um to order. Um so, Dr. Phipps, would you like to review the budget options as we finalize the budget for approval for April 14th? If it's okay, what I'd like to do is give you a little additional information on a couple things that you all asked for to be able to share that. And there's also a piece that I want to make sure that that you all and the public are very clear on when we talk about the um the the loss of ADM and the impact that that has on us in terms of positions and and dollar amounts. I want to show you what those position numbers look like. Um but also but but but before there's a a panic because of of where we've been with the cuts that have been made, we have frozen positions and we have a vacant positions that have been made. We have frozen positions and we have a vacant positions that can absorb those cuts and we don't feel like that we're in a position right now where anybody would lose a job. Uh there may be individuals that would be in different assignments in terms of school locations, but not jobs that would be lost. Now, I may have to come back to you at some point in time as as we get down to the very end, but I think we have uh we've looked at what we've got open both on classified and certified positions and we know of some retirements, we know of some resignations, we know really a lot of the positions that have been vacant are are just not going to be filled and we'll move people in those spots. So, when we talk about positions, I want you to understand we're not talking about people and jobs being lost, but I want to show you uh what that looks like just so you have some idea. Um the the other thing that I that we wanted to to bring back to you was if if we were to go back and take a look at those positions who had formerly been 11 or 12-month positions and be able to add that back in. We didn't want to do it just on the athletic director side because there are a number of other people and we want to want to be able to get the big picture and let you take a look at that. And and Chris can talk about this some. The APs are not all 12 months, in fact most are 11. Um you want to talk about what that distribution looks like? >> Sure. Um well, first of all, on the the assistant principals are given to I give all assistant principals 12-month. All right. And then if you said all's too many, all right, then I gave 11 months for high school, middle school, elementary. We can do a lot of different combinations. I know right now we're looking at the ask. Um this is moving all of our all of our APs are currently 10-month employees. And this would be moving to 12-11 months. All right, which 4 years ago, we had 11 months and 10 and 1/2. All right. We we went to the 11 and 12 somewhere I think in 22 23. Uh so, this kind of gives you the cost and if you'll notice here, there's only one shedding and that's the green on the side and that's the loaded cost including salary, benefits, uh retirement, and FICA. And it has to include the supplement amount. Uh if you'll recall yesterday, I said we had some additional supplement dollars, supplement dollars, not position dollars, you know, for Article 46, but assistant principals are not eligible for Article 46 and those dollars. So, we have to allocate that as whole cost. So, you can see that's like 1.231, you know, million. That's kind of an average. When we add APs, if we end up recruiting some people that little more higher experience, it could go up. All right. It could also go a little down. The big thing on this is we have to increase the cost compared to our initial presentation due to the fact that we only got 490 498 months on state position dollars where they just cover it regardless. So, that pushes the more experienced principals on the local or at-risk dollars. So, this is what the APs would cost. Now, when you look at your counselors, all right, the count high school counselors would be at two months. All right. Each high school, the 18 would get two months. All right. And then that's, you know, if you don't add any more positions, you're just looking at the loaded cost. All right. This one varies a little as well, all right, because of who it is, but we can put them on a month of employment and then push it down to a lower paid person. So, that's where you can get some cost savings that we call the high-low. If we add a lot of positions, then we have to include the supplement as well. Middle schools, uh 17 one month as well. Uh the athletic directors is uh the two months. Uh that's our current ADs with one step. All right. I did have to uh I will tell you that that automatically comes on dollar for dollar local due to the fact they're not teaching. Uh we don't we have other roles that we also reduce. All right. These are the ones the board specifically asked for, so we we wanted to put them up there. We had psychologists, speech pathologists, you know, we had some others. Uh but we this is the ones that we specifically asked for, so we wanted to give. Uh you can kind of picture the AD uh role pay being very similar to most of those other groups uh based on their higher pay scales. All right. Uh psychologists, for example, are masters plus 300. Uh counselors are masters plus 100 and things of such like that. Uh so, that's kind of like, you know, to give you a ballpark if you say, "Well, Chris, if I wanted to add psychologists." We can kind of work it for you. Chris, what is that that I don't I don't see the total unless I'm not looking at the right >> Uh I don't put a total cuz I just put it the total items. I can pull it up for you. Hold on a second. I'll get it for you tomorrow. My guess is that we're in the $3 million range there, probably. Yeah. Yeah, top four. Okay. You'll all be fine. Don't worry. It's uh 1.8 I'm going to say 1.9. I'm going to round up to the nearest 100,000 if that's okay. If we had to pay that if you don't add the other teachers for those groups. 1.9 million dollars. Yes, ma'am. Questions about that? Yeah. I'm probably going to say lots of things today that are going to make people cringe, but um I know that you just listed off um a bunch of people that you didn't include um in this. Who is that was in that list are critical to summer work for staying in compliance with anything legally when it comes to our students? Well, you you've got many that are tied to EC that are doing evaluations and things like that. I don't know Chris on the on the rest of the student services side if you want to talk about that. Yeah, we have our psychologists, uh sometimes EC apps uh for the helping facilitating that, but we all but if you have principals and assistant principals, you can make an argument either way there. I think your psychologists are your big ones there. Uh speech language pathologists for uh when we have uh comp- compensatory ed uh environments. Um we already have we do have a few social workers still on 12-month uh contracts. Um for the uh project help and homelessness that we had to to keep. Um those are the ones that kind of come off the straight off the head, but then also when we think about instructional support and things you from the district level, I'm sure some of our curriculum department would say that we have some critical roles as well. Uh just so we're all know, the roles that we kind of reduced starting next year would be your directors and program managers in instructional services and uh student services. Uh you have your We had six five or six psychologists that were 12 months. We had some diagnosticians that were 12 months that went down to 10. They help school psychologists interpret data. Um we had 12 speech language pathologists. Uh they they are involved with the EC pre-K testing over the summer. Um the list is kind of Sorry, I'm trying to picture in the back of the head right now, so just but there's several roles as such. And and you mentioned, you know, we we also had the extended school year for some of the students that have that EC service, so there may be instruction associated with that that goes along with with that. Certainly part of compliance that we have to offer during school summer time. We have dollars set aside for ESY in the budget already in the base budget. We do have some dollars set aside for the flat rate pay for EC the folks we talked about in psychologist using some specific PRC's that have come in that aren't guaranteed every year, but we know we have until September 30th, so we're we have days covered for August or excuse me days covered for July. We also have federal funds that we've set aside where we can do some extended employment for the curriculum instruction student services. The areas that come a little more complicated that you can't use those dollars for would be the areas that are listed up here. So >> May I add one thing here? Yeah, go ahead. The one key thing here is you have changed terms of employment where you if you have extra days at the daily rate or you have contracts. Once we do contracts and we do a promotion to a 12-month contract, then there's a guarantee for year on after year. When you just offer the additional days right and then then you have more flexibility based on your budget flexibility changing. So that's one of kind of nuance in HR and contract languages that sometimes can be important. I apologize for my interruption. >> So I I think to Sabrina's point I would like to see um some type of list of these positions and exactly what they would be do doing during the summer and how it affects students because like when I look at athletic directors, there's nobody else outside who's paid to be in charge of those facilities because the coaches are not being paid. Let's let's be clear about that. So I I see that one is a as a mandatory. I also look at high school counselors. Most of their summer is spent you know, jocking and gymming schedules to try to get everything to work. Are we expecting them to work for free from home? But I don't know do we need every high school counselor in the building all summer or is it two or is it I I don't know that's what I'm I guess I'm looking at that I um assistant principals, I don't know how much they're doing during the summer that affects student experiences or or being in charge of a facility. I don't know if they're if they're doing more of assisting a principal and that might be where we say we can't do it or but I I don't know enough to to know. I do know that with psychologist the ECF and speech pathologist without those people working in the summer, there is a major backlog that keeps students from getting services they need early in the school year. I mean there are kids who don't get services until January because of the backlog from getting evaluations and that's that's problematic and that's directly impacting our customer the student. So I would like to see something with again, it would be nice to have all these. We don't have the budget for all these. So let's is there a way we can prioritize better based on our mission which is student centered. Any other questions about that slide? Not a question but a comment. I think we at one point we talked about looking at the assistant principals as a kind of like staggered or it would be a school based decision what happens over the summer between the between the assistant principal and that extra counseling position kind of talked about meshing that so that so that he or she can then determine who I need in the building when based on the needs of the building. Yes, sir. That's where I was going with the terms of employment rather than the contract. If you would say you know currently we have built in the June this year and then next year's base budget we have days where it's at the flat rate not the daily rate. That's the difference but it would be you would have this many days between your three assistant principals. So I'm going let's say it's 20 and there's three assistant we're saying all of them get three 20 so it's 60 days. They can divide it up. In that way that's the terms of employment so there's no guarantee the employee that they're going to get those days. We need to communicate well ahead of time but it does give flexibility. So like instead of having one counselor for 22 days you might bring two in for 11. So to follow up on that would that be if we kept and just paid them the fee like we're talking about doing it for the this summer. Is that the same because the reason why I I have a reason for asking because if that is the case, I think some of the concern with our athletic directors is that they are getting a lower rate um than some of the others and are doing more labor in different circumstances and definitely still affecting students. So if that is what we're still talking about is there where where is that conversation that we are not paying them at a fair rate? Well, you know and I think that's one thing that begs to be uh asked and answered hopefully would be we've had a lot of discussion and it's been a point of angst of daily rate of pay versus a flat rate of pay for exactly what you're what you're talking about it which is which why I prefer that we have the contract piece but the contract piece ties us up a little bit in terms of flexibility but it takes care of the employee from from that standpoint. So we lose some some ability to be able to adjust depending on how things are going as we get in the summer but you've got individuals that can count on the salary part and you know what that looks like. The other thing you don't get are annual leave days and some of the other things that you would earn if you're working during the with the regular contract and those two months being extra month sick leave stuff like that. So we can I mean psychologist are not on the list. I don't know we can look at social workers and speech pathologist and OTPT or anybody else that we have like that that would need to be there and talk about what they do. And the AP's contract ends when? For a 10-month person. >> When the teacher work days do this year is May. So when a teacher walks out the AP that doesn't have an 11-month contract they're done too. And what you typically see are AP's that stick around for a couple of weeks and and they may have in in the counties where I've been they've had three weeks of employment that they that they worked and so they were 10-month 10 10-month three weeks pretty much that allowed them to stay a little bit longer after teachers left but they were not there particularly the elementary school the entire time. And then you all know in the summer we have fiscal year changes. So we've we've got to think about what that looks like in July and August. We can still do just so we're clear we can do daily rate of pay on the extended term. We're allowed to do it. The one thing we would need to change is on our AR our policy is that determination will be when you're extended term do you get the teacher supplement or not. Currently it says there's some variance in the policy so we need to make sure that's really clear but that can be done. It doesn't have to be a straight contract. You can still pay daily rate of course you know, funds being available. That's the thing and we can make we'll make a list of all those terms of employment that were reduced during the reduction