Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County School Board, FY24 Operating Budget Work Session* (Department of Instruction and Department of Digital Innovation), Tuesday, January 17, 2023

Date: Tuesday, January 17, 2023
Place: Loudoun County Public Schools / School Board meeting (see BoardDocs / LCPS-TV)
Length: 1h 29m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/790191437?rel=0
BoardDocs (School Board): https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/loudoun/Board.nsf/Public

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 2026-10-20. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

[00:00:00] that Ms. Corbeau is requesting remote participation for this evening's meeting. Ms. Corbeau, could you state your location, whether it's a personal or health and medical reason that you're requesting remote participation and whether anyone is with you at your location?

[00:00:20] Thank you. Under Policy 2420, I'm asking for remote meeting participation due to an ongoing disability and medical condition as recommended by HRTD under federal ADA disability law.

[00:00:37] I'll entertain a motion that Ms. Corbeau's remote participation be approved for health and medical reasons. So moved. Moved by Mr. Morris. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by Ms. Polifko. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please raise your hand and say aye.

[00:00:54] Those opposed, please raise your hand and say nay. Nay. Those abstaining? That motion will fail 2-4-1-2, with Sorotkin, Mehedavi, Reeser, and Sheridan opposed.

[00:01:10] Ms. Ogadegbe abstaining, and Corbo and Beatty absent for the vote. Ms. Corbo, would you like to request remote participation for personal reasons tonight? No, because those are limited, and we are not voting on anything I can communicate through email.

[00:01:29] Okay, thank you. With that, we will move to item three on our agenda, disclosures and we'll start at the far end with Ms. Sheridan. - Thank you, Mr. Chair. As a member of the Loudoun County School Board, I make the following disclosure to the school board and to the general public in connection with the item on tonight's agenda regarding the budget and or health insurance and related benefits and any other discussion that may include or affect benefits for LCPS employees.

[00:01:56] Specific, excuse me, specifically as a school board member, I'm eligible to receive health insurance and related benefits as an LCPS employee. Those benefits, however, affect thousands of employees while in excess of the statutory three employees whose interest may also be affected, of which I am included.

[00:02:13] I can and will participate fairly, objectively, and in the public interest. This disclosure will be reflected in the public records of the clerk of the school board for five years. - Thank you. Mr. Mahedby. - Thank you, Chair. As a member of the Lowry County School Board, I make the following disclosure to the school board and to the general public in connection with the item tonight's agenda regarding employee salaries the budget and or health insurance and any of the discussion that may include or affect salary and benefits for LCPS employees specifically I'm enrolled in LCPS health insurance and may be affected by any potential changes to health insurance these subjects include thousands of employees well in excess of statutory three

[00:02:49] employees whose interest may be affected of which I'm included I can and will participate fairly objectively and in the public interest this disclosure will be reflected in the public records of the clerk of the school board for five years thank you as a member of the loudon county school board i make the following disclosure to the school board and to the general public in connection with the item on tonight's agenda regarding employee salaries the budget and or health insurance and any other discussion that may include or affect salary and benefits for lcps employees specifically i am enrolled in lcps health insurance and may be affected by any potential changes to health insurance these

[00:03:25] subjects include thousands of employees well in excess of the statutory three employees whose interests may be affected of which i am included i can and will participate fairly objectively and in the public interest this disclosure will be reflected in the public records of the clerk of the school board for five years mr morse thank you as a member of laudan county school board i make the following disclosure to the school board and the general public in connection with the item on tonight's agenda regarding employee salaries the budget and

[00:04:01] or health insurance and any other discussion that may include or affect salaries and benefits for LCPS employees specifically my wife is an LCPS employee who may be affected by potential changes to LCPS salary and benefits these subjects include thousands of employees well in excess of the statutory three employees whose interest may be affected of which my wife and I are included I can and will participate fairly objectively and in the public interest this disclosure will be reflected in the public record for the clerk of the school board for five years thank you with that we will move to our work session and I will turn it

[00:04:38] over to Dr. Smith. Good evening, board members. Tonight, we bring you two more presentations as a part of our budget process. We met last week on Tuesday and Thursday for our budget meetings. Tonight, you'll hear from the Department of Instruction and the Department of Digital Innovation. On Thursday, we have Department of Student Services and the Department of Support Services, followed by a public hearing on the 24th. So I did also want to mention that the budget Q&A document, the question and answer document that you receive due to the holiday. Also I'll say Ms. Willoughby is out, she's out on sick leave and so due to the holiday and that we are going to

[00:05:17] have that for you on Thursday so you can expect that budget Q&A document on Thursday. So with that I'll turn things over to Dr. Ellis for the budget presentation on the Department of Instruction. Good evening Chair Sorotkin, Vice Chair Mahedby and members of the board. I'm glad to be here this evening to present a deeper dive into the Department of Instruction portion of Dr. Smith's superintendent's estimate of needs. This evening's presentation is grounded in our 1LCPS 2027 Strategic Plan for Excellence. Our mission and vision are ingrained in all that we do in the

[00:05:56] Department of Instruction, and we firmly believe that our job is to create meaningful educational experiences for students to help them reach their full potential and empower them to make meaningful contributions to the world. This slide includes the four goals of 1LCPS that you are familiar with. It will come as no great surprise to the board that the bulk of the DOI budget falls under goal one, empowering students. There are four actions under goal one and the budget

[00:06:32] items I'll share with you today support the division's efforts in these areas. In addition to the one LCPS strategic plan for excellence, I think it's also important to set the stage with our instructional framework. You can see on this slide our profile of an LCPS graduate and the instructional vision we have for all of our classrooms. We believe in the Department of Instruction that by providing students with rigorous and engaging instruction through deeper learning in a welcoming, inclusive and affirming environment that students will reach those five C's. Before I dive into

[00:07:11] highlights of the estimate of needs, I would like to take a couple minutes to describe the operations of the Department of Instruction. The DOI section starts on page 157 of the budget book and the next several slides have little bookmarks in in the top corner of the page with page numbers that align to the budget book.

[00:07:30] DOI is the largest division within LCPS and is organized into 10 separate divisions. You may be asking yourself why I said 10 and there are only six pieces of this pie. That is because the school's office also includes school administration, elementary, middle, and high school offices, and those four offices are listed as four separate divisions in the budget book and for budgeting purposes.

[00:07:57] Teaching and Learning, under the direction of Neil Slevin and now Acting Executive Director Dr. Ashley Cramp, is responsible for all of the content areas listed on page 209, including early literacy, secondary English and reading, fine arts, health and PE, math, science, social science and global studies, and world languages and cultures.

[00:08:21] It also includes CTE, computer science, and community connections, gifted education, library and media services, special programs, and textbooks and instructional resources. This team works closely with schools, teacher leaders, community partners, and others to provide resources and support to schools to support curriculum and instruction and assessment every day.

[00:08:48] The school's office, as I previously mentioned, has four other divisions within it and three additional programs. The three level offices, their directors, and executive principals, as well as the Office of School Administration, are all in the school's office, led by Ray Mitchell, Executive Director, Chief of Schools.

[00:09:06] Additionally, Virtual Loudon, Athletics and Activities, and our Adult Education Program fall within this division. Most of the school-based staff falls under the level offices division budgets. The English Learner Division supports Elementary and Secondary EL, our preschool programs, both Head Start and Step, the Welcome Center.

