##VIDEO ID:Y-mr01I_Vh0## [Music] welcome everyone to the November 13 2024 um Finance subcomittee meeting of the Brookline school committee um we will start on our agenda with the approval of the October 23rd 2024 minutes can I get a motion for approval thank you Sarah Carolyn do you second yes okay Carolyn how do you vote Yes Sarah yes and I vote Yes um next item on the agenda is the Abby Dean Abby W Dean scholarship and the um a little bit of the background we'll have a conversation and then um a vote and the vote would be to recommend to the full school committee authorization for the office of Town Council to file a cpre I don't know how you say that Latin worde C pre complaint in court to modify the Abby wdan scholarship eligibility conditions to increase possible recipients so that is the potential vote in front of us um and I think we will maybe turn it over to you Helen to MC this portion if that works for you sure that would be great I maybe I can just sort of frame why we're bringing this or why sure I'm bring helping to to facilitate this and before you start I just want to frame to people that I expect this is not going to take more than five to 10 minutes total so let's let's keep it relatively brief if we can so John hodman who was on the school committee with me many moons ago um contacted me about this Abid Dean scholarship that through the Brooklyn Community Foundation they were trying to figure out what could be done with it and um you know what I think rather than me so you have John Hodgman here from the Community Foundation you have Scott butchard here from um the scholarship what's your title Scott I'm co-chair of the scholarship committee at the high school thank you we have Susan Harris here from town council's office uh who would be the one working and then there's a number of people who are also here um who have been involved but might not wouldn't be talking so I think I'll turn over to you John just to frame it and then I was just thinking it was 30 years ago I was on the school committee with Helen and I was a member of the finance committee at that time so I this is an interesting and important story uh about 10 years ago Steven cerillo who was the director of Finance for the town approached the Brookline Community Foundation to say that we needed an endowment to help underwrite scholarships so I agreed to be the founding chair of that committee scholarship committee at the BCF and then an Kohl's who's an observer uh joined me about five years ago as the succeeding chair and we've worked together since and uh with Stephen Scott an and Kathleen Cavell who was a former member of the uh town council's office we've been working on this project for the last six months I think you have a document that spells out in more detail the history of this but here we have a case of a generous benefactor Charlotte hedge who incidentally was the granddaughter of Reverend Pierce who was a member of the Brookline school committee from the late 18th century into the early 20 uh 19th century and was a co-founder of the Brookline High School uh Charlotte hedge wrote a will in 1915 saying that she would give $300 to the town of Brookline for scholarships for students going to Radcliffe or Simmons and in addition that no scholarships would be awarded until the income from this donation was exceeding $200 1923 she died the town received the $300 invested it in some form and the first scholarship award was made in 1941 now since then Awards have been made to students presumably from Radcliffe and Simmons I say presumably because in 19 1999 Radcliffe merged with Harvard and from that time forward it's been very uh infrequent if at all that students going to Harvard have applied for these scholarships so only the students going to Simmons have received these Awards and to put this into context uh in this past year there were three women who receive scholarships who are going to Simmons and I believe the awards they received was about uh $115,000 total and I believe the income for that year was $175,000 so the balance went back into the fund and has been reinvested accordingly what we've done is we found the will we have started the process of looking at a legal uh Doctrine s c prey uh Susan Harris from the Town Council has joined our group and we are trying to get authorization from the select board to file a petition with the Attorney General's office and then the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to alter the provision of the will so that all females who qualify at Brookline High School would be able to receive a scholarship no matter what college they attended uh what prompted this for me was the fact that of the $190,000 that the BCF Awards each year for scholarships 990,000 of that comes from the arpa Grant and that Grant ends in 2026 so I've been looking at a way to fill that Gap and I'm pretty confident with a balance of over $3 million in the abidine fund that over $100,000 would be available on an ongoing basis should the court approve this petition and Scott is here to answer questions and Susan is here to answer questions so thank you very much one quick question John wasn't it $3,000 that was left or 300 uh three 3,000 yeah that's what I thought because you said 300 at the beginning and I thought that was low y um before we go to questions Carolyn I just want to put a little bit of context out there which is when I heard about this um I think naturally it raises a lot of questions for people about the scholarships overall and we're going to C we're going to come back to scholarships later in the year um but because there is a long lead time to go through this process with the state we're going to sort of pluck this little component of the whole scholarship story out we're going to tease just this portion out um discuss just this vote because I think there this is a very potentially very large L can of worms and we want to get this one worm wending its way through the state process before we talk about every other worm in the can um some of the worms which are quite large as as is the one we're talking about right now um so and and I think we also want to give staff the time in the finance office and of course um everyone who's involved to sort of make sure that they have all the full details of the questions that we'll ask them so again we'll park the rest of this for later in the year this is strict on the vote that's in front of us about the cpre um discussion going to the state and now that I've given a little bit of that context Caroline go ahead thanks and I I hear you for sure on that um so the only because certainly I am curious about what else it takes to get this scholarship other than applying to those schools so I but I do think this question is relevant so you want to lift the restriction and thank you for all of this by the way super interesting and thank you for your work um we want to lift the restriction on Simmons Radcliffe and so that would be not withstanding whatever else may be required to get this scholarship it would just open it up to any to go to any school uh we we believe it it would be uh for female graduates because we're trying to adhere as much as possible to the intent of the donor yeah when she wrote the will in 1914 yep sure and I I can add to you know there's no one sort of right answer in filing a a a petition for CPR it really requires considering what the original intent was and how to stay as close to that as possible while avoiding waste um so here you know the the town has not been able to spend as much money as they could um with that restriction on Simmons and Radcliffe we are we are continuing to research it at town council's office but we think what's what's likely is that we may recommend that it be opened up to female students who are um with a preference to those attending Simmons and Harvard and then expand from there and is there a limitation thank you Susan is there a limit on the amount I mean I guess it sort of begs the question if for example you had three people this year and I'll just say let's just call it $90,000 why wouldn't they each get 30 or is so in terms of not being able to spend what you want to spend yeah we uh typically look hard and sort of objectively at kids unmet Financial need yeah okay in the Harvard realm that there's not much unmet need and in the 's realm we have typically been offering uh young ladies four you know four years worth of support in the amount that that covers their unmet need once you once you take out family contribution and financial aid from Simmons which is why we haven't haven't been able to spend as much as we would have liked to and that is consistent with um Charlotte's will as well which references the the needs and deserts of the students thank you okay any more questions before we take a vote Sarah no okay so this is the vote um thank you Betsy did you just change the wording to what I said you did right okay no did it always have the recommend okay so but we are recommending to the full school committee that the committee authorized so I will make this motion that is written on the screen that we are recommending to full school committee I'll second okay Sarah how do you vote Yes Carolyn yes and I vote Yes okay thank you Scott John Susan for coming one question do you think I mean so this would go this is on the docket for tomorrow so that we can expedite it as much as possible do you think there's a need for anybody to be there tomorrow my suggestion is that Ellen you have John on speed dial and if a question no no I'm not gonna be at the meeting sorry okay well maybe John you can send