of force. What I heard you say is the cost plus their what they're doing and their impact on the student experience or facilities. Did I capture that correctly, ma'am? Yes. Okay, great. That's one of the questions. So the teacher supplement piece to this is so are there people getting the teacher supplement when school is out? Yes, ma'am on our on our terms of employment they were if you were a 12-month you know, 12-month contract and you were on a teacher contract um and all these roles here except for the the top ones are this not the assistant principals were getting their get their regular supplement plus article 46. Is there any way we could modify that so that the teacher supplement is when school's in session? That's when you get that. Would that include AD's? Yes. Yeah, everybody everybody has to make it more I mean just the supplement. Right, you can't you you get the supplement when school starts and when school ends and when there's no school in session you don't get the supplement. I think as long as we clearly define it in the salary schedules, yes you that is permissible. Okay. But And I just said it so I'm not saying it's a good idea. >> >> Sure. So Yeah. It it might be a compromise to get people back more fully employed. We can we can get that information to you. Other questions, thoughts or ideas about that? Okay. So the the next slide is the one that I want you to take a look at and this is what the loss of ADM results in when you talk about positions. But again, I don't want anybody to read that and think we've lost 57 people in in elementary that have lost their jobs. We're trying to absorb as many of these and and they can be across areas. So it could be that we've got 60 vacant positions in elementary and we're able to absorb some of the middle school or high school there. So we're we're talking about what the allotments look like from the state. It's not a a thing. It's what almost every district is dealing with in the state right now. When we go through this this year, provided that we don't have major loss of students in the future, this level sets us at a place where we're not having to fight the battle every single year. And what I hope and what I hope is that we're able to regain students and we're able to add back the following year, but you all know that we're in a funding in arrears model, so it takes some time for that to show up. I asked Chris to take a look, you know, one of the caveats there is because we're moving ISS positions from classified certified to classified, some of the openings that are in the teacher assistant piece would fill in there. So, that's how some of these things happen. And we really won't have a full accounting of every person by person until we get into the early part of the month of May. And it would be at that point that if there individual situations that we've got to try to work through to make sure that nobody's lost a job. I'm committed to making that happen. But, based on what it looks like with our vacancies right now, we're we're able to accommodate that. Um this is is what you all saw before the formula changes. I'm I'm not going to run back through that again. I do want to make my way down to the what I called options, but really were not options. It was more a summary of some things that we could put together. And this is where I I wanted us to be able to have some conversation today. Another slide adjustment and as as as Chris and I were talking, knowing that one of the goals of the priorities that we had in the budget of being to to work in the exceptional children's area. The cuts that were made there were not made in exceptional children. So, what I asked Chris to go back and look at was if the allocation of formula was applied to EC the same way that it was to everybody else, how many positions would the exceptional children program have lost? And I want to include that number when we talk about the increase. So, if that number is 15 and we're talking about increasing exceptional children by 28 in one example, the real number would be 13 because I'm counting the 15 that we didn't cut. Which would allow us to trim because they're in the budget already. The nine assistant principals that we had at those schools except for those extremely small schools are in that budget already. So, these are the add-on pieces that we're talking about. The other part and Kevin's here and and I don't want Kevin to cringe when I say this. And and I I wake up thinking about it, I go to bed thinking about it. I'm looking at any kind of alternative. What can we do to grab a dollar here or there? The other big ticket item that was in there that I felt like is important to include is the refresh rate for technology and it's two and a half million dollars. So, the question is what if we delay that for a year and we know that we're coming off of the debt deal that we have to work with. And if we had to handle it internally, we've got that money at least moving forward. Kevin, is that a possibility in terms of where we are to survive for one more year without starting the replenishment? And yesterday afternoon, Kevin and I had a conversation and and I was not privy to this the last go-around with the bond, but the the preference was not to include devices in a bond because a bond is stretched over multiple years, which makes sense. So, you don't you don't want to purchase a Chromebook and pay for it for 10 years or whatever that financing piece would look like, but as we think about and I'm just asking you as as you kind of put your money pieces together, the EC piece, I think, is a little bit of a twist in terms of some of the things that we've done already to salvage positions in the existing budget. And then the other piece would be that refresh, which will be a quarter of our our student inventory. Yeah, I think my only input to that would be this will be our third year in a row of not doing anything, so it makes each year gets a little harder. Can we survive? We probably can, but there will come a point that we'll have to look at that 9-12 one-to-one program. And if we don't start refreshing soon, we'll have to pull back from that and go to a different ratio as we've done at middle at elementary and middle. So, to sustain where we are now, um I can't tell you today can we hold it together one more year? Um gut tells me maybe we can. But, just keep in mind this will be year three of not purchasing a single device for kids. So, the further we do that, and I don't disagree with your strategy, Dr. Gibbs, but we get it further and further in that refresh hole of trying to keep on a cycle, but um we'll do what we have to do. And and what the reason I'm saying that is I want to be able to put some options out there when we get to that. If we if we are at a situation where we don't get what we requested, but we have some needs that we feel like are critical on the table, what can we do on our end? And and that would be something that I'd encourage us to look at. Not that we do it immediately, but if we get in that situation. So, so my question was going to be what do we need to restock for 26-27 so that we have like if not doing a refresh, but what do we need to restock cuz I know we have you know, devices that are broken or devices that are um missing or >> We may need to look at increasing our repair budget where we're buying screens and keyboards as the main things that we replace often on on the on the Chromebooks. I think we carry about $100,000 a year right now just for pieces and parts uh to keep broken things fixed. So, maybe we could find a little maybe we could double that budget to help limp through another year possibly would be something to look at. Um just to clarify what we the the 2.5 million is actually a 20% refresh. That's to help keep everything on a 5-year schedule. Um So, I would lean towards, you know, if we if we if we had a 1-year hit, that's that's great, but it doesn't restart our life cycle. So, we I think until we find a a strategic way to build a recurring budget, then we're really just always chasing it. And I'm not saying that a 1-year would be great cuz that would get us another year, but um I think our long-term goal and I think y'all you guys are all thinking the same way. We got it's got to be a recurring budget item to keep the life cycle going for our our students are never carrying a device more than 5 years old. So, maybe to answer your question directly one last time is maybe increasing our repair budget to get through next year would be probably helpful if we could find a little money to do that. And and maybe even a little little bit for devices if we had to purchase some, but it would be significantly less than 2.5 million. Can can you elaborate cuz I'm concerned at the thought of not having one-to-one in high school? I don't think that that is our students cannot function at that level. So, where are we >> Yeah, I don't think that I think we'll be there for next year. I mean, I I don't have that data in front of me right now, but I need to look at the loss per school. And as you know, some of our schools have higher loss than others just based on the student populations and things that that go on in schools. So, I could come back to you with that and let you know where our high school stand and what next year would look like as far as sustaining 9-12 one-to-one for next year. I threw it out there as a as a strategy. Hey, if we don't start buying at some point, then we can't keep sustaining the numbers that we have, but if you'd like in a in an upcoming finance committee or buildings and grounds or something, I can bring that data and tell you where those high school stand. >> Well, I would I would want that to be a minimum. Expectation is that we have those devices in those students' hands. So, I mean, if it's what whatever the dollar amount is plus the repair budget, I wouldn't feel any I wouldn't feel comfortable going below that amount. Let me share one piece of good news and I'll get off the microphone. We did have through Winston-Salem. Many of y'all are familiar with what Winston-Salem is. It's an organization we've been a member of for 15 years. We've had a donation of 500 Chromebooks come. They're refurbished, but they're usable from an organization that Winston-Salem is partnered with and those are getting ready to come to our warehouse in the next few weeks. So, we're going to use those in the most needed areas. So, we've got a little small band-aid there for some devices going in the next fall on on that on that donation. I plan to recognize him at a board board meeting later on. Kevin, I got a question. For the what for the repairs that we had, do we have any carryover this year or last year that we did not use? Well, no. What we what we've done this year is we had, I think, Lynn, correct me if I'm wrong, about a $40,000 budget and then we had some surplus sale of of some broken things. And we as surplus money has come in, we put that money back into the repair budget. So, we kind of fluctuated around $100,000 total for the year. And we know we don't ever have any carryover on the repairs. How how about our collections on >> That's that's all on us. Mhm. from students that lost or damaged. Is that base That's based on collections over the S the estimate for the budget for next year? >> That's our You're getting ready to ask it. How good are we at actually collecting it? Oh, we're Because I know a number of parents who um are very loudly saying they will not pay for damages. That is their mindset. >> Yeah, just to remind you, we only charge for complete loss or stolen based on negligence or intentional damage. We don't charge for accidental damage and those kinds of things. And we we have a hard time collecting and that's school by school and that's based on the school administration manages that, but we can't manage all that from a central level for every family. Um so, yeah, it's it's a challenge and some some schools do better than others as far as collecting those funds, but it is a strategy to roll those funds, you know, obviously back into our repair budget. Maybe quarterly or something would be great to have to keep that padded up and helping us. Does it I mean like we had to pay for textbooks and gosh knows what else before children could graduate. Is that still I've kicked the idea around uh with you guys for years about a technology fee and we just we just never really committed to saying that's something we could do. It's not exactly what you said I know but other districts charge. I've got three three kids in Iredell-Statesville schools and I pay $25 a year per student. And you know, if we charged 20 bucks million dollar I mean So but that's another whole discussion about the technology fee. Other districts have done technology fees for years and we just never committed to it cuz they just don't want to pass that cost along to our families. I get it. But that's another thing to maybe keep on the list of options. I mean at some point it becomes like as a single parent I get every dollar that is asked for by our schools. It's hard. I get that. But at some point that there has to become kind of a partnership of us us as parents being willing to say we will pay a fee so that we can continue to have nice things. I mean that's part of being partners. So I really think we should um and and have obviously ways to cover folks that are unable and I don't want anybody to ever be punished for being unable to pay but it I think that >> That comes to this challenge where you have to maybe prorate it and things like that for free or reduced. I don't know the specifics. >> an opportunity too for people to opt out of getting the school issued one cuz they're going to provide their own. And that could reduce how much we need to budget for it. And that way we get that way our funds are used to get technology in the hands of kids that that otherwise wouldn't have it. And that person who's going to buy their kid their own Chromebook anyway that Good point. >> we don't have to buy one for them. So I'm I'm not trying to push any particular object or initiative or anything on here. I just want to show you what the numbers were and as as we go through and and and try to get a a sense of what to include or not to include because that'll be what I include in the proposal for you all on Tuesday night of of next week. The others are are here. You've seen this. This this isn't any any different than it was yesterday in terms of the pieces that get get added in and what the the total amounts are and I do think that the 3% pay raise piece has to be in there because we we almost I can't say we're guaranteed. We we feel very very confident that there'll be some type of a raise that's provided and we've got to have the ability to cover that locally. I don't know that this will cover it all because we don't know what that amount's going to be yet. So we've got that in as as a placeholder to be able to take care of that. So to me that has to be in and then we start adding the pieces to it as we go through and I I wanted to get your sense of the things that you all felt like were critical that need to be included or anything that we might not have talked about that you thought about. We've shown