Joint City Council - School Board Budget Work Session 6-8PM   1/28/2020

Hey all, I'm going to go ahead and call the meeting to order for the school board at least, since it's after six.

Okay, so the first item, I think the only item on our agenda at the moment is the budget development that we are doing, just to kind of give you guys an update of where we are.

So we're gonna, I'm gonna see the floor to Dr. Atkins and then she'll probably give the floor to Ms.

Yes, thank you Madam Chair.

Good afternoon Councilpersons and good afternoon to our school board.

and I'd like to say congratulations to all of the new council members.

Mr. Shook, congratulations.

And to our vice mayor elected in January, congratulations.

And to our mayor that was recently elected, congratulations.

So what I'd like to do now is to present where we are in our thinking in the budget development.

We have conducted an analysis of our current programs and current staffing.

and we have received input from a multitude of stakeholders including our principals and our teachers, our stakeholders in the community and our administrators and other internal stakeholders and we have developed for you a proposal.

presented this proposal to our school board on January 25th which was this past Saturday and we've made a few adjustments since that presentation.

Thank you all.

We're going to go through the first part of this presentation fairly quickly so that you can get into the meat of the request early on.

So we'll have a brief discussion about what the focus and priorities are that drove these requests and then again the meat of this is the request and then there's some summary and wrap up.

There's also an appendix that provides some supporting details behind what you'll see as staffing adjustments that are enrollment based staffing adjustments and that's the appendix.

We won't present that unless you ask to go through in detail.

So the focus of the entire process of everything we do is equity in our strategic plan and the intention of this slide simply takes the strategic plan which was developed two or three years ago

and then what it does is it takes our key equity focus areas and there are four of them and it just shows how they align with the strategic plan with equity foundations really being the foundation overall and that just speaks to the fact that we want to be systematic, proactive in everything we do to implement positive change and ultimately change that can represent best practices.

That's really what the drive is.

So, at this point in the presentation, and this is just going to be for your reference, what you'll see in this, there's a summary later in the presentation that we're going to use to step you through all of our requests.

And on that summary, you'll see the references to our strategic plan.

But you're just looking at references.

You'd have to go grab the strategic plan to actually tie it all together.

So these next few slides simply take the requests and group them under the strategic plan and equity goals.

And so this is just something that's in there for your reference, and you'll understand how it ties all together.

Again, it's really there for your reference.

A quick mention about this before we go into the details of the request.

The Blue Ribbon Commission on Sustainable School Funding is a really useful report to look at, because it actually talks about, and this was back in 2014, that in order to sustain the level of programming that our school offers, given inflation and other factors, you could expect a $2 to $4 million increase in

in the allocation that's necessary to maintain programs and sustain.

This is just, and you'll see this come into play on the summary, we talked about the strategic plan, we talked about our key equity focus areas, and when you look at the summary, the next page starts to get into all the details.

Everything falls under either advancing our strategic objectives and our equity goals, and we just talked about that.

Competitive compensation and benefits, we're a people business.

That's so critical to advancing our goals, our people.

And then last but not least, maintaining valued and required programs and supports.

So again, that's another way when you're looking at why are they asking for these things, everything we're asking for falls in these three categories.

So with that, we arrive at what we call our budget summary or summary of changes document.

If you've sat in any of our presentations for the last, I don't know how many years, this format will look familiar to you.

Dr. Atkins, would you like for me to continue on this slide or do you want to pick it up here?

All the way through non-discretionary and then I'll take it from there.

Will do.

Okay, so for the salary actions, we have broken it out based on

and Action, what it costs for teachers, support staff, and administrative staff.

And this slide reflects moving all of them for an average increase of 3%.

For the school board, these numbers were updated based on discussion at the Saturday work session.

And I'd be happy to entertain any questions about those.

But these numbers have all been reviewed, scrubbed, and then they reflect the 3% that you asked we look at for all three categories.

Next we move into the non-discretionary items, health insurance.

We are facing what, based on the preliminary actuarial estimates, we are facing a larger increase than what we normally see and the placeholder we have in for that is 1.1 million.

The Virginia retirement system increase, the rate for our pension plan went up.

The past two years we enjoyed a break from having to deal with that.

But the impact of the 1% increase on our existing payroll is close to $812,000.

Next, we move into the city contract increases for transportation, maintenance, and security.

And those total increases are laid out there.

The KTEC increase, that is, it reflects the increase in wages and whatnot at KTEC.

But it also reflects any increase from the state

that comes to us for KTEC.

We're the fiscal agent, so it's a pass-through.

So that $45,000 is a combination of the cost of the adjustments that they have to do here programmatically, but also the increase in the pass-through money from the state.

Telecommunications, that is an adjustment that's necessary because E-rate funding can no longer

be applied to any type of voice communication.

That's a change under the E-rate program.

