness. These are your AP exams, your dual enrollment, your CTE programs. And then we have the transition or transitional supplemental instruction on the blueprint
coordinator, which are smaller components of the blueprint. And some of those components are being phased out. So the blueprint transition was to help us transition from our the regular way we used to budget to the blueprint. And then transitional supplemental
instruction was a program that was to make sure that our third grade students get additional reading support. And the state aid is transitioning that out. So it's going to remain solely covered by the school districts. But remember the last slide I said that you have to add all
of those years to really come up with how much money we have been increasing in terms of salaries, but in this slice and in the others, you're just going to see every year how much we are. We're we're budgeting for this programs. So
in FY 23, the cost of blueprint was 38.8 million that the state would give us. And we had a local share of 27.5 million. As you move forward, you can see how the state share is decreasing in FY 20. For the state, it was 34 million. We
had to come up with 37 million. And then when you get to FY 27, the state is giving us 61.9 for all this programs. And we have to account for 68.9 million in for all the blueprint programs. So in FY 23, we were spending
66.3 million in the blueprint programs. Now we're at 130.8 million for blueprint programs. And this is not this is absent of the compensation piece. This is specifically for this programs. So I, I want to point
out, Madam Chair, that on slide four, stay a the total stay a increase from 863 to from FY 23
to now. FY 27 to 1000, like one point A 1053 million. And that is an 18% increase. However, if you look at the blueprint cost,
our share on the page eight, our local share have gained doubled. So it's disproportionate impact. So we we love to see state aid increase, but the percentage is
not keeping pace of our local share increase. Can you say that again, Miss Yang? So on page eight is our local share blueprint. It's doubled. We we doubled more than doubled our local share. And if you go back
to the total number on page four, that is the total state, a increase about 18% from FY 23 to now. Okay. So we have we are disproportionately putting in more local money in order to
carry out the blueprints requirement for our accounting and the local share 27,000,023, 37 and 24 and so forth. That
becomes part of the base budget the next year. And so the public doesn't see, right. Oh, last year we put in 55 million, and that's now part of the whole even, you know, people are not even thinking about
blueprint being part of the base budget. But every, every year, the base budget grows with the local share. That is correct, yes. Mr. Thank you. I was also noticing the interesting percent increase year over year, and part of
what stood out to me is that the initial increase is significantly lower than some later years. I guess my thought is like, do how are we trying to forecast what we can predict in future budgets and future increases as we start to look into the blueprint going
forward? So yeah, that's a great question. And it has increased. It has substantially increased from the beginning because at the very beginning, they're also not requiring a lot of local share. Right. And also the programs that are not have not expanded as much and
they keep expanding the program. So our local share is going to keep increasing so we can manage some of the local share for the blueprint. Keep in mind that this is the minimum required. Local share doesn't mean that you cannot, you know, increase it more substantially.
I think where it's going to be, it's very challenging for us to project is when it comes when it comes to the career ladder, because the career ladder, you know, it depends on how fast you want to move, the progression of the teachers, you know, when are we going to
get to that point where they're saying that we might not be meeting the blueprint requirements and everything keeps changing because the needle keeps being moved in terms of a blueprint, you know what, what is on the floor today might not be in the law next year. So I think for all the other programs that we're
going to go through them, like pre kindergarten, we can manage the growth. Obviously, we want to provide full day kindergarten for our students, you know, as much as possible, but we can manage that growth a little bit as long as we meet the requirements 5 or 6 years, we just cannot wait until the
very end to then have this huge investment. So that's what we're trying to move it, you know, little by little, progressively, you know, until I'm making sure that we're meeting, you know, the guidelines. Yeah. So this is, this is really what they tell us. This is the minimum that they tell us. And a lot of
times, you know, we have to spend a little bit more than what they tell us. The state actually tell us how much is our minimum local share. Okay, so then to follow up to this as well, it sounds like, you know, some of the goals that are perhaps a little bit further off just to say that we're to
meet them in 2030, that we begin meeting them incrementally starting in 2025 and making progress towards that. So our local share increases, not at a high rate when we have to meet some of these requirements at a higher rate. Does that capture that?
Well, that is correct. And we're going to see that in pre-kindergarten. Right. So let's go back to that one like where we were thinking that we would be opening the Burtonsville Early Childhood Center this year, and we're not going to be ready. We still have to make a little bit of progress. So we added five, you
know, full day classes for pre-kindergarten. But when, you know, we start opening that center, then we're going to have to make more incremental increases to make sure that we're meeting, you know, the target by 2030. Okay, so it sounds like for our viewing public that we can expect that
we're going to see increases amongst our local share for the blueprint because we're seeing a bigger increase in state requirements going forward. Yeah, absolutely. We might get a little bit of relief in terms of local share because
blueprints, community school component will will not move forward as fast as before. AM I understanding that correctly? Well, I did hear this week that there are some legislation that are moving forward. I'm not sure yet what that will mean.
And if it's going to, if you know, if it's going to even impact us for this year. Okay. So yes, that is going through the legislation right now. But when we met with AIB, they weren't they weren't giving us all the details yet. Okay. So
pending you're welcome. But that's I mean, that's to the point of we don't know how things are going to change, right? You know, there's requirements now and we don't know how we're moving forward. I did want to take a moment to approve the agenda. So can I have a motion and a second to
approve today's agenda move approval. Second, all in favor, raise your hands. That's unanimous. And would like to welcome Miss Zimmerman. Thank you. My apologies. I was late at work. No worries. Okay, we can continue. Thank you. So
then we're just going to go over the the the programs that a specific programs are not going to go through all the numbers. But as you can see, you know, this is pre-K in 23. We're at $18.3 million. We're now at $42.2 million. And that's just making small
incremental changes, right? Year over year in the number of full day pre-kindergarten that we are offering. And M.C.P.S. is still in what they call tier one, meaning it's students at the highest threshold of poverty that we're providing the full day kindergarten for. We have it moving to the other
tiers yet. For for the concentration of poverty, which is our community schools. As you can see in FY 23, there was no local share. There were not asking us to come up with a local share for our community schools. And we had 19 at the
time. We have gone from 19 schools all the way to projected 80 for FY 27. I'm not sure what's going to happen with that new legislation. If if 80 is still going to be the number, you know, for next year. But now our local share is $23
million. Our state share is 31 $31.9 million. And even if they don't increase the number of community schools for next year as schools are moving from what they call the first year to the second year when they become eligible for the per pupil
grant, the local share increases significantly. Even if we're not adding any other schools. So that is that is part of the the you know, that's one of the biggest increases for the for the for the blueprint for Maryland's
future, the community schools. What is it true up nursing? I noticed that is that so there's two aspects of concentration of poverty. There's the personal grant and there's the per pupil grant. So the personal grant says that every school must have a community liaison and
that every school must have a full time nurse. So depending on what services our schools are getting from the HHS, you know, some schools are school based health centers where they might have a full time nurse. Then if that part of the funding is not using for the nurses, then the schools can
use it for other things. So we drew up the nursing based on or we account for the portion for nursing based on what other staffing the schools have based on DHHS. So you may not use it for nursing. If they already have a nurse and you use it for
other things, for other things. Wrap around services. Yes. Then this is the college and career readiness. Again, this is something that has substantial increase in FY 23. And this are our AP exams, our dual enrollment, you know, and our
CTE programs. This is you know, where the funding is. The increases are coming in. And as the programs became more popular, you know, we anticipate that our costs are going to keep increasing. Then these are the last three that
that we kind of, you know, bundled together. This is a transitional supplemental instruction. The blueprint coordinator and the blueprint transition. So as you know, the blueprint requires you to have a blueprint coordinator. They paid a very small portion of that salary. And you know, that
sometimes is not even sufficient because one blueprint coordinator for US district of our size is not able to keep track of everything that goes on with the blueprint, the transition, the blueprint, transition grant. I believe we have one more year and the transition supplemental instruction. This is the very
last year, FY 26, and that is a small amount of funding that was providing Paraeducators to support our grade three students through reading. Obviously, it's not something that we're taking back because it's one of the biggest. It's one of the priorities of the
Board of Education, our strategic plan. So it's something that we must continue to do in our budget. So the local share is not necessarily going away. And then continuing in the vein of the cost drivers, you know, if we answer one more
question about blueprint is the plan. I mean, I know the state also has its financial challenges, but is the plan for the state to continue to provide funding for these initiatives, or is the plan for the local counties to
eventually fully fund these initiatives? If eventually the plan is for the local local eventually. As for the plan for the local liaise to fully fund, you know, the blueprint programs. Yes. Okay. The years
keep moving back. But yes, eventually, you know, that's the expectation. It's an important note. That is the expectation. Yes. Thank you. So if we're ready, we're just going to talk over the again
cost drivers and it's the SR cost. So we made we M.C.P.S. really tried very hard to put things on the fund through the SR grants, things that were one time funding. We really try not to put a lot on the SR grant.
