NJSBA The Boardroom Episode 2 - with Charles Muller Business Administrator in Residence at NJSBA

welcome back to the boardroom um this is a podcast series entitled transparent conversations it's your opportunity to call in with any question that you have whatsoever about the association um or you can call in with a question of our business administrator and residents who you'll meet with just in a few minutes um but transparency for us is not just a buzzword it's a fundamental core value of our associ and we believe that when we're transparent with our leadership and our happenings and priorities here it makes for a better community of stakeholders so this is your chance this is the boardroom your opportunity to call in and actually I'm going to give you the phone over right now it should appear on your screen as well 609 278 5292 we hope you call in with a question for us today uh let me begin Charlie for our viewer love to have you introduce yourself sure what you do and how it relates to the work that we do and please don't make fun of the suit I won't you know I I think it's very this was a gift with love I emphasize with love um from two of the members of our our board of directors actually one of my officers and I'll just bring so your attention to my red tie that is impressive I have a feeling that your wife assisted you in that process or encouraged it purchase no she made me buy it oh she there you go yeah well anyway thanks to Barry Fitz drill and Barry Walker I am sporting my new suit somebody said well you look like a joke how could you go in the air with that I said no no this demonstrates that we have fun we balance fun and work important for you to see and we're being transparent with there go anyway Charlie wer great to have you on the show Good afternoon everyone I am Charle meller I've been with the school boards here for four months uh just a little my background it's about the first 15 years after college in the casino industry and then moved into education tell them a little bit more about that that's fascinating listen to this one I started as a midnight to8 auditor at Resorts International two weeks before they opened and it was interesting on those midnight to8 shifts if you know much about Atlantic City they were lined out the doors to the boardwalk and a couple blocks in either direction it was just extremely busy and very very interesting um then buses came so I started running buses for uh the casinos uh I came from all over New Jersey New York Connecticut Delaware Pennsylvania um so we had Charters and I actually had to work the uh Superstar theater for a period of time to help out did you act on I did act no you didn't no I didn't act no no and um and then I started running more buses and got involved in some other things in 1990 I thought I had enough the casinos so I went back to school for my certification as a school business administrator so I started in epse in 1992 uh a couple other districts Regional High Schools another K to8 and then I moved into the Department of Education right around 2004 where I stayed um till 2010 and went back from my final uh District which was greater a harbor Regional down by down where I live and then I retired in 2014 and went back to the department in 2014 for 10 years where I was the um executive County Business official for you know three or four counties and most recently the ocean county superintendent schools in Ocean County um and then uh had an opportunity to come to New Jersey school boards which I look forward to it like I said it's my four fourth month uh and I'm looking to share my experiences and my research with uh board members School District superintendents Bas whoever would like to have some assistance I'm here this is a new position that we added at New Jersey school boards Association for all of you for our members and opportun related to the budget related to finances here we have a local expert that can answer your questions or guide you in the right direction um so pleasure to have you uh as part of our njsba family good to have you on the show great to be here um I mean this is our Valentine's Day special so uh which happens to fall in the middle of February and speaking of February we're in the middle of a time where we get State AIDS released at the end of the month um so at this point what should our school districts uh be looking for as they're in the middle of the budget process for 2425 you know what what should they be thinking about at this point well at this point in time you know I think we need to mention that your budgets are probably 90% fixed in nature between salaries benefits heat light and pound power tuitions Transportation uh most of these numbers are known you know there's tuitions out there for private schools uh once the budget software is complete they'll be able to do the tuition for Center receive relationships uh transportation is always interesting uh Transportation costs have risen uh pretty dramatically over the past you know few years and in addition to that we have a shortage of bus drivers not only here in the state of Jersey but Countrywide that's right so it's difficult to um add any Roots they become more and more expensive uh what districts are doing um they have a con we have a Consortium when I was a great area Harbor Regional Michelle uh was our transportation person okay and she developed a Consortium other than the roots that we had to provide we've had enough root so somebody needed a route going somewhere just for one student uh most of the times we're able to accommodate them so that that helps with Consortium it keeps the cost down for both uh for both districts for sharing Services between the two districts exactly yeah um the appropriations of salaries are pretty much done unless uh you're in the middle of negotiations uh so you make your best guess at that point in time uh but a lot a lot of the um Appropriations tend to Trend over a period of time yeah uh look at your class size but I think the most important thing before all this begins is you need to look at what uh the district priorities are um for New Jersey uh standards um and what do you want to do you know it's not always based on dollars first it's what is the what are the priorities and what are the goals of the district so if we want to make for example class size we want to maintain class size at a certain level so that's one of your priorities when all the state aid and everything gets in final you'll be able to see if you can maintain that class size that uh the board like to do yeah um yeah so and then once the uh second download after the stated State a comes in then you'll have a full picture of what the budgets are but right now you can do your