Coraggio Consulting Albemarle County School Board 2025-26 Draft Funding Request Public Hearing and Work Session, Thursday, February 27, 2025 Date: Thursday, February 27, 2025 Place: Albemarle County Public Schools / School Board meeting, Virginia Length: 2h 50m (video) Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkfyjOjIt1s Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting. Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-14. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [00:00:02] Good evening. Good evening everyone. This February 27th meeting of the Albemarle County School Board is now in session. As you can tell from the header, we are having, this is our first budget work session preceded by a public hearing on the budget. With that, let's do some of the basics. [00:00:24] And first is a roll call. Why don't we start with you, Ms. Schmidt. Roslyn Schmidt, Chief Operating Officer. - Isabel Wong, Albemarle High School. - Lee, Rivanna District. - Allison Spillman, At-Large Representative. [00:00:39] - Graham Page, Miller District. - Kate A. Cuff, Jack Jewett District. - Rebecca Berlin, Whitehall District. - Ellen Osborne, Scottsville District. - Leslie Pryor, Ryo District. - Matthew Hawes, Superintendent. - Josiah Black, School Division Counsel. [00:00:55] - Karen Stone, Assistant, School Division Counsel. - Christine Thompson, Clerk of the Board. - Patrick McLaughlin, Assistant Superintendent. Daphne Kaiser, Assistant Superintendent. - Thank you. The next item on the agenda is standing for the Pledge of Allegiance. [00:01:33] Now we'll pause for a moment of silence. [00:01:57] Next item is the approval of tonight's agenda. Do I have a motion? - So moved. - Second. - Did you get that Ms. Thompson? - I'm sorry, not. [00:02:12] - It was moved by Ms. Lee, seconded by Ms. Spillman to approve tonight's agenda. All those in favor say aye. - Aye. - Opposed? motion to approve the agenda is passed the next item of business is the public hearing and miss osborne will read the rules of uh of this for the speakers tonight we welcome public input at our school board meetings to sign up to speak during the public comment period you can do so in several [00:02:50] ways online sign up is available from 9 a.m on the monday of the meeting week until 2 p.m on the meeting day by phone you can call the school board clerk's office to sign up until 2 p.m on the meeting day and in person you can sign up at the meeting that's available from 6 p.m until the public comment period which is right now please note that public comment is not received at special board meetings unless specified on the agenda each speaker will have three uh two minutes tonight to speak but the chair with the board consent may reduce his two minutes should there be 14 or more [00:03:25] speakers and we have 18 so chair we are we'll be at the two-minute mark thank you the maximum number of people or groups that may speak at a meeting is 20 in the event that there are more than 20 people or groups who wish to speak at a particular meeting each speaker will be assigned a number and numbers will be drawn to determine which people or groups will have the opportunity to speak those who do not have the opportunity to speak at a particular meeting may sign up to speak at a subsequent meeting and or may submit written comments for the school board's consideration speakers should state your name and either your address or your voting district address comments [00:04:04] to the school board as a whole and limit comments to school board governance or school division operations and you can provide written statements and supporting material to the clerk the school board will use a timer to track each speaker's time speakers are asked to wrap up their comments by the end of the three minute two minute mark to maintain respect please refrain from clapping or other audible forms of support you may raise your hand instead debate with the school board is not allowed and the projection system is for staff presentations only um i will tell you the first [00:04:43] three speakers will be katherine jerry mark siccoli and lauren williamson is go ahead so okay wait a second uh this is public hearing on the budget are we limited to talking about budget [00:05:18] only that's correct okay all right thank you do i click it or does someone else click it you may begin okay good evening my name is kate gary i am a third grade teacher at broadest wood which is in the white hall district i'm a golden apple recipient teacher of the year nominee and the division's 2023 equity educator of the year i'm here tonight to speak for the instructional staff of broadest wood all of whom signed the letter i'm about to read many of them are here tonight with me we wrote this letter to urge you to reconsider the decision to eliminate the flest program we believe it's a mistake we understand that there are budgetary shortfalls [00:05:55] we saw ellie shotts program listed on the list next to furniture expenses and field trip costs and we believe it is reductive of the profoundly human work that she has done at our school her flest program has been transformative as families and students will share tonight it brings us closer the school community and better academically through fless the world has become bigger the school has become more joyful and our students have noticed this is what school should feel like for our kids and watching this happen is why we became educators brought us wood received the virginia's board of education's highest achievement award last year and we believe fless was directly [00:06:34] responsible for part of this research shows that students with good content knowledge perform better on standardized assessments and seniority shot makes less time content linked students tell me when i ask them that this is what they love about her lessons we were proud when the division emailed to reaffirm our commitment to efforts that bring a sense of belonging safety and well-being for all seniority shots instruction is a tangible way in which we have been realizing this we watch our native spanish speakers blossom and become leaders in our classroom in the flesh environment [00:07:10] and the concrete way that this program communicates our belief that all children bring something valuable to our community is powerful our kids understand that and they will understand the message it sends if we cancel it as well we think that the elimination of the flest program is a step away from our values of providing anti-racist equitable education for all thank you mr mark siccoli you can correct me if i mispronounce your name thank you i'm mark I'm Mark Siccoli and I live in the Whitehall District of Albemarle County with two children in our public schools. [00:07:48] I'm a professor at UVA and director of the program in linguistics. I focus my comments here on the educational and cognitive gains for children learning a second language in elementary school and how cutting the FLES program would harm students by removing these benefits. I'd like to quote just a few of the many studies. [00:08:05] A 2021 paper showed elementary language learning has a profound impact on children's cognitive development enhancing executive functions problem solving skills and academic performance second language learning expands vocabulary improves grammar and sentence structure enhances pronunciation and boosts writing and reading proficiency in both students first and second languages so better english with a second language 2018 study demonstrated academic gains in all subject areas including english language arts mathematics science and social studies by students who have who have participated in language programs. [00:08:41] Learning a second language makes a positive impact on memory and the ability to focus and multitask, and bilingualism delays the onset of Alzheimer's disease. Rather than peripheral to a core, the authors conclude that second language learning should be central in the curriculum of every school. [00:08:59] Another study showed that early learning of a second language correlates with higher salaries as adults. Cutting the FLESS program will remove these educational gains and will decrease students' ability to succeed in post-secondary education and STEM and other fields. Linguistic research also demonstrates the best time in life to learn a language as a child because of the critical language acquisition period before puberty. [00:09:22] Adolescents and adults have a far more difficult time and often fail to reach fluency. It's no consolation to tell us that students will still have second languages in middle and high school because cutting FLESS removes the gains that would help them succeed there. We should rather be expanding the FLESS program As it is a keystone program improving outcomes across the curriculum, please do not defund the FLES program. [00:09:43] Thank you. Mr. Sicoli. Laura Williamson. It'll just start. [00:10:02] Thank you. Good evening, board members. I'm Laurel Williamson from the Whitehall District, and my kids attend Broaddus Wood Elementary School. Six days ago, we learned that the foreign language in elementary schools program or FLES is proposed to be cut from next year's budget. [00:10:18] This program started in Albemarle about 10 years ago and came to Broaddus Wood three years ago with Spanish instruction. Our beloved senorita shot teaches all 265 K through 5 students and I can't tell you how blown away I have been by how much the kids have soaked up in such a little time bringing home new phrases and songs week over week. With the FLES program I think that Albemarle County has discovered the secret ingredient to truly absorbing a second language: start young. Start young when learning language is so much easier instead of waiting until middle or high school. [00:10:53] Does it really make sense to cut the most efficient avenue of second language instruction that these kids will ever have? By my count, over 1,400 kids currently receive FLESS instruction in the county. And it's unfortunate that the FLESS program hasn't yet reached all the elementary schools as was originally planned. [00:11:10] But does that mean we should give up now, now when second language and cultural fluency are even more needed than in the past? My kids and I attended last year's Spanish Multicultural night at the school and it was on that night that I got a glimpse at the spark of pride and belonging in the eyes of classmates and their parents who are native Spanish speakers helping lead the way on this school-wide language learning journey as someone who went to school as a young child in a language and culture not that of my family I recognize that spark when even if just briefly you can use your home language and experience two-way communication I [00:11:48] i realize that balancing the budget is a difficult task but i urge the board to recognize the obvious and the subtle impacts the fless program has on our school communities and our broader community please don't give up on fless now thank you the next three speakers will be lillian lessick [00:12:08] rebecca titchener and ashley spinelli can we just go ahead you just talk you can just start hello we are lillian and kaya we live in whitehall district and we go to broadestwood elementary school we are here tonight to state why we believe flash should stay in [00:12:45] elementary schools when I was in kindergarten I only knew one word in Spanish hola then throughout the years senior to shop my Spanish teacher taught me the feelings from mild to infantile that means from bad to sick and the alphabet to A to Z that means A to Z in second grade we had someone who transferred from Mexico if Spanish was not here we would not have been able to to have conversations with her like we do now. [00:13:25] Señorita Shaw gave us the tools we needed so we could speak to our friends even if they speak a different language. We bought a poster that we made for people to sign if they want Fluss to stay at our school. As you can see, everyone loves Fluss. [00:13:41] Can you please try harder to find the money to keep Fluss? Thank you for your time and please let Fluss stay. We have one song. Adios, mis amigos. Adios. Adios, mis amigos. Adios. Adios, mis amigos. Hasta luego. Adios, mis amigos. Adios. [00:14:15] Thank you. Next, we have Heidi Gilman Bennett, Emily Maython, and Donna Gray. And you are not required to sing. [00:14:34] Can you tell me, state your name, please? [00:14:53] Hi, I'm Ashley Spinelli. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. no that's it was my bad i'm sorry um i was so happy when i moved here nearly a decade ago and got an email that my daughter would be part of the first flesh per class at ivy elementary as a former military family my oldest went to four elementary schools by the time he was in fourth grade so we know elementary schools this was the only one that was so forward-looking and progressive that it provided a foreign language program when our school board brought us this program they built something great for us they enriched our children's education and leveled up our school district but for some reason now out of 280 plus million dollars of things in the budget you [00:15:33] selected this as something that should be cut if you cut this you're not just cutting a line item you're cutting something incalculably precious that you know we're never going to get back i know that's not what you want your legacy to be a board that chisels away the gems that make our school shine i know you guys want to build something with us please keep this program take your time and when you can expand it all of our schools should have it i've been told it's fair to cut flesh because it's just in a handful of schools i know it wasn't the intention but that's [00:16:09] really insulting we're not just a number that handful contains my children their friends their neighbors don't punish them for being in a smaller program we already know that our schools have the lowest funding per pupil in the county by quite a lot in some cases i totally understand that other schools have different needs and i don't care if it's all equal but please don't put all these cuts on our children's backs don't make our schools the sacrificial lamb of aldemarle county wait to buy textbooks wait to expand other programs please don't take away our teachers jobs and this incredibly precious program thank you thank you i think i also skipped [00:16:47] uh miss rebecca titchener okay heidi gilman bennett samuel miller district i'm here on behalf of family council as chair first some frustration that we have as a public one single opportunity to express our comments on the proposed budget compared to the county giving 16 separate opportunities for the public to express opinions and engage on the budget so forgive my lack of [00:17:26] poetry i'm going to go quickly focusing on the five learning for all proposals first yes to to compensating educators and staff. Also, to hiring bus drivers and English learner teachers. Second, yes to the bellwether instructional priorities. [00:17:41] So many students continue to be so far behind in reading and math. And these are investments that ACPS teachers, educators, have been requesting for many years. It's great to see them here. And please, in the future, listen to our educators who are serving our most needy students sooner. [00:17:58] Third, the intensive support center. Yes, to improvements to supporting special education services, including TA compensation and more. However, I'm frustrated to hear that SEAC has not been consulted prior to sharing this detailed proposal. [00:18:14] Fourth, Scholar Studios, I repeat the concern over multiple years by family counsel that while the instructional approach is potentially interesting, the actual enrollment is extremely low. Why make such a huge investment, including in a principal and admin for Center 2 and the demand isn't there and the program isn't even open. I urge you to ask for actual enrollment numbers for next year. Given massive overcrowding and AHS, the space is desperately needed. Fifth, SROs. I'm deeply frustrated again about the lack of transparency since this SRO program was reintroduced without any [00:18:50] public input. Yes, the public demands to feel safe at school, but I'm concerned that this expansion isn't based on actual need. Do these SROs receive training on working with students with autism students with mental health crises do they cooperate with ice we have so many questions and urge transparency and more information and community engagement thank you thank you hi I'm Emily Mathan from the Rio district I'm speaking to you tonight [00:19:28] about the budget proposal shared by dr. Haas about the school resource officers I'm writing I'm speaking to voice my frustration and concern over the increase in spending to hire two additional law enforcement officers to be placed in our high schools. In the summer of 2020, many of you who still sit on the school board made the case for removing school resource officers from