you the extra part there that was the 12-month employment of those positions, you know, anything like that. And and and we probably all received the same email about an orchestra director that he's not receiving the 1500 he needs for repairs and I think that's just for one school that maybe we should take a look at that for all the schools. Yeah, that apparently had always been it always has been in the budget. And was taken out of Yeah, it was removed from the budget for this year. Mhm. So I just want to circle back to see has that been included again for 26-27 or we're expecting students to try to repair their own or whatever. >> know about that but now that I do we'll we'll look at that in terms of where it might fit or if it needs to be an add-on. It's it's relatively inexpensive compared to all the other stuff but it adds up when you do that. So but yes, I've I've I've got that on my list. >> I think there's a minimal amount included in the arts budget for repairs but nowhere near the amount that just try to look at it proportionally. How can we afford that based on And and um And and I was going to say I really like uh the ideas that bubbled up yesterday about SRO and nursing to be county like to come from the county if we could talk about that because that could certainly be a savings for us and the municipalities asking them for assistance. I just don't know where to start with that. Um the city and all of the other municipalities but I I think we're all in it together. We're partners just kind of like what Sabrina said with parents. We're all partners. We need to look at that. Um I'm going to say some things that I thought about. I've been pondering over this um but before like all the things that we were given for homework last night. Before I say it I want to I want to say something else. Um what I'm about to say is not in support of any organization. I am not saying this in support of FCAE or on behalf of FCAE. This is coming out of my mouth as me as an individual um because I don't appreciate what happened to some of my fellow board members last night with FCAE. So I want to be real clear that this is not to support them. I have been thinking about the budget thing and I thought about two things and then I watched Sheriff Kimbrough's um press conference. So my first thing I thought about is that we are the fourth largest employer in the county and not all of those employees are teachers. So I just I want us to remember that when we're thinking about our budget. Like there's a lot of other people who have jobs in our district that aren't just teachers. That's my first thing. The second thing is just ask. That one from 2018 keeps playing in my head. And the the county commission's job is absolutely to control their budget. To say, "Hey, we don't have this or we can't do this or don't ask for this or whatever." Sheriff Kimbrough was very quick to get up there and talk about what he needs, what he wants, that he's going to fight for it and he pushes back. We continue to worry about what the county commission's thoughts are going to be about what we do or what we ask for when at the end of the day our job is just to just ask. To just ask it. They can say no. It could be a crazy amount. But our job is to ask. Their job is to say we can't do it. You if the sheriff is able to go and ask the way he wants to ask and do the way he wants to do, why do we worry so much about their opinion? Someone came Someone came. I think it was Patty but she's not in here tonight today. I'm sorry. But she asked um about if we could get with Novant and Atrium as partners to supply probably um maybe our nurses. So that could take some money off. Maybe. Yeah. I mean those are two areas we could really do and that could take away some of the money, you know, that is in our budget. They also pay Atrium pays for our We pay Atrium for our athletic trainers that are mandated by the state. It's a big expense for us. And they're not taxed, right? Neither one of those are taxed? Atrium and yeah, they're not taxed. So I mean what's the problem with us asking, right? It's a payback actually. Um another thing to think about is yes, just ask but where does this money come from because they have to do the fires, the sheriff, you know, the parks, all the things and so that comes from tax increases. So to really put it in perspective, what is doable and what is feasible. So if you look at six for every six million, it's a penny property tax. If you're looking at what all of these different options are for FCAE, it would be a 6.4 increase in property tax. For priority, one of the options would be 3.5% increase. For the adjusted service, it would be 2.3 cent increase and for the base, 1.27 increase. So we you know, the community might have an appetite for that. That's how we could get these funds but we just have to know that this is where the money's going to be coming from. Other thoughts or comments from the time that you had a chance to have your meeting last night and then the the opportunity to look over and think about what we did yesterday. How much? I'm not the math person, so I'm going to let somebody else Trevonia or somebody. Um What if we said that the base cost for a house in Winston-Salem, it's $200,000. What does that create or what is that potential that would be passed on to that consumer? So if they had a $200,000, is it 20 extra dollars a month? How many extra dollars a year? Like is it really Is it a huge number? Is it a small number? Does that make sense? We'll get somebody working on that. Just to make sure that Is this what they're paying now, what it would be additionally, or what it would it be in total? So like if they were paying 20 bucks, would it now become 24 bucks? Or is it 54? You know, I I And I don't know math enough to have that answer, so that's why I'm asking for some help. If we're assuming it's and I didn't do the calculation, I used ChatGPT. Uh do not tell the Digital Teaching and Learning Department of Technology, please. Uh 1 cent increase per $100 on a $200,000 home is $20. So cuz it's 2,000 units * 0.01 is the way it explains it. Forgive me, that's not something I learned in my two accounting classes. Are there Are there non-negotiables that you want to make sure are included as we move forward? A couple of thing Well, uh more than a couple of things. I wanted to look at all of the requests for the EC teachers, assistants, and case managers. And I'm big on case managers, by the way. I'm sorry. You probably don't know that, Dr. Phipps, but that's something I've been preaching since I've been on the board. And the bilingual assistants. So I would like to see it and I know that's a big number. If we just added those together, I think it was 17,282. But those I would like to add to our base request. And then see what the Well, we know what it would be, but I would like to add. I don't know about other board members, but I would like to add that. But So just a clarification, so I'm looking at the priority investment request. Is that where you're What What are you saying again you're asking for, I'm sorry? So actually I'm getting it from when he did the FCAE request. I took the additional EC teachers, the EC case managers, the EC teacher assistants, and the bilingual assistants. And like I I said last night, I I think, you know, we can do a little bit at a time. Maybe this year we add that, then next year we can see about adding something else back after we see how we can function with that part of it. So that's what I got so So wait, just for So clarifying, like we never we we don't we didn't have case managers beforehand. So your ask is to add case managers back from when we Like cuz we didn't we didn't riff case managers. That was just something that we never added back. Or we Or really, what did we Does Does anybody know what we actually did? I I feel like it was at one point I'm looking around to see if anybody was here. So it was I think they were in the schools and then they were taken out of the schools and then but the positions didn't go away. It was just like they were Like do you know what happened Does anybody know what actually happened? I don't have all the exact detail, but at one point But at one point they Talk to Dr. Talk to Dr. Wooten. I'm sorry. Are you Short version of the transition of leadership in EC after Sam Dent C was to transition case managers into EC facilitators, which had more of an instructional focus versus a paperwork management focus. They do support that, but that's not their primary role. That's the simple version. Well, so I And I guess my question is so we were trying to transition those positions from case managers to facilitators, but what happened to those Do we have EC facilitators? Like You know what I'm saying? Like Yes, we have EC facilitators and we have job descriptions. One of the challenges with that is that job has morphed about five times since that initial transition and what that role looks like. We've had some clarity gaps, I would say, because of the initial vision post like 6 7 years ago, etc. So So I think there are two challenges with that. One, teachers do have to own data around their students and they have to be involved. One of the challenges that we had as a district is when we had case managers, there was kind of this unstated that somebody else was doing that responsibility. And so So we have to have a clear balance cuz teachers have to know their data. They have to support students, but they do need support. And so that was the intent of the EC facilitator role. And I guess that's my my point is like I I remember Thank you for that clarification. And that I guess that was the point I made last night is like so you add the case managers back, what does that do in terms of process and procedure to basically make our service delivery where it needs to be cuz it sounds like based on what you said, we still have to get clarity around like our the current role of EC facilitators. So it it's sort of like you add case managers back and then what's the What is the result of adding them back? I think we know what the result of adding the additional EC teachers back cuz we know what the function of EC teacher is, but we haven't had case managers in so long. Like what is it that they're going to be doing? But also our EC case managers were the ones who did all the paperwork, pretty much. They did all the paperwork. And right now we're kind of putting that to every teacher and they don't have enough time to do the But the EC facilitators also help with that role. So I just want to be Yeah, not that much though. Come on, let's go >> do. It just looks different and the number of schools and the ratios looks different. And so And we've had to adjust and play with that, if you will, based on funding. So when we had case managers, we had upwards of over 30 of those, right? And they shared in multiple schools depending on the size of the school and how many. Now with EC facilitators, now we're down to about 23 to 25. So it's a lot less than we have before, but I think the question is, and this is the critical question, if we make a shift to case managers, what do we give up and shift? Because it all depends on a few things. One is being fully staffed and having teachers in the role in that place so that teachers can work in tandem with someone who has that knowledge. Right now, a lot of our EC facilitators are working in the gaps where we don't have teachers as well. So staffing period around EC teachers in conjunction with the purpose and function of that role are two critical issues we have to explore. But also the way we have it now, our EC teachers have a larger caseload than they had before. And not only the larger caseload, but you also, in addition, have to do all the paperwork. So when you say all the paperwork, I I want to ground in that a bit because there's always support from EC facilitators that help them in prep for meetings. Do they do everything? Absolutely not. But EC facilitators sit in that gap, working side by side with teachers both on planning schedules for the meeting, helping with the paperwork around meetings to ensure compliance. And we also have process specialists. We don't have as many, but they help in the background, too, and support schools. So we do have support. It is just not an exclusive role that the person only does paperwork. That is the huge shift that we made moving into the EC facilitator role. But But I also like that to be And And the reason why I'm I want to make sure I have it is because And this is, I guess, the saying the quiet part out loud. Is it sounds like to me, and this is what I how I understood it when I first got on the board, was that there was this sort of like underlying belief with the older structure where we had the caseworkers that that's the responsibility of the caseworker. I'm the reg ed teacher, so I don't have a whole lot of like If you have a question about EC, you need to ask the caseworker. And so the shift to where we I guess wanted to be was that there was some additional ownership on the part of the teacher because all students Even students that were receiving EC services, they that has to There just has to be ownership there. What I also know is that that transition maybe didn't work out the way that it was supposed to based off of the Theory, intent, implementation is always critical. Okay. And I would say at the root of that, some of our additional training and preparation. So the current infrastructure we have is a once-a-month training. One of the things that I would say in that initial transition we did not prepare for as a system well is individuals that were used to doing paperwork only and you were asking them to move into an instructional role. What is their preparation for doing so? And with all the transition that we've had, it's still a difficult spot. But are we still engaged in providing support and PD? Absolutely. But we need more, but I also think in looking at more individuals who specialize in instruction is probably the biggest gap that we have. Not probably, it is. Which is the teachers? Well, it is the teachers, but it's also we have some newer teachers in EC that need more support and development process specialist help with that as well as our PD team with the coaches and our AU support. All those individuals help with that, but they're also helping with individual support for students as well and helping to give teacher on the ground in the classrooms as well. Right. So how many of these process facilitators do you Process is only three now. It's only three process specialists now. Okay. I've never heard of it. And the reason why I asked the question, it goes back to the actual item itself because I feel like if we put that as part if we put at EC case managers as part of the ask, the next question is going to be what is the impact of the case managers? And so if we're not ready to speak specifically to that and that's a relatively large ask. I mean, $6.9 million. We just have to be really sure that we know exactly what these positions are going to do and what they're going to be doing in relation to EC services. And so so that one more piece I would add is if you're asking them to do paperwork only, then you're giving