Jeff Faust is here.

And so, Jeff, if I start to miss any notes here, you jump in.

But we used to get a pretty healthy refund, an E-rate.

Is it called an E-bait?

I'm afraid I'm confused.

But an E-rate rebate.

And so our budget for telecommunications was lower because we could count on that money coming in.

We simply can no longer do that.

And this reflects that.

And then the last item is net adjustments for all other contracts and services.

These are a lot of lines throughout all of our budgets.

We went through this process at least three times as a senior staff looking for things.

You know, is this a software subscription we still use?

What's this contract running us for trash or pest control or whatever?

And there's a lot of ins and outs that make up that number, but that's net all other adjustments.

And we do work.

We work to make that a decrease.

So the total of the salary actions is $1.7 million.

The total of the non-discretionary items is 2.5 million and so when you see our bottom line, when you add those two numbers together, that is the vast majority of what this request is about.

It's what's in these two sections.

Thank you, Ms.

Powell, and before I go into any detail about the school-based programs in support, I want to say thank you to Kim Powell and Renee Hoover.

They work diligently to make sure that they look at all of the numbers and how can we best utilize the funds that we've received in the past and how can we be most efficient

moving forward with any requests that we have, so thank you to those two ladies.

The school-based programs, I'm not going to go through those individually.

We went over those with the board members on Saturday, but that just gives the council an idea of the individual items, the line items that we are requesting from our, that our school board approve and it reflects changes in either student enrollment, changes in programs, enhancing programs,

providing additional supports to our teachers and to our staff.

So the total of the school based programs would be 1,061,418.

On the next slide, we have our school operations.

Only two of these I'll give a little detail on.

Our firewall upgrade and our technology annual security audit.

We have gone through a digital security audit in our school division, and we have the results of that audit.

So these two items are in response to some of the recommendations in that audit.

And then other deductions is as we look at enrollment in our schools or where we have duplicated programs or we have a redundancy.

or we have an instructional assistant in a place where there may have been a need that we had a student with a need and we had an instructional assistant and that student has either moved on or out of our system we go in and look and see where we can make some adjustments.

So the reductions either reflect enrollment or the student or the person that the instructional assistant was with is no longer with us.

So, the general fund increase in expenses is $4,955,514.

When we net that against the state revenue, we anticipate that we will have an increase in revenue of $447,164 from the state, and that is taking into consideration the increase in our LCI, so that's reflected there.

We will have a $12,000 decrease in federal funding and we would be making a request from the city of $4,520,350.

And we will be happy to answer any questions.

Does anybody have any comments or questions for us?

So the small adjustment on the federal line, there's something that we get called impact aid.

and it has to do with, I don't even, it's a strange little number, it's not a big number to begin with but I know that that line has not been running true to what we have budgeted for it and it's something called impact aid.

Do you want to add anything?

We're consistently not getting as much as we had loaded in the budget for it and there's some fluctuation and we've been watching it for several years I think since Renee's been working here we're like we're really not getting that much and after three years or so it's like you know what we really need to go ahead and make that adjustment because you know we're not getting what what the amount was that was loaded in and if I'm not mistaken it was we're getting 10 to 12,000 a year but what was the budget line on it 18 at least okay 18

Well, I'm at the risk because I didn't deep dive on this.

I believe it has something to do with military families in your locality.

And that is what it's connected to.

We're not a big military-based location.

But maybe when INJIC came in or something, we initially had a spike.

But then I don't know.

But we have seen now for three years, we're just simply not getting what we were holding as a placeholder for the revenue we expected to receive.

And then you asked about state.

So for state, the big driver, if it hadn't been for the LCI change, we would have gotten $800,000 to $900,000 more money from the state.

We were really afraid because of some changes also in funding for students with high needs.

We now call it regional program funding.

We thought it was going to be worse than it is.

but Dr. Atkins and some other division leaders have worked extremely hard with the state to make them understand how the criteria that was laid out for this new reimbursement formula for high needs students was really not, was going to impact us much more than what the state was thinking and we finally, I think, gotten on the same song sheet and gotten the reassurances that that's not going to hurt us dramatically so in earlier presentations we were warning that we thought we could actually see a slight dip

If you follow our presentations, we talked about maybe even having a slight dip.

That's when we were bracing for that special education impact.

was taken off the table, so to speak.

There's some new additional funding for at risk and things like that.

And so it's a lot of moving parts in state funding formula.

But we would have gotten upwards of close to, I think, $900,000 in new money.

Instead, we're only going to get $400,000 and some thousand in new money.

That's all the LCI.

what the LCI is, yes, and forgive me there because I did a lot, yep brief, I'll try my best.

So the LCI, what does LCI stand for?

LCI stands for, thank you, LCI stands for the local composite index of ability to pay.

It's what the state uses as a factor to determine what percentage of a baseline education costs

the locality should fund versus the state.

