Hi, good afternoon everyone.

My name is Miguel Sanchez.

I'm calling to order the special committee on ways and means.

The time is 5 37, Thursday, May 28th.

Chair Sanchez.

Present.

Vice Chairman Taylor is absent.

Counselor Davidson.

Councilman Graves.

President.

Councilor Peterson.

We have four president, one absent, we have five.

Thank you.

At this time, I want to recognize our policy staff, our comms team, our interns, our clerk's office, uh Etsy from our C Solicitor's Office.

Thank you for joining us.

At this time, anyone that plans on presenting before the committee, can you please stand up and guess what?

And please please raise your right hand.

Scott, uh don't you worry about Christmas TC is like directly partners you should.

I don't feel like the other should for the fun.

Exactly.

Scott, that's an operation.

Okay.

Thank you.

Um so we're gonna take item six out of order.

Um it is an appointment to the zoning board.

Uh this time I'll entertain a motion uh to move uh item six uh out of order.

Motion made by counselor Peterson, second by counselor Davis, all those in favor, aye, any nays, any uh abstentions, the ayes have it.

Mr.

Scott, Chairman Sanchez, thank you.

It's a pleasure to be here tonight.

How are you today?

So pretty good.

Uh I think everyone's pretty familiar with who you are and the service that you have and continue to provide to the city of Providence.

So a quick paragraph, could you just summarize uh on why you want to be uh appointed?

This is a new appointment, not a reappointment, correct?

So I served as second alternate since 2019.

I believe I took uh chairwoman Anthony's place, former councilman Nancy's place when she stepped into the council or somewhere in between us and overway.

Uh serve as second alternate though.

I voted probably in most meetings because you do have absences and refusals, things like that.

So I have a pretty robust voting record.

I I am proud of some of the stands I've taken and proud that we sometimes have had to occasionally vote against the recommendations playing department.

Something comes up in the hearing that you know wasn't presented now.

So it's in a way we could be a custodian of the city and protect their neighborhoods.

Uh I this term would be replacing Chairman Greenfield.

I would not be the chair, right?

Holton's the chair, but I would be the full term where I'd vote in every meeting.

And I feel at this point I don't need to find the front door.

I've been doing this for close to seven years, and I have an interesting context and neighborhoods having previously served as director of parks and recreation for Warwick.

Uh working at PPSD with the amazing friends back here, and especially Superintendent Martinez, where I got to ride shotgun back and some of the uh facilities work, some rate execution work.

Uh I've been involved with affordable health board and uh and overall enthusiastic about all things province.

So I'm glad to be here with all of you tonight.

Awesome, thank you.

Um in your experience in the zoning board, what have been some of uh your biggest challenges uh that you've seen the board have to uh work with?

I think the it's interesting.

Like we we really just call balls and strikes based on the the state sets the ordinance and you write the local ordinance.

So I don't think there's been a lot of challenge.

I think since uh Speaker Shikachi and the council subsequently revised the ordinance and they are signed it.

I feel it's a lot more streamlined, like it's uh the needs go a little bit quicker, and it's a little more user-friendly in the relief criteria.

You know, the ADA EU laws took a lot of stuff out of going there by right now, and they should be.

Uh there's smaller lots in the city, so it's hard to do a ton of the use, but uh, I think it's a lot more streamlined now, and you know, some of that's the councils could work by amending the ordinance.

Appreciate that.

Uh committee members, is there any questions uh for Mr.

Scott?

Comments uh counselor Peterson.

That's a quick one.

Thank you for your hearing a lot for the city for a long time.

I know we've known each other for quite some time now, and I appreciate um uh the support that you've given, not only in my neighborhood, but also the one fighting and then even yours.

I know that you would just a couple of words over.

So uh board six resident for the record.

Um I I guess this is definitely a comment as a thank you, but I actually do have a quick question.

Um now that I'm thinking of it.

Um zoning is very different from the work that you do during the day.

So tell me why you like doning.

I I think it started in Ross when I was on the Smith Hill Community Development Corporation board, so which Alpha Graves is familiar with.

Yeah, Councilman Graves, and uh I you know, I done that, I did that work.

Uh when I got on the board, the organization was struggling a little bit, had past its peak, but we were able to keep it going, and it creates UFO units.

I think that was important.

That started my I got on that board.

And you know, I saw some of my students struggle with housing.

That really affects learning.

Uh you don't have advocacy.

We discussed that many times, and that led to 2019, mayor wars at the time, put my name forward for uh to face Cheryl and Anthony, and that went on there, and I you know, it was it wasn't learning curve because it is very different from I do.

But it's you know, after a few months, you really get the hang of it, and I feel I'm I get a good perspective to not that type of work lends yourself to being a lawyer.

So, like we have I think three lawyers in the board, which is good, they're all smart lawyers.

I think be an educator and look at differently and come from a different angle when I coach that work.

But I I really enjoyed serving the city councilman.

Thank you for asking the question.

Absolutely.

Thank you for again.

Uh any other questions, comments, councilwoman Graves.

This is kind of it.

Um thank you for all you did in Smith area.

Um I think you're wherever you go, you're an assignment.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Yep, thank you for your interface.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you, Councilman.

Awesome.

Thank you.

At this time, I will understand a motion to approve item six.

So move, second.

Motion made by counselor Peterson, second by councilwoman graves.

All those in favor, aye.

Any nays, any abstentions, any discussion?

The ayes have it.

Thank you, Mr.

Scott.

Thank you, Chairman.

Thank you, Councilor.

All right, at this time I will entertain a motion to waive the reading of items one through five.

Senate, second.

Motion made by counselor Davidson, second by councilwoman graves, all those in favor, aye.

Any nays, any abstentions?

Any discussion?

Ayes have it.

Uh this time I will entertain a motion to enter exhibit 35 uh 34 into the records.

34.

Any points?

Uh motion made by counselor Peterson, second by counselor Davidson, all those in favor, aye, and nays, any abstentions, any discussion?

Ayes have it.

Who's gonna present uh before us today?

School department, yeah.

You can uh bring up whoever uh whoever's gonna participate in the conversation.

Yeah, we can move stuff around just anybody has this time.

Uh before you guys start, I do want to recognize that our amazing wonderful finance team uh is here for any questions, support, uh any comments.

Uh please go free uh any time to raise your hand if you want to jump into the discussion.

You guys want to join the table at some point or now it's up to you completely.

I really appreciate you guys being here.

Thanks, James.

Um before we begin, Chair.

I just want to say uh, you know, obviously we're at a very important time uh for school district.

I mean, it is always important, but right now with this transition.

Um, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of questions, concerns um out there in the community.

But as chair of this committee, I want to make it very clear that we're here to support uh the district, the students, the families, the teachers, uh in any way possible.

Um obviously we all signed up uh to be in these positions, our constituents elected us.

Uh there's gonna be tough decisions at times to be made, but that's uh part of the job, and I think we all are aware of that.

Um so yeah, and anything that we can do to support, obviously, counselor Davidson, a few other counselors, some staff have been involved in some of these conversations more than others.

Uh, but I just want to make that very clear before we begin this conversation that uh we're here to support, uh, to help uh to stay out of the way if needed.

Um, as you know, anything that we can do to support this transition, um, where we're here and you have our our full support.

I appreciate it, Janet.

Of course.

So I want to say thank you, Janet and members of the committee.

Um today, what you're going to be hearing uh is the problem for the students facing a challenging uh 2027 fiscal year due to several factors which include the declining uh the planning enrollment.

We're looking at high fix and variable costs such as transportation benefits and special education tuition.

The decline of enrollment is leading to a loss in state A.

Roughly two-thirds of local funds come from the state based on per P allocations.

Nevertheless, we at BPSD continue to be fiscally responsible and making reductions in line with the declining enrollment uh enrollment revenues.

Since the start of the intervention, we have had over 500 less full-time employees.

Despite these challenges, PPSB continues to make investment in student focused areas such as teaching and learning, multilingual learners, and early childhood education programs.

However, uh, despite these challenges, PPSB is still on the rise, and we're uh we're showing progress in the work that we're doing.

We have increased in ELA right hassle, math wise caskets, SAT math scores, SAT reading um writing reading as well.

So we're making games with broad chronic absenteeism, we're leading the state in many areas, so we're proud of the work that has been done, but also thinking about what the future is going to break.

Um, we're also looking ahead.

We will need to make sure we make sure and make some tough decisions, strategic decisions that we're going to be focused on for students.

So we want to make sure all the decisions that we do focus on student and student outcomes.

Uh so that's which one's probably most likely to be hearing today.

And I'm going to now turn it over to my uh my colleagues, uh Zach Scott, technically superintendent cooperation and the team, so we can go through the budget itself.

Thank you.

Uh definitely, before you begin, can other two folks just share their names and titles.

Um, I know you guys shared it uh when you guys went in, but just so we're all aware we have the table.

Dr.

Paul and Delan, Deputy Superintendent of Academics.

Christopher TC exactly from thank you.

And uh Zach's got definitely superintendent operations.

Uh I will also like to mention that uh our goals as we move forward, they have to align with the school board roles that were written.

So we want to make sure that everyone's aware that any other decisions that we make that's going to be impacting student.

We have to make sure that we have a high quality curriculum.

Also, we can want to make sure that we have support staff and interventions, and also making sure that we're looking at career and technical education programs as we move forward because those are the areas that we're going to be focused on through the goals that were given to us by the school board.

Um she's just a few recent yes.

Okay.

Welcome, welcome, thank you.

Very welcome to have you congratulations.

Um, so uh how we would want to um engage in discussion, but but this is a small group so we're always having answer questions throughout.

Um, but we have a presentation that will help guide our discussion.

Um, I think we share both our budget book as well as our ordinances, and so at any point uh if people want to know how we can those areas we are prepared to do so.

Um the presentation hopefully guides this kind of highlights a lot of the key points uh and then we can people would love.

Uh thank you, Deputy B.

Uh, before you start, do you mind if we ask questions while you're presenting um in the moment?

Totally fine.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Um, so slide two, this is a little bit of the organization of our of our presentation.

One is to give a budget overview, and I know some folks are very involved in the school department's budget, some they can do it, and so we wanted to just give some broad understanding of that.

We're gonna talk a little bit about how we uh approach planning for 27 as well as the context on what we've done in the past few years with our budget and what that's worth in terms of the student health funds.

Then really the heart of the budget details are in section three vote or provide an overview of each of our ordinances, and I suspect there'll be a lot of questions both on the overall big picture as well as any of the individual departmental or uh spending lines.

And then we knew the the council had uh had questions and inquiries on students experiencing homelessness, and so we're prepared to talk with you about that, both from a financial lens as well as uh how we how we support those students.

We appreciate that.

Thank you.

So moving to slide three, uh, in this first section again, an overview is just some big buckets of where our money comes from and how we spend.

So slide three gives you the three very high-level uh uh chunks of the PSC budget.

The local budget, and that's what you'll see in our in our appropriation ordinance that consists of city and state funding as well as some smaller funding sources.

That is the vast majority of our budget and is used for uh basic uh education needs and ongoing expenditures.

You'll see the middle about uh 36, 37 million dollars is our non-local budget that consists of our federal dollars.

You might have uh might know these funds as title one, title two, title three, IDEA.

Uh incredibly important uh part of our budget, often is used to do supplemental work uh and um professional development and things like that.

Uh in general, you know, in the grand scheme of things like a smaller dollar amount, that's still critically important.

Uh lastly, we have um grants and donations of a smaller portion of our budget.

Um we note that facilities funds, we work very closely with the city province.

Those that the funding for those facilities project projects do not go through the school department, um, but we're glad to partner with the city folks to in terms of diving into our uh local revenue, uh three key components.

So first is state aid.

What you'll see here is uh what it was in 2016, uh which is pretty consistent year to year.

State aid, uh the vast majority of that is driven by enrollment along with uh students' experience of poverty, uh, multimillion learner students, uh, and then there are some categorical funds related to uh special education, and so we'll do a deeper dive into that for FY27 later in the presentation, and you can see some of the historical funding uh in the budget book.

Uh city aid, uh obviously the point of discussion over the past few years.

Uh we have uh uh had reached settlement agreement between the district and the city last year.

Uh so what you see here is the amount that was agreed to uh in that in that settlement.

Uh the last bucket of funding is other, the biggest of which is Medicaid, so we receive uh Medicaid revenue for students from those services, and there are also some other smaller uh revenue sources that fall under.

So that's the revenue side again.

Local budget, the biggest part of our uh funding uh for the district, and then in that the vast majority of the two-thirds of it come from state aid, much of the rest comes from city eight.

Uh quick question uh director, sorry about the superintendent.

Sorry, um, how come the the dollar amounts in the parentheses in the key funding sources doesn't match up the table graph?

That was a uh update the graph, so it should it's roughly the same that I think is the prior years as FY20 uh five.

So I apologize that it's not the numbers you see uh in the funding sources are the active numbers.

Thanks for touching that we transition to slide five.

This gives you again, and we have more in the appendix.

This looks uh a few years prior.

We had outside um contractor help us just categorize our funding as a kind of an objective party.

So this is not FY, this is FY24, but it roughly holds true in terms of allocation.

Um, if you think of the amount we we spend, I guess three big buckets.

Um that we would kind of think of our as um our non-district budget, so there are a portion of funds that we are obligated to pay out to other districts uh to charge to that while it is revenue in, it is an automatic expenditure output, which the district does not have control over, and so that's that top part where you see chartering title school payments.

Uh but that in FY24 was about 52 million dollars, and we can talk about what that number is in uh current years.

Uh then below you'll see the remaining, so what you think of the in-district budget, and those are um uh distinguish between school-based costs and central uh central based costs.

School based costs are the vast majority of our expenditures in the school district, uh, 87% here.

Um obviously most of our staff, most of our spending happens at our schools, whether that's in uh staff, uh supplies and services, uh and then a much smaller portion, 13% is in central based costs.

So, big picture, just wanted to give you a sense of revenue, and then how our fund is generally organized, and then as we get into uh the coming year, we'll have a lot more detail on what it's happening.

So the next few sides I think we just want to provide a bit of context and talk to what informs our planning for this coming year.

And so uh some of this is to highlight work that's been happening over the past few years and what we've seen in terms of outcomes.

And so I'll do uh my best to pick us off the talk as well and it can speak uh much more to the student outcomes I can see.

So we'll see our few key areas of investments that the district has made and has made over the past few years, not the exhaustive lists, but those that we thought were very important.

Uh the first event in the year is a teaching and learning, and so we've invested in high quality curriculum materials and aligned data systems of professional development.

Um we had some one-time funding through ESSER, uh, and we were the only district in the state of Lord Island to extend uh the school day for students, uh, which we think how um uh was able to help us recover at faster at a faster pace, which we'll talk about next.

So some of the outcomes we've seen uh in this past year the only district uh in the state to see improved outcomes on my castle right and math, safety ELA and math.

Uh while other districts might have been pre-proven one of those areas or two of those areas we were district that's improved them all.

We had the highest uh reduction in harmony absenteeism, and we have the highest graduation rate that we've seen in the past.

A key area that came in at the start of the intervention that we needed to be supported in and we see greater investment with support for less annual learners.

Uh where district that was roughly 20% multilingual learners prior to the intervention, we were close to 40% at this time.

Uh it's a great asset for the district, uh, as we welcome um students who come from uh out of state and out of country.

Um but you know, we didn't believe in um and it led to a Department of Justice Settlement Agreement that the district was not adequate at supporting their students, and so we made a number of key investments uh to support students and families of multi-langual learners.

Uh kind of building on high quality curricula is certainly part of it, but we've also invested heavily in our teachers, uh more than um nearly doubling the number of teachers who possess an ESL certification.

Uh we've also expanded our translation and interpretation services for families because we saw that as a major barrier.

Uh what we've seen is some growth in both outcomes for students uh uh work uh multilingual learners, but also we are one of the few districts who actually have been able to exit the Department of Justice 73.

So Boston is a district that has been in there for more than two decades, and it's not the progress that we have.

Um but we were uh released several years ago for the work uh that the team started.

On early childhood, there's both uh investments in students and also uh addressing some areas of underinvestment for many years.

Um so the uh similarly the district was under a settlement agreement for failure to adequately screen uh pre-K students, and that was due to lack of staff.

Um so we've added uh pre-k valuation teams because we are obligated to screen whole students in this in the city province, whether it is whether they become a province public school student or not.

We've also added pre-K classrooms, both to support rising and special education needs, but also uh through the Rhoda pre-K expansion.

And this has allowed us to double the number of uh four-year-olds enrolled in high quality, high quality pre-K programs, and this past year we were able to open the school year without any uh pre-K vacancies, which has been a challenge as we've expanded those programs.

Um Counselor Graves, this question.

Actually, I have a couple.

Um there's a decline.

Oh, you're expecting a decline, but you're telling me we got almost double the enrollment.

So isn't that count?

Um so it's a it's a it's a good thing to point up.

We've seen an overall client district enrollment.

So uh prior to the unit intervention, we had roughly 23,000 students, and we are now closer to 19,000.

We have seen growth in the number of pre-K students served, but that doesn't cancel off the overall decline in enrollment.

So the the decline is overall, the growth is 18 and pre-quarters.

Okay, and you said you had the highest graduation rate in the last 10 years.

Also, if you're saying that you have less students, it is I do it by the fact that there's less kids in the school, but the school would you graduate is a percentage.

So you're calculating it.