[00:09:28] that is often the first face of LCPS many of our EL students see when they come to Loudoun, as well as the Family and Community Engagement or FACE team. The Division of Equity includes the Offices of Equity and Culturally Responsive Instruction. This team works cross-functionally with other departments throughout LCPS to ensure we are providing equitable experiences for all students. The Division of Professional Learning includes the Offices of Educational technology instructional coaching or the instructional facilitator program

[00:10:07] leadership development and mentoring and coaching this team organizes professional development days leadership development activities for instructional staff and instructional leaders and coordinates with other departments across the organization to provide support to new teachers seasoned teachers and instructional leaders and that's and last but not least in the DOI organization is the RASI team research assessment services and school improvement. As you can imagine, this team also works collaboratively across multiple departments in all three of these areas. So before I move on, I just want to thank this amazing team of

[00:10:45] instructional leaders I have the privilege of working with every single day. The leadership team is here with us this evening. It's an honor to work with them and learn alongside them each day. And one final note before I share the budget summary. In Dr. Smith's presentation last week, he shared the percentage of all personnel that are school-based and non-school-based.

[00:11:10] Overall, across the division, 92.3% of staff are school-based and 7.7% are non-school-based. We often hear from employees who are not familiar with how a large school system or organization of our size is run and that we are top-heavy or sometimes we are said to be bloated at the top.

[00:11:32] That's simply not true. It's important to note that just within the Department of Instruction, 98.2 percent of the personnel is school-based. This includes teachers, school administrators, librarians, EL teachers, and many many others required to run a school every day. The other 1.8 percent non-school based employees often operate on very small teams and are essential in running the entire school system and making sure the schools have what they need to make teaching and

[00:12:04] learning happen every day for all 83,000 of our students. So now we'll shift to budget details as you can see on this slide there is an overall 4.1 percent increase in the Department of Instruction budget and we'll walk through some of the items contributing to this slight increase this year as I mentioned earlier the majority of all the budget items fall within items within DOI fall under goal one empowering students so for that reason in

[00:12:40] order to tell the story of the budget I've grouped these items under three categories all in support of goal one of the strategic plan so I'd ask you to think about what I'll describe in the following three buckets. The first that we'll discuss is maintaining existing supports for students. The second is providing new supports for students, and the third is innovative programs for students. So the first category, maintaining existing supports for students, is just that. It is the things we need to maintain current level of

[00:13:18] support for schools and students. Many of these items are aligned with the indicators for Aligned Actions 1.1 and 1.2 in the 1LCPS strategic plan. Support of these positions is critical to our success in achieving our goals in this area. Some of these items are coming from COVID funding and we feel have become integral in providing support to our staff and students.

[00:13:43] Starting with new schools, as most of you know, because it's common practice in LCPS to open new schools each year, we pre-staff in the year before a school opens its doors to students with a few key staff members. Those key staff members within the DOI budget are the principal and the financial technician. So next year we will pre-staff ES32 and MS14. Other cabinet members will also have items related to these two new schools opening. This is not a new innovation or additional support

[00:14:17] but rather to maintain current practice of successfully opening new schools. We'll now get into a series of positions that were grant funded during COVID and are needed to maintain current level of programming and support. Again, these positions are aligned with the indicators for Aligned Action 1.1 and 1.2 of the strategic plan. Prior to COVID, LCPS received, in partnership with another Virginia school division, a Go Virginia grant to support the integration of computer science in instruction. As a result, LCPS has become a leader in the Commonwealth in the area

[00:14:54] of computer science. We are requesting to shift two grant-funded positions to support to the school operating funds to allow us to maintain this high-quality program in support of k-12 computer science instruction a little bit more about these positions over the last two and a half years the experiential learning coordinator has established and maintained 65 business partnerships and provided 321 internships for students the coordinator along with other key staff members has established LCBS partner which has which has improved community outreach in

[00:15:33] working with business partners as well as working cross departmentally with student services specifically school counseling and the career center assistance the coordinator has hosted seven internship fairs since 2020 six virtually during the global pandemic with a range of 150 to 265 students in attendance and one in-person fair for with approximately 90 students in attendance each each internship fair had 10 to 20 business partners in attendance providing internships for students. The instructional facilitator for computer science is another request. This

[00:16:09] facilitator works on a team of other facilitators to provide support to all 61 elementary schools and 17 middle schools in one way or another. They have been supporting 40 schools in adding computer science or computational thinking goals into their three-year school improvement plans or SIPs, and we're planning on increasing this integration into more schools next year.

[00:16:35] As a side note, originally we were going to request additional instructional facilitators on this team. Given the budget outlook when we were first planning, we determined that at least maintaining the current level of support would be needed, and we may be requesting more facilitators on this team in the future.

[00:16:51] We are also requesting to shift the CTE specialist currently funded in the Perkins grant to local funds. The Perkins plan allows priority items such as this position to be funded through the Perkins grant for a maximum of three years.

[00:17:11] So this current position has been funded in FY 21, 22, and 23. To maintain current levels of support in a critical area of career and technical education, we are requesting moving this to local funds.

[00:17:28] This position will support the competency-based instruction, career and technical organizations like Educators Rising, industry credentials, and work-based learning experiences, focusing specifically on family and consumer sciences.

[00:17:44] Currently, there are over 65 courses in the home high schools and middle schools that this position would help support. These courses are organized in 11 career clusters and 15 pathways. Currently, the CTE office is one of many examples of small teams that take on a great amount of work supporting students and teachers.

[00:18:04] We currently have a supervisor of CTE, a specialist focusing on business and IT and marketing programs, and this grant-funded position. Ideally, we would shift this position to local funds, and then we would request an additional CTE specialist in the Perkins grant later this spring to focus on the third career pathway, technology and engineering programs, thus allowing each specialist to support the career clusters and pathways in their area of expertise and building out this team.

[00:18:36] Three years later, in FY26, we would likely request to shift this person to local funds to finalize the team. We are grateful for the Jack Kent Cook Foundation's support, both financially and otherwise, of LCPS, and specifically the Summer Math Discovery, or BEAM program.

[00:18:59] With those funds, we were able to fund and hire a math coordinator to implement and run the BEAM program this past summer. The current mathematics coordinator is being recommended to shift from the one-year grant funds to local funds in order to maintain current level of support and continue the summer BEAM program next year.

[00:19:18] In addition to the BEAM program, the math coordinator works with the mathematics supervisor and mathematics specialist to support math instruction during the school year. I will mention there is a possibility that we could receive more grant funds from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation.

[00:19:35] However, we would not know that information until May, and that's obviously well after the board adopts its final budget, and planning for the summer is well underway at that point. We also truly value this BEAM program, its connection to the strategic plan, specifically Aligned Action 1.2, and the opportunity it provides to students.

[00:19:55] The next two slides show some initial data in support of the program and a few quotations from students and parents who participated. So as you can see on this slide, the average achievement percentile on the map assessment increased when typically students tend to drop between two and five points over each summer between third and fifth grade.

[00:20:22] Also pretty powerful is that 89.7% of the students who attended the BEAM summer math discovery changed their course enrollment to pre-algebra, allowing them access to Algebra I in eighth grade. And 85% of students reported an A or B for their fall 2022 quarter one grade in mathematics.

