Good morning everyone. Welcome to the Education and Culture Committee. I'm joined by my colleagues, Councilman's Avernos and Mink, and great to have the superintendent and the board president and board member Laura Stewart and MCPS staff and our staff as well. This is the first of four E&C set work sessions on the board of educations requested FY26 budget operating budget for MCPS. We know and we were here late last night hearing from hundreds of educators and parents and others about the importance of this, these budget conversations, the importance of our school system having what it needs to move forward. And we also have had a lot of good sessions here in E&C over the last half of this year and going into last year on various items that are gonna be in the budget. I wanna thank Dr. Taylor and Dr. Williams, who is in here, but we're going to cover his budget another day for the budget sessions that we did. Those were very informed, including last one at Rockville, which is high school, which is very well attended. As I'm sure many of you have and my colleagues, we've been visiting a lot of schools. I've been to dozens of schools this year. And it's very clear that when you talk to parents and educators and students, they know what they need and that there are needs. I was reminiscing yesterday we heard from the PTA, either a mom or PTA president I can't remember from New Hampshire States. Elementary where it was a PTA president. My old neighborhood, they're in Long Branch and old schools, they're in Oakview and we were there at the first day of school along with a couple of others and the AC wasn't working and there's challenges there. And so everything from inside the physical building to making sure we have enough special educators and all the things we're gonna talk talk about. This is an important conversation. So over the next several weeks, we're going to go through as we did last year. I want to thank Ms. McGuire for helping us over the last couple of years set this model out. I'm really happy and thank Mr. Proudy and Ms. Cummings for picking the baton up and taking it to the next level. We're going to go through systematically the budget, making sure we strike the right balance of what the fiscal reality is, what the reality is on the ground, and what our families are expecting for us to deliver for students. And so today, we're gonna do an overview of the request and look at key issues kind of that under touch on every on the following sessions on the 23rd of April will go into core academic and operational areas, including special education, curriculum priorities and multilingual learner work. And then the third session will look at school climate, school safety and security and other student supports. And then our final review will be on April 30th, where we will refine our recommendations and submit an official recommendation of funding level to the full council. So just wanted to, so for the millions watching home, as I like to say, if everyone in the room, that's where we're heading. And we will also have, I have my good friend, Council Member Albinos, who's the chair of the Health and Human Services Committee. We're going to have some overlapping joint committees on things that are in both jurisdiction. And then obviously there will be some and PHP related to EBB and other things that touch on schools as well. So with that, I'll see if my colleagues want to say anything. I will, but now all right, yeah, so I'll turn it over to staff to just T.S. up and then I'm sure the board president Would like to say a few words and superintendent and then we'll get into the presentation So in addition to agenda as well That a number of different sections which include summary of the budgets with some information both respective and respective looking backwards. I am Mr. Proudi. I'm not sure your mic is on you to the left. There we go. There you go. So start over. Yeah. Thank you. No problem. Good morning. Still learning some. I, Doug Proudi, sorry, senior legislative analyst. And in the packet in addition to the calendar, we just looked at this number of different sections, including a summary of the recommended budget with charts looking both backwards and forwards in terms of spending, maintenance of effort, a piece in terms of, as Councillor Spirations of Toronto mentioned, looking at the sessions that the Education and Culture Committee has conducted over the last several months about the school systems programs, and then pieces in terms of different parts of the school system budget and how that plays out with racial and social justice. We will talk later about a number of different aspects in terms of the request. And then as Councillor Osborne also indicated, we will move forward with more detail in terms of a number of those areas and then finally, at the end of the month, with a recommendation. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'll turn it over to Board President Julie Yang. We can see you. Good morning, good morning, Chair Juwando, Councilman Albinas and Councilman Mink. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. And as the President for the Board of Education, I am a passionate advocate for the needs of our students. I'm also a committed partner in addressing the issues we face in the community. This budget, for one, you will keep our school system running. I think that's important. And for two, it's addressing some long-standing issues that you have heard about in the past six months and the past years. Number one issue is special education and multi-emergent multi-lingo learners needs. And this is one area we really need some improvement and strengthening. Second thing is reading a math, fundamental skills to prepare our students for life. We have made some improvement in literacy area. We still have a long way to go. And number third is addressing building needs, like you mentioned. We have buildings that maybe need a complete major capital improvement, but the vast majority of buildings need maintenance. When we address little things, it prevented to become really big issues. In the long run, it's better financial investment. Lastly, but not least, pay our staff and pay our staff with a competitive wage. With the national teacher shortage and workforce shortage, we need local strategies. And we also live in a very high cost of living area. And we don't want our staff to travel miles and spend hours to get to where they have to work. So that's the fourth area we addressed. And the board understand that we need to have physical stewardship, we need to be really careful with the taxpayers' money and need to have financial sustainability with design and propose this budget with that in mind. Now, we understand as a community, as a county, we are really facing tough times, economic times, political climate. And so we are committed to be a partner in this process, in this four sessions, we hope to work out a way that we can move forward. So we can address the needs with every student that walk into our building. Thank you so much. Thank you, Miss Yang. Dr. Taylor? Thank you. Council member, Juwando, and members of the E&C Committee. We're thrilled to be here. It's impossible to improve upon President Yang's comments because they really wrap up the sentiments of where we stand as a school system wanting to be good partners with Council in this work to make our community better. I do want to take just a few moments to highlight some of the features of the budget at a very high level. I will say that this is really for your viewing audience because you all are actually very well acquainted with the things that we're going to talk about and that we've spent considerable time talking about these issues, not just in one-off meetings but throughout really the entire year. And I want to thank the members of the E&C Committee for being so in touch with our school community and some of the needs you respond to, the same constituents that we respond to when they elevate issues and you'll see those present. And so I wanna talk through just a, where you get started. I just wanna recognize Grace Rivera-Oven News here. I think I saw her. Yes, come in. It's just a, I couldn't see you, but I saw you when you walked in. And to your point, I just want to thank you guys for that. I mean, I think this is something on the transparency side of understanding what's in the budget. I've never been, you know, I've been on the screen for seven years. I've never been more clear about what the ask is while you're making it. Now, people can debate how you're going to use the money, whether they think we can afford it, all those things and we'll talk about them, is it? But I think the lack of transparency and clarity that has come, and especially in the last couple of years, and since you've come on board and with this board, I think it's going to really help us so people understand what's needed. Well, thank you, Mr. Chair, and I would say that it's not complicated. Some elements of this may be unpleasant, but it's not complicated. And the challenges that we're facing, they really are challenges that are shared. And there are also solutions that we're going to have to address by working together. This very short list is that the list of directives that the Board of Education