Appropriations uh there's a couple adjustments you could probably uh be able to do okay uh all your adequacy and all your local fair share doesn't happen until after the uh second download of the budget right um and I think we're going to put up a um a link the department of education's budget guidelines uh there's 258 pages in the guidelines but they're excellent they've had a person in finance that's been doing it for years and she's very very good uh at updating all the information uh so whatever topic you have you could just go these budget guidelines search for it and it'll pop up and give you uh the detailed information of where the numbers come from what we need to input that's great yeah excellent and I remember those days of setting priorities as a former superintendent of schools um it was interesting walking through that process because my finance committee would do a survey so we'd look at our our priorities and make sure because it's important to listen to your stakeholders uh but I know inherent within our priorities we always had instructional priorities right so some years it depended right so one year might have been focused on ESL expansion of a program uh maybe new mathematics program certainly always those related to our bildings and grounds or Finance so if we had new turf fields or if we were installing new energy efficient you know lighting um those are things that guide you but how do you maintain that balance I think was always the challenge for me as a superintendent certainly a challenge for my business administrator and our finance committee was how do you maintain that balance between you know our our taxpayer payers the trust of our taxpayers and how do we continue to provide the optimal programs so it's that Bal it's that fine balance and right now it seems like we're almost heading into a um a time where we need to be consider we're bracing for impact uh financially with as you mentioned inflation you know Transportation costs um eventually losing you know Federal funding all of this will be hitting us know with our curent structures in place of the tax levy so it's it's interesting and such an important and timely topic um but uh yeah I I I know it's not easy being a bus a business administrator and going through this and working with your finance committee um any advice that you'd offer our board members you know who um who are working or maybe they're serving on a finance committee sure uh I I forgot to mention I did teach uh budgeting and planning at Stockton University for over over 20 years and the most important thing that we ever that I ever taught was the planning process your budget just isn't numbers yeah it's what you want to do and you mentioned facilities you know facilities sometimes is the first to go but if you look at your home and you have a a leaky window and you throw a little bit of qu in and say that'll be okay we'll fix it later yeah you know that $200 window in years to come is going to cost you a couple thousand dollars if you don't take care of it M so facilities are are are very important to take care of um I see a lot of districts struggling in that area yeah um where they um you know due to you know lack of funding where do they and a lot of times they may in areas such as maintenance buildings of grounds which at the end of the day eventually will lead them and potentially going out for a referendum rather than taking care of their of their buildings yeah this dists uh do a comprehensive maintenance plan and it's a three-year plan you know what you've done and it takes there's 40 indicators that you can find on school facilities website and there's required maintenance Capital maintenance and and just regular maintenance and there's uh M Reserve Districts are fortunate enough to have money in a reserve they can pull that each year for the required maintenance um but it gives you a plan that you're supposed to have and planning is the most important to me planning is the most important and never stops that's right a lot of us at times you know as soon as the budget's done it's voted on approved however it's done by an April election or November um you just wipe your brow and say yeah we'll worry about this again next year but next year comes the next day yeah and what we need to keep in mind is if you're having an April or November election your budget don't really begin until July but really in September when all the staff comes back and you build open you know fully and things could happen you could have a a person that gets sick so you'd have to hire a substitute which are also difficult to find so at this point in time you deal and you plan with what you know yeah you know you you know what your state aid was last year consider it I I would always take it as flat I know my Appropriations because of salary guides and and everything moving up and um there's a good document called position control roster yeah talk about the position control roster the position control roster supposedly well doesn't supposedly code has 23 items and there's no software in the state that can cover 23 items so a few years ago well quite a few years ago at this point in time it's probably 12 uh we were doing qack and we met with a person that does qack we said listen we can't do this this information is on four probably three or four separate Chiefs but all the information is there in the in the business office yeah so excuse me so we did is the most important thing and I have it here somewhere but let's see if I can do it by memory yeah um the position control roster is designed to have a position control number for each position so if you have a um a few three kindergarten teachers you should have three position controls for that position also where are they locate at what schools right um their salary is important uh when they start it where their step is if there's any additional additional monies out there so there's really two parts to this the part is the salaries that you know where people you move them up a step wherever they're going to be that's going to be their salaries that's going to be the base yeah the second part is more Trends in history and it's any overtime any additional Stu sens for covering as another class uh substitutes anything else that would go in there um has to be recorded because when the county office uh reviews a budget they they'll take a line that says oh say grades 1 through five and there'll be a number a total number and that has to match what's in the budget it has to Mach position control roster sometimes if you forget a substitute or over time especially when it comes to custodial areas um it won't match so part of the review is to make sure that matches because if your budget if