So the higher your LCI, the less money you're going to get from the state.

The highest in the commonwealth is a 0.8, and those tend to be your localities up in Northern Virginia.

They won't go higher than a 0.8.

The lowest right now I think is a 0.16 something.

You know, that's probably in a very rural, remote area.

So what drives the LCI, the number one factor is the number of students you're serving.

and that's something they call ADM, average daily membership.

Then it's the true value of property is the next biggest driver in that formula.

And now I've got to be careful because I don't really pay that much attention to the order, so don't quote me on the order after that.

But the other factors are your total number of citizens, your overall population, your adjusted gross income as reported on the Virginia tax returns, Virginia adjusted gross income, and the last piece is taxable sales.

So they look at all those factors, and then what the LCI does, and this is the last part of the explanation.

I won't go any deeper unless somebody asks me to.

It's not just how those factors move.

It's how your locality moves relative to every other locality in the Commonwealth, every city and county.

So I could have a decrease in my taxable sales, but if everyone else decreases more, then my LCI is still going up.

And we saw a lot of that during the recession.

A lot of us got hit hard at a lot of localities, not Charlottesville necessarily.

Because if you had any kind of positive blip in that when everybody else was going down, or even if you were going down but you weren't going down as much, the LCI can be really very impactful.

Anyway, I'll stop there.

Let me add to that.

Ms.

Powell, thank you so much.

Earlier this school year, we received notification from our State Department of Education, and this is routine.

Whenever a school division or localities of real estate value

increases significantly, the school division will get a letter saying that, relatively speaking, your locality, the real estate, has gone up.

We were one of those.

When I get a memo to certain superintendents, I know I have to sit up and take notice.

So this year, they said, compared to the other school divisions in the Commonwealth, 132 school divisions,

The real estate value in Charlottesville went up the third highest amongst those 132 school divisions.

But again, as Ms.

Powell said, Kim said, it's all relative because

They give you that warning ahead of time, but then it's relative to how much everyone else has gone up.

So it looked as if our real estate value went up about 23%.

So we met with Chrissy and the city manager to talk about

implications.

We also challenged that number, and I thank Chrissy and the rest of her team.

They helped us to challenge that at the department that does that calculation.

We did not prevail, but we did challenge it.

So it was just a heads up to say that we might not receive as much funding.

Our LCI could go up, and it could have a significant impact on our funding.

One of the sheets that I'm showing them is from the PTO president's presentation.

It's online.

Yeah, it's online.

So I haven't shown the mayor yet, but I just want to indicate that that is a document that kind of, first of all, it's a lengthy discussion of the LCI, and then one of the last pages kind of compares Charlottesville to other cities in our Commonwealth, which I thought was very instructive in terms of why our

One thing that the big thing that saved us from that value true value of property increase really really stinging was it was the look-back period included when our growth for student population was around three percent which far outpaced the state average so our growth in students really helped to offset

I have a couple questions.

Because it's a different format than last year and the year before, I think, so I just want to make sure I'm clear.

What we're showing here is just basically the change that's above what we would automatically.

I'm just trying to understand what this $4.5 million represents.

Our formula is they get 40% of any new real estate tax that we receive, right?

Which is not part of the 4.5.

Right, so like we haven't, that's not, so the, like if this, the estimated request

will be the 2.1 and then whatever the gap is between the 2.1 and 4.0.

Oh, yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Right.

And then the positions that were filled last summer on a one-time funding, they're now built into your regular budget?

They are built into your regular budget.

And that wasn't even for the full number they needed.

So are you going to be able to, what is the plans for that right now?

Like the ramping of that, because we didn't provide funding to cover everything.

Correct.

We pulled funding in from one open position that was already in the budget and we also took funding from the fund balance.

So we've made up that one position and it's reflected here in the budget and we also have, we pulled it from the fund balance so we don't have to replace that.

And if I may, at this point in the process, Ms.

Hill, the teacher compensation line, we take exactly who's in our payroll, which includes those teachers at that point.

And all the calculations are done based on that.

So because to your point, the one position we had from fund balance, we have to fully recognize that position now in these actions because you can't budget an ongoing cost from fund balance.

But it's not delineated.

We can certainly do that.

What we do when we add that we go back to our board and we do a budget amendment to request that the money, that the board approve those funds being added to the budget.

So in August, I think it was August or September,

We went after speaking with City Council and receiving the allocation, we went back to the board and officially had the board to vote on adding those funds to the budget.

Could I ask a couple of questions about the LCI page here?

So I'm going to go from memory on this, and I'll look to Chrissy.

If I'm not mistaken, a big part of that, or when we went back and forth quite a bit with Richmond, there was something about utility and railroad properties at the end that came into play.

Chrissy, would you like to add any further comments on that?

