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HomeMy WebLinkAboutFINCOM01242013 Town of Mansfield Finance Committee Minutes of January 24, 2013 i=l' ED �., S rIF F ICE Present: Chairman Walter Wilk; Vice Chairman Steve Schoonveld; Memberrs James a Bazinet, Michael O'Brien, and Yogen Chemburkar. Others present included Superintendent cif,eh`oo( .Banda Hodges and Director of Finance Operations for the Schools, Ed Vozzella. H Absent: Liz Christo, Clerk, Scott Feely, Member Call to Order: Chairman Wilk called the meeting to order at 7:40 p.m. Walter Wilk would like to thank Brenda Hodges and Ed Vozella for coming tonight and giving the Finance Committee and overview of the FY 2014 budget. Review of Minutes None at this time. School Department Proposed FY 2014 Budget Ed Vozella presents consolidated spreadsheet. It shows FY 12 and FY 13 and difference for FY 14 budget. It gives dollars and percentage difference. Level service budget is going up $1,765,457 which is a difference of 4.3%. Most of the increase is due to the increase in salaries. Central services are up $70,208 which is 3.9% increase (50% of increase is due to professional development). Buildings and grounds is up $70,475 due to maintenance of buildings. The buildings are getting older and need work. Special Education is going down $218,488 which is a difference of -10% based upon their estimation of where students were placed back in October 2012. At this point Ed feels they may have more savings in the spring. High School up budget is up 25% primarily for textbooks; QMS is additional lease costs; Jordan Jackson is up for textbooks; Robinson School is putting in computer pods in 9 classrooms. Dollars attributed to the new mandate is $1,073,265 and $582,584 in other positions that tie into the school improvement plan. School budget has always been asking for these increases. The change is the educational needs due to mandates. In the past the schools have been looked at by MCAS results. State is saying they need to move the students in the need improvement range up to proficient. Schools need to show improvement in these areas for rating. Schools are broken into 5 levels of classifications. Level 1 and 2 are the top 20% in the State. Level 3, 4 and 5 is the bottom 80 %. If you are in the bottom levels, the state will come in and will and work with district on what they need to do and how it will be done. There could be some penalties if we do not meet a certain level. Level ratings started last year and we were in level 3. We were in level 3 not because of academic performance; 98% proficient in English; 94% proficient in math. There are 7 sub groups in the high risk needs that the state weighs heavily. One piece of state formula is that more than 90% of students must participate in the MCAS tests; in that particular sub group only 89% participated in test. Five students did not take test. Superintendent did appeal the one student not taking the test and they won the appeal Page I 1 Finance Committee Meeting January 24,2013 and were place in level 2. Brenda says the state put in a formula over a 3 year period and schools need to show progress over a three year period. We were judged on the formula last year. Now the state has taken out the last two years of data and that is how they classified schools this year. We know if we do not meet the formula next year then Mansfield will be classified as a level 3. This will effect how everyone looks at Mansfield School system. Walter says that a small percentage of students will always not do well. What happens if they don't get there? Brenda says they know the students that can move and the strategies and teaching methodology to get them there and keep at a level 2. Ed Vozella says it is an issue of credibility. We have asked for these monies every year and we have not received it. The matrix has changed and now they are mandates. We need this support. How do we get from a budget this year FY 13 of$33,740,279 down to budget of FY 14 of$37,166,132? We had a loss of grants and one time funds for a loss of$387,598. Contractual steps and lanes teachers get an increase in salary. After school programs and summer programs that are running over and above current budget that we want to continue and in order to fund those we will need an additional $87,722. At the time we did the budget, we knew of one teacher retiring and now we know there will be probably 5 or 6 more. When a teacher retires they are in a high salary range and we can hire a replacement at half the cost. This will help reduce the budget. FTE Schedule We have gone down from 562 people down to 555 in a five year period of time. We have been losing 40-50 students going into high school because of lack of electives. Hopefully we will get more people back into the school system. Enrollment Schedule This schedule shows the year to year change. We are starting to loss about 3% of our student population each year. They have been trying to reduce class size in grades 1-5. Ideal class size is around 23-24. We are always over. We need lower class sizes for younger students. Mandates There have been a number of federal and state mandates over the last years. The biggest mandate at this point is the states mandate to narrow the achievement gap. Along with that comes a new assessment. It is what the state refers to as PARCC assessment next year. It is similar to MCAS testing. It is assessed a little differently and more frequently. We will be accessing grades 3 through 11 in different areas and more often. We needed to work with the state on updating them with our technology capabilities because many of these assessments are on line. The state will be looking at the 7 areas of high needs. The formula has weighted so heavily on those areas of high needs. When we look at mandates to meet, we look at adding an adjustment counselor and we really have to that to meet this mandate. If we have more adjustment counselors to meet the needs of student's emotional needs and behavioral needs, then all student will Page 12 Finance Committee Meeting January 24,2013 succeed. We have only one adjustment counselor in each school. We also need professional development that is required to address the comprehensive assessment that we need to for the PARCC assessment. It is similar to the MCAS assessment but there are still differences that we need to work with teachers and bring them up to that level. Mandate with English Language Learners (ELL). All teachers throughout every district in the state of Massachusetts will have an endorsement added to their licenses to teach ELL. This requires 50 hours of training for each teacher. We have 3 years to do this. We will be starting this next year. We also need to upgrade technology infrastructure, hardware and software to utilize the digital components of the program including online tools, assessments and resources. New teacher evaluation model will be put in place. It has to be in place by September 2013. Administration has been working with the teacher association over the last couple of years to look at which model they will use. The state requires that we