Yeah, yeah, and it's not actually our the graduation rate is something prescribed by federal law or semi-state law.

Yeah, so it's not our accountability measures from the federal government, so they check on our graduation rates and tell us how we're doing each year.

Okay, because it to me is kind of saying that we don't have them, but we got a higher rate than this, we got more of these.

No, seem like maybe the overall percentage of students graduating is higher, even though we have fewer students.

Okay.

Okay, that's uh are you also counselor's counselor Peterson has uh yeah, just a quick question um similar to what uh counselor groups have said or similar topic.

Um are you noticing or can you see a trend of students that are enrolling in pre-K?

Are they dropped off at some point in the elementary school system and the middle school system and high school?

And um is there like a can you are you seeing that?

And if so, um how does that factor into what like if they're what can we do to make sure that we're retaining them?

I guess it's the next question.

Yeah, um, so areas that we've often seen Christians and students has been uh fifth grade, sixth grade, um, and ninth grade is a little complicated because we lose students, but we also need a number of students who come back for uh some of our class school and PCTA.

Um, and so obviously the number of factors that go into that, I think at fifth and sixth grade.

It's um for those parents in the room, like it's a is a time when students are typically elementary schools are ending, you students enter a lottery to enter middle school, and um people either know which middle school they want, and it's for for whatever reason that's full, they then you might choose to exit.

It's also um a great level that other options outside of TBSD are open up for families, whether that's a private school or private school, what have you.

Um you know, I think then it's worked early on in this, but what we've seen is as we've had a pre-K through eights, we've had options where families can actually stay in those schools for another year, and so early we've only had um two schools at a sixth grade, we'll have two more next year.

Um, but I think between those two schools, we only saw each each school only saw five students leave, which is pretty small from what we would normally see.

So it's very early, um, very small sample size, and so we we want to see more, but that was part of the the idea with with pre-K three eight, it's a way that not only uh improves student outcomes, but hopefully parents see if that that's what they choose, yeah, they can stay in school for a long time.

So I mean just in this week show um when I was a principal of living to do language, that was one of the biggest questions I used to receive from my parents was who always asked me when my home, what middle school?

Because they didn't have the dual language program.

Now we have expanded the language program all the way to high school.

Yeah, and that's another reason why it's really important.

Research showed that when we have 3K aid schools, it does two things.

One, it helps our families because now they have younger siblings and older siblings that only have to go to one place to pick up that person.

The second thing that we're looking at now they can build a deeper relationship within the building because now they're no longer ledges for five or six years, they're there for at least a decade, ten years.

So that's basic building that relationship and building that transparency, building the trust within that community.

I think like yeah, a third strategy that we have that's working well and we're continuing to grow it is to grow our career and technical education programs.

Our students are expressing extreme desire to be in those programs.

We have wait lists.

Um we have more students applying to those programs than we actually have seats.

So next year alone, we're going from 29 to 32.

Um, we'll be the first uh medical imaging CTE program in the state.

Um will be the only the second program for dental in the state, and so as the students are expressing to us what they would like to go into, and industry is telling us where those needs are, we're adding those programs as we're able to afford to, um, and as we have space.

So that strategy um, in terms of you ask what are things that um the city can help us with or city council can help us with, it's really thinking about the funding sources and the grants and the partnerships that allow us to do those things.

I I have to add to that because I'm so proud of us of uh education mostly of our students for the work that they do.

A hundred percent of our students who go to CTE programs that complete the entire CTE code.

100% of those students graduate, and we just had 97 students who were uh part of the uh electron book signing.

97 of our students got hired right out of high school, starting at 2530.

And students that have at least some CTE program are the 90, 91% to 92% graduation rate, which is much higher than our students who don't take a single CTE class.

Um, so we know these things are working, and we need to continue to provide them for our students the best that we can.

Thank you.

Sure, follow for just a good firm.

Our graduation rate is what, 70 something?

70%.

79, 79%.

And 91 for students who are in CTE and 100 for students who finish C all do the whole entire CTE program.

Which is usually it's uh like three uh three or four course sequence that results in a certification at the end.

So it's not like they're in the CTE program all four years for all of their classes.

No, they still take the same um math, science, ELA, world language that all the other students take, and they take these in addition to it.

So these students are very well rounded, they can go into college, they can go into career, they have a lot of options when they graduate.

Can we make that clear?

Because I sometimes hear, but they do this and they can go to college no.

It's not this or that, it's this and this together.

Yeah.

Uh counselor Davidson.

Yeah, just have a comment.

Um, I was out and about in Providence last weekend and saw that some family had my crowd graduate who's going on to electric vote, and it made me so happy.

Um, I'm really glad that we're creating those opportunities because in my view, it opens up opportunity for higher education, not closes them down.

And we have partnerships with we have partnerships with Roger Williams, we have partnerships with New England Tech with uh URI uh with Rhode Island College.

So many of the students in our CTE programs are not only getting a career certificate, they're actually getting um college credits well in high school.

So if they choose to go on to that um college pathway, they already are starting at an advantage because they don't need to take the same number of courses to graduate that their peers entering those colleges do who haven't had those opportunities.

I think we can continue with the presentation.

Just introduce by the law, so I think it's most excited.

It's a recent report, it's one that was done by investing class.

Researchers not done for province, but province was included, and it's a very promising results.

The reason why we wanted to include this is one of the things you might hear often is um Providence says it's improving, but the overall proficiency rates continue to be lower than the state average.

We are improving, we are at pre-pandemic levels, and we need to continue to improve on overall proficiency.

But I think it's really important to celebrate the fact that uh our rates of growth are outpacing national averages, and that demonstrates that we are moving toward that higher proficiency rate.

So the Harvard Stanford Educational Score card report uh looks at students from how our students um doing comparatively across the state, but then also comparatively across the nation, and they look at it by demographic.

So they'll look at things like students who um are in the low income category, students who are from different demographic groups, uh black Hispanic, um, and then students overall.

And so on the right-hand side, what you see is that compared to similar districts, uh, on the first column is in math, and the second column is in ELA.

So compared to similar districts nationally, uh, our students are growing at the 70, 70th percentile compared to the 52nd percentile in math, and 69 percentile in ELA compared to the 35th percentile.

When we look at our Hispanic students, which we um have been expanding programming for and making sure that all of our teachers are certified and adding programs bilingual blue language, uh, we see that we're in the 79th percentile in math and the 83 percentile on ELA.

I just that's that's really important because think about what what we did as a community as a school uh school district when we had the opportunity during the pandemic and we have the extra fund, but we've invested on over 500 teachers to make sure that they receive their certification and do language bilingualism, and now good teaching is good teaching, right?

It doesn't matter what you need, what you teaching who you teach when it's good teaching, and we're able to do that.

So we grew our teachers who were certified in those early in those areas by 40 percent increase.

So at least one percent of our teachers are certified in those areas.

That's um, no, we're we're really have the uh the progress that we're making, and but we do understand we need to do more.

Um growth percentile among our black students also above national average, 66 66 percentile of math and 63rd in the LA, and then low income students 65 percentile math and 61st percentile in the LA.

This ties in a little bit to later on when we start to talk about um the homelessness factors.

So I think it's really important to to highlight uh these growth percentiles um and say province is is moving in a strong direction for the students and we're gonna continue to do the work.

Um we are we've invested in all of our teachers and um the the reading um initiative that is across the country in terms of uh making sure all of the teachers similar to ESL training are are trained to reading, we're hiring reading interventionists to support students.

We're making sure that we have interventionists in all of our schools, uh and then we're also providing acceleration programs.

We've increased our advanced academics to every single school before it was only select schools that had those programs.

Um we have the highest number of increases in AP scores, and so there's there are a lot of promising data points that we want to celebrate and express that in order to continue this work, the funding that goes behind it and the support that goes behind it and the partnerships that goes behind it are really critical.

Uh and that's good thing we did slide nine where we uh superintendent mentioned in the opening comments.

Um, despite we'll share despite some financial challenges, we we do want to continue investing in the areas that we could stop.

So part of the work of the school board over the last year uh was to identify goals and what you see are those uh five year grade three university create four math grade eight uh graduates that hold an industry credential and then civic and global competence and personal group and that will uh unfortunately these were goals that are very much aligned with those outline with your own action plans and those that live has been supporting district cat all along.

So um a lot of it we just um continuing on what what we have, but um what these what these lead to are um beyond all the high quality curriculum we already have the crop C areas are some additional investments and you can talk through those uh in the DCL section uh as well as some staff to support uh student work.

So um these we'd like to put up the promo presentation because even though we'll talk through some of the trade-offs decisions we've got to make, having your goals are helpful, uh I hope we can uh keep going so on.

And of course, we're working on literacy and math um across all of our grades.

The reason these are particularly called out is we're um targeting some additional investment of uh talent and time and um funds into these because grade three is the gateway if we can get students proficient in reading by grade three, that's the gateway um to post-secondary success, whether it's college or career, and grade four math is the gateway to algebra one readiness, which is the gateway to uh all of the higher order mathematics programs that students can enter into for high wage high career um jobs.

So that's why those particular grades are called out.

Thank you.

Um second, is it is the is it what's going on in the future?

We have issue with the system, so that's the best way that you can show the meeting tonight.

Uh reset isn't to us.

A reset won't help it.

Uh I don't think so.

We can try.

What do we have to do?

Uh positive media uh what we need to do for how how is it a long is it like a few minutes to reboot or we can turn off the camera and the system, but they have to start again.

Yeah.

We have to reset and try the meeting again.

Yeah, do you guys think it's okay that the camera might be able to work?

But everybody can listen to us.

Right.

The public can listen to us.

The only issue is they don't see the entire speaking, like it is a good thing.

Yes, the camera is moving when you spit low.

I know I don't think so.

Well, okay, and just see if we need to sorry, I just think when uh we make sure to try to the camera goes um towards more.

So like your eating, for example, don't focus on you know it's not a lot of things.

Uh I don't actually want to touch any moment.

If we had a few people we lost we know it's also the way it is right now.

So sorry, everybody.

So to that point, yeah, maybe for Steve can also use the way for the mic because that might be blocking the sound.

It's not like you block it.

Yeah, yeah.

One, two, three.

No, because this is the camera.

Yeah, if you see the camera on show one here and the other one on that side.

But we can continue with the meeting now.

Well uh the audio is fine.

It's uh fine.

It's not fine.

Everybody can listen to us.

I think we gotta do what we can with what we got.

Yeah, continue the conversation.

Um want to recognize our pro temp, uh Chardo has joined us.

Oh no.

Sorry about that.

So a few more slides before we get into the 27 budget details that I think are important, and again, maybe competitive for those who've been with us before, but uh, we do like to talk through the budget allocation process for our schools.

Um, we're now in uh year four, year three of uh student-based budgeting.

Uh prior to this of the way how students were given were typically school staffing was rolled over from one from one year to the next, were determined by central office, uh, and schools were given two to three percent of their budget in discretionary funds to purchase supplies and materials.

Uh, we now have an allocation methodology that looks at uh funding for all students, but uh also provides funding differentials for students uh with IEPs, multiple learners, students in CTE programs and other things that we know uh drive meat, and so it's a tie dollars uh to me.

It allows us to have uh very clear rules on how funds are allocated.

Uh it allows us to differentiate some needs.

We're happy at any point to talk to you more in depth about what that looks like.

But it's been um very helpful for us, I think, as having a clear and transparent way for our schools to know how fun generality is.

Uh, it provides some distances year to year, and also allows us to know uh where you know put dollars against whatever programs out.

Uh slide 11, another important piece of context is just looking at enrollment and sort of the um some of the questions earlier.

What you'll see here is a three-year enrollment snapshot uh October one of each year.

That's typically the time when enrollment is pulled.

Uh and you'll notice that we've seen roughly a 750 decline over the last three years, with much of it happening at the middle and high school levels.

Uh, and then we've seen particular declines in newcomer students at the high school level uh going from 220 on our tour one to 24 to 134 on October 1 or 25.

Um, and we'll talk about this more as we get into the 27 budget because I think what we've seen in this year is some particularly unique enrollment patterns that we haven't seen in the years past.

Um we typically are uh a school district that gained students over the course of the year, uh, and um to the student 400 to 500 students when it comes to the state moving numbers.

Uh, this year we were relatively flat.

Uh and based on uh that happened typically in sixth grade and ninth grade is where we often have students that are coming from out of the state and out of the country.

Um much of this impact beyond demographic seems to be based on um federal, you know, GGs and federal education enforcement, which is unfortunate, but has uh you know it has a real impact on our student population and ultimately our finances.

Um can you get us uh enrollment numbers uh say for the past 10 years?

Absolutely uh quick follow-up of counselor Peterson.

Um you say that we're intended that it's because students are not enrolling but they're here, or they're just not here.

I mean, what so what we what we noted is we had fewer uh the growth in students over the group course of this year in particular was quite low, and what we saw, you know, that gene is either you get you um you grow it because you gain a lot of students or you lose fewer.

We lost about this the number of students who left was all the same, the number of students who joined us went far down.

So we we it's hard to prove that with certain, but what it feels like is far less people immigrating um from and in particular where we saw the biggest change was typically our uh ESL one students, so students who are typically um uh English learners that had limited um instruction of English, the growth in that student population is actually declined this year in a way that we since I've been here at this.

My just as a follow-up, my concern is that we have students that just have to come to school while they're still here, and there's not any way that we can seek resources for them or find support for them when needed.

This is sometimes the only place the students can eat, and we've had conversation before, but I um I worry that we have some of that happening, and that's not thank you.

Uh lastly, before we get into the 27 budget, I think it's worth obviously we're here with you to make that we give you a sense of the overall kind of engagement and when we think of our budget.

Obviously, we start with limited information we get more over the course of the year.

Um but so early on, we started with our school board in the in the fall, we get initial C projections.

Uh come January is when we start both getting better information from the government's budget, and we refine our expense rejections.

Uh we've met with our screw board.

Um we knew it goes toward finance every month, but um uh for since February, we've been providing updates on our Catholic 27.

So a lot of what you'll see here, we we tried to consolidate it, but we always uh welcome people to join our school board primary fees because that's often the primary place where we're sharing uh updates.

Uh we had an update in March, and so when you see revenue numbers, that's based on uh what was released from Rod in March.

We still know that there is time uh and that the any finalization of the uh state budget um will intact BPSD as well.

So we're we're happy to talk to you what we anticipate there.

But what you'll see here reflects March numbers, which are pretty much set in terms of enrollment.

Uh the only alternative, the only thing that could change is some change of this at the state policy.

Thank you.

And also just want to point out that the uh house um posed to their budget for tomorrow.

Uh so anyone listening, anyone here um you know, we can plan now if you do that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, now that's to the details, and then next two slides summarize some of our ordinances, and we fully are anticipated or prepared and happy to talk about the details of each of those ordinances as much as we could work in.

So slide 14.

Uh we have three main ordinances, uh which we'll go through as well as some uh we'll start first by talking to revenue.

But we have our appropriation ordinance that describes funding by categories.

Um excited about the job at the shooter.

Um but uh it is based on the uniform charter accounts, which is uh uh um required by Ryan and I to organize it.

Uh we don't have it, we don't have as much flexibility.

We have to organize our funding by that, but it's actually very helpful because it allows you to compare municipality and style and funding.

This encovers all of our local funds, so state and city eight.

Uh, and so when we talk about the appropriation ordinance, that's the funding that we're talking about.

Compensation was all the positions in the district and the pay bans, it assumes uh all agreed upon salary increases for the coming year.

Uh like the uh the city, we have several bargaining units, the the biggest of which is the province teachers union.

We are under contract with all three year bargaining units for each year, so there is um uh no open contract or no open question about what the salary increases are for the coming year.

The last one is a cost rotation ordinance that gives you a list of all of our positions uh by department and compares it uh in school and very simple to the next next, so you can look at your uh department of interest or a school to see changes from one year to the next, and uh both the compensation and the cost requirement ordinance includes all funding sources, so we get to see whether it's title one funded or still funded, uh, all positions are in order to serve.

Um Winton, just before our when does the current teacher's contract uh expire?

Uh it expires at the uh August of 2027.

Thank you.

2027.

Okay, um slide 15.

I'll spend a bit of time on this old uh this is our revenue, local revenue for next year.

Uh and I'll there's a lot of stuff here, so I'll do my best to walk us through how that should be.

Uh the column, the first column you'll see is the current year's final budget.

Uh the second column you'll see is the proposed budget for next year, and the third column will be the change from one year to the next.

The top portion where you see that above that first subtotal is all considered state aid, and it includes a few sources of which I'll talk through now.

Uh you'll see the first two lines are the both uh it's an app to date and funding formula, so you can see the change from year to year.

But if you combine those uh first two lines together, uh you'll see roughly a million dollar increase in the funding formula from one year to the next.

Well, that is um obviously gaining is better than using um it's it's uh it assumes uh the funding formula assumes 4% increase for all uh per people basis, and so uh the reason it's only a one million dollar increase is because of uh enrollments.

The the funding for um the enrollment change from last year's funding, uh sorry, this year's funding to next year's funding is 329 students.

Uh some of that has to do with uh projective charter expansion, the rest has to do with uh general enrollment comms that we've seen.

So the the funding formula, the good news is that the per people has gone up by four percent.

Uh the bad news is that we've seen uh students with which uh negatively impact that number.