That was multiple year that we would need to keep. But there were some things that we couldn't avoid and some of that were, you know, the Hvac and air quality. We, we put in the sensor system where you can monitor the air quality in the classrooms from afar. And, you
know, and we need to keep paying that contract in order to keep having that ability. HVA you know, contractual, you know, this is, it is also part of what we've been discussing in terms of the CIP and the operating budget and the need to make sure that we're
maintaining the systems that our schools. But at one point it was covered through, you know, the Esser grant, $72.7 million of that, that we shifted then to the operating budget. We increased our mental health staffing substantially, you know, based on what we used
to have through the Esser grant, the psychologist, we added 12. And remember, once we make a commitment to a position, that cost is not staying the same, right? The compensation, you know, is increases year after year. And then we added more
social workers. 1723, 16, 24 and then 31, you know, in FY 25. And additionally, through the Esser grant, we added 17 additional family engagement specialists that we know, you know, we're looking through in
our operating budget right now. Additionally, as a result of the pandemic, we gave Chromebooks to almost every single one of our students and the cost of repairing those Chromebooks, you know, it's substantial. So we used to fund it through the Esser, 3.444, $5
million, and that was something that we had to move to the operating budget. So when you look at this in total, you're looking at about $20 million in expenses from the Esser that we moved to the operating budget, to our base budget that
increases year after year with our compensation. And then last but not least is our inflationary changes. Those are not going to go away. You know, the we based on our consumer price index and we're talking
about instructional materials, our operational supplies, our technology products and also our contracts. Our contracts are a substantial increase year over year, specifically our technology contracts. They use the software, you know, the Google, the, the Microsoft, the
cost of all that software increases, you know, year over year by inflationary cost based fuel and utility costs continue to increase, you know, right now as a result of the world situation that we're experiencing, the cost of our
fuel has increased substantially in the last two weeks. You know, the political events, the geopolitical events that are taking place. And, you know, in our operating budget, we're increasing facilities, but utilities cost by almost four, 4 to $5 million. And that
is something that is not going to slow down. We're going to have to continue funding that, you know, every year and making increases every year. And another inflationary change is our employee tuition reimbursement. As colleges and universities increase their tuitions, that has significant
increase, you know, an impact on us and what we're able to provide, what we're able to reimburse our employees for. And keep in mind that this is a contractual obligation. So so it's something that we must meet as part of our contracts with our associations. What do
you estimate to be the inflationary delta from last year's budget to this year's budget, in terms of dollars or percentage? Both. Both, I would say between 4% and 6% increase just for this area. Right?
Because remember, most of our budget is personnel. So, you know, there's so I would say between last year and this year, between 30 and $40 million, if you take everything into consideration, the multiple contracts that we have, the
utilities, you know, and, and the cost of supplies. Great. Thank you. You're welcome. Then if there's no no more questions on this, I just want to touch really briefly on minimum school funding, which is an
initiative. It's it's part of the blueprint. And it was something that had kept us on our toes for the last two years. So the blueprint has what they call minimum school funding, which means that 70%, 75% of
our budget must be spent at schools, which M.C.P.S. really has no problem meeting that goal. And most school systems don't have that problem meeting that goal. The problem is that it is it's not a problem. The challenge is that is in a school by school basis. So if
enrollment decreases at a school for this year and they base the minimum school funding in prior year enrollment in order to meet that requirement, you really have to keep the budget as that school the same as based on the enrollment from
the prior year. And that can create some challenges because it might be that this school had 100 students this year and lost 20, but it has to be funded at 100 students for this year in order to meet minimum school funding. Some of the
challenges were that the blueprint will withhold money from the lease. If there were not meeting this minimum school funding this year was the very that was the very first year, and it's based both in budget and in actual expenditures. So you have to meet both. And if
you did not, or you were thinking that you were not going to meet this requirement as a school system, you had to provide, you had to request a waiver for each school that would not be meeting the 75% minimum school funding, and it could only be based on
enrollment. If a school has significant number of vacancies, which for M.C.P.S. probably wouldn't be a problem for smaller districts, would be you might not meet the actual spending, you know, of the 75 million minimum school funding. So it's something that we have
been grappling with. It is a huge lift in terms of the reporting. It is part of the Powerschool reporting, and we just heard this week that the AIB is actually submitting changing some of the legislation, and it's going to go, I believe, this week, where
they're going to delay it for two more years. We have to report, we have to make sure that we're meeting the requirement or making steps towards improvement, towards meeting that requirement. But they realized that it's not a that is not that the school
systems didn't want to meet the requirement. It's just that there were a lot of challenges that were not considered when meeting that requirement. So it has been pushed now until FY 28 in terms of them withholding any funding from the schools that are not meeting that minimum school funding. From the blueprints perspective,
what problem are they trying to solve by doing this? That is something that we have asked. And and that is they're trying to make sure that every school gets funded appropriately. But as we know, you know, there are many factors in how we're staff
at school. You know, the population of our school. Additionally, as a school system, we try to spend money sometimes in central office to get, you know, good value out of our spending power. You know, it's not the same thing if a school is trying to buy 100,
you know, textbooks versus central office trying to buy 10,000 of those textbooks, you know, we get a break, you know, in the purchasing. So we're working through that and how we report. But those are some of the biggest challenges. And, you know, not everything was
taken into consideration. As you know, we are working through our staffing standards that you're going to hear, you know, and about in a little bit again, and that is going to make sure that the that the funding that we talked about follows the student. But if the
enrollment changes, it is kind of hard, you know, to make sure we meet that deadline. I mean, that that requirement. Additionally, as we go through this boundary studies and as enrollment is going to change in a particular school due to the, you know, enrollment
change due to the boundary changes. So because the population might have shifted and that population might be going to another school, or a certain number of students might be going to another school, us at M.C.P.S. we would have had to request waivers for all those schools that we're not going to be meeting, you
know, the minimum school funding, because it would have been based on the enrollment from the prior year. So I think this two year, you know, push back of the deadline for minimum school funding is going to be something that is going
to be beneficial for M.C.P.S. even though we are currently meeting it. And we're going to have to see how this plays, you know, plays moving forward. Thank you. You're welcome. I think that's it. Great. Thank
you. Any questions? Okay. All right. Where are we? So next. Staffing standards. Next item
is item 3.2. Any please introduce yourselves for the record. So we have we had to we had a. We touched on this at a previous board meeting, but I thought that it's very
important in terms of the the future of our schools and our classrooms. And I wanted to go deeper dive today. So thank you. Great, great. Good afternoon. So again, my name is Allen Francois. I'm the deputy chief of financial oversight. And so
as you mentioned, Ms. Silvestre, this is a bit of a follow up from the board work session that was held last month. Go to the next slide. This is our agenda for today. So just quickly we're going to recap
the goals of the staffing standards. Talk about the key inputs and factors. We'll review the staffing ratios for general education. We'll talk about the plan for special education and English language
development impacting our emergent multilingual learners. And then review the implementation plan for rolling out the staffing standards beginning in FY 27. And then we'll hopefully save some time for discussion. So the goals of
the staffing standard project include consistency and transparency. Again, we want to make sure that our staff, our students and family understand how staffing is provided to schools, financial stability and predictability. I want to
make sure that we have a stable budget that we can predict over time, the staff that we're providing for our schools. Differentiation to meet student needs, targeted support to increase academic achievement,
staffing ratios that balance workload for our teachers and support staff. Data based decisions to improve equity. And then we want to remain competitive as a large school system in the state of Maryland.