your budget has a half a million dollars and your position control roster only has 450 right then you have $50,000 or vice versa you don't want to be short so that's part of the review that we do but it's it's very important there's also Trends where teachers are what positions become open uh illnesses so on and so on so it's it's a very very good document it's like a almost the the guiding principle of the business office yes and having to create a new position in the position control roster before you hire for that you know individual right so you've got to create it yes or maybe abolish one and create another one but that do I mean that that document seems to inform a lot of budget decisions and can assist them in in budget planning yes it certainly does I'm sure yep yeah which leads in um health benefits let's talk a little bit about health benefits which are W your little should be a whole podcast I don't think we have enough time for our viewers to talk about health benefits we would love to hear a little bit Yeah on that thoroughly enjoyed on going through sorry I keep checking to see if anybody's logging in asking questions so that's why I'm flipping back and forth they ask questions I hope they're not hard ones hey you never know they heard you were on the ER they're like we got to call in with some difficult questions right um we're having issues with Facebook Instagram so if you're on if you're yeah well they can't hear me but um um for those of you who are online we are having trouble with Facebook and Instagram um we're trying to get that up and running for you but thanks still thanks for tuning in um and uh for those who are on those may not platforms may not be able to hear me but um you can always watch this later on as well we'll certainly replay this for you but yeah go ahead health benefits by the way do we have any callers no call keep going Charlie there you go the health benefits but due of a lot of research and actually I to be honest with you in preparing for this C podcast yeah I did a lot of research a lot of reading I just I actually had a good time yeah had good time I had a good time looking at all this stuff Charlie has fun with this um the health benefits uh I did a a quick little calculation yeah and for a single uh P which is a main maintenance Health Organization used to be when I very first heard of it um the lowest cost could be 11,000 uh $111,000 to go to the more expensive one M which is New Jersey direct 10 I believe was the most expensive that plan is 44 ,000 so again I mentioned earlier that things could happen people could come back got married over the summertime now they're eligible for husband and wife right um they could had a baby now they have family so these things are these things can add up but again we're now it's our all things that we can you know encourage them doing but at the same time we'll add up yeah so you need to plan and there's uh there's trends there's Trends to that that you can use um in in preparing the budget just a reminder viewers at home if you'd like to call in if you can hear us and you can't maybe see the screen it's 609 278 5292 fire away any question you'd like at uh uh for Charlie or myself we'd love to answer your questions ah all right you want to continue with heal benefits or you want to move on to something else because I was thinking Debt Service payments is another one de service payments this is probably the easiest of all all right see I gave you a s all the budgeting line items you have um your debt service is just paying back your bonds and it's used for major construction areas uh what a lot of districts do has your debt becomes uh starts to expire yeah sometimes they rolled over so you can upgrade your facilities and keep the money going same thing with maintenance same thing with some capital capital money you roll it over because it's it's pretty much the same dollar amount going forward so you can actually maintain your facilities that's important thing is to make sure you value that service Aid in December December yeah because you tend to miss that you're going to have a hard time trying to get any uh Debt Service Aid and the minimum uh minum I believe is 40% Aid okay depending on the district you can go higher depending on the factor group of the district you talked a little bit about um transportation earlier um and we have uh districts that send they have send receed relationships um you know any any thoughts about that or or what do they um I certainly know the answer but I'd love for you to to discuss for our viewers you know when do they have to provide the transportation um and what does that look like and um you know go through a few scenarios for our listeners all right we'll talk basically with they call two and from okay uh two and from is two miles for elementary schools two and a half miles for high schools you allow to have a student walk that far and the mileage is measured from door to door uh during the shortest walkway or pathway it's not necessarily roadways one been a child with um an individualized education program that's most likely going to be in their IEP what type of Transportation okay they may have door Todo Transportation uh pick them up the house or they may be able to ride on a regular two and front bus M so it depends on how the child study team writes their IEP okay um charer schools it's pretty much the same as um to and from for the regular public school students the difference there is you have to offer the parent there's um there's I think it's, it's 1180 $1,180 I think it was wow um is the 8 of payment for nonpublic students okay that's a base so if you're if the Charter School's coming if the charter if the charter school cost is more than that then you have to off the offer the parents the opportunity to pay the difference now it's crazy as the scen as it happened to me once I had one student U and I had to Pride of Transportation this goes way back into the 90s and I sent the parent a letter say do you want to pay $20,000 for transportation obviously I got a response well um shocker yeah really really um yeah so that's uh and same thing with Aiden LOF Aiden L off is for non nonpublic students for the most part and what's the amount for Aiden Lou for 2324 just for our viewers at home I wrote that down Tim $1,165 nice um excuse me um and then there's just other uh Transportation have preschool Transportation you have and transportation is becoming just more and more expensive not only short it's driver but the placements yeah talk a little bit about out of District placements yes or add of District tuitions sure let's start that if you don't mind no no not at all yeah district and I have some notes Here on that yes there