our schools. [00:19:49] In the July 2020 meeting, you all approved a resolution acknowledging that the research is not definitive or conclusive with regard to the question of whether police presence in schools results in safer school environment conducive to learning where students are more likely to thrive. [00:20:04] Another part was acknowledged. Some data suggests that students of color and students with disabilities are disproportionately arrested for school-related incidents and that criminalization of school behaviors contributes to the school to prison pipeline. Also it was noted that it's essential for all of our students to feel safe at school and are treated equitably and with dignity and respect in accordance with the terms and intent of the ACPS anti-racism policy. [00:20:28] The school board directed the superintendent to develop new protocols. Now some of these new protocols in the form of safety coaches are being slashed from the budget. In 2023, many of you who still sit on the board unanimously approved the budget that paid for one SRO without any public acknowledgement or discourse on the reintroduction of this officer at Albemarle High School. [00:20:47] The MOU not publicly available leaves many questions as to the rights of students and their families, as well as questions about the training, accountability, and monitoring of the progress of this impactful role. In the spring of 2023, Bellwether published their report, whose purpose was to ensure systematically marginalized young people achieve outcomes that lead to fulfilling lives and flourishing communities. In this report, black and Latinx students describe being overly scrutinized and disproportionately disciplined for their behavior. I urge you to reject this increase in police presence at our schools. Thank you. Thank you. Next, we have Donna Gray, Jennifer Bucket, [00:21:22] and Meg Phillips. Just start talking. Hi, my name's Donna Gray. Can you move the mic closer to you? [00:21:38] Oh, sure, sure, sure. No, move me closer. Okay, either way. Thank you. My name's Donna Gray. I'm a graduate of Albemarle High School, class of 1969, and a fifth-generation Charlottesville Albemarle resident. I've seen a lot of change. Today, we have violence in our schools like I never experienced, even in the 60s. The most heinous thing was the rape that happened in the boys' locker room just a couple years ago. With all that's happening, not just in the world, but in our own county, it's obvious that we need more protection for our students at school. [00:22:11] I've personally met parents who have kids at Albemarle High School, their kids race to the bathroom when they get off the bus in the afternoon because they're afraid to use the bathrooms at school. I'm not making this up. I've also met parents whose students say there are certain hallways they won't walk down in school because there are people who should be in class that are just hanging out there and posing a menacing danger. [00:22:37] There's a big difference between safety coaches and a school resource officer, and yes, they are especially trained to work with the kids in school to answer somebody else's question. These two positions are not interchangeable in any way. [00:22:53] A safety coach might be able to help someone after a violent event has already occurred. A resource officer has the ability to stop a violent event before it begins. [00:23:10] I believe our ever-increasing property taxes should be more than sufficient to hire additional school resource officers necessary to keep our kids safe in school. school. There is no reasonable excuse to withhold this service from the citizens of Albemarle County whose money you spend while our children are at risk. [00:23:31] Thank you. Thank you. [00:23:47] Good evening. My name is Jennifer Bucket and I am a parent of a first grader at Crozet Elementary School. I have a master's in teaching, have taught English and Spanish, and I am currently an assistant director at a local preschool. When I learned that the foreign language and elementary schools program as a parent I did not know it's called FLESS, but the FLESS program was going to be cut next year. I, along with so many parents and neighbors, was incredibly disappointed. There are many practical benefits to this program at the elementary level. My son has come home confident and proud to count in Spanish, teach me new Spanish words, and even practice some of his language skills in restaurants. [00:24:27] There is evidence that learning a new language in elementary school can improve memory and concentration, which benefits students as they build skills in other subjects, such as math and reading. Learning a second language also positively impacts a child's literacy skills in their native language, something that I know has been a priority in our district. Early exposure is key, and waiting until middle and high school is depriving our students of learning a new language during an ideal time for language acquisition. We also know that it is hard to dehumanize and see someone as an [00:25:04] other when you speak their language. Respect for other cultures and an understanding of the value of diversity is something we must engender in our children sooner rather than later. Our children need to be prepared to be citizens of the world and see themselves as such and taking away this opportunity to expand their worldview is unfair. I am aware that Crozet is an affluent community and one of only a few elementary schools to have this program in the first place. That too is unfair. This is a program that should be prioritized and expanded, not cut. Thank you so much for your [00:25:44] consideration. Thank you. Hi, my name is Meg Phillips. I'm the executive director of Wild Rock, a local non-profit in Crozet that promotes nature play for health and happiness. Wild Rock is a longtime community partner and supporter of ACPS. We run numerous programs, including afterschool programs, camps, outreach visits, and field trips for your students. Last year, over 3,000 ACPS [00:26:22] students visited Wild Rock or participated in programs in their schoolyards. I'm here to respond to the proposed cut of over $351,000 to the guaranteed field experiences, or GFEs. I assume folks in the room understand the importance of nature for children's development and physical and mental health so i'll gloss over that and talk about the curriculum for the gfes the gfe curricula are co-created with acps teachers and community partners to ensure that the material in their experience is sol aligned relevant and supports classroom learning i'm so proud that acps has offered these field experiences to all students in the district ensuring they have the same [00:26:58] exposure to cultural activities and environmental science in action the acps strategic plan emphasizes learning for all and engaging students in relevant authentic learning experiences this is what the gfes do cutting this funding won't get rid of field trips it will get rid of equitable access to field trips there will be fundraising efforts and the results will not be equitable across the board certain children who do not have access to resources will will not benefit from these field trips other kids will see real habitats find creatures in real creeks and [00:27:35] and benefit we want to help we want all students to have high quality educational experiences i noted and applaud the increase in budget for transportation staff and teachers we love bus drivers and teachers i have questions about what cutting gfes means for bus drivers who often take routes in the middle of the day i also think that teachers who lose their field trip access will struggle thank you for considering thank you next we have Lisa [00:28:07] Whittenborn Taylor Clements and Bridget Rogers hello thank you so much for the opportunity to speak tonight my name is Lisa Whittenborn I live in the Jack Jewett district I have a student at Western Albemarle High School and I'm the executive director of the Rivanna Conservation Alliance another community partner that works through the field trip program I'm we carry out sixth grade field trips for all students across the county and I'm here to urge you tonight [00:28:44] to continue funding this important program for all of our students. Environmental field trips like RCA's and Wild Rocks and many other organizations in the community reinforce and greatly enrich classroom curriculum tying abstract science concepts to the real world supporting different types of learners and making learning fun and memorable. RCA's watershed science field trips directly tie into our science standards of learning. These field trips lead students in scientific investigations of the conditions of local streams including streams right behind their schools sometimes through hands-on [00:29:21] biological, chemical, and habitat stream evaluations and we also provide follow-up activities for teachers to use in the classroom. The guaranteed field trip program ensures that all students across the county can participate in experiential learning opportunities, helping reduce the science achievement gap that we see between disadvantaged and advantaged students. Two years ago, this program allowed RCA to expand our field trip program from just Burley Middle School to all five of the middle schools. And without it, many schools will miss out on these opportunities. Field trips like RCA's play an important role in promoting the well-being of our students and our [00:30:00] community. Students benefit greatly from seeing how their classroom curriculum connects with the real world, and they also benefit from spending time in nature. We frequently hear that the field trips are the student's favorite part of sixth grade, and I know from running into students out in the community that this sticks with them for a long time. I hope you will continue to provide funding so that all students in Albemarle County can have these opportunities. [00:30:26] Thank you so much for your consideration. Hello and good evening. First and foremost, I want to thank you all for being here and listening to what I have to say. My name is Taylor Clements, and this is my first year as a student safety coach at Monticello High School, a position that is being reduced to fund SROs. I want to start by explaining the position of a student safety coach. At first glance it may look like I'm another security officer due to the name and some of the job duties [00:31:04] but I can assure you it is much more than that. The safety coach is a job of many hats. Some days I'm helping security, other days I'm providing mental health and behavioral support to students. I've also been entrusted to sit in on disciplinary hearings, threat assessments, Working with administrators to do mediations between students, running mental health groups with our mental health counselor, and so much more. [00:31:25] I know budget is a big topic of discussion tonight, and I know I'm bold in saying this, but I truly believe this position is one of the most cost-effective expenditures the system can make that directly helps the students. If students are not in class, they don't learn. If they are upset and don't know there are resources, they don't succeed. [00:31:41] If they're having an emotional breakdown or an angry moment with no one to guide them, they make bad choices. In my position, I can go up to groups of students in heated arguments, and I can prevent that escalation from happening. But not only that, I can then take the time to sit with them and work with them to ensure it doesn't happen again. [00:31:59] I'm successful in this way because my position is that of limited authority. The students feel safe with the student safety coaches. They feel it's a place to vent, seek advice, decompress from their everyday lives without the fear of judgment or consequences. If I can prevent one fight, one person from skipping class, one emotional breakdown, one attempt of harming themselves, or convince one person that tomorrow will be a better day and that someone believes in them, then I think that's money well spent. [00:32:23] I can assure you I've done all these things and then some in my position. And I have students, staff, and even parent testimonies to show you, which will be given to you. I will close with this. We all want the same thing. We want our students to be successful, feel and be safe, and to go out into this community better than they came into our buildings. [00:32:41] When considering reducing the student safety coaches, please read these letters, listen to the students, and see how this position has benefited them, and decide will reducing it be negative or positive for their student community. Thank you. Good evening, School Board. [00:33:13] Bridget Rogers from the Ravana District, and I have two children at Hollymead Elementary School. I'm here tonight to emphasize the urgent need for strategic refinement in the $500 million needs-based capital improvement plan and the importance of working with your Board of Supervisors counterparts to develop a funding strategy to update and modernize all of our school buildings. The average age of our school buildings in this county is over 50 years old and the demand for modern updated schools will only continue to increase as the years go on. We need to ensure that CIP requests are specific, actionable, and describe impacts to students, staff, and [00:33:53] the community when they are not funded by refining these requests with specific detail and impact statements the board and public can more effectively communicate why each project matters in order for the CIP list to be effective it must also be funded ACPI ACPS CIP funding began falling short many many years ago and is now so far behind that we are left with a very large needs based CIP list I encourage you to work with your Board of Supervisors counterparts to explore funding options to support the 500 000 needs-based budget please work with them to consider funding mechanisms such as bond referendums public [00:34:31] public private partnerships specific tax-based carve-outs for schools like those proposed in the county executive's first budget yesterday and additional methods to fund critical school facilities thank you for your dedication to the future of our students and for considering these critical steps and moving our school infrastructure forward thank you next we have megan nab [00:34:53] caroline killday chris dilbeck and the last one will be pamela mierza hello my name is megan nab and i live in the scottsville district i have one child at walton middle school and another at both monticello and center one i'd like to comment today on staffing at center one as found in the draft funding report mr prelimin is the phenomenal director of center one he has assembled an incredible collection of teachers and staff who provide my kid and all the center one students [00:35:29] with a supportive respectful engaging can we make sure it stays on the budget topic and not individuals i'll get there um safe space and community one of those individuals is nurse annie page 267 of the budget document proposes having a certified nurse assistant at center one instead of a nurse i think this is a grave mistake my daughter chloe suffered from a concussion on monticello school grounds in october the support she has received from center one staff including Mr. Prilliman, Ms. Fink, her teachers, and especially Nurse Annie, has been unmatched. [00:36:02] Of all the adults who were notified of her condition, and there were many, only Nurse Annie reached out to us with the district's Return to Learn post-concussion recovery protocol. Although all Chloe's teachers have been kind and flexible, it helped so much to have a common framework and shared terminology during recovery. Nurse Annie intervened when teachers were pushing Chloe too hard too soon. [00:36:21] She let Chloe rest and cry in her office. She let me cry over the phone. She called after hours to check in. She made sure Chloe felt normal in her symptoms and recovery and even gave us good questions to take back to the pediatrician. She encouraged Chloe to balance her mental health with her physical and academic recovery. [00:36:37] - This is still wandering too far from the budget. Can you get back to the budget part of it? - Center One population has a large percentage of twice exceptional students in the base schools. These students can really benefit from and need an experienced and educated healthcare provider. Nurse Annie is a nurse. She has deep experience in healthcare educational settings, including working with homebound students. [00:36:57] and I feel it would be a real loss to center one if her position was replaced with a CNA. - There you go, thank you. [00:37:13] - Hi, I'm Carolyn Kilday, and I'm in the Whitehall District. I am here tonight to request that the board reconsider the cutting of funding for the foreign languages and elementary schools program. The program has been a vital part of the school community where my kids go at Ivy Elementary, and