So I am not prepared to speak in any great detail but we could follow up with you on that.

I'm going off the top of my head and there was a lot of back and forth with with Richmond with the Department of Tax and whatever other departments they pointed us to to debate to review this these numbers.

Okay, the second question I notice on this that says this is data reported 10-31-2018, published 1-31-2019.

Everything the state does, everything, is always looking in arrears because they have to take whatever time it takes to pull in everything from the CAFR, the Auditor of Public Accounts, they take time to consolidate things.

So this is the most recent data that we can be working from?

Yes.

Okay.

And just looking at an old index, new index, it says that we're changing 1.14% increase.

So anytime the local composite index of ability to pay, the LCI, anytime LCI goes up, you're going to get relatively less state funding because the state views

the locality's relative ability to pay as higher.

So in that case, an increase is not a good thing in your LCI when it comes to state funding.

Well, my question was a little more limited, and I suppose I should have limited it appropriately.

Yeah, it's based on our claims.

We are self-insured and being self-insured and we've been self-insured in the school division long before I came in.

We went out of being self-insured during the downturn of the economy and we went with the market.

and then as soon as we could we came back into a self-insured position.

So we pay claims, our claims experience up to a certain threshold and then when we reach that threshold then our carrier provides the coverage.

So what they do is base it on those claims and the claims experience is over a year.

So if you've had a number of claims over the year, then you can expect our 15%, relatively speaking, across our region and across the Commonwealth is not abnormal.

We have been able to hold our costs.

When we see it escalating like that, oftentimes we will get our broker.

to get busy negotiating with our carrier.

And if we cannot reach a comfortable place with our carrier, oftentimes we will go out to bid.

We try not to do that too often, but we will go out to bid.

Last year we went out to bid again because we were getting a higher percentage than we felt comfortable.

So that's a variable.

and we are still working with them.

I know there's a lot of ongoing conversations about school funding at the General Assembly.

That's a great question.

We build our budget based on the governor's budget that he releases or the governor did release in December.

So we build our budget on that and oftentimes what will happen is it will be pretty close somewhere between the House of Delegates and the Senate and we end up in a very comfortable place.

And I anticipate that this year

I agree with Councilor Payne.

Yeah, it will probably be the state budget is usually approved sometime in late April.

Okay, so it's after our budgets are approved.

It is.

The General Assembly has to finish all of its action and then it has to go through all of those processes and typically is sometime in April.

We have gone as far as well into June.

And I believe it was two years ago that the state was a bit slow in passing their budget.

As I look at one of these pages, it talks about a specialist for annual giving.

That is a new position and let me explain that position.

We are in the process right now of taking a look at the reconfiguration and preschool.

What we have realized over the years that we have a very philanthropic, generous community.

and we have received indications that there are a number of our citizens in the community who are interested in supporting the work that we do around preschool, around some other areas that they want to contribute.

So we don't have a staff member specifically dedicated to developing the relationship

with the community in that way in order to generate those funds.

So this position would be specifically geared to doing that, setting up a foundation and developing that relationship in the community to help offset some of the costs.

And if I may, whenever you see a reference to something with a position, please know that that's not just someone's salary.

It's always salary and fringe, which is FICA, pension, and an allowance for our average health insurance cost based on.

So just know that you're not looking at like, well, that's a proposed salary for that position.

There's the fringe that's added onto it.

So I noticed that Walker has another orchestra teacher in the line, which my child's in orchestra, so Walker.

But I was just wondering if we're looking at the numbers of elementary schools' kids and showing that we're going to continue with such a heavy.

I mean, there was what, 700 kids who started Walker this year?

That's a good question also.

What we have seen is with orchestra we have seen more students because of that master scheduling at orchestra more students are able to take advantage and take two electives now instead of the one so therefore we see more students in our arts program we anticipate that that will continue

May I just add to that that, you know, one of the things that we're so pleased about is that there's greater diversity among the students who are choosing orchestra, and that's something that we've really wanted for a long time.

And what it means, I think, is you're really starting off these students fresh, you know, learning an instrument, learning, you know, to read music, learning the basics, and it's very labor intensive.

and can be very stressful on the orchestra teacher to try to pull that group together, you know, to do concerts, et cetera.

So we're obviously just seeing kind of this delta piece.

So what we do is as we're developing the budget we go line by line of each item.

We start zero based with our budget.

We go line by line each item that is in the budget as a team looking at those items, looking where we might make cuts, where we might make changes in the cost.

We look at the actuals from this school year or previous school years and then project that forward.

Now on the city side we see that a lot of times there are vacancies that go for extended periods of time.

We do the same thing.

We look for vacancies that have been in the budget.

We account for every vacancy that's in the budget currently.

We look at how long that position has been vacant and the reason that it has been vacant.

Some of our positions are vacant because we have a long-term substitute in the position.

and we have not been able to find the certified staff to put in the position.

