are we getting No it's not Great Well you're welcome everyone Going to officially call to order our committee of the whole meeting for Tuesday March 18th 2025 The time is
508 Those who can please rise and salute the flag I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and
justice for all Thank you all The mayor will be joining us shortly He's coming from the state house Until then I will chair for us Could we please have a roll call Mrs Bronston Renzo here Mr Kajiano here Mr Kingston here Miss Milberry Ellis here
Just ran to the bathroom Mrs Montteroso present Mr Sella and Mayor Not yet And Mayor Keith absent Okay with that we'll go on to our consent calendar Do we have any
questions on the minutes from last month Bless you Any uh questions on the warrants submitted for this one One just one quick question just a general like we see national grade and stuff like that How how can we have what
usually one location gets one bill but we have multiple bills sometimes Uh yeah there's multiple I'm not sure the technical term panels or entry points for electricity at several of the schools I think the high school we receive four
monthly bills A couple are very small or attached to specific things that are happening Um so it's not as simple as eight buildings eight bills especially for like I said I just saw it and I you know I you know like I said I know about
commercial buildings and stuff but sometimes when I see all these different bills I'm just saying why is it just some of it is also interior exterior splits of how the electricity is coming into the facility The high school gets the most because of its size right Okay
Anything else Okay Uh we don't have anything for the next items of financial reports food services communications or enrollment So we'll move on to personnel items I will just say if if we're done with the bills we will be scheduling a ways and means
meeting for next week to take a first look with that committee at the first draft of the budget stepping into the next two months of the health Um that will include a draft anyway of
our schedule 19 agreement with the city And the largest uh item on there that will be affecting us is increase in the estimated rate increases on this cost to the city and school department for health insurance
So you'll notice that uh as with transportation in our last conversation our health insurance rates have been in the single digits for increases anyway in recent years And again we've contributed everywhere possible from
exceptional funding that has come in to health insurance costs For example the ESRE funding with the staff that we had there for two or three years there was uh lots of budget available to also deal with health insurance for them So we've
held those costs down and now this year both with rate increases and the end of those funds you will see a substantial increase in our active employee health insurance costs and some other things So um we've got a first draft of the budget
that we'll get a final look at together on Friday morning And then sometime next week before the first week of April we'll have Ways and Means at least take its first you know look at what what are we dealing with as we jump fully into budget season this year Thank you Thank
you It's about uh just just to give you a scale of the issue it's a 19% increase that they had us budget for in current employee health insurance Wow So it's a lot right What's the number this year Do
you know what's that mean Six Six million No no Oh 6% increase No but what's the current like what are we paying What's the total number on that line That line how much the health insurance is today Yeah it's just it's complicated to give you at at
No I'll take it next week Don't worry Take that net 20% and say that's the norm Part of it is is that our active employees uh we contribute you know we're carrying their whole plan For retired non-teers we're carrying their
plans but at a lesser cost And then for retired teachers health insurance it's the cherry sheet that gives us the number So it's coming at us from three different directions No problem what we try and do is put it together as as easy to understand as possible for our ways
and means conversations Okay But in the same way I guess we would say that as the city is stressing over the transportation reality of all these things converging uh health insurance insurance costs in general and special education costs will
be the two focuses of our conversation to say how does the rest of our budget keep pace when these costs are so exceeding what we actually did receive This is also why last month we made sure to give you what we did have in hand
which was the net school spending uh allocation from the governor's budget anyway And it didn't jump up as it had in successive years It stayed flat So all of that will be conversation in our first we have to see it together Yes sir
And then we can begin to strategize strategize going forward So we we couldn't do that conversation with you until all of this work was done We'd just be talking blind We have enough now to sink our teeth into some basics And yes health insurance will be on there
special education costs and some others Thank you One quick projected carryover like the 5% Are we on target We below or we were supposed to be where we thought we could carrying over Same thing I love I love that you you had you got it is you ask me questions as if I have a one