gave me as the superintendent and putting together the budget in terms of things that they wanted to see reflected as priorities. These align perfectly with things that we heard from our community in budget town halls at the start of the year. Things that I heard as a brand new superintendent coming to our community through some entry plan meetings with groups of stakeholders for sure. And unfortunately, it also elevates some things that we're not particularly proud of. And it may be uncharacteristic for us to elevate those things in this setting, but we're going to talk about some things that are maybe even embarrassing for us as a school system and things that we're not proud of. But if we don't elevate these things, we can address them. And we do need to address them with sincerity. So with that, I'll move right along and say that really what this budget is about. And Mrs. Yang did a great job of giving you the finer points and many of which were on that list before. But we wanted to make sure that we brought a budget that was putting the classroom first. That was focusing our resources in the student facing environment. that we were getting back to a strategy that was really focusing on our fundamentals and that includes our fiscal management strategy that we were good stewards of our financial resources and that we were communicating in a transparent way and we've made a lot of budget innovations this year. I'm very proud of the budget summary page that folks can go to on our website. And there are exhibits for each line in the budget where folks can click down to a number of origin and really see how the school system spends its money. And it's's a very interactive way that folks can do it. I love hopping on to that sheet because it's a Google document and I get to see complete strangers in that document live at the same time that I'm in that document because it means that folks are interested and they want to know just like we want to know how we're using our resources. A couple of issues that I want to bring forward right out of the gate. We have relatively flat enrollment changes. We do. Roughly 160,000 students that's not really changing. We're not projecting a ton more students. We're projecting a few more students in elementary school and middle school and a few fewer students in high school next year. And we're adjusting for that. But overall, our enrollment trend is relatively flat right now. But there is something that is changing. The thing that is changing is some of the makeup of our student population in terms of our students with disabilities, our emergent multilinguals, making sure that our students have the resources that they need, and these are groups of students that need more resources and need more support. So one of the questions that we routinely get usually involves, well, if your enrollment is flat, why on earth are you asking for more resources? Well, the dynamics are changing even though the enrollment may be staying the same. And this is very reflective of the fact that our dynamics are in fact changing. And the service needs of the population that we're servicing are also changing and we need to respond to that. And I'm going to be completely candid with you and tell you that we have not done a good job of adjusting for that in the last few years. And so this is a little bit of catch-up and this is a little bit of trying to bring our service levels up to the areas in which we've previously communicated and say that they are, but they aren't actually. Another big issue that we're facing as a community, as a whole, and I'm sad to say that given the economic landscape of our community, that this is probably bound to get worse, that we've seen a substantial jump since the pandemic in terms of our students who are accessing the Federal Free Lunch Program. This is a big jump and we cannot be blind to the fact that this is reflective of a change in how we need to service our students, the materials and supplies that we provide at the school level to make sure that everyone has an equitable access to a free and appropriate public education. This is a big barrier for a lot of our students and their families and it really is incumbent on us to adjust our strategy to accommodate for that and we've got a couple of strategies that we put in this budget to meet that need. Another big issue and this is one that is really a crisis. We are not performing as well as we would like to perform. Not all of our students are achieving at the level that we need them to achieve in order to be prepared for success in life. With just over half of our students meeting state proficiency for literacy. This is a real problem. And it's worse in mathematics that just a third of our students are meeting state proficiency in mathematics. These are fundamental skills, really foundational skills in the academic space to help prepare our students to thrive. And if we are really trying to invest in our community from an economic development standpoint, we've got to invest in our kids in creating these foundational skills. Making sure that they have the adequate tools, they have the adequate resources, and that they have stability in the classroom by having teachers that stay in the classroom and don't feel like they have to give up on education because they can't afford to live, it makes a difference. So these are issues that we have to confront. And we think we've got good strategies on how we might be able to reverse this trend and move in a different direction, but we do need help. And that's why we are coming to council. Now, you have the good fortune of being well acquainted with this idea that this is a broccoli budget. I would love to bring you a budget of cake that has lots of great ideas and lots of innovations and lots of clever strategies on how we can make MCPS just this landmark wonderful best school system in America. But the reality for this budget is that we have a lot of things that we need to correct. And some of those things that we need to correct are financial issues in the way that we've structured things in the past. And we are hoping that this is really an opportunity to reset and an opportunity for us to get the train back on the track, so to speak, and establish some financial stability, and to do it in a really transparent way. And we are going to talk through some of those numbers today. This first piece and you have seen in our budget proposal that our budget is really broken up into five sections. The first section is revenue. The second section is changes to our base budget. The third section are non-discretionary items that are either by law contract statute, things that we don't really have a ton of say in. And then our next section is the blueprint for Maryland's future and our last section are discretionary items. And we're going to kind of go through our budget section by section and give you a high level view of some of the changes to our base budget from that lens. First one is revenue. As you're going through this, are you going to have you able to been able to get control of what's the state, what happened at the state level, is that going to be? Yeah, that's actually on the next slide. So this is somewhat outdated, but it is reflective of what the Board of Education adopted as their tentative adopted budget. And it does reflect a request of $284 million to the county. And it does reflect the governor's proposed budget from earlier in the year and it does reflect a change in federal revenue. We are expecting federal revenue to go down. We were expecting federal revenue to go down even before the administration came into play. A lot of that is still in question and still up in the air as I'm sure we're all very concerned about. The one advantage that we work with with the federal government is that they're on a different fiscal cycle than we are. They're on a calendar cycle versus the fiscal year that we operate, which is July to June. They're on a January to December fiscal year so we do have somewhat of of a six month head start when we are dealing with federal revenues. So jumping ahead and taking a look at changes that have happened since the Governor's original proposed budget and some of the shifts that have taken place. One of the most substantial shifts that has happened is that the state actually, that the governor proposed an increase in revenue that would have impacted Montgomery County public schools. And then just as soon as that was introduced, it was also encumbered by the addition of 24 community schools as part of that governor's proposal. There were some other technical adjustments in that space and the Board of Education from the superintendents proposed budget also took out almost $1.2 million and we also adjusted our laps and turn over to account for some of the changes so that we weren't asking for more money of council. We actually are very committed to making sure that our budget numbers don't shift and that we are not asking council for more than what we originally proposed. So some changes and I'm going to hit some of the highlights off of this slide because we have already talked a little bit about this in terms of some of the big pieces and puzzles in terms of numbers. We are making a pretty significant shift in our