according to other parents at the other schools that have participated in the program. [00:37:33] The program allows our students to access a wider cultural lens and learn about things that do not cross their paths in any other way. As the Western feeder schools do not have access to any sort of full immersion program, like at Mountain View, this at least ensures that our kids get a bit of the much needed exposure to other languages and cultures. [00:37:51] And additionally, to use Albemarle County Public Schools words in their expanding opportunities, developing a robust world languages program in early childhood, this instruction to become fluent more than one language can have significant cognitive benefits. [00:38:07] These benefits include improved attention, creativity, emotional control, critical thinking, organization, and problem solving, which Albemarle pulled from all of the current research that was noted by Dr. Socoli. The, sorry, I lost my place. [00:38:26] The idea is that we want to be able to hold this program in our schools because we think that it will improve not only their language learning, but also their academic success across the board. And I urge you to reconsider the cutting of this program. [00:38:41] Thank you. - Thank you. - Hello all, my name is Chris Dilbeck. [00:38:56] I'm in the Roivanna district. I'd like to provide some information here about a personal story that I think supports the existence and expansion of school resource officers within our schools. I graduated Albemarle High School in 2005 and I played football there. [00:39:14] One common thing that I learned that year was that not everybody in that school had as good of a home life as I did, us and people. And one common positive theme in that school and presence in that school was School Resource Officer Reed. [00:39:31] He was always there for any of us, no matter what we were going through, and provided advice, high fives, and someone to talk to anytime you wanted it, no matter what you had going on. I remember him because he always stood out near the computer science door. [00:39:49] office was right next to it and he regularly gave people hellos and goodbyes and was a generally positive presence one other benefit of having school resource officers in the schools is to counteract some of the negative attention that some people have that some people are exposed to online and through the media about police officers having exposure to high quality ethical competent police officers early in life is beneficial for all students and with that i urge [00:40:23] that you all expand the school resource officer programs in our schools thank you thank you good evening i really appreciate the opportunity to address the board i am here also for the foreign language program and the appeal not to remove it from schools i am a current public school teacher [00:40:56] here for Albemarle County. Can you state your name? Pamela Mearswa. I, in my training to then become a teacher, fifth grade elementary school, I am now at Baker Butler. I had my opportunity for student teaching at Broaduswood Elementary. The first grade class that I was in every day, the joy that I witnessed and the classes that I saw was unsurpassed even now in my daily job. I'm in elementary school [00:41:29] every day in a school that does not offer this program. This decision is one that I decided to send my daughter to Broaddus Wood instead of coming along with me to the school I teach at because I wanted her to have access at the unsurpassed joy that I witnessed. I would love if someone here, if they're here to support this, you said we would allow raised hands and I would like to welcome those raised hands right now if you are here for that support. We do not want this program to go away. You have well trained and professionally developed your [00:42:07] teachers to know the science of reading and the fundamentals of phonemic awareness and foreign language is the absolute portal and exposure for these children to be able to access this. But really my pure joy is the appeal I'm trying to make for this. The connection that the successes, the furthering and broadening their eyes and their communities is absolutely unsurpassed and stripping that away from schools rather than adding it would be a grave mistake multicultural night is more [00:42:44] than one night a year when you have foreign language as part of their daily lives thank you very much thank you and that concludes public comment on the budget thank all of you for coming out and giving public comment the next item on our agenda is our budget work session number one [00:43:17] led by maya kumazawa good evening i'm maya kumazawa director of budget and planning and this evening i will help facilitate our budget work session number one our budget development [00:43:54] is focused around our strategic plan learning for all and in particular the budget development process really captures the goal of equitable and transformative resources. So this evening we have three topics to cover with you. The first one is revenue updates. [00:44:10] These are the revenue updates that were provided by Albemarle County yesterday in the county executive's recommended budget and the impacts that they will have to the funding request. That will be quick. And then the second piece is the health care fund overview. [00:44:28] I have my colleagues, Dan Redding and Andy Bowman here, who will provide a little bit more detail about our health care fund. As you know, that this is one of our major cost drivers, as you heard in the presentation last week, and as you will see in the budget book as well. That will be kind of a medium level in terms of numbers of slides. [00:44:46] So if you wanted a break right after that section, it might be a good time for that. And then the longest section for this evening is the budget document overview. So this is more of a working session with your budget books, where we'll actually go through the entire book, and I will point out some of the things you might be interested in. [00:45:05] You can ask questions, and it'll be more of an informal, let's learn about what's in the budget. So with that, I will jump into the revenue updates. So yesterday, the county executive presented his recommended budget for fiscal year 26. [00:45:23] that does impact what we have budgeted in terms of our revenues and the draft funding request. So the FY25 adopted budget has a local government transfer of $195 million. That's for the current year. In the draft funding request that you have in your books and in our presentations, that number is $206.5 million. Due to proposed tax rate changes, the recommended budget updates the transfer to us to $209.3 million. So when you compare what's in the draft funding request in your books [00:46:01] to what we are now working with, that is an increase of $2.8 million. So compared to the FY25 adopted budget, that's a total of a $14.3 million increase or 7.3 in terms of percentage. [00:46:17] And that is a combination of the revenue growth due to assessments, personal property tax rate changes and natural growth allocated by using our policy guidelines now comparing the new transfer number to what's in the draft funding request that is driven directly by the tax rate changes so real property tax rate is increased by four cents to be 89 cents per $100 of assessed value the four cents is a dedicated increase meaning it's not based on our formula split but it is [00:46:53] dedicated to certain programs, 0.4 of which, 0.4 cents of the 4 cents is dedicated to ACPS. And that is driving the part of the $2.8 million increase of $1.2 million. The other portion is the change in the personal property tax rate. That's increased by 86 cents to bring the rate back up to the rate it was before the pandemic. And then that revenue is shared by our established formula, which results [00:47:23] in 1.6 million dollars in additional revenues as part of the county's recommended budget the recommended capital improvement program or cip was also released yesterday the total five-year cip program is 189.6 million dollars this funds are ongoing programs the first one is project management this is the reimbursement that we get to manage our capital program so our project managers it's about three million dollars our facilities maintenance and [00:48:01] replacement program that's to maintain our existing infrastructure at seventy four point seven million dollars our maintenance of our network infrastructure throughout the county is six point two million dollars and a school bus replacement of twenty three point nine million dollars I'm happy to report that these are fully funded levels of what was requested for these programs including a fairly significant increase in the school bus replacement program [00:48:27] In terms of our projects, what's included in the five-year plan is an increase for higher costs to build the ACE Academy at Lambs Lane or High School Center 2, so $600,000 in additional project funds. [00:48:43] Mountain View Upper Elementary School, another $600 million due to increased costs for that project. And then you might remember, well, we requested an increase for the northern feeder pattern elementary school to expand the number of seats from 500 students to 600 students, anticipating the amount of development that's happening in that area, so that increase is also included along with inflationary factors, and that's about $10 million. [00:49:11] And then finally, school renovations, this is kind of a larger pot for us to, that doesn't specify exactly which projects it goes, but we can discuss that further. The total five-year budget for that is now $20 million, and that's a $5.7 million increase over the five years from prior CIPs that were adopted. [00:49:34] So as a reminder, the Capital Improvement Program is part of the county's budget process, so you will not find this in the draft funding request, so this doesn't necessarily have any impact or change to the current operating funding request. [00:49:51] And then the last piece, which we'll talk more about in the next section, is an update to the health care fund. Using local government's fund balance, there's a recommendation to transfer one time from local government to ACPS $6.2 million to use as a one-time reserve infusion into the health care fund. [00:50:12] And we'll talk more about why that's needed. And the amount is based on our percentage of total membership, so we make up about 69% of the employees that are part of our health plan. So that infusion is about 69% of the $9 million needed to maintain our reserve balances. [00:50:32] This is in addition to the 24% increase in employer contributions that we're anticipating for next plan year. So the transfer is recommended to be included as a revenue coming into the school fund, but then also budgeted as an expenditure leaving the school fund to then go into the health care fund. [00:50:51] We'll talk a little bit more about our various funds later this evening. So there's no net impact if you do revenues less expenditures. There's a zero impact to the FY26 draft funding request. Overall, there will be an increase, a fairly significant increase, when you look at our total revenue amount and our total expenditure amount. [00:51:10] They'll both go up by $6.2 million, according to this recommendation. questions about these three items I of course have a question about did you say they've fully funded our school bus request of 30 buses a year for each of the next five years I believe 30 was the number is that I believe so I just want to clarify there was a separate ask for electric school buses and that remains unfunded but we were very pleased that I just knew that we were requesting for five years an increase in the numbers of replacement we will get you the exact [00:51:50] number thank you anyone else okay you said we're going to be discussing more details of the health the increase that 24 is that coming up yeah that's actually next so i'll move on i have a question to the health care fund overview and i will leave this section with dan running thank you all right thank you maya and good evening board members i have been tasked with a refresher on our health [00:52:26] care fund and an explanation of how self-insured health insurance works some of you have seen this graphic before someone said to me after the last time we shared it that this is the most clear explanation of a self-insured health plan they've ever received if we think about the health plans we our parents might have had when we were young the employer collected premiums from the employee's paycheck and paid those to a big insurance company and every time we went to the doctor or had a [00:53:01] claim the insurance company paid it and every year the employer would get a new estimate adjust their rates and go forward over time what was found is that as those claims increase as very expensive conditions occur insurance companies raise rates but when those don't happen in large numbers they never lower the rates so they continue to add all that money this concept of self-insured plans came about to actually benefit the [00:53:36] employer in those scenarios in a self-funded plan employee and employer shares of the premium go into a fund, basically a rather large bucket of money, and that bucket is used to pay every claim from a doctor's office, a hospital, whatever kind of provider. It covers the administrative expenses of the plan. In our case, the costs that Anthem charges us to provide access to their network, adjudicate claims dispute claims if there's an overcharge from a provider it [00:54:15] covers stop-loss insurance which benefits us so if someone has a health condition and their claims cost $800,000 at a certain point we get reimbursed for claims over for plan year 25 that amount is $400,000 so when someone crosses that threshold we're reimbursed for every expense over that it also covers wellness services and those are services that hopefully bend to the cost of health care they help employees treat [00:54:54] chronic conditions and even prevent conditions from becoming more serious or more expensive a critical piece of this is to have a reserve because you don't know when there will be a number of very expensive conditions that you need to cover to take care of your employees and their dependents so every health care fund has to keep an adequate reserve to to be sure that when those bills come in they can be paid for our health fund we participate with the county government [00:55:31] and several other entities sorry so our health fund participates we need to wait a minute all right this is kidding this is working now it's working now [00:56:05] our health care plan participates with the local government as well as the albemarle county service authority the emergency communication center you pick up the phone when we dial 9-1-1 the jail and also the charlottesville albemarle visitors bureau those six entities all participate in discussions around plan design and a steering committee made up of representatives from the leadership of local government and the school division participate in [00:56:39] decision-making about rates, plan design, coverage, and new benefits. That is how decisions are made around our health care fund. This is a very collaborative process where everyone stays informed as we go forward. Recently we've done a a number of strategies. We've put a number of things in place to mitigate rising expenses. [00:57:06] We continue to look at our competitive market to see how our plan compares to other employers and to see what other employers are doing to manage rising health costs across the country. We're implementing a multi-year wellness plan. Ms. Kumazawa spoke about the infusion into the healthcare balance, that is a really important strategy to keep that reserve well in place. [00:57:34] We have ongoing dependent eligibility audits to ensure that everyone on our plan is eligible to be on our plan. And finally, our most recent one that I shared with you about two weeks ago is our employee health clinic, which we continue to get amazing feedback on. [00:57:53] So that's kind of an overview of how our self-insured plan works. questions about that? I know that we were running dangerously low in terms of our reserves so the question is does a 6.9 million dollar transfer get us upward about 14% isn't that close to the industry standard? That is the lower threshold I'm gonna let my very knowledgeable friend speak about that in a bit. Okay I'll await your you're speaking Mr. Bowen. That's probably a [00:58:33] a question that we're going to hear about. I mean, I think the question we have, I have at least is that it seems that is this a trend? And will you know, do we have any crystal ball to know if this is something that we may have to be doing every year? [00:58:54] Was this a set of claims we may not see? Or is this a new place in the cost of health care? I can speak to the fact that we've had we had in 2024 an exceptionally large number of exceptionally high claims it was