Updates on the Fight for Quality Public Education in Brevard County, FL
0:00 ♪♪
28:31 million and that’s also discretionary but the total change 42
28:34 million 42.1 million and again
28:38 that’s not dollars that goes all to the district the there’s
28:43 about 110 million
28:46 that is a pass-through that that goes to charters and
28:50 scholarships
28:54 and this breaks out some more of the categoricals
29:00 and then if you recall at the march budget update that bottom
29:14 line was 3.6.
29:17 We continue to revise the numbers as we get more information as
29:23 we
29:28 understand things that are they’re changing and and those kind
29:31 of things increases in costs for
29:33 contracts we reduce the minimum wage increase it used to be six
29:38 million and as we scrub that down
29:42 i believe it’ll be five million again this is their estimates
29:47 and then the frs rate originally
29:49 i had at four million and we scrubbed that as well and i believe
29:54 it’ll be more like 3.4
29:56 again as we move as we understand what our enrollment actually
30:01 is we’ll be able to continue
30:03 to revise these numbers so when you take the total revenue the 4.21
30:13 you subtract out the
30:15 categoricals you take out all the pass-throughs available
30:19 funding is 13.2 then we take out the
30:23 minimum wage the frs and our remaining revenue that we can use
30:28 for compensation that we can use
30:31 for health care the the the remaining discretionary dollars is 4.8
30:39 at this
30:42 so the benefits obviously there’s great benefits to this budget
30:48 and we went through all of these
30:52 and uh go on to the next and then one of the things i wanted to
30:58 talk about was the importance
31:00 of audits so we welcome the accountability the taxpayers and
31:05 trust us with their treasure
31:08 it’s an incredible responsibility and we want we open our books
31:14 to anyone because we want to be
31:17 able to make sure that we are transparent and that the dollars
31:21 every dollar counts that are going is
31:24 going to the right places and i believe in audits is my thought
31:29 is it’s an investment and it makes
31:32 us better in you know in findings regarding the first thing i
31:38 look at when if there’s a finding is
31:41 was it a system issue was it a process issue was it a person
31:46 problem or you know a manual
31:49 breakdown or was it a problem of time meaning there just wasn’t
31:53 enough of it and you know it
31:55 wasn’t a priority so kind of narrow down the root cause and then
32:00 the effect you know can we identify
32:03 what the effect was what the root cause was and can we change
32:08 that we need to ensure that we have
32:10 the internal controls and to prevent uh broadways and abuse and
32:16 then the thing that i like to do is
32:21 look for a bright spot you know you can look at all the findings
32:26 and and and we need to see those
32:29 but we also have bright spots and then if we have a bright spot
32:33 somewhere maybe that bright spot can
32:35 be trans transported all over and bring more bright spots so if
32:40 somebody’s doing something
32:42 really well we want it shared and we want people to to take a
32:47 look at where people are
32:52 doing things well and then again on the bottom there are audits
32:57 it’s not about paperwork it’s about everybody doing their job
33:00 correctly
33:04 and then we recently had a audit committee and there was some
33:07 discussion about difference between
33:09 an internal audit an external audit and basically an internal
33:14 audit is our internal auditors we are
33:18 like you know we as the audit committee will take a look and say
33:24 what are the concerns within the
33:30 district hey i’m kind of worried about um the process over here
33:34 or can you take a look over here
33:37 it’s things that we direct things that we want to make sure is
33:42 right things that may have high risk
33:45 and we just want to make sure that everything’s going well so we
33:48 just have somebody
33:49 our internal auditors go in and check it out for us and so the
33:53 internal auditors for us is rms
33:57 and they report to the audit committee they assess risk and best
34:03 practices they do test
34:05 internal controls and then they recommend what they you know
34:10 anything that they see that could
34:13 better the process and it’s continuous it isn’t once a year it’s
34:17 continuous they’re going in
34:20 they’re they’re looking at the processes and then after they do
34:24 that they’ll come back later and