sentence answer So no one wordy Sure If we were like oh my gosh No no I'm just I'm not asking for the price I'm just saying right the projections that we made are we in line with the projections Right So coming into this year that was solid going into next year It's March
and we have uh projections of what can we count on and those are within the ballpark of where it would be But we're not only dealing with a year with four collective bargaining increases that hit after the start of the year but also the
state is making some changes in how they account for previous year's liquidations So some of those may increase our carry forward in one year and then decrease it in the next year and so that it becomes our job to say we actually need to look
at this in terms of two years not one because of those changes Okay So yes as a general rule if there's anything that's offtarget you know about it But also to to just flatly say oh everything's on target There are so many
moving parts It's fascinating how every year there's more Feels like we learned how to juggle seven I know and now they're like "Hey there's four more See if you guys can juggle 11." So we will do that work with you starting next week Yeah And I think a simple answer Anthony too is the one place that we feel a
little bit off target this year is the special ed which we've talked to you about before That's not running as we hoped that it would but everything else is And thankfully um we've been good fiscal agents and have the $10 million in reserve that we can talk about if we
need to use some of that spread Um this year or not you know we we can think about all of those pieces This will be the year where as a committee with with our team we actually see this
is why we go about things the way that we do right So that in years when the net school spending increases flat there is some strategy that we can can employ and also never ever looking at things only one year in advance but trying to
keep a a two or three year or further window So all that will come into play in our conversations Thank you Okay we'll get that out through Robin hopefully tomorrow Thank you Um I'll recognize that Mr President has also joined us via Zoom Thank you Of course
So next was personnel items Any questions on these since I think just to show um I was just concerned about the way it was written We don't have five teachers do we Yeah we do Yeah Oh I didn't think we could Yeah
Okay great Okay And then Dr Kelly would you like to walk us through the donations gifts and grants Sure We have a lot and most of them came up just in the last couple of days I know that when Robin when we were doing the draft agenda last Thursday I don't think that
we had we had one and then in the last few days we've gotten all these notifications which is wonderful Yeah Was it Yeah Uh the first is the uh RHS library grant for um $4,000 And what that does is it gives all of our students and staff access to online
library of resources um that they can now um you know get into and um it's an explore grant It's the $4,000 um let me just see here This doesn't really say what it is
Um but it it'll just enable our kids and our staff to have a lot more um online library research availability Um and so that's exciting And uh Mia Morgan who's the librarian here at the high school applied and got that grant So thank you
to her for bringing that on Um City Lab got um had a visit a site visit from um the learning agenda and received a $1,500 endowment um for their school as a result of that They were able to come
in and observe classes talk to kids talk to staff about the um hands-on project based learning that they're doing there Um so sorry it's $1,000 or 1,500 Why do I think it was 1500 Um that was the second notice that she got was that it was actually 1,500 Oh okay So we thought
it was going to be a,000 1500 But so it's 1,500 that we need the committee to approve Yeah Okay Um we got notified yesterday that all three of our middle schools got a Democratic Knowledge Project implementation grant It's $24,000 for
each of the schools So uh really exciting and that's going to help them develop out the civics action projects the kids have already been working on but um try to bring a little more rigor into those projects Um and then we were also notified that um we received the
teacher diversification grant again this year and um thanks to Dr Garcia and Jamie Flynn um and others who worked with them on that application Um that's $42,556 Um so we're excited for that piece as
well Miss Johnson um Dr P how many educators do you have working right now through that grant Through the diversification grant Uh I don't know that we have any You mean like fully on salary
um paid by the grant None I thought we had two from last month The grant isn't used to cover salaries It's a signing bonus right Yes And and this particular branch is not for signing bonuses This $42,000 is for um
school culture and support Okay That's what it's going to be focused on which is pretty broad Yeah Any other questions on the grants All great Thank you Dr Kelly We don't have anything on field trip So uh
anything from the missing from the regular meeting agenda or something else folk want to bring up Well with that um could we have a motion to adjurnn Motion to adjourn All in favor I Any second Okay then we have adjourned
and we will see you all at 6 p.m for the regular meeting time Thank you Fred will see