We've also seen the smaller number of students who qualify for uh SNAP tan up and other uh social services with which impact our uh success student success factor.

So that combined with that enrollment fund leads to um a relatively small increase in uh funding formula.

We also see a small increase in the enrollment loss transition funds for the next two lines, so taken together it's about half a million dollar increase.

Those were uh uh funding sources enacted in the past few years um where districts that lose enrollment uh only lose a portion of the funding that goes with that loss enrolling, and the first year of loss enrollment uh the district receipts 40 percent, and the second year it's five percent.

Uh so does that um is that have a clip or is that uh I don't think there's any uh expiration date, but I also don't think it's I think they'd be changed easier than the fund from uh I think we may not exist in statute, so there's no end date, but there's also if it I don't think the barriers to remove it are part of lower than other things.

Has that um has has that allocation been in place the the whole time while the state takeover that just got added right a couple of years ago?

Yeah, I think it was during it was maybe three years, maybe three years ago.

Um, and it was and and I know we're off the mouth provides there are the enrollment decline is something that is happening statewide, so I think that you know this is something that was put in place as old as we started to see the process involved.

Uh then the component is obviously very small.

The next thing you'll see is a decline in high cost special led categorical funding.

Um I'll do my best to explain that source of funding, but it is uh it is a lot of money that is allocated by the state uh for student uh um for students whose cost to educate is three times uh the core average.

Uh anyone above that qualifies for this funding source, and it's not fully funded, so depending on how much people spend, it's allocated uh uh to districts.

We've um well, we still spend a significant amount on um special education.

Um we have fewer students who have uh kind of picked that uh extraordinary cost level.

Some of that has to do is we brought some students back from a district placements or other things that allowed us to serve students in the district uh effectively, uh, but at not such an extraordinary cost.

And I also think because this is based on what other districts are doing to, I think other districts have seen some pretty high growth in this, which is led to the coming here for us to see actually decline in this category.

So taken all together with the state aid change, the enrollment loss transition time, and uh special categorical, uh we are seeing a 1.3 million dollar decline in state, uh, which you know is a challenge as you mentioned that's city is is typically two-thirds of our budget, uh two-thirds of our revenue, and so uh a 1.3 million dollar decline is is um is uh substantial.

If we look next, um sorry, we have a question over here, uh council turnal.

Yeah, um on the line of the reserves using uh 3.2 million from the reserve.

What is the balance of the reserve that you currently have?

Current balance is 4.2 million dollars.

4.2 million and what is the reserve usually usually used for yeah.

So the way it the first, as we went into the state intervention, uh there was an agreement that the C would not be responsible for any uh uh deficit of the district brand, and so uh it was also at the same time of the district shutdown during COVID.

Um, so we had a one-time surplus that allowed us to get into reserves.

We really haven't had to use it, with the exception of uh the years in which we entered into settlement agreements with the city, and so when we had the uh our planned revenue for the year, when that settlement agreement was less than that revenue source, we used reserves.

Uh so the reserves started a bit higher, and then as we had a several successive um settlement agreements, um, we use the reserves to um uh cover any gap from planning.

Um there any um additional dollars that now that the schools have been returned July 1st for fiscal year 2027 um 2627 for this one additional funding sources no I mean it there's no necessarily additional funding sources I believe I mean will the the funding sources say local federal aid will still be also uh one more um and just on the the funding formula uh from the state uh I know you explained it in essence that we for this proposed budget is uh less than the previous year.

That's correct.

So therefore the state is is not providing uh well, what is the short change on compared?

See what yeah, what is the deficit in the sense that between the years?

Yeah, so the I mean the past few years, the vast majority of the increases the district have come in the city, but for this coming year, we are seeing a 1.3 million dollar decline from current year to next year in the city.

Okay, um that's the question.

Uh are there any other uh reserve accounts or any additional money that the school department has available?

No, reserve account is the uh the rainy day funding that is that's what it is.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Counselor Graves.

Um you said that um a lot of this might uh was from SNAP.

Is it because of the client the decline in student enrollment or is it has to do with the cutback that's going out for government right now?

Um both.

Yeah, it's probably both.

So there are certainly fewer students, fewer students now, but the percentage has gone down.

So it was 78.

We should double check that both the absolute number and the percentage of students um who qualified has gone down.

Um I think there's a couple of reasons we've heard that people believe that's happening.

It's either people who are um worried or scared to seek services that so the way this works is that students who um get uh our family that gets approximately DHS um the State Department of Health and Human Services matches those students with with our rosters, and uh that tells them how many they should be used for the for the formula.

Um there have been fewer students who have been matching, so it's either that there are fewer students eligible for the students or fewer families that are seeking the services for whatever or well, yeah, there's less people that are eligible or less providers.

Yeah, that would make sense.

Um back in July, November uh federal administration uh some harsh uh deductions to SNAP uh eligibility.

So yeah, I think so.

Those people are created up, but I didn't have fallen in sure.

One five put in councillor Davidson.

Yeah, I um we might be getting into the weeds too quickly.

You can tell me if so, but I'm looking at the um never get into the weeds.

Yeah, so here we go.

I'm looking at the high house uh special academic funding.

I also noticed we can get into the budget detail.

Sorry, I didn't have to look my phone for my notes.

Um that tuition to other school districts has raised by about 1.5 million.

Is there a correlation there?

So the sport talking for you, what is page 30 something?

Yeah, so there's um there's a number of UCO lines that reference tuition.

So let me walk through what each of them are because they're all slightly different.

Tuition to other school districts, uh assume it includes Mr.

PC will correct me, the days and met and the net so um state schools and CTE.

So not at all just special ed or no, so the one that is the one that is just called tuition, that is special.

That's the special advance.

There's the other while we're here, is the other ones you'll see tuition educational agencies, that's where students who go to C CRI and then push in the charter schools is tuition that would be okay.

Thank you for helping me understand that.

Um just before we move on to pretend just to uh clarify confirm.

Uh so the 4.2 million in reserve, uh that's uh that's the balance right now.

Correct.

So say this budget goes through, it's gonna be one million in the reserve by the time uh July 1st starts as the projection.

Right, thank you.

Uh council return.

Um seeing that uh there is that short for what have you is there any implication for any uh planning what uh with the changes of the funding formula and the proposed legislation.

Could that can the state turn around and provide additional talents to the BPSD?

Yeah, so I think that's a topic we'll hear more about tomorrow at the General Assembly.

We don't have any uh special insight into, but but we understand that there, so there was an original proposal in the governor's budget that assumed that increases the success factor from 40% to 43%.

And the success factor is uh essentially a multiplier for students who qualify for freedom to use launch or who are economically disadvantaged, and so the 40% represents of the of uh the per pupil, an additional 40% is added on for every student in poverty.

This legislation would change up from 40 to 43 percent.

Uh it was taken out uh when the March data updates came through.

Um, but because of I think better news at the state level in terms of regiment, it sounds like it's back on the table.

Uh so that would certainly I think the uh benefit to the of the district.

Um wouldn't know until it's passed exactly, but it would potentially be uh four to four and a half million dollar increase in revenue to the district by our estimates.

Um so that I mean, I think obviously decisions would have to be made that the uh the starting point where we would probably not use reserves next year, so we wouldn't be starting from uh you know starting starting from that that hole.

So uh, but that you know we wanted to plan is that that one happening just kind of out of uh prudent, but that is a potential that that's been happening as well.

And um just looks like it.

Uh just to confirm uh and stay for the record.

Uh hopefully someone from finance can jump in.

Uh state aid increases.

What's the city's uh responsibility?

Well, Miss Fair, or I can just tell you about it.

You can just tell us though, you're trusting at this point for a few months, right?

I trust you might alight.

Um the city is committed to matching what the increases right now, it's a little over two percent after March data update, but it will likely change or that will be changed with this chapter, so we will need to figure out how to close that gap between that one and the top talk budget.

Awesome.

Thank you, Crystal.

Thank you.

I mean, could segue into the we've uh the assumed is uh based on the March numbers, and we've been kind of consultation with the city city, and I think are in alignment.

Uh and we'll swap to see if there's any other changes in state in that number could change by the general assembly.

Um we have seen growth in Medicaid revenue over the past few years.

Uh uh, really two years ago is when it started, and then it sustained last year to the point where we we feel comfortable uh increasing it as as part of our coming to next year.

Uh part of that has to do with more students qualifying for services.

Um of that is connected to the growth in students with IEPs and the special needs.

There's also been um uh broadening of who can qualify for billing, so social workers of which we've added quite a few since the start of the intervention uh historically could not bill, uh, but there are now uh more providers that can bill.

Uh so we think that this is since we've seen how two years existing increases in medical revenue, are including that in our planning for next year.

Uh and then the last component is reserves, uh, which we just talked about, and again uh you know the the assumption would be out additionally what are coming in, we would go first to start reducing our use of reserves.

Um what is this is uh obviously interesting time for all of us uh to be in um while you know we are planning uh for for control July 1st, um it's still under state control up until then.

Um I guess what's PP province public school district uh position on um a reserve account?

Is that something the school district has had in the past?

Like what is obviously going into the back school control.

What is what is your guys' suggestion uh plan um with having uh a reserve account?

Obviously, uh if there is a possibility to have a reserve account, like I think we all support uh that.

Um, but yeah, I I guess like is anything gonna change in your guys' opinion um when it's officially mobile control.

Yeah, in short, and and this is I think I can speak for the district.

We don't anticipate that changing that we would continue that uh a reserve account.

Uh I think part of that has it's less less about our opinion, but I think there is some state law that refers to districts once funds are appropriated to a school department that they aren't able to be uh pulled back.

I'm sure that that is not everyone's opinion and um and others may disagree, but I think both because it's been we've seen it as helpful in our planning, but also because I think state law indicates that that's um one once funds are appropriate to the school departments, they are uh can't be right.

Um has there ever in any of your guys' time with a school district uh outside of before the state intervention, was there uh a reserve account at any point?

Whereas I've only been here.

So I can speak to I I don't believe that I don't think there was one city.

Most districts do have one because if something were to happen, high school fails, um anything significant happens.

There has to be a funding source to be able to do that so that students can continue their education, and what the state districts have found, the ones that haven't had that have run into some pretty sticky situations when they have you know, especially a facilities failure and they have no reserves, or they have no reserves to keep on keep on um situations that are of extreme um nature, such as a shortfall in a budget at the budget here.

Uh any other questions before we continue all benefits.

Okay, uh let's talk to the next slide, which gives you a summary of our appropriation limits.

And as I know all of you who have it, um a lot more needs on there.

So what I do is we do a summary uh and then uh pause to see what people want to learn about.

Uh so just to give kind of a big picture uh school department the uh uh people business.

Both salaries have benefits, and uh so let's uh kind of talk through both of those in order.

Um salaries, uh we are projecting uh 1.5 million dollar decline uh in salaries from year to year.

Um that is a combination of several uh kind of forces that are causing that to reduce.

So um just uh so we uh based on our cost of living increases, uh we would project uh, I believe it's a roughly seven million dollar increase when you factor in, we have a 3.75% increase uh to our teachers, 2.75% to our other unions.

Part of the reason that is uh the highest of the three years for the teachers of 3.75 because they received uh no increase or uh one percent halfway through the year.

So this contract had uh more money towards the back end of the contract.

So taken all together based on cost of living increases for salaries, that would be over a seven million dollar increase.

Uh we then uh, and we'll talk about this in the next slide.

We made significant reductions to FPEs.

Uh that gets to a um uh another um uh excuse me, seven and a half million dollar reduction in FTEs.

Uh yeah, taking taking with our that you get an increase of the cost of living adjustments with position reductions, another uh seven and a half million dollar uh decrease, and then we have uh a some other salary items like segments to our uh special education teachers that we are reducing, uh leads us to the 145.

So it's both uh normally this would increase based on cost of living, but we made significant reductions to FPUs.

Uh and we'll talk through both on the next slide where there's types of jobs that were limited as well as uh where they work benefits was a combination of some some um increases and some decreases.

Uh and so we saw after we saw a decrease in active medical for this year.

Um we are uh the actuaries that we work with are projecting an increase in acting medical for next year of roughly 3.3 million uh to our local budget, and uh a decrease in city retirement and public.

And a decrease in city retirement and 1.1 million.

So netted together, those are the major changes in that area, which are $2.2 million increase in benefits and special.

Just a quick question to the counselor previously.

Thank you.

Decrease in city retirement, that means less people are retiring.

You can correct.

I think we get from the city retirement, we get like the actuary report about hey, because it's out of trick project to pay you for next year.

So it's okay.

So every year we send a census to the actuaries based on the enrollment as of June 30th of that fiscal year.

They take that census data and project what the contribution will be for the up to two fiscal years based on enrollment at that time.

So what we see is as positions are reduced to the budget, which is what we're seeing at the school district side that people pay into the city's pension system or less FTEs that are doing that.

The actual contribution required for district is not now.

Okay, okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Crystal.

The next category is the other beyond salaries and benefits, the largest bucket, and so I would go through each of these things in detail.

So transportation services, we uh were at the end of our transportation contract.

Uh we went out to bid uh early, uh, which allowed us to have two bidders.

Um the bids that came back were were were quite high, and unfortunately, or well, unfortunately, uh consistent with what we're doing from other uh other districts who are out of it at the current time.

So we saw uh 15% increase in the rates for buses.

Um we anticipate fewer losses, so that will um lessen the impact there, but the rate uh of the contract went up pretty significantly.

Uh and uh while we typically in any first year of these service contracts, we would have seen increases, it was quite substantial.

Unfortunately, it's something we've heard consistent with other uh colleagues in other districts.

Uh I don't want to add too much more to your play, but just so we can have uh better understanding of the whole situation contracts.

So something we've worked with, our finance department is every department comes before us, presents their budget, and um what's helped us committee members is for those departments to provide um dollar amounts and specific contracts uh above a certain threshold.

Um I'm not sure what that threshold looks like for PBSD, um, but maybe we can work uh together uh going forward just so we have uh full picture uh when we're talking about contracts.

Uh we know what we're we're uh looking at.

Um so I think counselor, I don't want to volunteer counselor Davidson, but uh some portion of us I think will follow up and have that not as important as other things, but it helps us, especially going into uh this more important time period, uh how the full picture is looking.

Thank you.

Yeah, sorry.

And we're we're happy to do that and just to put a little context around transportation.

So there's a couple of big components of that transportation line.

Uh the biggest of which is our daily runs, or yellow bus service, that is about 14 million dollars.

Uh the next is statewide, so uh what we pay for students uh take special ed or programs out of uh district that's around six million.

Uh the third component is RIFTA.

So we have RIPTA passes for students used to be who live over two miles, now it's over one mile.

Uh that's around three million dollars, and then the last and smallest is athletics, which is around a million dollars.

So uh a lot of again the big driver here is our first student contract uh for yellow bus service, but also uh to a bus service statewide and special ed services.

Uh that is our um special education tuitions.

Uh we are expecting to see fewer students out of district.

Um so I would we are down uh 24 students uh for next year, which is a positive development.

Um but like many things we've seen the rates for that tuition go up quite substantially.

So historical tuition rates for the district tuition three to five percent.

Uh and many of our providers are now at eight percent.

Uh and again, I did a lot of that has to do with staffing challenges that they're facing, and therefore as they've caught up and their costs have increased in it, and we're gonna get to pass on to school departments.

Uh I will talk about public schools of choice and how the district CTE programs together because uh they're intertwined and there's a change this year, which is uh um makes these numbers move in interesting ways.

So public schools of choice are the amounts that the district has to pay out uh in tuition to uh charter schools, so it's typically forty around forty five hundred dollars that is set by ride and is considered the city or LEA portion for the student that enrolls, probably the student who enrolls in a charter school uh receives that pass through from from the district.

I'm sorry, uh that'll be um we're time or is this outside of the the regular tuition payment?

So funding the way uh charter schools are funded, they receive their state aid directly from the state, so nothing you know, the student enrolls and achievement first.

The state aid flows directly from the state to the uh to the um charter school.

There's the what almost maybe like the city portion, so the amount we get we get money from the state and the city, uh the amount we we have to pay a portion of our budget over to the charter school in the amount that is equivalent to what the city contributes to the school.

So it was the that's really like the the and it's it's it's a rate set by the by the state, so uh it looks like an expenditure, but it's essentially a costly from the city through us to the charter schools.

Question uh counselor perturbed um what is the per student uh number that gets passed through $4,473 per student now for each child.

So each charge student, the LEA portion is four thousand four hundred and seventy-three dollars.

And then the additional forty five hundred no, that's that problem.

Right, right.

But what about that's that's that portion, the 4500?

Yes.

But what about the for uh per student?

Uh the for the tuition that that follows that that's a state aid, that's the state portion that follows that student.

So it all depends, it all depends if that person that students in multi-wing will learn or a experience from poverty, so it could range from fifteen thousand dollars to eighteen thousand dollars or two.

But we have those numbers though, right?

It's all on the state website, we follow much state aid of how much the per pupil dollar amount is that each child school is receiving.

We don't I mean we don't track we don't track the estate aid, it's all that's right.

Right, right.

But you basically received that money.

We don't receive the state aid, state aid goes directly to the child school.

Based on their enrollment, based on the enrollment, okay.

But we have to pay you a portion of the LEA portion of those province residents that are attending that child school, which is $4500 per student.

And uh the transportation is managed by PPSD.

No, the child schools are all uh mandated to provide their own transportation for their own students.