me your cell phone by um and and if there's any questions we can always pause the vote call you and come back but I don't think you need to join the meeting or anything well probably um I would ask Scott if he might be available by phone as well because you can talk more detailed about the process of awarding the scholarship it's the first item isn't it Betsy the um consent agenda no it's not part of the consent agenda it's under the it's a little bit later under our school Committee Action section oh okay I can uh check in with everyone share the agenda and then maybe I can be the conduit um for folks um if you need to join but all right sure maybe Betsy you can reach out and have them share their cell phones with you and then that way okay that'd be great yeah thank you very much thank you for coming let's get this one done you John and John Scott Susan and everybody else Ann I know has worked on it too this is really important and thank you and you know this is just the beginning I I'm committing myself to working on this to make sure that we you know get make sure that all the scholarships that we have are used and used well um so so so uh Helen knows that I've been involved in several uh building of organizations to support the schools and to provide scholarships this is my last big project so let's get it done come on now come on than you very much thank you bye bye bye okay next item on the agenda is um budget reporting so minutes and done yeah I told you we gotta G to maybe this meeting I don't even want to say it might be quick we'll see depends on you all so the next item on the agenda we're going to go to budget reporting first one is acceptance of gifts we have one gift um for $25 to the BHS queer Student Union um thank you very much to the donor um can I get a motion for acceptance thank Sarah Carolyn do you second yes second okay Carolyn how do you vote Yes yes [Music] um Sarah sorry my my audio just dropped out that's uh Sarah yes and I vote yes thank you next item on the agenda is um position sorry are you still there position of control report we can hear you okay um someone must calling me oh yeah hold on sorry sorry sorry okay the child calling you know how that goes okay so there's um this is the next iteration of the position control report and like the previous months you can see the details of where things are this one um is a little bit more um as has some things going on so maybe Susan I'll turn it over to you to walk us through what's going on in November can't hear you Susan hear me now yes we can yeah uh as we went through the process of reconciling for the quarterly report um it it became clear that there were uh several positions that uh went um over to payroll for uh staff to be paid that had not been included in the FY 25 budget um and so we added these to the report we don't know what the funding source is and we have reached out to the budget managers to let them know that um they need to request a PCN number um these uh four positions are not included in our forecast uh but you know um should be added um to the deficit at this particular Point unless a an a funding source to offset that is provided um in the next month or so so uh once that information comes to us you know I can update November to reflect what the funding source is if there is if if there is one um but this helps us to keep these on the radar and um make sure that uh when we do see instances where staff have been added without uh approval that um that we're very proactive about addressing that timely uh this is an improvement over last year of course because we have position control in place now and we'll talk a little bit about our progress on that we talk about the internal reports but that's essentially the the the four on the bottom are different it's about 150 I think 151,000 um in additional costs that uh we have not um identified a funding source for at this time um before I Call On You Caroline maybe Susan you can just explain to me I thought the whole point of the position control numbers was so that this didn't happen so how does why does it happen like how do the jobs get posted I guess I'm confused because I thought that they didn't there was a whole process that required the PCN at the beginning yeah I'm happy to describe what happened here uh two different things um so the English language learner point2 uh there was an open position and it was posted um and then while the posting was out a request came over to dissolve that position and apply it to another uh um new position being requested the two the paths uh kind of crossed at different times and so that one was merely a uh um you know a fluke that's all I can say is a fluke in in the process so the process was followed uh but the paperwork um you know crossed uh paths so we have to go back on this point too and now come up with a funding source for it because as I said it was filled in the intrum that uh um while the position was being dissolved so it was just a timing issue there the other three um the way uh Paris are hired is a different process than what is followed for all other positions so Paras are hosted monthly uh because there's many openings that are uh available each month and so it's it's called a pooled posting so we're constantly getting applications and so in this casee um uh the the control which would be if we have an open position the position then has to be approved by me before it gets posted is uh is kind of circumvented um and we're going to have to come up with a different uh way to be able to uh flag these earlier but so uh these positions were hired they you know were not hired and cleared through HR we've had ongoing problems here in Brooklyn with with with some of these um situations um happening uh perennially uh this year you know though I'm not pleased that we've we continue to see this um present itself it is significantly less than it has been in the past so um again it this this should never happen but um that's the reason why the the Paras uh were able to be hired um without detection in advance thank you for the update Carolyn I saw you had your hand up earlier and then took it down so I'll call on you first and then Sarah thanks um yeah I just wanted to make sure I still had a question thank you Susan for this information and um so these are people who are working and getting paid we just need to figure out how they're going to get paid ultimately well what happened in these cases and was was a big challenge last year is that we uh when it comes time for somebody to get paid the payroll department was informed that there were people that were working uh the paperwork had not they had not been cleared through HR neither had the uh approval gone through me which then creates an action so that when time cards come over payroll is ready and prepared and set up for um for paying them if we don't pay them then we're subject to Triple damages so you know we we have no choice at that particular point which is really problematic um and so okay thank you and I'm not I wasn't asking that in any kind of critical way I'm really this is sort of all new information for me so it's just helpful to to sort of hear the logistics and pieces um um and this is a question that might be because I know nothing completely sort of off base I don't really know how this works but and I don't know how many pars we have at any given time I do remember I think you Susan explaining how there are shifts throughout the year for par needs depending on classrooms IEPs Powers come on and off IEPs IEPs start and stop and all of the different reasons um and I don't know how many we are are sort of in the district at any given time I happen to preview tomorrow night's um enrollment report and I can see that in most of our schools class sizes are pretty small um so is there ever a way in which like when you see this and you go uh oh um is there does the system sort of allow you or anyone to kind of look and go oh maybe I'm maybe I have Surplus someplace and I can or that doesn't work because these are already humans who are hired for these positions I guess so I'm answering my own question sorry go ahead yes no no this should happen ahead of time not if you knew the need you could do that well and that's the way the process is set up so a need is identified and so therefore uh a request for a new position is tendered um with the recommendation for where the position is now going to be funded from that comes to me um it's signed off by a deputy um so uh Lisa or jod and then it comes to me and then I uh confirm that the funding is available and then I send it off to Diane Diane issues the the um New PCN number and dissolves and or makes the adjustment to the to the budget to make sure that we're not spending money twice um and then when she signs off and assigns that PCN it goes off to payroll and payroll makes the adjustment so that we have uh through line consistency um and we know that munus is uh the PCN numbers that are active in munus um are clear communicated to payroll so they know then when somebody comes to them that there's a problem right so so our our process is really tight it just wasn't followed for those ones that appear here it was followed for the English language teacher it was just a a a process two processes kind of passing in the night um where we dissolved a PCN at the same time somebody filled it it was it was uh it was legitimate to post at the time because it was open um and then uh before the position could uh funnel through it was dissolved but the person had been hired so that was just it was a fluke that one was a fluke um