or comments must include the following information your first name and last name your meford street address and your question or comment um our agenda today is um Committee of the whole meeting is being called to focus on the fy2 budget areas of Chapter 70 funding grant funding and using and the um use of our evolving funds accounts uh member R can you call the role certainly member brandley present member gr here and for the first time I've ever saying it member in tapa I don't think we can hear you you're muted present there you are right I don't know what's going on but I'll just fine M present do not see her on just yet okay um second M so present mayor long member is joining us right now okay and audio connecting thank you may and a remember iel we're taking the roll call and I'm just need one more person that's you to say here here um and so yes sorry um after you say that there are seven present seven present zero absent member ISO um yes I just wanted to remind us that um rule 19 of our our members school committee rules said that we will take no votes in committees as the whole um we have a bad past practice of just rolling with it and making all kinds of motions and um we literally have a rule we adopted saying we will take no votes in this meeting I think that's important if we want to make motions Etc we can bring them to the regular meeting where votes actually matter um so just a friendly reminder of our rules that's all thank you thank you member so uh mayor Edward Vin sorry mayor Edward Vincent oh my goodness Dr Edward Vincent would you like to lead us off oh you're on mute thank you the same situation happened to me good evening everyone I want to um extend a very warm welcome to Mr John and TAA thank you for um joining the team today and we look forward to continuing our work together collaboratively so um welcome aboard um this evening this is our first um budget Committee of the whole I want to just point out that this evening's presentation will be taking place by Mr Jerry McHugh who is our um Finance director at Medford Public Schools he has been working um incredibly hard in collaboration with the mayor in City Hall and I think our um Vice chair Graham and member Uso who have been um working and just providing consult and so um I would like to pass the Baton on to Mr McHugh so he can bring his um budget update for for the committee and um Mr McHugh is going to um present um I should ask uh Mr McHugh do you want to do all of your presentation first and then um take questions at the end or um pause in between the different pieces of presentations yeah um I I don't mind taking questions as we go along I think um tonight's meeting was going to be focused on um um Revenue that's you know available for our budget um so it probably makes sense you know we'll be talking about Chapter 70 um revolving funds private grants uh you know the idea of Char Char charging programs for overhead uh so it might make sense to take the questions as they go along but um you know whatever the preference of the committee is is uh what I'll do thank you um is there anything else you would like me to uh share member Graham no why don't we let you get started uh Jerry and then if there are stopping points why don't you just let us know where those good stopping points are in your presentation and we can stop and ask questions um if with with your permission I I thought I could give maybe a 5 minute update on the um fy2 24 shortfall um just because we have some um made some progress in that area would that be okay yes okay um so I um a couple of meetings ago I I came up to the committee we finally you know were able to run some year-end projections and um we're concerned about a you know a$2 and5 million shortfall that was showing up at that time we um you know I felt it um prudent to advise a committee at that time uh uh of that you know potential shortfall but then we we went to work to to um see what other kind of resources we could bring to bear um working with the city's Finance director Bob Dickerson and of course the mayor um you know we were able to um identify um a grant for homeless Transportation you know we determined a potential balance from Essa funds that we could use um we have some circuit breaker funds for special ed tuition that we could use we created a chargeback for food service to recover utility expenses and and we came up with about $1.7 million of um potential uh resources that we could bring to beer um we I uh the the finance director um you know was generous with his time and um reviewed the spreadsheet and actually identified a um a problem with one of the formulas in the projection so the the formula was like picking up most of the accounts that were showing a deficit but was leaving out some accounts that was showing Surplus so uh once we made that fix the deficit um that we're looking at is about half a million dollar now and um the the uh fiscal year 23 budget is still open and um we've requested that the city uh apply uh a Teamsters the third payment of a Teamsters Union president that goes back to fy22 um and it's worth $255,000 and that hit in FY 24 but it's really properly charged to FY 23 so if they make that adjustment we get the projected deficit down to 250 and that is quite manageable with the resources that we've been able to identify um so I don't know if there's if anyone has any questions there were you know there's some new members on the board since that time so uh be happy to respond to any questions um mayor did you want to take over did you want me to I um I can I'm not sure if this question is without any like sort of presentation on that 500 number Jerry so do you want to do you have anything in your presentation on that um I do not I was just you know this just kind of all came together this afternoon but um I mean I have a my spreadsheet that I use for projections is quite um lengthy so um okay I I yeah I think I think the bottom line is that um we'll be able to manage through we're going to finish the year with the balanced budget um okay but if you if there's anything in particular that you would want I mean we're we're going to be running this projection once or twice a month anyway cuz things change um we have uh the teachers contract the administrator's contract and the um nurses contract all have a 1% increase that's going to hit at the end of the month so that would be after those go through that would be a good time to um you know take another projection we we've we've we've anticipated you know we have some ated numbers for the cost of that uh but you know it be best to get the actual cost you know baked into the uh projections okay thank you Jerry but thank you for your help me um in um kind of working through this problem yep thank you for your hard work as