That was set back in uh in title sixteen statute uh when funding form is fully implemented in twenty sixteen, twenty fifteen.

We can provide transportation for private workers, which is the state.

You still provide to the private private parochial, and parochial.

And that was six million, right?

That uh that's statewide transportation.

So that a little different statewide transportation is Providence students, so those are our students who attend um, private colloquial school special education CD programs, some of them are uh displaced as well.

So that's all the bucket of statewide transportation.

Uh follow counselor Pearson.

Just remind me again.

What is the per pupil cost for the city department?

4,000 the total per like for the inside, it's it's not 4,000 that we that it's cost that's that's a city, it's like 19 or 30%.

Oh total total, uh yeah.

So total tuition to charter schools?

Yeah.

Charter school.

No, no, sorry, the total per pupil cost in general for each PPSD student.

It's like 21,000.

That's the uh pay age.

Per paper the page of 23 of 23 of the flight spoke for rate or 23 yeah, 23 is we don't calculate uh okay right calculation our expenditures.

Okay.

So fiscal 20 to 4 proven spent 29,839 per student.

All funding sources.

Yeah.

Yes.

This is our answer.

So it's probably that would be less.

Okay.

So it's less now.

Just a follow-up on that.

You mentioned state aid to charter goes, it's about 15, 18, depending on what it might be percent.

And we give approximately 4500 or 4700.

It doesn't equal what our per pupil spending is all funding sources to include federal dollars as well.

Okay.

Thank you.

What happens uh to federal dollars if a student we just don't get no one get no one gets it if they if a student goes to to charter school or they they they uh documents don't correct me from what they apply to their own uh application process to apply for title dollars to three, however, there are caveats in title two title one two four that we have to provide funding to private schools that participate in our programming as well.

So it's a little complicated.

But charter schools receive their own federal dollars if you need an obligation to provide some of our federal federal charge.

Yes.

So in other words, we have our title one money, which we'll be talking about later when we're talking about homeless.

Um there's a percentage carval that for all of the private schools in province.

Um we have to do a consultation with them and provide a certain um dollar amount and also potentially services for the students in those schools that are province residents.

Thank you.

Um I think right now is a good time to bring up uh concern or question, comment if you guys I I talk about it box really concerned, and a lot of elected officials in my opinion don't talk about this um enough because it's a very political uh challenge you could say um it pulls a lot of emotions.

Um but I I'm just primarily talking about this as a fiscal uh challenge you could say um in regards to our uh tuition to to charter schools.

Um the numbers I have before me.

Um please uh correct me if anything I'm saying is wrong or stop me.

Um in school year 2020 to 2021, uh the payment to charter schools was 21 million give or take dollars.

Uh this current fiscal year 2025 uh 2026 it is uh or 25, 27, it is uh 29 million.

Is that is that the current is that actuals for for this fiscal year?

Fiscal so the current budget this this fiscal year is 35.5 million 35.5 million is this current fiscal year, 25.26.

So I wrong in my in my first number and in what was the 2020, 2021 fiscal year contribution to charter schools.

I don't find that about the I only go back five years.

What's the last year you have on there?

I guess uh 23.

Well fiscal 23 to charter schools was 28.3 million dollars.

28.3 so since three fiscal years ago to current about eight million dollar increase.

My question and concern is um what's the plan uh fiscally if we see the same growth in three fiscal years?

That's another eight million less enrollment.

Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple things.

One is we would continue to make reductions to staff and district footprint.

So um, as we've seen enrollment declines, as we mentioned over the past um four or five years, we've seen significant declines in the number of staff uh because we need you know fewer staff uh uh to support the on the revenue side, the the enrollment loss transition fund helps in that it uh as the district loses students you know use the full amount you lose 40 percent or 20 percent.

Um so between the reductions and the and the revenue um enrollment trip loss transition fund those help, but there's it's certainly a challenge.

I mean it's not gonna lie.

inside the the enrollment loss transition fund helps in that it uh as the district loses students you know use the full amount we lose 40 percent or 20 percent um so between the reductions and the and the revenue um um enrollment triple loss transition fund those help but there's it's certainly a challenge i mean it's not gonna lie i i guess what i want to hear um or not what i want to hear what what the the point that i'm trying to um make clear you could say is um obviously you know a student goes to a charter school then you know that charter school is has new uh uh fiscal responsibilities so so i i don't think anyone is i'm certainly not saying that no money uh should should go uh to to that student um but what i've heard or what i've been told is um we're still responsible uh fiscally uh for the the the payments uh what i'm trying to get is to that our expenses don't go down the same uh dollar amount that the uh deduction in uh revenue receive so there is some calculation that needs to happen um i i think at the state level some type of funding formula um rather sooner than than later because i am extremely concerned um if we continue uh this path um just from a fiscally uh position you know obviously there's there's political and other uh uh intuitions uh on why we believe on what we believe but fiscally um charter school expansion um as uh under the current funding formula is putting impossible problems uh to to solve uh not just a financial matter and and i've said this uh to to the group and and i know you know obviously we we all have our constraints to try to work in but this is what i tell my my colleagues and and neighbors um when when this topic comes up um because this is this is gonna bankrupt us if we don't do anything and then you know I don't use those words lightly but I just don't see uh another way uh around this issue um until we start uh advocating and trying to change something dramatically and you know I I think this involves some of the the charter school organizations uh you know at the table I think their voices uh important in in this obviously um state house uh you know leaders have have been talking about some type of moratorium uh to at least in my opinion stabilize uh the the finances um for a short period of time um because this in my opinion and I don't think it's my opinion I think it's it's facts looking at a at a spreadsheet here um is a really dangerous path where we're going and you know if you guys have anything to to add if you want to share anything you're more than welcome to actually just have a follow-up counselor Peterson has um follow-up thank you question comments um question maybe yeah we there is a cap on the number of charter school seats that are given approvable that are from the city of records correct yeah so they I don't know if it's a cap as much as they they approve you know when they're when they're approved there's a limit um that they can go above but I don't think they're the number that are active and use or are less than the number that are approved.

I was just well so then my next question was going to be are we close to that projected number or whatever it might be.

I don't I don't think so I mean I I we can look at the the total aggregate number I think there are some schools that I expected to expect it to open earlier and so they're a little behind in their rollout but um there are a number of schools that are adding so excel is adding a night grade next year and the first is adding fifth and sixth grade so those will continue to grow up so I think they're not just a follow-up comment I I share your concern chair on this particular thing because we don't have a plan for work for how I mean if our costs keep going up and our enrollments keep going down and then we also have to pay into a portion for them how do we how do we balance right is there any sort of idea or anything that you guys are trying to come up with because I'm sure this is not a conversation that you're only having here um is there anything on the horizon in terms of finding pockets of money down at a underneath rainbow is a bit one of the things that we talked about earlier is one of the important strategies that we have to continue to work for our pre K8 schools are showing current promise of students wanting to stay with us.

Our expansion of expansion of CTE programs and high quality programs that our students are wanting to be in is it's a really important strategy as well.

So I think there are conversations that have to happen on the on the fiscal end and funding formula end for sure.

But I think one of the strategies that we have the most immediate impact on that we have control over is are we providing those services and programs that students want and need and want to stay with us for and I I think that the PK8 strategy is one of those and as it's CTE and we need to continue to build those the two things that I would add to that are I think there have been some positive steps already so the addition of the um enrollment loss transition fund has been helpful and to your point like if we for every dollar we lose you can't cut with the the same amount of expenditures to recover and so that enrollment loss transition fund at least softens the blue a little bit but maybe not fully I also think the the proposed funding formula change that has been put out there will help in a number of ways but one of which is um if I understand correctly it acknowledges that there's a lot of um fixed costs whatever you might want to call them that districts have to take to cover so we have to screen all three and four year olds in the city um regardless of how many students we have to district regardless of whether any of those students come that doesn't there's no revenue source for that but we have to have four teams of five people screening whole year to do that.

So I think the funding formula acknowledges that there's some districts that have to be gonna have to use that or as church they don't have to screen pre-K students and so uh changes to the funding formula could be helpful in really aligning funding with the cost district have because it's not all for people basically counselor Davidson so related to that and maybe I have clarification of council women Peterson's question charter caps um I know we're talking about and then there I believe there's currently statewide charter cap but is there a charter cap for providence as a district as opposed to just statewide so there's a there's a number of approved seats and those seats are differentiated by the number I think whenever charter applications uh it's approved it indicates how many of that other seats how many are involved so I think that goes down to the C to each individual LEA perfect okay cool thanks my last question on uh charter schools um is there any like uh administrator like teacher to teacher level what conversations collaboration and sharing knowledge uh experiences uh in that aspect was that question clear on that no it was it was I I was just trying to think I don't know of any kind of um coordinated way in which that's happening at one school that is uh we have uh it's co-located between uh uh charter school and uh and uh um one of our elementary schools and you know they they coexist I think at their best they're working together and other times it's you know your roommates in the house and that can be can be tough so um I don't think there's any big coordination across it's not a requirement and it's not funded so those for those reasons I I think I mean obviously it's for anyone to to work on but um if there's any teachers listening there probably public school teachers or charter schools I mean I think having some type of you know not high expectations but just like some maybe unofficial working group or advisory on you know sharing uh experiences I mean this is a lot this is a little this is kind of like frustrating it's uh on any of you guys because I mean charter schools were started as you know uh not necessarily to experiment but to to start specific programs or or do things um that you couldn't necessarily do uh in traditional probably public school districts and here we are decades later there's no uh fluidly relationship or maybe you know hopefully someone's listening and they they call me after the meeting and then correct me but I mean the whole reason chart schools were were started at least for my understanding was to take lessons learned and you know apply them to traditional public school districts and just doesn't seem like that's happening and hopefully someone will call me later and correct me uh but it's that's just so disappointing to to be in a position uh 20 30 years later of what an idea was and to see it be completely something different and no one trying to work towards uh going back to to point A and putting some of these uh principles and in in place um which doesn't really make sense to me but I guess that's uh local government at times and our society

uh fluidly relationship or maybe you know hopefully someone's listening and they they call me after a meeting and then and correct me but I mean the whole reason chart schools were were started at least for my understanding was to take lessons learned and you know apply them to traditional public school districts and just doesn't seem like that's happening and and hopefully someone will call me later and correct me uh but it's that's just so disappointing to be in a position uh 20 30 years later of what an idea was and to see it be completely something different and no one trying to work towards uh going back to to point A and putting some of these uh principles and in in place um just doesn't really make sense to me but I guess that's uh local government at times and our society totally consular graves just a comment um I was around when we first um private schools died in that fact my one of my children went to one it was never meant to be a competition which it became it was never meant to take money from the public schools drain money from the public schools to build taking care of child schools it was a wonderful conception but I think it's kind of grown into a must because now they're buying each of them are buying for children you know and the kids are a commodity but I don't know if they're if it's a great thing you know um especially when you're saying that they're getting the foundation basically from the public school if most of them are leaving in the sixth and seventh and eighth grade so they got the foundation from us and now they're going somewhere else um and ask them is that closing down or falling down I think is a sad state of affairs myself um and I don't think it was meant to be that I think you know we all know that some kids um do better on the different you know tools they do you know some are better off learning at home homeschool some are better off in private school or what some and whatever you know but the public schools I think everybody and nine times out of ten is the poorest ones they have to go to the public schools and they have no choice and so they they get a lottery so now it's like we're putting the kids against one another and that's the only bad thing now because I don't think it was ever meant to be this but it is this and and it's sad because our kids are now fighting and parents are fighting amongst each other because of education when all the kids deserve a good education no matter where they are that's just my comment thank you um sorry you're kind of that that conversation was gonna happen at some point and it's looked like a good opportunity I think you've got kind of budget so we're talking to the one new ones I'll have this this year and I'll see the if you look in the services column about row between the third class and last school so um there's a unique thing happening this year where there was a what used to be a charter school the Princeton area technical is being converted from a charter school to a school district district school of Cranston and so typically we would be paying out tuition on the charter line you're not paying out on the CTE line it ends up being about a wash financially but it will make those one line move up in a way that normally you would expect that CT line to not be as high and the charter school to actually actually be a lot a little bit higher.

Last one I would mention is uh our custodial line so we are we um went out to it several years ago um four years ago at this point and so it's a contract that was awarded in uh through three years and then two two year extensions next year will be the first year of our extension uh contract uh and the way this was bid out was uh uh it is flat um the the fees are flat uh for every term of the contract so for the first few years the rate um that we made did not go up uh which was which was good and so uh but it does increase it has an escalator in the extension uh years uh for for the coming year um it was um the current vendor is far less than the other um the next uh uh lowest cost bidder and it translates to roughly a few percent or three and a half percent uh increase annually so um uh feels like this is well it's a large dollar uh in in terms of what we're uh what we would see if we were uh going up to Bitagan or another vendor uh feels like we're in a good spot uh the the the remainder of our budget is relatively small so supplies uh it is uh you know materials and groups for schools uh with slight reductions there as we uh have rolled out a lot of our high quality curriculum uh and have some fewer students uh capital that is not uh it's not capital in the sense of um you know like building uh construction

Um the the remainder of our budget is relatively small, so supplies uh it is uh you know materials and groups for schools, uh slight reductions there as we uh have rolled out a lot of our high quality curriculum uh and have some fewer students.

Uh capital that is not uh it's not capital in the sense of um you know like building uh construction, uh, but it is things like uh durable goods like equipment and furniture, and so one of the cost cutting measures was to reduce our planned um Chromebook purchases for the following year.

Uh, I think we have to find some alternative funding to support that.

Uh so in addition to uh addressing our reserves, should there be extra funding to this?

We would like to store the slide because uh we do need to uh maintain uh technologies up as a one-to-one uh district.

What was um the total uh projected cost on those Chromebooks?

Uh so for we're so we're purchasing now for next year, and for the number of students, it's like two uh two million dollars.

Yeah, price keeps the price keeps going up monthly for the buggies for these Chromebooks given what's what's happening over C.

So originally it was about a 1.6 1.7 million dollars now it's growing to about $200 to replace 4300, 4300 Chromebooks.

And the way we do it is we buy one for every third grader, sixth grader ninth creator because they have about a three-year shelf life, and so um either those stay in school or they follow the student through the three years and then are replaced.

Um so while we are all set, we'll be purchasing those from next year.

Come this time next year, uh, we have to identify funding for uh lots of utilities.

Um we um continue to work with the city on an energy credits agreement uh that we we believe is mutually beneficial to both the the city and the district.

Um seeing that you just concluded that part.

Yeah, I want to go back uh a couple of things on the highlight.

Um there's some questions to catch a little bit of the uh meeting last night, but I got some notes here.

Um the transportation end.

Why is it important to add positions there?

Uh where and why not continue managing what you have now?

What has increased and why it's changed?

Yeah, for sure.

So transportation.

Um several years ago we had uh a role that oversaw uh transportation and a little bit of registration, that role was reduced when we had uh had to make uh budget reductions.

I think we have felt uh the the challenge with having that position eliminated, so we're proposing to restore it uh as the executive record transformation for next year.

I think a few things we put out a survey uh through our principals three months ago at this point, uh, and asked them what their biggest operational concerns and challenges were.

Transportation came through number one.

Uh, I suspect if we talk to parents, that's often a concern we've heard as well about.

Um, you know, it's not that it's uh it's it's it's not performing uh it's performing fine, but it's not performing to continue having the level of attendance we wanted to continue delivering the service we want.

It's just the constant the pain point we are from our schools and teachers are transportation.

As you can tell, it also has a um significant financial impact to the district.

So every additional bus, the district uh is about 100,000, so additional resources that can reduce the number of buses that we use.

Um position can help reduce that by one or two buses that can be you know for itself.

And the last thing I'd say is like beyond the the need uh and and the her default not having that role, the service issues that we want to address and the funding uh that comes with it.

Transportation is becoming increasingly um complicated for the district.

Um some of you know we have um four schools in swing space, so we're having to transport students to different parts of town.

We have pre-paid grade schools that are rolling up, we have middle schools that are winding down, so lots of changes in enrollment uh that impact transportation along with the growing prepaid special education population.

So beyond want to provide better service, save money, it is become more complex, and we think that uh you know, despite we're making overall more reductions in central office than we are in schools, it's called like an area that is worthy of investment.

So um, out of that survey, and then your projection.

Your projection, as you were saying, is that there's going to be some savings.

Do you know what kind of savings is it going to provide?

So for next year, we're anticipating reducing by four buses, and I think um which is substantial.

I also think really we'll obviously as we're facing financial challenges for this year, and we see momentum decline is coming in future years, we're gonna have to make some bigger changes the year after next.

And so a lot of that has to do with how we adjust belt times, other transportation policies.

And so while we're anticipating some reductions in buses next year, I think a lot of the goal will be for the following year to continue to see more reduction based on some bigger changes.

Um and what the what does that like equal to in terms of the four for uh buses?

I mean, what's a dollar dollar a month?

400,000?

Yeah.

So the the number you see in the transportation reflects an increase in the rates for transportation, but induction of the number of buses.

All right.

Um great.

So he's not here we'll continue.

I'll continue if you don't mind.

Um so also uh on the uh the elimination of uh teachers, social studies teachers and so forth.

Um yesterday the the board also agreed that uh they should be dismissed.

How many uh how many uh teachers in total are being dismissed?

And um are we replacing them also with uh teacher assistant, or what's what's the reasoning behind that?