central office and deploying our central services out to schools into 13 regional teams to provide direct support to schools rather than having folks stationed at a central office where we are deploying them into school environments more directly. We are proposing a pretty substantial increase to special education. The pain point with this increase to special education is this is actually staffing our special education at the levels in which we previously communicated that we staff but actually haven't been staffing. So what I mean by that is that we publish guidelines for staffing ratios and we have actually not fulfilled those staffing ratios. but actually haven't been staffing. So what I mean by that is that we publish guidelines for staffing ratios and we have actually not fulfilled those staffing ratios and this number actually brings us up to that staffing ratio. It also within that 689 special education positions, 500 of which are paroprofessional positions, the vast majority of which are already temporary part-time positions for critical staffing that we would be converting to full-time positions. These are our highest turnover positions in the district and they are high turnover because they are in our highest need classrooms. And when these positions are vacated, they are actually a huge safety concern for the educators in that room, as well as for the students in that room. And we're also not meeting federal guidelines to providing fair and appropriate public education. So it's a huge liability by not providing those positions in the classroom as well. Similar story with our emergent multilingual learners, making sure that we're staffing to the level that we say we staff at and keeping pace with the growth of that population is absolutely going to be critical. This is an issue that if we don't stay on top of this, this will get ahead of us very quickly, and we will not be able to meet the very diverse needs of those learners without adequate staffing in that space. Something that is not a requirement, and something that is not anything that anyone is telling us to do, but we know that it is the right decision to do is to enhance our security footprint with additional security staff members. We need to keep our schools safe. I would love to tell you that instruction is our number one priority. It's not. Campus safety for our student staff and visitors is really our top priority and we need to commit the resources necessary to make that happen. We do have a couple of other enhancements. We know that not all kids are able to learn in the regular education setting for a variety of reasons, many of which are tied to health and expanding our online footprint is a way that we can absolutely meet that need. And we also have students that we can equip with life-ready skills both in English language acquisition and industry certifications for our students who are about to age out of our system or have recently aged out of our system and get them that GED and industry certification through our CREA program or our night school program. So there are some additional pieces with blueprint and I'll touch on those in a minute. So the focus on fundamentals really has to do with a few things that we're trying to do a little bit different. With the launch of a new strategic plan that the board is set to adopt later this spring, we really are trying to hone in on the strategies that are going to have the biggest impact. We have already started our work in the literacy space. We have a lot of room for improvement in mathematics. But we are also looking at things like our grading and reporting policy. And to be candid with you, it hasn't gone well. Some of the changes that we've made over the last several years. Some of the relaxed policy positions that we've taken since the pandemic have not served our students particularly well. And they have also kind of removed the educator as the center of making some of those decisions in the classroom and we're looking to restore some of those expectations and raise those expectations for our classrooms. We also know that not all schools are created equal and that different schools need different things. So we came up with a financial model to enhance the materials and supplies at each school site through a differentiation add-on of fiscal support for based on students with disabilities, students who are accessing federal free lunch and for our emergent multilingual learners. This is a great footprint in terms of making sure that kids have what they need to be successful in schools. In the fiscal stewardship space, there are a couple of issues that we're not particularly proud of. One of the things that we're not particularly proud of is that over the last several years we've let our health benefits fund slip into a state of insolvency. I give a lot of credit to our associations, McCap McBoa, MCEA and SEIU, because they all came to the table with an understanding that they needed to be participants in helping to solve this problem. This has been something that the Council has asked of the school system for several years that the associations re-addressed their benefits mix and our associations did just that. And so we have positioned ourselves better and put us on the path to solvency to correct this issue. We have gotten to a place where we are stopping the bleeding and we are actually reversing the trend of losing money into the health benefits fund, but we do need to close the gap. And so there is an investment that is needed to set this right and to continue with solvency. Another big issue that we've had is that when we have fallen short financially, we have needed to close the gap in order to meet federal and state requirements. And one of the strategies that we've done is to use salary, lapse, and turnover in other areas where we know that we could have expended it. That is a great short-term strategy, is a terrible long-term strategy. Unfortunately, it's not exciting. It's not a great approach that we can sustain long-term. We actually have to go back and fill some of that hole so that we are more fiscally responsible moving forward. Another big issue, and this is one that Ms. Yang illuminated, is making sure that our facilities are well taken care of so that they don't end up in the CIP budget. This has not been an investment that we've kept up with over the last several years. And unfortunately, when we visit schools and all of us have visited schools together, we've seen some things which are really disappointing. And it's unfortunate where we have to connect dollars to repairs, but we do. And when we have to say no to fixing something, it's usually an issue of capacity or it's an issue of actual physical dollars. And when we get to the end of the fiscal year like we are right now, and the weather starts to get warmer, it is going to start to get warmer, right? At some point, okay, we hope so. That is going to start taxing our HVAC systems. It's going to start taxing our plumbing systems. It's going to start taxing other issues with our building envelope and making sure that we can keep and maintain these buildings in a really reasonable and responsible way. Those things have a cost and it's not something that we've invested in historically in terms of ongoing maintenance. As a matter of fact, our maintenance team hasn't changed a whole lot in the last 20 years, but the footprint of MCPS has grown millions of square feet during that time. So we quite literally are asking more of a group of people that are already stretched very, very thin. Transparency, I've already touched on this, I won't go into a ton more detail other than to say it's very important to us that we communicate clearly, that we share our issues, even the stuff that is not amazing and the things that we're not proud of so that we can confront our issues head on, that folks can have a good understanding of where we are, both the good and the not so good, so that we can move forward. And we're thrilled that we're able to provide documentation and things that the council has asked for for some time, whether it be lists of contracts or whether it be specific categories that we can drill down to the penny. We're delighted that we are in a place where we can do that and we hope to continue that moving forward. So highlighting a few things for you, the big chunks of our budget really, and this is a summary of our non-discretionary items, the biggest part of our budget is our contract with our associations. And we're thrilled that our contracts have come to conclusion and that they were accepted by our Board of Education. and their request is a reasonable request. And it's a request that mirrors that of county government employees. Their request of a 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 The world is becoming more and more expensive by the day. And their costs are not to be overlooked. They are the second largest employee group in the county next to the federal government. It is the school system. 