34:26 check to make sure the fixes are still there or the fixes work
34:31 and then on external is more it’s
34:33 a third party it’s something you know it’s a requirement by the
34:38 state or a different agency
34:41 and you know they they go and they confirm that you’re following
34:46 the laws regulations grants
34:48 accounting standards and you know we have msl they have to come
34:53 look at our books every year at the
34:56 end of the year and give us a financial statement or a financial
35:00 opinion and this isn’t normally
35:03 voluntary i mean they come it’s by law by statute and then you’ll
35:09 see in the next slide or the next
35:11 two slides that the audit general is here now and they are
35:15 required to come every three years
35:19 and so this slide just kind of shows you some of the things that
35:21 we’ve done
35:23 over the year you can see that the annual financial audit and
35:27 then we’re also according
35:30 to red book we have to have a internal audit on our internal
35:33 accounts from the schools which is
35:36 kind of the fees and fundraising those kind of things and we
35:43 also take a look at the
35:46 the surtax we do that every i think every other every six months
35:51 education technology so making
35:56 sure that people can’t hack into our system is really important
35:59 so they’ll do those kind of
36:01 intrusion tests stimulus funding is all the funding that we’ve
36:07 received the esser the the cares
36:11 the arp all those dollars a lot of dollars and you know we were
36:17 rsm go look and make sure that
36:18 our processes are in place so we can ensure that we have the
36:23 transparency and that we’re using
36:25 these dollars as they’re intended and then again you’ll see
36:30 cycle audits some of the ones that we
36:35 continue to do like time keeping and the msl they’re here now
36:44 they’re they’re pulling all
36:46 this data to start working on their audit for our books at the
36:50 end of the year and then also we have
36:53 the audit general here it comes every three years they’re
36:56 looking at our financial and they’re
36:59 looking at our operational in the operational they’re looking at
37:02 mental health plan make sure
37:04 that we’re following all the regulations and guidelines law they’re
37:10 also they looked at
37:13 full safety and tested that and they’re looking at how we’re
37:18 calculating and providing tsia for the
37:21 teachers so and and that’s what they’re doing so far we still
37:26 don’t know everything that they’re
37:29 going to look at but they’re going to give us a good look and we
37:32 welcome it we want to get better
37:34 so challenges that is the the first bullet i believe is the most
37:41 challenging because we
37:44 have a finite budget and we have so many things that we have to
37:51 do and we we have a finite budget
37:54 eighty percent of our budget is uh labor and then you’ve seen
38:02 all of the the restricted areas we
38:06 have very little discretionary dollars and what discretionary
38:10 dollars that we have we just really
38:13 need to use it um so sparingly because it’s just so important
38:19 because we want to provide recurring
38:22 compensation to all our employees we know that that’s just so
38:27 important we want them to have
38:29 great health care or yeah we do want them to have great health
38:34 care we also are aware of the
38:37 compression issues so we got to balance all that with you know
38:42 the the finite amount of money
38:46 the the increase for health care this year the projections 13
38:52 million dollars that’s a lot of
38:55 money in the previous slide you saw a 4.8 so you may wonder well
39:01 what are we going to do with the
39:03 you know how we’re going to get other dollars um so we’re going
39:07 to change our processes
39:09 and historically we had so again eighty percent of our budget is
39:16 labor and no matter
39:21 even in the best years we’re going to have vacant positions and
39:24 vacant positions are going to
39:26 generate lap which is additional dollars um or dollars that
39:31 weren’t spent on the labor
39:34 and then the other thing that we’ve done historically is have a
39:40 reserve for
39:43 employee units so if you know if a school enrollment goes way up
39:50 then we need more
39:52 teachers so we have reserve units so we’re gonna we’re gonna do
39:57 something different we’re gonna
40:00 use that reserve funding and we’re going to put it in the front
40:04 and we’re going to use