Uh and also I know that's a strategy to uh attract more teachers uh to the to the district.

Why why that change?

Yeah, uh so a couple things.

We so last night the superintendent and recommended the board uh approved uh the layoff in our new 22 teachers.

Um putting in context when you look in other districts.

Um Johnson is laying off around 80 teachers.

Um other numbers that we've been looking at.

Um Johnson had sent off 89 layoff notices, new port 17, Warwick 42, Patucket 46, Kranston, not yet determined, but expected to be substantially higher.

So sure that not to um you know we take the pleasure, and obviously this happened in other districts, but so we are significantly larger than most of the districts, and we are actually seeing uh fewer teacher layouts.

So I think that's one important point to note.

Um the layoffs that are occurring are in areas where we do not need as many as many teachers.

So we've had um, I'll give you a few examples.

One of uh one of the larger categories was elementary teachers who are not ESL certified.

All of our elementary classrooms uh at this point require DSL certification.

We've moved away from models where you had what they call sheltered classrooms, and and and uh where people did not mix with their peers, the one where every classroom has non-multingual owners and multi-name owners.

So we have a number of teachers that did not um uh get the DSL certification as we support over the years, and so we do not have roles for people who don't have that DSL certification, so that was for the people that were um that were let go.

Um we also have had declines uh in um it's kind of an older certification, but business education.

So business education was a program that we've seen fewer and fewer students choose as they have had more CTE opportunities as we as computer science has come in as a field of study.

So we just have um do not even need those types of positions anymore.

Um while that is happening, it is still true.

We need uh we are desperately searching and and trying every day to make sure we have enough math special ed and science teachers.

So we're living in this world where we have some areas where we have more teachers uh than we need uh in certain subject areas, and other areas where we're still actively actively recruiting.

Um there's a is a positive bit of news is that we are as of today um looking at next year, have less than 60 vacancies, uh, which is far far fewer than we've had uh at this point in the past.

Uh we started this year with in the mid-70s uh in terms of vacancies, which was lower than the the numbers prior to the intervention, and so not to jinx it, but we are hopeful that we will continue that the positive trend hopefully this will school year with uh fewer vacancies.

So big picture is that whole teacher positions are are needed.

We don't need to have the same number of needs as any of the certification areas.

So while we still need math and special end, there are areas where we don't need as many teachers.

And uh the last one on this one, uh, those teachers that are being let go, are they offered uh those opportunities to uh stay on board?

Um but pursuing degree or at least um getting those specialties?

We have offered, so I would say it not just this year, but every year some of the elementaries uh uh the MLM teachers I mentioned for the past four years we offered to you three thousand dollars to get the self-certification and elementary um for whatever reason these individuals did not did not so um should I mean we we've already kind of issued the notices if someone were to get another strip reason for which we need later, we'd have to absolutely welcome them to apply back.

Um but but they wouldn't need to apply because we we felt like we gave us opportunities for folks uh to get the certifications that were and they and they if they get to apply back, is like starting over again from their sort of years in this in the system?

It's a good question.

I don't think it restarts their like it certainly doesn't restart the state retirement and anything like that.

I would have to check with the it's dictated by the teachers union contract, whether they have their seniority resets, uh, but they would big of them lose their retirement, their salary would be about four, their whatever the district seniority might be getting.

Thank you.

Um I think we're we're gonna cover the uh the uh the topic of uh FTV text right.

So I yeah, let's go through this and ask some questions uh on SEs roll.

We'll go through this.

So what about page first or yeah, quickly 17 just to give an overview, and then I'm sure people have individual individual questions.

Uh so we categorize this in a few ways.

One that the first table is by type of position, and the second is by um uh like uh whether it's a school or central office position.

Uh so the the first column is the 20th and current uh final FY26 budget, and 2627 is our proposed budget for the number.

I think headlines are that we are uh reducing by uh head count by about four percent or 109 FTEs.

Um the biggest portion is uh in absolute terms is in teaching roles, which is 67, though we you know that is by far the biggest employee group that we have.

So the 4% decline is roughly mirrors the four percent decline in teaching staff.

Much of that is in uh what we see is in middle and high school uh teachers because those are the areas where we have seen uh enrollment supplies.

Um we we did uh as much as we could to maintain support staff like guidance counselors and social workers.

Uh so for just for if it's helpful um at the start of the intervention in FY20, we had 51 social workers.

Uh we have we are expecting 63 for FY27, uh, and that is uh you know increase of you know more than 20% out of time we have 4,000 viewer students.

So I share that in that that line that has teacher roles, much of that is in uh costume teachers um based on the moment that we've seen.

Uh where we've seen the only area of uh slight growth was teacher assistance, and that has to do with um we continue to see um our special education uh influx that happened several years ago, those students are now uh growing uh older, and we still have a high need coming in uh of our pre-K students coming in things.

So we've had that uh add uh a handful of additional special education classrooms.

Many of those come with two to free teacher assistance, and so even while we're seeing the clients in other areas, we still we aren't seeing plans of special education for lead drives uh that teacher assistant line.

Uh, where you see the kind of biggest percentage reductions are in both administrator uh certified administrators at top line uh as well as uh clerical staff uh both at the end building uh and at schools.

When we look at on a on a location basis, uh we have uh the percent of school-based staff members is down by two percent or 96 and a half FPEs and central office staff down by five percent or 12 and a half FDEs.

Uh so I think obviously the important thing noticed our central office, like fanning central offices is the small portion of our overall uh workforce, uh less than you know 10% of our overall staff working in the central office.

Uh and when we made reductions here, uh we made them uh portionally higher at our central office.

Um but on happy classes and like anything that's on this uh on this chart or anything in the uh in year.

Any question committee members or uh process out a couple of so uh you know just going back to the uh uh teachers, but uh under the counselors, what is uh we increased the counselors?

working in the central office uh and when we made reductions here uh we made them uh portion higher at our central office um but uh heck class in fact anything that's on this uh on this chart or anything in the uh any question committee members or uh pro time chart one that's like I have a couple of quote so uh you want to go ahead just going back to the uh uh teachers but uh under the counselors what is uh we increase the counselors uh what is the ratio now for per student we're typically pretty close to one to two fifty which is one of the things like I recommend national best practice I I don't know if you're able to tell I believe we increased from last year to this year um by one or two uh and that actually with we had 38th grade schools that were adding six and seventh grade instead of schoolistic we did not have counselors look for that maybe now we're not having this are we uh proposing any changes uh increasing counselors uh on that end yeah so I think we can get to the exact change from year to yeah but I believe it was a one to two overall increasing districts from this year than that in general counselors not students okay it's one that makes sure okay so the ratio will still be around two 50 production yeah um I think that's okay all right um this isn't uh on on this page but something that I I keep hearing I've heard over the past few years and um I've never really have left into it um because it didn't really impact us too much before uh but now uh it certainly does what's um I've heard and please correct me if I'm wrong because this is just stuff that I kind of talk to people about like service level can you guys explain like the layoff notices um for my understanding you know I can happen when whenever but closer to the end of the year I hear a June first date and uh and a July first date um what what's I guess there's like different requirements um can you speak to that a little bit uh deputy uh superintendent absolutely so uh that is in state law so there's a June one notification for fiscal exigencies so districts that have to do layoffs for financial reasons uh there's a June one deadline there's an earlier deadline that if you're doing if you're non-renewing and non-tenured teacher for performance reasons that's March first but the deadline to do layoffs is is uh is June one and part of the reason um the so we have to we obviously have to hit that stack story that number if we can't if it's not void um but it also allows us the earlier you do it the more people you end up laying off because you don't see attrition over the over the spring so what we can do is we knew if there were areas that were potentially tight but then we might have people resign tell us they're retiring to get promoted uh and then we don't need to do layoffs so the later we do it the more time we then get to make sure we don't have to look off more than um but the the G1 is not a district construct on it not even a state collective bargaining it's a state it's a state uh um and that's for uh fiscal uh fiscal exigency it's actually exact section if it's this fiscal exigency or program organization so basically you're closing school you're you're you're adding a bunch of map and cutting up the angles like if you wanted to change the program for there are financial questions on the district and portions of the fact that so after June first uh there can't be another set of layoffs or what not for certified teachers so for other staffs that are not certified teachers there are typically less state banks that learn that so if the central office staff um other teacher systems presumably but central office staff that aren't kind of same regular so there could be further layouts just not to certify teachers right okay uh thank you so much for that um another question in terms of vacancies so you said projected next uh calendar year is 60 yeah where we're at where we're at now we it changes obviously daily for 54 thank you um I guess like how does the like the layoff notices impact that like is that it doesn't I mean I think so the the way layoffs happen are areas where we have more people than positions.

So we the for example the elementary teachers or business teachers there are no vacancies in those areas but there are business level four teachers that did not have a role so it does not create more vacancies it's actually for areas where there are more people that there are vacancies right because yeah I mean obviously you guys have explained it very well but I I think uh just a challenging surface level uh confusing thing that a lot of people in our community um question and in face with is um all the you know not all but the hundred teachers or whatever uh being laid off I'm gonna go back is that but we have worded that was that right so starting back uh the point I'm making here is uh when teacher notice layoffs go you know in the tens 20s more in this case um while at the same time seeing like the vacancy number like trying to inform people on on how those intersect um I think something that we could all maybe do a slightly better job in in messaging and obviously I'm just speaking from what I see you know there's sure a lot more of these conversations happen the school board and between administrators uh and teachers directly um but that's just

So starting back, uh the point I'm making here is uh when teacher notice layoffs go, you know, in the tens, twenties more in this case, um while at the same time seeing like the vacancy number, like trying to inform people on on how those intersect.

Um I think something that we could all maybe do a slightly better job in in messaging and obviously I'm just speaking from what I see, uh you know, there's sure a lot more of these conversations happen the school board and between administrators uh and and teachers directly.

Um but that's just my uh something that I've kind of had to speak to to neighbors about in the past.

Um I mean I think a good analogy is if you are in in a in an organization that requires uh drivers, and you have people who have a driver's license, and you have people who don't have a driver's license, and the jobs without a driver's license decrease, you keep the people with the driver's license.

You might offer the people without an opportunity to earn a driver's license, but if they don't, you can't keep them.

Right.

So I think that's the analogy.

So the teachers that are are going are the people without the driver's license, and we need the people with the driver's license right now.

We did pay for ESL training, driver's license.

We did offer opportunities to get special ed certified driver's license, but people chose not to take the route to get those driver's license.

So we have to keep the people with the driver's license, hire more people with driver's license because we don't have enough people driver's license.

And people who didn't get the driver's license, we can't keep.

Um was there any other questions uh on this slide before we continue?

Can I also mention that this is not something that just happens is this happens every year.

Right.

And communication is constantly going on with more than every other there's another one or one.

This is every year to re-evaluation of who who will be at who to be who we need to serve.

So we want to make sure that we have the right people in front of those schools to give them the best opportunity to be more successful.

Right.

Um the last thing I want to say is uh, you know, obviously these finances are extremely important.

But I I think I just want to, you know, give space to to anyone that's impacted.

Um, you know, we understand this is uh a tough decision.

There's a lot of um emotions.

Um understandably, you know, some of these teachers have sacrificed a lot to to be uh in our schools, are super committed uh to our students and families.

Um and this is a really crappy part of the process, and anything that we can do uh to make it less crappy.

Um, you know, I was as honestly as speaking as possible, uh, you know, let's let's let's try to do that.

I understand, but we also want to make sure that it's clear that this is not the first time that's heard is been years it's been in the making for years.

So we've been reminding them that you're gonna make these license, it's just this they look you need these license over reminding them over years.

I mean it's like that whole scene.

I could I can lead a horse water camp for some drink.

I can give you the light, I can make sure you try to get those licenses, we're paying for them, take the opportunity and go get those licenses and you can maintain.

But I I I guess just to uh to be clear, so any of the teachers that were laid off um was because they didn't have the certain certification uh to fulfill the need of the school district.

Yeah, isn't there that we just had we did not have a need for business as one that over time has been fewer students have requested those classes, fewer classes have been served or fewer business teachers?

Make sense.

Uh council returnable, and I'll pick it up.

So the same thing with social studies uh teachers don't need them as much.

I know, and they didn't get that additional certification.

Um I know so this budget, keeping in mind that we city council and the mayor we've been saying, you know, we want the schools back for next year, and we now we have this budget while you were crafting it as uh was being prepared being thoughtful and prepared uh with this transition in mind.

Is there other things that now that is a reality that it's in our lab, in your lab, in our lab, um that we should be uh mindful of that right now you're saying, well before it was before it was 5050.

Now it's like, oh yeah, it's here.

So should we have uh planned uh for something else?

Uh budget wise, precision wise.

Um is there something that now that's missing?

Yeah, well, and and tell me this is not an interesting question, but what comes to mind is like as we come back to local control, what any kind of um from a budget perspective, what what are some aside from kind of educating on how it works like any thoughts?

And I and I think what I was sure for this year is obviously a very giant fiscal year.

We have to make a number of reductions that led to staff losing a role.

I think one of the positive things was we had um clarity on the city contribution.

So we had a agreement with this you know from the city, we knew what that was, and so we could plan early on for for what was coming.

Uh so what we would I would advocate for is as we move forward in the coming years, how can we um you know learn from the past of moving away from level funding or having some foresight into what funding it would be for for the district from the city?

And I know the city has a lot of challenging decisions to make and always are to forecast beyond multiple years, but the more half of it is how much money for that.

Well, uh a portion of it is how much money you have, and a portion of it is how much you know and and how much certainty you have because uh lack of funds and uncertainty are both challenging.

So my ask would be is how we can beyond next year and the years beyond so that we all can have an understanding of what city aid will be for the district because um I think it was all plan better, and even if the news isn't great, the earlier you have that and the reserves too.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean we currently are able to keep the reserves, and if there's an emergency, we're able to take care of that like right now.

We didn't lay off as many people as we would have had to had we not had those reserves, right?

We're using those three million dollars.

It's the district's responsibility to maintain a budget that it isn't overspent, that we're not in deficit, that we're being physically responsible.

Um, and part of that is just like when you have your own budget to have that rating day fund.

So when that emergency happens in your home, you're able to take care of it.

Uh and so I think that is something if you're asking about something that we need to consider.

Um that is something that wasn't there before, and I think it's important to consider.

Just to double down on that, so is we you know the the spot we're in now is there's a potential increase in state that may come or may not come.

Um if we did not have reserves, we could not plan out that general assembly vote, and so we would be cutting three, like we'd be coming here with three million dollars worth of more cuts.

Now that we know okay, there's this possibility that funding may come, reserves allow us to have a backup plan in case those funds and essentially prevents us from over overcreasing.

Uh beyond in addition to emergencies, it means that we can have a bit of an insurance called policy in case state aid or something else happens.

So that I think is allowed us to we would have these absent that we would be cutting a few million dollars, and then all of a sudden Monday would be adding a bunch of stuff back in the way that it's not possible.

Um go ahead and just it's also important to think about what we actually receive versus what we actually pay out for some of our students that they're from the able because that can one for an individual child may cost XYC, that's just I'm throwing a number out there.

Let's say it costs 30,000 for to educate one child per year.

When it comes to a student who we have to evaluate, we can figure out exactly what that child needs to have to services directed from that 30,000 in turn into 60 can turn into random and turn into 100,000 for that one child.

So we also have to think about that, like what what which are the students?

How many students are we receiving that won't be extra supports?

Um I have two things.

Uh the first thing is just to confirm have you guys or do you have the power to use um the reserve funds for anything other than a deficit in your budget?

Yeah, it's not like we have uh we don't think that's like a checking down where it's like hey, we have to find that expenditure, it would just be a year we were our expenditures exceeded our limited.

And that has been used in the past to cover a deficit, or it was only used in the years where we had settlement agreement for the city where we plan our budget for X amount of dollars and the seven months where it's for last into the reserve view, so to fill that gap.

So for last year you ran out of slight surplus right now.

Um thank you.

And back to uh counselor Bridge Harvard's point.

Um as long as I'm a city counselor, I I mean, you know, obviously a lot of none of us were here uh when uh a lot of the the level funding for the decade pretty much uh occurred.

Um well while while I'm here as a city counselor, I'm I'm committed to always uh increasing um our contribution to our kids.

I think this is literally the most important uh investment and that we can make as a city on a strong believer that public education and access to it is the foundation to any uh driving society.

Um but at the same time, like we we I I have that that commitment.

Um then we see stuff with with with the funding formula of charter allocation money, and I think that's where we all need to you know participate in not only the city's uh uh side of it, but also um what about the state house?

Because this is back to my point.

I don't want to uh be on the point too much.

Um it's just unsustainable.

We can contribute increasing our budgets, but the uh expenditure is um it's uh it's outpacing our our uh pension obligation funds and it's just unsustainable and unrealistic.

It's not that even sustainable, it's just not realistic.

So I mean I think that's something that we all need to be committed to um to working together to address not only our contribution, but the way some of the funding formula is is allocated to the city office, because the way it's written right now and what we're seeing is it's just does not make sense at all.

And if anyone disagrees, if anyone wants to add anything, uh well, I just want to say that's why I asked in a sense now that we have the reality.

Um I think that people that are sitting at this table also are members of the uh hope committee, and we can go into more of a detail in terms of this transition and uh we're gonna go about it.

Um and we have obviously a lot of questions.