the other three um there was no paperwork um there was no preapproval of those positions before got it person started yeah when that happen you talk to the people who are the hiring people right to say to them like you can't do that yes okay Sarah go ahead and then Helen and then I want to keep us going so there's something going on in the background here let me know if you can hear it and then I'll um I'll just move on okay if you can't hear it then we're good so um I was wondering about the the permanence part of this is so like to give an example if you take if you add in a point2 Chinese teacher from Pierce and you're taking it away from Driscoll does that mean that um Pierce now has that for subsequent years yes yes obviously when we build the budget for next year we will look at enrollment and we will look at student need and we'll set this the the Staffing for FY 26 at that time and some adjustments might be made at that time but once the budget's approved uh those are the positions that um have have active PCN numbers and um are available to be filled so there might be some adjustments in between fiscal years but the mechanism to be able to make an adjustment within a fiscal year is this process Helen yeah um thank you thank you for Sarah I assume you were done sorry okay your hand up no go ahead Helen okay um thank you for for providing this I think in many years past I think it's probably been at least five maybe 10 we used to get every uh half year maybe a quarter when we had the quarterly reports the number Prof pair of professionals that we have in the system what kinds you know the ones who are the kindergarten pair of professionals the special Leed preparer professionals Etc and I think that would be helpful for us to see that at some point uh I'm not trying to give you more work but but it it helps to understand also the ins and outs because PA professionals can be hired one day and then decide to leave then five days later you know there's a lot of uh churn there as they say but I think I think it would be good to to have sort of some sort of if you can and if you can't we could start now some sort of historical um way of how many many per professionals the the system has working at any uh at a given time I think what this document does Helen is that we provide the FTE number in the budget so you know how many you have appropriated for and then this document is the one that shows changes from what was appro what what we had um no but I mean to know the total number that doesn't here the number of PA Professionals in the system because that to my recollection has been going up quite a bit um maybe we can talk offline so I can better understand what sure happy to do that no problem um thank you Helen thank you Susan for this update um very helpful as always so you said you'll maybe for the December meeting you'll have the update on November you'll back yeah yeah I'll I'll back fill this um okay um as I have new information but I didn't want to lose track of it and also as we're giving the quarterly report I wanted to call out that these four positions that you see here are not incorporated into the analysis the dian's going to present in a minute so this would let's say that there was no additional funding source this would put us in further deficit on the salary okay yep thank you um okay so we will turn it over to Diane then for the q1 report and so I'm so sorry I'm going to jump in super quick um oh Dan Perry um I um am gonna be turning this off and switching to my phone shortly because I have to take my son to the doctor okay okay so um would you like me to show your slides yes please um and would you like The Narrative piece first and then the spreadsheets if you will they're two different documents what would you I think you could pull them up together so I can toggle back and for yeah let me uh back here and I assume that everybody knows Diane is our finance director um I think everybody online um has met Diane so Dian narrative and then um in one document here I have the general budget and followed by the the special revenues yes special Revenue fund so okay great thank you so um good evening everybody and please forgive my voice I'm uh recovering from a fungal infection of my lar of all the weird things in the world yeah nice huh my father-in-law has that too I never heard of that before last week so huh okay um if he has asthma or COPD and uses inhalers that apparently the thing oh okay so um yeah no fun at all they tell me my voice will make eventually go back to normal and I won't sound like I smoke three packs a day but um we'll see in any event um the general fund um let me can you toggle over to the report sure thank you okay so as you see our for those of you who are new we're now presenting this in a new format we're doing it by um site based budgeting rather than all in a lump in past years we've done the general fund as one big pile and now we're breaking it out salary and expense but in different areas of the budget so we're we're doing the big Corner offices the superintendent admin and finance educational Equity student services teaching and learning those are sort of the big administrative offices and then we go into the schools and beep Baker and so on and so or this is also the first time we're presenting a salary encumbrance because the tracking sheet that we keep with position control numbers allows us to see what we expect to spend based on who we've currently hired through the end of the year assuming no one leaves or nobody else changes over so it is an estimate and there will of course be changes because people always leave and people get hired there's usually a gap in between that but this is very new we haven't been able to project this before and I think this is while we're not really loving what we're seeing right now this is bringing us closer to having a much tighter grip on where the budget is headed when it comes to expenses at this point in the year when it comes to supplies a lot of supplies get purchased over the summer so in a more typical business model you would expect in the first quarter you'd see about a quarter of the expense spending but in schools you frontload a lot of your materials expenses in the first quarter plus when it comes to encumbrance for things like if you could scroll down or scroll up to um student services that's a really good example right there you can see that they have lot of money in cover because that includes the transportation POS for um specialed transportation and it includes all the out of District tuition POS for the entire school year they haven't spent a lot of those POs as of the end of September but they've encumbered them for the whole school year so we know what funds we committed to and we could see that and as the year goes on those encumbrances will spend down expenses will go up but we know where we're at and that's a very good thing I've just passed my one-year anniversary and I know for a fact that we were nowhere nearly as well incumbered as we are now so I feel like that that's a really good move in the in the right direction of course we haven't encumbered all of our expenses for the year as of the first quarter but we certainly have encumbered more than a quarter's worth of them so with that little bit so far there I see there's questions go ahead Sarah so there I I'm not a finance person um so we were saying the word cost Centers before to refer to what you're what I had understood and now you're saying site based and this makes a lot more sense to me as site based because I thought that cost centers were the items that we end up voting on as school committee members and site based is like just dividing it up into yeah where where it's from could would you help me understand further by telling me how you anticipate this to impact the way that we will vote vote the budget do you see it this having any you know impact on that at all well this is this is how the budget was voted last time we did present it by and and whether you call them offices or cost centers or sites it's really the same concept it's you're breaking the budget up into chunks that make sense for your organization and the way we do business and workline these are the chunks that make sense given our management structure given our staffing these are logical management units within our structure that you know even as a non Finance person yes they are very logical and it yes it it really works for me this way good I'm glad that's what we're going for you know a budget a budget tells a story about what at a plan about what we're trying to do and the financial reports are basically a way of saying if here's our plan here's where we're at and here's where we expect to land based on what we know at this moment so you know it it needs to all tie together to tell a good story you know because our plan the reality and where you know what happened to change it when it's really different there's a reason what's the reason other questions a comment that Sarah this also aligns with the Ed reform requirement of site based budgeting or School based budgeting I should say Caroline go ahead thanks um and this sorry this is a basic one I just want to make sure I understand so salary for each thing salaries clear and then expense is just like everything else that that it could be it could be materials it could be PD any of that okay thank you the stiens paid for PD work okay that would be on the salary side it wouldn't you know anything that involves compensation to a person is salary okay even the stuff that's not direct salary anything that is things or services