up the focus on instruction and so what what happens to the EC facilitator role? So we would have to answer that. So just real quick. So I think also we got it's about layers. We I think we've taken away a lot of layers which are all connected to the EC in general where we're talking about whether it's a processor or processes, case manager, EC facilitator. We've we've taken away layers and we put all those layers together or lack of, that's where we kind of I think I'm missing missing it. So the question I have, how do we go back and add layers of support to make sure that the regular ed teacher, he or she is getting what they need but also making sure the EC teacher and staff are getting what they need so we get the ultimate benefit that the children are successful. Point. So who is doing this well and how can we copy them? I mean, that was kind of your point last night, Alex, is there's there's other districts that are doing this work well with fewer people and they it has to be through good systems or processes in place and how do we replicate that? Maybe that's like a a question that because I I do want that answer, but maybe we can answer it today. I don't know. I can't tell you who the exemplars are, but we can find that out. But I can I can talk to folks at DPI that work in the EC world that could tell us who they could point us to. I mean, service-wise, we were one of the best. People were coming here to get their kids served in EC. I I don't know if that's still the case today or if we were serving them, but we were way over budget. So Yeah. Can I say one other thing? I will say every district that we know of in the big 12 is struggling around the answers around EC. If you haven't followed with Wake County right now, that huge piece around Wake, everyone is figuring out service delivery, sustainability for support and ratios that are better than the state and how can you make it sustainable? Charlotte is doing it as well. So all of our colleagues are dealing with this critical issue and question. Effective as defined by what? And so the academic achievement I would say is the indicator and what districts are having better performance. I know Charlotte is showing some really great growth in many in many ways of all of their schools, about 90% of them meet or exceed growth. So they have some good systems in place, but continuing to look at more systems by definition of subgroups, we can we can absolutely share that data. Well, and also to tease out if Charlotte doing it because they are supplementing locally. I mean, everybody is supplementing locally. But but to but to different degrees and we know I mean, there's no comparison with tax base between, you know, Wake and Winston-Salem or or Mecklenburg County and Forsyth County. There's we're not in the same we're not even we're not in the same league or the same sport even. So That has to be factored in. >> from just allotments of each district. I know currently with our last adjustment, we are very close to what Union does in allocation of staffing. Are you looking for both allocation and staffing and subgroup data? Is that what you the board is collecting the data? Yeah, like so the sub subgroup specifically around EC because when we were looking at the ratios, it was sort of said like I think it was Union, but then the other one. Alamance, Cumberland. Yes, where the rate they were they were comparable in size, but their ratios were about where we are where we were moving to. But in terms of their data, it it was indicated that we may be not working in the right we were overstaffed, but we weren't performing >> outcomes, we are not getting the return on investment based on what our staffing ratios are. Yeah. No, I mean, it it it is a system like but that's the point about Like I I feel like in the in a budget conversation, we have to be able to ask like if we're going to the commission and saying this is worth passing a tax increase for, then we have to make sure that we're confident like not even just confident, but we're sure that the investment is going to yield the results that we're asking for. And so that's why I feel like we need to not just look at in the increase, we have to it to me it's a good faith sort of thing to say not just to look at the actual positions you have, but the policies, procedures, practices also. I don't disagree with that at all. I think my concern is that This one's really probably going to ruffle some feathers. We've been saying for 3 years that we were going to get our staffing like our EC staff distributed properly to best serve our district in compared like like other districts were doing, but somehow there is a disconnect where it's not happening. So to know that there is a systemic problem, to call it out and say we've got to work on it, those are all well and good, but what is actually being done? And I I I'm not trying to be disrespectful, but we have as a board heard now almost 4 years that EC needed to be dealt with better and it needed to be redistributed like the staff needed to be redistributed better, things So I have a hard time keep saying we talk about the systemic and the budget piece when I I I haven't seen the systemic piece change. And putting more people into a bad system is not going to yield better outcomes. >> Right. Well, and to your to your point, I want to say this year with a staffing adjustment and the hiring freeze compounded the issue in a really tough system. Um and until we can get to the place that we say we have the staffing, we're not on a freeze, and we do implementation based on the adjusted criteria, we can't say this works, this doesn't work. We we were in a lot of um work with what we have and try to continue to serve children based on what the requirements of their needs of IEPs. And so I think this year was a it was a really challenging year around that. >> I I and I hear that, but I'm talking about even 2 years ago. We sat and we were told that we had plenty of EC staff. We had an overabundance of EC staff. That the issue was only in how they were being distributed and effectively being used to carry out the EC plan or the the process, whatever. We're sitting here now. We got we're not overstaffed, but we're we haven't done anything to fix that part. Like we're still in the same space. So I I that's that's a big struggle for me. I agree. It's we we had fewer people that should have forced us into a more efficient model, but we kept the same model with fewer people, which didn't it's not working. But I also think and this is just me so I think everything like what you both have said, I I agree with. I also think that there are lots of variables to the why in that when you shift from the status quo in organization, there's there's always pushback from a bunch of different groups that are really integral to the success of that work. So when you have a group of folks who are like, I like the way we were doing it before, it worked for me, but the practices in the in the best practices around the way you do it is sort of the opposite of that, then that creates issues and I feel like that's been one of the variables for me is that we have different groups and different people who want things to be a certain way cuz that's the way it's been and we haven't quite either gotten the buy-in or we just haven't and I say we, but there hasn't been a decision made that no, this is where we're moving to. And I actually think even with the reductions, what that's also caused is us having to move to doing things that maybe we would have it would have taken us 10 years to transition or a longer time to transition to, but probably from a best practices standpoint we probably should have been transitioning to anyway. But the reality is that a lot of people don't like that. Like a lot of people don't like where the practices are like going or where we're supposed to what we're supposed to be doing. They liked the way that it has been historically in the district. And so when you're trying to create institutional change, it takes time, particularly if people are pushing against it. I mean I mean I think that's a that is also the reality is that I feel like this wasn't just like one person going where you know, one person should have said we're doing this and then we didn't do it. It was that there were people who wanted to do it. There were also groups of people who didn't and so it's like how do you manage change in that environment? And to that point >> >> mindset is one of the biggest barriers to change in our district. I don't care what the topic is, but EC is the hot topic. Um and to that point I can give you countless examples where we have worked provided support to schools, given feedback to leaders, talked about the strategy for implementation, where we have challenges around people wanting to try because they believe and have made a determination despite what an IEP says that this child doesn't belong. And so as a system until we do that continued work around mindset we're going to get the results we're getting. But we have to get better and we need support around that. I I do think a big contributor to the mindset piece is um the feeling that the people on the front lines doing the work have a say so in it and have been heard. Um I mean we that message gets reverberated at least 10 times a week I hear about you know people on the front lines feeling like they're not that people are making decisions about their jobs and their processes who aren't in there and don't understand the work that's being done. Um And we've got to we've got to overcome that somehow on a lot of fronts. Um because you're not going to get you're not going to get change if you don't get buy-in from the people who have to do the work and the only way you're going to get buy-in from them is if they are part of the process. I want to say 2017-18. That's how long. All right. The last year we had case managers was 2019-2020. Dr. Harris and we had four and we you had you had 40, but I'm not sure the 40 EC case managers became ECFs, but there were also some other roles that were created that were similar. It was appears it was divided. I think we provided the board some information my first May here. So from your perspective is it too early to ask if we're getting outcomes that we've been wanting? You mean for EPs outcomes and not having case managers and using the using them in a different way with the ECIAFs. Um Our data's not showing impact. Like let's be very clear about that. But can we attribute that to the case manager? No. Because there's so many other variables around teacher competence, teacher strategy, um implementing, attendance, following IEP. I mean there are so we can't just use just the case manager. I would I don't want to say the case managers were a way for schools to feel like they had additional support around getting a piece done that was also a part of the process of monitoring and serving students. Though I think well-intentioned, what it created is a gap when it was eliminated that we didn't have people to have the capacity to be able to do that, meaning teachers. So that was a challenge in that transition. The second challenge I know we had is around people being able to transition to the new role that was the vision for that when the case manager was gone. I don't know if that helps, but no, we are not getting the results that we would expect and want in the district. Okay, I can only tell from my point of view and when I was teaching, which was not that long ago, but I think it was anyway. For me the EC manager was the one who like you said did all the paperwork. And when I had to go in for a re-eval or whatever as the general teacher, I would lose an entire period for one child. So if you're thinking about now the teachers are doing the about everything, they're they're probably losing a whole lot and and that's how I base it on. It was just so much that one person was responsible and you got all your information at the beginning of the year cuz you need to know what the IEP says. You need to have that before the kids step in the classroom. And as we got rid of the EC case managers, it was a little later, you know what I'm saying? We didn't have it the first day of school. Right. So I would have given a test already and I don't I didn't even know what the IEP said. So now I'm you know, not following it. So that's the problem. >> teacher is doing that work working in tandem with the general ed teacher. Yeah, with the extra caseload. Okay. But I think that to the but I think to the to the budgetary conversation if you increase the and I guess that's my point is like if you start and and you mentioned this earlier Trelawney about like kind of building back more intentionally, if you increase the amount of EC teachers and then you start to also work in tandem on the processes and like the like an adequate transition and and giving people the training that they need so that we're adopting a structure that is both compliant, but also where we are acknowledging what people are feeling and experiencing on the ground, you can start to kind of build back, but then keep assessing what your needs are so that if there's an opportunity to be able to do some additional things you can do that and deploy them in a way that's the best for whatever your needs are. Cuz I cuz again I feel like to say right this minute add back case managers when we're in a when there are questions about what the what we're doing, I don't know if that's you know, the best investment for those dollars. You know what? I I'm trying not to put you on the spot, which I think you are. But You know But You know what? I haven't been in the trenches in a long long time. You're you know, you're in the trenches. You're dealing with all of the the EC layers. We're looking at budget. And this is where I probably put you on the spot. What is it that you think that we need to seriously look at prioritize in this? Is it a mindset? Is it positions? Is it Is it So here's how I'm going to answer your question. Um I do think we need to look at the collective system and look at validating where our biggest gaps and return are. That could be an analysis of our instructional landscape. Um so that would be helpful. As far as positions, I'm always going to support putting more teachers in place first because teachers have first priority in serving kids directly. Is it that I'm saying no for case manager? Absolutely not because any position we get for support is great. But at the end of the day what we hear in feedback is people want more support to directly impact students. And so I would say that is always going to be the first investment, whether that's instructional assistants or teachers, but teachers would be first because they're trained to do that work around specially designed instruction and I'm going to use that term because that's what it's about. It's about designing instruction to respond to the direct needs of students. And then instructional support, which would be an instructional assistant, would be second. You asked me, so okay. This is a this is So at what what is a a reasonable time frame to believe that the systems get fixed? And and again, I'm not I really am not trying to be ugly, but when we