well um member brandley and then member brandley then member Graham I just want to make sure I'm hearing this correctly so the 2.5 million that we once heard is is now down to approximately $250,000 yes can we do a dance because I I haven't slept all this no no no I I Yay this is great news why AR we why aren't we all screaming and dancing I'm I'm like I'm sweating yay still half a million but we're yeah we made great progress yeah there was um there was some uh encumbrances we were over encumbered uh in one account and that was a Savings of $265,000 um we we adjusted some of our uh bi-weekly payroll amounts that we are using in the projections um to to be closer the current and then the the biggest difference was this um you know era in the formula that was you know adding the adding up the the accounts that we're in deficit so um anyway it just I've never been so happy about a mistake it kind of worked out you know I'm I'm I'm a little bit um I don't want to say embarrassed is too strong but you know I I I wish the problem you know didn't happen in the first place but it could have went the other way too so I'm grateful that it just worked out but I think it's just example we have a you know we we any kind of little problem in this budget um is kind of magnified so uh but I'm totally I'm going to sleep well tonight and uh we'll finish a year with balanced budget okay thank you I know we I think we scheduled this from 5 to six so we're GNA go to member Graham the member reinfeld they see your hand up then I'm going to go to your presentation okay um thank you Jerry wondered I I don't I know that you generally um don't attend our school committee meetings on Mondays but I was hoping maybe you could just write a report and submit that as an agenda item so that somebody can like read that for the record in our main meeting um and I'm going to hold my any you know any sort of additional questions and comments until then because this isn't on the agenda for today um but since I know that you generally aren't able to join those meetings I did want to say thank you for being proactive about telling us because we could easily find ourselves in the situation that Brockton is finding themselves in right now um with massive surprises of deficits um with everybody asleep at the wheel so um I don't think you should feel embarrassed um thank you for being diligent and for um informing the committee because I I think that um that is that is what we all want and need so thank you and then um member rouso I think Noah yasco has joined us so if you can add him to the roll call thank you that's it great member reinfeld I was just gonna thank Jerry again for being proactive and say don't be embarrassed we'd rather get the information sooner so we all make mistakes all the time thank you thank you yeah we're great news we'll turn it over to you Jerry thank you okay all right so um you know one of the um key uh sources of Revenue um or or uh you know uh resources that we have for um I don't know if they let me can are you uh let's see can can you see my screen not yet yes com okay all right so um historically you know the Chapter 70 isn't um a big source of revenue for uh Medford um like it might be in other communities that have a high uh lowincome population um but nevertheless it does outline you know kind of the minimum spending um that a school district should be spending and it identifies that and uh you know allocates a a share that the city's expected to um contribute and then the state uh contributes um another amount so I thought it might be useful just to look at um kind of the last few years of Chapter 70 if you go back to um FY 23 our foundation enrollment which includes not only Medford Public School students um but Medford students attending cha schools as well so cha schools is part of the Chapter 70 formula and the city gets a bill every year for chat School tuition uh for those students um the state calculated a foundation budget of $ 64.9 million in 23 they uh determined the city uh should contribute 51 million and then 13.9 would come from Chapter 70 and this net School spending is something that we would we have to report at the end of the year to show that we met our net School spending Target now in medfi you're fortunate that the city um picks up the health insurance for active employees and retirees that are um attributable to Medford Public Schools and and they pay for the Charter School tuition so every year we are going to hit this um med school spending um Target because the city routinely contributes more than they required to uh in 24 uh it was pretty good year for Medford because the foundation enrollment went up by over 100 students and again that could include chatter school as well um our foundation budget went up 6.9 million and then uh that was basically that 6.9 million increase was split between the city and Chapter 70 so there was a$3 A5 million increase in Chapter 70 that year then we forward to fy2 and this is based on the uh Governor's budget that is working its way through the house and this can change a little bit it doesn't change too drastically but it could change a little bit after uh it goes through the legislature but between FY 24 and fy2 our enrollment actually went down and our foundation budget went up by 1.7 the city's required contribution went up by almost 2.8 million but because our enrollment went down because the uh because the um Chapter 70 money has a whole hold harmless provision so instead of going down which it should have down to about 16 million it stayed the same and then we qualify for what's called minimum Aid it's a per student amount I think it's $35 uh per student and so our Chapter 70 increased by 135,000 and the net School spending increased by the total of the district contribution and the 135,000 so that went up 2.9 I also did an analysis of um our school budget versus our net School spending um just to kind of get a sense of what Ty Al happens in in Medford so our school budget um you know has always increased during the year uh we had a big increase in fy22 you know a smaller increase in fy21 uh and our net School spending in relation to the school budget um you know typically is is going up but in a couple of years was our budget was actually less than the net School spending budget but just kind of data points on on Chapter 70 um I could spend a little bit of time on how Chapter 70 works for some of the new members but I don't want to take up too much time um so happy to answer this might be a good time just to answer any questions on Chapter 70 member Graham thank you um I will uh reconnect about scheduling some time with Tracy novic um to do a real deep dive on Chapter 70 for all of us um now that we have a new member on board we'll get his availability