that are purchased from PE for purchased for people that don't work for us that's an expense so if we hire a consultant to come in and teach a professional development yeah that's an expense if we pay a teacher to lead a workshop that's a salary it wouldn't come out of her her regular salary it would be an enhanced piece of payment but that would still fall under salary and where we see the encumbrances for salary yes sorry I'm switching back to the to the one that Betsy provided that where I can control it that's um basically it doesn't mean that's what you paid people so far it's like this is what we can expect because that's their salary for the year based on what we know this is what we expect to perfect well the expenses as of 9:30 are exactly what we've paid yeah okay amazing thank you super is there any difference between the word projection and encumbrance an encumbrance you know when it when we're talking about the salary line the encumbrance is a projection when we're talking about the expense line and encumbrance is actually what happens when you put up a PO in the financial system the money is scooped out of the budget and placed almost in reserve and then as you spend as you pay the invoices for that thing the encumbrance lowers and the expense goes up so every time you encumber a PE you encumber a poo you set aside money for that purpose and the process of opening po is how you approve the appropriateness of that expense so if I put in a PO for um books it gets approved that's fine if I put in a PO to buy myself a race car that will not be approved because that is not an appropriate expenditure of public funds and and that approving process happens at the PO level you and Susan are both so great explaining this thank you that's great it really isn't hard the hard thing about Finance is it overwhelms people and it bores people the concepts are not difficult if you can stay awake it's not so bad do you want um are you gonna go down to the bottom line of it sure um Betsy thank you it's really weird not being able to drive I keep hitting my mouse and nothing happens feel disempowered there we go okay so here's what we see our salary line looks pretty scary at the moment about half of that is due to the fact that Susan and I could not get our arms around all of the additional compensation which would be stiens additional work all of that um additional programs we run that's money on top of salaries we couldn't get a handle on it last year when we were building the budget it's very complex very granulated and very confusing we've got a much about handle on it now and these projections reflect that Susan's going to go into that in a little bit more detail later on but a good half of that is represented by that those expenses that we weren't able to capture in last year's budget cycle and the other piece of it is these numbers and salary assume that every single person Works through the end of the year and every single position is filled and past experience would tell us that that is never true people will leave positions will stay unfilled even when we want to fill them they won't get filled so we can expect that number to come down because of those things and we'll see that over the course of the year however if we don't find funding for those open positions then that would increase the problem here right so some things will change um uh as we move forward through the year so just want to mention that when it comes to expense as I was saying before you can see that while we've spent just under $4 million we've encumbered nine and you know leaving only five and a half left but that's what I talked about how we frontload expenses with supplies we buy them in the summer for the school year and we've encumbered all of our big expenses for the entire school year and so we're spending down those incumbrances so in anything but a school seeing this much spent at the end of the first quarter or this much committed by the end of the first quarter would be kind of freaky but it's a pretty normal pattern for a school um Sarah is that a new hand or an old hand a new hand so now that I've seen us go through one year of this I have a better feeling of how conservative we are with projections and you know and where we end up so at the end of last year um I once we spent everything I saw that we then returned to free cash on the Town side the balance and I don't quite understand um yet how we can't take things that we don't end up spending and move it to another line item is there ever a situation where we set up like a fund for what we don't end up spending so that we can use it in other ways well you you are singing a song that would time in the heart of every school business manager but unfortunately Municipal Finance law does not permit us to do that General funds unspent General funds go back to the town to free cash so we have we have to be conservative so that we know where our money will go um and but it works out best if we're um if we come in a little bit under what we thought just that we make sure that we have the money for what we need correct and but the free it does go back to the and the town does fund us so you know it's kind of the the great rain circle of money you know it's it's not lost it's just recycled there's always going to be a variance at the end of the year of some sort you know the goal is not to have what happened last year happen you know with a budget of you know 137 million dollar um to turn back ultimately first of all we requested half a million dollars was again in the in the grand scheme of total dollars is not a huge amount of money though it feels like it because if you gave me a half a million dollars I'd be a happy girl right but uh when you're looking at it and I don't also don't have a a budget of $1 137 million that I'm trying to spend right so I there's a relativity here um but it's always you're never going to land a budget to the penny you know and uh the fact that you know we turn back I think what was it Diane 100,000 or something like that that was exactly the way the way that I felt about it I thought that it was just such great work on your part that you were that close it felt super close to me yeah yeah um but the goal is you know you don't want to be overspending your budget because um you know we're we're government you know and uh we're we're tasked with um you know spending the resources given to us by the public um uh in a in a provent and responsible way and that wouldn't be overspending spending more money that you have the internal controls that we put into place this year and we're not we haven't arrived we've made progress on that allows allow us to be able to see where we're at with some measure of clarity and assurance and so when we sit here and we say right now um with everything that we know it it looks to us like we would be over spending our salaries by $1 million1 157,000 um and now we can explain to you why right and I'm going to share some more of that information um you know when we get to internal controls um we also see that on the expense side we have a little bit of capacity here to make some choices because this is the first quarter right and so administratively what will happen is next week the senior leadership will have a conversation about what strategies are we going to employ to ensure that um we can course correct um and without causing trout gate like happened last year right I mean it I've never had that in my entire career I didn't know you knew that name yes right I mean when you have enough run way it it increases the levers you can pull and so we're going to have a conversation um uh about how we're going to close the G and so that's what this allows us to do we could not do this last year at this time because when we didn't have the data so the first part is that you have to know what's in your budget right you can't manage something you can't see and so the work last year was about really identifying with Clarity um what our expenses are who's where what do they cost what do we owe all of that and so we're in a much better position um this is not the final note on where we're going to land this year it's where we happen to be right here and right now and we'll have to make some choices as I said so this is this is really um you know I I don't like that we're sitting here overspent but I'm not surprised on the salaries because I knew that we didn't capture all of the extra compensation you know and after the budget was published then we learn about things that are completely Brookline specific that we would have no way of knowing in our lived experience that these things would exist I've never heard of calculus project in my life never mind no to to say hey do we have a calculus project it's not like we're you know in the coffee room talking about calculus project right I mean so you hear about these things and and then you got to learn what it is and then you have to know where to where where the funds are for it so it it it really has been a process of discovery and a lot of research um and as Diane and I were talking earlier this week it's painful it's very painful and frustrating work but it's essential right you deserve to have answers and people deserve to be able to make informed decisions based on data but if your data has no Integrity then you're not making informed decisions and that is that is the work that we are doing even if it is frustrating so thank you for this update and and I really do appreciate the points you're making about q1 and having this in insight into what's going on allows you to course correct that's