have had people say they were working on it and it's not fixed When when? When are we going to when are we going to start? When we going to do it? Like I I guess I'm just So fixed versus continuous improvement, I think are two different things. >> Okay. We're always going to have pockets of excellence and Okay, I'm going to I'm going to pause. So I'm using the term fixed because I am say from what we have been told that we had the ability and the staff to do the work, we just didn't have the right distribution and system. So to fix that what is it going to take because we again, the whole time I have been on this board, that has been said. Those things have been said. So what what is it going to take? Like where What are what are What's the plan? It We're I'm not I'm almost 4 years in. So, I would think the first ask is to get us fully staffed. Let's focus on that piece, I mean, being a critical piece along with the training and support directly for the staff that are in place to stay in place and to your point, board member Crowley, having good morale where teachers one feel supported and they believe they can serve children and they have the strategy to do that. So, that's the the piece that I would say is the most important and people being able to give feedback in the system. And so, I think as a system, this is not just EC. Morale is in a really bad place. You know, people have concerns around where we move forward, they want support. Many of them want to be here, that's why they're here. And so, what do we do to ensure that they stay and attract new talent that will stay? I think that's our top priority. And to your point, once we get that, I think we'll see progress. Will it be perfection? We weren't 2 years ago we had vacancies. >> 2 years ago we were told that we had an abundance of staff, that we were overstaffed in EC. Now, that was always debated by the folks in the EC. However, that is what we continually were told and that all that needed to be done was fix how they were distributed. So, we had adequate staff when that began to be said. Now, we don't, we're different, it's changed. So, I I I understand the reasoning for now, but what nothing has happened in the interim. I That is my biggest concern is we're talking about systemic issues that affect our budget, but they haven't We've been working on the same systemic issues since I got on the board. And adding adding more people, again, I don't see where that's going to help. Because if we're already having a trouble attracting and retaining employees, especially in EC, adding to a system where they're already disgruntled and overworked and feel like they're doing all this paperwork or all this admin stuff instead of teaching is going to run them off just as fast or or we'll never even get them in the door. So, that's I don't I don't want to bring more people again into a system that's not working and and not producing results, good results for our students. That part I feel like needs to be fixed and then bring people into it. And and maybe that maybe the add-on is that we bring in the people who do the paperwork and then we have happy teachers because they're doing they're doing one-on-one with kids and not doing all this admin stuff. Maybe it's not what we want to do or ideally we want them to do both, but if we know we can't hire people because they hate the job and we can't keep people because they hate the job, then same to hire more people, it's not going to help. So, that's What I was going to I think at our current staffing current like this fiscal year, we are not staffed in EC in a way where we can ask anybody to do anything else, including additional training, adopting a different structure, because people's ratios are so high that like I just feel like there's a any additional weight you put on folks, then that's sort of the straw cuz a lot of people are having Some people left because they were A lot of people had to leave because of the reduction, but then there are voluntary separations because of the pressure. I feel like how you how you stop that bleeding is you ask and you receive additional people who are helping to take on that load from just a personnel standpoint. Like that to me is the direct kind of first level intervention that we can do or we we should like to do. And I feel like EC teachers are, in my opinion, more EC teachers would would be the most beneficial. I also will say this and I'm trying to say this in a way that is like I'm not trying to I'm I'm trying to just talk about the reality, but also be respectful. Again, decisions don't happen if the EC department could wield a thing in place, they would have done it already. The requirements around systemic change in an organization this large are that the superintendent has to buy in. Principals have to buy in. APs have to buy in. Teachers have to buy in. If groups are not bought in to where you're headed to and they're pushing back, your implementation is not going to be what it's going to be. I feel like to the point there's been work that's been attempted and Dr. you correct me if I'm wrong. There's been work that's been attempted, but that either has been met with pushback or we haven't been able to get to a place where there's kind of a collective understanding of where we need to go, why we need to go there and people actually want to like take that journey. I feel like it hasn't just been people in EC just sitting on their laurels being like, "We're not doing anything." It's been we've attempted, but we need to make sure that everybody's bought in because the EC department can't do that heavy lift on their own. That's correct. >> >> Everyone has to own it and everyone has to be a part of the change. And until we are committed to that as a system, it is going to be hard. So, what's the what from the budget perspective? Like is it is it EC teachers? Like what what is the what do we think the ask is? So, so let me let's go back to try to We're looking at document that we were given earlier. Not saying I agree or disagree, but the document suggested that we add 20 to 48 more EC teachers to meet student needs. That was a document we received and and that's within those guidelines, it's not restoring everything, but that was a recommendation that we at least anywhere from 20 to 48 be added back into the EC or from another document. If we could look at that I mean again, I know we can't Well, so what the suggestion was to put everything in, but um Yeah, put it all back in, but there's also that was a recommendation that we would try to maintain that 20 to 48 positions. And let me share with you all what I've heard just as I've been out talking with administrators and the teachers. The two things that I think are the pressure points that are frustrations and things that I want to try to fix is what can we do to allow teachers to teach? Because that's what they want to do. That's what they're there to do is to teach. And then we've got other individuals I think that are are great at doing case management work. And when I look at this, I think a case manager comes in and does the work of the the traditional work of a case manager and it frees the teacher up to do the teaching work. And and I don't know whether that's the pendulum swinging back to where we were before, but I think it's at least a two-tier approach to what we have. And then the other piece that's there and I want to be careful not to suggest that EC folks are doing general ed work, but in inclusion model when you have EC children in general ed classrooms, there's a need now that we've never had before where general ed teachers need additional support as well. And that that's what we're talking about on the EC piece. With additional training, too. Without question. Yes. I will say that's one thing that Charlotte Mecklenburg does is they actually train all of their gen ed teachers in IEPs and it's mandatory. It's not optional. And that probably would make some folks unhappy, it but at some point and and I'm going to make everybody mad when I say this. At some point we have to take responsibility as grown-ups and say if we want things to be different, I have to put in the effort to and the district needs to provide it and then people need to go do it and actually get the training and understand so we can work as a collective system because we are so siloed and and we're not only siloed between central office and our schools, we're siloed between folks who have 20 years of experience and someone who has 5 years of experience. Like our in in our schools, like the mindsets are so siloed and if we don't do something to change that, nothing it doesn't matter what we do and how much we spend. Okay, I'll make a suggestion then. Since nobody's going to step up. What if we did the 48 EC teachers instead of 62 and then do the case managers? Maybe do half of the case managers and they would have two schools and I know that's going to be difficult. So, what happens to EC facilitators or do they become case managers? Is that a possibility? And again, I'm talking about stuff I don't know enough about to make any decision. I would think that would probably be the transition, but we I think we need to ask the teachers that are doing it or the EC department, but I would think the facilitators would become the case managers. If they don't want to do that totally, then they'll be a EC teacher and get rid of the facilitators. And can we bring together a a consortium of EC teachers to talk about what they need and get them to buy in on a on a big change that we could be in supportive of if that's what they feel like would help them serve students better. So then from a budgetary perspective, why don't because we have a meeting next week, why don't we change the case managers to like EC support positions because then that make it general so that whatever the function ends up being then we budget you know like that's what we're asking for and then we can work on what the what like well not we but staff can work on what they're going to do and then bring people to the table. I just what I will say definitively is that I do not like returning to where we were before which I have seen with my own eyes of like a case manager being told like like a like general education teacher saying EC is not my thing. That's the case manager's responsibility. Like that is where we were in a lot of places. So I I think the original impetus for the transition was because there was a there was a consistent like belief or like mindset that I I don't need to be in an IEP meeting. I don't need to be involved in the details of like I don't need to be involved in that and the case manager should handle that. So I think building capacity of what the collective responsibility is for everybody around EC and I'm not just talking about teachers. I'm talking about leaders in buildings, everybody because I feel like we still that we still are struggling with that and Right. Or to the point that Dr. Wilkins mentioned is that there's still mindsets about children not belonging in schools. Like this school is not the place for this child which to me is not always the case. I feel like some people think that that might be the case more often than it should be. So I So I have have you have concern about No no no not inclusion but changing that title to EC support and then coming back to figure it out later. I just don't know that's the right thing to do at this point. I um I know that's that's another concern we have. We we have one week left of to bring this budget together. Um and I I don't know the solution but I'm I just don't not feeling that part of it. I just don't know how to move forward with it though. Maybe HR could have a what's the betters terminology than EC support or something. I don't know. I'm just not feeling it. >> work on the naming but I think a part of it is like you can say EC EC case manager or similar support and what I hear you saying is you want to add 40 of those and then with the 25 ECFs that we have on the base budget that would give you 65 positions to for staff to work together to decide what the best support plan that would look that would be different than we've done to better support teachers with course with the input of the teachers and principals. Uh it so you'd be at 65 positions there. Uh you also have some office specialists and software specialists and some other licensed positions in that. Um I'm going to say something and again not going to be popular. Um Um There were last budget time there were a few things that we said we were going to do or we wanted and then or maybe it wasn't even budget time but there's something that we were said we were going to do one thing with this group of people. Um I think it was during the riff and then it totally changed kind of the project like the trajectory of how the riff went and how people's opinions of the riff went because we switched something that didn't make sense and these people were upset because this job this position was more valuable than this position but because the board made the decision we didn't have all the information. I don't want us to be making decisions about specific positions that then it's codified and then it goes back and it is a ripple effect of things because we didn't have all the information. That's my concern. That if we are too specific with specific positions we may be harming people instead of helping them. So it's more of increase that budget but have uh the superintendent recommend how that's going to be allocated to support positions or teacher positions um to make that department get the best results. Make our students you know help our students get the best results and then That was my suggestion. But also I think in in in that conversation we still must go back to including our EC staff and I'm just making sure we all so we we got to include our EC staff or our teachers and even our regular ed teachers and our school administration also got to be included in this discussion because a lot of times sometimes those people are left out. So I think we we can truly come up with a collaborative process where all voices are heard and maybe he charges that group but but someone got to bring all that together so we can begin to work through this discussion we're having here today. Um I think that's really critical. We have we got to bring all parties about because I've been in it for a long time and I've seen the dove from the pendulum has shifted from here to here to here to here and in the day I still feel like we're we're not doing our best for our kids. So then I think we're back to the general like EC support kind of EC support positions because we don't have to like that that's going to take time to flesh out and if we want to do that we're not going to do that by April 14th. Right. So I think we just agree to an increase that we all are comfortable with and have the superintendent figure out how to use those dollars to best serve that area and it's based on the feedback that's been gathered from the front lines. Now I want to say this. I like the increase of dollars but to me it seems like and I'm not quite sure what the the leadership structure is Dr. Phipps but to me having this discussion about EC I really wish that we could hear from the voice of the person who's over EC the EC director. And I would assume that she would kind of know what's going on in the trenches and the need you know along along with Dr. Wilkins. So I don't know if that's a discussion that you would have. It is and we'll we'll set that up. I I you know we'll do work but I want you all to be involved in that to hear what we're doing as we go each step of the way as well. Yeah. And Paula we'll work on that as quick as we can. Because that's why we have a leadership structure to make sure that we get the voices of those who are doing the work. So but what okay so the point about being general because I think is it that we want to keep it as because it sounds like to me we don't know if case managers is what like we don't know if that's what the function is going to be. So then it the ask is You said something Chris. You could say you could say you know EC case manager {slash} EC support. You know it's you're in that budget coding area of uh instruction support. So we'll figure out a way to phrase it. All right. By how much? If you did 40 positions uh the base the uh loaded salary is uh 3.36 million dollars. 