and um figure out a time to do that um but uh Jerry a couple things that I've been watching in the in the news is that two points of concern about Chapter 70 is one the rate of inflation that was assigned in the governor's budget which was like 1 and a half% I want to say um and people feeling like that's considerably lower than um what actual inflation represents but the other thing that um people are talking about is a pretty substantial reduction in students being considered lowincome there's actually like a list of communities where this where the the drop was significant um and I didn't see us on that list but I was just curious if you have any insights about how our lowi income enrollment numbers are changing I mean I know there's sort of attributing it to the mass health redetermination among other things um but I was just curious um what our low-income numbers look like and if we feel like those sound representative of our population or if we are if there is a a gap there much like our snap Gap um yeah let me uh just going to call up another spreadsheet but what um yeah the the you know years ago all um all districts you used a paper produ process to identify loan you know was tied to the lunch fund um since we have um gone to um uh you know um Community eligibility everybody uh qualifies for free lunch that um led the state to try to come up with a different um methodology um and it's never you know it's based on um PE uh identifying people that are on various benefit programs within the state and it just doesn't pick up everybody for some reason um particularly uh recently AR arrived immigrants um even if um you're legal immigrant here you're B from receiving benefits for 5 years so um they've been trying to work around that but uh I will try to do some more research on that but essentially you know this is how can can everybody see this screen fy2 Chapter 70 Foundation budget um we can't see your screen right now you cannot nope okay here it comes good okay so uh you know this part of the foundation budget is kind of what's the base base budget you know based on um all of our students and then every Community gets um a incremental increase over and above the base for the foundation now it's not an increase in chapter 78 it's an increase in your budget so because you have special needs students English language Learners lowincome students you um it's assume that you need to spend more money because these students are more needy but if you look over here on column 19 this is the count of low-income students that we have in Medford Public School so um you know if we have 4,200 Stu uh students um you know that's about you know 40% 45% there's another so we're in a group eight category you see this little blue box over here 43% of our students are low income that qualifies us for group eight and that dictates um you know how much of a bump up we're going to get for low income so um the very neediest communities get a much bigger increase for their low-income students um but this is where we are uh group eight so our foundation budget increases by$ 1225 million uh due to our low-income students and you know this is where we we should be spending money on interventionists and um tutoring and we qualify for uh Title One in some of our schools because of this so um thank you thank you member I I can go back and figure out I can do some trending on that too to see what the trend is remember Uso thank you um jar you um when you were showing the budget for the last few years um you I I almost everybody who was here certainly remembers the level funded year of fy21 and I realized that we did have a sub supplemental the state hadn't even finished their budget so we level funded and I believe there was a supplemental and your numbers reflected an increase which we never approved a supp Al as a school committee and I'm just because I am often looking at the data from desie and I cannot find the number that you showed anywhere online I believe you have access to you know the login and all that to versions of portals that the public doesn't is that where you get the number that you are showing not on this one but the uh the last yeah five years of budget me um this one yes yes so that fy21 number we we actually proved in our budget 61250 that's what we approved okay but I I don't doubt that you're number is right because I know I heard that there was a supplemental that's as much as I ever heard about it yeah I'd have to go back and I I might have just gotten them off of um budgets that you know I found in the office here okay because I I I did look at my own copies of budgets and never saw that number just can you one second I want to write it down 339 537 okay if you if you I know you're ridiculously busy but I I really would like to know where that number came from um because that's really important yeah fy21 because you know this trending stuff is a constant conversation um that I certainly have with others and having the same numbers matters thank you okay y you can continue Jerry thank you okay so um the next thing let's I'm looking at uh maybe we'll look at uh revolving funds so uh let's see so the city uh I mean the school department has um a number of evolving funds um that they use uh which um provide some resources uh uh to the school department budget to run programs um this meat program is a tuition-based um program and um it I you know i' have to go back in the Years um I'm going to try to spend my time over the next three weeks kind of looking forward but when we have some time we can go back to see why some of these balances were accumulated but certainly this is an area where we could charge staff that are uh assigned to the me program uh and not uh use those um uh not have you know save those salaries from being charged to the general fund budget um The Vocational School has a number of um revolving funds that they use because they provide Services um to students I mean to um to um parents and other individuals in Medford and this gives them a chance to have kind of a real world experience in their education uh so there's a cosmetology program marketing there's col culinary uh the beastro here at the high school there's a Cy program uh a motive uh program and a graphics group and then there's this category tuition so um in uh in years past uh medf uh was a program that was accessed by a lot of students outside of medfed and they would pay tuition to medf it go into this account um because there's um in the program is popular with our own students now there there's little room to accept um students from um outside so there's a few there's a few students that are tuition in that are still uh going through the program but this program as a source of Revenue will eventually uh just dry up but this provides some