very valuable um I have two questions one is is this an all funds or an operating presentation this is just the general fund the the other funds are below this we'll scroll down to those next okay don't go to them yet Betsy hold on and then my second question is um uh we had talked in the last meeting about the q1 report being delayed because sort of learnings from FY 24 you might be applying them to fy2 um and I was curious if there will be some sort of discussion of what modifications you'll be making if any to the categories or are you leaving them the way that they were originally defined in fy2 like are you going against the approved budget are you going to be seeking modifications or I I think the big I mean I think what we were really wrestling with was the additional comp that getting a grip on what additional comp was really going to cost us was incredibly timec consuming and you know for you know it was pretty much the most evil $1.3 million I've ever had to wrestle with um you know it was really really hard and how we ultimately deal with that you know we may address that you know I have no idea how we're going to address it in the next budget but at least we know the Beast is there and we have to address it which we didn't even know it was there last year and so you know it it's always when you're building a budget most horrible thing in the world is the things you don't know about and between Susan and I we have almost 50 years of experience doing this and to get beat by things we've never heard of is really unnerving with our years of experience so to build on that um we will be making more adjustments you know we we've been able to do a lot of Discovery around um really the costs of certain programs that we're offering here that I don't know that everybody anybody's really um fully um uh had in front of them at any point in time I know when we ask uh program managers to give us a budget they you know it's like we're speaking a a very foreign language um at a very sophisticated level that they're not really um accustomed to um um and it you know so so there's there's that bit of like teaching um that that's going on as we're trying to pull this together but we we do have some really good information and then it's also learning who is responsible for the programs and we're working through internally who's respons responsible so cost centers or sites are usually designed around um a person ultimately having authority over the costs and resources that are under their purview and so some additional movement toward site base is looking at things like co-curricular co-curricular should live not at a districtwide account but in fact at the building level and so as we go through and we see what uh co-curricular programming is is offered here we are rightfully placing the expense now in those uh categories and so we're we're still doing some work around that I would say with extra comp maybe we're 80% to where we want to be um in the process of really um finalizing that and so next year yes there will be some some changes in what appears where uh but our goal is to record the information properly this year so that when we close this year and we have next year that um we'll have a much more apples to apples comparison so we can start looking at Trends um one of the things that I was able to actually get for data um and when looking at the extra comp was last year's data and the year before so when I was doing the projection I could see if I was on target so it was grounded in some data um which was very very helpful um and when we look at all funds that are associated with the program then you can see the bigger picture and so you know that if a grant goes away or you're running out of revolving fund money or have run out of I can see you know the evolution but I can also evolution of how the funding has uh has been structured as well as um the total cost of a program which will be helpful you know as we talk about you know what aligns to our core Mission and our core goals you know having an understanding of of that of of of the detail will be invaluable for us so um we have more work yes there'll be some more tweaks and adjustments um in the FY 26 but nothing as substantial as what happened last year but are you going to tweak FY 25 at all like present a modified number if you if you discover that like oh salary should actually be a million dollars higher because otherwise all year it's just going to look like salary is off by a million when maybe it isn't you know like based on what you know it really isn't I I'm probably going to leave the approved budget as is so that I what will happen with so many budget managers without um um a level of skill for how to manage their resources in place um I I'm likely going to run the deficit for the year so that I'm not moving things around and then looking losing track of things um for this year ultimately in the end and Diane will do some budget modifications so let me be clear about that uh if folks want to um use money that's allocated to them for let's say professional development and instead they want to buy a something or another um they do have uh the ability to move money on the non-salary lines but I don't I I actually don't let anyone make any modifications to the salary lines because it'll get it'll get too crazy and there's too many moving Parts payr changes daily uh in multiple ways and so um probably on the salary lines uh I I won't be moving money around but on the expense side we would okay thanks Helen yeah I there was one term that you used that I didn't understand co-curricular what is that uh before and after school programming is usually referred to as co-curricular so Athletics you you guys so Athletics clubs intramural extramural all of that would be considered co-curricular okay all right and and Athletics has a revolving fund too um and the revolving fund doesn't pay for any salaries at all oh okay all right thank you I just needed to understand that I'll give you more yeah um does it make so it do you think that at the when do you think we'll hear about what um you and other senior leadership are going to do for your course correction we'll be at the next Finance meeting or at the Q2 report or sort of what's your what's the plan from here yeah I I would I would say um any course correction strategies we can certainly report out at the next finance committee meeting okay thank you yeah um great so I think we probably have the do you want to look at the um revolvers special Revenue funds so one of the one of the things that's been a little different this year is that the fy2 grants have been slow to get approved to get set up and so we have been able to spend against them in as timely a way as we would like I understand this is a perennial problem but it was aggravated this year because things were slow coming out of Desi as well um so what we did is follow past practice so to give an example that's right here if you look at FY 24 for title 2A we have expenses for this year and they're running in deficit because we finished f fy2 24 title 2A those expenses rightfully belong to title 2A for fy2 but we do not yet have access to title UA fy2 because there's delay at the moment the delay is in the com controller's office getting those grants set up once they are set up those expenses will move up to 25 I know that's a lot of bookkeeping but you'll see the pattern throughout all the entitlement grants Title One title 2 title three title four we also have delays with the um special education grants idea in early childhood those have not yet been um submitted for approval there's been some delay and getting the Staffing plan worked out between our staffing plan in the district and what's being applied for in the grant we got to get that sorted before we apply when are these things due the two you just been uh they were due some months ago does the federal government allow us to apply after the due date yes what is the what's the real due date then what's the due date at which we can't apply I don't know that's a good question never had to encounter that well I guess I'm worried that we're going to miss the date if the real due date was months ago we don't if if the official due date was months ago we don't know what the drop dead date is I mean idea is $2.5 million yeah it's a lot of money yeah yep we're whereare we're working okay um are there other questions on this one questions on the federal grants okay um let's scoot down to the next same issue with metco we weren't able to get 25 as set up as we would like so we will be fixing that once 25 is set up we were able to begin putting salaries to it but not getting the expenses set up some of the other grants that didn't come out of Desi got were able to get set up faster Tessie just seems to be having some issues this year okay questions on state revenue okay I just want to reiterate that that until desie approves the grant the com controller's office won't set up the fund so it's we're we're kind of like in the middle um so even our federal stuff goes through desie oh yeah yeah okay is there anything that um government relations should be doing to elevate this no I think the delay with desie this year is that this is the first full year they're rolling it out through their new Grant system and I think they're having Tech issues on their end I think the new Grant system is going to be fabulous once everybody's accustomed to it but you know first first full implementation year in the system they're going to be bum there's going to be bumps okay all right these are our private grants not a lot of activity