70% of our workforce lives in Montgomery County. They spend their tax dollars in Montgomery County. The return on county invested dollars into the school system is is above $1 and 40 cents for every dollar that spent it gets returned to the county in terms of Economic development that's a that's a positive return on investment not something to be overlooked but it is expensive and Making that commitment to our workforce really does help us with stability. It does help us with teacher turnover. It does help us to maintain safe classrooms. You all have heard me say this before and it's worth saying again that the safest classrooms in Montgomery County are the ones that have a fully staffed teacher and our special education classrooms that require a pair of professional are the ones that have a fully staffed pair of professional in addition to a teacher. These things are known. This is not a mystery and this is a secret to how MCPS can continue to thrive is making sure that our very talented workforce that cares about kids is still with us. A couple other really significant pieces, you see our special education and EML investment is there, and you see our investment in Pago major maintenance or PAY as you go major maintenance. The way that we've committed these resources is a strategy that a lot of other large districts use where they create teams that go in in clear work orders. You put a plumber, a carpenter, an HVAC guy, an electrician, and a truck. You send them to a school to assess the work order situation. They assess the work order situation and then they clear work orders. We have a tremendous work order backlog. This is the way that we get schools that are on the bubble of landing on the CIP list, off the CIP list for consideration and back in working order in a really meaningful way. The next big section, that's a hot topic of the day, is the blueprint. This is something that Annapolis spends an awful lot of time with, and so do we. The investments expected for early childhood are substantial. This is representative of 28 classrooms in terms of early childhood expansion. And this is the minimum expectation for MCPS this year tied to the blueprint. There are other pieces in terms of investments in national board certified teachers. And there are other investments in terms of making sure that we are paying for assessments of students who are taking advanced coursework for college. These are tied directly to our blueprint expenditures. This is the blueprint and the impact to MCPS this year. This is likely going to continue to be a bigger number over time. As we start talking about other things like career ladder enhancements to planning time. These are all things that are going to have really significant price tags. and there is going to be a large local share that's expected based on what has been agreed to in terms of the blueprint from Annapolis. The last section is our discretionary expenditures. These are things that no one is telling us that we need to do these things, but we know that these are great strategies and good ideas that can enhance the environment and MCPS. The lead-off strategy is differentiating our materials resources that we send to schools. It may surprise you to learn that less than $100 per kid at the elementary level and a little bit over $100 per kid gets submitted at the secondary level for every student, for the school principal to effectively run their academic program at their school. That number has not changed in a very long time, nearly 20 years, in terms of how much money we give per student to schools in order to operate their school but a lot has changed in the last 20 years in terms of inflation and the value of those dollars and instead of just enhancing that bottom line we came up with a different financial model in which we can account for differences among schools a little bit more clearly. It is not an equality model, but it is an equity model that does take into account differences in student population. Very proud of that. It may surprise you to learn that there is a law on the books in Maryland that does require uh... menstrual supplies uh... be provided in all of our schools but there's no money attached to it. And so we have a grant that we have to support this, but that grant doesn't go very far. So what we are trying to do here is we're trying to put a placeholder in terms of some money in our budget so that we can enhance this over time. One of the things that Council has asked us to do and is represented in this budget is that we give you multi-year approaches to solving problems and that we not try to solve everything with one fell swoop. And all of these budget items are really the first year of a multi-year improvement that we could see. So you'll see all of these budget lines again. It will not be a surprise when they come back in the future because these will be things that we will need to continue to invest in to build our foundation. We did have a component in our budget for school renaming. This is something that the Board of Education actually did pull back on. The strategy that we are looking at is to incorporate future school renaming and future changes that happen and coincide them with capital improvements. Fantastic strategy. And it's a way that we could save some money for the county and request fewer dollars of county government. We do have a couple of things that I've already mentioned before about how we might expand our footprint to some of our other educational programs. And the Board of Education did make some changes to that as well and made some reductions in that space. And they had also made some changes to some professional development that we had asked for and reduced that dollar figure as well. So with that, I concluded my budget presentation in December with a couple of zingers. The first one was a pretty big aspirational goal. And I think that this is something that's particularly important. Now, keep in mind that at Montgomery College there are not actual remedial classes per per se, but there are support classes that are offered at a cost at Montgomery College. I think it's important that we stand behind our kids and we stand behind our diplomas. And if our diplomas mean something, then our kids need to graduate knowing that there is confidence behind that diploma and that our students have the requisite skills that they need to be successful in life. So with that, within the next 10 years we would like to build up to the place where our diploma is the best in Maryland, unquestioned throughout the state and we think that we can accomplish this goal, we think that this is an attainable goal, and we think that we can be the undeniable best diploma for for kids in in the state of Maryland. Along with that, we think that in order to accomplish that goal, every child needs to walk into a top-tier school. We absolutely think that this is an attainable goal too. Our belief that four or more stars on the Maryland report card is something that all of our schools can attain. And truthfully, I think we're going to hit this long before 2035. And the minute that we hit four or more, it's going to be five. We're going to have that expectation because we think that every child is entitled to a five-star education in Montgomery County and that really does need to be the target that we're aiming at. And we know that we can accomplish this. It is going to take partnership, it's going to take a lot of work and it's going to take a big investment in order for us to make that happen. But these investments and these results in ten years really do begin now. We want to see this in 2035. We need to make the decisions today that are going to influence those outcomes. And so that's really where we come today. And we have a big request, but the things that need to be addressed are really big as well. And so we're committed to working with you. We're grateful for your partnership. We're grateful for the support that we've received. And we just thank you for the time today and an opportunity to talk about our needs and the resources that are necessary to make these things happen. Thank you so much for the presentation. You'll be happy to know that the broccoli budget theme was repeated to us last night a few times. So it has stuck. So good job with that. Is there are you all do you need we go into questions? Are you all of anything else that you wanted to go through? We were prepared to go through the packet and talk about the additions, but we know that would be and then we'll pause on each section. That's fine. Why don't we do that? Sounds good. Great. So we actually have already been through the first section and I'll pass along as comments. Talk about the summary of the recommended budget. Thank you. I think it's on. Mm-hmm. So in the packet, we've included a brief fiscal summary for the County Executive's recommendation, which would increase the county contribution by $250 million for the FY26 budget year. We also noted in the packet that at the time we wrote the packet, the General Assembly had not quite settled yet, so there will be updates anticipated from the executive. The spending affordability was approved by the Montgomery County Council in February of this year for $3,124.2 million for tax-supported funds of MCPS. The board request of $3,414.2 million exceeds the SAG guideline by $290 million. The County Executive's recommendation is $256 million above the SAG guideline. And we've also included on page three of the packet a few tables just to show the MCPS operating budget by revenue