Um and I think that uh going forward, uh knowing that we were prepared and asking for the uh schools uh to return back to us in Providence and have that uh oversight uh from the um PPSD and the board, etc.

I think that uh that's why I asked those questions because I think it's important to know right up front if there are other things that might be in the horizon, and no surprises.

Um and and that's why I asked that.

And I know that uh uh councilwoman uh Jill Davidson is is focusing on a task force that uh was focusing on the transition, so we're gonna continue to have those uh all hands on that kind of sense, but in a in a positive way to make sure that we continue that momentum of increasing uh the right support for our students, the right monies.

Um and lastly uh asking the general assembly to put more money into the kids.

Uh I was around, yes, as a father and as a young person, and I was in the Senate uh doing those times and starting.

Right?

No one said that I'm all uh is it was to close the that achievement that that we continuously uh saw because our public school system was not graduating enough students and going on to college and finishing uh their degrees within those times because they were not prepared as much.

And so I was I know what we were looking for before parents just had the choice of sending a kid to private school or public school, and that was it.

And so the the other challenges that we have now, uh people knew already that this was gonna happen in terms of uh parents are the ones that make the decision to actually make the best choice for their kids, and so that's what we're seeing right now.

And so we at the table are committed to making sure that uh we continue the right path.

So that's what I wanted to add.

Thanks, sir.

Uh counselor Peterson.

Um are we gonna go over anything else besides this package?

I'm just trying to happy to go if people have questions on deeper and be ordinances for happy to do this, but this is all you're we plan on presenting though, the package.

Okay, thank you.

I'm just trying to make sure we I don't mind being here until 10.

Um I don't know about everybody else.

Midnight that's questioning it, so I've got uh plan a little bit.

Counselor Peterson.

Thank you.

Um well, actually, um the question in the follow-up.

Um out of your reserve, do you get to replenish it anyway?

Uh, if we were to run uh surplus, you would I let me start off by saying that I um I really want to applaud all of your achievements.

I think that um you have delivered on so many marks that I think it's absolutely unbelievable.

Um absenteeism, graduation rates, x you know, more TTE, we're seeing everything that we need to set up a child to thrive, and I very much applaud that.

I think it's one of the things that um the test was set, and you guys achieved, and in my opinion, you're knocking it out of the ballpark.

I know that we still have a way to go, but I am really really proud of how far we've come.

Um a little bit worried that we are considering using so much of your reserve to be able to fill this whole, and um I am genuinely concerned about what comes not just this coming year, but the following year and the following year, it looks like the projections are that our enrollment is coming down.

We are building these wonderful new schools, which is absolutely going to be extremely beneficial.

However, um, we haven't even come to the new school build situation yet.

And I'll be some other conversations.

Yeah, um, and I am genuinely concerned about what a projection for next year and the following year are.

And I I'm not saying cut in any way, but I am saying we need to do a little bit more because I am I a rainy day fund is meant for a rainy day fund, right?

And I am worried about that rainy day fund coming also next year and the year after because we're not hitting our marks, and um, when we have all of these moving parts, whether it's um money being expended in in giving being uh transitioned into a charter school for a student or the higher cost of transportation, or um you name it a variety of things that just have been presented even just today.

Um I really worry that we're not gonna be able to have any sort of additional reserve.

And so I'm um I just want to put that on record because I think that um while this is extremely extremely well well thought out and and prepared.

I'm just worried that we're not gonna we're and as a city where we've balanced for this year, however, um two weeks ago, less than two weeks ago, we were told this is all in your hands now, and I I'm really worried about that.

Um I would we we are equally concerned about the use of reserves because it doesn't sell us off for uh long term success.

Uh I'll share it.

I hope it's not out of turn.

I mean I I am hopeful that uh and optimistic that the the change the proposed success factor will help us go through next year without actually not having to use it.

It's not gonna change any of our productions because it'll probably balance out.

But I do think whether it's next year or the year after, we are gonna have to think through you know, we've we've cut 100 FTs for this next year.

We've over the past since the start of the intervention are down 500 F E's.

Yeah, so we're making reductions, but I do think we're coming to this point where it's gonna be harder uh like the there's nothing easy left to do, right?

So we'll have to think of some of our big cost drivers, uh, and and how do we run so transportation?

There are ways you can uh move from two belts to two sets of bell times to three, it causes all types of problems.

Um education.

We are losing enrollment, so at some point we might need to.

I think we've taken steps and they were painful in reducing the number of uh some middle schools and elementary schools.

We have some high schools that are getting very, very small.

Um at this time.

I mean, not not right this moment, but we've had I think what what we knew were kind of longer term enrollment declines really seem to accelerate this year.

So, like we're gonna have to make some collectively some decisions, whether it's next next year, may not be next year, but it'll soon be after bigger changes, whether it's again transportation, special education benefits, district footprint, like those are those are coming our way because we won't we can't do small tests.

Um, can I just add we're talking operations, right?

But we need to start talking about students.

What are those things that we have carved down of the budget because we're balancing that we cannot provide to students or to teachers in the way that would allow us to accelerate faster?

What does this mean for professional development?

What does this mean for after school tutoring and acceleration programs?

What does this mean for summer programming?

We've been doing April and February academies for students.

What does this mean for that?

So we're having a conversation about things we control to some degree, operational things, but we're not having a conversation about what really matters, and that are the things that are going to drive student outcomes, and a balanced budget, although is something we want to achieve, doesn't necessarily mean it's all the things the students and teachers need to continue to improve.

Thank you.

Well, I think uh just uh follow up uh yeah, how's that up?

Well, that's why I asked earlier, and that's why we say that we're going to big deeper in the hope committee because it's included education because I see, for example, here um, and maybe you can justify it, and I was gonna ask in terms of the opportunities for grant writing.

I see that the grant writing has been eliminated.

Uh, but in a sense, it has been merged with merged merged with with uh something else.

I see I see the manager for multilingual learner.

Um that was uh manager that's been cut, and so when we've done in MLL, right?

So when we we've done some great improvement, now we're also eliminating these kind of things.

That's where I start looking at more deeper.

Um, and that's why I asked uh earlier on since we're gonna be there was a question.

I just don't want us to go back, and we are this body here and the chairman just indicated, and we uh is that we are going to continue to have those conversations of what really matters is that those are the teachers, the students, and those outcomes because that's what got us into trouble that we in the beginning.

Um I just want to address it was a question last night about um you know, are we what are we doing with these positions?

Because we're changing titles.

We are we decreased by merging positions and having people do multiple jobs where we used to have two people doing a job, now we have one person doing a job, right?

And so we're trying to have the least impact at the classroom in order to do that, we have to offset somewhere else, but we still need the work to continue, and so that's why you're seeing something like that.

Oh, I just want to say something that I forgot to say at the beginning.

Um really important part actually.

Uh I I told committee members uh earlier this week that uh you know it's it's important that we're having this conversation um now.

Some folks, you know, question like maybe we should postpone it a little bit or give give the the transition a little more time.

But I think it was super important to get into the weeds as much as possible.

Uh this committee to have uh a thorough understanding um of what you know we have before us and and how we can support as much as possible.

Um, but I made it clear that this is you know the first of many conversations with um you all, a combination of you, maybe other uh folks for BBSD.

Um this is uh it's gonna be a partnership as much as possible.

Um so just know you will be invited again in the somewhat near future.

Uh and hopefully you accept that.

But thank you.

Uh counselor Graves and Counselor Davidson.

Um prepared and we're not quite clear.

All right, we'll uh save it then.

Yeah, all right, counselor Davidson.

I have a specific question about MLL department reductions.

We can if you're gonna get to it, then I'll be happy to table it.

But since it came up, I wanted to ask, which is you know, when you when I went through the budget, I noticed a very significant drop.

Um from that 4.3 million to 1.9 million, and I was wondering how my specific question is how does that affect students?

Yeah, um, let me look at the position changes.

So I think there were a few things that happened.

Um, it is an area where we've added positions uh since it's already considered I it might have been more a couple positions early on.

Um so we we had them to make some uh administrative reductions anyway.

Uh the biggest change we saw was that there within second 18 of the classification ordinance.

There were uh eight teacher roles uh that were providing additional coaching to teachers and maybe assistive.

There's a little bit less of that, and I think some of these that have actually been pushed through the school level for planning purposes.

Is that really cool, isn't it?

There's also a rest issues that we need to coach us and each certified.

And the third thing is the state has changed the way that the teachers can get the certification.

So the way we were doing it is getting phased out.

So they have to go through full certification now rather than coaching certification.

So this is the grandfather year, and then it changes, and so the way we were doing it with the staff members, that's no longer a way that we can or are allowed to do it.

So yeah, and just to just follow up what is your estimation about how this is going to impact students, if at all.

Yeah, I would say the the lead of this department general fund does a wonderful job uh with her team of providing guidance and support to schools.

There will be less of that.

I in terms of direct services to students, there are there we still have the SL certified staff in schools, and so the direct services will still happen with some of the administrative positions that are able to support that language that could be for fewer.

The training is fairly um is in an increased intensity, actually, not a decrease.

Um, there's uh coursework that they have to do, uh, and then there is a whole certification process, uh, and they also have um coaching but in a different way than it was previously.

So it's a change, but it's actually upping the game and increasing uh the level of rigor for that training.

Before they just got an endorsement, and now teachers going through this will get a full certification.

Teachers who did the endorsement in Providence maintain that endorsement, but it's not affordable, they can't take it with them under the certification.

They can use it in Providence and beyond because it is at that next level.

So it's just a change in the way that that part happens.

I appreciate that explanation.

But I do know that the district has increased capacity at the classroom level significantly per year, previously.

And we have fewer teachers who are now required uh required because so many have already done it.

So it makes sense that whereas before we might have to do 800 hours, and now we only have to do you know 200 hours because only 25% of the teachers still have to go through the process.

Counselor Rivers, yeah.

Sorry, I have to find the procurement.

Yeah, the preparation.

Oh, yeah, I wanted to know about we're talking about cuts and stuff.

Um I was looking at some of the um tech stuff that you have.

Some of it seems like maybe we can get it for a lot cheaper because was alluded earlier.

The prices are going up, opposed and coming down, and if there's some things that we can get for maybe free or at least a lot less.

I know some of us some of it is on the contract, but I want to know what's on the contract and when that contract is over.

So we may look into alternatives.

Um that canvas that you have.

I can switch to Canvas.

Um Canvas is uh a platform that does multiple things for us, and because of the multiple things, it's actually a cost saver.

So there's something called the open-end resource curriculum that is high quality and approved by the state.

Because uh we have Canvas, our open-end science curriculum and our uh illustrative math curriculum, those we don't have to pay for the curriculum cost itself because we have the platform to deliver to the students and the teachers.

If we did not have the platform, we would actually be purchasing a much higher um curriculum cost for math and science.

Uh it also is the system that delivers our professional development to our teachers.

So that professional development, for example, that we're talking about for the teachers who uh who are getting the MLL certification, we're able to build that in Canvas, and we don't have to pay for another system.

Uh in addition, all of the outcomes that we're able to report on, um, those are coming in through Canvas, and so we don't have to purchase an additional data system in order to have that data because it's coming right through the Canvas system.

Um, so not only that, the majority uh at least 60% of colleges in the United States included Brown use Canvas as the their system, which means if our students graduate from us and they go to these places of higher education, they've already had significant training in how to use that system, and they're ahead of their peers who are entering who have not had the opportunity to use that system.

Um so it actually helps them navigate uh college, especially for first gen students.

All right, that's one less thing that is is new to them because our district has provided it and they've been using it since they were younger.

Just there was a comment meeting in a school in public comment at a school meeting where someone quoted this is costing 1.2 million dollars for the district.

It costs 26,000 dollars, so it's certainly substantial.

Um the person isn't seeking when they when they uh share the college.

But you think of that as like the backbone of our curriculum for 286,000 costs 20,000 students um it's just and you say that um Brown is using that.

Brown uses it too, yes.

Okay, maybe we can work something out with Braun supposed to be one of those.

Ron's listening.

Um, and I am sorry.

No, I suppose there's an example of other places too.

No, but they're supposed to be doing a community um contribution to maybe they can find some type of way of sharing this with the school department.

So we are not you're not paying for this.

I want to thank Braun for a few things.

One thing every every year they give us 250,000 dollars in grant money for us to be able to do innovative um uh pieces and things with our students.

So right now they're helping support our work with the PK8.

They're also providing us with free tutoring for our students.

So um, just so everyone is aware, they they are a huge partner, they're supporting our libraries and providing a lot of resources for our libraries.

So, in addition to like the competitive grants we write, Brown is also a significant contributor to many of the programs, especially around acceleration uh and innovative programs like PKE uh that we're investing in.

Wonderful.

I'm glad they're doing that, and maybe they can contribute more.

They can always do more.

Um but there's several other ones.

What is going on with that iReady and like iReady um and curriculum associates is multiple pieces.

Um one thing people don't understand is it's part of our elevation program.

Um platform that we use for our NLL students and our uh MLL team.

So it allows us to track the progress of the students who are um multilingual learners.

Uh it provides the strategies and coaching modules for the teachers who are instructing students who are MLL.

So when people hear curriculum associates, they think that's just iREDI.

Um, a portion of that uh dollar amount is also elevations.

iReady is our um we're required to diagnose uh provide a baseline assessment of our students at a minimum three times a year in literacy and numeracy.

Um, and so iReady is the system and the platform that does that, and the one of the reasons why we selected that is because it correlates with how students do on Right Hass, so we're able to have an early predictor of how our students will do on our state assessment.

In the between time, in between um the three times a year, there are things in iRed called uh standards mastery, which allows our students to have extra practice and teachers to have extra insight into how students are doing in terms of gaining those skills that are critical for them to become strong readers, um, writers and mathematicians.

Uh so it provides us with with those elements as well.

Um, and so iRETI is multifunctional, and then it there's also an early literacy component called um magnetic reading for students who are English speakers, um, and whose for students who their home language is uh Spanish, there's um and that helps us to build a strong early foundation program um for literacy.

So when you see curriculum associates, um it's not just iREDI, it's all of those things.

So um it's multiple parts of our program.

Okay, and what is your concern about the class acts with suit?

Um that's yes, they're IRED.

Um we have been monitoring the class action suit.

There are components in iREDI that we we do not use, and our our lawyers are closely monitoring all of those components and um student data privacy.

One of the things that uh was indicated is that some of the components in IRETI uh should not be used for um diagnosing certain things, and we're not using it in that way.

Yeah, and then after that, we'll um continue on and then go back to questions.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

No, you're not using that.

And the only other one is is the um the new teacher project.

Um can you give us a little bit more about that?

And when is it what is the contract entail and when does it file?

Um so you might be able to answer the question about when it expires.

Uh we've had several contracts with the New Teachers Project over time.

Um right now, uh, the purpose and the function of the new teacher project is to work with administrators and teachers on delivery of high quality curriculum and also on lesson internalization, which is how teachers are preparing to make sure that what they're delivering in the classroom is what is intended by the in the curriculum.

Um so they've been really strong partners in that work with us.

Um they are nationally recognized for their work around HQIM and with uh math progress, and so it's really critical if you look at the research around um teacher efficacy, collective teacher advocacy, that's the number one factor in improving student outcomes.

And so, in order to invest in our students, we have to invest in our teachers and in our leaders, and new teacher project um is one of our strongest partners in that arena.

Um so TMTP is also uh pushing it out.

It's either Title II or Title Four, so it does not go into our local uh funding.

It is part of that supplemental funds that are typically subtitle two is used for teacher production development.

So it's kind of square youth and um in that public source.

Yeah, that fund source that you couldn't use to cover basic operating expenditure, so it's just more the second set of working.

Okay.

One thing.

Castro Graves, you can ask as many questions as you are um okay, which is AI situation getting out of here and all what are your concerns about the all the screen-based um learning in the connection to AI and all of things.

Yes, so we actually um under Dexter, um, who is our chief of operations and myself, we have created a district task force uh to investigate what AI means in terms of um teaching learning in terms of um student data privacy in terms of um what we're how we're operating and what we're using in terms of our decision making.

And so um it was really important that we dive very deep into those questions and do a strong level of investigation across the district to make those decisions.

AI is changing so rapidly um that what it looks like today in a month is very, very different.

Um, and and so even today we had a meeting with a potential vendor um and we started to ask questions about the AI component.

Um those the answers were concerning and alarming, and so we're asking more questions.

Uh one of the pieces that we're doing unique in providence um that we instituted as a team because I brought forth those concerns.

Companies were starting to add AI in, and it wasn't part of our contract, and they didn't tell us that they were adding it in right, and so now in our contract process, that is something that we put in our RRPs and in our contracts that if they are adding an AI or changing the way AI acts in communicates with us, that we need to be notified and have the ability to turn it off.

So uh we do think that AI has a strong value, strong value add for many different reasons, but we also know that we have to take great responsibility to determine how we use that in the district.

Is there any school board members on that task force?

Um the task force was originally started by um Travis.

Travis um and Corey was a part of that, and so the internal group is uh in the district, and now we will go to the um including the school board once we're a little bit further along in the process.

Uh that's why that's a school board member John roughly is um very knowledgeable on AI and doing a lot of work at the state level uh when impacts this and I'm glad that uh you're asking this uh with contracts that's something that we're seeing also in contracts that for us and data sharing and cybersecurity, all that is extremely extremely important.

Yeah, um part of a national um task force with uh members of the Gates Foundation.