quite shocking and significantly different from previous years however there has been trying to remember my eighth grade algebra the the curve has increased the slope is getting steeper of the increases [00:59:28] inflation in health care is outpacing inflation period so i mean the the two ways to combat that aside from making our our people healthier are different kind of stop loss insurance i mean is can we shop that and increasing the reserves i mean maybe there's more but those are strategies that we have looked at absolutely yeah so with that i'm going to turn it over to mr bowman from from the county's Department of Finance and Budget. [01:00:04] Thank you, Mr. Redding. Yes, Andy Bowman, Assistant Chief Financial Officer. And thank you, Mr. Redding, for the introduction. As I start, just as I did in December at the joint board meeting, I just need to, again, express my appreciation for the partnership that we have with public schools. [01:00:21] I appreciate Dr. Haas' thank you he gave us last week and our team in his budget presentation and all of the work we do, I think. As soon as the county executive was done with this presentation, the very first meeting I had was with Ms. Schmidt and Ms. Kumazawa to get ready for this meeting tonight. So whether it is the capital budget or the health fund, our continued partnership, I greatly appreciate it. [01:00:41] I also want to recognize in the audience we have Laura Andrick, who is an employee in finance and budget. She is our chief of risk management and shared services. In addition, with our two HRs and our two finance department and fiscal services working with our benefits consultant, so much of the analysis on this fund and the good work on the strategies whether it be wellness initiatives the employee clinic is due to her leadership and contributions so thank you laura for that so i'm here to provide a little more detail and hopefully address uh some of the questions and more that are on the board's minds because we have in the [01:01:15] fiscal year 26 budget as ms kumazawa has mentioned a 24 rate that is would be planned to begin in plan year 26 which plan year and calendar year i'll use those terms interchangeably we have in In addition to that, this is two strategies, the $9 million one-time transfer. [01:01:35] This was included in the county executive's recommended budget, as Ms. Kumazawa mentioned that the school share of that, approximately 69%, is about $6.2 million, and the county executive has recommended that be funded from county government one-time fund balance. [01:01:52] So I'm going to walk through over a few slides. How have we changed in recent years? What has this trend analysis looked like on the expenditures? does that look like in the trends on the revenue side from the premiums? Third, what is our fund balance and how has that changed over time? And finally, what is the impact of the employee clinic both in the short term and the long term as we look through our rates? I'll share this as information. I'll be sharing with the board of supervisors as well at their work sessions on March 10th and 12th. I've also been working with Ms. Andrick to go with our partner entities and update this on a complex story for what is a significant budget driver for everyone this year. [01:02:28] So first, and this speaks to some of the point Mr. Reddian spoke to, the expenditures in the health fund. Just for perspective, in our health fund, which has about a little over 3,000 members of employees, and the total covered lives is over $6,000 when we count dependents. [01:02:49] In plan year 24, that was a total of more than $54 million in actual expenditures. And that is really one of the points that Mr. Reddian made too, is in our partnership, is we really are stronger together, where using the numbers of the public schools and county government and our partner entities together, that gives us a greater risk pool to insure us in those challenging years. What we have seen over the last four years is our actual annual expenditure growth in this fund has been 16% each year. And so this has been one that certainly coming out of the pandemic, we knew there'd be a surge in those expenses as certain procedures or the ability to [01:03:29] see the doctor was delayed. What we have seen is that has not been a one-year thing. Just as Mr. Reddy mentioned that inflation has been high, medical costs typically outpace inflation, and this is what we are seeing in our experience. The slide on the right, which is very almost impossible to read on that, so I'll take a moment and explain this, but this really speaks to the high claim data that we are seeing. So for perspective and plan year 24, we had 16 claimants who had more than 325 thousand dollars in claims what happens above 325 thousand dollars is our [01:04:05] stop-loss insurance that kicks in so we're able to be reimbursed above that amount but that first 325 thousand is funded by the health fund so it has 16 of those in a year significant but we look deeper in the data to show that even between 100 000 and 325 000 there were 53 folks who were impacted at that level and typically about a hundred thousand dollars is what will be looked at as a high cost claim and goes into your experience factor with your insurance and so on but looking a little deeper there were another 33 folks between 75 000 100 000 who had those claims so while these 102 people in total are a still a small percentage of the more than 6 000 covered [01:04:45] members need a lot and a lot of healthy people to begin to offset the impacts of what you have in those one years so this is not the only story because again we've had four years in a row of 16% average growth. Last two years I believe we're about 13 and 15 so it's there's some relative steadiness but these highest cost claimants are part of that and that's actually been one of the strategies we've looked at in our last renewal for stop-loss insurance where that deductible has increased next year to 400,000 to help buy down some of that premium looking at our risk factor because we will rebid that every few years just like all of our insurance services to make sure that we're getting the the best deal that we can. So that's the summary takeaway on the [01:05:24] expenditure side. On the revenue side, really those revenues come from, in Mr. Redding's slide, the employer and employee contributions. So this is a slide the school board saw back in December that speaks to the history of how these have changed over time. So moving left to right, I'll start with the employee side where we can see that from, it's in the footnote, from 2018 to 2022, there was not an increase to the employee premiums during that period. I don't have the the benchmark data for what that was, but talking to anecdotally, that was pretty unusual as an employer to go for that long of a stretch without an employee rate change. What we have seen in the [01:06:04] employee share increase now with that 7, 10, and 18, that has been increasing more. And then with the additional funding of 24, if that's where we end up in playing year 26, but there's been a long time where that employee share has not kept up with that 16% average growth. On the employer side, we see a similar story though the employer share has been increasing has not been until the most recently in the current plan year and again into next year where we're exceeding what has been that 16 average so we can think about what this looks like in total expenditures are growing about 16 a year revenues are not keeping up so we have been drawing down that fund balance over time [01:06:43] which is the next slide that i want to speak to in terms of where are we because as mr reddian spoke to uh when you're self-insured you want to have the healthy fund balance to make sure you can ride out those tough years so within things even out over time so this slide puts together the revenue side and the expenditures together what this looks like in each plan year if we look at that that health fund what were all the actual revenues received what were all of the actual expenditures that went out the door what was the net impact of this fund and this includes if we there were any one-time transfers in the fund if there were any employee rate holidays which [01:07:21] happened all of that is reflected the one thing i adjusted in this chart noted here is that in 2024 it was funded not through rates but a one-time contribution of 1.7 million split among all the partners for the startup cost in the clinic that's the uh the only item i did not note in 24 because it really would just be money in money out to that specific project but to walk ourselves left to right we can see in 2020 this fund did have a positive experience but that's not because we're a really healthy organization that's the impact of the pandemic not being able to go to the doctor [01:07:52] by choice or medical providers not being able to schedule those so as it was predicted in 2021 we did have a kind of a bounce back year where a lot of catch-up procedures other visits began to happen and we can see that that was the first year where the actual expenditures greatly exceeded the actual revenues what we have seen though is that has persisted to varying degrees over the last three years. So this is not just a one year of a bounce back from the pandemic. This is not one year of high-cost claimants. This is not one year of just the impact of rate increases. It's been [01:08:30] that slow and steady, really, result of all of those things coming together. Now, as Mr. Redding mentioned, the county and the schools have been working together to, in the past, you know, what do we need to do differently with the wellness incentive programs? What do we need to do differently with the strategy of the clinic and those things have started before now but it's taken a while to get those to implement to begin to do some things to help turn the tide in this particular outlook so to speak to the actual fund balance that is available uh the the policy that the schools and county government manage to is to have a minimum of 17 fund balance in that fund just as a best [01:09:07] practice that's about two months of expenditures for the year the maximum amount would be four four percent. Now for those who have been on the board or a while or have been with the organization a while may recall that at the end of plan year 19 we have we had a very different experience. [01:09:24] There was a fund balance of just under 17 million which amazingly was 51 percent of that plan year 20 budget. That is a fund balance that was well above the policy and the strategy and part with our benefits consultant advising us to draw that down through premium holidays rate decisions. So there is a reason some of those rates didn't change during that time as they were. What was not anticipated is certainly the change of the 16 percent expenditures and all those collective impacts that we've been talking about. Something else I want to point out that Ms. Anne Drake reminds me of is when she started at the county about four or five years ago our health fund [01:10:00] expenditures were in the ballpark of about 30 million dollars. 16 percent growth year over year compounds very quickly and as we talked earlier we had 54 million so we can see at 16 million being about half of the fund balance that was a 32 million dollar fund our health care costs have now grown to be a total of 54 million so starting from that point at the end of playing year 19 working to the end of playing year 24 we are now down to a three million dollar balance or 4.7 that is a uh still good to have a balance but that is a very small balance it would be very challenging should there be an additional year uh for uh to absorb that without having to impact [01:10:40] outside of the health fund. So part of that speaks to the strategy of the one-time infusion along with the 24% rates. And it's not on the slide, but if projections all else being equal, that infusion happens, we would end up with a fund balance in the 10 to 12% range over the next two years. So I also want to make sure the board understands these recommendations are not a one-year fix. This is trying to move us in the right direction so that we're not in a position where we've overcorrected in one year in either direction. So my second to last slide is just to acknowledge the employee [01:11:15] clinic. This is both, it's really, I think of it as a two-pronged approach. And I know Mr. Redding has spent time with the board on this before, so I'll be brief. But a lot of this has provided an improved access to employees as a benefit. I know that we've seen in county government, I'm sure this exists in the public schools, where we're able to recruit qualified staff from across the country. They come here and they cannot get established with a physician, which has all sorts of impacts. That is no longer the barrier that it once was. It's also can be the immediate impact where if, you know, for example, I need to see my primary doctor in a timely manner and I can't get in, I have an option now available that's not urgent care over the emergency room, which will [01:11:55] be a much higher cost to myself and to the county than the employee clinic would be. So just for an update, we're just a few weeks in here. The first two weeks, there were 99 visits to the existing clinic the first one is open the second one will open in a few months 62 of those came from public schools employees and dependents and we also have saturday hours for flexibility every single one of those saturday slots has been utilized so it's very early this shows that there really was demand for the service out there and as we get further into the clinic we'll get the data we'll monitor [01:12:29] and see how this plays out over time so just to clarify because the question i've received already from some of our partners how does this clinic impact our rates in plan year 25 and plan year 26 and the answer is really there is none because there is in the first year a little bit of a net cost however we plan for that in our fund balance because we know in the long term as the clinic is able to it can't guarantee will decline our cost but will slow the rate of growth that we have in those expenses so that uh the 24 percent of the nine million is not uh is driven by the is not driven by the clinic but that is one of the things that will put us on the path [01:13:08] to a more long-term steady future in the health fund as that has continued to be utilized so to recap kind of these questions i went back to at the start you know we have this very significant cost driver for county government schools and our partners of the 24 and the nine million infusion the average annual expenditure so first question how have those expenditures grown over time the average annual expenditure growth has been 16% over the last four years. That is, I had the word driven by high-cost claimants, I would say strongly contributed to by high-cost claimants, because [01:13:43] even without those, we do have a significant increase in medical inflation. Next, looking at the revenue side, we have raised rates, but they have not kept up with that 16%. The cumulative result of all of that is that our fund balance over time has drawn down to below a 5% level, just $3 million. And then the impact of the clinic, the short-term impact on rates is that there is none. That does not affect the recommendation of 24% for plan year 26. But the long-term, knowing that that provides both more effective cost control, but not even the long-term, we have the immediate benefit right now to employees who may need service. They have more [01:14:21] access than they did in January. So I'll be happy to answer any questions. And I may ask Mr. Redding Ms. Kumazawa or perhaps Ms. Andrick, depending on where the board's interest is. But I wanted to provide that as an overview for the different parts of this, and I'll be happy to answer any questions. And anything I can't answer tonight, we'll certainly give us a follow-up. Could you just go back? I think it's two slides, just with the minimum/maximum. So does the policy state it's two months of expenditures of the previous year? I'm just curious where that number is taken from? [01:14:56] Yeah, so it would be, it's, yeah, of the plan year budget. So if it was a $100 million health fund, we would want to have a $17 million fund balance as a level, and no more than 33 million in that hypothetical example. Those numbers are much higher than it actually is. Okay, right. And can you just, just in follow-up, give us kind of based on the numbers we have now, what those minimum maximum numbers would be and where based on this if it's approved where we would we anticipating i know it's kind of ongoing we would be at the end of plan year 25 just so we could kind of excuse [01:15:33] then you noted that this is a probably a two-year fix and then so where we would be not right now but just as a follow-up yeah i'll uh restate this part but i can provide it as a follow-up we would