an opportunity for us to charge some teacher salaries if we want the the this account typically contributed about $150,000 to supply needs for the Vocational School in addition to what was provided in the general fund and because this account is um not producing more Revenue I think we'll we're going to try to bring more of that Supply expense into the general fund uh so we EV don't kind of have a fiscal cliff with the uh Supply budget of the U of the uh vocational program um then we have a separate account for uh the rental charges for the edgely field so uh any Personnel that's assigned to that uh field when it's in use um gets charged to this account um and of course the lighting expenses and uh maintenance of the field that all gets charged to this account now I'm told that um there's uh there was a a Del or intentional um strategy to to build up the fund in this account so it would be available uh when the field had to be replaced so there is a a good balance it would that if that field was replaced it certainly wouldn't cover the cost of the entire field but it might cover cost of uh uh design and project management uh and then we have the school lunch fund which is um provides lunches to our students and that fund is um you know self- sustaining so most of the money comes in Federal reimbursement a small amount comes from State reimbursement and U that balance is in good shape School athletics as well we charge fees uh to our students to um participate in sports uh it certainly does not cover the entire cost of sports there's a a budget in the general fund that covers most of the expenses but this provides some opportunity to charge some of the expenses um that we have in athletics to this fund um Community Schools is another area where we um renting our facilities like the Japanese uh Language School uh churches that use the facilities uh right now I'm I you know it's a little concerning that we're running a deficit right now in this account but I I want to say that the um with these accounts the revenues tend to lag the expenses the expenses more or less happen in real time um and the uh the revenues eventually you know have to get up to City Treasury and get deposited into the correct account but we have to keep an eye on that there's also a drive Ed program where we charge students to um uh have their Drive Zed program U or to get their license um it pays for a couple of Staff members um and that's most of the charges to this account and there is a good a balance in that account as well we also charge students and staff if they lose or damage their Chromebooks um th those all go into a fund um and are available to refurbish uh computers or to buy Replacements summer school is another um account where the U there's a fees charg for I guess Credit Recovery uh programs this is in another account that's in deficit so it could be that obviously we spent more it could be that we haven't fully deposited the uh proceeds there but we are showing a deficit on that program this vocational early Ed program is a um a small uh Early Childhood Program that's run out of the V uh for students that are pursuing uh teaching or um similar uh types of career paths within teaching uh so there's uh charges made and uh a little bit of expense made but there's balance in that account as well preschool this I believe it might be mfn Jerry mfn Medford Family Network okay thank you there are few accounts here from medred family Network so uh now medf Family network is you know kind of a completely um separate program from from Medford Public Schools but we operate more or less as a f agent for them and so we accept their grants we provide some accounting and um you know payroll HR those all those support services that provided by midford public schools um and then we the pool has uh its own rental fees and U membership charges uh the pool um you know we need to um really take a look at how that's staffed and the hours that are open I did a really kind of back of the envelope um assessment when I first got here and I I just think we're you know we're only uh we we lose about $20 an hour um you know every time we're open we're open a lot of hours early in the morning late at night um we do have some good uh revenue from different schools uh a lot of schools don't have pools so some schools are coming to Medford to use uh our facility for their swim program uh but that really needs a kind of a management review to to make sure that that can run uh in the black every year this sure tuition account is another account similar to vocational tuition where um in years past we used to uh tuition in uh students to the Curtis tffs program and um we we haven't done that in recent years and uh but we did accumulate a balance and we use that balance uh on and off to um support the special ed program here at bford Kids Corner is another program that's kind of uh is should be self- sustaining it's the U the daycare program that's available to staff it's located here in the High School uh the evening school is uh no longer in use I think this small deficit is from a prior year and I think it's probably just uh missed it's a Mis posting to this account so we'll have to do a journal entry to to clean that up but that's no we no longer run an evening program and then the before and after school program um is a good um Money Maker for the school department um so it just has a cumulated a large balance over the years um it's running in the red this year but that's again I think the the revenues are lagging the uh and the expenses are more in real time so that will finish up um you know in a positive amount but those are all the revolving funds that we operate uh in Medford and I'd be happy to answer any questions people might have on that this is great Jerry thank you um member reinfeld then member rouso then member Graham sorry thank you Jerry uh so I am curious when we will when the lags will catch up so when we'll know whether these numbers are lasting or temporary and then I guess my other question is what ability do we have to see what the trends are cuz I'm seeing a lot of net losses and I'm curious how many of those are perpetuating from year to year and how many are anomalies yeah yeah I can I can get that there are a couple accounts that are like the pool um and and what happens usually is um and I don't I don't really have a good handle here because I wasn't here last year but there's um you know to if you had uh for instance um a deficit in the this vocational carpentry which is really this this happened you know prior to FY 24 but um the the vocational school has been kind of running all the centry uh Revenue expenses recently through the vocational tuition account and we just kind of reactivated this fund they um the uh the students build