there except the usuals um these these expenses were mostly over the summer any question I I have a question it's about gift accounts are gift accounts special Revenue funds yes where do they get reported um it depends on the gift account where do they get reported to school committee in financial reporting um I think they're in the revolving fund section aren't they in the next page okay so it's a good question the the line between a private Grant and a revolving you know a private Grant has to I would guess I don't know I haven't been here long enough to know but a private Grant would have to be fairly large to be set up on their own I mean we wouldn't set up a separate grant for every $25 donation that those would tend to go into a revolving account okay and for some of these private grants that have been sitting here for years and years we had talked about you're going to work on clearing them right oh we spent quite a bit of them last year the Saudi teachers one I feel like has that gone anywhere in yours The Bu Saudi teachers well I only have one year of experience but I know we were definitely chewing on these last year okay hey can we scoot down to the to the revolving please so down at the very bottom of the revolving page you see the gift accounts um we don't disaggregate we don't report separately on all the K to8 gift accounts but they are booked separately there's generally not enough activity on a quarterly basis to really report out on it but if you were interested we could we could let you know so anything that comes in for the high school gift account would would land here Revenue to date would appear here once it's accepted and put in but this these are all as of September 30th and I think we approved a bunch of things in October so we wouldn't see them yet any questions on revolving Diane also doesn't the com trollers office have to post them before they show up on munice as a receipt we're not manually encumbering that it's when it flows through the report through the com controller's office and the treasurer's office that that then appear so we accept the Grant and then it then it has to get processed again through the town before it shows up um on a munice report yes it it can take a long time it can hang fire and right now our comproller the new comproller started yesterday and one of their key staffers is leaving on Friday so who's leaving um I'm sorry sorry I can't remember her name it's not yolita it's not uh Michelle someone else um Betsy do you mind scrolling up just so we can see the top of the table it's cut off thank you maybe a little bit down so we can see the bottom too there we go thank you um Carolyn is your hand still up if not I had a question um I did um sorry I'm trying to do this on my phone what's what's the bus transportation revolving fund just curious once the upon of time we used to collect bus fees and now we don't so that money is just sitting there we did um have to do an update to our financial of to our busing um route software and so that is what is encumbered against that revolving fund it's a onetime um upgrade that was not put in the operating budget but with this revolving fund sitting here um we utilize the balance in that to pay for the rooting software update they were discontinuing it so we had no choice um and we had no for warning so thanks that will reduce the balance in that down to 17 um on the Athletics budget it was budgeted at around 450 and the revenue to date is 20,000 or remember this is September 30 and they don't send out the bills for the fall Sports until after cuts are made so that would reflect the the checks that come in cuts are made before like school starts correct but that would reflect the checks that had come in and made their way all the way through the treasury all the way through the com controllers I see the short staff comp roller do we know how like last year we knew that the com controller's office was behind by months because the clothes hadn't happened for even 203 yet or whatever year it was 23 are they are they more or less on time now for posting of things or how far behind are they do you know I can't answer that with any shity I don't want to pester them I want to do you know um Chaz mentioned today that he was hopeful that they would have their free cash certified by their December um FY 26 uh budget projection so that tells me that they if they're behind they're not that far behind because getting free cash certified in December was is very reasonable okay great other questions q1 is always such a mystery lots of things have been spent a lot other things aren't happening yet like it's just a weird quarter it really is it really is okay um why don't we turn to the update on internal controls if there's no more questions on q1 okay thank you for driving Betsy does such a wonderful job oh yes many talents many town you are you're amazing we appreciate you so um I think probably everyone was uh you know participating on some level um with school committee business last year when we presented um the unfortunate information that we our budget was uh up upside down running hot as we say and uh Diane and I had put together a report to go along with that that talked about some internal um controls that need to be put into place in order for us to um increase uh our our ability to one project where we're at um uh and provide timely and accurate reporting and of course as I said earlier tonight it enables us to be able to course correct we have more options available to us we don't have to just completely halt um all spending we can make some some adjustments um that are uh less impactful to students so the five areas that we had uh mentioned in our report last year were uh position control um this extra comp that we've talked quite a bit about um already um contract approval and oversight was a real pain Point um uh purchase order management and Diane's talked a bit about that and then uh accounting access privileges so what we wanted to do tonight is uh talk a little bit about our progress towards uh implementing these internal controls um so that you would know uh what we've been able to accomplish so far which is uh I think rather significant that we have um still a distance to travel so the first one position control um Diane uh championed this initiative if you can turn to the next slide Betsy that great um and so um I'm going to let her talk uh through and or answer questions that you have but uh the four main uh takeaways are that position control was created and uploaded to m in July and you know that we um uh developed procedures around um adding new positions and um we did that in August and then we had a staff training so the office of administration and finance offered four um I think they were two or three hour uh training uh related to these um internal control processes uh back in August and then um we introduced uh the reporting component which we've you know um again reviewed tonight and so um I'd like maybe Diane if if you can um share a little bit of nuance or any anything um that you feel is important about this whole process and how it's gone and any uh followup activities that that um still hang out there does um everyone feel comfortable with the concept of position control or do you have lurking questions about what it is and how it works Sarah so um I think I understand that position control is the position I want to confirm that that's not linked to a specific amount of money like I've known that in the past we've used $8,000 as a sort of average salary so what I'm thinking is that if at Driscoll they have an Ela teacher for seventh grade and that is a position that has a number associated with it it's just that and not that we've got somebody I don't know I'm making this up in that position right now who earns more than that and so then when they rehire they could rehire for somebody who still has that same amount of expertise is the position control not linked to a salary number so the way it works is when we budget we budget for the people that are currently sitting in the chairs so we budget the chairs if the chairs are occupied we use the number of the person currently occupying the chairs the chair is empty then we do our best guess with what it's going to cost to fill that chair when I've done this in other districts I wouldn't use an average teacher salary if I had an AP Physics position I was looking to fill at the high school I know I'm going to pay top dollar for that if I have a grade two generalist um elementary teacher I can get those at you know Masters one so you know I would use some discretion in how I budgeted those empty positions I would have a formula for it depending on how hard I thought it was going to be to get that position so you said that you were doing that before and that's the way you intended to do it in in Brooklyn did in a different district is that really mostly we have filled positions here like most of our positions have bodies in them and so we're using the current incumbent as the cost of the position okay so as people change over in the summer that's when we see the the coming is and going and then so who would Ben benefit if you know that POS if you could hire for at a lower salary would it be the site based per principal who would benefit no no I mean we they have a chair and they get to fill the chair and you know but if they you know want to hire somebody very very inexperienced so they can put the money to other things no dice they get the chair we doesn't that create a little bit of a tragedy of the commons though in that because no one Acres the balance of