be in for end of plan year 25 and 26 and that 10 to 12 range of fund balance but we can provide the the exact dollars and how that plays out thank you sure any questions down [01:15:59] this way i love the clinic i was there for the opening and i i do see how it will improve access but in terms of immediate or even intermediate cost savings i mean part of part of this will be out of the woodwork phenomenon where people who might not have sought care at all are now seeking care and how can we incentivize some of our high-cost claimants to utilize the clinic as opposed to I mean if assuming that that care is appropriate of course [01:16:38] yes and I mentioned we have some wellness incentives we're putting in place the last year was around just you know kind of having sort of an annual wellness check I don't know if mr. Redden would you want to speak to or miss and Drake the the wellness and benefit we have now thank you yeah there is a an incentive that is part of the clinic opening and that is for health sorry for employees on our health plan to do basically a wellness exam it's nicknamed the PHA but they will basically get some labs done on their [01:17:11] blood draw they will answer a survey of health behaviors and health risks and a general physical exam and as a result of that they receive $100 but they also get the benefit of follow-up so if my blood work shows my cholesterol is in a risky range the doctor or the nurse practitioner because our clinic is staffed with a registered dietitian can refer us to that dietitian who can work with me around changing some of my eating choices to benefit my diet and reduce my cholesterol cholesterol medications lead to an herb sorry high [01:17:48] cholesterol leads to a number of health risks and dangers managing that prevents all of those potential complications and costs to our plan so that's that's the primary incentive we're using right now thank you any other questions about the health plan thank you both thank you we are at the point in the agenda where we [01:18:23] could take a break or we can why don't we take a 10-minute break let's come [01:18:29] back at 8 o'clock let's get back to work hello hello okay why don't we get [01:30:17] stuck it doesn't sound like it hello hello hello I don't think it's on we are back in session now miss kumazawa lead the way all right um so the last portion of our work session will be um a walk through the budget document we're sitting in a very kind of formal space [01:30:56] but this i want this to be informal um throughout the sections jump and interrupt me and ask me questions while we're on the topic i think that would be the most efficient way to go about it um so i saw everyone brought their budget books nice job usually i have to bring a spare and bring one in so christine had them at our desk okay take the credit give all credit to christine thank you christine um the budget document has seven sections as you will see the way that this presentation is organized is by section so we'll generally go front to back [01:31:34] and then you'll see that the tabs in your binders correspond with the colors And then you'll also see that we have a page number, usually in the upper right corner so that you can find exactly where I am in the book. So the slides are just here to guide us so you know where we are in the book, but really the book is the presentation for that. [01:31:57] You should also have some sticky tabs and post-its. The paper everything's printed on is easily writable, so just write directly in the book. It's yours to keep. You can mark it with tabs if you want to go back and find it later. And then also if I go too fast, just tell me to slow down. [01:32:16] So I'm just gonna go through from the beginning and point out some of the items that might be of most interest to you. The first is the message from the superintendent, which is on page A9. So this is more of a qualitative look at our budget, what this means for the board, you all, what it means for the public and why the work that's in the book matters. [01:32:39] There will be a message that will be written from you to the Board of Supervisors as a next step. So as we work through the budget, start thinking about what the budget means to you and how you would like to present it to the Board of Supervisors. [01:32:55] Every section is lettered, and the page numbers, as you can see, have a letter and then a number. So A9 as a first step, you can see where the letter is. [01:33:12] So section A. In section A, you will find a lot of information our school division some of it is not necessarily financially related but the purpose of a budget document is to provide a plan for the school division the financial plan kind of is the underlying piece of the overall plan but it's important to keep in mind well what who who are who are who's being served by the budget so there's information about our employees about our students and the accomplishments of the division you'll also find the budget development [01:33:48] calendar. And I'll just note that we did postpone last week's work session and combined it to this week. So this week is called work session number one, and there will only be two work sessions rather than three. So getting into the budget, the first place you'll find the highest level of budget information is on page A29. And this overview is talking specifically about our school [01:34:23] fund so we'll talk about the total budget a little bit later but because the school fund is our day to day operating fund that finances our day-to-day operations that reaches most of our students and employees we do tend to focus on that and this is also the piece that's publicly funded with local and state tax dollars so you will typically also see the 25 adopted budget and the proposed budget or the draft funding request for next year any changes that you see typically throughout the document will be comparing budget to budget and that's really the best way to compare as of this [01:35:01] point as we are still in the current year and we don't know how the year is ending so it doesn't make sense to compare part of a year to a whole year so we want to look at the whole year's budget versus the draft the other piece to note is that whenever we talk about this year's budget we're talking about the original adopted budget that may be different from the current appropriated budget as you're aware we make budget amendments throughout the year and again that is ongoing so the snapshot in time to which we're comparing our budget is the original or the adopted budget for fy25 i'll talk about the revenues a little bit later and i'll provide an update on how this is [01:35:38] different so the numbers for the revenues are outdated as of yesterday but i'll go over that and then the bottom part of the table shows our expenditures by the time that we adopt a budget in early May those revenues and expenditures we'll need to balance any questions just on the pay 829 not on the screen show on the page it also shows the difference so I'm going to state the obvious here is a gap of 7.8 million [01:36:10] with the new newly updated revenue that gap is now 5 million can you tell us those new numbers again that we heard yes I will when I loop back on here yes that's actually a good place to do that I was gonna say I'll get to it later but this is the first kind of overview so the local the first line where it says local that is mostly the local transfer but it does include some other earned [01:36:48] revenues that we have as a school division but you could add 2.8 million to the 209.4 and that would be the new amount which would be I don't have the numbers off the top of it just add 2.8 million yeah and then this also doesn't show the the transfers I was talking about with the health care fund if we continue with the recommendation it means that there would be a six million dollar revenue in that's currently not shown here that would increase in the [01:37:24] green and then also six million in the orange so it'll make our budget look larger than it might be but we can talk about that okay my question yeah why isn't the increase shown at the bottom like the 281 million but the draft is it because it's still oh the gap yeah the gap oh I was just this is like the 209 million is more than that doesn't include what the Board of Supervisors [01:37:59] yesterday right it does not yes but also the numbers won't matter and I'll go into revenues a little bit more we do have other local revenues that are included in this number that's outside of the transfer so the numbers don't tie up exactly but we'll be providing revisions more official revisions I guess I should ask about federal funding and the risk of losing said funding do we build that into the budget as a potential risk at this point let's I will also spend some time on [01:38:37] that so I can talk about what we have later on and then maybe after that perfect thank you okay so the other focus point of section a is that it out it kind of summarizes what's changing so it doesn't necessarily provide a very detailed breakdown of what is in the FY 26 proposed requests it really focuses on the change because I feel like that's more understandable to people what's the difference so on page 832 you'll see a [01:39:11] summary of what we're proposing to change by various categories a lot of this is very technical in nature and it's has they have explanations on the following pages so 832 is a list of everything the total of nineteen point million dollars that represents the increase in expenditures so the change from the FY25 adopted budget to the FY26 funding request is nineteen point five million dollars and then you can see exactly how that change is broken out [01:39:43] some examples of these main categories so within baseline adjustment these are baseline staffing and operating adjustments to maintain exactly where we are so what we do is we build a zero base budget each year we budget in every single employee that's our largest cost and we say how much does that employee cost we take current salary assumptions current health care benefit elections current retirement choices that they make and we develop a budget from scratch [01:40:22] that says okay this is what our workforce is costing us and so that change from year to year is 2.6 million there are other changes but those are that's the driver and there and this number is larger than we would typically anticipate, and that's largely driven by the plan year 25 health care rate increase that we saw of 26%. We had not fully budgeted for that in the 25 adopted budget, and so it's an adjustment to account for the cost increase that we saw last month. That's already in the current year that [01:40:59] we're experiencing. So when we move into non-discretionary changes, those are changes that are anticipated to be changes between this year and next year. So the health care rate change from plan year 25 to 26, that's a future change as part of the fiscal year 26 adopted budget. [01:41:18] So that cost is included as part of a non-discretionary change. So that's one piece. Inflation is included as a non-discretionary change as we're maintaining service levels. It's just that the cost of providing that same service has gone up. [01:41:35] And then also enrollment growth, which is in a similar category, because in order to maintain our staffing ratios, as the number of kids grow, we must grow our employee group to match the service level in terms of our staffing ratios. [01:41:50] The third category is service reductions. And I'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment. But there's a list of what is included the $2.7 million as a response to limited revenues. And then finally learning for all proposals. So these are the strategic investments, new investments that are proposed as part of the draft funding request. And these are the items that have more detailed descriptions, a logic model, and the impact that that new investment will have. [01:42:22] Any questions about these categories and what goes where? Are we going to be going into detail on any of these or should I ask questions now? any of the what or should i ask questions now well like for one what is why do we have a 24 health care increase rate increase so that i mean that all ties into the presentation from andy it's really about replenishing the reserve um that has been drawn down and then how do we make sure we're not in the same position again in four years what what is the and you may not have that [01:43:00] answer i'm not saying it's you but what got us into this position i mean i heard the presentation but i am not convinced that it wasn't complete like that we're not going to be in this position again in a couple of years where we just deplete the reserve and then yeah i mean we do model the many out years of what what the health care fund will look like so as with any long-term planning it's our best guess based on historical activity what it might look like we do anticipate in the current long-term projection we do anticipate these high increases for a couple of years but [01:43:39] then it should taper out that is what we're predicting at as of now um i should have flipped this so this is a repeat of dr haas's presentation from last week we heard health care was increasing We heard a little bit about why. [01:44:02] Maybe we can follow up with more details on what, you know, the more the long-term future will look like. But if you look at the last two years, if you take both of those plan year 25 and plan year 26 increases, we are seeing a 54% increase from the budget from last year to the projected budget for next year. [01:44:24] And you can find information on this. A-35 has a little bit of information, but this is one area where we would jump around. We do have more information about health care and the rates on page C-18. Do you recall how much -- I know we even talked about the reserves last year. [01:44:47] How much did we put in last year to boost the reserves? You don't have to answer right now. It was the amount, I believe, above our 2% that we put in. I don't remember the exact number. It was what we had above, in terms of our projected fund balance, it was what we had above 2%. [01:45:06] We'll get you the number. So the other driver of expenditure increases that I mentioned is enrollment growth. This is also a chart that you saw from last week. [01:45:25] You can find, again, the cost of the growth is on page A35 at $1.3 million. That includes maintaining our ratios, our current staffing standards, and then it also includes some startup funding to anticipate the opening of the ACE Academy at Lambs Lane, which is due to growth to address our student growth. [01:45:56] These enrollment numbers, so I'll refer a lot to our supplemental materials. So the pink section, the supplemental materials, those are the kind of the data that's driving lot of the decisions so that's where you'll you'll find kind of the numbers and the formulas and so the first item in that section is the enrollment projection for next year and that's the primary driver of how resources are allocated and that's on page g2 you'll on that [01:46:27] page you'll find the projection by school and by grade level and that's 13 802 is our projection for next year um so i'll just spend a moment to talk about the service reductions um there's 2.7 million dollars proposed in reductions as a result of our limited revenues these are in addition to all the cuts that you all approved for the current budget so central office and department-based [01:47:06] positions are reduced by 476 000 the elimination of the foreign language and elementary schools program is eliminated at $690,000 the elimination of the National Defense Cadet Corps program the restructuring of the freshman seminar to freshman advisory and the reduced budget for guaranteed field experiences I wanted to clarify that item since there was some public comment on it and clarify that the current program that we have for guaranteed field guaranteed field experience remains the same so we are maintaining what we have so all the [01:47:43] field experiences that are planned for our elementary school students to go to these fun places are still accounted and budgeted for in the draft funding request. What's being reduced is we had budgeted to expand that field experiences out to higher grades, to high schools. And so this reduction doesn't allow for the expansion, the expanded program at higher grade levels. So that's what the reduction represents. There are opportunities for our middle and high school students to have field experiences that are budgeted from other places that aren't part of this budget line item so this line item is reducing [01:48:19] the expansion of the current program that we have but maintaining what we have right now the next item is fewer student safety coach positions this represents three positions in high schools and then the last item is to reduce our furniture replacement program in half by $600,000 so that adds up to the 2.7 million. I have a couple