Thank you again. Just to recap why this and why now? So we currently have limited position control. So we want to make sure that we institute position control as we allocate staff to schools. We have a strategic
plan objective to stabilize class sizes. This will take several years to implement. And we're starting that in FY 27, beginning with our elementary schools, our approach to staffing has not been updated in many years. We've had a lot of changes in the district, and
so this is an attempt to align ourselves with those changes. We have staffing guidelines that are loose and in some areas lack dependability. So we want to make sure that we have policies in place that show standards and transparency
across all of our schools and for our school leaders. Again. Staffing standards versus guidelines. Again, this will address transparency, equity
and adequacy in our staffing. So over the next slide or two, we're going to talk about the key inputs and factors that have influenced some of the decisions that we've made around our staffing standard
project. So to begin on this slide, you've heard us talk about farms data. And so we believe that the most concrete predictor of academic performance is correlated to free and reduced price meals
system. And the number of students that participate in farms. And so our response to this is that a tiered system of staffing support based on farms will help us to differentiate our support across schools. The second key input and factor is
school size. And so we took a look at enrollment because we want to understand how our enrollment has changed over time and what the and we'll look at this later, but have an understanding of what the average size school is and the small and large schools in our
system so that we can better support them appropriately. And then finally, class size and workload. We know that this impacts staff turnover and class management. And so our response to this is that reduced and differentiated staffing ratios better account
for the workload considerations to promote stability in our workforce workforce and in our classrooms. So we've talked a lot about the tiered system. So I want to make one note here. Since we last talked, we've
revised tier three. So previously tier three, which is which addresses the needs that are most impacted schools. The original range was 75% to 100%. We've reduced that down by 5% to 70% to 100%. So we're
capturing more schools, more impacted schools in that 70 to 100% range. And, and I'll just note, we did not make any changes to middle school, which is on the right side of the slide. Most of the changes that
were made since we last spoke were. Impacted elementary schools. And so the other note is that tier two changed from 35% to 65%. It is now up, I'm
sorry, from 35% to 75% down to 35% to 69%. And if I may just really quickly, you know, when we met with you last at a work session, we talked about how this was a work in progress that we're constantly listening
to our stakeholders evaluating the data because it's all brand new to make sure that we are making any changes. As you know, we hear feedback, and that was one of the reasons why we changed tier two and three and tier two, to make sure we have a more balanced number of schools, and that we're
providing more support to the schools that need it the most. And so there are about 43 title one schools that were part of the tier two and tier three. With this change, 80% of our title one schools now fall into the tier three category. So
that's about 34 schools. On this. Next slide. Again, another influencing factor is enrollment and school size. And so just to recap here for elementary school the average
size is 517. The average size of a middle school is 879. And the average size for high school is 2002. And then for special schools the average size is 65. Again, this is important as we're looking at at staffing ratios and ratios
for other support positions that support the entire school. It gives us a sense of economies of scale and understand how to better support our schools. So now we're going to turn to classroom staffing ratios. So
beginning with this slide, this was something we presented last month as well. And as a reminder, this information for the neighboring counties comes from the Washington area boards of Education, Howard County Public Schools website and Prince George's County Public
Schools presentation and report from 2022. The main thing to highlight here is that these are based on our base tiers. So and then also our current guidelines on the left side they're reflecting our current
non focus school ratios. So that we're comparing apples to apples. When we're looking at what we're currently doing with our guidelines, our base tiers for the staffing standards. And then when we're comparing ourselves to other districts on the on the next slide, we're going to talk about how this
looks based on the tier system. And so when we apply the tiers, those ratios drop significantly. So we'll just look quickly at kindergarten for kindergarten tier three again which is the
70 to 100%. That ratio is 1 to 18. And as shown on the previous slide, the base tier is 1 to 23. And then we go all the way up to fifth grade where at the tier three level the ratio is 1 to 24. And then for the base tier it's 1 to 27.
Long term, we do want to see kindergarten peer educators and our kindergarten classrooms, and then additional peer educators supporting our grades one through five. Here we're looking at secondary. So middle
schools and high schools. Again the tiers did not change for secondary. But again, looking here we had a ratio roughly of about 1 to 28. But we could see class sizes for middle school
and high school range up to 30 to 33 students. And so what we like to see, and this is our starting point for discussions for when we implement this ratio for secondary schools, a 1 to 27 staffing ratio. As we look at the tiers, that 1 to 27
drops to 1 to 24. If you're a tier three school with farms between 60 and 100%. So now we're going to look at special education and English language development. When we were here last, I believe it was you,
Miss Zimmerman. Miss Zimmerman, I'm not sure, but you made the point that, you know, we shared our current guidelines for general education, but we did not share that for special education and English language development. So this is showing our current special education
staffing guidelines. That top table reflects the services per month for different services here. So we listed five different examples of the services. And basically staff
are provided based on the number of services required. And dividing that by 68 services per month per professional. So if we look at the first service for special instruction, there's a total of
981. Hours or services there. And then we divide that by the 68 and get to a 14.4 FTE staffing allocation. So that's an example for how that calculation works for the top table. And then for our home
school model in the bottom left corner, it shows that we're allocating staff, basically 33 students. And then looking at 33 students and then looking at the hours of classroom
instruction. So in the first example, 465 classroom instructional hours divided by 33 students arrives at 3.5 teachers. So that's how that's determined and within our home
school model. And then the third way that staffing is, is allocated for special education is based on our enrollment driven allocations for some of our classrooms, like autism, where there's a 1 to 6 teacher
to student ratio, and then 3.4 FTE Paraeducators to one FTE. So for this example, the enrollment is 19. And so three teachers are allocated with
10.32 Paraeducators. So that's our current special education staffing guideline. And we're moving to a to more of an LA based model for special education. And so this is where
we're looking at least restrictive environment or l r e and so l r e a these are students who spend 80% or more of their time in the general education setting. L r e b these are students who spend 40 to 79% of their time in the general education setting and
then l r e c most restrictive environment, they're spending less than 40% of their time in the general education setting. And so you'll see on the next slide how we provide a more streamlined, transparent
staffing ratio for each L, r, e for each setting, which makes it a little easier to follow when you compare this to our current guidelines for special education. So for L r e a, we
are providing a one to 15 or 1 teacher to student ratio and then providing one paraeducator per teacher. And then as you follow along, LREBA1 to eight staffing ratio, staff to student ratio. And then there
are levels within Hla-b and Hla-c. So students who fall into level three, we're allocating two point Paraeducators per teacher and then level 42.5. And then you can follow through for L, r, e c as well. One teacher to five
students and then pair educators based on their level. As we turn to emergent multilingual learners, I want to first remind us that this is
based on English language proficiency level. So students who are at LP1, they are entering their. At the initial stage of English language acquisition and then LP2 they're emerging. So students at this level, they're in the
early stages of English language acquisition and demonstrate understanding and usage of of of English with support. English language proficiency level three. These are students who are at a developing stage, a student who has moved beyond basic
formulaic language and can now demonstrate increased complexity in English language use. And then the last stage or I'm sorry, last level LP4. These are students who are expanding. A student who demonstrates increasing proficiency by using specific
and some technical content area language. So we mentioned this because this is prevalent in our current guidelines. But then it's also a important part of the staffing standards that are being proposed and the
staffing standards project. So on this slide, these are the current guidelines for our emergent multilingual learners. So L p level one, the way that this works, if we just take the non focus column and we
determine eft's by taking the total number of ML students and dividing that by the group size. For that first row eight students per group. And this will give us the number of sections that are required. And
then we multiply that by 0.2. The point two represents the portion of FTE to each section. And then again this just follows EOP level one, two, three and four with some
variation between non focus and focus. And then as you move through the levels. The staffing standard going forward would have two groupings per grade band. And so there will
be a grouping for levels one and two and a grouping for levels three and four. One way to look at this is that the higher the level and the higher the grade, the smaller the ratios. So that's just one way to quickly follow this table.