sheds for different organizations and so they're able to sell those sheds so that's going to kind of correct itself but if we finish the year with that and we had uh bandwidth in our um general fund to absorb that we would do a journal entry to get that account corrected um but that's T that's probably typically what happened in years past there were um accounting Maneuvers at the end to kind of get everything to balance uh because um the city's Director of Finance is going to send send me a report and says I you know I have to get these accounts in Balance you know to close my book so there's a there's an effort made in in August and September to get those straightened out but what we're going to do is we're going to try to take a look at um um the the individual departments uh keep track of their deposits to the city treasury so we're going to go back and look at those figures uh to to make sure that everything we deposited with the treasury is hitting the right account so that would be the first step um and then uh and then we'll go from there but we can go back a few years and identify uh the um if there's any problem areas yeah we don't want to be in a situation where we're like routinely bailing out these um these different revolving funds and if they're if they're U consistently running a deficit we have to look at the the revenue structure and um like with the pool um with the Community Schools we're looking at the rates that we're going to charge Athletics is another account you know are those rates um you know kind of keeping up with the increases in our expenses so that's that's what we'll be looking at for this cycle or for what What's the timing on looking at that well as soon as we get the budget finished then we you know our attention is going to be turned towards you know yearend uh activities and we were going to uh and we want to kind of spend make sure we're spending a general fund and make sure these revolving funds are in Balance so great it's more or less like May June July Activity thank you member Russo then member Graham thank you um Jerry this is excellent work and I really appreciate having it in front of us so we can really see this uh I believe the Japanese school pays even more than the revenue listed for Community Schools um so um if their annual contribution their annual payment is more than that number I think somebody should figure out where that money went um but you did indicate that there was work to be done there but I I think that their annual payment is greatly in excess of the revenue shown so yeah I'm a little concerned about that well they all all their all that money at the time was collected went into Community Schools account and I think what they do is they prepay for a number of years so um that is something that um also has to be watched so you don't want to you know they're they're overpaying in the first year you don't want to use that Surplus for other things uh because you're committed to providing them the space you know for the next three years years so um Point well no thank you I didn't know they did it that's really useful information um the pool Revenue um it's I'm I'm glad to see that other schools that are using our facilities are paying as well um I guess the question and obviously our students shouldn't be paying to use the pool to do the things like you know swimming and all that stuff but um I guess you know my question is are we just charging entirely ridiculously low rates to the public who wants to come in and use our pool because frankly it's like the best kept secret in Medford is that our pool is fabulous you can get in at a ridiculously early hour um it's not crowded although I have not done it myself um but um you know we need to really have a conversation about what we're charging um to to the to folks in the public who are using the pool and it's sounds like you'll get that done um um can you repeat I'm I'm the chair of the board of sh so can you remind repeat what you said about the short tuition because I was confused okay um so back um even when I was working in Chelsea I can you know remember paying tuition to Medford because we had two or three students in the uh ctis stuff special needs program um so those tuition payments went into this revolving fund and so over time it uh Surplus uh funds were built up um so because the revenue that we collected was in connection with our special needs program um any spending we would do uh would be connect Ed to our special needs program so you can collect the money and you can kind of spend it on special needs as you see fit I think last year we might have charged a portion of a teacher um but anyway thank you yeah that that's great thank you I appreciate that um and then Kids Corner I mean I think we have people who work in Medford because we have kids corner and it's great right um but clearly we are not charging which I realize it's charging staff but we are not charging enough money to cover that and um we need to just bite the bullet I don't know I don't believe the school committee ever um votes on what the costs for Kids Corner are um which would be interesting whether we're supposed to or not but I certainly for one hope that whatever it costs no matter how big the increase it just needs to be zeroed out to yeah you know if the increas is to double what we charge people then that's the increase because we can't be doing you know having other programs pay for a service that is frankly a service that people all over would die to have right so yeah well they did uh this Top Line is the beginning balance so that means it was the ending balance in fy22 so they did finish the year um in a surplus so I'm confident that they will finish this year in a surplus I just think that um the revenues are lagging again but oh okay it's still it's still uh you know a concern until we kind of close the books and we verify that you know it is in Surplus so okay that's great that makes me feel better because you know nobody wants to be telling Folks by the way your daycare screen now cost a lot more money because that that would be terrible but yeah if this is lagging that that makes me much happier those are all my questions thank you thank you next up is member Graham thank you um I think across the board we have unequivocally been told in the past that it is absolutely the school commit authority to set rates for all of these things and we have never been presented with a rate C hard despite asking about it at least annually um since I have been on the committee and so before we go too far into the next fiscal year I would like to see a rate card for our review and approval for all the tuition bearing parts of this revolving fund and that would include recommendations About Kids Corner the pool um any sort of