It is Thursday, May 16th, and I am calling our budget and finance uh budget hearing meeting to order.

Thank you all so much for joining us.

Um, we were trying to give a few minutes to allow some more committee members to make it.

So thank you for everyone that was able to make it.

Um I do have a few announcements, and the teacher and me is repeating these announcements every day because we have different people joining us every day.

Um so we do have budget hearings.

Today is the last one for this week, and then we have two on next week.

Um, your wish lists are due on May the 23rd for council members, and you will have an edited wish list that is due on June the 6th.

That is the version after the public hearing.

If you want to make edits to your wish list, you can do so up until June the 6th.

Um, these budget work sessions will be starting on May the 28th.

So that is the time when the committee will work together and look at everyone's wish list and work through all of the budget requests that we have put in.

I did want to remind people that we are having some community meetings.

So thank you for those of you who came out to the Bellevue meeting on the 18th.

Um, excuse me, on uh this past Monday.

Our next meeting is on May 18th at the Northwest YMCA, located at 3700 Ashland City Highway, and that will be at 2 p.m.

We will have one Saturday, May 25th at the Southeast Community Center, located at 5260 Hickory Hollow Parkway at 10 a.m.

And we will have one on Saturday, May 25th at the Hermitage Library, located at 3700 James K.

Lane at 2 p.m.

Our public hearing will be Tuesday, June 4th during our regularly scheduled council meeting, and that will be at 6 30 p.m.

If you are a budget and finance committee member, please put up your yellow sign so that members of the view and audience will know that you are a committee member.

If you are not on the committee, please take down your sign so that we can eliminate confusion.

There were some questions that have been asked to departments.

Um we have started to receive some of those answers.

Those answers are put in our QA folder in the SharePoint.

So if you go to Nashville.gov on the right hand side, you will see a picture of Vice Mayor Angie Henderson.

If you click on Vice Mayor's picture, that will take you to the council page.

There's a navigation bar on your left hand side.

If you scroll down to council resources and click that link, then there will be an operational budget link.

And this the first link for our uh constituents, that first link is the citizens guide to the budget, which is very helpful and it will answer a lot of your budget questions.

That second link is going to be the operational budget guidelines for twenty uh for fiscal year 25.

So colleagues, you can click on that link and it will have resources available for you.

The third folder in that link is where the uh budget questionnaires live.

So for each of the departments that we hear from in our departments today, their questionnaires are in that folder.

So please make sure you're you are reviewing those prior to the budget hearings.

Um, but there will also be a folder for our QA.

So any questions that you ask that we don't get the answers to, those answers are uploaded there.

And I believe that those are all of my announcements.

So uh joining us for our first presentation, it's the board of education, and we have Dr.

Adrian Battle with us today, and she will have the opportunity to introduce uh who she has with uh with her today.

And thank you to our other elected officials that are here, our school board members, and I'll let Dr.

Battle acknowledge you all.

Um and colleagues uh for the Board of Education for their budget.

It is in section I of your budget book, and that starts on page 430.

And with that, Dr.

Battle, you are recognized.

Thank you so much, Chair Porterfield, and good afternoon to um this budget committee.

We appreciate your time um and attention to um the budget details for the board of education.

I'd like to introduce um who is here with me, our budget chair, board member um Frida Player.

Um, I'll be turning it over to her in just a moment, and also our Chief Financial Officer, CFO, uh Jorge Robles.

So you'll be hearing from the two of them, including myself, but also want to acknowledge um two of our other school board members who are here with us um as well.

Um, that is board member Mays, um Cheryl Mays, and also board member Berthina Nama McKinney.

And at this time, I'll turn it over to our budget chair, um, Ms.

Player, who will kick us off this afternoon.

Um, good evening, council members to Chair Porterfield Um budget committee and um the distinguished council members um into the administration.

Uh, thank you for having us.

Um, this is my pleasure being fourth time as budget chair, and over my four years and tenure, I really appreciate the relationship um the school board has had with the council um and also the mayor's office and director uh crumbo.

Um, I would say this could be a different year.

And I'm really proud because of the working relationship we have.

We are not having the difficult conversations that our other um fellow counterparts are having with drastically changing um the lives of our employees by having some difficult decisions.