source, both the Board of Education request and the county executive recommendation for FY26 and going back to FY24, some of the historical changes. There's also a summary of the county executives proposed budget for MCPS included on that same page. We also noted the maintenance of effort, maintenance of effort being the minimum funding level for public education. So the executives recommended 250 million increase in the county, if the executives recommended 250 million increase in the county contribution is approved. The amount per people would increase to $15,410 as the new M.O.E. per people required funding level going forward. And should the boards request be approved? It would result in a new MLE per people amount of $15,361. We did just briefly know for public testimony. We have received some robust testimony over the last few days, which we will incorporate into future packets. I appreciate that. I just kind of an overarching question. So you got 284 from that you requested 250 that the county executive requested. Obviously, things changed yesterday or the day before, this week. With anapolis, you had the slide on the pinch and shift liability. I just want to try to be as clear as possible as we can for the public about. Because even yesterday, the folks were asking, well, what is the 284 mean versus the 250? And are we, are we, it's what's full, what does, what is fully funded mean now that we have all the pieces of information today? And if that's if we're not 100% sure yet, just think, I just think we need to get as close as we can so that that's a baseline understanding as we start. And so I don't know, yeah, and Miss Alfonso, please introduce yourself. And good morning, Yvonne Alfonso, Windsor, Chief Financial Officer. Nice to be here today. So we're still analyzing the impact from an Appleist, the decisions have been made. The state pension shift is remaining that demo forward, which is an impact to MCPS of about $20 million. It was not included in your report. It was, all of it was included. That was included, so you did include that amount. Okay, because there was some question whether it could be higher or lower. It was that level that was already incorporated. That's right now, yes. That was incorporating our in our request. The other piece that was everything that we knew what was coming, we incorporated in our request. The other piece that is moving forward is the special education, the reimbursement portion of non-public. That currently they reimburse us for 70% of the expenses. The governor recommended that that be decreased to a 60% reimbursement for FY26. We can't meet the needs of a special education student, they go to another school, private school, transportation, all that we pay for that, just to be clear on what you're talking about. So what does that cost? So that is $3.6 million, suspected for FY26, but it's gonna have an impact in FY27 as well, because in FY27, so from 25 to 26, it went from 70% to 60% from 26 to 27, it's gonna go to 50%. So we'll spend 50%, they'll reimburse us for 50%, and then they'll have about a 7.6. They're projecting million dollars impact to MCPS. So this year would be 3.6. Next year would be 7.6. Close 3.7.9. Project there right now. When it goes to 50%. When it goes to 50%. Again, but that doesn't account for inflation and all of that. And on the cost of t-shirts, so that could be a little bit more higher than whether currently projecting because they're not anticipating inflation cost, salary increases because remember, due to the T-shirt parody act that was passed by Annapolis a few years ago, private schools have to provide the same salary to their teachers, the public schools do, so that has increased our costs substantially over the last three or four years. And so it's also not reflective of any growth that we may see in students with disability population. So again, our enrollment growth is flat, but our second fastest growing student population are our students with disabilities. The other, go ahead, sorry. Just a quick finish your comment. Is this on, you're moving on to different topics. So yes, the councilman may go ahead. Go ahead. A little bit tangential, but relevant, I would say. Students who were in in virtual school before how many of them fall into this category? They don't fall into the category of non-public placements for special education yes. Okay. Okay so you are continuing on the things that change so we've got the 20 million ship which you accounted for the 3.6 from the 76 for non-public placements you also accounted for in the budget. So we know about that. That is correct. Please continue. There is a little light in their- It's waiting for you to get in there. There are changes. So the positive towards the end, so was towards collaborative planning time. So the governor's budget recommended a pause in collaborative planning time and a decrease in the funding that we would get from the state, which was about $14.4 million. What they're recommending is, I mean, the new budget, we would still pause on collaborative time in terms that there would be no expectations from the LEA for FY26 in terms of collaborative planning time, although MCPS has been doing some of that for many years already. So that would be a restoration of $14.4 million in state aid. Then- Money is unrestricted in the sense that you can use it for whatever. Correct. Then their proposal does say we would pass in 27 and 28 on collaborative planning time we would not get any additional funding. It would stay at the $14.4 million level. Reduction. Correct. And then once we get to FY 29, we would assume, resume collaborative planning time, blueprint implementation, as year two. So the funding would increase quite a bit. So from 163 per pupil to 334 per pupil for FY29. But keep in mind the funding we would have got in FY27. So again, it does an account for the inflation that would take place between 27 and 29. And those are. So those are the changes that we know about right now. Community schools stay in the way the governor recommended. There's no pause in that. The only thing is that it's not an impact to MCPS, but they are saying that you can use some of the funding for, you know, the systems initiatives. Currently, if you have more than 40 community schools, you are in that place where some of the system strategies can be built into that, which we already do. And MCPS made that, you know, we got, we worked 40 schools back in 2024. We were in, sorry, in 2024 was the first time that we had over 40 community schools correct. So we've already been implementing some of those districts. On the 14.4 million that we thought we might lose, but we have, did you count that as lost in the your budget already? You did, right? So that means your request can be reduced to 270. It's- Yeah, no, I know this is very loose on millions of dollars, but- And we're not enhancing our budget to keep our ask high. We're reducing our ask to counsel so that- Yes. So that you'll formally, I just want to go through the process. I just want to understand the process of when you will get, when we will understand how that's changed and what the actual number is. So we do have some more analysis to do internally, just to be sure, and particularly given some of the assumptions that we're in the executive's budget. And again, obviously, we want to be sure we've captured everything correctly from the state. Once we do that, we're happy to communicate that and typically the council would roll that into its assumptions. That's not something that typically the board would take additional action. That's what I was thinking. That's what I thought. And if I can just make a go back to when we talked about community schools and make one clarification, they are adding 24 additional community schools for FY26 that was included in our budget both the state side and the local match or the local state side. All right, so we got the first big news from the first day. It's going to be less than what you asked for eventually, which is good. Okay, do we wanna continue? And we'll just stop on each section. Yep. So continuing through the packet, again, there is background in terms of the areas that the NC committee has taken up over the last several months. A number of these are going to be things that will be considered in the upcoming work sessions, including the student well-being piece, the interventions for highly effective learners, attendance and engagement may come up in terms of the discussion of school safety and security as well. And then moving along, we're going to move through the statements in terms of RISJ and move to page eight. We have budget discussion items. Again, a number of these have already been discussed today or will be coming up in the next little bit. We're going to talk about the base budget reductions next session when we talk about the cross functional teams and the central office changes that have been initiated. I think it would be interesting to spend some time today talking about the nondiscussionary requirements that will not necessarily be detailed in terms of the next several sessions. In terms of general education staffing, 13.2 million additional dollars and 133.8 additional FTEs for general education staffing. The committee might want to make some inquiries