preschool programming meep to the extent that community members are paying for it driver ed Athletics like all of those things I think we have approved Athletics once or twice um and really to wave tuition during or wave user fees during covid um but I would like to see a cohesive rate card that also includes our rentals um our rental rates so that we as a committee can take a vote and be supportive of what we need to generate from a revenue perspective into these accounts um and I think you know Jerry obviously you can't do what you weren't even here to do but we've asked this question multiple times and um we have been assured that it's coming but I think we really do need a fiscal view of these of these tuitions to say what do we recommend that they are for fy2 like we've already done that with before and after school so I feel comfortable with that but they they're not an exception in any way in terms of how they operate to anything else so um I'm hoping that that can be on the agenda in then in the coming like you know in the coming month or so because some of these programs people will need to start to plan accordingly yep yeah that makes complete sense um and then I think the other thing remember G I was just gonna ask do you want like small presentations on each category so we could vote on them individually as they're as they come ready or do you want a full overview and when it when everything's complete just because maybe that would take longer than if yeah the pool could give us recommendations you know next month along with X Y and Z where others take some time I don't have a preference like if there's an EAS whatever is easiest for the administration to go through and and sort of cover all the bases I think whatever we do to set rates for next year this year is is going to be proba probably really imperfect and next year we can be a little bit more comprehensive about it and say like is what we did last year did it work did it not work etc yeah um and then I think we can get on a schedule where we could do R setting as a single thing but if it takes a while for us to get there I think that's okay so I don't have a I don't have a strong preference I think it's really more a question of like how can the um you know how can the administration be ready for that um I had two other questions um uh one is um I would like to see a Reconciliation of um athletic fees to ensure that we are collecting all of our athletic user fees so I would like to know how many um students are registered um what that means in terms of the anticipated fees the number of students who are Exempted from fees whether they have like multiple siblings um in sports or they play many sports or um we are providing financial assistance I would just like to see an actual accounting of like kids doing sports and money collected and I would like to see you know whether that number ties out or whether we have a problem collecting our fees um I concerned that we do I've heard from lots of people in the community that it's really hard to actually pay the school to have their kid participate but their kids get to participate anyway which is great and I would absolutely love for us to be a fee-free school but in the meantime if we're going to charge fees I want to make sure we're doing it with accuracy and um fairly and I'm I've not ever been able to see any reporting that sort of G gives me that assurances so I think that would be another thing I'm I'm interested in and then I think the other thing that strikes me um and it it's honestly been sort of on my mind since long before I was on the school committee is when we talk about um like and this is these are small examples but like lost Chromebooks and lost library books um what is the process for replacing those because anytime I spent a lot of time in the school libraries and what I heard was like oh well I keep this money in my petty cash because I once it goes into the Lost book fee I can never get it and what I see when I see a line that says there's $30,000 in Lost Chromebooks that's $30,000 in like Chromebooks not available to students and same thing with library books right like there's a 20s something thousand balance which in the library the used Library the Lost library book fund that means there's $28,000 worth of books not available to our students right and I think the point of the fund is to replace the Lost Books and it just doesn't seem like that happen so I would also like to delve into like what are the processes to use those funds and who is responsible for making sure that's happening on a regular basis and in those two particular instances I uh so my my plan I I'm just about finalized the a scope of work for to have U an auditing firm come in and do a management review of our collection practices um so part of it was like organizing all these accounts where we collect Revenue because um there's just a number of different ways we collect revenue and some um you know departments are responsible for making deposits to to the city Treasurers Office um it's a little bit um kind of spread out from an accountability point of view um so just to get an idea we have um different websites where we make collections other um parents are able to to pay in cash sometimes and I don't have any I I'm not concerned that there's like fraud going on but I think that we need um somebody come in take a look at how we do it give us recommendations on how we can tighten up uh the revenue collection and then um we're thinking about you know kind of in you know what is our uh we we need some capacity to to manage the revenue better than we have now so trying to you know Envision like making that somebody's position without necessarily adding adding another position but maybe that that's a recommendation from this report but I I agree with you would have it's um there there's a lot of um Cooks in the kitchen on Revenue collection um yeah I I completely agree four three well three maybe three years ago now um we asked for that exact audit to be done um and we retained Andy pette to do it um and he did provide um he did provide a public report um to us and it did not go into that level of detail um which was disappointing at the time and also sort of the middle of covid and lots was going on I don't know if privately there were recommendations made about Revenue collection but as I sat here looking at this I I certainly said some sort of centralization of Revenue operations and controls has to happen like all that cash management control um strikes me as a risk and not and it's great to hear you say you're not like overly concerned about like any sort of like actual fraud happening right now but it's incumbent on us to prevent that and I think we need to have good measures to do it um but also we need