Questions from the members on the budget

O'Connell runs through the possible problems with revenue coming in
suggests continuing with school choice and increasing it

Monfredo echoes that (on school choice)wants to talk 50/50 split on Medicaid

Foley mentions that Brian Allen came tonight to get some sleep (his wife had a baby boy last Friday)
we depend on others for our money (2/3 of our budget comes from the state)
how much would one or two charter schools cost?
next year's cost $3.1 million to $6.4 million--we'd supposedly get reimbursed, but we think it's unlikely that we'd get reimbursed
FY11 has $8.1 million in stimulus which GOES AWAY after that: watch out for FY12!
how confident are we on the level funding of grants? "appears to be level funded"
House/Senate would cut grants before Ch.70, but it doesn't matter to us: "A cut is a cut"Foley points out that in a traditional year we'd be in good shape: our numbers are going up! But with the inflation rate
going down...we're hit...in a normal year, our foundation budget would be going up $15 million!
"federal price deflator index" says Allen...state and federal governments making cutbacks
seeing increases in enrollments

Mullaney: "well worth waiting for" asks about possible school reconfigurations? Would we be looking at this for next year? What would we be doing to prepare families for that?
will work through subcommittee on Teaching, Learning, and Student Supports as presented
"full dialogue" around changes
would we do it for FY12 (know that we're going into that year with a deficit) or do it for this year, with fewer children?
putting last parts together

Biancheria: expenses, when we look at employees salaries, can we divide what is under grant funding? (yes, it's done, as the budget is presented later on)

Novick: School nutrition change means that this year the school nutrition area is now making enough money to support itself;
we no longer have to subsidize the health insurance of those who work in school nutrition (it doesn't change health insurance)
we don't yet know how much compliance will cost, but we're getting a report on this on Feb. 25(that's the PQA report, for those who have been following this)
the state could theoretically take back the money over foundation, but it isn't uncommon for this to happen, so it's perhaps unlikely
reorganization of federal funding needs watching