in terms of that. In terms of curriculum, we'll be tied into special education and multilingual learners. But the curriculum piece itself has not been something that we've discussed yet. I want to talk about the facility maintenance piece that's gone into a little bit detail there for the presentation today. But if I want to ask some more questions in that regard, and then we just talked about the non-club of placements. So that may be a piece that will follow up in terms of special education and multi-linkle learners. Those strike me as being the areas that we know may not come up in terms of the details of the next several sessions. I might want to ask some questions today. Great. Oh, I can start. So first, thank you for the overview. This has been hell. I've seen it multiple times. I get something slightly a new little nugget every time. I'm sure other folks can understand that. Something that I've heard about a lot and is connected, I think, to your, you know, is the central office restructuring. We've got a lot of questions. I know you've got a lot of questions over the last weeks about what these cross functional teams will look like. How does that shift and to replacing those central staff standalone positions? How do you see it will actually tangibly improve support for principles and teachers at the school level. And then how are we going to measure what the success of that? Well, you're going to get a whole presentation on it from what it sounds like, but I'll give you the 30,000 foot view. It's predicated on two beliefs and the measurement is really simple. The first belief that it's predicated on is that where you are is where you're focused. And if our staff is in the schools, working with teachers and principals with one clear message, which is the other belief, that if we are supporting folks, we should be making teachers better. That is really the whole purpose is to make teachers better. And picking just a handful of areas, not everything. We don't have targeted areas in social studies. We don't have targeted areas in visual and performing arts. We don't have targeted areas in health and physical education. We do have targeted areas in special education, emergent multilingual learners, mathematics, and literacy. Those are our targeted areas. And we are concentrating resources to geographical teams where they're going to be working with one or two clusters and working across the cluster to making sure that what's happening in the classroom is aligned to the district expectations and that there is the follow-through that we expect and how we're going to measure that is by student academic performance. It's just that simple. I know we'll go into that in more detail in the next session but what they look like because as you know we've've just getting a lot it's of anytime you change something like that. You're gonna get a lot of questions people understand working Staff council staff mentioned the non discretionary which obviously the biggest part is employee compensation the 192.5 million for the agreements it was mentioned last night Repeditively and I think it's important to lift it up that there was about $30 million in savings from the health. I think that the health plans that is that, is that the correct number? That the, through the negotiations that, the benefits that force MCPS staff, they took a $30 million. That's gonna save us $30 million, does that work? It's all between 25 and 30, And we're going to see the full impact of that, you know, a couple of years, you know, in 28. We're going to save us $30 million, is that right? Between 25 and 30, and we're going to see the full impact of that a couple of years. In 28, we're going to start seeing the impact, obviously, in FY26, but we negotiate benefits in calendar year. So we're going to see a portion of that in FY26, and then FY27, and then the final, the total amounting, FY28. but yes a huge positive step in the right direction and something that will return the employee benefits plan to solvency. Yeah and in addition to that you've also asked for 40 million towards helping returns to the government. And that would be how many years long plan to get back to what we wanted. We can't be insol, so we have to do this very quickly. And this is within this year and the next fiscal year. We're back to where we need to be. Back to where we need to be. We'll realize some of the savings from the negotiation. Yep. Okay. The reclassifications are 6.2 million. We heard a lot last night from some very harrowing and passionate stories from pair educators who would be the beneficiary of these reclassifications. I think about these folks a lot. I greet them on the bus every day and the other day I won't even say what happened, but they're often tired from working the multiple jobs and it's just a really, really tough job to be a bus driver, to be a parent-gigator, to be in the SEIU 500 family of job classifications. All of our jobs are tough, but particularly the strain there and we heard about that that yesterday in detail from, you know, around 10 o'clock at night from several folks. So I think that's super important. I'm glad that was negotiated. I think it's a key item in the budget. Do you, I just want to give you the opportunity to talk a little bit more about why you think that's so critical and how you think it ties into career ladder, retention you kind of mentioned it a little bit, but I feel like this is an area. When you're talking about this is a big part of the budget, $692, 500 of those are a pair of educators. The TPP changed. I just want to let you elaborate a little bit on that. So every person in this room can be very proud of the fact that equity is a value that we share in the county, not just in the school system but in the county. And one of the narratives of this budget is that we need to do a better job of differentiating for the sake of equity and really have a watchful eye on how we distribute our resources in an equitable way. One of the biggest gaps that we've noticed in one of our job classifications is in our paraprofessionals where the roles and responsibilities differ so widely, widely and wildly between what folks are asked to do. There are paraprofessionals who have administrative roles and work in front offices. There are paraprofessionals who provide literacy support in work in small groups. and there are parap pair of professionals who are supporting students one-on-one with high needs in terms of academic supports. And then there are also a pair of professionals who are doing really, really difficult chores in terms of managing student behaviors or perhaps toileting needs or even medical procedures in the form of working with students that have feeding tubes. So we have this wide range of responsibilities and when we look at it from an employment standpoint and when we did a reclassification study the job responsibilities are so different that they really do need to be reflected differently from a financial standpoint. And so we did that, we've completed that study, the study definitely reflected that we needed to have some different compensation for different roles. And truth be told, this is also reflected in our churn data. and we have paraprofessionals that are returning to the workplace year every year, they're in different roles than on our highest needs roles. A lot of that is financial. And that's what we have learned from this process. And it may pain you to know that in our highest needs classrooms, that a lot of those paraprofessionals are not even full-time, they're part-time, and they're temporary because the situation is perceived as temporary, but the reality is that we have these students from year to year to year. And so the need for their ongoing retained employment and to provide benefits really really is a pressing need for us. So a large portion of our special education expenditures tied to that. You mentioned 500 and over 300 of those 500 positions are those part time positions that really we need to convert to full time because they're so high-turned because they're in in such a critical area and they really are at the top of the strata in terms of severity of responsibilities, dealing with combative students, dealing with medical issues, dealing with toileting issues. Those are the things that we need to compensate differently. I appreciate that. Do you anticipate any other classification studies? I know we talk about security guards. Just I think giving a preview for that. Yeah, this that group is that's true. There's other groups that absolutely situation. And what I think we're trying to do is we do a number of classification studies every year and we'll do a number next year. We are trying not to overwhelm council with the financial burden of the changes that we know we need to make. We are trying to meter them out. Please expect that things like our security assistance or other roles and responsibilities that we've prioritized in the school system will try to bring back to you and that will try to to do it in a really intentional way and the tough part for us right now is trying to prioritize those employee groups and really trying to bring you the employee groups that are going to have the the most significant impact to the quickest to the system and