Notes from November Finance and Operations

 The video is over here; the agenda is here. 

As always, these are my notes as much for me as anyone!

The looming question of having all of this one-to-one technology now has been "and then what?" as all of it has a lifespan, and the one-time funds we used to fund it all were, well, one time. Thus the item that had the longest back up for this meeting this week.

These charts always make me panic me a little, as I find them initially hard to follow, but if you take some time with it, I think you'll work it out. Here's what we have now (this is page 18, as linked above); this is (listed down) what we have now, and then the bars show when they're 'done,' so to speak:

And here's the proposed (leased) replacement cycle (this is page 19 from above): 

The dollar amounts accumulate each year at the bottom, while each individual lease runs multiple years.

Now while this is (bottom line) $750K next year, note that it then goes to $1.6M, to $2.5M, to $3.4M, until in FY28, we're at what becomes a sustained $3.8M. As these are leases, this is an operational expenditure. This thus is a long-term plan for the budget to be regularly setting aside about $4M a year in replacement technology costs by FY28. 

You might remember a bit ago we updated our transportation policies in part because they talk about a "vendor" and we don't have one anymore, but also we had some missing pieces. One piece was policy EEAG, which covers student transportation in private vehicles. This is very much one of those "not having a policy won't save you" situations; we need to have language on this. Mr. Traynor sent some legal guidance back to us, and we'll be recommending, then, a policy that includes his addition. 

And so on to our regular transportation update. This month, we passed two milestones: we now have more full-sized bus drivers than routes (only a few, and remember, the margin is for keeping those routes going!), and MOST of the buses in the district are our new buses! Mr. Allen said that the hope is that by next month, all the new buses will be on site (even if some still need registration and inspection). All permits have been received for the new fueling station on Pullman Street; it's from the same landlord, so we're amending our lease. The hope is to have that operational for February. 
The crunch we (and not just us) have seen around athletic transportation--we've been able only to transport fall athletics after 4, as the first responsibility of the district is to get all students who get buses home from school--should not be an issue for winter (events are at night) and should be alleviated by spring, as we'll then have enough drivers to run both home from school routes and athletic routes at the same time. There is ongoing work with student behavior on buses, ensuring we have appropriate responses and supports. 
And speaking of replacement cycles, there's been a bit of a change of plan for the next set of buses. The School Committee voted to authorize administration to enter into a five year lease for up to 15 buses to replace our original set of buses. The plan was for those to be propane buses, as we make steps forward towards greener technology.
There's two things that have shifted though: first, the ordering time for new buses is so long that there's concern that we wouldn't get the new buses for when this current set of 13 is coming off their lease; plus the federal government changed the electric bus grant. As of now, the thinking is that the district will buy the leased buses (as part of FY24), apply for the federal grant, and see if we can (eventually--timelines on this one are long, too!) add 15 electric buses. We don't want to be running too many kinds of technology at the same time, either. 
Planned schedule for moving trainee drivers into service (which will shift and expand routes) in next month's meeting; Mr. Allen noted that the administration may be requesting additional training staff in order to be sure that those being trained can be moved most efficiently through the process.

Translation during School Committee meetings has been happening in Spanish for two meetings now; adding our other six major languages for our remaining fifteen meetings, estimated at a cost of $57,750, will be funded through ESSER this year, and then the estimated yearly cost of  $84,700 will be added to the FY24 budget. 

We also then attempted to sort out how it is that security guards are assigned to schools--in other words, what the process is. I don't know that I'm any clearer on that process now than I was before the meeting; you can watch the last 15 minutes to see if it makes it clear to you.

This meeting will report out on Thursday; we have back-to-back Worcester School Committee meetings this month, as we pushed our usual first week meeting back a week due to the joint superintendent-school committee conference.