So if we look at EOP level one group 1LP levels one and two for k to five, the the teacher to student ratio is 1 to 30. And then for those higher levels the ratio increases by
ten. So it's a 1 to 40. And that kind of follows through as you go through each grade band and the groupings by level. The idea here is that ML students at levels three and four, and then in particular at our
secondary level, require more intensive, differentiated language support. I could ask a question about the special ed and the ML plans. I think there
was some clarification during the board work session that this is supplemental to classroom instruction, at least for the higher levels for English language learners. For
ML students, yes. This is in addition to the classrooms. This is to provide, you know, instruction specific instruction for ML students and who decided on these ratios.
Were teachers consulted in developing these? So our. So I would say first that we had multiple stakeholders that were involved in the process. And I do know that our English language development team and
department did engage multiple stakeholders at the school level, including teachers. The details of that engagement I don't have, but again, through our work group, we consulted many different stakeholders,
including principals, and there were some teachers who were part of the workgroups. But then in addition to that, the English Language Development department and teams engage with teachers as well in more focused sessions. Thank you.
Yes. Thank you. I hate to go back a little bit, but I know we've talked about this a few times. You were talking about school size specifically, and we're also talking about our classroom, our class size and ratios. I'm still wondering
about like the physical capacity of buildings and how that changes and what related costs go along with that. So I understand that, you know, we're going to have to kind of dig into some of those numbers a little bit and maybe make some projections based on
current enrollment, not, you know, understanding it will change for the upcoming year. But I do think that is an additional cost factor that I would like to see more information on that relate. Well, not at all really related, but thank you for the special
education breakdown. If we could go to slide 14. Thank you. What I see looking at the like bottom left hours driven allocations, if I look at the
top right, 33 students enrolled based on the hours we see three and a half FTEs. Then if we could go to slide 15 and thank you. Then I see at l r e a,
which is the home school model. I see 1 to 15. And like what I'm understanding here is that then that is three staff for again, those 33 students. Is that am I understanding that
correctly? Yeah. So. Your you're referring to the. And we may just look back to see if our special education team was here to support on this. But you're referring to the classroom model. I mean, homeschool model, right? Where
you're saying there are three teachers for 33 students. And then if we apply the LREA1 to 15 to those same students, then the allocation would be 22.5
teachers. Okay. So it went from three and a half to those 33 students receiving the high number of hours like the highest on that chart. And now the same number of students with the same number of hours is again receiving two and a
half. Well, those are hours. Correct. And, and, and here we're doing a straight teacher ratio. Right. But I'll pass to doctor team struggle. Hi, my
name is Julie Hall. I'm the director in the office of the Department of Special Education Systems and Management. And your analysis is correct. The difference between the two at 33 for the enrollment would give you two and a half teachers with the new standard
at 15 to 1 in comparison. So the hours based model is based on the classroom instructional hours, which is a sliding scale. So on the highest end, yes, it would be a decrease of one teacher. Okay, so then I guess
this is more of like a general question. I, I'm curious what the advantages of shifting that model, because what I hear then is fewer teachers for fewer, for more students, harder to meet hours. It depends on the
grouping or the type of the students. So in that particular case, those students had a high number of classroom instructional hours. So one of the advantages of going to this standard model is having a ceiling on caseload. So a
single teacher would have no more than 15 students on their caseload to manage. So a student with the high number of hours versus a student with low number of hours, they still would have the same number of amount of paperwork. They still
have the same amount of work to do. So the caseload would be the same and equitable across all schools. So when we were looking at an analysis of the current caseloads in our current model versus the caseloads in the new model,
there was great inequity between the two or a range in the elementary, for example, range from 8 to 20 students on a single caseload to. Now that would be equitable at 15. Okay.
I guess my additional question with this, especially looking at adding resources to the elementary level, then if we're looking at this, because my understanding is that this is across all M.c.p.s levels,
elementary level. Yes, yes. I'm talking about these specific like we're shifting from hours driven allocations to specific student enrollment. So my additional question is then are our middle and high school
teachers with having, I guess they've experienced the addition of the ritzy that our elementary teachers have. And you talked about the great inequities. You see for our elementary teachers. Are we expecting that this addition of resources, plus the hours driven allocation or. I'm sorry,
the enrollment driven allocations is going to increase the like equity in service. So the ritzy allocation is separate, correct, from this standard. So that's an additional position on top of this position. If you're
comparing to secondary their caseload currently is is higher. So once this standard goes into effect across elementary middle and high, actually the the caseload for middle and high will actually go down. And so
it will be now more equitable across elementary, middle and high because high school has one of the highest caseloads per teacher. Okay, then just my last follow up. I'm so sorry. I've taken a lot of your time,
but it sounds like as well, the main driver for this shift had to do with the large range that we were seeing. So that is the main driver for the shift. Are there other factors that led to that? So. Margaret K Chief
Student Support Officer So thank you for that question. There are many drivers. So we didn't just decide upon a standard based model, our surrounding areas. We looked into how what are some of the other ones we looked into and
Arundel PG District of Columbia, right. And most of their ratios, staff to student ratios are 18 to 1. So we ran a few models in order to be more equitable. The hours based model, as Julie
said earlier, is a sliding scale that was able to be manipulated or not. Over time. So depending on what we place in the IEP, we could then ask
for more hours. So coming in, standardizing it, we now have to also come on the back end and bring the information to understanding how we create an equitable IEP without putting
extra hours on it to receive extra staff, and also still be able to meet the needs of our students. The other piece to it was also depending on the number of staff that we had each year, we would run out of
staff to be able to give to schools for the number of hours that they would place in an IEP. So standardizing it as a whole was one to to create equity. Also to ensure that students receive the services that they're supposed to be
receiving. When we allocate staff into a school, making sure that they are tied to that specific staff, excuse me, that specific student that we allocate the staff for, and also bringing our model into close relation to what our
surrounding areas were also doing. Okay. Thank you. I would be interested to see which schools will be most affected and in fact see fewer staff based on the shift. I believe only three out of all of them.