is now these are outed District private school placements I have 135 I've count 135 approved private schools throughout the state they so districts will select from the approved list child study team will place the best from the approve from the approved list uh they go from 180 days to 226 days obviously the 226 is little more than the extended school year SP school year usually to 20 and the price will range from $224 a day for 180 days all the way up to $745 a day a day a day for extended school year now on top of the tuition it depends on the school if they're going to provide the itinerate services or if they're going to provide uh AIDS whatever is needed if not that comes back to the um district will be responsible for that plus transportation wow so kids could be on the you know bus for over an hour to get to S of the schools it's and that's a loss right there right so you know yeah and having children travel so far you know when they could be doing something else especially children with disabilities yeah make sure we talked a little bit about um send receive but I'd love to hear your thoughts on send receive tuition um any thoughts on that yep there's two uh calculations a41 and a42 which is a manual calculation Excel very few I think there's maybe a handful of districts to use that in the state or used to be that few okay the budget software will calculate tuitions it'll calculate it by kindergarten grades 1 through five 6 8 9 and 12 and various special ed categories right okay so take all of your budget numbers Y and they'll run through the calculation and you'll get a rate for each one of those programs oh okay so that is for in District only that's not the private school it's completely separate the law says that you can charge less than that but you cannot charge more more okay so if your tuition is $155,000 you can't charge $115,000 in a dollar $50,000 one good you can charge under that and then every two years it correct and then every two years they adjust the tuition so if you paid 15 and it was only 14 you get the money back again there's a calculation for that to get that money back what about uh like a um a formal send received agreement between uh two districts there is a um in the uh there's a formal agreement that's in there as a matter of fact I looked at it and there's one for uh one for regular education and I believe there's one for special education so it's it's just agreement to the number of students one of the things you need to put in this section for comments you need to put something in there for resource room if somebody's going to charge resource room in the future and again there's there's a calculation for that in there but everything should be in that contract so everybody knows what's going including the adjustments from from two years prior W it's much easier using the software yeah don't try don't do it on your own don't do it on your own so we're at midpoint and I think um just knowing you I'm sure some sort of joke has been brewing you always have a good joke we're at midpoint in the program okay we could just do a little break here and and give our our listeners one of the Charlie Classics you could choose any of them well can't choose any of them well we can choose it all right go ahead this is this because this actually came close to happening to me uh really playing golf with North Carolina years ago yeah so these three guys were playing did wait did you play for them huh did you play on the the school team no no I was a baseball guy oh yeah I knew that yeah no no golf no gol so these three guys finished Golf and uh they go to the car and one guy who's driver locks the car and he goes oh I locked the car I can't get in yeah so the second guy says well listen he says we we got to find someone maybe have a c could hanger we can you know think because now we can't do that in these new cars we could do it in the old ones we can't do it now third guy looks at them all and says listen we better do something because the top down this car and it's starting to [Music] rain uh and we'll save the other ones yeah that's good love it thanks for the intermission you're welcome enjoyable as always all right let's move on to if you don't mind um the topic of I'm just want to check and see if there's any questions topic of facilities um you know I talk to our viewers a little bit about you know long range facility plans planning for facilities uh we talked a little bit about it in the beginning with budget prep but can you dive in a little bit you know deeper into facilities sure and recently this really helped we had when they had all the additional facilities money coming in districts had up up now talk about that do you mean uh regular operating District grants reg operating District grants explain that just for our viewers Cas yeah there's um Rod is stands for regular operating districts there's money that was put out by the state um I think it was 75 million there's there was different charges of money that came out there's a lot of money that came out part of those requirements where you had to upgrade your update your long range facility plan ah now your long range facility plan is the footprint of your each one of your buildings it's the square footage it's um how many kids are in the room where they are how many libraries how many kindergarten classes it's a complete inventory of your building so when you when you need to U apply for an when you submit your application for a building project that has to be approved by school facilities then all this information has to come out you know and then then the review your facilities say yeah it's okay to go ahead and do this especially when you expand your facilities because you know if you have on house students in there's plenty room right you know why you putting an addition on unless put gy or something helps you have intentionality and thought I'm going to pause this conversation because we do have a caller so uh we've got a live caller if you can hello hello hey you're on the air can I ask who's calling Irene Irene thanks for joining us Irene actually is our immediate past president um and I'm sure she is loaded with questions so fire away Irene thanks for calling in today all right so I got I got permission for two but I got three how's that so the first one is you talked about process of involving um making sure everybody was involved in the process of building the budget in has been my experience that the um finance committee becomes the budg Committee in many districts how do you what kind of suggestions do you have for involving other the rest of the board in the process so that at the end of the time when the budget comes up for uh you know final approval by the