[00:20:43] So not only are they getting excited about math and choosing advanced math courses, they're also succeeding in those math courses. What's even more compelling than the number sometimes is hearing straight from the students and their families. So I won't read these to you, but here are some responses we received after the program this past summer.

[00:21:07] I know many of you are familiar with our Propel and Level Up STEM-focused afterschool programs that have been in existence for several years.

[00:21:29] They were developed to give academic support to students who are economically vulnerable and to give them extra time and critical skills needed to close the opportunity gap. Originally, LCPS was able to build this program, again with the support of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, and later through additional funding through HHMI, or the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

[00:21:51] The Propel and Level Up Coordinator has been funded through HHMI for a number of years. As the program is a key strategy in our strategic plan, again aligned to Strategic Actions 1.1 and 1.2, this leadership role is being recommended to move to the local budget.

[00:22:11] Students in these programs develop high-level reasoning skills, exhibit behaviors associated with high achievement and the five C's, and prepare for academically rigorous coursework in middle and high school.

[00:22:22] I've also provided you some data points in support of these programs a big thanks to our research office for helping to evaluate these programs over the past several years and again I always think it's powerful to go back to what the students say about the programs I love what the fifth grader said what I really like about propel is everyone collaborating and helping each other and what could happen during those collaborations can be really magical the next two positions are to school improvement specialists in the school

[00:23:06] Improvement Office. These positions were funded using COVID funds this past year and have been instrumental in supporting schools, specifically building leaders and site-based school improvement teams. The next slide illustrates what some of these individuals do every day. I won't read the whole list to you, but I did want to point out a couple. These school improvement specialists support building leaders and site-based school improvement teams to develop, refine, and or align high-quality goals strategies and evidence for the school improvement plan

[00:23:43] they also facilitate school support meetings for schools with level 2 or level 3 accreditation areas and they oversee SOL remediation to support instructional staff in planning and delivering targeted instruction as with all these grant funded positions we aren't seeking anything new but rather we would like to maintain the current level of support we are providing to schools and staff and students. An additional position that was funded with COVID funds is the

[00:24:20] English Learning Development Coordinator. This was funded this past year through the Unfinished Learning Grant, and those funds will go away in September. Given the recommendation in the West Ed EL program evaluation, you'll see that this budget focuses on supporting our English learners who are duly identified. Duly identified ELs are students who are both English learners and have While the EL coordinator will continue to be responsible for leading EL summer programming

[00:24:52] as the job was originally intended, responsibilities will also include accountability specific to EL students with documented disabilities throughout the year. For example, they will conduct non-evaluative walkthroughs and provide feedback to EL teachers on instructional strategies and best practices to support ELs with documented disabilities.

[00:25:16] They will also review EL services, teacher schedules, and IEPs with the IEP team, provide recommendations for supporting ELs with documented disabilities. They will also collaborate closely with the entire EL team and the Office of Special Education for support.

[00:25:36] So the last item under maintaining existing supports is admittedly a budget enhancement and would result in a new FTE. This is not a current position, grant funded or otherwise.

[00:25:52] While this is listed as an enhancement in the budget book, I've intentionally categorized it in my presentation as maintaining existing support. As a few of you learned in our recent C&I presentation on this subject, the current Health and P.E. office includes one Health and P.E. supervisor and a resource teacher.

[00:26:13] Given the multiple responsibilities, the number of teachers in grades K through 12, and all of our schools, the current situation is simply not sustainable. The scope of the Office of Health and PE is significant, as you can see by all of these separate items on the screen.

[00:26:33] Program oversight is needed for implementation of high-profile items such as family life education and behind the wheel. Not funding this position puts us at risk of being out of compliance for a number of programs and limits our ability to support schools in implementing an effective health and PE curriculum.

[00:26:50] So we'll now move on to our second category under goal number one, and this is providing new supports for students. The EL budget items are aligned with closing achievement gaps as outlined in goal one of the strategic plan.

[00:27:16] And as I mentioned previously, in terms of meeting the needs of EL learners, we have identified need to support our ELs who are duly identified. This comes both from the program evaluation and our own evaluation. We are asking for an enhancement to the EL staffing standard at the middle and high school to provide support, to provide more support, excuse me, to duly identified students.

[00:27:41] This will result in a 15.2 FTE increase. We are also requesting a smaller enhancement at the elementary level to change our kindergarten ratio of one teacher to 59 students to one to 50 students to match BDOE's recommendations.

[00:28:00] Regarding the middle and high school staffing standard, I wanted to provide a little bit more information directly from our program review so straight from the recommendation West Ed stated one of the recommendations was to review the design and implementation of programs for duly identified students to ensure equitable supports and opportunities to learn our hope is that by reducing caseloads using the data to drive school allotments and providing explicit guidance from the EO office and the special education office on the use of time we can better meet the

[00:28:34] needs of our duly identified students. You may be wondering why the focus on middle and high school, so I briefly wanted to show these numbers. First, there's a higher percentage of duly identified students at the middle and high school levels. You can see 25.5% for middle school and 22.4% for high school, and often our youngest students haven't yet been identified in their early years.

[00:29:01] Additionally, graduation rate is another goal of the strategic plan, and focusing on middle and high schools will support this goal as well. I'd like to address one final grant funded position. The current virtual Loudoun specialist is being funded through COVID funds and was supporting elementary distance learning. While we are no longer offering elementary distance learning in FY24, we continue to grow our middle and high school distance learning programs and need additional support to

[00:29:37] be able to provide this service to students and expand virtual Loudoun offerings. As you can see on this slide and as we've discussed in C&I committees over the past several months our enrollment in virtual loud and online courses has increased significantly over the past few years and I just as a side note these numbers do not include when everyone was in distance learning so these are individual student enrollments in classes this increased enrollment and the desire to be able to provide students with expanded course offerings including an increase in world language options and hard to staff upper level

[00:30:16] courses that we are often not able to schedule at home schools makes this position necessary. To give you an idea of the job responsibilities, among other things, this person provides supervision over the work of teachers assigned to teach virtual loud in courses, plans and implements the instructional orientation of new teachers, evaluates the effectiveness of instruction in the online courses, works with central office departments to provide coordinated instructional services, fosters home and school communication with families, and collaborates with a student's

[00:30:55] homeschool to support academic success. Another enhancement to increase supports for schools and students is in the area of differentiated staffing. As Ms. Willoughby mentioned in her staffing standard presentation last week, the differentiated FTE staffing standard is enhanced to recognize an entire school's population if they are designated a community eligibility provision or CEP school so instead of counting 70% of the students at a CEP

[00:31:29] school we would count 100% this adjustment provides an additional 5.2 differentiated FTEs to support schools on top of the existing differentiated staffing we've also made the same adjustment in the formula calculation for the differentiated allotments this support is on top of what schools already receive out of allotments and on top of any title one support that title one schools receive and just to give you an idea of how schools use their

[00:32:06] differentiated staffing I pulled the top three ways that that schools usually allocate their differentiated staffing they work closely with their level director and school improvement teams to determine need and the three most common are a school-based instructional facilitator or instructional coach additional English learner teachers or reading specialists so in addition to the EL staffing standard for Julie identified students another significant new initiative in terms of dollar amount we are enthusiastic about is the