The the bulk of our schools, when we looked at it will lose 0.5 teacher. Okay. Thank you, Miss Yang. Yes. Give me some education. I'm really trying to understand this. All right, so
hours of classroom instruction. Does that mean based on the IEP, how many hours of services we need to provide. So it could mean many things. And because I don't come from an hours based staffing, I come from a ratio
based so many to one. I'm gonna ask Julie to chime in because she's been here. But it does not only equate to a teacher, right? And it doesn't only equate to instructional services, there could be related services and other things that are added into an
IEP for hours. So the number that's that's listed on the screen there is classroom instructional hours. So on an IEP, it's the hours that are listed on the IEP for classroom instruction both in and outside
of general education setting. Good. That's clear to me. Now. Now my next question then we all know in special education there are many other tasks, a lot of paperwork, a lot of meetings to, I don't know, all
of it. Just name a few that I know, right? A teacher, a special education teacher might help with transition meetings, right? They might participate in the child, find meetings, they might do evaluations. They
might train some general education teachers on. They might write reports to the families quarterly or yearly or evaluations, and they might say, hey, we need to come up with a plan, a behavior modification plan, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah. Okay, very complex job. I know I cannot do what they do. How are those things captured into this ratio? Or is it ratio? Yes, it's staffing 15 to 1
model, right. Okay. So being a former special education teacher and former principal, yeah, a few things we can control from each level with a 15 to 1. That means I have 15 IEPs that I'm responsible for for the whole year, right? All
of the paperwork that I do with those 15 IEPs are almost identical. I have to hold an annual IEP meeting. Some of them may have a behavior plan, but all of them will not have a behavior plan. If I have to
write a report or do five day docs, I have to do that for all of them, right? Everything is consistently done with all 15 of those IEPs. Unless there is a reason for a behavior plan. What I controlled as a school principal was if I had three
special education teachers, I looked at my caseload and I made sure that one teacher didn't have 15 IEPs, that they were responsible for that all had behavior plans, right? So you kind of make sure that there's some equity there as
well from the school level lens. But I can tell you standard, each of those IEPs in that 15 caseload all pretty much have the same paperwork that happens with them. Okay. So what you're
saying is locally, this is not capturing those administrative tasks, but there is a way to make it predictable in at the school level. Now then let's look at school between schools. Right? One of the things I'm
aware of is we have special education students that don't go to public school. They're in private school settings. And but we are do their evaluation. For some reason, I, I don't
know how, but that is that's the state. Okay. So we do the evaluation. Now some area of our county has more students that are in private school. Other area has less students.
So how do we make this more equitable? And how does that reflect in our staffing standards? And this will be the last question because we do have to finish the presentation. There's another one. Okay. So currently it does not reflect in our staffing standard. It is
one of the things that we received as feedback and as part of what we are looking towards, you know, anything that we have in our next five years and how we might be able to monitor it. Part of our plan is to look at that distribution
of how many students that actually is per school, but don't we already have that data now? So we have the data, but we have not drilled down to the individual schools because some of them have active service plans and some of them don't. So if they don't have an active
service plan, it's not readily data that you can pull real easily to monitor, like on a monthly basis to see the impact of workload. I can easily monitor active service plans because that's part of the data we report to the state and get
child fine counts and state aid funding for for our private religious. And there's no more than 2 or 3 in a school that that affects. So it's not a large amount that would influence these enrollment
counts in our standards. But there's others that are not active service plans that were still required to do evaluations. And it's that component that we still need to investigate further to see if it might impact our staffing
standards going forward. And we heard that this year very recently. And so that's something that we are looking at this year. So can I, from what you are telling me, can I
assume you have a timeline that you use this year to evaluate? And if there is adjustment, this year means FY 26, correct? Okay. If there's adjustment, it will be adjusted for FY 27. Yes. AM I understanding correctly?
Yes. And we've already made some adjustments to our staffing standards to make sure that our schools had the most staff we can give them. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it. You're welcome. Important point.
Thank you. You can continue. Whoa. Okay. Implementation plan. So this will conclude this section will conclude the
presentation. But just want to remind everyone how we're rolling out the staffing standards. So we're beginning this with a phased approach beginning with elementary schools. Again, just setting a foundation for implementing the many changes that we're
planning through the staffing standards. And then phase two will include middle schools, phase three high schools. But throughout this or throughout this phasing, there will be changes to special education staffing and English language development staffing, and then
also central services. But in 2032, we'll take that year to assess our progress and to make any adjustments. Again, this is a work in progress and we'll make those adjustments along the way. But we want to be intentional about looking back and then ensuring that we have
a sustainable model going forward. So again, continue with implementation. This slide shows the implementation for elementary schools. So for FY 27, as a reminder, we're making adjustments to the staffing for
assistant principals and assistant school administrators. We are discontinuing the assistant school administrator role. And then as we talked about the K through five class size standards and then partial security assistant
implementation, then for FY 28 through FY 2031, gradual implementation of the kindergarten Paraeducator positions, math specialist positions at each elementary school, gradual increase of counselor positions. Gradual
implementation of the remaining security assistant positions, and then streamline intervention and academic support positions for middle school. No changes in FY 27. The plan is to start in FY 28
for FY 28 through FY 2031. Changes to the assistant principal allocation and then also discontinuing the Assistant School Administrator role testing coordinators at each school. Decrease of class
sizes to 27 from that hovering of 30 to 33 students in a class. Consolidation of multiple intervention teacher positions into one staff development teacher increase from 0.6 to 1.0. Increase in educator allocation again and
streamlining the intervention academic support positions as well. And then for high school, beginning in FY 27, assistant principal staffing changes the point for FTE regional program
teacher coordinator position. And then for 28 through 31, again, discrete decrease of class sizes. The testing coordinator, staff development teacher and then again, consolidation of intervention support. And then the building
services and security positions rolling out those staffing standards as well. And then again, the streamline intervention support positions as well. And then for special education and ML. So for FY 27, as we just talked about implementing the LRA, a teacher
to student ratios, the ritzy position. And then for 28 through 2031, FY 20 to FY 2031, rolling out elementary L, R, E, B, and C staffing ratios for both teachers and paraeducators,
and then middle school and high school and special school L, r, e a, B and C again, l e c mostly impacts our special schools. So that will all happen in FY 29. And then for our ML students implementing
that new staffing standard for elementary schools in 2028, middle schools 2029 and high schools in 2030. And then as we look ahead, we're also looking at creating standards for central services and answering questions like, why is the
position created? How is the position created? What metrics drive the creation of positions? And then we'll also look at other metrics as well to ensure we evaluate positions for success, and that we're getting
our return on investment. So that concludes the staffing standards. So so parents want to know is this going to reduce class size in my child's classroom. Can you answer that
question. The ratios do reduce class size at all levels from tier three to tier to the base. But the but the thing that we really need to think about is right now, the way the
guidelines are being implemented, we have huge ranges. We have some schools that have class sizes with nine students. So what we're looking to do is not just reduce class sizes, but make sure that there's equity. And there is,
you know, some baselining at all schools. So we don't see those huge movements, you know, from a classroom that is so small because they have lost students, because in the current guidelines, by increasing by one student, we would give them another teacher, which would make all the class
sizes very small compared to other schools. So we're looking to do both reduce class sizes, especially in the future as we build more staff into those classrooms, you're going to have more students and more staff to student ratio, but also create equity and balance
the class sizes across all schools. And if there isn't more classrooms to split up, then it will be more staffing in those existing classrooms. Correct. And that's something that we're ready. As we moved into elementary schools, you know, we had some schools that have reached out and obviously,
you know, we work with them. You know, they might not have the space, you know, but how do we work with them to convert some of that staffing into something that they can use in those classrooms? Okay. Miss Yang yeah. So. For the viewing
public, when we talking about the classroom guidelines right now, the standards, we are actually mostly talking about elementary schools. This is not impacting middle school and high school. Correct. Okay. No
no, no, no, it will it the implementation of the staffing standards will involve elementary, middle and high school. But at the elementary level. And as Miss Alfonso Windsor was discussing, we are
looking at ranges for the classroom ratios. And so we're there are some class sizes that are currently really, really small. And then there are some that are also really large. And so these ranges will help control on both the the low end
and the high end. Currently, we have no gaps in our staffing guidelines. And so the staffing standards with that range will create that cap and not allow classes to be too large and then also help to not have
super small class sizes. Okay. Gotcha. So it is elementary school, middle and high, like 1 to 27 is middle school 1 to 27. Okay, so that is one of the myths we thought that was only. But now let me ask you, we. The
school system is designing a regional program model. So there were some questions in terms of how that will impact staffing or staffing allocation.