40:05 that buying power and then that’s going to that’s reoccurring
40:09 dollars that allows us to
40:16 it allows us to provide compensation for our employees it allows
40:22 us to have
40:23 additional recurring dollars to help with our health care costs
40:29 and it’s just a smarter way
40:31 of doing business instead of letting the the lapse rate and the
40:37 you know if we use the reserves those
40:40 dollars fall to the bottom every year and then pay um recurring
40:46 requirements at the end of the year
40:49 let’s just put it all up front so we’re going to budget for all
40:53 those items that we normally pay
40:55 at the end of the year and we’re going to budget for what we
41:00 spend and we’ll have less laps or
41:03 we’ll have less fallout at the end of the year but we’re also
41:07 using that buying power more effectively
41:13 and again we talked about many of these risks inflation supply
41:19 line disruptions we’re seeing
41:21 that right now i mean if you try to buy a van i don’t think that’s
41:25 going to happen anytime soon
41:28 and then we have the esser esser has been an amazing
41:36 assistant in helping educate our kids and providing programs and
41:44 it’s just been
41:44 amazing however it’s going to end so we need to make sure that
41:48 we have a soft landing with our
41:50 for our esser and then we also need to start planning for a flat
41:54 enrollment recovery or if
41:56 we’re not going to recover what are we going to change because
42:00 you know again we have a finite
42:02 amount of money that can be used towards compensation and the
42:07 other things that we want
42:09 to do so it’s one of those things is what are we going to do and
42:13 what we’re not going to do so
42:16 that’s what we that’s our challenge but again i think we’re in a
42:20 much better position than we were
42:23 the last two years and i’m looking forward to seeing how the
42:27 year plays out
42:31 and this is our budget adoption timeline
42:40 and this is this is good news so our tax roll came back
42:47 an estimate and it came march i’m sorry may 31st and it
42:52 increased it increased to
42:54 61.9 a billion dollars so that is money that is on our tax roll
43:04 and we’ll get the certified amount
43:06 in july july 19th no later than so just based on this estimate
43:14 we our lci or our local capital
43:17 investment went up about 7.4 million dollars so we came to you
43:23 last month or i’m sorry in march
43:26 and we told you that we had about 28.7 million dollars remaining
43:32 for projects
43:33 and now we’re up to 35.3 so we’re gonna reconvene the committee
43:40 take a look at
43:44 you know the different projects what we want to do and come back
43:48 with a recommendation of
43:49 now that we have additional capital dollars what is the best
43:54 then for those
43:59 and again this was the list that we provided prior so are there
44:06 any questions
44:12 um i have a simple one and i think my triple check i think it’s
44:16 on slide six
44:18 so uh we’ve seen this slide before many times uh but i just
44:23 something i just never asked
44:24 so when we’re presenting this data with the numbers from the
44:27 district the charter the
44:28 scholarship when we have students that access scholarships for
44:33 instance like the mckay
44:34 but they use it to go to a bps school from one to another one
44:38 that’s outside of their zone school
44:42 is that reflected in the number of scholarship or is that
44:44 reflected
44:45 still in district because they’re staying within the district
44:48 but they access the scholarship and
44:49 use it i in that case so fte isn’t necessarily one student um so
44:57 if um a student came in
45:01 halfway through the school year they would be a 0.5 those kind
45:05 of things so i i
45:08 so it would be split it would be split it wouldn’t be one
45:12 student maybe it would be
45:13 district a certain percentage in the mckay okay i was just
45:17 curious because um because we’ve seen
45:19 that significant jump i know that you were saying these are also
45:22 students that never
45:22 stepped foot in bps so that number is inflated as well as homeschool
45:25 students
45:27 so just curious i think we’re asking is if they move one bps
45:29 school to another bps school that
45:31 wouldn’t necessarily be reflected here they’d still be under the
45:33 district correct correct
45:37 um yeah i’ve got um a question so um on just i’m going to start
45:44 with the back end the capital
45:46 dollars you talked about we’re going to have uh increased