[00:32:45] addition of one student support advisor position at each high school and one student support advisor stipend at each middle school this will be a new staffing standard if approved the student support advisor would be the chief point of contact for providing continued education and in-school intervention opportunities for students particularly those in the discipline process but not exclusively by collaborating with school-based staff on instructional and behavioral supports the student support advisor will focus on the development of positive authentic relationships with students and their families and collaborate with appropriate staff at the school and

[00:33:25] division level to provide students with resources to promote academic success social-emotional wellness and behavioral improvement they were they will work closely with multiple individuals in the Office of School Administration the MTSS and PBIS teams EL and special education as needed and their school leadership teams they would also serve in the capacity of the internal MTSS and PBIS coach to build capacity among staff they would coordinate amongst

[00:34:01] stakeholders for support for students in the discipline process and be the chief point of contact for the development of a comprehensive student support plan that I know dr. Smith has spoken about recently this work is often done by multiple people in a school building and we believe that by having one central point of contact to liaise with offices and families we can provide the best support possible for students we are also proposing the addition of an elementary gifted resource teacher this resource teacher would spend their days

[00:34:39] in elementary schools supporting elementary gifted education teachers the gifted office is another example of a lean team and the lack of people makes it difficult to research plan and implement any new innovations the addition of this teacher would support the gifted education office and allow us to research and implement enhancements to the elementary gifted program specifically the search program and finally the last item in our category of of new supports for students we are recommending one math resource teacher

[00:35:16] this position is being recommended in response to the state funding for the governor's math specialist initiative this would be a school-based position if approved the mathematics office would collaborate with the school improvement office to determine the school the elementary or middle level with the highest need in mathematics and the teacher would be allocated directly to that school for support and I'm happy to talk a little bit more about the Governor's Initiative, if you're interested. Before shifting to innovation, I want to briefly

[00:35:53] mention a couple things Dr. Smith spoke about during his presentation last week. As Dr. Smith mentioned last Tuesday, there are some programs and initiatives that were funded out of COVID funds that we are recommending sunsetting in FY23 and not to continue in FY24. These decisions are based on staff's recommendation and important school board feedback we obtained during the school Board work sessions in October. I wanted to provide a little bit more detail on a couple

[00:36:25] of programs. First, Tudor.com was funded using $1.7 million of COVID funds. We've been providing monthly usage updates to the board and sought your feedback during the initial budget work session. While feedback about the program has been positive, usage has not been high, particularly given the cost. We've also learned since that budget work session that VDOE has announced a partnership with the Library of Virginia to provide free tutoring services to students in Virginia next

[00:36:58] year. Staff plans to continue to promote the use of Tutor.com this year to finish our contract and will shift to providing other tutoring services and resources next year to support students in the future. I also wanted to mention elementary virtual Loudon. As Dr. Smith mentioned, this will also end as LCPS returns to quote unquote normal. While the program provided high quality distance learning for elementary students, enrollment in elementary distance learning has declined this

[00:37:31] past year and we believe in-person learning is best particularly for elementary students. I did want to mention that staff is prepared to support these families as we transition them back to their home schools. They have remained concurrently enrolled in their home schools during distance learning. We do also recognize that there may be some students who are medically fragile and require virtual learning for the foreseeable future. Staff will work with those students to explore all options, including the possibility of virtual Virginia that will continue in the

[00:38:05] future. And one last reminder, and this I don't believe was mentioned in Dr. Smith's presentation last week, staff had previously allocated $1.5 million in COVID funds for part-time funds for first grade for part-time first grade teaching assistants to support first grade students returning to school from the pandemic. These part-time funds are also not in the FY24 for post-budget. So finally our third category I will share some information on budget items that will

[00:38:40] allow LCPS to either innovate in new ways in support of our strategic goals or continue innovative programs we have begun planning for this year. The first is funds needed to support the Dual Language Immersion Program, or DLI, at Potomac and Sanders Corner Elementary Schools.

[00:39:03] In FY24, we are requesting four FTEs, two teachers and two language ambassadors, similar to teacher assistants, who are bilingual, to support the first year of a multi-year rollout. As you can see on this next slide, it will take us several years to fully implement DLI at these two schools.

[00:39:24] We are prepared to begin at kindergarten in FY24. We've been advertising, having information sessions, and writing curriculum, and we will add one grade level each year until we are fully implemented in FY29. We have to take kind of the marathon approach rather than the sprinting approach to implementing DLI at these two schools, and we are excited to welcome our first kindergarten class at Potomac and Sanders Corner next year.

[00:39:53] Similarly, we are excited about the potential of Loudoun's first international baccalaureate programs at Heritage and Loudoun Valley High School. We are still in the candidacy phase, I want to be very clear about that, and we are still in the candidacy phase and are working closely with our IB consultant, and we are looking forward to receiving authorization.

[00:40:15] The rollout of an IB program is not quite as lengthy as a DLI program once you've gone through the candidacy and authorization phases. This year, we are requesting a small amount of funds in DOI to support curriculum development, professional learning, and the annual fee that will then become a part of the base budget each year.

[00:40:37] Mr. Lewis will talk on Thursday evening about the transportation needed for the program in this first year. On this next slide, you'll see the rollout over several years. Again, relatively speaking, IB is not as expensive to roll out or comprehensive once you go through the rigorous candidacy phase.

[00:40:57] While there may be a need for a few additional FTEs over the years, most will be added through the high school staffing standard. Another new innovation that provides additional opportunity and access to students who may not otherwise have the opportunity outside of school is a middle school intramural sports pilot.

[00:41:19] This is something that staff and the CNI committee discussed at length last year and presented to the board in October of 2021. The funds associated with this would allow us to add a coordinator for intramural sports who would also support our athletic trainers and funds to cover the costs for four middle schools to participate.

[00:41:43] encourage you to go back and listen to the October presentation but just as a brief summary we talked about students participating in after-school grade level tournaments students would have the option to participate in a new sport each month they would sign up at their house office to participate in the tournament tournaments would be organized and supervised at the school level with support from the coordinator at the division level and then a division tournament could be could be planned at the end of each season this

[00:42:20] This pilot year would allow us to gather data on implementation, on student interest and participation in different activities and would help us identify areas of improvement before potentially expanding to all middle schools.