of questions on this first of all on the FLESS program I would like some more information on that that's considered a special and so our [01:48:59] teachers going to still get their planning time and how will that work making sure that that is covered I'm also I thought tonight's public comment was and emails have been worth considering I guess I will say and then And on the student safety coach positions, didn't, if I'm not mistaken, Ralph Bradley say that that's actually a zero, so it's not actually negative 250, because right here it says negative 250, but then we're filling it with SROs, and it zeroes out? [01:49:37] Right. It zeroes out when you combine this reduction, which is related to the SRO addition. So together, those are zero. That just is kind of misleading, because it makes it seem like we're making cuts when we're not, really. So it would be helpful to say, yes, we're cutting these positions, but if we're talking about what the net is, it's not cutting any of that $5 million deficit. [01:50:00] I think it would also be helpful to know what schools are affected by the elimination of the FLESS program. And I'd like to add what other programs were considered in place of it. [01:50:19] And I think it's important to look at, with that, what the correlation is between stronger test scores in all of those schools and having a foreign language program because um i think that there could be a strong correlation and as we're trying to get scores up in our other schools um it may be worth looking at as well yes was that program started before we were big on logic models and looking at outcomes and things like that where do we have that data on the the program was started before we it had no goals when it was established it was just hasn't been tracked since then no it [01:50:57] hasn't and in fact it was at many elementary schools and last year when we had the budget crunch we offered schools the opportunity to do a waiver for their FLESS program and use it for other staffing and all the other schools have abandoned the FLESS program these schools retained it because they wanted to have grade-level positions reading intervention positions other positions that would help contribute to the core program in a more direct way. [01:51:34] So we haven't tracked really anything with the FLES program because it's what we call a legacy program. It was started before we even really used the strategic plan. I wasn't on the cabinet. Nobody on this board was around at that time. [01:51:51] We just weren't doing business that way. And I will also add the intent of the next work session is to talk both about the reductions and the learning for all proposals. and we'll have staff here today so we'll do our best to answer clarifying questions okay well i'm i would still like to ask them so that we have the answers for next week um yeah thank you um and i think it's it would be important to note how many students are being affected by cutting these programs um because when you do look at the budget the spending per student at all of [01:52:23] these schools does fall in the very bottom um of our schools i'll also note that um i did ask earlier this week how much it would cost to expand the program to all of our elementary schools I believe it was 1.8 million on top of the 690,000 or so it would be 2.5 million for it to be equitably spread thank you so I'm as miss Schmidt mentioned we will go into these items in more detail in terms of [01:52:58] the content I don't think anybody here doubts the value and learning foreign at a young age no I'm not arguing that but it seems like even more of an unfair cut now knowing that these schools chose to keep in and now they're being affected so I just think it's worth looking into so at the end of section a are the proposals so we have five proposals in this funding request and these go into a lot more depth into what that entails so this is new investments [01:53:35] they include a description the owners how that change will be managed as well as the logic models that includes inputs activities outputs and outcomes so what will we accomplish by this new funding so I encourage you all to read those in detail and ask questions this is also not just an opportunity to maybe change the budget but also change how we're measuring things so we're welcome feedback in these areas and uh we will have staff um at the next work session for each of those [01:54:10] proposals so any advanced questions would be helpful so that we can prepare and address them correctly do you that tonight but just how would you just like us to send those so they're so um we are capturing everything um through budget at k-12 admiral.org okay so we should just send those there what's that for for school board you want us to just send all those questions in advance there and by when would you like all those questions so the earlier you get them to us the earlier response I guess yeah it's an ongoing process and then [01:54:48] just to respond to Ms. Spillman the SRO proposal is also in here and that has a cost attached to it at $252,000 so that's how we are showing kind of yes there's a reduction but then there's a cost to that SRO proposal so if there's a better way to show it all but that um yeah i'm open to hearing how we can show it better but the justification is that we show the increase and we show the decrease and we try to do our best to explain that they're connected yeah um i do have a and i will submit questions but um [01:55:24] specifically with the flest program and with isc i do want to express my frustration in that emails have gone out either to the entire school district or to and for ISC and to the specific elementary schools about these programs being cut or added and our budget has not been finalized and so that really bothers me from a standpoint of an email going out to everyone telling them that ISC is being expanded and we're doing this but it hasn't been approved by the school board this is by no means a rubber stamp worse up until tonight we were seven million dollars [01:55:59] over budget so to get an email that says that we are moving forward with these things when we have yet to discuss it seems awfully misleading and when schools are getting principals are sending out emails with with people from central office saying that we're cutting our language programs next year before that's been decided by the school board seems a little preemptive and I would prefer us to be able to work through these things and approve a budget before emails go out saying that we are doing something in our school district that [01:56:33] hasn't been approved and specifically with ISC my son attends ISC so that it made it seem like it was a new program and it's not but I have not been able to find what the budget has been for the last two years for ISC and what the difference is going to be for this expansion with taking on prep so I I'd really like to know how much more money we're spending by taking on an ISC, how long [01:57:01] it's going to take us to make up to versus sending those kids out to other schools, and what the current cost per student is, and then what the expected cost per student is going to be with the anticipated enrollment, if that goes through. [01:57:25] I can answer part of your question now. page a 46 there is a detailed breakdown of exactly a 46 a 46 yes 46 of the net so what we show is the net for this proposal the increase of six hundred and forty eight thousand dollars so that's the new cost of the change and the way that's broken out is there are a lot of pieces changing within that and so the bullet points in the middle of that page explain what's changing we're adding [01:58:00] 15.5 FTE and that would cost 15 million dollars but there are areas we're saving because of the restructure so you kind of walk down line by line the biggest item on there to note is the elimination of the tuition payment that we currently pay to prep that goes away and that's really the bulk of what's funding our new program so it but and then for per pupil funding we don't have that calculation but we can get that. I think that that's something that would be helpful in a lot of these programs that we're talking about cutting or adding. What is it going to cost per [01:58:39] student? Not just the overall cost because as we're looking at enrollment issues with the centers and the studios, what does that look like if we do get to our enrollment numbers or if we're not meeting them, how much more we're spending per student on each of these programs? Thank you. [01:58:56] Good questions. Okay. With the guaranteed field experiences, are those trips related to the curriculum, like in history or anything? Yes. Okay. So that would be for all of the schools? [01:59:12] For all elementary school students, yes. Okay. So I'm going to move next to revenue, so we'll spend a little bit of time on that. So that's on the next tab. This slide is a repeat from last week. [01:59:29] This is our total budget. It's a little bit different from the school fund, and you won't find this in the book because there's a reason why we separate the school fund and special revenue funds. If you were to add up our school fund and our special revenue funds, make adjustments for transfers between the funds, so we're not double counting money, the total budget is $304 million. [01:59:51] Of that, you can see it's still a majority locally funded, 71%, 25% state, and 4% federal. this is kind of the big picture of how are we funded what is the impact of federal funding and i will talk more about the special revenue funds and this federal funding when we get to the special revenue fund section section b focuses specifically on the school fund only as that is our largest fund and it's our day-to-day operating fund so if you home in on that um you can see the [02:00:26] split you can see the federal slice becomes much smaller because there's only only one very specific revenue stream that we budget into the school fund the local revenues is mostly made up of the local government transfer so that's what that amount represents so let's talk about that a little bit more whoops actually first if you flip the page you'll see a division level per pupil summary so all this does is it takes our enrollment every year and then it looks at our budget [02:01:00] actual for a couple years then adopted and draft it just divides the budget by the number of students we have you can see that our cost per pupil has grown every year including the proposed funding requests we're now at twenty thousand dollars per pupil which is a three percent increase over the 25 adopted budget right so going back to the local revenues the local government transfer is established per formula, as I've mentioned, where there's a pool of shared [02:01:38] tax revenues. And after certain adjustments are made, we receive 54% of the increase from year to year. 36% goes to county general operations and 10% goes to CIP and debt service. So again, just to repeat from earlier, what you see in the budget book is no longer up to date. We are anticipating $2.8 million above what is in the book in terms of our local revenues. We don't talk [02:02:14] much about the county's budget document, but it has a lot of great information in it. My favorite page is this one. It's on page 232, but this is where you can see exactly how they calculate our share of those revenues, and it's a significant amount. This is essentially funding our budget so I think it's important to understand and and on this page it's too small for you to read here but if you're able to go to it later you can see how the new tax rates are impacting us how and how it's dedicated to other areas [02:02:49] you can see what part is split in the 10 54 36 percent split and then you'll be able to track the total transfer amount the 209.3 million dollars that then ties to our revenue amount for that transfer of 209.3 million dollars are there any questions about the formula or the split would you just like giving us a copy of that when you do updates next week yes would it be possible to get the fund balances as well not just what's being spent from them the fund balance is for [02:03:24] on the like for the the trans well I guess from the can you go back like our totals fun our fund balance yeah yeah we can get yeah just so we can like as we're we're talking about what we're spending from our funds but I would love to just see what the total balance where we are yeah yep [02:03:56] okay thank you sorry I got I got myself lost all right so our next largest source of revenue is the state revenue. This begins on page B11. State revenue is largely driven by enrollment or average daily membership. And as your ADM goes up, as you can see in the formula that's kind of [02:04:35] boxed in, your total revenue will go up as well. And so our ADM for next year is projected to be 13,602. This is a little bit different from the September 30th projection you see because there are some adjustments made in that formula. [02:04:57] The other piece for state funding, as you are aware, is the Local Composite Index. So again, if you're interested, page G30 shows you the exact calculation for how the state comes up with our LCI of .6904. [02:05:14] page b10 you'll see well what has the trend been and you can see that every two years is the same because it's based on a biennial benchmark and so we're in the second year of this lci which is the highest we've had and so that's the contributing factor to our depressed state revenues as a reminder this is our projection for if our lci had not changed we would be about receiving about 10 million dollars per year so you can see how the dark blue lines is what we're actually projecting [02:05:53] and these numbers are based on the senate and house amended 2024 to 2026 crossover budget so this is not a finalized budget this is just the most recent budget that we have available to us and that's what's used in the funding requests do we have any sense as to say two years from now what we'll be looking at with lci and um as lci seems to be a problem is there any hope of that ever changing at the state level perhaps our with our representatives they were lobbying for it yeah yeah that the well we're all aware of the jlark report and the recommendations that came out of [02:06:31] that uh it seemed from the let's see we had our our winter vast meeting uh where secretary gadara was in that meeting just rosalind's nodding because she was on that it was a zoom meeting so we're uh because of the weather so my read on the way they were answering questions at that meeting it really sounded like they were dragging their feet that the governor was uh proposing i think a million dollars to a task force to continue to study it but they weren't [02:07:08] going to do anything during at least my take is they're not going to do anything while he's still the governor um i was just anecdotally for whatever it's worth i left that meeting thinking they weren't going to do anything with the support cap but then it came up through the legislature and it it's now part of the crossover budget is to address the support cap that's why we actually got a little bump in our state funding before i did the presentation so that was i was pleased about that because some superintendents were asking even though you're not going to do change [02:07:44] things with the jlark report would you do something with the support cap and she also answered negatively to that now regarding um so i do think with uh you know potential changing of the guard you know as things move forward with a different administration i think there there is momentum and there's a lot of conversation and work going on particularly on uh in talking to senator deeds about it that there's a lot of momentum in the education committee to address the local composite index so i do think we will see change i would say before the end of this [02:08:24] decade i think um it we cannot um accurately predict what the lci will be the bet i would say the best way to predict it is like so right now it's 2025 and we know our property values are increasing that is one factor in of the three factors of our local wealth so if it's increasing then it could be that two years from now our lci will also increase it sounds simple to do that and it is because other places depending on what other places do like let's say [02:09:02] another several school systems decrease in value well ours could go up even higher than it was going to go up it could be other places all go up a lot more and even though we increased we dropped because it's one pie and so that every time they do it there's winners and losers it so if it was just a budget that they built annually and said how much money do we need for schools and then they built the budget around it we could do it but what they do is they bring in all the revenue make a pie out of it and then they say oh when you win your your rate went up less your local [02:09:40] property value went up less your adjusted gross income the other big indicator for us