We have a little technology task force um from members across the country, and um the AI and the contract piece has been a major conversation that we've been having all year because as these companies are adapting so quickly, they're not necessarily including us in those decisions or what it means for teachers or students.

Right.

Um the last question I have to have um but if you have more, please let us know.

Um the last question I had on this uh presentation, sorry, that we kind of got stuck on for a while.

Is um substitute teachers is that reflected in any one of these categories?

Um I guess is that is that reflected in like the salaries component of uh the budget line items?

Yeah, so if you see at the top, uh in our appropriation, there's a salary line, there's substitute line, and then there's no percent.

Thank you.

So um just to confirm is that is substitute teachers uh reflected any of the position categories on page 17?

No, we don't we don't budget, I mean you don't have uh hard to work for uh as much as uh total dollar.

So um what do you budget like uh like hours or per day?

So it's a day dollars per day.

How much is it?

180 dollars per day.

Uh that is for uh DM.

We also have a smaller portion of uh retirees who get a higher rate because they're certified.

Um is that we have long-term substitutes and pool.

Um, we're looking to kind of look at spending over the the past year, we make some rejections for the next year based on vacancies.

So we're looking at fewer vacancies for next year, so our hope is that we will spend less small line on our substitute line check.

Uh just a question uh chairman and I have a question.

Are we going to uh also go over the presentation regarding the homeless population?

Um it's part of this presentation.

Okay, so yeah, we're gonna go through this.

Um my question and um just uh last one.

Uh can you talk to uh speak to us within the procurement and the RFPs?

Are you gonna continue as as usual?

Um, and then two um is there opportunities for piggybacking or piggybacking with the state and other uh school districts?

Does that exist at the municipal level or so we do have already taken advantage of that you feed backing or cooperatives or um context for whom the state and the their state is what is tips as national uh national purchases cooperatives that we belong to that we could be valued for uh contracts.

Procurement I'm just gonna walk in and being shocked at how much we hear me to talk about in a report on education, but it was because it was really seen as a barrier to what happened in the district.

So we work with the State Department of Administration, the city treasurer at the time, Ride and uh developed another process that was uh aligned with state law but allowed us to follow uh more streamlined process.

So um it involves uh um different uh threshold, so we anything that is uh above five thousand dollars is competitive for a bid spot for our RB.

Um, but there's a different approval threshold, so things that are uh 200,000 or above the rocks and school board um and voted on and and publicly vetted.

Um but but we have lower thresholds where uh we have internal authority that as long as we follow the RFP process, um, but we haven't had any big protests or lack of compliance, so we can get those a lot.

Um we've seen a decline in the number of days from uh when uh our contractors award uh RP was uh open on the street on the street to contract awarded, it used to be 94, 95 days pre-intervention is 50 ish now.

Um it is an area of concern as we come back because we've you know and as I as we understand it is uh city journal that indicates uh potentially different process, and um dates and that it's a software of some of that committee.

Um, and we are very appreciative of her raising that important topic.

Um but it is something we are reverse about as we as we come back because we've got six years of of a track record of what's worked, both compliance-wise as well as getting things to students and teachers quickly, um, but we're worried about what happens when we go back to the creating working class.

And the impact of making sure that we have everything that we move for teachers to teach on day one.

What's the worry?

What is the what is the process transition that is changing what the link is?

The length of time when we ordered go through the whole process and then coming back by the time we're able to order, make sure that the team was in the building they want to.

So the specific one is when we we have an E you put out an RRP.

Uh it reaches that threshold we bring the school finance, they vote on it because the school board you vote on it.

Can I just jump in here?

So members of PPSD, school board, um Ride, um, and administration have all been part of this working group that I convened.

The question was what could the city council do to support the successful return of the schools and make sure that students are getting what they need for actual teaching learning.

That was like our framing question.

The um issue of procurement came up pretty quickly as something that we could focus on.

Um I think that you know you all describe the problem really well that prior to um prior to the takeover procurement for schools took a long time, and there was because and also there was duplicative processes.

The school board has their own internal processes as Zach described, and then everything over the $10,000 threshold would also come to the board of contracts and supply.

So we would do it twice.

Now we're not here to decide what we should do about that.

I've been grateful for everybody's time to be able to weigh in to understand the range of concerns there are and how we can maintain a speedy process, make sure that schools get everything that they need, make sure we're satisfying any um needs that the city has for financial oversight.

I am confident that we can probably find a way to get it done.

Um we also, as you know, Zach mentioned right now under city charter obligation to have some form of oversight and a purchasing agent.

So we just need to make sure that we're clear about how we can get that done.

I am not, I am going to we have one more meeting of my working group after which I'm gonna be offering a recommendation to all of us about how to proceed, but we're not quite there.

I think we're gonna get there.

Not that not trying to shut down discussion about it here.

I just want to have it.

We're gonna have it in the whole committee.

Yeah, then it would go to the hub committee.

Exactly.

Um, so I'm not trying to shut down any conversation here.

I just want to assure everybody that out of all the issues we're talking about, we've been able to dig in and maybe come to some at least be able to identify the challenge pretty clearly and identify ways to fix it.

It could be someday we change the city charter, right?

Um, but I don't think we're at that point now, especially given the time pressure that we're undering.

And I don't disagree with what your um what the need is.

I it's clear as day that there is a substantial difference between 94 days of somebody who's gone back to 94, however, um yeah, one thing that comes to mind um at the start of our term, if I'm not mistaken, was the ABM contract, and I certainly need to remember all of the parts to it, but I do believe that there are certain parameters that we need to just make sure that we're um solidifying before taking reactive um proactive steps, not reactive, proactive steps.

So I just um this is just spitballing at the top of my head for just talking about this conversation or having this conversation.

Yeah, I think that um you know there's a number of different ways we can go, yeah.

And I think we've identified some possibility where, for example, we could identify the school department as the purchasing agent until it hits certain threshold, just like it does with other city departments.

We don't know what that threshold should be.

Certainly it would apply to multi-year contract.

So I think we have some somewhere to play with in all of that.

Um but you know, again, we have I is really I felt like a broken record, I know, but we have to do this in a way that teachers are getting what they need to teach and students are getting what they need to learn, and principals are getting what they need to run their buildings, full stop.

And if we as adults and bureaucrats are getting in the way of that, we're doing something wrong.

So that's the attitude with which I have been pursuing that with fully understanding the need for fiscal oversight and collaboration on that fiscal oversight.

I can just make a point on the ABM contract, which I and I might be the point you were making might be different than I think it was different than mine.

Like I actually think that's a good example of how the new process worked.

So we had uh there was a higher contract that had been the 15 years, but it had not been bid out.

And so like we all wondered why the facilities were in the shape they were, and it's not because the the old old vendor didn't have good people and they weren't trying to they were, but it was not performance-based.

It was a contract that just said sweep the floor three times a day, even if it needs to be in each, yeah, moderately in it was one where as buildings came online and offline, there was no rule rhyme or reason about how that happens.

Now we have a formula that says when we in this construction, like we have to take buildings offline and actually save money.

So, like I don't know if I didn't want to speak for what you were mentioning, counseling, but I think it was uh it was a contract that was hard, and there's a lot of noise about who the district should go with, and we had a public process with uh that was viewed by the school board, and we got a vendor that um was different than the content that invented for decades.

I certainly don't disagree with the process by which it was done.

I just remember that there was a very long arduous conversation that went around it, and it caused a little bit more noise, just like you you mentioned, and it's something that certainly both highlighting in an effort to make everything better, right?

So I think that there's um definitely look if there's new procurement is the thing that I wanted to do most and really delve into the most in the city, and I think that I spent maybe three months really trying to invest my time, and I said I'm lost.

So I and then I learned it from the state perspective, and that's not that much easier.

So I very much understand um how difficult and involved this process is.

I just want to make sure that obviously to the point that counselor Davidson made, which which is the reason such a great point to try and make sure to highlight for the schools, and as we're uh progressing with return, um, that we take into consideration all of the necessary pieces that make will make it flow better.

That's all um I'm just gonna wait for my seconds and see it.

Alrighty, we'll uh continue page 18.

All right, we will try to move quickly to the last section because I know that was sound percent of the especially request.

Not a ton of new information here aside from state aid, we know we're still waiting on that.

That's gonna be important.

Uh, we're still waiting on some exact figures from the transportation or statewide.

The one thing we have mentioned that I think worth is worth calling out is it pertains to the legislature.

There's legislation planning on UCAP.

So this is a uh collaborative uh that the district has been participating in.

It used to be five distance, it's five band when I woke in, it was three uh maybe a year and a half into my um meeting on the board.

Uh it turned to one for the last three years.

I have been the committee of one, the board of one.

And um, I asked multiple times to get extra support from other uh communities, and didn't happen, still hasn't happened, and I had to make it very tough decision, but a very easy decision when it came to looking at data and putting schools first.

So that was my reason for saying I can't do this, we can't do this.

We can't allow ourselves to continue doing this.

So all those four of the communities have exited that partnership years years ago, we presumed what kind of hung on the longest.

Um the same process they did.

There's a state law that requires notification by January one.

We did that.

Um the uh the district spends you know, two to three million expenditures in state aid two to three million dollars to support roughly a hundred students.

We heard that the program, I think decades ago may have been successful, but the data was showing uh worse worse outcomes uh compared to the district and serving not as many multi lowers students, not as many students without these.

Um there's legislation to undo that, so essentially the the state law that we followed would be changed.

Uh, if that were to happen, we would immediately have a two million dollar impact in state aid funding to the district or in that state aid and expenditure.

So um we testified uh against uh that because it would have such a negative impact.

And if someone asked any of us if we get two million dollars, would you use that to sustain this program?

I think there are plenty of other places we could rather soon.

Counselor Davidson, yeah.

I just want to add a comment, which is that when sort of this decision was getting made and being made public.

I reached out to you to ask to actually to um superintendent and to uh assistant superintendent Dylan to find out about what was going to happen to those provident students who are currently attending UCAP.

You gave me a very detailed and satisfactory answer.

So I just if that was in your heads, I wanted to sort of what was the answer.

Thank you.

You actually walk in.

Um I think it's important for if you if you're not aware, UCAP only serves students in the seventh and eighth grade.

Um so the students in eighth grade would be coming back to us naturally anyway, um, because they would be ninth graders.

So we're talking about 42 students, we're talking about 42 seventh grade students only.

Um so the 42 seventh grade students, and if you think about this, the two million dollars for 80 students, 42 that we're talking about right now.

The this they will have a program um made specifically for them so that they can remain a co-war if they so choose at um Roger Williams Middle School with their own um intervention is specifically dedicated to them, uh, in addition to all the wraparound services that a social worker um that the school has a school psychiatrist, um psychologist, I'm sorry, guidance counselors, um, MLL supports all of those.

And if the parent and student chooses to select a different school, they're eligible to do that.

They don't have to go to Roger Williams, but if they want to stay as a cohort together, um, we are providing extra intervention and extra services to them at Roger Williams, or they can select by school choice one of our other middle schools to attend, um, and and so that we had a parent night for the families uh to come in and learn about those different program options and and how to enroll and how to register.

We had members of a registration team there if they were interested in registering that evening.

Um so we we are talking about um the 42 students and having a cohort program, or they can choose school choice.

Um my only question is so is there only problems of students attending that school right now?

Currently, there are uh there are like one or two from um uh random districts who are not partner districts who have opted to send one or two students, but the almost 100% of the students there are uh who owns uh that building uh I think they release it from their own C3 like the friends of UCAP or I think the actual owners of the building, and then the school SD is the one that leaves the counselor Peterson Graves you have told too.

No, I think she's gonna ask my same question today.

Oh, we keep doing that way.

Um this is actually more of a clarified question.

You CAP, I feel as though UCAP was very disappointed when I was in school when I was in school for a long time ago.

Can you please explain to me what UCAP does for the seventh and eighth grade?

And why are parents opting to send their students to UCAP versus the other middle schools or private school or whatever it might be?

I I can start by saying first eight though it was a small school that they needed wraparound services.

We can do that so uh we actually have more wraparounds.

We have more wrappers.

When a meeting with them, we found that they were missing services that the students needed.

So I want to be clear about that.

All the although they had some services, they didn't have all of the services students needed, and in fact, in the middle of eighth grade, they were sending students back to us.

So I just want to be clear about those wraparounds.

I had even go ahead, please go ahead.

Especially the guy beats, you know, that's single and must look at it, review it, um, do any changes you need to do with that what you have to do with students who are returning back to us with the same ID that we have sent.

So again, I'm I'm just gonna push this point.

Um are the students that were sent to UCAP more of a um a school that required additional supports, or is it behavioral supports, or is it like what what is there a what is the differential of the students between I think the way that they advertise is that uh it's a small school setting that can increase engagement and accelerate um performance.

I think that's the way they market it if uh says maybe not been successful in uh traditional students.

And you know, they talk about increased um uh attendance, their attendance is significantly lower than our middle school students.

So if we just look at our seventh and eighth grade students compared to the seventh and eighth grade students there, more than half of their students are chronically absent on a daily basis, um, right?

And so the things that they were um promising our students when we looked at the data, it didn't appear that they were delivering on that promise.

And so we wanted to create an opportunity within our own district to deliver on that promise.

That's um to create that environment for students at one at Rad Williams or whatever it might be, uh, whatever school that might be two of them, is there an additional um added cost to it, or is it just uh is there like a different how much so this is 1.9 million, right?

However, um what we're able to do is uh hire uh the additional interventionist and uh have the social work support at Roger Williams for significantly under that 1.9 million dollars counselor Picardo, um I I have some reservations over uh because I know of the model and also the students, right?

Um just a background that was in the Senate, Rob, who I forget his last name right now, and the concept of Rob Robo, uh the concept of uh students having IPs and the challenges working uh performing in regular schools, uh it went through a lot of uh reiteration, ALP, uh servicing our students, and and eventually that was one of the alternative school.

Um and I when I say reservation is that because Roger Williams, that's the middle school that's currently there, uh have our own set of uh of challenging.

And I think the question in terms of providing additional service to those students while you're also providing an alternative to parents, uh obviously uh it challenges the services throughout the school districts, right?

If they if they go to different schools because they're choosing that um is it come uh what was the result of this of this uh of this convening with parents and and what is that plan?

I would love to see that or or have more assurance that that's uh uh a workable plan for the kids because I know all around it's it's really challenging.

And then the the other uh aspect of it was in terms of uh and you know, programs have evolved and and obviously, and thank you for reaching out uh and sharing that information with me in terms of for the two students and how much is cost and so forth.

I just think that even for these seventh graders that are transitioning, um that they definitely would require um those services and and how that flexibility and I and I I'm concerned in essence that having it at uh Roger Williams if that's the school that that's the appropriate environment.

That's and I just and I like to discuss that further.

Sure, and I want to clarify because I hear you saying concern about um spreading out a large number of students with IEPs, there are only four IEPs.

So I think there's a lot of um for IP students coming.

That's it, that's all they have.

Right.

Yes, right, but yes, they sell okay.

Yeah, that's why I like to discuss them even more in depth, because I think that that's uh um I think the assumption was that a lot of the students there have IPs and are special education or IML learners.

That is that is not the demographic that they're serving.

Okay, yeah, I was mentioned too.

I'll say we're thinking about the students as we should have 42 coming coming back to this next year.

Um but but I think it's also worth contrasting if you were one when this program was maybe more successful is when the district only had seven uh 800 to a thousand kids in middle schools, right?

And so in the coming years, we'll still have um uh they agreeing uh native bishops and schools that are that are big and uh offer a large middle school setting, but we'll have pre-k three options, and so for those students who to the extent the size of the school is important, maybe we'll have other options that we didn't have, yeah.

Yeah, and by expanding our PK8s, we'll also be having students have the opportunity to stay in small schools from PK all the way through eight, right?

And so we'll also have those opportunities.

But it's really important for us to look at the amount of absences that the students are experiencing, their level of proficiency in that program upon enter and then exit, and look at our students in similar demographics and how they're performing and what can we do for our students.

And if we had 1.9 million, how many students can we effectively and successfully touch?

That that's a pretty big number, and we can reach a lot of students with 1.9 million.

And so you want to transition to the speech experience.

And I just uh one point before just on that end, if uh whether it's for this committee or hope, if you could just get me get the get us, obviously some more information with that um you can have that transition plan.

Thank you.

I'm sorry, uh you said you were gonna go through the budget timeline, or that quickly so we can get unless people I'm just um the the last point or the last uh bar uh July 2026 commissioner approved that might need to change that our data.

Yes, yes, it will be to change.

Presentation was created before uh counseling jobs.

Um I mean so what if you were to rewrite that last one?

Yeah, yeah, whole jokes aside.

I mean, we will have a um we have a proposed budget now.

We typically historically come back after revenue numbers get finalized in June and July.

So I assume we would go and then and then offer a final budget in September, we would like to do the do the same with our school board.

So it would be the you know, the commissioner would approve this proposed budget, and then we would have the final budget once once revenue figures are final at the end of June, that would be voted upon by the by the school.

I don't know what other city how we what the city process would be, but the first step would be going back.

We've done this the past few years during the intervention.

We go back to the school board, they vote on our final final.

So you're talking about uh school, just like state house revenue rejections that we're saying.

Yeah, what's the the final state budget?

That'll allow us to close our final revenue numbers, and so we have to make any adjustments based on that and the school number wouldn't work.

Moving on.