to be able to tell people what they owe us and make it easy for people to to um to pay so you know like I see stuff all the time and sort of you know like field trips people say like send cash or you know please send cash and like that's that's part of like Revenue collection that's a symptom of like complicated Revenue collection in my opinion so I think we do need to do that but there may be some findings from that initial report that you can get your hands on as well yeah there's a whole there's a whole uh accounting system around Student Activities which is where that those funds would go your last example so that's not even on this chart but um y that that would be part of the management review yeah okay great um and then I think the other question I had is um whether we're confident that Community Schools is being charged appropriately for um the staff uh expenses yeah we um we we're not confident in that I think that U and and part of it was because you know some of our um uh costs you know are not keeping up with the contracts that are being settled so it's really I I'm glad to hear like we get into a process of annual review of the rates because I think that's G to create a system where we're looking at um the sufficiency of the rates we're charging on an annual basis but uh we're probably we we are not um uh recovering the costs of staff that are assigned on the weekends uh to some of these events yeah and that like that that just can't continue to happen we can't continue to to pay in excess of what our rentals are providing us it's just not it's not feasible and it hurts our students um and we can't we can't continue to do that agreed yeah thank you so much Jerry this is super helpful um we can I I'm looking at the time we can stop here I had you know we do get private grants and donations um as well but um um and I have a little presentation on kind of my thoughts around chargebacks to some of these programs to recover U admin costs and Facilities costs but U we can defer that to another time if you want um I know I did did see member member reinfeld you put your hand down U thought you had a question it's up to the committee I don't know who has time restrictions and I'm I'm okay to stay okay I'm gonna just I think maybe maybe 10 more minutes sounds good okay um so we we have these private grants that that provide um uh you know extra programming that doesn't affect the general fund um so the U the center of um citizenship and social responsibility um has three three accounts that they manage this Crystal Campbell bman project the Cummings Foundation which is really a lot of how they uh provide for their uh programming um and then they also get donations here in column H um uh so they they have programs running in every school uh which is provid in um our students U you know after school opportunity um this Leo clock English award I to be honest I'm not sure what uh this is for I have to try to go back uh but it looks like it might be a scholarship uh type of a program um this Verizon Grant is uh another U private donation that we got um small balances um some of these grants um probably you know haven't been charged yet or there might be small balances that will um transfer out at the end of the year if they're no longer active um is's another group save our Sports um so there's a small balance there's a a gift uh so these These are little balances that will be uh transferred out the Campbell gift fund is also another ccsr um account U Bloomberg gift account that looks like maybe it was something from the past with the balance on it then we have uh Medford Family network has The Children's they get a grand from the children's trust which I need to get a hand on because um I I want to say that there there's probably they have a few accounts I want to say that this account's probably being overcharged and another account like maybe this gift account is being undercharged um but we'll get to the bottom of that and then there's this miscellaneous School gifts account I'm not sure what's going in and out of this account but typically um a lot of schools have this type of account some people sometimes alumni or um successful families in medf might just be generous and give give a gift for no specific reason it would go into this account uh and then there's something got to notify the art Department there's a money for a mural that seems to be available Medford Family Network and then we got a grant for uh stem equipment and professional development I think we got it in FY 23 and we spent the money in FY 23 so there was a deficit in the account but then we we received the funds in FY 24 and that all balanced out but that's just another uh group of funds that are outside you I'm I know you know about Title One and Essa and uh and those types of Grants but there's these other smaller grants that the school department [Music] manages I don't know if there's any questions on that no this is helpful thank you okay and then um who sorry sorry I didn't see um member Russo I I just have one question about um and and I don't expect you to have the answer on this but um some of those things have substantial balances and um I'm hoping that somebody has the documentation on those those bigger things like there's three comings ones um because when I see these big numbers sitting there I worry about the grant expiring and then we have to send the money back because we didn't figure out how to spend it frankly um or did we spend it and we didn't properly account for the expenses so um you know obviously if you don't have the grant documents yeah you know but that that's something I hope we could yeah we could do because U there was some big numbers there yeah my the crystal Campbell vman project which um you know has the biggest balance my understanding is that most of that may be an endowment so I just have to kind of work something out with the treasurer where we whatever so so an endowment is the we're going to keep uh uh the the original uh contribution uh imp perpetuity and then we'd probably spend any interest that's being generated from that account but um I I think that's why you see the balance there but we have to set up the accounting so we make sure that we don't spend the amount that's intended to be the endowment thank you okay um so just going to spend just a couple minutes and and get your thoughts on this if um mayor I I I believe member in tapa had a question oops member in tapa no I was just gonna um to member thank you to member so's point of the Cummings Foundation that large Grant funds the ccsr over a expanded amount of time so that might be why and I don't know if they have to give it back but I do know they have to apply I think every 10 years or so might be it's like somewhere between six to 10 um