that's that has been impactful is adjusted gross income locally that one of there was a recent news story that i sent out to the cabinet and i think it said it was a couple months ago now but the that wealthy people are moving here an increased rate from northern virginia because during the pandemic they found that they weren't going to the office now that could be it could have been disastrous now who knows but um they are they're working from here and they're working in other [02:10:17] places where it's like we even though we're really expensive we're a lot less expensive than northern virginia so they're working from here they're coming from other places and they're bringing that adjusted gross income with them but we don't have access to it so i know that was a long answer but to say that it's very hard to predict what it will be except my prediction is that locally our lci will just keep going up because of that adjusted gross income and because our property values go up we are 14th in the state now in terms of the rate of our lci if you take all of the eight school systems above us that are all truncated at 0.8 which is where [02:10:57] the state caps is where i think we're fourth or fifth in the state uh the city is even higher than we are. They're a 0.77. I was really surprised the other day when I looked in there and saw just how how high they are. So this area is becoming is going to be one of those districts at some point where it's I think will be capped at 0.8. Now there's advantages to that because then once you get above 0.8 you could be someday you could be a 0.9 whatever it won't matter you're going to get the same amount of funding from the state so you actually don't fluctuate that much from year to [02:11:33] year other than an increased rate that the state would do based on the governor's budget it just seems like a lot of work and a lot of good things were was revealed in that jlark report and yeah i'm not just wondering like what do we do with the information that we got from that report or does it just continue to sit there yeah i think they're going to nibble around the edges of it until we have a change of real change of philosophy at the at the at the governor level i think [02:12:02] I raised this week with Cree Deeds as well at the groundbreaking for the school, and they're studying it, but he said the real barrier is going to be where are they going to fund the money to make the changes that they need to do across the board, not just in the LCI, but in all of those recommendations. [02:12:26] They've recognized the need for the past 30 years to change it, and we've gone through different flavors of governors, and nobody's changed it. Yeah, to your point, and I won't prolong it, but I do think the biggest issue is Virginia's philosophy around funding education, that we live in a low tax, low service state, education is a service, and they fund it at a very low rate, and it's well recognized that if the recommendations from the JLARC report were implemented, I mean, the funding would be on a magnitude of that. [02:13:03] Yeah, the JLARC study provided that if Virginia, which is in the bottom quartile in per pupil investment, was just raised to the national median, that it would be $1,900 more per student and about $26 million for us as a school division. [02:13:24] And we could probably find use for $25 extra million a year. I think we could. Now that you're a bit oriented with the book and flipping through, and given the time, I'm going to move more quickly. [02:13:42] So if you have questions, speak out. So federal revenues, as I mentioned, the school fund only receives a small portion of total federal revenues in the school fund. That's what you see on B20. In this case, it's a Medicaid reimbursement. [02:13:58] So we provide services and we get reimbursed from federal funds. That amount is being adjusted to reflect historical receipts. It's not being adjusted for any other reason. Transfers from special revenue funds. So we do budget in transfers from our own special revenue funds to help support our school fund budget. [02:14:20] For example, we budget a transfer from child nutrition to cover kind of overhead or administrative services that we provide for that fund. we are one division we have one fund for child nutrition but for them to pay for kind of that overhead that's the charge you'll also see some other smaller transfers as part of that revenue so the next section is school fund expenditures so this is a fairly short section it kind of gives a summary overview of expenditures as our large our budget is large and complex this the [02:14:56] this section aims to kind of provide that summary view of what's in the budget not not not not not necessarily the change like in section a but what is in the FY 26 funding requests we do have a fairly robust budget code structure so you might you might hear me refer to some of these items these are more technical in nature so I'll try to stay away from that but add a very high level as I mentioned we have a total school budget that was the three hundred [02:15:30] four million dollars in expenditures. Of that we have a school fund and special revenue funds. Within the school fund, because it's so large, we break it down into two more categories: our schools and our departments. And so the schools have a dedicated section in the book, which is section D. Our departments have a dedicated section, section E. And then our special revenue funds make up section F. [02:15:55] this doughnut chart shows kind of the size of those budgets our school-based budgets make up seventy sixty-seven percent our department-based budget make up twenty three point five percent and our special revenue funds make up about nine percent of that total budget this is an org chart of how expenditures are managed largely by department so you can see you have the school board at the top and the direct reports of the school board and then all the green boxes are actual budgets that are managed within this areas so the numbers you see there [02:16:34] are department codes that we use to track expenditures and you can see how within the organizational structure the oversight areas for each of those budgets so this is on page c4 also this actual visuals on a16 going back into school fund expenditures throughout sections D E and F you will see this the proposed expenditures broken down in two different ways so the first way you'll see every budget is by expense type so this is what is that budget going towards [02:17:12] is it going towards salaries benefits other wages operations or transfers so that's what is it paying for and then the other way is by state reporting category also known as functional area or program area and so this is the same expenditure budget but broken down by function and so you can see that instruction makes up 71% of what the expanded expenses pay for and then you can see some of the other categories by which we report both of the charts make up two hundred and eighty eight point nine million dollars in expenditures [02:17:44] section D so now within the school fund as I mentioned that's broken down by schools and departments we'll start first with the schools which is our largest area so the way we develop school budgets it's also a kind of a zero-based budgeting approach is that we first start with the enrollment projection so every fall I usually stand here and I provide an update on what our enrollment projection is that's really the first step in the budget process because that drives the resource allocation so as I mentioned you can [02:18:19] find those on page g2 what you can also find in that supplemental area is the staffing standards so we take the enrollment projection at the in the most simplest sense we apply the established formula of how we allocate resources so for example k3 classroom teacher for every 20.05 students what results what the actual FTE allocation is or what the actual FTE we budget for that school is also in section G it's called school-based staffing allocation so you can see in this little screenshot we have every school listed and then we [02:18:59] have all their statistics that we use that are the inputs and then their base classroom teachers so Agner is allocated 21.89 base classroom teachers and then they're allocated an additional 3.4 for reducing class size so the base classroom staffing standard is a ratio of the number of students and then we have other staffing standard areas for example reducing class size depending on demographics of the school there's a different formula for additional staffing you'll see there's many many columns of different staffing areas and if you're interested or curious about that [02:19:37] might encourage you to look at it ask questions and if again if it's confusing and there's room for showing it better please let me know um so staffing allocations make up 94 of a school's budget so that's an average if you added up all the school budgets together took their divided up what the budget was, 94% of it would go towards staffing or FTE. So this page G20 is what's being budgeted. Some smaller pieces that schools get on top of that FTE allocation is an operating budget [02:20:13] allocation. That's on page G25. So this is just for renting copiers, buying paper, buying office supplies, and kind of those classroom materials that are needed in every school. That's what the operating budget allocation is. And then there's also a supplemental pay allocation. So this is for additional pay beyond FTE costs. So we talk about other wages a lot in that pie chart. This is what other wages is. It's paying for overtime, paying for temporary work, and paying for [02:20:46] substitute teachers. That's the main driver under supplemental pay. So when you take all of that, that's really what's being shown in section D. So when you just look at section D, it's hard to kind of interpret or decipher the numbers but now you know how we come up with those numbers as I mentioned in a previous slide we show a school budget in two different ways the first one is by expense type so and then you can see it over time as well so the expense type is salary other wages benefits and [02:21:21] operations and then the state category report is instruction administration attendance and health technology building services and transportation do Can I explain the $5 million, $5.7 million, I guess, transfer or move to non-departmental from fiscal services? [02:21:45] Where did that come from? And if you can't answer it now, if that's later, that's fine. I just... I'll address that. I'll stop there in the next section when we do department. You said in non-departmental? Oh, yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Yep. I thought you asked if there were any questions on the whole section. [02:22:01] Sorry. Nope. Nope. And if I forget, just shout at me. So those are the school budgets. is a summary so if you were to go to page d11 it gives you a list of all the a list of the school budgets actually it's d12 so just flip the page one more this is just a visual representation of what's shown on page d12 and as you might expect our larger schools have larger budgets and our smaller schools have smaller budgets and you can see how enrollment really drives the size of a [02:22:37] budget. All right, so section E. So again, as a reminder, the school fund has school budgets and department budgets. So we covered schools, now we'll cover departments. As I mentioned, we manage our budgets by these different areas. We have executive services, instruction, human resources, community engagement, communication, strategic planning, operations, and technology. And as I mentioned before, these budgets are tracked by these department codes. This [02:23:14] This is a summary of department budgets. With this, you can't really find a pattern in it the way you can with schools because the way we allocate budgets for departments is very different from schools as there are no student to teacher staffing ratios. [02:23:30] What we do do is we develop a budget for every department, and we say that you cannot go over -- so it is a zero-based budget in that you start at zero and then you're building up your budget. However, there's a ceiling and departments cannot go over what they were previously budgeted and any changes have to be justified. [02:23:52] Those justifications are in section A. So all those technical items that you saw, that is largely driven by department budgets and the changes that they're seeing from year to year. And they're very specific to departments. You can't really treat all the departments in the same way. So, and for example, as I mentioned, the FTE cost for schools was about 94%. If you added up all the department budgets, salary makes up 35% and benefits is 19%. So FTE costs are a little bit over half, but not nearly at the same level as schools. So what's really [02:24:30] driving department budgets are operations and transfers. So you might ask, well, what are those? The operational cost drivers are listed in here. These are categorized by the 10 most common expenditures across all of our departments so you can see the largest cost driver is school facilities so utilities for our school facilities so electrical heating water sewer and refuse costs a transfer to the children's services act contract services the transfer to technology equipment replacement repairs and maintenance voluntary early retirement incentive [02:25:10] program, and a lot of these programs aren't covered the entire division, even those FTEs in the school fund. So this, for example, VRIP, this is a cost that we bear in a department budget, but it's VRIP mostly for our instructional school-based FTEs. Furniture and fixtures, our payment to KTEC for tuition for our students, software licenses, and fuel. So those are our largest drivers. So So going back to the question about transfers, if you -- transfers does make up 11.2% of [02:25:46] our department budget, which is pretty significant. I will point you to page C12. On C12, you'll see exactly what that 11.2% is. [02:26:05] We have transfers mostly living in non-departmental, and it's because you can't really assign a transfer to a department because it's just a movement of money. not really a spending of the money. So we transfer, you can see the largest cost in there is to the equipment replacement program at $2.6 million. We have a $600,000 transfer to learning resources for textbook replacement, and we have $260,000 for vehicle replacement, and then $763,000 for [02:26:39] Bright Stars. So that's another significant cost. That's our local portion of the state grant that funds about half of that program so it's accounted for in the school fund through a transfer but the revenue and expenditure is also accounted for as a special revenue fund so that's where it gets a little bit complex in the interplay between our funds that answer your question Ms. Spillman the transfers yep thank you all right so similarly to schools and we do show department budgets in the same format so on every department page you'll see the budget by [02:27:17] expense type so salary versus operations and then by state category report right so our next section is the green tab special revenue funds and here you will see a similar format of how we break down our revenues and expenditures so we do show here our revenues into our special revenue funds by local state and federal and you can see how federal makes up a large portion of our special [02:27:52] revenue funds. The funding request projects revenues of $28 million, which is an 8.1% increase over the 25 adopted budget. The pie chart is an expenditure summary of how we are spending those funds. 