3.36 Yeah. 3.3 million 360,000 dollars at 40 using the average salary of 80 uh total cost of 84,000. That's what our average ECF is. Once I get guys this it'll be somewhere in that area. Uh 40 positions That's right. So what I heard what I No, 40 positions. 40 positions The 40 positions at 3.33 yeah 3.36 million. So now the question comes is how many more positions you add does it impact the supplements? So if we if we get above 150 we have to increase our supplements generally. Right now you are not there. What I've heard you say is 48 EC teachers uh and 40 uh EC case managers support. You said base you said start with the base so you still have the instructional facilitators in that group. Um and that's the only licensed staff in that grouping so far. Well Yeah. Yep. Let me at least Lisa can you come up and let's kind of keep Let me see if I can hide a couple columns here so we can just work from one please. I don't know if you've got a device that would would let us be able to keep up with things. You guys are I think I can type on the slide right Chris. Yeah. You can type She will type on it. Um do I have to go out of slide show to do it? If you just open one for me. Are you are you currently in the shared one? I can type it in here for you. No. Downloaded it? Okay. Yep. Twice. Right here. So we said 48 >> So do do a separate just a separate slide with with bullets on it of what we talked about. >> Okay. Okay. So we've said 48 EC teachers, right? Mhm. 40 Yes. And that'll be uh Okay. for EC EC support {slash} case manager. Okay. I'm I'm not trying to change the content or subject, but there are other things we've already agreed to. Can we kind of put those up there as well as we move forward? Well, I don't know what we agreed to, but they Well, they were suggestions. >> Mhm. Like the ADs, the high school counselors, there's I'm going to I'm going to put um What do you mean put Chris? Chris is in the terms of employment. It was table It's slide one. Is that right? from Also, the the AP positions. Yeah, so that would be AP And that And then we mentioned I don't counselors I'd have to be convinced. >> on there? I'd have to be convinced it's necessary for middle school ones over the summer. It's not as dire. Middle school counselors, I don't see So, just so I put this the the recommendation is one 112, you know, two months of employment for the high schools, one month for the middle school. So, even if they have three counselors, they only get one person that gets unless they we allow them to divide the days. But, it's not multiple folks as far as total length. Elementary school counselors do not receive uh expeditionary terms of employment. That one's over here. Yeah, I put the other one, the psychologist, ECF, and speech pathologist. Yep. Was it all >> If you just Yeah. It's the people needed over the summer to do the assessments so that so there's not a backlog for students, and they immediately or as close as immediately receive services once the school is >> speech I had speech. school psychologist >> school psychologist And I I wrote down ECF, but >> Yeah, the ECFs were 10 months and um a few days uh for 10 months 9 days uh previously, I believe. Did they do assessments over the summer? >> They may have They may have to hold an IEP meeting or do some kind of uh thing like that. >> So, that they can start Yeah. day one of school kids are ready to go. So. And I And I'll say that just to reiterate, some of these positions we have already identified available funding sources in our federal funds uh to do so, it won't be a local ask. Uh but in a state grant. That's right. Uh the one thing with those is we would not want to put that in a contract because the those dollars are temporary. So, it's kind of, you know, we're looking at this year. You know, then we have to worry about next year. Um What are the questions? And another day I'll explain maintenance of effort. CTE has its own budget, so we don't have to Correct. >> And the reason I'm asking, what is the position up under the up under Kim? The director. Okay, yeah, you you have the director of career technical education. Then you have some central office roles that are actually part of the CTE months of employment, such as your special pops coordinators, uh curriculum instructional management coordinators, things Excuse me, yeah. CIMCs. The These are All these acronyms are going to get me today. EC cross specialists We have that position covered, EC software specialists. John Watts Oh, CT I'll follow Lisa. We also mentioned adding additional AP positions. They wouldn't be under the extended terms, it would be by itself. >> Got you. Is that in addition to the base budget? or I was pulling over base budget as well. >> budget. Okay. Cuz those things were on the base. I'll get to watch me in real time mess with this thing. Better you than me, man. I have those budget though. You have You already have those built in the budget. And a couple of the EC teachers in terms of what we looked at initially. Not right now, we don't. No, that was No, the zero thing has the APs. Back to it. What am I missing from that first one? I think we had nine, and the the the regulation was to have one at each school, which would Yeah. Right. So, that would require another four FTE, I believe. Is that right? Yes, four. Was the But, was the device refresh on that first slide? Yeah, I was just going to say that we were talking about that. Should I add that? >> An extra 100,000 for the repairs plus some additional devices if needed. We We wouldn't keep both of those. If we If we eliminated the 2.5 million, then we would get back. But, if we kept the 2.5, we wouldn't have to do >> Right, we'll eliminate that. This is just uh a thought with the 2.5 million for device refresh. Um Texas um one of their school districts that's comparable in size to us does a five-year bond cycle so that each bond isn't exorbitant, it's reasonable, and they put their devices in there, they put their athletic equipment in there, they put tangibles that need to be re-upped and refreshed every five years. Is that something we could discuss within our bond at some point that we approach it from a cycle because that would help eliminate some of these things being in the annual request. Yeah, I'll investigate. I don't know enough about bonds and and how what the terms are and the different options, but we'll look We can find that out. At least I think on the the 100,000 add and 2.5 is not both, but That's right. Is it either or at this point? I'm not sure where we're landing, but it's not We're not going to We're not recommending both. It It wasn't Yeah. I think we were taking out the 2.5. It's 100,000 plus some additional money for some devices. So, not the 2.5 refresh? Keep it like you had it. It's going to be It's going to be one or the other. >> Okay. And do we know if we have a line for the um repairs of musical instruments? It's not currently in there, so that'd be another piece that we need to add. It's 5,000 now. Is it Is it under the arts budget? Is that what you said? It says currently 5,000. For the entire district. And it used to be 1,500 per school. I'd like to propose that we move it back up to at least 10 if not 20. This isn't even getting And this isn't even buying any instruments. We're not We're not even We're not even keeping our heads above water on this one, guys. I think it needs to be at least 20. Is that 1,500 that he spoke of? That was needed for just his school >> his school, correct? Okay. No. Mhm. No. Chris, was there anything else captured in the base that we don't have So, on the base option, we have the instruction facilitators. Uh We also have I'm going to go through here and say quickly. You have the operations additional dollars for operations, instructional support. And then we also need the probably at the top of the list the dollars for the local pay raise. >> a raise? What am I adding? I'm adding IFs. Yes, it's 32 positions if you're looking for the number. I What I don't Do you I was asking the board. No. I don't think That's not on the board request to add back 32 instructional facilitators, is it? No. The reason I said it is you said base plus and it was on the base ask. That's why it came up then. Can you Can you Is somebody What is the difference between an instructional facilitator and a testing coordinator? Right, cuz we got those Right, we used to have those. I know I can answer that, but I'm going to defer to Dr. Wilkins. He's the chief academic officer. And and neither Neither one of those are administrators, so they're some administrative roles in That's what it was classified. So, just a couple of background information. So, instructional facilitators in our district has had a long history, but they used to also be the testing person. Over time when we shifted that to have pure instructional focuses, we created a classified position that was a testing coordinator that could just manage the nuances of testing. Over time, there has been a push that only instructional certified personnel should do testing, so that's when it moved back to APs and not IFs. So, that's just the instructional AP. We had APs of instruction. >> Of an API which was created under Dr. Harrison for this way as a position. Now, we don't have any curriculum coordinators anymore, do we? So, curriculum coordinators and instructional facilitators I would say are synonymous. However, this is the however. They were originally called curriculum coordinators. When we shifted the role to exclude testing, that's when the name became instructional facilitators because of instructional focus only. Does that make sense? It It does. >> Okay. But, that's a position that is not typically like other districts. Do they have that Many of them have some sort of nuance. It looks different. So, if many as we talk about opportunity culture with MCLs, though that's classroom, but you have full release versus partial release. Dr. Barn Jones can talk about that more as well. But, many of those have shifted over time in some other districts that it do more OC, some of the state funding with that as well. But, in our district, the instructional facilitator role has been the one that has been a teacher position allotted that it doesn't have full-time classroom responsibilities. Okay, last question. If we remove if if the allotment isn't there for the IF If I'm a principal as when I receive my base allotment, I still if I really want one, I can take a teacher and use it as an IF. That is correct. I increase in class size. But, Okay, I know I'm aware, but So, the uh Two other questions just to make sure we're on the same page. The board asked uh on the base option, we had operational We had 25% of amount of the operational unfunded. That's a lot of equipment and other things that we just do not we've And and repair and inventory associated with that. I would love to see us be a little more aggressive with anything to do with operations. Um again, I lifted it up yesterday. We need to have some attention there, too. That currently is sitting just for the board to know is at $569,241.75. Uh cuz that's the 25% of the ask. We can make it 50% of the ask which pushes it just over a a million. Okay. What's the number? 1. I'm putting it as special. I'll give everyone the whole thing in a second. Okay. >> Uh The uh The other one is there's an instructional support uh un- unfunded which is funds for summer school transportation, uh EC funds for project dream, textbooks for college career promise, NC pre- pre-K curriculum, math printer curriculum, world language printer curriculum, and then I put etc. cuz I think I got tired of typing at that point. As well as I've added $20,000 for the arts, so that would be a 710,000. Is that included already in the 20,000 figure? >> Yeah, yeah. I'll I'll give you the total number in a second. >> Okay, okay. So, that's in the 50%? That is the operation No, instructional Just put instructional support uh unfunded and I'll get you the number in one second. And Chris, were we adding the funds for the 3% pay increase? >> Yes, that's right. With the locally funded positions. Yes, that's right. Am I missing Chris? >> Uh all right. I have locally funded positions and state positions from the non-match PRCs. Yes, the pay So, >> So, it's it's one of the Which one would you like? Would you like the local the pay increase for just local or local and state unmatched? What would be the pleasure of the board? Is that another >> So, on the pay increase, it's going to be one or the other. Uh for the 3% increase, is it just local or local plus this, you know, amount we're going to need for state uh unmatched PRCs? I think we need to add that. Read that, Chris. Is that right what I wrote? Yep, that's That's right. That's close enough. Yes, ma'am. That's right. local and state and state So, may I add one thing here and we'll have to When we do the switching does it proposal make sure we get the correct numbers. As we've added these additional positions saying that number might change as as change a bit because you're adding more to the denominator, right? But, it won't be much, but if you see a different number and when Claire is cuz of the additional positions. So, I wanted to ask the board if because we haven't done the RFP yet, so we don't know what the proposals are going to yield, but if we could put in here a budget for the central office study. And the reason why is because I think it's important to show that that's something that we've we are committing to, but also we want to do it right. Um and I think maybe putting that in as a bulleted ask will show the commissioners that we actually are taking you know, that seriously. I mean, that's something that we want to look at. And that's the next thing on our to-do list of that scope of work is is pretty much finished to send that out to find out what kind of feedback we're going to get. And Alex, when we were doing a gender review, was it I don't know if Lawrence is here. Was it 6 or 700,000? >> That's the for the facilities. Oh, the facilities study. >> Yeah, if we could add I mean, we could add that. What they had done at Atkins. 