Those we carry over because those are based on enrollment.

So we look at the reason for the vacancy and make a determination if it's still necessary to have that position in the budget.

And then one specific thing I know that we have talked about in the past is the afterschool programs, which Ms.

McKeever and I both can attest to.

There's a high demand for those programs.

Yeah, that's a great question.

The foundation of that is that those programs are self-sustaining.

So those programs are not reflected in our budget.

We set a rate for our class program.

There's a class advisory committee that meets throughout the school year.

The class advisory committee set the rates.

And it's a sliding scale rate.

And the rates are set in a manner in which it pays for staff who are in that program working in the program.

We've had a waiting list this year at Burnley-Moran, Johnson, Venable, and Greenbrier.

Recently we've had meetings and been in discussion with our YMCA and the director of the YMCA to talk about what a partnership might look like.

We're pleased that they are pretty enthusiastic about partnering with us.

and to come alongside us to help run the CLASS program.

We've also come up with what potentially could be a wonderful name for the program, CLASS-Y, Classy, to include the YMCA, but they were looking at a model that would allow them to come into our schools

use our schools, use the space so that we can eliminate during the registration week that we will set with them.

Eliminate the waiting list for that week if you register during that time frame.

doesn't mean it will eliminate completely the waiting list but it would absolutely expand our capacity to respond to the needs of our families.

And that partnership is because they'll be better positioned to help recruit

They would.

They would.

They would be in a better position, and they may be able to use some of their existing staff because they run a number of programs at the YMCA that are already staffed.

They may be able to leverage that staffing to come alongside us and to support our efforts.

And our staff would continue as well in that model?

Well, they would be running our classic program.

So those staff members would have to reapply through.

We'll talk about that.

We're in negotiations now talking with them about we have some full-time employees in class who have already earned benefits in our system and the last thing we would want to do is diminish benefits.

So we would be looking at, will it be necessary that we grandfather some of those full-time employees so that they can continue with their benefits.

We have a number of employees in that program who are very close to receiving, getting to 30 years or a place in which they're vested in the Virginia retirement system.

And we would not want to do anything to jeopardize that.

I was also asking because they're also very close to some of our children.

Absolutely.

And I think that continuity is just really important for the kids that are in those programs.

So look to here.

We are scheduled to present to the board in March to give the board more detail.

And the registration will be in April, like later April.

And don't be late.

You know this.

I don't have any questions.

I just got to go back to the number that's being requested now.

Later on, I don't know when you get to your presentation, but we've really got to talk about that because I'm still trying to close a gap on the city side.

Yeah.

Well, one of the things that at our work session on Saturday that we took note of was the non-discretionary contract amounts.

And I think that that's something that would be good for everybody to be aware of, because those are contracts with the city or with the VRS, junior retirement system, that our division

We can't control those costs, although maybe there's some areas in there that could be looked at as well.

There's quite a big increase, for example, in transportation and maintenance.

And I'll just, am I on?

I don't have too many comments at this time because we haven't received the full presentation on our budget.

So I don't even know where we could fit it in.

I haven't seen the numbers for hours.

A question for the city manager.

And that represents the 40%?

That represents the 40%, yes.

Yes.

And a starting point for negotiation, really.

Yes.

But I mean, if you look at amounts that we've given, when you look at 19,

We were given, it was about 1.6, but we gave 2.7 and then again in FY20, you know, 40% would have been about 2.3, but we gave 3.4.

Absolutely.

Yes, exactly.

And that's something that we're very grateful for.

Like I said, I would like to, I mean, I want to help as much as I can to continue to do that as we've done historically, but as I'm saying now is that based upon our budget numbers, you know, that additional two plus million will really impact us in terms of trying to close our gap.

We worked this weekend to try to close it some more, went from about, what, seven million at one time down to about two and a half, almost three million now.

We're still working just like y'all are working to be able to cut back on the overall expenditures.

And we've looked at some of our biggest departments in terms of trying to trim a lot of costs.

I mean, we've trimmed a lot of costs from other fiscal years.

But going into this year, like I said, we're starting to go into smaller departments.

I'm just curious if the numbers are ever run.

I'm just trying to get a sense for, obviously, if the LCI is what it is because there is a rising amount that we have in our real estate values, but I'm just trying to compare the actual additional revenue that we get from that versus what we're losing from the state, just to understand

Where that balance is, and if it's not, is it not in our favor, is it in our favor?

Because we haven't published our assessments yet, but there obviously will be some level of lift.

And I'm just trying to get a sense around my head.

If the city would run those numbers, we wouldn't have access to those numbers.

You don't recall running that?

Yeah, 15 years I've been here, I don't recall running that.

And then to understand of that what percentage goes to would go to the schools anyway I'm just trying to get a sense for at a high level what that looks like

Well, that's why we're able to give a little bit more when those assessed values do go up or their LCI increases in their dollars go down.