45% for instruction, 35% for food services and non-instruction, and then some smaller slices for the other areas. [02:28:16] Did this change yesterday also? No, this remains the same. So this is a review of the slide from last week about our federal special revenue funds we have budgeted about eleven point five million dollars in federal revenues within our special revenue funds of that eleven point five about ninety percent funds just three programs and they're listed here that's school lunch which provides free and reduced meals IDEA which is a special education program and [02:28:55] and Title I that provides support for direct interventions. So if there were any federal reductions in these areas, this would impact our students directly, and we would require local funding to make up any shortfalls. [02:29:13] I know there's a question on that, so I'll pause. So those were the three major federal programs. We do have some smaller ones here. So you can see the largest ones here, and you can see the size of those. [02:29:30] So IDEA, Title I, Title II, which is a little bit smaller, Carl Perkins, which is a CTE grant, Title III, and then a combination of all the other federal programs are $0.4 million. You said a total of $24 million? [02:29:51] For federal? Yeah. So we have, it's a bit confusing, but we categorize our, because we have so many special revenue funds we categorize them by federal programs state programs local programs and capital replacement each of those funds may have different revenue sources so one way to break it out is by program so these are our federal programs however when you take all of our special revenue funds and you look at what are the federal revenue sources it's 11.5 million and you won't be able [02:30:25] to pull that out of the budget book because it's a combination of child nutrition which is a self-sustaining fund in terms of how we can't talk about it but they do receive a lot of federal funding which is why we're kind of showing it in this way and we don't typically do that so the potential that of local funding that may be required if we were to lose any like lose all our federal funding let's say would be 11 and a half million if if you chose to fund that okay so it's we're not required to provide free lunch but if you said we want to provide free lunch we would have to find the revenue for that [02:31:03] so eleven and a half million out of two hundred and like what is three three hundred four million three okay it's about four percent four percent okay that's what I want to get thank you yep so as I mentioned we the budget book is categorized by program type not necessarily by specific revenue source so the next program type is state program so these are programs supported by the the state that includes bright stars you can see that's the largest portion as I mentioned this we don't get 1.9 million dollars from the state that's just the [02:31:41] total budget for bright stars we just categorize it as a state program and as I mentioned there's a local transfer that we contribute to bright stars combining the local transfer from us and the state revenue that budget is 1.9 million the other categories are Blue Ridge juvenile detention center technology a state fund for technology replacement learning recovery also known as summer school and then the combination of all the smaller grants are about $200,000 so I just wanted to touch on some of our largest self-sustaining programs one is [02:32:19] child nutrition as I mentioned we categorize this as a self-sustaining program but you can see there's federal revenue there's local school revenue there's some state revenue and there's some use of fund balance so there's various sources of revenue make up this specific special revenue fund. So you can see that same 4.4 million dollars that you saw on the previous slide is one piece of the Child Nutrition Fund. What's also in the budget book is a proposal for the prices. So what is what is driving these revenues? And so in this in this budget there's a proposal to increase student breakfast and lunch [02:32:58] price prices in order to cover the expenditures that are projected in this fund another major program that's a special revenue fund is the extended day enrichment programs or EDEP this one as you can see is is completely self sustaining through earned revenues through fees and tuitions that's why you see that one line across the top there's also a proposed price increase for this program that's included as part of these projected revenues and then finally we [02:33:34] We have some other special revenue funds that I wanted to point out, but I also wanted to show how there are various funding sources throughout the budget document and throughout the CIP that really contribute to the service we provide. So for example, transportation services, while you won't find this number anywhere documented, we provide $24.7 million in transportation services. [02:34:00] Of that, $18.5 million is in that department-based budget in Section E. We also have a vehicle replacement program that's about $260,000. That's a special revenue fund in Section F. [02:34:18] We have a vehicle services fund that's about $1.4 million, also in Section F. And then, as I mentioned earlier, our school bus replacement program lives in the county's capital improvement program and that's funded at four point three million dollars for next year so you can see while you may only see the transportation department in section E as a traditional department there are various funding sources and different budgets that are managed by that department and to answer the earlier question that school bus replacement program is about 30 buses per year so your memory was accurate it's approximate because depending on the [02:34:57] they buy more specialized units the upper down but 30 was accurate the other department I wanted to point out as technology services that they're also funded by various sources there are school-based FTE that are included in the school-based budgets of about 3.1 million dollars so that's in section D and you can see the breakouts within kind of the school-based staffing allocations you'll see technology support staff within those allocations And then what you would traditionally imagine a department-based budget for technology to look [02:35:35] like is in section E. So similar to transportation, the bulk of it does live in the department budget. As I mentioned, technology has an equipment replacement program. That's one of our special revenue funds at $2.6 million. And then a state-funded technology equipment replacement program at $0.7 million. And then technology also has a piece in the CIP, which is the maintenance of our network infrastructure and that's about 0.3 million dollars. I put page numbers for the county's budget so if you were to look at it you can find [02:36:09] exactly the funding and the five-year plan for each of these programs. So the last piece on special revenue funds is contingency funding. We do have two contingency funds in our special revenue funds. The first one is called the revenue contingency reserve. This fund was established as a general reserve for revenue shortfalls. So you might remember in order to get to a balanced budget for FY25, we proposed using one million dollars as kind of a band-aid or a bridge to get to a balanced budget. So this would be a one-time transfer from this [02:36:45] reserve and after that one-time transfer this year, we project the ending balance of that fund to be two million dollars. So this might be a source of revenue, a one-time source of revenue for other shortfalls. The other, the names are a bit confusing but the other reserve is called the federal revenue contingency and this one was established specifically for federal revenue shortfalls we do have even though this is a one-time reserve we do have a recurring use of it so it will run out we typically fund about [02:37:19] two FTEs out of this fund that provide title one and intervention services so as our costs of FTEs These are going up. Our Title I funding remains relatively flat. So in order to maintain the services of our Title I programming, we are supplementing it with a transfer from this fund. [02:37:38] So that's, you can see, is being quickly drawn down. Question. Do, for these, do we have any, either in policy or in practice, any minimum maximums that need to be sitting in those funds? They're just... All right. [02:37:55] So the last section is only one slide. It's the table of contents. is just a list of the some resources you have to look at numbers and how budgets are being driven the enrollment projections are there the average daily membership which is another way to look at enrollment staffing standards so the formulas we use to allocate resources a staffing summary what are the summary of the numbers of FTEs throughout the division school-based staffing allocations is a more detailed look at every type of position and how many [02:38:29] positions a school gets classification review cycle if you might you might remember there was six percent of a school's budget is reserved for operating budgets and supplemental pay so those exact allocations are listed there you might be interested in the school-based per pupil expenditures and then finally as I mentioned the LCI calculation is listed there as well so next steps we had a lot of really good questions about kind of the changes in the budget we [02:39:04] plan to get provide more details on the service reductions and the proposals as well as potential balancing scenarios if that is your wish for next week so it's a lot so we welcome feedback on specifics on what you'd like to hear and then it's a short turnaround but on March 13th you're scheduled to approve a funding request that funding request can be needs based it's up it's at your discretion how you'd like to present that so we'll work on that over the next two weeks is there a reason that we're not doing another public hearing next week for the work session we we typically [02:39:43] have one public hearing throughout the budget process um that's something that well and i will also add at the march 13th uh regular business meeting there's public comment but we're approving the budget on that night you're approving your funding request okay and then we will have further conversations in April before it's approved too. We have until May 9th to approve the budget. So there's plenty of opportunities. Thank you for the clarification. So does the funding request, does that have to be balanced or is that more in April and May? Okay. It can be a needs-based. So we are, the [02:40:23] state says we must provide a needs-based request. We have two stages of of that. One is the draft funding request and one is the school board's funding request. And then I'd also like to mention all the materials that we've been talking about can be found on the budget website k12albemarle.org/budget and then we welcome questions not just from the school board but from the public as well at budget@k12albemarle.org. Do we have any idea what neighboring [02:41:00] jurisdictions are doing with respect to the market compensation? That is an item that we will present next week okay yep sorry just this is less budget oriented this is more about the FLESS program just to give a slightly different perspective on that I personally didn't go through that program but I went through an elementary school that provided a second language education and I think while it's definitely true that younger students have like a great [02:41:38] ability to pick up a second language with that I think also needs to be acknowledge that it's the depth of practice that they put into it as someone who also like learns a second language at home that's the reason i have the skill i have in it is because of the fact that i have day-to-day conversation in it so if we do have these say spanish lessons in elementary schools if it's it depends on like what type of education we're providing them depending on whether if you're playing the same spanish song video covering the weather every single class [02:42:13] or whether they actually are developing conversational skills to some extent so i'd love to see whether i don't know if this is tracked or not but if there's some data on whether students that come out of this flesh program go into high school and take like ap levels of this language or at least something past like the third level of it to see if there's really a big difference that it makes and what level of foreign language they pursue yeah i'd be interested in knowing the intensity of instruction too i mean is it just you know 20 minutes once a week you know because all [02:42:47] of that matters i see lauren mcclune back there nodding her head so we'll we'll have follow-ups on that information and i also noticed uh dr hayes taking notes over there so thank you thanks for those questions thank you isabel are there any more questions for ms gumazoa i think this is a great budget book on a difficult year to do the budget but I think you're going through the budget and all the different sections will be it's very [02:43:22] helpful thank you and your team thank you Maya my team Burke Conover spent many nights and hours making this work thank you I didn't imagine you did it all by yourself but thank you if this part of our agenda is through we move on to other business. Do we have a motion on item 5.1? Yes, Dr. Hickok, would you? I move that the [02:43:59] division does not reappoint employee aid. Do we have a second? Second. All those in favor? Is there any discussion? It's a personnel matter, so we really can't, but... [02:44:15] Do you want to take a roll call? Do we want to take a roll call? We should do a roll call. We can. Thank you, Ms. Thompson. Ms. Philman? Abstain. [02:44:32] Dr. Berlin. Yes. Ms. Lee. Yes. Ms. Osborne. Yes. Mr. Page. Yes. Ms. Pryor. Yes. Terry Cuff. Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Item 5.2. Is there any other business by board members or the superintendent? So I have two things. Does a board member have anything? Okay. First, I do want to apologize. I really appreciate the feedback from Ms. Spillman earlier about our communication about FLESS and then [02:45:09] also about the intensive support center i did review both of those communications i have no excuse i just got hung up in the content and the desire to be proactive and failed to acknowledge that those those are both uh items that the board will ultimately need to approve through the budget so i apologize to you apologize to all the families the community um we will do better next time on that and I appreciate the feedback. Thank you. The other thing I just want to and I did provide a handout to the board. I want to clarify a recent public statement regarding eighth grade [02:45:48] math achievement in Amal County Public Schools. A recent narrative published in a local newspaper stated that in ACPS only half or 50 percent of all eighth grade students passed the standards of learning mathematics test this claim is misleading as it only accounts for students who took the math 8 sol and it excludes our eighth graders enrolled in advanced math courses which is most of our eighth graders every year to provide a complete picture in the spring of 2024 [02:46:23] 949 eighth grade students took a math sol test with an overall pass rate of 71.7 percent while 43.3 percent of these students took the math 8 exam so less than half the majority 56.7 percent were enrolled in advanced coursework including algebra 1 geometry and algebra 2. these students performed exceptionally well with a 93.7 percent pass rate including 90 more than 90 percent in algebra 1 96 percent in geometry and 100 percent in algebra 2. this level of achievement reflects [02:47:03] our students readiness and hard work in engaging in rigorous coursework early and the strength of our teachers and their preparation and their hard work and the instructional and family support that the students receive commitment to math success extends beyond middle school our commitment among the graduating class of 2024 45.8 percent completed at least one college level math course before earning their diploma through advanced placement dual enrollment classes or the international [02:47:39] baccalaureate programs at the same time we recognize that not all students have had equitable access to advanced coursework in alignment with our mission acps strives to eliminate disproportionality and math opportunities based on race class gender and special capacities while we are really proud of our many students progress we still have much work to do to ensure that every learner has the support and opportunity to succeed at the highest levels. ACPS remains committed to transparency and accuracy in reporting student performance. We appreciate the community's [02:48:16] trust in us as a reliable source of information and welcome continued conversations on how to expand access to and success in mathematics for all of our students. Thank you for the time and [02:48:27] Thank you, Dr. Haas. Any other business from school board members? Just want to mention that Mr. Page and I represented the school board members, school board this week at the groundbreaking ceremony for Center Two, which means we've had two ground breakings in the month of February for opening in August of 2027. [02:48:56] So what we're looking at is building about 132,000 square feet of new, flexible, modern, educational space. So when you drive by, just know that it's going to be beautiful in 18 months. [02:49:13] Do you want to add anything? The only thing is that they went on about two weeks ago. The weather was nowhere near as favorable as it was yesterday. So there was a major difference between the two. It was about a 40 degree temperature. - And just some updates from Albemarle High School. [02:49:35] Currently, we're wrapping up Black History Month and our VSU has done a great job this month of organizing some great events. I know just this week we had Chihamba dancers at our schools in teaching some other members of our school community how to dance, as well as our school's robotics team Firefly is heading to States this weekend. [02:49:55] - Outstanding news, thank you. - Good luck on that. - Is there any further news? With that, at 9:22, this meeting is adjourned. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Coraggio Consulting · aguyonx.com