board everybody on the board feels like they've had a voice yeah great question Irene um yeah how do you keep you have board members that may feel out of the loop they haven't been part of the conversations recommendations other than other than the budget iene have uh District goals District goals I believe are set by the entire board so those District goals should be part of the budgeting process so that they they should feel included uh if they had participated in that development of the goals development of the goals also your superintendent has goals you know does a super and again the board the full board decrees on the superintendent goals and they could be uh become part of the budget probably should be at least some of them so when you are when you're going through the development process you need to really align those instructional priorities that are developed by the full board and include the superintendent's uh goals as part of the foundation of the process correct yep and also part of the budget um documentation is District priorities and New Jersey learning standards um they're in there too and also there's a checklist Irene I'm sorry to cut you off but there's also a checklist that you can find on the department's website uh and it is D I think it might be D2 the priorities of the district that's reviewed by the county office so that gives you indication of what um what they should do but I think they may I think they may be included but not really and then if I could just add my two cents um great question Irene I think uh Communications really important you know here we are hosting a podcast on transparency uh so I you know know just putting myself and you know looking through the lens of a board member that's not part of the committee uh you know properly communicating out and and you know regularly using those those board reporting periods you know when you have the committee reports as an opportunity not only just to give information because I think too often in life we give right we give um and we don't necessarily listen intently uh listening to understand rather than to respond which I I know my assistant always using that verbiage so that's just my two senses making sure that it's transparent in the process and that benefits not only the other board members but all stakeholders right yeah you you had a second question Irene yes you were talking about the um the roster of um staff and making sure that it you you account for everyone how about you think you're thinking about adding additional staff how do how would that work out with that roster do we have to put that in aead of time or is that something that happens after the fact or what uh no you put it in you would put it in now and if it was let's say it's grades one through five because that's what I happen to be looking at right now you would just add a line and say uh vacant you know oh I see and then yeah and then Irene what happened is in there's one column the employee the date to position was create it you would definitely want to fill that in so that would be February 14 2024 yeah agre great Point okay y That's good all right then I've got one for you for later on your conversation because it's not directly budget related but could be in the future if a district is considering moving their election back to April from November the costs involved in running that election some portion of that or all of that has to be borne by the district how does a district gather that information and where is that accounted for in the budget process for the upcoming year in which that might happen so you have answer that right now but that's just a if you get time for it someplace in the conversation um there are number of districts are part to put that idea your part of Elections should be able to help you with that because you have the printing of the ballots you have the machine rental you have I don't know whether you'll have uh facility rentals but um the elections the election board should be able to help you with that County Board of Elections yeah okay and then that number goes into our budget as a as an expense right it does go in your budget as expense yes okay so moving it back to April is not without some cost to the district because it's whatever the difference is between what it costs us to participate in a November election what it cost us to participate in an April election correct because you still have you may have board members that are up and you also have to certify a tax levy yeah okay okay Irene thanks for calling in and we hope you're call next month as well with a question so all right thank you we actually Charlie we have another question that came through on social media um and this one's a from a board member who works with Committee of the whole ah and I'm not sure what your experience is with that but both you have you work with both so the question here is when do board members traditionally get involved in the budget process without um basically as a member of Committee of the whole and what does that involvement look like for them well it'll it'll range from District to District but I'll tell you my experience with um uh Community as a whole we usually start in late fall to get some serious like November December uh you'll have a good enrollment after your after all your Council all your reports are due in a and in October so you'll know what your enrollment is going to be what the projected enrollment is going to be um your grants and a lot of things that will happen and then you start discussing what you want to do again I'm going to go back to the planning what is your plan and that's the discussion that should start occurring early enough in the year do we want to maintain let's say 23 is a class size do we want 23 do we want 20 can we go to 26 what do we want to do and that's all that's a discussion point in that time uh the money will come later but but the money is there for the most part and from what I've seen with Committee of the whole uh just add my thoughts as well is that the process should be the same yes so timing wise um rather than operating as a committee that's solely responsible for finance which is a segment of your board operating as committee of the whole means that you're all that committee for that particular meeting so the process in terms of when you start to have these conversations to budget development all the way through should be the same timeline correct yep yeah so uh just advice to that board member um you know you should start to see things if you're a first year board member uh you'll start to see information coming out now and meeting as a committee of the whole um without a doubt y yeah and certainly after state aid