[00:42:38] So that brings us to the end of the presentation. I do want to mention just a couple things before I wrap up. First of all, this is not an all-inclusive list of everything in the DOI Estimative Needs. That would take several more hours. does not include items that are in the base budget and all of the work that's well underway an example of something that's in the best in the base budget and well underway would be all of our efforts around early literacy there are funds in the base budget to continue the work of letters training a focus on the science of reading and preparations for the adoption of a new core literacy

[00:43:13] curriculum when video we releases an approved list I'm happy to answer any questions related to specific line items in the budget book or any of the new budget requests that we've shared this evening Thank You dr. Ellis board members questions for do I had the presentation miss Rieser thank you for the update on some of the neat things that we are able to provide students I just have a brief question to start with and then might ask for another turn regarding the

[00:43:48] differentiated staffing that that you talked about that can change from that can take different forms I was wondering if it changes from year to sometimes at the same school and who decides which of the different options is taken and thirdly how is the efficacy of the option chosen evaluated it at the is it evaluated at the school level or is it in conjunction with anybody in central admin thank you thanks for the question and I can provide more data in

[00:44:25] writing if you if you wish but just to to start it is teach the principal works closely with the level office and the school improvement office to determine needs in writing their school improvement plan goals emerge from that plan and the differentiated staffing is to support those goals that is evaluated at the school level with support from the principal supervisor either their director or executive principal and the school improvement office provides the

[00:44:57] data and often the structure to have those conversations thank you additional questions mr. Morse thank you mr. chair on your slide of school operating fund FY 23 adopted to the FY 24 proposed why did we not put in the FY 23 revised because that would be a much more accurate portrayal of where we were at the at the end of FY or at the beginning of FY 23 I don't know why but we can

[00:45:34] certainly provide that information to you there was actually a decrease between FY23 revised and FY24 proposed? Yes. So the revisions down and you capture them on page 174, a lot of the revisions to the FTE. I think if you revise the amount down and then you see the proposed FY24, you see a more realistic increase than just the 4.3. I think it would be something more than that uh so on page 174 of the of the of the bible that we have there's a significant

[00:46:13] number of fte that were kind of cross-traded between contingency positions uh reading positions and teaching positions and i'm a little concerned because as it's printed out it indicates that we have six there were six positions teacher contingency positions that were moved to dean positions the first line is the three three dean from teacher contingency and then the second to last line is teacher contingency to dean which says the same thing and one's negative and one's

[00:46:49] positive so when you add them together they're actually six positions this is really hard to wrap our heads around because the position seemed to be going back and forth. Could staff take a look at this and provide us kind of some feedback on how we got through those contingency positions and where the board was notified on the creation of new positions or the changing of staffing standards? Because I am a little worried when we look at positions such as the lead school security officer if we were not if we were short a position and we were using a teacher

[00:47:27] position to fill that is that because the staffing standard was more than the staffing that we had or did we change the staffing standard to add a lead security lead school security officer I just want to make sure because when I go through and after many hours of reviewing through all of the the adopted versus revised I came up with 9.5 new positions and that goes throughout staff not just the instruction so I'd like to make sure that the board was aware of

[00:48:03] new positions being added several of them we are aware of the assistant counsel that we have in the superintendent's office the new administrative aid so several of those even some charter school adjustments the school was made aware of I would just like to make sure that if there were new positions that were added that number one that the board approved them and number two that we end up adjusting our staffing standard to reflect that yes we can definitely provide that information i will say that if a contingency teacher is needed a contingency person is needed because enrollment

[00:48:41] has increased in that particular school or area i don't believe the board is notified about that but any other time for all of these other positions that you mentioned the board should have been notified and we can get those absolutely and those the contingency positions are specifically there for teachers assignments so absolutely no question that needs no justification but if we were taking them out of that pool and applying them to a different area I think it's kind of important for the board to know finally miss Rieser mentions you know perhaps measuring or determining the effectiveness of having some of the differentiated staff I would

[00:49:19] like to know the staffing the level of staffing we have at the title one schools the number of classroom teachers we have versus the number of students and because we have we have several different areas from which we're attacking the problem of the the academic success of our title one schools and I think that as we look at that where I'm wondering if they're all moving in the same direction and they're all being focused on the exact same students, or whether it might make more sense for those resources to go to the schools that did not

[00:49:55] make Title I, that don't quite have the level of differentiated support that the Title I schools have. So, you know, it's a nuance between where we're applying the resources. I support the resources. I just want to make sure we're putting them in the right place. Can I ask one clarifying question to make sure I understand your question? So, specifically for Title I schools, you want to about differentiated staffing so on top what is on top of i'm just here yes i'm sorry if i didn't say that right but i'm looking for differentiated staffing at the title one absolutely and versus differentiated staffing at other schools that have significant populations but might not be

[00:50:35] receiving the resources that the title one schools are great thank you okay thank you additional questions mr madby thank you chair thank you dr ellis for the for the presentation so i guess i

[00:50:50] I know it's in the slide in page 14 sort of you talked about this is sort of the discussion and we hear this all the time where 98. 2% of school employees are school based versus in the administration do you have numbers for our adjacent school divisions see what the numbers are I know they have quite a few staff supporting that I don't know if you have from percentage wise what their staffing looks like compared to ours.

[00:51:21] So I believe the Wavy Guide contains this information for neighboring school divisions, specifically for the whole division. So this slide 14, I actually did a deep dive specifically for DOI staff.

[00:51:39] I don't know that the Wavy Guide includes that. Gotcha. So this is just for the DOI staffing versus the entire school. Got it. Thank you. I guess I'll, you know, I'm supportive of this. thing I've shared this with with the staff to the differential staffing completely support that but I think going back to what my colleagues have mentioned already and I think this came up in the last budget cycle too when we were talking about the EL so addition and adding of EL staff within elementary we took them out from middle or high school and we kind of went back

[00:52:17] and forth last year in the budget cycle but I think it's it's it's really It's important to kind of bring back, I think Mr. Morris was trying to highlight that, to look at the problem comprehensively versus slicing it from one, we're just adding resource from Title I, we're adding resources from here, we're adding resources from there, versus treating it comprehensively saying, well, what do we do?

[00:52:43] I think, for example, in a 1.1, if academic excellence and we have a huge number of KPIs identified in that, in order for us to meet those metrics, what do we need to do to achieve that anything title one resources or other resources then subsequently help within that so I think that would be really helpful to look at comprehensively what that support looks like at the end of the day I know you would need some additional I support again the the request from the superintendent to add differential staffing but I think we from a division perspective definitely look at need to look at the problem comprehensively versus you know well we

[00:53:22] added this and had a bunch of other resources which I kind of segue into I'm gonna jump a little bit on slide number forty forty two forty three can't be anymore so again I know it's I would like to get a better understanding on this because last year or maybe the budget before we also added 17 additional positions at the high school in the similar manner so I'd like to get a better understanding on this as well because again I'm not sure where this

[00:54:00] will lead to so again maybe not today but maybe we can have a follow-up discussion to better understand what these resources are and what we plan to gain out of that so just to piggyback on like again addressing the issue comprehensively on this my other question is so if you don't some mr.

[00:54:20] Mahedby I think dr. Ellis wants to respond to that I can just briefly respond i can would it be helpful to provide i think you're talking about the student activities and engagement coordinator that was recently added to high schools i'm happy to provide the job description for each of those and a comparison of what one does versus what we anticipate the student support advisor doing great thank you the the second though maybe this is my third question so third question is um so covid resource fund i mean resources that we added with the covid funds What is the impact?

[00:54:56] I mean, I know you have a few positions that you'd like to keep and some that you're not planning to continue. So that would also be a little bit better understanding on how we leverage, how that helped, and why would you want to keep it. I mean, the summary was there, but I'd just like to have a little better understanding on the impact of these one, two resources for the entire division as we have it.

[00:55:20] So that's my third question. Fourth question I have. So, which kind of, I think, brings back to slide number 45, I guess, the math resource teacher, I think, in the governor's initiative.

[00:55:39] So, we've been coming out of COVID, I think we have talked, I mean, most of us talk, and I think we all see the numbers, you know, early literacy and reading specialist program. I mean, we added about 40 or 40.5 reading specialists last year to help with elementary.