send the model to them and whether any changes to that model is acceptable to the state. An agreement has been met in theory and wording as to what document they are going to use. Teacher and school committee need to approve model and then we will send to the state for approval. Once this is in place, there is mandated training for all teachers. We have to notify state on what the training will be and what it will cost. State needs this information by October 2013. Academic learning center where we bring students in a group setting and there will be staff to help those students with any area of challenge. Response to Intervention (RTI) is another state mandate that requires district to have in place. It is a 3 tier intervention. These are the biggest mandates required in this budget along with the addition of teachers to meet these mandates. This budget is trying to get the schools to a more solid place. Yogen Chemburkar asks if we are meeting the mandates that are not new. Brenda says that they have been asking for RTI for a couple of years. The state has specific guidelines that we need to identify and show that we have applied strategies to individual students. Ed has seen such improvements by tests and RTI (Response to intervention). Data analyzes individual needs of each student. RTI is labor intensive. Impressive on how you teach children. Require funds to help student. Nothing more satisfying than seeing these children succeeds. James Bazinet asks if there is any other funding or grants available for these mandates or is all paid for by the Town. Brenda says she takes advantage of grants they can get. Not large dollars but some over the last couple of years. The state looks at this like being funded through "race to the top money". James said he thought we dropped out of that program. Brenda says we did not apply for the program and the reason why they did not apply is because everyone was not on board (school committee, teachers association). It was about $13,000 a year over a 3-year period for Mansfield. Walter Wilk says it may have a lot to do with economic status of Mansfield. Mansfield will not benefit from Page 13 Finance Committee Meeting January 24,2013 the governor's new grants. Mansfield does not meet criteria. Revolving Accounts Revolving accounts are like mini businesses. For example food services, they have a million dollars and they have to pay for all their products, custodial services, etc. There are many revolving accounts (athletics, fees for parking, champs, summer institute, little hornet, etc.). School uses revolvers to supplement budget. When you look at the budget, we have the general budget which was just presented but we also have a couple of other pieces like grants that support para professionals. We also have revolvers that absorb some of the expenses that would be in the general fund. We can take some of the custodians and allocate their expenses into the revolving accounts and the town does not have to pay for that. One of the rules in a revolving account is that you can never go negative. They have to be self sufficient. They pay for 100% of food service and also absorb some custodians. Revolving does not pay 100% of athletics. It pays for partial athletics. Also pay-n-ride has a revolving account. What we collect does not pay for 10 months of bus service. It helps off set the expense. The school projects over a number of years what those revolvers would be in the future and if we continue to spend at the same level and continue to take in the same fund. They utilize these funds to off set the general fund and if we did everything the same, 3 years from now these accounts would go negative. We charge certain things to the revolvers like administrative assistances salaries and custodial salaries. If taking money from the revolver accounts, the expenses have to be relative to the accounts. Some portions of utility bills can be charged to revolvers. Yogen Chemburkar asks why use revolver accounts instead of putting money into general fund. Ed Vozella says it is legally a general fund. The summer institute for example does not have anything to do with academics so you cannot take from the general fund. Ed Vozella says the schools are blessed to have the revolver accounts because without them a lot of costs would be finding their way back to the general fund. Steve Schoonveld asks why the percentage of 6 month projection is 22% and not 50%. Ed Vozella says the schools buy things when they need them and at certain times of the year they will get better deals. James Bazinet says the salaries and wages year-to-date are based on 4 months. There should not be much deviation from month to month for salaries and wages. Monthly budget for salaries for the last 4 months, for example, was $2.8 million versus $1.9 million year-to-date expenditure which would lead us to believe that in the calculation that it was under budgeted by$300,000. Walter Wilk states hoping for state money for Mansfield is unlikely. Unless it is federal grant money, Mansfield does not fall into the category for much state money. Walter Wilk states that we are working closely with Board of Selectmen, Zoning and some of the different groups. We have $1.5 million that is a plug in this budget that has been carried over from last year and the year before. One of the things we are trying to work on with the Town that was identified by the consultants is focusing on zoning in the industrial park, downtown and train station. We are hoping to change the zoning to drive more businesses in and bring up a larger tax base to the Town without raising people's taxes and use some of that money to offset the towns and the schools needs on a go forward basis. Obviously, that is not going to happen before May 7th which is the target for town meeting. Finance Page 14 Finance Committee Meeting January 24,2013 Committee and Schools will meet again in first or second week in March to discuss what is coming in from the State and by that time Schools can put together a later approach similar to what was done for CIP. We will work conservatively. Finance committee's job is to figure out what makes sense and what makes sense for the town and what is economically feasible for the town and make recommendation on that. Everyone will agree on one budget for the year. CIP Update Finance Committee has many questions on the CIP $900K for study of DPW facility. We are going to ask Lee Azinheira to come in for the next meeting to answer questions on DPW facility. Master planner from UMASS says that consolidating services such as DPW, Fire and Police together in the new facility would be beneficial. Then we are told there is not enough space to do that. We need to look at where they can consolidate services. Sell police, fire, and stick all together. We are unclear on what the strategic plan is. We want to make it more cost effective. Future Meetings Bill Ross and Department Heads will present budget on Saturday, February 2"d Motion to adjourn. 9:10 PM (Schoonveld /Bazinet) j Gi;. - z Zg 13 Sign ture of Clerk Date of Approval Page 15 Finance Committee Meeting January 24,2013