prioritizing them financially for you. I appreciate that. I think it's important to, you can't do everything at once, but it's important to not keep loose sight of what the scope of what needs to happen. Councillor Marabana. Good morning. It's good to see everybody. So, going to make a lot of general comments here, but this is our first session. So, sort of, want to set the tone context for where I'm going to be coming from and all of us are going to be coming from important but different angles. So let me start with the great news. I have just been so impressed. All of us have stated it. We've all felt it with the transparency, the communication, the responsiveness, not just to this body, but to key stakeholders across the county. Whether that's teachers, whether that's our associations, whether that's parents. Everybody is feeling since the beginning of this new school year, this new level of accountability. You all have stepped up, we can see it, we can feel it. And this excellent presentation and the very straight forward and authentic way that you've laid out your budget request is just another example of it. So all of you are the right people at the right time and I would say you're the right people for any time, but especially right now. So I just want to express my deepest appreciation and respect for you you all professionally for what you are doing working on. And because of that, I feel so much more confident because in the past, as we all know, the construct is a little awkward. We write the check, but we have no way of determining how it's spent. And there sadly have been evidence over the last several fiscal years prior to this new incredible leadership team that checks were written, money was said to be committed to certain areas and it was not, it was moved around, it was very confusing, it was difficult for us to follow, it was difficult for the board to follow. And so this is just level setting things in a way that make me feel more confident than I ever have on this body of where we're going. So great job, great job. And that's obviously a fundamental thing that we have to start from. I am, as all of us are, deeply concerned about what's coming, because we know what's coming. We will be in a recession. It's not an if, it's a when, and it's a how bad. We will get to double-digit unemployment in this county before the end of this calendar year. And what that will mean in the cascading effect, catastrophically, on budget, is gonna be something that we're gonna have to wrestle with over the next several years, not just this one. Last year as we were having these conversations, I'm a glass half full kind of a person, but I would sprinkle in these little comments every now and then, gosh, we gotta be prepared. If Trump wins, if Trump wins, well, he won. And it's infinitely worse than we ever thought it could possibly be. And so the conversations that we're having that are extremely difficult in this space multiply that by every single committee before this body. Within HHS, we just found out recently that the Capital Area Food Bank and and Mana food not surprisingly have lost significant funding based on federal grants. That's going to have a cascading impact to the organizations and nonprofits that they support in the county. We know that our primary care clinics because of the Medicaid reimbursements that are going to be significantly adjusted down. We're already struggling and are going to struggle even more. These are people that take care of more than 68,000 patients in Montgomery County who have no or very little insurance, many of which are MCPS families. And that, of course, doesn't even touch on the housing crisis that we continue to be in, and that will escalate moving forward. So all of these things are happening at the same time, as we're having these really difficult conversations, and that's what's coming in the backdrop. The salary and compensation packages that were negotiated are appropriate. They are reasonable. They acknowledge the reality that the cost of living is very high and we must remain competitive. But two things can be true at the same time and that is that they are probably not going to be sustainable in the environment that we are about to have happened to us. This happened, the exact same thing happened in fiscal years, 2002 through 2005. When very generous and appropriate salary and compensation packages were negotiated, nobody could have anticipated the recession that would follow. And so what happened was a reduction in force at record levels on the county side, and the reductions that you are trying to make up for now but happened then. And so more than a significant percentage of your request is based on salary and compensation. And it's obviously set to what the county has negotiated. But it puts us in a very difficult position to address the many other myriad of needs that we have. We have to honor those very reasonably negotiated contracts and we will, but we have to acknowledge just up front that that will make everything else much more difficult. And that's just the reality. So with that in mind, and I don't need answers now, but what I would like from the team is for us to break down the all of them are important, all of them are critical. You can't argue against any of them, but 622 positions. What would it look like to have making this up? I'm shooting from the hip, 200. And how many more schools could we serve? What would it look like to reduce the number of security professionals that we are requesting? And just to have options on the table that are sobering and I would prefer not to even consider but something that we're gonna have to talk through because we will need those options. I also think that we have to bear in mind that whatever we pass now is going to be continued because we know that our colleagues in Annapolis will be reconvening in September to adjust to whatever it is that the federal government is going to be coming, you know, is going to be coming our way. So we have to take that into consideration. And the other mitigating factor here is once again we've proposed a revenue increase, which on the surface I certainly understand and is justifiable, but when you factor that into all of the other increases that our residents have been faced with, not just this year, but over the last four years, you can't look at any of this in isolation. And we've got a lot of folks on fixed incomes who are deeply concerned about what's coming next. And unemployment rates that I said are going to be hitting double digits in the very near future. Many of them federal employees. For every one federal job, the Council of Governments has confirmed that that means three private sector jobs are lost as well. One federal job that's lost equals three private sector jobs. So that's four jobs that are lost in our region, disproportionately impacting Maryland. Because we haven't done a great job of diversifying our workforce over the last 25 years. So that's the lens sadly that I will be looking at this from from. But I just want to state once again and reinforce my appreciation to all of you. And just the partnership comment, Miss Yang, was so sage and so appropriate. I really thank you for that. And I know that this is one of these budgets where nobody will be happy by the end of it. But we're gonna do our best, as we always do. And I do feel confident we will weather this storm. We've had storms before. It's just this one is just so, it's even less predictable than the ones we've faced before. And that's what feels so unsettling. So that's what I'm gonna be looking for as we have these conversations and I just wanna make those comments up from. Thank you. I appreciate the comments. Before I turn to Council member Mink, you reminded me of something I wanted to mention. So the, when a student is, if you see, when a student enrolls, what comes with that student? So the cost to educate them, obviously. But explaining to me, so student enrolls, what funding do we get? How does that trigger support and cost of a student enrolled? Can someone talk about that? You understand the question? I hope so. And I'm going to defer to Miss Alfonso Windsor in a second. But it's difficult because no two students are the same. And it's hard because we quickly gravitate to things like average per pupil cost when When I can assure you that no student ever is at the average per pupil cost, they are either well above the average per pupil costs or well below, depending. And so we have a state portion, a federal portion, and a local portion that is tied to every student. And it does change based on different ways that we're meeting and servicing that students need. So I'll let Evonne add to that. She's opening a book. Yeah, she's getting serious. It's all fun and games until she opens the book. No, and it's an interesting question, but it's also difficult, right? Because all our funding is based on where a year behind, you know, when it comes from the state, you know, we're lagging behind. We get funding for our enrollment as of September 30th for next year, but we know that we enrolled students throughout the year. We know that the needs of the students that we enrolled, change, and it's different. Are really our average cost per student right now? I know what our