[00:55:57] And one of the things that I think we have in our budget from this existing 2022 funds, we have an item in our student services to acquire some math intervention programs.

[00:56:14] I think it's like $400 some $32,000 in the presentation that Dr. Smith did in the first presentation we had, which kind of, it's a program for, I got to have asked Dr. Jones about the more about detail of the program but it talks about math intervention for special education from that specific and what I mean again going back to this slide 45 where math resource teacher comes through like a state-funded I mean that's what we're adding from from a state-funded

[00:56:48] perspective this resource so I like to get a you know again I know we coming in a little bit late in the budget cycle but just like we did reading specialists or intervention reading specialists what can we do more at the elementary level with the math initiative you know I'd like to have a little bit more more than one pilots going on at different schools to see what what program potentially can be applied one of the programs that here is called bridges of intervention I guess the same program that the special

[00:57:22] education is using it and right now it's just and for the for the fellow board members that's a program we're putting in place for students with special education but we know that I think we've and I've said this before we need to be providing support for our other student population who might be also be behind and so what can we do to kick start that math intervention the elementary level quicker than later and again not that we do need to hold scale but perhaps we do some pilot a few elementary schools so that's kind of my question comment two cents

[00:58:01] into that but again so my question would be it's it's a great initiative for the from this perspective but I don't know if your thoughts are to expand it to additional school as a pilot so this open with that question so I can speak very briefly to that and provide I'm thinking through what additional information would be helpful to provide it I think I understand what what your question is and I will share that our LCPS allocation so the the the governor in his amended budget provided a total of seven point two million dollars across

[00:58:41] the state for school divisions across the state in support of his math specialist initiative it's specifically for math instructional specialists at underperforming schools that the governor's language not mine schools that enroll students in grades K through 8 so it would be elementary or middle school only based on spring 2021 SOL data we are our LCPS allocation for this initiative would only be forty two thousand dollars so it wouldn't even

[00:59:18] fund the full FTE which is why staff is recommending just one position to support as you mentioned a pilot at at the school that would need it the most I will say historically we before I arrived in LCPS we did have math instructional resource teachers and they were cut from the budget so I don't know that we have any historical data for how they were used so this was an attempt to be responsive to the governor's budget and start a very small pilot is that helpful my answering your question no thank you I think you're right on the track I

[00:59:57] think but I guess my my hope I mean I think that's a that's a good initiative and a good thought for schools that are probably underperforming but again from some of the feedbacks that I've heard I think we have this challenge across all our elementary and I think I've be I think I mean I can speak for myself but I think collectively board also we do believe that you know if you spend more energy in the elementary level I mean for example with the counselors we're talking about bringing more more support for our elementary students earlier on with early reading and I think math would be in line with exactly the same thing but my request would be or my hope would

[01:00:36] be that it's not just for schools that need help I mean extra help I mean we are doing that with additional resources or differential resources but also to other schools as well and and hopefully expand the pilot to at least five schools versus one school so got it now i understand thank you thank you chair one question so for the three programs you mentioned that were covered by covid funds that are not being recommended for continuation i was trying to get my notes opened

[01:01:15] and didn't get them open fast enough to to jot down what those savings were if you could share with us again the cost for tutor.com virtual elementary school and the first grade tas and i have a separate question of course so tutor.com was funded using 1.7 million of covid funds elementary virtual loudon was funded using 3.4 million and our enrollment has dropped to about

[01:01:50] 88 students and then 1.5 million for part-time funds for first grade teaching assistants so previously we had used covid funding i believe for full-time first grade teaching assistants in this past year we changed it to part-time funds so as a follow-up to the dollar amount for virtual elementary school i think this is a question that i've received from some families just asking the question about the total dollar amount and the low enrollment and kind of asking the question about

[01:02:27] why the costs are what they are is that reflected of the whole period of time where for a period of time there were more students enrolled if you can address that yes that is true and we hired a certain number of teachers expecting enrollment to maintain from first year to second year and that really didn't happen we also lost students over the course of this first semester some students returned to their home school mid-semester okay and then staff first teachers who were hired are on contract for the full year so they

[01:03:06] remain on staff yes ma'am okay great thank you and then my other separate question was can you provide a link you mentioned the vape guide related to an answer to one of Mr. Mejedevi's question around the percent of school-based staff in neighboring districts. If you can just send that link. Yes, we can definitely provide that. It's the Washington Area Boards of Education. Yes, and they do a comparison every year of many,

[01:03:45] many things, including staffing. So we will provide that. Great. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I briefly wanted to revisit some of the early comments this evening regarding the difference between school-based staff and administrative non-school-based staff. So I know we're looking at 98.

[01:04:12] 2% that are school-based, and then I think it was about 7. 7% administration are non-school-based. And on page 21, I believe it is, of our large book here, the concern that I have and what I have, you know, when I think of administrative bloat, and I know you say that we're not really bloated because we're comparing staff in the, you know, administrative building who are non-school-based versus school-based staff, I'm thinking of it from a perspective of student enrollment and administrative staff.

[01:04:42] So it would really help me if you could maybe, you know, obviously not right here and not today, but if you can break down for me the rationale for some of these additional positions that we have, because I'm looking at a growth of about 17. 4 administrative positions that are non-school based and an additional 24 positions that are support staff that are changing from FY23 to FY24.

[01:05:08] but FY24 is looking at an increase of 22 students and so that really makes me think of those graphs that you see where you've got the line increasing with administration and the line remaining relatively flat with student growth so it would help me if you could break that down for me and possibly send some of that information to me so that I can better understand why we have growth in those positions. Secondly, my question about what we're doing for students in math. I understand that we're doing, you know, putting forth a lot of effort for some, you know, for

[01:05:46] struggling students to give others a push to move forward with taking algebra one by the time they get to eighth grade. But what are we doing specifically to be student-centered and encourage those highest achieving students to continue to meet their individual needs, i.e. those students that are capable and prepared and ready to take algebra in sixth grade so I want to make sure that we're continuing to elevate those students and provide them with what they need to meet their individual needs to become the most successful students that they can be and finally I this is

[01:06:20] not a question but I was hoping to receive some kind of specific data to support the initiative for the 17 FTE at 1.9 million for the student support advisors. So I would appreciate some kind of rationale, not only anecdotal, but I would like some quantitative data to provide me with a reason for the ask for these positions for the next year. Thank you. Thank you for the questions.

[01:06:53] we can get that information to you so uh just a follow-up to one of mr mehedvi's questions first did i did i i did i hear you right that the the governor's initiative for the mathematics position equates to we're only getting two thousand dollars worth of funding for that 42 000 42 okay that's slightly slightly better than what i heard that makes that makes a little more sense uh but even even so you said that's not enough to fully fund one fte so the rest would just be be covered out of the operating fund?

[01:07:29] Or out of local transfer to be? - That's correct. - Okay. Talking about the ask for EL duly identified students. So the WestEd recommendation was related, was to review the design and implementation of the programs for the duly identified students.