Particularly, I think one of the questions people often ask is, hey, this is going to offer this school more specialized classes depending on the track, you know, what courses is, and
sometimes you might not get a full class of 27. It might have fewer students compared to other mandatory courses that students take. Have we looked
at how that might impact our staffing numbers? So we really haven't at this point. And that's one of the reasons why high schools is not really going to be implemented until FY 29, right? That's the very first year that high school's is going to be, you know, we're
going to this that part of the implementation plan, high school will start in FY 29. That would give us some time to see, you know, how the regional programs, if that's the way we're going develop, and then any tweaks or any changes that we have to do to our staffing
guidelines or build staffing guidelines for the specialized programs, that could be another way that we handle that aspect of it. Right. But I think, you know, postponing that until FY 29 gives us the flexibility. This is the baseline, right? This is the baseline for our high schools. And then we can
look at those specialized programs and see what staffing changes or guidelines we might need or standards we might need. So can I based on your answer, summarize or infer that this staffing guideline is not going
to prohibit us from offering classes if it is part of the regional study program, in the curriculum or in the pathway design, can I can I make that in assumption? That is correct.
Obviously, we want to move with the priorities of the school system and make sure that this aligns with that. And also remember, we currently have high schools and middle schools and even elementary schools that have specialized programs. And we work around, you know, we're right now working on developing or thinking through
some of those for the schools, like elementary schools that might have those programs. Thank you. So but what will happen between now and when? What you said 29 what will happen in order to roll out the specialized programs with the
current staffing model? Well, if I'm not mistaken, a specifically for high school, right. The regional programs will be in place for FY 28 based on the current guidelines. And then we can use that year to really study what they need and change any staffing
standards to accommodate or create new staffing standards to accommodate the specialized programs. So that will be a transition year. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions?
Okay. Thank you very much. Okay, so we just lost half of our audience. All right. Switching
gears, the next item on the agenda is 4.1 Doctor Addison, academic return on investments. Welcome back. Thank you. Good
evening. So yes, excited to be back before you to continue our conversation related to academic return on investment. The last time we were together, I shared high level and a
theoretical way for us to look at program evaluation reports that are completed. And this evening we are transitioning from our theoretical discussion of academic return on investment to a practical application using completed program evaluation report,
which is the Amplified Core Knowledge Language Arts Program evaluation report as our kind of like case study. And this report is published. So it's on our Office of Shared Accountability web page and
publicly available. And the formal response and what you have in front of you. A couple of handouts are some examples of what the response document looks like. So our underlying
message for today is that evaluation is only as valuable as the decisions it drives, and we are here to bridge that gap between the C Carla findings as an example and the upcoming budget cycle. And so by the end of our time together today, we
will have tested a protocol that identifies exactly how to handle a yellow light program. So that's one of the questions that you all have asked. And we're assuring that we do not spend, do not just spend more on a system facing, for example,
implementation challenges, but instead spend smarter to fix the friction points first. So, Kayla, core knowledge language Arts Year one program
evaluation report is our test case for our work together today. And so the scope covers the first district wide rollout for pre-K through grade five. And while the report highlights strengths and rigorous content and vocabulary, it also flags
some concerns or challenges related to diverse student needs and teacher manageability. And so this has led the program to receive a yellow designation. Proceed with caution in our program evaluation framework. And again, you should have received a copy of the report.
And as we progress in our conversation, I'll point you to some specific pages to review to frame the fiscal side of this equation. This slide outlines the cost presented in the original board memo for the adoption of C, K, L, a, and this includes the base
materials, instructional supports and professional development. And as we look at the academic return on investment, we have to keep these baseline investment figures in mind to determine if implementation friction is devaluing this significant expenditure. And this is a visual from the report that you
have received. When we met on December 2nd, we laid this conceptual groundwork for how this committee can move beyond simply receiving reports to actively governing them. We discussed the adoption of an evidence to decision protocol,
a tool used by high performing districts to ensure fiscal oversight is tied directly to program performance. As a reminder of that discussion, this protocol asks us to filter every evaluation through four specific lenses effectiveness,
equity, fiscal justification, and strategic alignment. And in December, we looked at these as theoretical pillars. Today we are kind of putting those into practice. And so the goal of the activity today isn't to reach a perfect consensus, but to build clarity around how
these parameters inform our stoplight designations. And by applying this rubric to the Carla report, we are essentially stress testing, if you will, the approach to examining a completed program evaluation report through an academic return on investment
lens. And so this helps us ensure we have a shared understanding of the evidence required to move a program from one designation to another. So to facilitate facilitate our live review today, we will
follow these steps identified on the slide. First, we will review the four key domains effectiveness, equity, manageability, and strategic alignment. For each, you will seek out the evidence in the report to provide the. The report provided. Sorry to
determine if the return on investment is high, mixed or low. And then finally, you will move from data to action by assigning a preliminary governance recommendation. So you have a handout. And on that
handout you will use that to support this activity. There are four sections of the handout shown here on the slide. Since the reports are dense. I know since the reports are dense I've identified the exact pages. We're not going to
you're not going to do the full activity, but you know, to teach it through. So I've identified the exact pages you should reference to find each domain. So I'm going to go in a little closer for you. So this is a closer view of the first two sections of the handout.
And in the interest of time I will not have you engage in going through all aspects, but want to preview what your work should look like when you receive a program evaluation report. So section one shown here on the slide is your data
navigation map or your cheat sheet. For tonight you will notice I've done the work for you and identified key report pages. For example manageability of data. A key friction point is found on pages three, five, and 52. Now
let's move to what I want you to do in this live activity. So using section two of your handout, please take a few minutes to review the report pages listed on the handout. And you'll notice for each protocol category, additional language to support your
thinking as it relates to return on investment. So with effectiveness, I want you to think about the instructional return on investment for equity. Think about equitable access, return on investment. So we're going to focus on equity for for tonight. So what I want you
to do is to record your observations, check the box for the academic return on investment impact. Is it a high impact issue which is positive mixed return or low return? Ideally, we do not want to have
areas that are low return on investment. So let's focus on equity. Go to page four of the report, which is part of the executive summary, and take about 3 to 5 minutes to read through the pages. And then we
want to hear your thoughts on where you would rate access, return on investment or equity based on what is mentioned in the findings. It's not labeled the pages, so they are virtually but they are
virtually. Oh, okay. It should be in the lower, far, lower bottom right corner. Yeah, it is kind of tiny. The way that I had it printed. It looks like most of them are cut off. Oh I'm sorry. All right. So I'm going to go to the virtual.
It's okay. Yes. Okay. Why is it loading it is the second executive summary page. If to the second. Yes. It starts with adherence to curriculum. Yes,
that is page four. My apologies. We are reading effectiveness equity. Equity. Yes. Your focus is on equity. So as you read
that, look at the cheat sheet cheat sheet section part one. And we're looking at page four. Okay. To see what you think
about that. Okay. It's terrible. It's terrible.
Are we ready? Yeah. I'm ready. All right. So before we go to the next page, just want to hear your thoughts in terms of thinking about equity, that access return on investment. What did you glean
from this page four. With regard to Kayla Zimmerman? Well, I mean, to pull some specific numbers in here, right? Are students with IEPs or students
with disabilities that 34% were able to of educators were able to meet their needs. For our ML students, it was 30% something as students needing extra help, that was 26% students
performing below grade level. That was 20%. And going through this. And as someone that also went through this, as the general education teacher that was in the classroom, I noticed that there wasn't a mention as
well, that our ELD teachers and our special education teachers didn't have the books for Carla. They didn't have the teacher manuals to implement. So I wonder if we had made some
better equity moves ourselves, if we would see better outcomes here. And I'm very curious to see. I know this is year one. I'm very curious to see year two. Now that they have those materials. I think that's a really that's a big piece of what's missing here as well. I didn't see that it could be
later on in a different slide, but it's not here in the main findings. And thank you for that. There is more later in terms of the impact for teachers of special education and English language development services later in
the report. And year two is currently underway. So just for that awareness as well, other thoughts. Mr. Yang. Any other thoughts? I I'm trying like so
for your I'm trying to be a good student. So when you have high mixed and low. Yes. What are the percentage we will characterize as high? What percentage will be mixed? What percentage will we say that is a low. How do we decide that.