Um before you start that was a finance team, uh, thank you so much for being troopers.

I will be a little sad if you guys get up and leave, but I will not take it personal.

You guys are a big of us uh so much, and I just want to make it clear that you guys are more than welcome uh to depart on and take care of other responsibilities uh whenever you need to see the long weekend.

That's good.

Thank you, guys.

Uh we're gonna continue page 21, it looks like um so the first chart is uh simply kind of the change in homeless percentages since uh 2019.

So you can see um the the number of students that we were aware of um that were experiencing homelessness uh that the district um provided services and supports for uh over that time period, and you can see this year in 2526.

Um we currently have a hundred and thirty-three students who have um a reported homelessness, and that's about um seven percent.

So just to confirm uh it's it's it's just percentage and actual or what I don't yeah, it's for it's percentage and actual.

So the homeless number is 143, the percent homeless is seven.

The percent of our students, yeah.

So how is um this data collected?

Uh so we work with our our students and our families and our face department and our our uh homeless coordinator.

Um when we when we suspect homelessness or if a family reports homelessness, um, then we are able to document it.

So when social workers or principals or teachers start to notice certain um potential trends or um a parent reports with their homeless, uh then we're able to know that the student's homeless needs services, and we collect that data and support.

Um these times now, I don't know if we can really go on if 133.

These are the ones that are reported.

These are the ones that report reporting.

These are the reported ones.

Okay, and so we anticipate or we have families that are um spending time in multiple locations, maybe friends' homes, maybe surfing, right?

And they might not report that, and we might not see signs of that because wherever they're staying, um, it it might not come across as the student having um home insecurities.

Um or we have families that have a lot of pride and don't want to report for other reasons.

Um these are the best numbers that we have based upon what's reported or what we've looked into because of signs that have um appeared, or because the student might be involved in DCYF and DCYF has lives now.

That's another way that we we get the numbers uh through through um DCYF.

So when a family is homeless, they are assigned like a CYF worker, and that DCYF worker works at the school.

Sometimes there's an ed advocate involved as well.

So what um sorry yeah, no, no, well, what definition of of homeless uh yes do you use like if a family reports are couch surfing homeless that's what you you would consider that?

Yes, that's homeless.

If if you cannot depend on having a request head night tonight, you you fall into the homeless category.

And if you're at the will of somebody else being gracious enough to give you a space in their home, you're homeless because that will that goodwill could change, even if that's a family member.

Yeah, I mean I I I appreciate that because the the state does it if you're couch surfing, you're not considered homeless into the state.

So the fact that we're going up a little deeper because in reality you are uh unhoused um stable housing.

Um and so what we have on the next page is just a comparison, so you can see how um homeless or having home insecurities really impacts your ability to come to school uh on a daily basis.

So if you look at the red line, these are our students who are not reported as homeless.

Um and if you look at the blue, those are the students who uh have a report of homelessness, and so you can see that right now, currently uh as of last year, because that's our umstricted data, we have about a six percent difference in daily attendance on the next page.

What you can see is um unfortunately when students have uh housing insecurity, we tend to see upticks in um behaviors that do result in discipline, especially suspensions.

Um, and so you can see the difference between uh the percentage of students who uh are experiencing housing insecurity or homelessness and their suspension patterns compared to uh students who are not reporting um housing insecurity or homelessness.

Can I ask a question?

Yeah, uming this, what are the can you give up a couple of reasons on the suspensions?

Is it too much absenteeism or is it no?

We don't suspend for absenteeism.

So uh suspension we have really uh put major restrictions on.

Uh so starting last year, um really really define suspension to be uh what we call a level three, and that means that it has to be uh a direct threat to yourself or not other than a way that the school can't keep you safe or keep others safe.

Um right, and so we really decreased before suspensions were for a much wider um variety of reasons.

Uh you know, a student might have um sworn at a teacher, for example, and that might have resulted in suspension in the past.

Now we're trying to do more things like restorative, keeping kids in school, um providing them access to their education.

Uh yes, they should not have sworn at a teacher, yes, there needs to be restorative, but it's critical that the students are in school.

So we have really cut down on the types of suspensions.

We're also very, very um closely monitoring the number of suspensions.

The state says you can only suspend a student up to 10 days, and so we are monitoring to make sure that that's what's happening.

And if we see a school that um does not follow that, we we are uh addressing that with the principal.

Um because again, if our students aren't in school, they're not getting the food, they're not getting the safety, they're not getting the education.

And so we're really really um careful about no more than 10 days.

And if a student has an IEP and individual education plan, um, we're also making sure that we're doing those manifestations because if the behavior is because of a disability and that's the way the disability presents, we shouldn't be suspending from for that.

We should be doing the education um and intervention around improving um their toolkit in terms of how they respond.

Thank you.

Um the next uh page, uh, just wanted you to see uh the difference between student performance for those who have reported home insecurity or homelessness on the RICAS ELA and RICAS Math.

Again, the blue are the students who are have a reported um home insecurity or homelessness, and the red are the students who have not.

Uh so you can see that in ELA there's um almost a seven percent difference, and in math, there is about uh uh six percent uh difference in performance.

You know, when students are are worried about where food or safety is coming from, they're not performing as well.

There's a lot of glory in their lives and trauma in their lives, and it impacts learning.

And so we think it's important for you also have an understanding of what we do in terms of of staffing um and services to support those students that we're aware of um that have home insecurity or homelessness, and so Chris I'll let you take over for the money.

Um Jugger, yes, as our maybe and off this work, but like really ventu is the um the federal um kind of yeah, statute that oversees this work, and so we have a person dedicated, you might know her.

Full disclosure, right?

Overseas this work in the district, it's really important work.

Um so there's um you know, a lot that team does obviously as uh as drug services, but also through supplies, um that's hygiene or educational supplies and backpacks, uh offering families uh transportation uh services, um, some printing and other family services are those um uh families' receipts programs.

So a lot of that comes from either title one or getting better, which is a specific sub-roll.

Um let's talk about the transportation for a minute because I think it's really important to understand how that works.

So if we are about a student who's a providence resident, now they're experiencing experiencing homelessness and um maybe their couch surfing at a family's home in Johnston, our friend's home in Johnston, um, and they notify us of that.

We are providing transportation here to Providence, even though they're not in Providence, because we want to make sure that there's this little disruption to their education as we can possibly support.

And so the transportation becomes extremely important.

Um, we can also help if the they need transportation for for medical reasons, um, you know, if the family can't get them to an appointment or or those types of things where they can't afford uh classes and things like that, we have money set aside to support the students in these ways.

Also thinking about students who maybe or families who may be in shelters, yeah, outside problems who also support those.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's where I want to point to the line that 1.2 million dollars obviously a very substantial amount, and that is based on our obligations we have, which are uh if a student is uh job like uh John.

Yeah, John uh a student in Johnston, but is temporarily um you know located in province, we have to pay 50% of that student's transportation bill, and so uh more often than not it's us paying for students who are not seeing students but are residing in a shelter in province or whatever, whatever it may be in well, we're there to support them.

We don't, you know, we aren't receiving we aren't enrolled with us in order we receiving state aid.

So that has been a bit of a uh discussion with the general assembly and others about how you funds.

Yeah, and then fundamentally we're we're transporting students that happen to reside in province because there's a shelter here, but they are enrolled with us, and we are you know totals a pretty sizable portion of um of funding and something that's um beyond the great things that that we need to do, that's also an obligation that is a pre-signary financial questions urgent questions.

There definitely is a few here.

Um counselor Freddy Mapers ready?

Yeah, can you tell me a little bit about how much you guys have in grant um grant awarded?

Grant.

Yeah, so that's a great question.

So it's probably just easier to point to a spoken.

So page 41 of the budget book uh it shows where our oldest uh budgets are uh on the federal title needs to be in the university.

Um federal stuff.

I know everybody's been hit on it, but anyway.

Yeah, so yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And there's you know there's discussions about losing some of these uh federal columns and fiscal 28, but we're afraid that we're gonna run some of them in fiscal 27 that hasn't come to fruition.

Um thank you.

I just was curious about that because I know that you have um people in charge of all of this.

Um, but I the other question that I have was with regards to the cybersecurity attack that you guys had last year.

Um, and I have two questions.

One, um, what was the final outcome of that?

Was that something that we had to pay a ransom on?

And two, um, what steps have been done to make it better?

Uh yeah, so we did not we did not pay grants support, oh, we had an obligation of those likely to do, but also understand a lot of live monitoring for our um packets.

So um all that all that we bought it up front, so we don't have that's on the non-looming expenditure, but uh we we covered credit monitoring for a lot of years three and five years of that common situation.

Um so that's that that was some of the going back, but there was no grants and fee.

Um one of the steps we took immediately was uh we actually work with the city's uh um both colleagues of the state and the city on uh kind of what was seen as best in class um uh uh device protection.

And so we have uh uh new software um that is called Falcon.

Uh it's on every device, and uh is uh what we feel is kind of best in class and more secure.

It also comes with I think one of the important added benefits is beyond just uh a like uh a trigger of something bad happens, it actually sends it to people who then understand like hey, this is there's an issue, and it's it's it's a problem, not just uh a normal something that something happened.

Um we've also applied for a grant so we're waiting for it to be awarded, but there's a big component of that that's moved towards training uh employees because um while this was not caused by a fishing attack, that does seem to be what's happening more often than not.

So our hope is that once that brand is awarded, we can invest more in some of the training, but some of the hardening of our system is just similar for such that we can.

We also added while we have our patient um across all of the our different products.

Um wasn't popular move, but seems to be the way all of the things that are doing it, so yeah, I get it.

Those were my my last questions.

I have a couple questions.

Executive director, what's uh what's the finance team makeup at PPLC?

Sure.

So uh under my purview, roughly 36 employees will see uh payroll cost payable uh purchasing and uh benefits along with the finance to use as well for 36 FPs in the division of and those are are those all in central 797 yeah um who uh who manages uh utilities expenditures that would be the five itself.

That's your your routine, yeah.

So we have the controlled and depth controlled.

Um what's what's going on utility payments?

I I I've been reported or I've been shared info of um certain amount of percentage of accounts being uh late.

Uh can you elaborate?

Uh I'm not sure.

I mean there was potentially during the coordination of the energy credits, there was uh some time where uh it took some time for the city to get us uh information over to us to make those payments and time, but I think that was last fiscal year, and I think all of that is like correct.

I'm not aware of it anymore.

So regarding uh Rhode Island energy accounts, um there's there's no past due expenses on there.

So so what what I'm getting to is I you know correct me if I'm wrong because I these are numbers that are shared with me.

Yeah, um, I I I'm informed that we pay an estimated five thousand dollars a month in late fees.

I don't think there's any other late fees that maybe it's illegal for them to do utility copies of charges later fees.

Okay, yeah, we don't pay awesome.

Um the last question I have really regarding PCTA.

Um our our rec department informed us uh that PCTA is not available uh for summer program, um that's around 400 kids.

Um I don't know it's too late this year, but going forward.

I mean, we we have to have access uh to that facility.

Um and this is this is gonna be part of the conversations regarding PPASD facilities.

I mean, I've tried to do stuff with Georgia West and it's a nightmare.

I'm not gonna lie, it has been in the past, I don't even try it more, but going forward.

Um there's a lot of uh intersection between uh rec and PPSD facilities and just community usage and availability, and I think that's something uh we we definitely need to keep um our collaborative efforts on.

Yeah, I'm happy to certainly partner on that.

I would I would show the specifics on the PCTA facility that gets a significant amount of use.

If you were to walk in, I could walk over there this week.

If you look on the right-hand side of the wall of the complex, it is in terrible shape.

It's uh where the camera growth happens uh and a lot of the trash has been torn up.

We as district, there's no other funding source for it, so we have to we have to pay that uh to replace it, and the way we do that is over the summer where there's not as much activity.

So I know our uh athletics team here have worked with uh the director is a home on relocating to other uh other spaces.

There's uh alternative location at hope.

So this is not uh every year that it'll be a junk, but they're like either we don't have gym class during the school year, or we we have to do some of these counselor graves and counselor puterson.

Okay, um hope is hope list you can only get 50 kids in there if you open up that other side.

There's usually something else going on, plus hope.

I hate to tell you this is not clean.

There's no air conditioner, and it's kind of dusty, it's kind of musty, it's it's really not a really good atmosphere for kids at all.

And so we're so the program that we're talking about, they're talking about going down to 50 kids per session opposed to 175, 1005 to 175 kids per section.

Um this is citywide.

So I I it's something else that really needs to be done.

I don't know what what other spot there is, but um just to add to that, and one of the things that was also a point of uh concern was that it's extremely hot.

Yes, hopefully, I do know that you could probably know better than I, but I do know that hope is on the list for renovations that are gonna be published on HVAC.

But they won't be completed by the time of summer programs.

No, not at all.

Yeah, yeah, and that's why I think this is the one that like I don't anticipate it for the future, but it's yeah, we have to do that.

Yeah, so this is the second year because last year was the weren't able to do it last year either.

So um, how long are we anticipating?

Because like I said, it's this has been two years, and kids almost died there last year.

They have a lot of issues with people, kids were overheating and feeling dizzy, and they only had 50 kids again.

I'll keep keep nailing that in.

Do you know how many kids families that is that don't have a place for the children during those times weekly?

I will I will find 99% sure, but I can we can send confirmation that I don't think there's any planned maintenance that would be impacted the summer after this one.

I know that does not this summer, but I don't think it's uh we think there's the uh track in the wall.

So one more yeah, I'm I'm gonna say on record, I mean there's absolutely no way I'm gonna accept PCTA not being an option next year.

I think going on two years.

You know, I try to be reasonable as much as possible when when us counselors and I'm on the rec board for full transparency.

So I can so I um I have a lot of interest in in this, and then this is impacting a lot of students.

Can I check can we check and see if classic is available?

Check all those places.

Yes, please.

Yeah, anything that might be supportive is important to that because it does it's a substantial amount of it.

And just so you're aware, it's nothing to you know, obviously a lot of us are frustrated on this because the first time we became aware of it is when rec department is presenting for us a couple weeks ago, and they didn't have much to share.

Um, so you know that that's where we get concerned.

Is you're telling us this at the you know, a couple weeks before schools out, um, and you didn't bring us in to try to come up with uh another solution.

Um that that works a little better than then sending kids to hope.

Um the direct department director share that hope high school is just difficult for some families to get to uh you know, the obviously the central relocated schools are obviously the space is bigger too, um a lot more convenient for families, but the there's opportunity to continue the conversation at some point we're we're definitely more interested in doing that.

And I want to correct the rec department didn't bring that to us, the parents brought that straight.

The parents are frustrated, the kids were frustrated, and the staff was frustrated.

So those are the people that brought that to us.

Um, and um it was prior to this, and we didn't push them to find out what was going on prior to them coming in, and they still were being told we're not sure if they're gonna be able to have that, and they still are telling parents sign up because we're still not sure because they haven't gotten a definitive answer.

So I it would be nice if they get a definitive answer, but at least try to classify somewhere else.

And also, could you also get Hope High School Gymnasium clean?

I mean, deep clean, and I'm not blaming the maintenance staff because the maintenance staff is doing the best that they can.

There's only so many of them, you know, and there's a lot of other programs going on.

So we we really need to do a deep cleaning and every every gym, we all know kids going to the gym, every gym needs a deep cleaning every so often, every last one of them.

But they're tracking everything in there.

No, so please, but it definitely needs a deep cleaning, guys.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You're also I'm I'm also I'm talking about um the last thing I want to say before I say my final remarks is um we didn't really get into too much of the facilities uh stuff conversation.

Um we've been getting some concerning uh details, I guess, shared to us as a reason.

So I think it makes sense at some point in the near future just to have uh another conversation around that and anything to to do anything that we can do to support uh those efforts and timelines.

Um it's uh it's a huge priority for all of us.

Um but just the last thing I want to say is uh thank you so much uh for coming here.

We appreciate it.

More importantly, uh all the day-to-day work.

Um you you guys are are in there in in the in the in the weeds on a day-to-day basis.

Um you know, we only see and hear so much.

Uh obviously all the teachers and students and families um that that benefit of your guys' work and commitment.

Uh we as elected officials here in City Province uh sincerely appreciate you and uh like I started the the remarks today.

Um we wanna be part of solutions.

I mean we could spend years uh looking back on what happened, what has happened, you know.

Obviously it's important to to learn from from the past, uh, but more importantly, we have about 20,000 kids uh depending on all of us uh to get this work done to work together to find solutions uh and to keep investing um resources as as much as possible.

So like I said, I'm I'm fully committed to that.

I think everyone around this this table uh is committed to that.

Um and we'll continue working together.

But I just wanna sincerely thank you guys um for being here and and like I said, uh for for doing all the work that you guys do and welcome back to the video.

That's what I was gonna say.

Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back.

Looking forward to developing uh this partnership.

For sure.

Thank you guys.

Uh this time I'll take a motion to continue items one through five.

So motion made by counselor uh Graves, seconded by Counselor Davidson, all those in favor, aye, any nays, any abstentions, any discussions?

I have it.

Maybe we won't make a motion to adjourn, sit here for another hour.

This time I will uh we were continue.

Uh this I'll take a motion to adjourn.

Motion made by counselor uh Davidson, second by counselor Graves, all is in favor, aye, any nays, any abstentions, any discussions?

Motion the meeting is something.

Good night, everyone.

Oh my goodness.