[01:07:47] So I understand the proposal to increase the staffing level by 15.2 FTEs, but is anything about the design or the structure of the program for those students going to be changing? Yes, absolutely. And I would like to provide that information in writing. We have a professional development plan and a plan for how those teachers will be allotted. So if you don't mind, I'll provide that in writing. Okay, thank you. Do you have any further details about what's being proposed next year for providing tutoring through the Library of Virginia? Because that was

[01:08:26] that that that was a curveball so I'd I mean if they're if they're going to provide something that's on par with what tutor.com has been doing that's fantastic but I haven't heard any details about what that program would be or how available it would be how many seats there would be to so if you have any more detail on that I'd love to hear I can certainly provide more detail I have a superintendent's memo and I can provide you the link to the the library of Virginia that was provided through that memo I don't have much more information than that we're still following it pretty closely but I'll give you whatever we have okay that would be great because I know the the usage has been somewhat small for tutor.com but

[01:09:05] I know the feedback for the students and families that have been using it has been overwhelmingly positive so it would certainly make me feel a lot better if there were something we could point to for next year to say you know this is going to be an alternative that will be available instead rather than it just going away entirely.

[01:09:23] And I will also add, if I may, Mr. Sorokin, we are taking a look at our list of tutors that's published on our LCPS website, mostly for elementary students. We have heard some feedback that tutor.com may not be the best resource for elementary students in need of tutoring.

[01:09:41] So Dr. Jones's team and DOI are collaborating on making sure that list of tutors is available for families to use. Okay, thank you. the it it it's either not in the budget or so small it's not showing up in the budget i'm just not sure which uh the beginning music workbooks in middle school that we had discussed in cni a few several months ago is that is that 55k in there or or not in the budget it is in there yes it is in there excellent okay uh and then finally just following on to miss palifco's question about

[01:10:18] this I think she asked about the student support advisor positions in middle school and high school and middle school so my understanding is that those are intended to be resources for students when they're transitioning either to or from alternative placements is that is that the main purpose of those positions or is that just one of many things that they would be doing I would say that is probably the first purpose of many things that they will be doing and we can provide when in response to Ms. Polipko and others will provide the job description, both the stipended position and the full-time FTE, as well as some supporting information.

[01:10:58] Okay. Thank you. Board members, additional questions for DOI? Mr. Mahedby. Thank you. The music book kind of reminded me. So Dr. Ellis, we've been talking about world languages and perhaps doing that. And again, is that also in the budget already?

[01:11:14] So that, Mr. Mahedby, is the main reason for requesting the shift of the distance learning specialists from covid funds to local funds that specialist will work with the virtual loudon team and the school teams to be able to provide virtual virtual courses specifically related to offering additional world languages in a hybrid model that we discussed in cni and also additional hard to staff courses so we plan to offer additional world language courses making sure we have options for

[01:11:52] students regardless of what school they attend as well as those hard to stack courses thank you so that means if you were to if you are adding a world language then you know this is anticipating adding more resources if that's need be or that's just part of the virtual Lauren that you'll be able to accommodate or shift around things to make it happen thank you additional questions seeing none that'll conclude the presentation from Department of instruction. Thank you, Dr. Ellis, for the overview. And we will shift to the Department of Digital

[01:12:32] Innovation. Mr. Smith. Good evening. Good evening, Chair Sorotkin, Vice Chair Mahedby, and board members. Thank you for the opportunity to present the Department of Digital Innovation's Estimate of Needs for FY24. DDI works closely with all LCPS departments and schools to support the one LCPS mission and vision of keeping students at the center of our decision-making, and it is our why, about what we do, and how we do it. The team is comprised of five separate teams that all work together with the common goal of supporting students.

[01:13:11] Together, this is 250 professionals, over 250 professionals that are dedicated to supporting students and staff and making sure they have the best experience possible. The Chief Technology Office, or my office, provides department leadership, IT security, and project management. Our digital experience team, which is our largest team, consists of all of our infield support staff, our technology acquisitions, which is extensive in our asset management practices for our asset lifecycle management. Our infrastructure and engineering team support our cloud and core

[01:13:48] services, data center locations, internet and wireless connectivity, software distribution, as well as our technology support center. Our enterprise solutions team manages our student information system, handles application development and low-code application development, all of our data integrations, data analytics, and data visualizations.

[01:14:15] And new to our team this year, from last year, is the Enterprise Resource Planning Team, or ERP team. This team was a reallocation of staff from other internal departments, and they provide support for our Oracle ERP environment, which manages all of our financial and human resource transactions.

[01:14:33] So we will speak a little bit more about that as we get into some of the budget changes for this year. So empowered students, goal one. DDI truly believes students are at the center of all of our work and we make all decisions based off of what is best for students.

[01:14:49] Our FY24 request continues to support students with the continuation of these existing practices. One-to-one devices for all students grades pre-K through 12, hotspots for students who lack home internet access, wireless upgrades for secondary schools, and our student opportunities portal enhancements for students to apply and are aware of opportunities as they are made available.

[01:15:13] I also wanted to highlight how DDI staff this year begun a several direct engagement programs with students previously in September the team came and presented on our internship program with high school students which allows high school students to come in early and work at elementary schools which is a great opportunity for them to work alongside a digital experience specialists we're also partnering with our teammates and our cast programs and we have an extensive job for a day offering where we host several students in different disciplines of technology work goal to

[01:15:48] exemplary staff again highlighting some of our FY 24 requests continues to support staff with the continuation of standardized device refresh for all staff standardized equipment across all classrooms it is important that no matter what classroom you're in you have a consistent user experience as both a staff member and a student and every classroom from classroom A to classroom Z has a standard set of technologies provided that are all on standard refresh practice or standard refresh cycles and we also support systems and applications to support instruction and other operations. Goal three, enrich

[01:16:24] division. Our FY24 request continues to support safe and productive learning environments. There is allocations for log management enhancements. We have outgrown with the pace of our growth some of our existing log management practices and systems. An incident response retainer and our cyber insurance, these partner together for any sort of breach or threat that we would have that this is how we would have a company or someone who would respond and also work us through the process and to ensure that we had a two hour response instead of a two-week response for them to get up to speed to

[01:17:03] get things rolling and go for engaged community we'll continue to support an engaged community with our existing tools for communication those include let's talk blackboard parent view and student view DDI will also also provides external facing dashboards that are available to the community with data on each school and the division. These dashboards can be found on the LCPS website or by navigating to dashboards.lcps.org. So that was things that are in the base budget that we do this year that we're going to continue to do in next year's budget. Now we will get into the FY24 request.