We're able to give a little bit more, but like I'm saying now is that that's a big number for us, that 2.5 million or 2.4 million.

I know that we're not close to where we need to be in terms of teacher pay, especially given the cost of living.

And I routinely, I'm sure as everyone here does, talk to people who are teachers who moved to Waynesboro or other outlying areas.

That's a good question.

What we did last year is we had a third party to do a market analysis of teacher salaries in Charlottesville and compare those salaries to other school divisions and also compare those salaries to the market.

Individuals graduating from college going into the workforce with a BS degree, what could they expect their salaries to be?

So currently we found that from that analysis that we were in some areas with surrounding school divisions we were slightly above and in some areas we were slightly below.

It depends on the number of years of experience.

However, we found that the market analysis put us significantly below the market with our starting salaries being in mid 40s, upper 40s.

and the market analysis showed that salaries should be around 60.

So we've been trying to close that gap for quite a long time.

So our starting salary, and if the staff member could help me try and turn to it as fast as possible, our starting salaries for our teachers for this school year is

48,000, and that's just with the BA degree, 48,143.

And so I think that's slightly above our nearest competitor.

Yes, sorry.

Yes, I have it.

Thank you.

One of the areas that we've also looked at is teacher shortage, the supply and demand.

And we realize that the supply has been reduced, not only around Charlottesville, but everywhere across the nation.

Question about the line for city contract maintenance.

What's that contract?

So the city does all the facilities work in our buildings.

That is the contract that we have with the city.

Do you know what that amount is this fiscal year?

12%?

Actually, that number is now between 3% and 4% increase.

And that is the increase over the current.

Initially, it was a higher number.

Is it at 8%?

OK, 8%.

Yeah, it's closer.

I believe that's correct.

Chrissy, you've looked at those numbers with me.

It was between 3 and 4% in the end with the number we got down to.

It is.

The transfer over, I believe for maintenance, this will bring it up to $3.8 million.

And the transfer for transportation will be $2.1 million.

So Madam Chair, I just wanted to say a couple of comments in.

that some of these same questions that we that y'all are asking now we ask on Saturday particularly about maintenance and and class we really delve in deep into those questions and at least what I came away with is that with the four point million dollars that we're asking for an increase like 2.5 of that just like

keeping us at base.

It's like things that we don't have any control over at all.

And the way I came away with is that the additional two million dollars that we're asking for are for new programs really allow our system to grow, to thrive, and that's what we need as a district to continue to attract families and students to the district.

So it's very difficult, I know.

and I wish we had control over funds, I mean as far as collecting them, but we don't.

Someone mentioned that something was updated Saturday after your meeting.

What we do is we take a look at each of these line items changes and we have those updates.

One was for instance this literacy coaches instead of two we have three.

Actually, what we asked the superintendent to do on Saturday was she had made her initial suggestion, and I'm never going to be able to find it, I'm sure, but was to have teachers move up an average increase of 3% and have support staff move up an average of 2% and have administrative staff move up an average of 2% for a total of 1.9.

So we asked her,

Don't let it be.

She asked us to move up, have everyone moving up 3%.

As we went back and looked at every teacher and loaded in each person's salary, we were able to bring down that first estimate to the actual cost in order to keep our request down.

We brought the actual cost in there and we went in today

to do fine-tuning.

One of the things that we have seen year after year is a recommendation that was stepped like that where teachers got some percentage and then other staff got different percentages and we just really felt like it was important especially given the report that Dr. Atkins mentioned

The market analysis or the analysis that we did last year with our pay scales that indicated our administrative staff really are not being paid equivalent to the surrounding counties.

So we were just kind of we're trying to

to guard against an exodus of our administrative staff to the county where they may be paid more or another county where they may be paid more.

So we just looked at this and we said, well, why don't we just do everybody at 3% average so that we could kind of represent that we, in fact, all of our staff are valued as much as everyone else is.

That's what we were hoping to do with the 3%, and that's why we asked them to go back and tweak it.

I just also want to note that this, I don't see it here necessarily, but that's probably because I can't see it, but this budget also seeks to make sure our substitutes and other staff are being paid $15 an hour.

Oh, there it is.

So last year we did the long-term substitute teacher daily rate.

We increased that.

And this year we're seeking to increase the substitute, the daily substitute rate.

to $15 an hour.

And there, yeah, so that's what this also does.

And also to nutrition custodian and secretary substitute pay rate also up to $15 an hour, right?

I'm sorry, $13 an hour.

So that's what those two lines are, the $43,000, $55,000.

So last year, you all discussed bringing all staff up to the $15,000.

What changed with that?

It was all full-time staff.

We did not affect hourly staff last year.

So this is now affecting hourly staff.