but I was curious about the gift fund and if that had any ement with the um the Alumni Association and where those funds are handled where the Overflow of SGA funds from the previous classes I know some of them sometimes they're retained sometimes the sgaa funds um go into like the alumni associ so that way they can do their own private scholarship so I'm curious to see if how much of that may be attributing to that if at all um or if it's purely outside if it's purely outside donations of um people who want to give back to our schools I I had a little is it is that a question I I had a little trouble hearing that I know my apologies I'm trying to figure out my mic but I would be interested to see where the the MHS gift fund what what is funding that if it's anything with the Alumni Association if it's in terms of like overflow of sgaa funds the student government funds with fundraised funds um and then the beginning Point again I don't know how much was heard fixing my mic situation for next meeting about the Cummings Foundation being a grant that's spent over a few years and I think we're actually in year one or year two of it I think it was just replenished which might be why that number is is so large but that is the predominant f f um funding source for all of the units of ccsr and all the projects so I do know they get an award for a number of years so they get $35,000 a year from that award so I think it might have been maybe it was a 10-year Award of 350,000 I'm not sure I think the committee is going to get a presentation on that program soon um but um I if you could if you could send me an email uh on your question and I'll I'll do the research for you g mchu at Medford K12 okay uh okay is this so well no it's [Music] sorry so um this was kind of my thinking around this chargeback plan that would need a little more work to go but essentially um you know we have programs like the after school program and Kids Corner and Meep um that use our facilities use our administrative Services um and you know we should be um we we can uh charge those programs for uh the facilities um expenses and the admin expenses that for the services we're providing them so the the the trick is to kind of coming up with a methodology that's like fairly allocates expenses to those programs so for the facilities charge I thought the easiest way uh to do it would be to base it on classroom use um and then we might be able to kind of piggyback on this to figure out you know if we're charging these outside groups uh sufficient um amount for our facilities but these are the number of classrooms we have according to the msba in each of our schools 651 total um and then our facilities budget for this year is uh 6.1 million and if I divide the number of classrooms by a facilities budget it's $9,400 per classroom uh then I say said well we go at least 183 uh school days including teacher days and then maybe another 40 over July and August for a 223 day year and we can kind of nail that number down but that would be $42 a day then I divided I I assumed a 12-hour day and divided it into kind of Three Time categories um because for instance the after school program uh mostly uses it after school um and then I assumed uh 40 you know 10 classrooms per school I don't know whether that's low or high we confirm that number uh but 170 uh school days and 10 early release days where the after school program provides more of a halfday program um that works out to be a charge of $100,000 that we could recover for facilities and then similarly for admin uh right now uh we have um 1,31 active employees uh we have a finance HR technology budget of almost $ 1.1 million so the uh Finance HR and Technology costs work out to be about $1,000 per employee and then I'm assuming before and after school program has 60 employees um and that would be a cost recovery of 63,000 so it will look like something like this and we'll you know this will be be able to kind of offset um some of the uh budgeted amounts uh in the general fund there more to come to that when we do the budget presentation that's that's what we look at and then the other thing is that I don't have for you tonight but we do get um eate funding for our technology projects any project that qualifies for eate so that will be part of a addition Revenue presentation but it's it's probably around 100 or $130,000 in offset uh for some of our technology costs and that's that's my presentation for tonight we l the mayor um nope she's still here um but remember so did you want to ask a question I did yes um it not a throw wrench and it's based on what I'm seeing it's more like throwing a little tiny file into this when it works but when we talk about the after school program for instance um you know um we just became aware that a primary space they use one of the schools was just reserved for another program without their um they were just told by the way you don't have your space anymore so when I think about making them pay for spaces I think we have to um also come think about how their space literally because we still can't figure out how to do reservations of space in the district um that their space May in fact just random no longer be theirs so when we talk about charging them I I almost feel like we should pay them back for the crisis that we put them in when we give away their space um and I realize that's sort of an additional little piece of work what to do in those situations but um I I just think it's super unfair and um minor minor thing to think about after the fact but yeah no I agree and it it just it happens um in every school District um but you have to um the the the services that are provide being provided by the after school program are just as important as whatever else is happening in the school and the best way to do it is just before school come to an agreement with the principle what spaces are going to be available on a regular basis for the after school program and then things come up and people work together and they kind of work things out for something unforeseen but you have to have a regular uh available space to do proper planning and um and then there's other spaces within the school that can be used for for some of these other meetings or kind of figure out a way you know how best to share the space but it's it's not an untypical problem in districts great thank you so much Jerry if there's no any other further questions um motion to adjourn motion to adjourn by member Graham seconded by second I think that is member brandley or member reinfeld uh reinfeld roll call please thank you s I'm talking to myself saying I'm muted aren't I as if anybody's gonna answer uh M BR yes member Graham yes member Anapa yes member yes member R yes member so yes Maro yes seven the affirmatives