[01:17:45] You can see our FY24 proposed has a 20% increase in personnel but a decrease of 0.3% in operations and maintenance for a total increase of 10%. The DDI pages are start on page 137. This information on this slide is pulled directly from page 139 in your budget book. So how did our O&M requests be less than FY23? I wanted to highlight this. It was really due to a reduction in cost for contractual services. In FY23, the school board approved the transition of all DDI digital

[01:18:24] experience specialists from 11-month positions to 12-month positions. Previously, most infield support positions worked 11 months and were off during our summer time, which is really our peak period. It is our busiest time of deploying, changing, upgrading, everything that we get done before students and staff return. With most staff unavailable in previous years, DDI had to rely on contractual services for things like Chromebook deployments, which we now handle completely in-house. DDI also right-sized the budget to account for staffing and student counts based off of projections. And lastly, DDI for this year has moved a request of $1.5 million

[01:19:01] dollars for the purchase of equipment to the FY 23 end-of-year funds this is a similar practice that was done in FY 21 and FY 22 so in in order to offset that the base budget would have had to be increased by 1.5 million instead this year we're going to continue to put that forward as a request in our end as an end-of-year spent that the 1.5 million represents about 7% of our total equipment purchase as a cost about 22 million dollars a year to completely keep our devices, Promethean boards, and all of those on refresh schedule. So why was there such

[01:19:40] a large increase in personnel? Well, the major change here was that the ERP team was transferred to DDI from two other departments, the Department of Human Resources and Talented Development and the Department of Business and Financial Services, comprised 11 staff members, which were transferred in the summer months, so after the FY23 budget was approved. We also have two requests as part of this budget. One is a $180,000 increase to part-time funds to represent

[01:20:14] actual costs. These part-time positions help staff during peak times and are associated with some of the ERP team that transition. So we are getting ready to hit W-2 season, so not necessarily aligning with a school calendar, but where we will have increased calls for people accessing systems so they can file their taxes, and those are positions that we bring on to help through those peak periods. The last item is a request for three additional staff to support the DDI warehouse operations. It is a cost of $269,000, and I will get into that on the next slide.

[01:20:48] So why are we requesting three new FTEs? DDI is requesting these three positions as we currently only have one distribution center inventory control specialist on staff. These positions are needed for the following reasons. In FY23, DDI opened a DDI dedicated warehouse location.

[01:21:09] It's our first real warehouse previously relied on vendors to store and manage inventory, which we paid for, part of those contractual services. The practice resulted in bottlenecks and equipment deployment delays when we had others kind of controlling our own destiny in those areas. Staff are needed to manage the at-set lifecycle as equipment is received, deployed, and decommissioned in the count of close to 100,000 pieces of equipment that go through the warehouse each year.

[01:21:33] As you can see in the chart, device counts have increased by two and a half times over FY17. This is due to the one-to-one project and then the expansion of the one-to-one project to include grades pre-K through two, as well as providing additional staff devices to staff such as teacher assistants, which we continue to provide those devices for.

[01:21:56] The last item here is our e-recycle program. So this is our first year of utilizing, we issued an RFP, selected a vendor to do our e-recycle program. In previous years, DDI paid vendors because our assets were so distributed across so many sites, We needed someone to go to every single location and help with that process.

[01:22:18] But with this new process, we actually anticipate to generate revenue of at least $350,000 each year. So staffer needed to manage the entire deployment process, which is approximately 60,000 devices just for that e-recycle program, as we deploy 30,000 new devices to students, reclaim 30,000 devices, and prepare them for our e-recycler.

[01:22:38] To process this massive quantity this year, teams had to pull staff out of schools beginning with the school year and make shifts which negatively impacted our infield support, these three positions would limit our need to do that in the future. That is our FY24 budget request, and I'm happy to take any questions.

[01:23:01] Thank you, Mr. Smith. Questions regarding DDI? Ms. Okadegbe. Thank you, Chair. Similar to another question earlier, it would be helpful on the budget ask slide if you can just provide us with what the delta is if you were to base this on the FY23 revised rather than the adopted budget, especially because this reflects the biggest cost here is the 11 FTE, which were just a shift. So if you could

[01:23:36] provide the revised budget as a comparison point. Absolutely. We can provide that. One of the reasons we see a lot of dramatic changes depending on COVID funding or different funding areas, different grants. So we can provide that. It's hard to tell a trendline story with some of the drastic changes we see with end-of-year purchases and things coming out of different funding sources understood i think for this one i mean 11 ft is a significant number for one department and so understanding that that happened that change happened in fy23 i think the increased percentage

[01:24:11] is a little misleading because it's less than that in terms of what we actually did last this current year thank you additional questions mr madby thank you chair so um mrs smith i guess I don't have direct questions with the budget, but I do have, I think you mentioned Promethean Boats.

[01:24:37] And we haven't heard much, you know, since we, you know, the initiative was led by Ms. Corvo to change it and implement it. How has that experience in this year or last year been since the new board is in place? I mean, how many call volume, et cetera?

[01:24:53] I don't know if you can share that. Has it decreased or is that still, you know, is it still an issue or not an issue anymore? i know it's not a budget question but i'd like to just get in you know some perspective on that so we can pull specific incident requests that we've received but they are down significantly as every classroom is outfitted with a board that is less than five years old previously before we had these initiatives we were supporting boards that were purchased with one-time funds with no ongoing refresh costs associated to that so there would be projectors that were 14 years old trying to replace bulbs trying to get filled like it was really just trying to breathe life into those

[01:25:31] devices so now um those type of calls have gone down significantly and on the same topic since you mentioned the recycle program um the the panels we bought which are non-interactive panels were they were recycled or they just repurposed for some different needs into the school itself so there be many of those are being reinstalled at schools for digital signage purposes or for other purposes so not necessarily in a classroom for an instructional need but I was just at Heritage the other day and they have their mounts up and they're getting their TVs installed so we provide a digital signage platform for them to do that inside their school and this gives them the ability to increase

[01:26:11] that locations of where that's available inside of those locations additional questions mr. Morris thank you mr. chair question concerning your recycle program do we capture that as a as revenue in any part of the budget yes I believe Ms.

[01:26:31] Willoughby captures that as revenue in the just as a general budget. It's same as same category I believe that e-rate and those type of revenue generating sources would come from. Okay and once a year I take this opportunity to to thank you for the fact that our DDI has not experienced any kind of mouth you know outages or or any other knock on wood any other issues that we see prevalent across the country.

[01:26:59] So I do appreciate the work you're doing. Mr. Morris, that is not something you say out loud unless you're currently knocking on wood. And I would just like to say I attribute that the team that does that work, but it also is the scariest statement that comes out each year.

[01:27:15] So I echo what Mr. Sorokin's comments are. Mr. Mahedby? No, I was going to say the same thing. I don't want to jinx it. It's like yesterday, you know, we're not to bring football in. Tom Brady has never thrown an interception in the red zone. Right as I said it, he threw it.

[01:27:33] So you shouldn't have said it. So I know last year's adopted budget had e-sports equipment for about half of our high schools, the ones that already had established e-sports teams.

[01:27:49] Does the budget this year have the funding for the remaining schools, or is that not in the FY24 budget? We actually just work with schools on designing those lab locations and working through the procurement of the equipment. So there's still eight or nine schools that are participating, and we are currently working with high schools to determine if anyone else would like to participate, but the budget doesn't include additional funding.

[01:28:11] For one, this equipment we purchased this year is to last for five years, right? So it'll be in part of the deployment, but as another school would want to come on board, I believe it's $17,000, $20,000 or something that would be to support that eSports initiative, and those are things with a one or two that we would be able to accommodate.

[01:28:28] so one to two within the existing budget given okay got it thank you additional questions seeing none mr smith thank you for the update and the overview board members that concludes our agenda for tonight our next work session is scheduled for this thursday the 19th i believe that quorum is still an open question for this thursday so if you have not gotten your confirmed your availability to Ms. Byrne, please do that by tomorrow so that we can determine that we have quorum for that meeting. And seeing no further business, we are adjourned. Thank you, board members.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Coraggio Consulting · aguyonx.com