numbers are revealed later this month yep great question Mary from and we've got another caller um Mary from Bridgewood you're live oh hi how are you um great to have you on the air thank you thank you for taking my call um I'm a brand new uh board member welcome to the board thank you for your service oh I'm I'm I'm thrilled I'm really excited about it so I have kind of an a question which is we know that there's teacher shortages we know that there are uh you know bus driver shortages we know that generally there's inflation you know so that the cost of everything that we need to do is going up which isn't new but it's becoming more acute um we also know that you know when that financial aid that we had kind of a from the federals government you know we kind of had an infusion of that we're facing the financial cliff um we also know that we have a 2% cap on our budgets um and in my district we you know adhere strictly to that as much as we we H have always and so my question is against that backdrop knowing that in the next you know five years or so uh we have some fairly large facility needs that are uh you know you know some in some degree could become somewhat aspirational but really are a necessity I think for the the changing needs of the community and also just educational needs we've got AI which you know is going to require a lot of you know professional development we've got you know um we want to make sure that our Dei and our you know seal learning is is you know as it should be and of course you know the changing needs always of the special education community and just in you know the ability to innovate right and to continue to be as good as we can be clearly those appear to be competing because everything costs money and my question is any advice for how we plan for those things over the next you know three to five years you know just generally yeah based on your experience yeah great call thank you Mary for calling in that's a great question uh Charlie I don't know if you want to give it first crack and then I'll respond up to you um when I was Stockton many years ago um I didn't believe in a 5-year plan it's it's it's far out it's it's that's five years I was going for anywhere from a year and a half to maybe two possibly three years and you could probably do three years in this particular industry um so again you would look at because because of the volatility correct yeah yeah so you would look at and what I used to do is I would look at any trends so I would look at my history and I would look at attrition you know how many teachers are retiring yeah you know am I going to save money there what can I do to um curtail some of my Transportation cost can I you know can I tear the bus one more time do I change my school starting times so I can run another section of the bus uh and save some money there um you know it's um and I think um Mary's question is a question that all boards are struggling with right now and um that's one of the reasons why it's great to belong to an association like the New Jersey school boards Association because we have a team of our our government governmental relations team has been advocating for additional relief or flexibilities that provide districts opportunities um to bring in some additional funding um or looking you could always go to a second question we talk a little bit about that but I wanted to mention a few things that I am concerned with personally related to Mary's question uh the first is those districts that used uh Federal funding or one-time Revenue sources or even like a three-year source for staff and for programs because um that is most concerning to me and I express this personally with our governor that you know all these wonderful programs that districts have brought in you know as a result of the pandemic with mental health all of these need that we really need in our districts very creative Innovative programs what's going to happen to them when as Mary said we're hitting the fiscal cliff we've got inflation we've got uh issues with Transportation Rising costs you know we've got a shortage of Staff we want to pay them properly what they should be paid all of these factors and what about the great Innovative programs that we brought in those are the going to be the ones that will suffer that's where we're going to cut cost and that's unfortunate so as we brace for impact what are things that districts can do and I I think you were starting to lay out some ideas of how they can forecast you know to provide for their students and creative Revenue sourcing looking for areas of shared services both with the municipality also with other districts in terms of Transportation are two unique ideas but we are still going to need some sort of relief for our districts as we hit this fiscal cliff and mayor we've been um when I review budgets uh at the county level tell them again remind them you know this is good from the county level working for the Department of Education uh I would review budgets on a one let me stop because I think it's important so our um each of the counties have an executive County Superintendent that meets with the districts to about their budget through the approval process so now go ahead just just in case our viewers didn't know yeah there's uh and I would I would always ask the districts to come in so I could sit with them and talk to them about their budget the first question I would ask them is um are you reducing any programs for next year and depending on what the answer is then we would have one discussion I would also ask on a positive side are you increasing any programs and that again that would have another discussion but through the budgeting process and we'll go into for example if I was doing it this year I'd ask all right here's your 2425 budget what's going on but the next question is what are you going to do for 2526 because there's areas in there there's uh Surplus that use there's um revenues that may be short uh from one year to a next and there's a whole list of them so I would ask how does it affect 2526 so the question question um for longterm five years I'm looking at two it would be three if I included the 2324 budget but that's what I would ask where are you going to be because if you have to cut staff for whatever reason for 2425 are you going to have to cut staff again in 2526 right so that leads to other discussions you know again I go I keep going back to class size um go back to cheering of your buses which means you run your us uh multiple times during the course of the day so that's those are the questions that I would ask and depending on the answers is where you would begin to um plan out your next uh couple years and driving factors