45:49 spending for that and i’m glad you guys
45:51 are going back to the table because even if we added in the the
45:55 add back list that’s still only
45:58 a couple million dollars more so my question is did you guys
46:01 already build into the original list
46:03 some inflationary cushion knowing where we were um or is it
46:08 possible that the projects that we
46:10 already have might need some of this um to just get them done
46:16 that’s a good point yes we would
46:19 have to relook at that okay but you don’t know i mean some of
46:22 them build in a little bit because i
46:24 mean we were when you guys were convening this spring i mean we
46:26 were already feeling the effects
46:27 of some of that i mean if it’s incurred if it was then current
46:31 pricing at the time you know right
46:33 and timing too if you uh purchase vehicles or buses or computers
46:40 you know with the supply line
46:43 disruptions are they going to come in timely though and you know
46:47 there’s supply and demand
46:49 so when there’s less supply the costs go up with demand that
46:54 that’s a very good point that we’ll
46:57 have to take a look at right um and then the last question going
47:02 back to the um the slide with the
47:08 tax assessment history of course for lci that’s great news
47:12 because you know it will naturally
47:15 increase like you said the amount of capital dollars we get um
47:19 it’s not necessarily reflected
47:22 in our general funding because that’s controlled by the state
47:26 but the state did if i’m if i remember
47:29 correctly it looks like our required local effort is going to
47:33 actually remain flat from last budget
47:36 year to this budget year i know we don’t probably know the exact
47:38 number because i think that comes
47:39 out in july right but isn’t it estimated it’s going to be
47:43 actually they’re not going to roll
47:46 it back the state didn’t necessarily roll back the rates again
47:48 like they have for the last seven years
47:50 am i am i reading that correctly i mean you didn’t have it in
47:53 your presentation but when it
47:54 seems like that’s what i had heard when i the budget was
47:57 presented right so um when it comes
48:01 to the general fund like like you said or the fund 100 those
48:07 dollars are from all the the tax
48:10 property tax are all sent up to the state and then they allocate
48:15 it out so you know they built their
48:17 budget and that’s the budget so if even though our our dollars
48:22 are going up quite a bit or our tax
48:26 rolls going up it doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re going to
48:30 be able to keep all those dollars
48:32 but with the lci that’s the 1.5 mil right and that’s for capital
48:38 and so they’ll be able to keep
48:41 that now um on the operating side we also have that if you
48:46 recall that 0.748 mil and i was very
48:52 excited about that and and did the calculations and was hoping
48:56 that we had an increase in dollars
48:58 but then there’s also that other categorical that is for
49:04 districts that are below average and that
49:09 was about eight million dollars according to the conference
49:14 report but when you do all the math
49:17 it ends up washing so we so we lose on that we don’t lose but we
49:24 don’t gain okay so i guess i i
49:28 do realize that the change in that won’t miss if it does remain
49:30 flat it doesn’t have effect on our
49:32 revenue because that’s based on students but i just wondered if
49:35 it was in any way kind of a
49:36 recognition by the state that we do need to realize that
49:42 increase in funding you know through
49:45 the year right well and again we’ll know more in uh july uh when
49:50 we get the second count because
49:53 that’s when the fdoe sends down what what we can um thank you
50:03 can we put that one up there
50:10 can we put that one up there that has the different years with
50:14 the
50:16 not the property value that one went over it’s the other one
50:21 that has scholarship okay i don’t have
50:24 i don’t have access to my thing oh not a problem is this the one
50:27 you’re looking for
50:29 can you can you go to her computer
50:36 it’s on the screen
50:40 so because there was a an anomaly that was i was speaking to a
50:43 group of people over at a church
50:46 last week and district means that’s how many students actually
50:49 step foot into our schools
50:51 right charter means that’s how many students actually step foot
50:54 into a charter right scholarship