Yeah, this is not intended to be percentage based determination of the impact. It really is your judgment thinking about what you're reading, what you've seen here, the cost. Right? What impact
would you think that these findings have on the academic return on investment? So, as Miss Zimmerman stated, when we think about the access to equity access piece and the findings, you might rate it at, you know, high because it is
impacting these groups more intensely than other groups. It just depends on kind of your perspective at this time. Okay. Got it, got it, got it. Silvestre. Just wondering if
these folks were also part of the selection committee for the curriculum. Yeah, I don't know. We didn't ask that. All right. So going, okay, good. So this was the first step. And this is kind of a great first step in
the process. And I want to walk you through the staff's analysis of the same data. So I didn't have you go through everything, but we went through everything. So you'll see with effectiveness, we see strong justification through student gains and adherence to lesson
rigor. Yet it's rated as mixed given some of the implementation adherence observed in the findings. Right. So it's kind of like, okay, we see some positives and we see some opportunities. So we're going to say that's a mixed return on investment impact. Now equity is what you all read
and you only read one page. And if you look at that kind of cheat sheet, there are multiple pages that highlight equity. So we didn't really go into the deep dive around that. But with equity, we see mixed returns for special education and multilingual learners. And additionally the perspectives
of teachers in response to the survey items reveals low agreement that the curriculum supports diverse learners. So because of that, we're going to say this is kind of low because we it doesn't reach in that equity of access, right? Is this available for all students is low because one of the things that we want to
intentionally understand and ensure is that our curriculum is accessible for all students. More importantly, when we think about manageability, we see what we'll say is like a really high level aspect that we want to focus on, which is about
only 15% of grades 3 to 5. Teachers find the scoring manageable, right? And so this is where staff confirms kind of that yellow designation that the curriculum is high quality. But some of this implementation is an efficient which impacts
the potential for teachers. And I'll go a bit more into that on this next slide. So I'm proposing the benefit to cost evaluation to frame kind of once you've gone through this process, you kind of then move
to this benefit to cost summary and which is crucial for you all as a fiscal management committee. And so this slide provides a really concise summary of the findings organized into three areas strong justification needs improvement and fiscal or
operational concern. And so if you think back to our December 2nd discussion, we were talking about the innovative school calendar in that context. And in that title one schools had this fiscal discussion tied to the negotiated additional
funding for MCE and SEIU members, along with leave days now with C, L, a, we don't have this stipend aspect that's included, but it's the potential loss of return on investment due to high teacher burnout and low fidelity resulting from that
unmanageable data entry. Right? So that could be an impact on the academic return on investment. So this sets up a question that we should ask. How can we modify those shifts from a needs improvement results to a strong justification? Or is the
investment simply too high? And I think in this regard, given what Miss Zimmerman said around year two, let's kind of see what shifts or adjustments have been made based on the findings of the year one report. And so
once you kind of think about it from we summarize it into those three buckets, then we kind of come now to what's your governance decision? And so you'll hear, you'll see analysis and results from the review. And so I'm recommending that when you all as a committee review, you kind of
align to the same stoplight chart. So you'll see at the bottom, continue or expand, which is green maintain or mitigate, which is yellow or modify or sunset, which will be red. And so based on the staff model analysis we just walked through, the evidence supports a yellow light because you have
some mixed results and some low results and very few high results. It's high because it aligns with the strategic plan. And so the yellow light recommendation would be maintain and mitigate. So this signals that we value the curriculum's rigor, but we can't expand it or it's already
expanded. But let's just pretend it wasn't or continue at full scale until we address the issues with manageability and equity friction points, right? So once we maintain and update those, then we would be more likely to see outcomes
that we would want to see. So to close, let's define what a yellow recommendation actually does in terms of U steps for you all as board members, I'm proposing it brings about three
actions pause, repair, and report. So we pause the expansion. Or if it's already expanded, we kind of pause where we are. No new schools or grades are selected for one academic year. So that's kind of what the pause would be. Now, this is already in elementary schools again, but still a
pause on anything new associated with the curriculum is something we would want to halt at that time. And then we repair. And so the program manager has 90 days to reallocate the existing budget to fix the friction points. And this is already a portion of our response to recommendations
aspects. So that's one of the handouts you'll see at the back. It's a template that shows you the response to recommendations that a program manager completes. With every report that we complete. And finally, we report a follow up evaluation, which must occur before the next budget cycle to
determine if the program has improved to a green or must move to a red for sunsetting. And so it's important to note that the program evaluation of this curriculum was already planned for examining two years. So as I shared, we're already in our year two, and the
opportunity I see for the team is to use the response to recommendations to report back as part of our year two evaluation study as well. And so our gap is a district is not going back to the response to recommendations document. So
the last time we talked were like, what happens after a yellow light? We have really good processes in place to say, okay, what are your response to recommendations? But our gap is we're not following up to ensure that these things have occurred in alignment. So
that's the opportunity for us as we continue to go forward, is we start circling back more to the program managers, particularly because we asked for a timeline of when these revisions will be made. So I'll turn it back over to you all for additional considerations
and conversation. Thank you. I think I would like to see when you said this is the work that we need to do. Is there a plan to address what we haven't been
able to do in the past as it relates to closing that gap of the circle back? Yes. No. But we can create we can create a written plan related to that.
So I guess I'd like to see. I'd like to see that plan, but maybe even beforehand. What's on the yellow list? And then how many you have closed out in
terms of your cycle and how many need to be addressed. My questions and concerns are related to that. I know this is year one implementation and we've been talking about, you know, now we're going to look at year two implementation. But
when I look at the conclusion and recommendations that come for this right to the three of them are to schedule and adhere to the 120 minutes of instructional time, enhance and
continue to strengthen targeted professional learning for staff and to reevaluate assessment, volume, alignment and processes. And with this report coming out in November of 2025, will most of our schools have already set their all school schedule and some many of them have said that by May of the previous
year. So where's the 120 minutes for us to adhere to? And summer is often when we have time for targeted professional learning. And looking at, you know, our assessment volume, I'm sure, in fact, I can guarantee you by November of 2025, we've already done some of the assessments.
My point to this is that it seems like our timeline, especially as we look to make good fiscal decisions and as our budget comes before us, it's really difficult for us to do that. Based on this timeline. I don't know how it would be possible for all of these, for
these three items that are pretty reasonable to be implemented, that with the timeline that we're looking at. So what can we do to ensure that we're getting good feedback and that we're getting it in time to enhance our decision making? No, I
appreciate you elevating that. That has been an ongoing challenge for us also, because our budget cycle starts so early, of course. So a lot of times we are early in the school year beginning to implement things, and we're already planning the next
fiscal year's budget. And so while our reports may take more time to come out publicly for you all to receive it, we do work collaboratively with program staff. Giving them information in the interim might not be public facing information, but that internal information for them to use to
inform instruction or inform their planning. The goal. Ideally, the goal is to have our program evaluation reports completed in the summer, because then that gives you all that gives program staff. And you know, sometimes it's
challenging depending on what assessments we may include as part of the evaluation and that timing of those. But the goal really is the summer. I will tell you, for this fiscal year 2026, The delay in approving
the program evaluation agenda. So we didn't approve it this year until October 30th. Kind of pushed a lot of things back to. And so I think as we think about our operational decisions and our planning to kind of move, the, we can set things up
the earlier we can start. And I agree with you and I understand the impact. And we are continuing to work on ensuring that we get you that information in a more timely manner so that it can inform the budget decisions. Great.