those positions they're always looking to hire at the highest level because they also don't acrew yeah the negative impacts let me clarify on that so what we budget for empty chairs so when we create the budget on average we use Master's five in situations where we know it's a physics teacher like Diane described we would budget higher than that but on average Master's 5 is what our placeholder is in the budget the position control number is associated with the account code and the position type so it connects um a beu unit a position to this account code I.E risal first grade teacher or World Language teacher so that so that there is there is a a clear clear definition of what that position control number represents the reason why site we don't allow site-based Personnel to manage the the the salary lines um and enjoy the benefit of um filling a position for Less is because they are not covering the costs when their teacher goes out for maternity leave and we have to pay the maternity leave and we still have to pay for the replacement you've got to be able to generate what we call breakage to cover that so if it you know it would be wonderful and from their perspective they would like to spend anything that's favorable to them but if they hire somebody at a doctoral level step 12 then it has to be covered by somebody that then is at a Master's one right because when the position vacates it could be vacated by somebody with a bachelor's one but you can't replace them with somebody with the bachelor's on right so it in order to be able to manage the salary um budgets um we have to be able to uh create a little capacity um throughout the year to be able to address these anomalies that crop up because they don't need neatly crop up by school right I might have five maternity leaves at Driscoll this year and none at the high school I might have 10 at the high school I'm not going to penalize the high school because they have more maternity leaves that year do you follow me and so um practice I follow you until then we go back to talking about position permanence because where is where is the permanence like you've just given me a very good understanding of where we um where we have to adjust and that makes complete sense to me so how what's the extent to which the definition is permanent um well any position that has a position control number is permanent so but I don't think that's answering the question you're asking yeah I'm not quite I'm not quite there yet but I did get more understanding so I'll I'll keep on asking questions yeah I don't think there think Sarah as a permanent position the way you're thinking about it because imagine that the third grade of some School this year requ has 100 kids and next year it has 70 kids well there's not like the the position that's maybe permanent is not because constantly the school district is assessing where there's actual need and and shifting positions around where they see there's change so then what does permanent mean in position permanence if you have seniority find you a job somewhere else oh okay is that what you're referring to like a staff member having having rights to a position is that is that is that no I I'm thinking about it from a budget point of view so I just wanted because I I hadn't until you and the superintendent explained to me what position permanence was I hadn't heard of the term before so I've been um going around along with it with what I was initially told that it is like you know the number that refers to that per that position and that makes a lot of sense to me for our budget needs and then tonight you helped me understand when that breaks what that means so I I I think I'm pretty much there and then the way that Mariah um defined it helped as well okay yeah I mean there like those are then jobs except that they might go away right like needs change and so that position control number is retired dissolved yes dissolved there you go dissolved but but it might not it might not be that person right the position is not the person yes they they are two separate things and that's where it gets very confusing which Sarah I'm sure knows as a former PSP teacher right that people job jobs change but people stay um okay next item cuz I want us to see if we can wrap up by 6:30 yeah so the next internal control is this extra comp that we have been talking about uh quite extensively um throughout our um meeting today and so what I wanted to share with you is our progress and so if you can Betsy if you can click on the the little uh yes it'll it should make it viewable to our can you guys see it no you need to reshare your web explor web browser with us Diane and I were talking about look at how nice and Consolidated this this little piece of paper is and and behind this piece of paper is a gazillions of hours wor them for and it just summer make it bigger Betsy that's not readable yeah thank you there we go awesome okay so extra compensation um we've kind of uh grouped into these four categories so after school programs with is which is Athletics um inal extral and co-curricular um sometimes referred to as like clubs and ADV advisors homework clubs culture and climate clubs things like that um benefits is another bucket of extra compensation so in that area we pay substitutes short and long-term Subs uh pair professionals provide coverage for teachers and there's a component in the contract that says when they're covering for a teacher they get a differential pay um there's sickly bonuses that are part of some of the cbas um there's long ity that most of our cbas and some of our non-aligned staff enjoy vacation buyback is um a benefit that is provided to non-aligned staff if they do not use their vacation time um they get they can buy back up to X number of days five or 10 days at the end of the year um there's shift differential for custodians um and then travel and clothing allowances so those we would consider to be related to benefits that um our employees enjoy and um we were able to capture a good portion of this when we built the budget because the it there were things that I could see in the CBA and some things um that uh I I didn't uh um I didn't uh identify when I had gone through them the third bucket is summer programming and we talked a bit about this um couple of times last last year uh but um under summer programming there's a component of uh The Unit B contract that says that they can petition for us to pay them for extra days in the summer they don't work year round they work a certain number of days per year and if they um would like to work on a curriculum project or some other um pre-approved uh project for the office of teaching and learning then they can petition the deputy um to access some some summer days we didn't budget any and nobody requested any so that was the good news on that but I I wanted to identify that that was a that was an area where we may need to consider putting some money aside in the budget uh beep has a summer uh uh program component and then the extended school year so that's esy that's that's special education so kids that may regress um during the summer are um often written into their IEPs is is some extended school year programming um and so that is typically the biggest um summer program that's offered here in Brookline um there are also other programs that are offered that I haven't seen in other places um or not as common uh project Discovery um which is run out of the office of teaching and learning is a big program that's run during the summer um calculus project is another one uh Star Academy which is a collaboration between the English language learner department and metco um is offered in the summertime and then BHS credit recovery so those are the programs that we would um put in the category of Summer programming so the for for all of these staff are paid uh beyond what um the salary guide for their standard uh professional position Andor par professional position um calls out so these are these are all areas where staff that are employed here can can uh work additionally and get compensated for it and then there's these other that I uh lumped as administrative so uh we have a mentoring program um and I guess you could argue that's also a benefit but it um uh for the time being I I I thought that um coaching and mentoring were something that administratively um we use as part of our on boarding and growth and development uh uh programming for staff so I I I placed it here child study teams um and culture and climate culture and climate will move down into the school level now that I understand it a little bit better mcast testing has been funded in two different areas sometimes at the school level and then sometimes at the district level that that is another one we will move down into the um School level budgets um p Council um this is a council that that uh um I think jod primarily works with to identify um professional development that will be offered during the year and then there's curriculum workshops and these building initiatives so you talk you heard the principes talk about uh when they did their sips that there's a certain amount of money that um is allocated to them to be able to um um pay staff to be able to um improve their skills in some way in service to um both their development and or accomplishing their um goals at their school um it's $10,000 at each building level and at the high school 20,000 and that's what makes that up so those are the buckets um that we've identified as extra comp some of them uh you can see we put some money in the budget and others we were not aware of