850, Lawrence said it. >> 850. Okay, 850. It's for the full to get the good data. for the facilities assessments Yes, and I think that might be good, too, because ahead of the ahead of the bond. And we talked about it. Yeah, getting ahead of the bond. It's the the central office The The first one was the study of the positions in central office to like see where we are so we can to Yeah. Not our Not our typical audit, but it's the it's a central office It's like a review of central office to I know that, but I was trying to figure out the difference between study and audit. Well, it's referred to as an audit, but it it just is semantics. Yeah. It's It's not a financial audit. It's an operational positional type of an audit. So, Question. And I'm I'm maybe I've missed it, but I know we had some discussion discussion on bilingual assistants and I don't Come back to That was two more bilingual assistants and the other one that I haven't You have Yeah, so put in bilingual if The other one that I haven't heard discussion on it was on the list. It wasn't on the base, but it was on the next ones. Uh was the school-based instructional supply allotments to the previous allocation of four people. It's about 1.15 million. That's the one I heard you I heard discussion yesterday, but I haven't heard it today. Chris, let me ask you that bilingual It was 30, so what I guess I'm wanting to know what schools are we Are we looking at elementary only? I just >> the bilingual Of course, whatever we add we can always change the allotment formula and how we do it. All right, let's put that. The bilingual assistants during the SR times were allocated based on how many office support people are at the elementary schools. It ensured that all elementary schools had three. So, if an elementary school was above uh I think 700 kids, they might have got three already, data manager, finance manager, and an additional secretary. If you're above 600, you might have got 2.5, so your bilingual assistant was 0.5. And if you were under that number, you only got two. So, it's only elementary It was only elementary school. Do we Do we currently provide any type of incentive for employees that are bilingual or speak another language? We do not, sir. That kind of goes back to the point if there's a better way to do this that could save us money and with more intentional hiring. But, we have Instead of hiring people to only do that, it's it there's other as >> or something. Right. Or, if there's somebody at a school who is bilingual and then you give them a stipend for also helping to do interpreting. I think that's The only thing I will say to that, I agree that absolutely they need to be compensated for their time. There needs to be the flexibility for the leader to do that for multiple people in the building so that it is not always fallen on the one person and missing classes and that kind of thing cuz I think that that happens like sometimes it's hey, we'll pay this one person and they get to do all the things for our building and I don't want to see that happen. I think if I may, instead of saying for their time cuz they're doing their time hours already being paid for that, it's for the additional responsibilities. scope for the stipend. And and and to I mean most like I don't know what it most employers would there's some type of like test like you you you if you if that's something that you want to if you want to get a stipend there's a some type of assessment to like make sure that you're actually >> I am positive the staff behind me has already jotted down for that. Yeah, no no I mean but it's it's something that's done. >> Yep, you're right. very regularly. >> Yeah, and all of our office support positions actually have uh Spanish speaking preferred but you know, we run into sometimes you have a lot of tests with data manager, finance managers and then we need to probably work on helping people develop those skills so they can be bilingual on both. Can we start with the stipend? And then see where we still have vacancies. If there's nobody in the school willing to you know, take a stipend to do it, then then look at filling the schools with Yeah, it just seems like a it's definitely a needed service but it's not Uh I just feel like it can be combined with something. Is that what we wanted to say? stipend No, I'm not there yet. Um because again it depends on I think also your building and who's in your building. I there's some schools who really need a full-time in my opinion front office position that's bilingual. And that Mr. Kelly you're talking about some creativity of shifting stipends and looking at vacancies but there are other schools who may not have a strong need that we might can get by with that school having a stipend. But there are some schools that I know that I can call up four or five schools, they need a full-time bilingual person. So, I don't want to limit us to just a stipend but I do like the idea of trying to figure out what's best for each school, whether it's a stipend or a person. So, when we go across all schools like this, 30 will not 30's going to be a very small spot in your bucket. Uh how what amount were you guys thinking? >> what? 30? 30 FTEs with this the different needs cuz right now it's focused on elementary schools. Uh So, you're saying we have 30 elementary schools who need a full-time bilingual employee? No, ma'am. I was just saying that we have 30 FTEs you know, right now on the board. When you start the previous uh allotment formula had very little very little to do with the ML speak of the Spanish speaking families. As I said, it was to make sure they all had three office support positions. And the bilingual assistant position was not intended to only be interpretive services. There was other type of work to be done, right? So, that's the other part I want to say cuz we're talking about interpretive services but bilingual assistant was more than just that uh connections and things of such and Right, that's my point about the problem with making it a position is because we have off like you have office support positions generally and then you have like a person that's bilingual and so you change the to me the most of their work and it you're sort of operating that person out of their grade or what the position is actually supposed to do. So, to me it's about asking the question which again is going back to like systemic things of what how do we or or what what are the best ways in which we can ensure that people within buildings are staffed and then buildings can communicate with people who may not who may speak a different language. Does that look like having a full-time person in every building that can speak whatever you know, to me I just feel like that model is number one not sustainable. It also is it's not something that we can always guarantee but then also because of the different percentages and like the way that our population is, you're not going to cover we don't we're we'll never have enough money to cover every single school having a guaranteed like bilingual person and then also there might be other people in that building that are also bilingual that are also providing that support and then what do you do for those people? Cuz they're providing that support and not getting paid for it. So, the reason why I made the suggestion about maybe starting with a stipend is for those who are actively providing those services additionally, there's a way to compensate compensate those people and then also we can take a look to see about ways in which cuz this is my thing. If I'm a principal and AP or whatever, I really ideally would want to communicate with people. I should be able to you know, like I if I don't speak the language, is there some type of like translation like software like something that we can do so that those relationship I'm not passing that person off onto another person cuz I can't speak the language cuz just because I can't there's a language barrier, that doesn't mean that I I don't need to develop a connection. You know what I'm saying? Like I so I think that we got to think about it cuz I feel like there's a better way to do this. There is software available for that. So, Richard I know that before you like is does that make sense or like are you still like I mean >> think there's some flexibility. I just cannot again, I'm going to use Ashley Elementary School as an example. I just cannot see what currently what they have on staff, they're meeting the needs all their students and parents. So, if there may be some flexibility in saying that hey, cuz there is only one person at Ashley who can do the work and we know that's a greater need for them, can we look at adding another person or somehow making sure we meet the need of that particular school we've got a lot of students who are multilingual. And I think and some school we don't have this the capacity for a stipend at this point. I just want some flexibility, I guess. So, does anyone have an idea of an amount you were hoping to budget for this? After y'all know I just sat there and looked was poking my calculator. What's listed on here as 30 assistants at $1.5 million. But, 40 Those are 205-day employees. So, if you were doing a stipend like if you wanted to do and this is where a stipend you know, what's the appropriate stipend amount? You know what I'm saying? Is it $1,000 for the year? $100 a month? Is it $200 extra a month? Uh you know, if you did something like 200 instead you're going to do up to 150, your stipend's district wide and we'll the of course the devil's in the detail for the allotment formula later but we have to have a budget amount first. That would be roughly $333,000 but I'm doing the math in my head but I again, I want us to be real careful with those numbers because we don't know what the stipend rates are for other people so I would really hate for us to say let's do X amount and then find out that isn't fair to someone else. >> Absolutely. What I'm I'm looking for is a budget amount and then we can back it out. We can back it do exactly what you're saying find the other stipends. Uh we don't have a lot of you know, we have to look at that and it's the other thing is you know, we used Yeah. Without knowing kind of where our stipends land in other spaces and places, I I'm real hesitant to put a number because I don't want to undersell or over you know, I don't want to Is it okay if all our staff to work on it and the superintendent will include it in his recommendation as EC splits? Yeah, and then also I mean cuz to me it's not it's a market thing. It's not a like providing an incentive for a bilingual employee is something that you would look at in like how what the standard is within the market not necessarily just solely based off of and based on kind of what we can do from a budgetary standpoint. I I think that you got to we have to operate within our means but I think that the original one to me the original amount was what? 1.5? If you did 82 schools times 10 months a year times one person at $200 a month, that's $164,000. And so there'd be room. So, I mean there'd be room for multiple. So, yeah. Yeah. But but 200 bucks a month might not draw any takers. I don't know. I'm still going to advocate that for flexibility for me is that I I understand the stipend but I do really believe in my heart there's some schools will need more than just a stipend. I I I do believe. I do support you with that um Richard cuz I about said Dr. Watts. I don't know why. I I'm tired. Um Will we agree to a million on this one? This one instead of million, can we try to do it for a million and see where that gets us? >> But then to to Richard's point, maybe the statement, Lisa, is it's not it's as opposed to by stipend, maybe it's support. Maybe we're general. And we're we're we we want the additional so we want the additional money for bilingual support. Tailored to what the schools need. >> that'll give us we'll get flushed it out at another >> say 1 million for bilingual support. And chat GPT says North Carolina school systems bilingual stipends for front office clerical staff typically modest, not standardized. They fall between 500 and 2,000 annually. My numbers was based on 2,000 annually. So I was at the top range and that put us at 164,000 to have one in every school. But that might not be enough to Richard's point. Just one is there anything else cuz I'm looking at the time is 3:30. So anything else that we have not looked at that we want to discuss before we bring closure. It is 3:30 and many of us got other commitments. Just want to make sure we're we're Thank you, Lisa. And I'm coming right back. When they said that this which one you looking That was that was on one of ours. >> >> We added that one. I I do see two the areas that we I don't see the area that we might want to discuss um I know we're short of time but additional grades ADM 6-12 and also with classified employees. I know we've not talked about Elon those yet today. So let's see where we where we are on those two perhaps. >> >> Is the one 6-12? >> It's under adjusted service level right here. Want to add 26 at 1.7 million dollars. >> 1.7. Wait, 1.7 million. Excuse me. What does it mean? I'm sorry. I don't understand what that >> Are those the positions we lost due to the like ADM reduction? >> The it's where we had to revise the formulas to get with ourselves within budget. So uh the 26 is like the model five so that's going to impact more high schools. Um who who took the the larger high schools took the greater cut. Yeah. And then your uh the next one will kind of um impact your high schools a little more and then middle schools a little. Is it class size? Is that what we're talking >> It's it's adding additional teachers to would lower class size. It will min I don't want to say class lower class size and more course offerings probably. Hi. Uh if you remember the first slide about how many positions were being reduced. Okay. I feel like we would be doing a great disservice if we did not do something to help our middle schools. Um class sizes are often an issue with behaviors. And class size so how what is the role that like class size there's a variable regarding class size around scheduling in the building, right? So like if I'm like the way principals arrange schedules. Yes, you depending on how many blocks you do will impact your class size and how long your planning period is. It also sometimes when you have certain courses that might a course might be smaller in one area so then it impacts another section. Um district wide, you know, we look at this section wise we're less than 3% of our classes are above 32. We're about 15% and we were in now the exception to that could be is you might have some classrooms that have an orchestra two and orchestra three in there. I mean this is what Infinite Campus has uh cuz we pulled we were curious but the 26 to 32 is a higher percentage so with the loss of ADM positions next year there will be more classrooms that'll be going between the 26 and 32 and 32 plus. Uh Okay. Would this cuz you know, my concern was all along the and I don't want to say it like that but I'm going to have