related to that you know obviously are your collective bargaining agreements correct which are a large portion but you know and those are coming at higher than your year-over-year Levy but at the same same time you want to pay your staff you know it's of a shortage so there's all these dynamics that come into you know play when you're trying to develop a budget and there's one other um meeting that we have with school districts and that is the midar budget review that happens in December uh December early January and uh it's basically and if you there's a comp the link it's called the TG taxpayers guide for educational spending that Al tell you um how your school district Compares within the state on uh various Z I think there's 19 of them uh but again that's another opportunity to talk about how your District's doing you know what is your increase what is your salary increase like Tim mentioned you know is it on the rise is it 3.2 is it going wherever it's going to be and what are some of the issues you have so that comes out at that point in time which should all those issues should just roll in to your planning for your budget for next year or the year after you know Stephen cvy once said you begin with the end in mind and I think um during these times of budget development so important to look through the lens of let's start with you know what we can't move right and then look for Creative areas that we can apply for Grants look for funding look for Partnerships look for uh shared services in those other areas um but I think really budget development needs to start with what do we need what are the Bare Bones here that we need to sustain our programs um certainly Personnel you know and services for children without compromise and unfortunately I think you know inherent within Mary's question and many of our board members is the notion of you know they do feel like they have to make compromise now right this time of year you always hear the conversation of zero based budget yeah talk to us a little bit about that zero based budget is a concept where you tear everything down you start from scratch um I've always taught a modified zero based budget where you start with what you have and go forward yeah okay so what do you mean what you have so let's say and I'm going get I use um class size as an example let's say you have five grade one through five teachers and your class size is 15 well that's where you are now going forward do you move to four teachers and reach at 18 or 19 so that's a modifi because you can't for to go back and say listen we're not going to have any grade one for five teachers you have to have them right so it's better to start from where you are now and then work then work either backwards or forward depending on what you have y we've actually got another caller H great question Mary thank you um we have a caller John faford is on the line John welcome to the show yes hi hi Tim hi Charlie hi joh uh hello uh quick question for Charlie uh and I apologize if uh you've already address this I jumped on the podcast a little late but my question is is there any end inight for health care cost rising at such high rates and if not then how do you continue to deal with that from a budgeting perspective year after year well for school districts they do get a little bit of break with the healthc care adjustment Healthcare used to uh increase at a very small rate this year it was I think the state health benefits is 6.3% um you're allowed a 2% increase so districts right now will be able to get a 4.3% increase on their increase in health care cost now health care cost is limited to uh major medical and prescription and that's in the budget software um the longer uh teachers teach the long longer we continue to live uh your health care costs are going to be there you know and I don't I don't see them going down as we get older and teachers I think now we in there to what 60 into their 60s now when a lot of us used to retire at 55 you know so they're they're in the profession longer which means they're health insurance is going to continue on um so other than that Healthcare adjustment um that's all I know at this point in time and but you should you know you should periodically shop it I'm going to throw up a article that was released back in um this is October of 23 so maybe it's a little bit dated but each year we around October we'll get um we'll get notification of anticipated you know rise in health care Aon in particular with this article but um it's it's you know it's really difficult to be able to budget for those increases um and especially I think now more than ever with all the constraints that we have at the local level so yeah and the uh and and the cost I was um many many years ago I had a topographical ointment um where are we going with this one oh not too far but they charged me $40 huh and I said but that's a lot because I'm not used to paying that much and when they showed me the price of the actual prescription it was $25 $500 so how I paid 40 and somebody else paid 2,100 uh so John I think that's where that's where some of the U some of the costs are and the more and more you have uh new medications coming out it's you know you're gonna pay for it hey thanks John thanks for your call appreciate it um and uh yeah no questions let's move on I do have uh we have time for a couple more topics uh one of them that I thought was interesting that we had not covered is the um Department of Education review process for budgets I think this would be interesting uh for our viewers to understand you know um the process and I know you have a bunch of appendices that you refer to um but if you could talk a little bit about that I think that'd be interesting for our board members who may not know yeah if you again we're going to be able to post the website we're going to post the finance website can you pull it up now while we're on or no is that possible sorry putting everybody in the spot here you could throw up the website onto um the blog that'd be great if not that's okay we can post it later okay go ahead TR okay um there's really four there's one that's uh it's called appendix D and that's just a submission from um what the district has to submit to the county office for revie the second one is a D1 which is the county office checklist now this reviews various line items and someone mentioned the other day about having somebody explain all the differences well this particular sheet anything that's plus or minus 4% has to have an explanation on it um in in in addition to that on those some of those explanation lines especially when it comes to professional development that has to tie into the district's priorities of what they're going to