The substitute pay rate will go from $91 an hour, I mean day.

I'm sorry.

I really want to pay that.

I cleared my background check.

We would go from $91 daily rate for our substitute pay to $105 daily rate for substitute pay.

Relatively speaking, if we go with the surrounding school division, their rate is $85 a day in comparison to our 91 current.

A couple of questions further.

Looking at the line item for division level literacy coaches for elementary and secondary, $324,000 for three full-time equivalents.

I assume there is something significantly more than just pay involved in adding those positions.

I was trying to do the math.

That's exactly right.

I went to Charlottesville Public Schools, I can do this.

Okay, so I'm going to reflect my ignorance.

SEAL program is social-emotional learning.

That is a program that is specifically geared towards helping our students with regulation, self-regulation, and we are growing that program at Clark.

They have it at the third grade level now and it'll be moving up to the fourth grade level.

And then we'll take a look at it a couple more times.

the next several meetings that we're going to have as a school board to talk about the superintendent's proposed budget.

She officially proposes it to us next Thursday, the 6th.

And then we're going to have a work session the following Tuesday.

And then we approve the budget on the 20th and present it to you the 2nd of March.

It's the goal.

And we've seen models from other school divisions.

That's exactly what has happened.

And it may take two, three years in order to get to that point.

It may not happen the first year because you're laying the foundation.

And then just infrastructure-wise with that, Jennifer and I had met.

We had discussed it with the other leadership team.

with the community foundation just to understand how we could leverage them as kind of a structure by which we could have private dollars be contributed specifically for the capital programs that are ahead of us, recognizing there will be some limits to public dollars and what we can accomplish.

I've done a little bit of follow-up and I've talked to John about that and there's no concerns there but we'll be kind of circling back and just communicating back you know what next steps there may be but obviously still some time out but that's certainly an option and that would probably working hand-in-hand with whoever would be fulfilling this role.

We also have a, yeah, I think that's right.

And apologies for the conflict.

I think certainly one of us would have interest in coming to hear the public's weigh in on this.

And vice versa.

We have our own budget work session.

Can I just comment?

I realize that there is a lot.

We're asking a lot.

And I think our school division is at such a critical juncture right now.

There's so much that we are responding to.

And we're really trying to respond to the community's desire for

a school division that is truly equitable and we're trying to do that in terms of how we pay our staff, how we pay everybody in our division and also how we meet the needs of students who have greater needs and require

More intervention and different intervention.

And that's our mandate right now.

So we're trying to do that as we then also work on reconfiguring our system up through up until high school.

You know, also as a way to better meet the needs of the students, the student body that we have.

It's a very important time for our community and for our school division.

And our hope is that the community is behind us in the directions that we're going and some of the initiatives that we are trying to implement.

and you know we have been very grateful and very appreciative of the city and for city council and how you have supported us.

We do have a great need now, but I think that we're going to see results from this in ways that we haven't before.

And I think we understand that, but we are also trying to weigh those other needs outside of the student's need, the housing need, the support program needs outside of schools.

So we're having to look at all of that and make sure that we are also doing this very difficult time where we're asking staff to have these very tough conversations that we are also paying

We certainly have a shared vision of being more metric driven as we move forward as we go back and as a council we're going to be looking with the city manager and his leadership team at our own strategic plan and making sure that

And I will tell you that we do have some significant initiatives that are underway right now and I think that we have a number of areas in our school division that we can all be very proud of.

A 95% graduation rate is nothing that you come to overnight and especially with the diversity and the challenges that we face in our school division.

I can recall when I came into the school division our dropout rate was very close to 18%.

We've moved from that 18% dropout rate to now about 1.3% dropout.

Graduation rate differentials between our African American students

and our Caucasian students was significant.

Our African American students were graduating at 66% completing high school and the vast majority of that 18% dropout rate were with our African American students.

And when you see a picture like that, that represents now a graduation rate with our African American students right around 95%, which is the same as all other students in our school division.

and to move from 18% to a 1% and to have them represented in significant numbers in post-secondary education is significant.

As we're looking at what's happening in our elementary schools, we have completely revamped our gifted model.

We came about that revamping of the gifted model by very difficult experience.

However,

What we're finding in our elementary schools now is that our model is being watched and is being considered in many other school divisions because we no longer have an isolated program, but we have a push-in program in which all of our students, our African American students, our Caucasian students, our Latino students,

All of them are being exposed at the same time to a very rigorous curriculum and we are seeing the payoff in big numbers with enthusiasm and with willingness to engage in the teaching and learning process amongst our most reluctant learners, our African American students.

and we're looking at the changes in our orchestra program.

The changes in the number of students who are making the choice to engage in honors level work.

So those are significant changes that are happening in our school division.

The more precise teaching around literacy is happening currently in our school division.