to. The classes such as foundations of math those are the ones we need to have less students in and have more in the upper levels. So I don't is that going to be taken care of with No. The our our secondary uh formula has been very gracious above what the state has which has impacted our budget significantly. So we're kind of getting back the state doesn't give us any extra percentage for planning. And we're just they're supposed to just have larger class sizes. You know, we're allotting for 10% plus high schools have CTE. The middle schools have less CTE for kids to go. Um to your for a balanced classroom schedule you need a balanced schedule. You also need an arts program that's very robust where you have a lot of kids in the orchestra and the band so that will lower your class sizes in other places. The math foundation classes you referred to actually when you start offering foundation classes you actually start increasing class sizes because those kids are not going to CTE and other classes in your core rooms. It it takes away extra blocks. Uh not saying the kids don't need it but you asked about class sizes. Just for discussion cuz again I I see this being critical to helping us support our teachers in the classrooms. There was a under the priority investment request there is a number of 43 give us a total of 2.8 million dollars. Um I just I just think we need to do more than the base for our teachers and ADMs. Uh increase uh uh ADM 6-12 ADM by 43, please. Yeah. That's that's all right. Oh. So I I want to do as much in that as we can afford to do because that provides additional support and provides more people in the building. Did Did we talk at some point about um adding in the um the textbook digital material adoption? No. >> Some Some of the money for that? >> a piece for the instructional part but not that. Right. What was that amount? Was it Was it 8 million? >> is 8 million. >> 8 million. But that's just ELA. That's nothing else. And we have one more year. We Right. One more year for math. But we will also have ninth grade science that's expiring as well. So science and ELA. And might have The science was about 2 million because it was listed. Paul, is that eight for one year or is that eight for two? >> It's a multi-year. So both science and ELA would be multi. Science would just be fourth grade eighth grade biology and ELA would be K-12 for five years. So is it 8 million per year or 8 divided by five? 8 divided by five. So but remember you have to pay for it all up front to get the multi-year discount. You can't pay by year. >> it is so it's a it's a one it's a one-time up front and then we get the multi-year. Correct. Well, if we need it but we don't >> for the next year, right? Can't this wait another year before we have to do something? Well, if we do an adoption we need to prepare for it in the spring so we would need the money by the spring. So we wouldn't get this money in the next budget cycle to that following fall so we would already be behind. We couldn't do training for the following year so we would need it in this budget. Okay, so spring of 27. Great. Okay. We adding that? It sounds like But do you want the the the the language arts adoption included? Yep. Yes, that was the language arts the K-12 language arts multi-year five years is 8 million dollars which we would need to pay for by spring 27 fall of this year. But it's a one-time expense. But it would be a one-time expense for a multi-year adoption. I would also list it out as if we did a one-year just to show what it would cost. If we can get it cheap up front but then we're paying more or we pay a lot up front but we get it for longer. I think we need to show both options so the commissioners see both options. And why we need the 8 million up front. So to Richard's um suggestion classified hasn't really been addressed in anything and I really don't want to leave them out. I don't know. Richard, did you have something? In the in the piece that was under the priority investment was an additional classified position we we've had that as flex just as an idea to give that to each to each school and then the principal would be able to use those as they see fit. That that may not be a priority for you. I don't know. And that included when when I put that on there that that may be the way somebody uses a bilingual assistant. But I I don't know that you that you do both. I I think it feels like a a want or an ideal but we are not in the position to do that yet. I think that's a 27-28 thing once we don't have a remaining $4 million hanging over our heads. But again, I just I I Well, I I agree. I think it would be nice. Is there Is there any way to look at adding some at this point? I mean, I I think I mentioned I I would like to work scaffold layers of support. Can we One thing I think that maybe got me in trouble down the road was I suggested a three-year plan or four-year plan to add many positions back. And um but I like to see maybe we can start somewhere adding some back then then next year adding more and once we get into a better spot. But also, we're looking at debt reduction and we're just also you know, we added some of these back. We also saved the 2. million from the refresh even though we're going to put that back in all these other categories. But still, I would suggest adding some days back not not leave it at zero. Well, and and then we've got to figure out what the allotment is of of which schools are going to get those positions. I I think we need to But part of that maybe were the low-performing schools cuz one of the one of the pieces that came out as as important in our budget priorities was that we provided additional support to lower-performing schools. I mean, that might be one way to do that. I I think we need whatever we need to break that down. So, like if it's if it's going to be 50 classified employees because we have so many varied categories of classified employees, we need to be specific about what employees those are. What we've listed in the budget proposal is a 205-day classified position. So, that you know, you know, if we're going to go to 215, that changes this you know, obviously the cost per employee. Right. So, what are the what are the classifications What are the So, under within that job class, what are the positions within that? >> you could be um you could do some um behavior assistant. You could do a teacher assistant. You could do a bilingual assistant. You could do um a general assistant in those areas. I'm trying to think. It would not cover it would not cover um the parent involvement uh coordinators cuz they're a pay grade 65. You you have to stay 61 or less. I would just want whatever it could be for that to be listed so that and so we can actually like identify what these positions potentially will be and do it. Like what the options are. And I think one of the key there is you have to say it's a 205 or 215 cuz there's a a big variance in pay there. Yeah. So, well, but not all schools may get that because of the only 30 positions. You know, we give schools choices. We might But that's the principal in me saying Sorry, I apologize. >> I was going to mention that again. That's where the flexibility comes in at the school level when you have a not a position but you have days then the the principal he or she can then be based on the needs of the school improvement team and based on the needs of the Title 1 plan. So, they can begin to adjust what that need looks like ideally, right? But that's that's not 205 days to split up among folks. That's a 205-day position. Correct. Can um can we talk about classified uh non-school building classified? Like how what are what are I know we added a little bit to operations but again, we employ people other than in our school buildings and they fall under classified and I just a lot of them do, not all of them. But um I just what are we doing for those folks? Well, I had mentioned getting a study done to see what it would cost for us to subcontract those services. I know that's not the direction you were thinking but but looking at budget and what you know, just looking at what our cost savings were with mowing contracts and with custodial contracts, is that what we need to we need at least those numbers to be considered or those options to have numbers on them to be considered. I think to be fair though and if we're going to allow other things to proceed with information coming later in this ask, I think it we should ask without information for these folks too. Whether we have to discuss a contract down the road, we might. We might have to do that. But right now, our obligation should be to say look at all these other people we're fighting for. Where are the people Where are the other people doing the grunt work on this list? Like we got to fight for them too. >> Were positions cut in those areas though? >> Yes. We've got frozen. We've got cut. I mean, we've lost people who are if we if we don't have them, we don't have buildings to function. And I just I can't sit here and look at this list and say we're fighting for all these things inside our buildings and then not fight for the people that support all those buildings, right? Yeah, and we we added back Chris, what was the number? Six or eight? >> Yeah, somewhere in there. positions that were included but we felt that they were important enough that they went into the base and we didn't we don't we're not we shouldn't we I guess we need to highlight those. But because they're in they're in the base budget that we have. Now, that may not be enough but we certainly have added back to that. So, are we back up to where we were pre-last year or what Like what's Are we you know, were we down 20 but we've added back four or were we down So, during the reduction of force, we absorbed some positions instead of using vacancies and this is how it all filled. And then through the freeze, there's been resignations. So, we're working through that process. I want to say it's um It's I don't want to say eight but I'm not I have to find the day. I have to find the sheet um of in the skilled base trades. Um but I will in some preliminary conversations with you know, Miss Richards and others, you know, they have some concerns about you know, making exactly how that's going to work. Um we haven't got we since 92% of our staff is actually in schools, we do spend more time on those allotments than we do operations but Well, as we get ready for the superintendent's budget recommendation, we'll give him some more information. >> I I I appreciate the time spent on our schools. We have got to I think that is something systemic that we have to remember um that our support we don't have our schools without our support and we've got to do better with that. And I think Dr. Fisk mentioned that if perhaps it's in the base but it's not really itemized or highlighted to where we can see what that really looks like. So, maybe we can go back and kind of either break down one of the other categories or highlight so we can see where it's included so we can kind of get an idea of where we are in that request. I think Sabrina's concern is it's not listed but based on what I'm hearing, it is listed somewhere but it's just not clearly identified what it current what current levels we're asking for. Is that right? That's correct. I I I can get you the number of vacancies that we have plus on top of there. So. And so with that, are there other areas where positions have been added back that we did not know about? Like I'm thinking like at central office. You know, we had big cuts at central office. Have any of those positions been >> The only positions that were frozen that will be allowed to be hired July 1 are positions that are federally funded. Okay. Uh let me say it's federally funded or semi-state grant, I'm saying or an A a state PRC for example, AIG can afford a AIG lead teacher. We don't have an AIG program manager anymore so we have dollars in that allotment to pay. So, we're going to use those dollars for it. The the local dollars for additional positions at central office. >> but we mentioned these these other positions yesterday when we were talking about our local budget with personnel and that was I couldn't remember the number was six or eight that we added back in in the area of operations. Those were the only ones. And so I just I want to confirm this these priorities for of ours are going to be added on top of your base budget. Yeah, we we pulled them out of the base and included it right here. Yeah. Well, I I just want to make sure it's not like So, because I think for us, it's My thing is if we decide like these are the things that we want to ask for, I want to make sure that like it's not just okay, we've asked for all these things now then then you feel like you have to go back into whatever you prepared for your base and then try to reduce the amount that we you know, what this ask is going to be to to make our priorities work because I want to make sure that if there are things in the budget that you felt like you needed that you we also asking those asking for those as well. The only the only one that's even in question is a two and a half million for a refresh. Everything else is there. The uh just to kind of circle back here, okay? I don't have it all nice typed out where I can give it to you really cleanly. Uh in our operations skill-based folks, we have 82 folks. All right, that goes from general uh uh general maintenance, eight electricians, grounds, H-vac, painters, plumbers, tech support, uh and we did add six more vacancies for Mr. Richard to be able to allocate where you know, with the team where she would see fit. Tra- transportation, for example, I'm going to have to send my Xbox down. There's 28 folks in the skill-based area there. And then uh of the 28, two two There's 26 people currently, and we added two vacancies. Uh the number I gave you earlier with 82, that includes the vacancies we added back. Uh we plan for every position to be filled for budgeting purposes. So, that's where the eight came from. Wasn't hallucinating. As I put this together in a format to be able to present to you all, I wanted to ask permission. Can can the budget book be electronic until we have our meeting on Tuesday because what I don't want to do is to go through and finalize it and then there be some changes that happen and then we go back through the process again. So, you'll have access to it. It'll just be electronic until we get the vote. Once it's official, then we'll we'll produce a hard copy. And just for those who are listening at home, when I was giving those numbers, that the your uh supervisors or checking your program managers and OSS's, some of our supervisor and assistant supervisors are not in those groups cuz they're not on the trade skill pay grade. Uh I do it by pay grade, so I'm sure someone's going to go start counting. They're going to go, "Wait, we have more." But, there's some people in different classifications. Okay, any other questions before we wrap it up? Thank you very much. Thank you both. Thank you. Can I move to revise? Yes, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, right. That's $90,000 right now. That's where we're at. Oh, I did it again.