um and we are aware of now uh we did a projection based on um what we believe are the costs um most of this information came from as we closed the year last year and finally um could do a deep dive into some of the accounts and sort through the through the various time cards to to lump these in a way that um uh made sense um uh we were able to come up with what the costs uh have been historically like last year and and what we believe they're going to be in the upcoming year so if if you look at that you'll see that um for the most part these overages um hit the general fund there's two exceptions to that um so if you look at the beep under summer school programming uh the revolving fund pays for that now I wasn't aware of that at the time that I built the budget and um what's important is that we know where we spend all of our money and then and then how we fund it is a separate question right but what we want to do is be able to keep track of all spending um not just that that is hitting taxpayer dollars so uh so that item um beep is hitting a revolving fund and then Star Academy is Grant funded but what that also tells us is that the grant we wrote um was for $119,400 and it's and we've overspent the grant by 66941 so if there isn't capacity within the grant as they've closed to be able to absorb that by doing an amendment to the grant then that will have to then come over and be funded through the general fund um but as Diane said um we're a little bit uh behind on some of the posting and um approval of some of the grants so that should wiggle its way out by the time we do the next quarterly report but flag those because uh right now we are hopeful that those two that are in deficit um that are charged to those special Revenue funds will be able to absorb it so the impact then to the general fund is the $726,000 uh $223 uh that was not um included or unfunded in the FY 25 budget now that's you know we knew that uh there was going to be um you know a there we just didn't know how big it would be um we fortunately this was also offset by the fact that we got some additional state aid um during the budget process $209,300 if if we hadn't gotten that then this variance would be you know uh closer to a million dollar problem so we've taken that into consideration already but um significant amount of work and we're we're feeling really good that we have gotten to this point we're about 80% um um and by the time we get to the next quarterly report and when we build the FY 26 budget we will have all of these um allocated out to the proper cost center or site um so that when we build next year's budget we have included everything um uh that all programs and all costs associated with them and are funded through our spending plan clearly so I know this is probably not good news on one hand um but on another hand it's it's really good news that we find ourselves um um this far along in our in our Discovery process so any any particular questions I thought Credit Recovery was charged against the summer school revolver the cost of credit recovery they only receive about $112,000 and so uh I did net out uh that portion of it so got it it was covered under the revolver yeah okay is netted out on that number and this is the part portion of that that's hitting the general fund I can go back now and I can look and see if we can further push off onto that revolving fund if there's some capacity there we'll do that in time for the next quarterly report it's just taking us every every bit of time to get us to a place where we could see it and then share it with you thank you for this is a lot of work finding all this like this is like detective work to the millionth power so thank you for that um I want us to keep going we're we're at 6:32 so and we can't lose any more members or we'll we won't have a quorum so um why don't we keep going Betsy can you go back to the other thing and Sarah and Carolyn do you have hard stops anytime soon like can we can we go till 6:40 or do you have a stop before then I don't okay I'm fine okay let's see if we can go quickly though I don't want to hold people too much yeah so we'll we'll we'll blow through this less progress made on the next three or next two slides anyway so uh we were able to put together the protocols um uh on how to get a contract uh created um who can sign off on what um what forms to use all of that training did take place um but it's still an area where staff struggle um and we continue to um uh be a little bit behind in the in our ability to um create the contracts get the signatures uh get a fully executed contract back um so that POS can be uh created um I I I won't read through it you can read through this later um we're not as as far along as I I was hoping part of that is due to to the to the fact that um we have uh you know had some uh staff members who've been out on medical leave and uh this was a primary function of that role um so that has also put us a little bit behind the eightball however because we did put put this in place what we could see was uh what contracts um are out there and then um the amount of money uh and total obligation that we would be committing to under that contract so Diane was then able to take that and encumber the money in our report so that we so that um information was helpful in that way and we're hope hoping in the next couple of weeks we'll get all of that caught up um as well so that's the update on contract approval and oversight what what sorts of contracts are they just they're for all kinds of things but um they can be for things um they can be for uh software they can be for um um contracted services for um uh what things like um we need a vision I'm using this as an example but it's not it's not one that we have but like a vision specialist we don't have one on staff student has a particular need um so those are the kinds of contract it is not for contracts between the school district and app parent for a settlement agreement it's not those types of things it really is just contracted Services um in a really traditional um sense so that's that the next is Diane to go over the next two items purchase order management and um so um we're getting purchase monthly purchase order reports are going out to all budget managers and as I said earlier we're out in front on getting yearlong expenses encumbered for the entire year so I think things are in a much better place um as the year progresses we've been uh quite busy with other things as the year progresses hopefully as we meet with budget man maners we can make sure that the posos are being managed well okay questions no we've talked you to death okay last slide um so uh the T I say the PO thing is really exciting too just congratulations thank you yeah no we're making progress there I feel good about that none of us find any of this boring we're all just super excited about it your heart actually is really really interesting yeah thank you for saying that not sure I believe you but thank you for saying it anyway um okay um in terms of accounting access privileges the town and school HR and payroll teams have been meeting and we've been banging through a lot of little nitty-gritty things that aren't working very well but also we've been talking about who really needs to be accessing what and uh we've been able to remove a lot of superfluous people that had strange privileges so I think that's much tighter and going much better so I think we're making progress on that front there's also been some upgrades to munis and every time they upgrade they turn off people that are questionable and wait for them to scream and so we've had a couple of people scream and we reinstituted them but all the people that don't scream don't get reinstituted so it's sort of a a work of attrition wouldn't be my first choice on how to approach it the town's apparently been doing it that way for a while so and people do scream loudly if you take something away from them that they use it sometimes it would be nice to know in advance so that we don't have people screaming around the office and knowing why it makes for a dramatic day when somebody gets turned off something that they need to do that day for a deadline but you know it's making a couple of calls and getting the right people where it really gets fun that the only person who can approve it is taking the day off and you've got a payroll deadline and we had one of those that was not fun but you know you swim through it it's okay you get it done and that's it have we come to the end yes I think we have thank you thank you yeah thanks thank you guys that is I really appreciate all of the time time that both of you take to I'm sure it's tedious and you have many other things you could do with this time um but I really appreciate becoming informed and and the clarity with which you present the information then are you seconding that or or is that the ac2 finger you have a comment no it's not the ac2 fingers the AC is the one finger the uh I just want to say how grateful I am for this presentation and I'm going to use a word not often used with fiscal matters it was exciting and I'm delighted with the work that's being done so I just want to say that personally I don't speak obviously for the AC but I just want to say this is really exciting to see how we're getting these things under control and uh it's going to mean a lot now and down the road awful lot so thank you thank you Ben appreciate well with those Sage words from Ben I think we will wrap it up thank you very much Susan and Diane and Betsy good night every and talk to you soon thank you bye bye by bye