So we've gotten some good results and we're looking forward to all the investment that City Council has made

in our school division really is turning around our school division.

We also have a partnership with the University of Virginia, where the University of Virginia is helping us to train our teachers in the delivery of gifted education, gifted instruction.

And so starting in January of this year, there were 22 of our teachers who are now enrolled in

certification at the University of Virginia to receive their certification in gifted education.

We, in the beginning, we didn't think we would fill 20 seats.

We not only filled the 20 seats, but we now have two additional teachers.

We also will be enrolling our students in a literacy class.

that they will be taking, one in which it will be instruction and practice back and forth.

One last question from me.

Just sort of at a high level, what kind of work do you see the literacy coaches doing?

Again, a great question.

In our schools right now, we currently have reading specialists.

And the reading specialists do a tremendous job working with our students, providing intervention for our students.

and helping our students.

Where we still have a need is providing a coach that works alongside our teachers because as the reading specialists are providing for the individual students our goal is to

increase the rigor and the effectiveness of our delivery of instruction in the literacy area.

So that will be the job of our literacy coach.

At the division level we have a new literacy coordinator and we have laid out a long-term plan to affect literacy in our school division and a part of that is providing that level of support for our teachers.

You also see in our budget that we have aligned lesson plans.

What's the story behind the Buford Engineering teacher?

Is there a new program coming?

That's another one of our good stories.

This year at Walker, we put in place a pre-engineering program.

What we were finding is at Buford, we had a number of students who are taking advantage of the engineering program, but not as much diversity in that program that we certainly want to have.

So this year we put at Buford a pre-engineering program at Walker, a pre-engine... Thank you, Ms.

McKeever.

at Walker pre-engineering program and currently we have a little over 300 students who are enrolled in that pre-engineering program.

It is incredibly popular.

It is making a huge difference in the engagement of students.

So we have that large group of students who will be moving up to Beaufort, and they will be continuing on with engineering.

I can tell you there's a great deal of diversity.

I mean, my daughter's there.

I know a lot of young girls who are in the engineering program.

We're pretty excited about that program and the synergy that's happening around that program.

So we're seeing students who did not have any idea what engineering is all about.

a part of that program and really because it's so experiential it's hands-on and it's really designed concepts that's being taught they are part of that program.

Matt Shields helped to develop this program so we know the quality of work that he does at the high school

Well let's be clear, it starts with an elementary school.

That's what the iSTEM teacher is.

That is, we have

three, four iSTEM teachers, and so it's basically- Apparently adding one.

Well, you know, right now they are, all of them, our goal is to have one teacher at each school and that we're not there yet.

This budget will not get us there, but our goal is to have

We also have started writing of our African American history curriculum.

We've been partnering with the Jefferson School, the African American Heritage Center.

They have been instrumental working with our staff to actually help us, assist us in writing our African American history curriculum and our local curriculum and what has taken place in our community over the years.

But there's not a line item for that in this.

You do see some professional development that's going to be happening over the summer along that area.

So we didn't put in an additional staff member, but we did put in professional development during the summer and curriculum writing.

a part of that aligned curriculum work that's happening.

We're going to have to go in and tweak how we deliver and insert, even though you have the curriculum now, you have to insert the curriculum into what you're actually delivering to teach and align the resources.

This is a total parent question.

Jack almost jumped out of his seat.

PowerSchool is a student information system in which we house your students emergency information, parent contact information, master scheduling, all of that.

Canvas is a learning management system, one in which our students have access and our teachers have access.

So that's where you can load in tests, you can load in student information and homework.

and students can go into that center and there are all sorts of features in Canvas that directly benefits a student.

If a teacher does a homework assignment in Canvas, the student has a calendar that is automatically populated.

We'll never have a good excuse.

We have been in discussion with our schools and how frustrating that can be for parents.

I just also thought it would also save teachers time as well as possibly saving money if it was just one.

Power School we could not do without.

That is our entire system with student information system.

Canvas we would not want to do without.

Jeff, did I cover that well enough?

Jeff, did I leave out anything?

I was with that coach, wasn't I, Jeff?

You're welcome.

What else is there?

Any other questions?

Truly, my last question.

The transportation line item just made me think of this.

This is just purely out of curiosity.

That is correct.

Full time benefits.

They have benefits, but they have to pay a higher rate because they are not full time.

So we do have benefits, but they don't get it at the same rate that a full time employee.

Ideally, we would love for our bus drivers to have full-time benefits.

This cost increase does not reflect that.

But there are challenges because Albemarle runs, Albemarle school system runs their transportation.

Any other questions or comments?

We really appreciate everybody gathering today, and I hope you found this useful.

And if you have questions, of course, reach out to us.

We're always happy to talk with you all and answer any questions you have.

And I feel like this is just beginning of the discussion as we move forward.

So if there's no questions or comments, hearing none, we'll stand adjourned.