50:56 that’s mckay scholarship and homeschool there that was there’s
51:00 some homeschool but it’s um
51:03 and the empowerment yeah family empowerment is the overarching
51:10 that’s so there was an anomaly where they were saying that there’s
51:13 a lot of homeschool students
51:16 who are part of like a charter school type um online system that
51:20 looks like it’s acting like a
51:23 charter school um but do we have the home school totals is what
51:26 i was looking for do we have that
51:28 or is that something i should just that’s something that we can
51:32 get for you okay nobody do i just i
51:34 just didn’t know if they were baked into that that’s all yeah i
51:37 i do know students that are
51:39 part of a like charter or private school that it’s it’s beyond
51:42 the co-op like an actual curriculum
51:45 and stuff that they buy into and it’s being it’s it’s going it’s
51:48 a little off i’ll just that’s all
51:50 that’s all that’s all i needed thank you okay yeah i think miss
51:53 lesinski referenced what i believe
51:56 you’re you’re talking about mr susan is that within family
52:00 empowerment scholarship there are
52:03 students who never came to brevard public schools who were
52:06 previously home education
52:07 that are now receiving a family empowerment scholarship for
52:11 participation in a private school
52:14 so that jump in participation of family empowerment includes
52:19 students who never
52:20 won that were always in private and stayed in private as well as
52:23 some who may have gone from
52:24 home ed to private but never came into brevard public schools
52:28 did i reflect that correctly miss
52:30 lesinski you did the um the family empowerment also uh provides
52:36 vouchers for parents at home
52:39 school so um parents at home school that did that you know
52:45 without additional funding are now able
52:49 to receive funding for that yeah if you can just email me the
52:53 last five year totals for home
52:55 school okay thank you anybody else all right thank you miss lesinski
53:06 thank you thank you
53:08 all right we’re now going to begin our public hearings is there
53:11 anyone present
53:12 who wishes to address board policy 3315 student and staff
53:15 wellness
53:18 is there anyone present who wishes to address board policy 3315
53:22 student and staff wellness
53:24 does any board member have anything to discuss pertaining to
53:26 this policy
53:28 all right is there anyone present who wishes to address board
53:31 policy 5121 controlled open enrollment
53:34 is there anyone present who wishes to address board policy 5121
53:37 controlled open enrollment
53:39 does any board member have anything to discuss pertaining to
53:42 this policy
53:44 is there anyone present who wishes to address board policy 7250
53:48 commemoration of school facilities
53:50 for anyone present who wishes to address board policy 7250
53:54 commemoration of school facilities
53:56 does any board member have anything to discuss pertaining to
53:58 this policy
54:01 is there anyone present who wishes to address board policy 7110
54:04 student accommodation
54:07 is there anyone present who wishes to address board policy 7110
54:11 student accommodation does
54:12 any board member have anything to discuss pertaining to this
54:15 policy is there anyone
54:18 present who wishes to address board policy 8510 wellness stellini
54:30 i just had a quick question um i’m happy to see that wellness is
54:34 being prioritized and
54:36 um but i would like to ask how parents and community members can
54:40 review the wellness
54:41 curriculum updates so if somebody could get back to me with that
54:45 that would be great thank you
54:46 miss stellini just make you go did you want to respond to that i
54:51 know miscellany i know that
54:53 it’s on the there’s a web page um and i know our website
54:56 sometimes is tricky to navigate
55:00 um dr sullivan can you help me about how they can look at our
55:06 wellness because i’m certainly
55:08 part of the you know okay do you go to departments food and
55:13 nutrition services correct that’s right
55:16 and then over on the side at the very bottom on the link if you’re
55:20 on your phone it’s a little
55:22 different but it says wellness policy and there is the annual
55:27 wellness policy and
55:30 sorry and updates are all there so it’s under food nutrition
55:37 services and procedures
55:54 all right anybody have anything else
55:58 all right if there is no further business this meeting is now
56:02 adjourned
56:28 you
56:58 [BLANK_AUDIO]