Thank you. Yes. So I, I wasn't here last meeting, so bear with me with the questions. Is it our goal that when something is
yellow, like we have a make a plan like within 90 days to how to address adjust it? Is that that is my recommendation this evening. So I did not make that recommendation on December the 2nd, but I do to miss
Silvestre's point in terms of what's our plan? How do we act? How do we move more expeditiously with response? Because you'll see in our reports we. It's not attached, but there's a response to the recommendations from the program staff. And I think as
we continue and we build this cycle of responding and checking back right within 90 days, I think that would also be beneficial to say, how are we, you know, what progress have we seen, seen what changes have been made to date? So the reason I asked that is I think
it's a really good recommendation, right? If, if you say you need to improve, you need to be like what we say, smart goal time, timely, right? And, and targeted outcome. So what does it take for the
system to adopt this 90 day recommendation from you? It is I'm chuckling. Oh. So it's not really a challenge in terms of us adopting it. I think it's just a matter of let's do it
right. So okay. Hearing your interest right. We already have a lot of processes already in place to get to that point. It's just a matter of all right, let's put it into action. Okay. So for example, let's say yeah,
okay, we go for it. So now it's March, the end of March, end of so. So maybe this summer we could figure it out. So it can help with next school year's implementation. Does does that
timeline work out in reality? Yes. And what I would share is because we already have a process for program managers, divisions, departments to provide a response to recommendations. Right. The gap that I elevated that we're
missing is the checking back in. Okay. And so that's what we need to do. What is our intentional check back in process so that then we can report again in terms of what has happened since, you know, you said by, you know, in the
next six months, you're going to do X, Y, Z in response to these recommendations. All right. Now we're checking back in. Please provide us an update with where you are with these responses to the recommendations. That sounds really good. And so then my next question is so okay, so
let's say we say I think we are in agreement. Let's do it. Okay. Which department should be in charge of doing it? Well, I would, you know, bias, but I would say it would fall under the Division of equity and
organizational development, right? Like under Doctor Hamlet with shared accountability is under Doctor Hamlet because his organizational processes and development. So I would recommend that area. It would bring in the other divisions. But a lot of times like for this report, this falls under
division of teaching and learning. So because we are kind of separate from that, this makes my recommendation would be division of equity and organizational development. So then so that Doctor Hamlet will bring in curriculum and instruction folks, supervisor
for reading, maybe teachers. So that to say, hey, where are we? These are the recommendations. How are we moving? Okay, okay, so maybe, Madam Chair, I think maybe there's time for us to come back to this and to make
it a, a, a case, right? A test case of how we respond to yellow light evaluation. And, and how does the school system respond to it and, and make it a case study so that we can
develop a, a, a flow, so to, so to speak, and as an example for all future evaluations. Yeah. The academic return on investment is a standing item on every fiscal management committee meeting so that we
can keep pulling the thread on. Right, right, right. So use this as a oversight study. That will be terrific. Now, if I miss something, tell me because now I'm so, so excited now, right? You know. Oh, okay. So
if we are going to make this into green. Or red depending how is it, what are some specific evidence you will be looking for? So I think part of it. I want to do two things.
One, remind you all of what I quickly took you through with the handout. Part of that is your process when you receive the report reports, because it's we have the district side, which is here's the evaluation of the program. Here's the program manager's response to
the recommendations. And on the district side, we'll follow up. And then you all as a board also, as you receive these reports and the response to recommendations. And then eventually we'll circle back with the update on the like the check in piece, you still need
to go through a process of looking through those for areas of effectiveness equity, right? So I just want to remind you of there's a two phase process as we engage in that. And then as we move forward, when we think about what would it take to
move from yellow to green or red? The yellow really is meant to be. And if you look at and I gave you a handout for the program evaluation framework, it's meant to be like, all right, we need to we get one more year, like, let's check in and see what we're doing. And
so we really should be using that follow up year to evaluate, examine what adjustments shifts have been made. So let's just pretend for a year one, we see these three areas and we recognize some of the equity
aspects. What I would want to see is improvements in those areas, right. And not additional areas that are going in that direction. We would not want it to be in. And we also have to keep in mind, and this is always the challenge of program evaluation. If programs
are not implemented as intended, we're not going to see the outcomes we expect. Right. And this is year one. And usually it takes 3 to 5 years for things to really take hold before you see it impact on student outcomes. And we haven't we haven't delved into
that yet. Right? So I think those are all the things that we also have to consider because we don't want to move too quickly. We know that the focus and purpose of Carla is in alignment with what the literature says we should be doing with literacy instruction.
So we want to first make sure, okay, it needs to be implemented as intended, because if it's not, then we're going to continue to receive mixed results. And we can't necessarily say that's a factor of the program or the curriculum when it may not be implemented as intended. Do you
look for that? Yes. So that's why there are a number of observations. So we didn't focus on the weeds of what was found in the observational aspect of the study, but that is part of year one. And in year two they're going back.
The team is going back and looking at the continuing to look at implementation in the classroom. Yeah. I mean this is a big investment for the school system. So we want it to get to green. Yes. Yeah. So I always
feel right looking at the data, some of it we have a very long way to go. We just look at the equity one. We know it's in the 20s or 30s range. And if you can, if you look at manageability, the third to
fifth grade teacher said data entry, only 15% of them say data entry is manageable, right? And then if you look at the how diligent are the, are the lessons components being implemented as intended? Only
50, 57% of teachers say that's what I'm. So my, my, what I'm trying to get at is that I get it. It takes 3 or 5 years for something fully take hold. But do we set incremental goals for
every year? Okay, 15% of teachers said it's manageable. What are some pain points next year? Year two can we get to 30%? Year three can we get to 60%, year 480% year five? Voila,
we get to 100%. I, I am troubled by not having incremental goals and just say, let's look at it, look at it, look at it. Great. Everyone is working so hard. How do we feel that we are successful? If you make 100 as the goal, you never
feel successful because you are starting from 15%, right? But you really don't know whether the strategy is working on that. So if we can just be honest to say this is our starting point in all these different
categories next year under the department leadership to say, can we agree to say this is where we try to get to? And I would think that will help us, you know, achieve better
realistic goals. So we have not approached response to program evaluation recommendations in that manner before. I do see it as an opportunity for us to discuss, as we build out this process of checking back in,
right. So after we receive the response to recommendations, perhaps that's a part of the conversation with the program staff around, okay, one, what are you planning to do to improve in these areas and what might be a preliminary goal or
target around these improvements? So I do I do see it as an opportunity because then we can kind of more directly align some of what we're looking for. So, so let me take that back as a conversation piece for us for consideration. Thank you. And I
think it is important that we are evaluating the curriculum in year one, because we don't want to wait till year 3 or 5 to say, you know, there's these huge problems that we should have addressed. So it is an important, important step and taking some corrective actions
so that we can hopefully make this work effectively for all of our students. So thank you. Thank you for that. And we will continue our academic Return on Investment theme here on the Fiscal Management Committee meeting. And finally, there are
two informational items included in the board's materials for today's meeting. The first is the semiannual report of board expenditures for the first half of the fiscal year 2026. And the second is a memorandum of the Division of Facilities
Management outlining updates to M.C.P.S. sustainability efforts. Any questions regarding this information can be directed to board staff. I did want to thank the Division of Facilities Management for the memo. I think it was very
informative and if we may be bringing that back as a future agenda item for the board, again, it's sustainability update, but also related to fiscal management because some of the initiatives help us to
reduce costs. Are there any questions, final comments or new business items before the committee this evening? Okay, that concludes today's Fiscal Management Committee meeting. Is there a motion to adjourn? Motion to adjourn. Second. All
in favor, raise your hands. That's unanimous. Meeting adjourned.