do and that's another section uh that's another section of the budget which is all narrative and this is something board members may not be aware of correct the extent and level of connection you between budget um between the goals and the budget submission to the county office C and then the budget has a lot of buildin before I get into the next two the budget has a lot of built-in safeguards like I said before the division of finance for the Department of Ed has done a wonderful job so you can't submit a budget uh with what they call a fatal edit and the example is let's say you want to submit a budget that's you know a million dollars over your tax levy there'll be a fatal edit there and the county office won't won't approve the budget so they'll send it back and say no this doesn't work and you're not even you can't even submit it for the most part um the third one is the uh called appendix D2 it's the executive County Su uh it should be the county superintendent and educational specialist review I mean executive County should be uh and this is where we look at your programs you know what do you plan on doing and this is an important document and somebody most likely a curriculum person should write this and tell us what you're planning on doing uh curriculum wise going forward and making sure you're meeting the uh learning standards and the last one is additional spending proposal checklist and that's just making sure it gives you the guidelines of what you um can put out for a separate question uh and again there's more detail on this in the budget guidelines which we'll put uh which is that up to yeah yep the budget we put the link yeah so you look at that link there's a lot of information there uh I would encourage you if you have any questions to go and look at it especially there's areas that explain the 2% cap which is BAS basically last year's tax levy plus any enrollment increased by 2% and then you also have your adjustments you have your healthc care adjustments um the enrollment adjustment like I said is already included but there's also used something called Bank cap yeah any any reports that you think they should uh be aware of that could assist them yeah this is this is reports and most recently like in the past week this is the questions I've gotten yeah so I would lo I would go into the budget guidelines and look at the enrollment adjustment and the tax levy cap because that's the 2% and that's that's separate from your your rateable your tax rate that's that's separate from that and then look at your adjustments look your health care adjustments and uh some of those are coming up more and more okay uh and Bank cap yeah B cap you can use if you don't use it you lose it that's right so and they'll be documents in your in the budgets uh that you have that'll show you you know this is what you have this year if you don't use it you're going to lose it and the other information once you start putting your budget in your Appropriations particularly then you'll start getting the adjustments coming out of what you're able to do now that will increase your tax levy so although it's a 2% yeah you could have a 6% you could have a 5% yeah you know you could have more than 2% if you utilize your bank cap and your Healthcare adjustments so it's that time in the program where I give you the three rapid fire questions here you go I'm ready so the first is what book are you currently reading right now and do you recommend it which is right now the most I'm I'm really into the budget guidelines I'm on page 212 um I don't read for enjoyment really no no U now my wife does she read constantly but I read for uh learning I love like I said ear I love just doing all the research reading reading educational articles reading budgets and you're a data person I love this stuff I mean this this is great and I I enjoy this all right what about a quote that you live by the quote that you live by well as you as you know um my quote would be a day without laughter is a day wasted and that's a quote by Charlie chap uh I'll give you a little side I see it's very fitting we were knowing you we were planning my fraternity reunion years ago how did that one go oh that one went well oh yeah but I called one of my fraternity brothers who unfortunately was very very ill but the first question he asked me said Char I got to go you know I have to go to the doctors he said but are you still smiling and this is back from 1975 so I said the smile have that left my face in all these years wow yeah and I a contest since you know knowing you that you always certainly smile so and you make others around you smile as well which I love so what about a person who has um served as an inspiration to you could be a mentor could be you know someone who's living or not well I really have two oh okay we'll let you bifurcate your answer then huh we'll let you bifurcate your answer okay my mentor uh every place I've been has been a mentor you know I've been um in the casino industry someone's been my mentor I started in a school district somebody's been my mentor you know I'm here you're my mentor so everybody every place I've been I've had a mentor um but I think the one that helped me out most was my college baseball coach uh I had a very bad bat one time and he told me to start running right after the game so I started running and then he pulled me aside and said listen he said if you're not have fun get off the field wow you're out here to enjoy yourself if you're not going to enjoy yourself don't fly so I've taken that into a lot of uh just into a daily life just if I'm not going to have fun but I think that the best one would be the inspiration would have to be cdy my my wife cdy um for all these years she's let me do what I want go ahead be happy do this do that whatever you want uh sounds good to me so you've married up I married up yes you did she married down I asked her one time I said I said S I don't know why you didn't leave me after the first 45 years later we're still together but that would be my that would certainly be my inspiration well thank you for uh sharing all of your passion your inspiration uh your insight into budget development and all things considered in the finance umbrella uh we thank all of you for tuning in today thank you for joining us um we hope that you join us next time um it should be on the but our next podcast is March 20th so you can spend our lunch spend your lunch and our lunch I guess we're both there uh with us for that podcast um so we're excited to bring you another program uh for you to call in and ask questions but thank you so much for your time today and um that's it any any parting words enjoy the budget Season Take Care thank you everyone