MOU per student is, but our real average per student is about 21,500. That's the cost that we have right now. But when you look at that, that doesn't even take into consideration the overhead of our human resources department that we need them in order to hire teachers, right? It doesn't take into consideration our enterprise funds. You know, our food services, all of those funds are not part of our cost per student. So when you look at everything that a student needs, you know, furniture breaks, you know, you have to replace that furniture, the student desk, you know, so on, this special education needs, whether they're going to be in NMPO, or they're going to be served at our schools, all of that, you know, it's part of a cost per student. So although Average is 21,000 is really understated because there's so many more needs that are not calculated into that cost. Funding sources to meet that, break that down for me. So the funding sources to meet that is our state funding, the funding that is provided by the county council, is very small federal. As you can see, it needs 3% and it keeps decreasing. And federal funding is also very targeted, you know, you have the Title I allocations for our students, you know, with economic challenges. And you have a special education allocation, which is, doesn't even come close to what we need to serve as special education student. We get about $40 million and that has decreased from year to year for special education students from federal. Our population keeps increasing yet the allocation decreases because they don't have the funding to support it. So basically, you know, between the state and the local government, the local government are our biggest fund, you know, fund sources, you know, that's how we really provide the education for, you know, for our students. And I did mention enterprise. Luckily, you know, we've been able to send the pandemic, our enterprise fund, especially the food fund has recovered because of the pandemic, it really suffered quite a bit. But we're able to provide the meals to our students and we're able to meet some of those needs, even when schools are closed for inclement weather and so on. I appreciate that. I just think along with, if there are other potential losses in revenue, Councillor Marlison, I was mentioned the food area. I know that has some impact potentially on your reimbursement and what you're providing. I'd love to us to have that as part of the conversation too of like where else you're losing, you're potentially going to lose money. We need to understand that. We had talked about the Medicaid reimbursement like what we don't know yet on that, but that's something I think we should, like you did with the budget, you should anticipate. We now are at the point where the House and the Senate have both taken votes on the tax pack on the big beautiful bill, it's an ugly bill, but that's what the president calls it. That puts in place the budget reconciliation process in the Senate and secured the votes, and it basically affirms these deep Medicaid cuts. So I think we should start projecting now what that's going to mean across everywhere. And obviously there's an impact for you all as well. In addition to, of course, deep impacts for HHS. And the other thing is, we're gonna have to look at this whole budget, holistically, I mean, I think the, you talked about the broccoli budget. If we don't address these things now, the problems are going to get worse. The question is, what pace can we address them? You know, and I think that's, we have to look at all of the financial pieces. I think the good, I feel better than I did two days ago. I hope about what came out of Annapolis, you know, as far as, it could have been a lot worse, as far as the impact on the schools, and and frankly the impact on the county in general. So I think that's a factor of how we're going to do this. So just want to throw that out there. I'll have more to say, but I want to turn to Councilmember Mac. Rough times. I just wanted to know at first, and I know we've We've talked about it a couple of times. I just wanted to note first, and I know we've talked about it a couple of times, but the concessions that were made by the unions in regards to the health care, that I just think that that needs to be included everywhere, anytime, anytime that's mentioned, you know, often I think the summary is like the compensation package is this, it includes reclassification. It should, I think, I really think it needs to say and it also includes these significant concessions. Could you talk a little bit about, you know, there's a history to this ask being made of our partners in labor. And you all, I mean, kudos to you all and kudos to them for coming to the table and working this and managing to get this done now. It's a huge deal with a major impact that is making this viable. But I think it's relevant to every conversation to understand also why this was the moment when, you know, how you were able to get them on board with that. That part of that is that they want the investment to go towards better working environments and better learning environments. Could you just talk a little bit about that? I'll let Miss Alfonso Windsor illuminate some of the details, but I think that this is a reflection of our associations really caring about the system. acknowledging the financial hardship that really the broader community is in and wanting to be a collaborative partner in being a problem solver. I think that it's a reflection of just the deep care that our associations have for the kids and wanting to make sure that we are spending the money wisely and that we are on firm footing moving forward. Candidly, when made aware of how bad the situation was to see them step up and take the initiative to wanting to step up, it wasn't a matter of us convincing anybody to do anything. It was how do we collaborate together to solve a problem? And I will say that sometimes there's an image that gets projected from a media standpoint about some kind of adversarial relationship and whatnot. And really this is just a group of people who care deeply about their community, care deeply about kids, and want to solve problems. And working together to get that done, it's really refreshing. And I think it's the things that we expect of our children and what we hope to teach our children. And I just think it's great that they could model that for our community with this particular problem. And I think that they're willing to work with us on a whole host of things that are coming down the pipe, whether it's the blueprint or whether it's career ladder or whether it's some of the other things that we know that we're going to have to work on and problem solved together. Thank you. Sure, and I just want to say you know, I was part of those conversations with the union as we were negotiating, and they came to the table ready to figure out how to resolve the problem that we, they laid other feet in terms of this. And they tried to work with us to make decisions that would not have variables in terms of the impact of their members, that it was something that could be projected, that their members could plan for as we make this changes. So the biggest thing I think that we've been working through, I have been asked of us and them for the last few years is the cost share, the employee cost share. So they have agreed to increase the employee cost share by 1% for next year and then an additional 1% for the following year. We also talked through plan management, medical plan management because our plan did not include a lot of that and that can result in big savings for the system and it would also help their members, some that have more higher medical needs. So they look through that as well as we make those changes. And then something that has come up over the last few years that the cost just keep increasing and increasing as those GLP1 drugs that are used for off label to make sure that there is a utilization management. It's not that they're gonna be be denied. One is just an utilization manager, to make sure that those people that really need them can get them. Great, thank you. Yeah, I mean, I was, I just think that this is so important. And I'm so appreciative of our partners in labor coming to the table. And this way, when we know that they're under such severe stress, you know, it's just as you all have described. It's difficult working conditions. And they continue to find ways to show up for our kids. And I was surprised. I think there were colleagues of mine who even as of a week ago were not aware of these concessions. And I think it's just, it's fundamental to this entire conversation because this is our workforce. And they made these concessions again because they saw the benefit in making sure that the funding was going towards having properly staffed buildings and ironically, you know, that entailed them making this concession so that we can have the reclassification so that we can shift, you know, TPPs to full time, like all of these pieces. And so we can't, you know, let them take that cut and then also not fund the things that they are intending for that funding to go towards, which is having kind of the basic level of staffing and basic needs met and promises fulfilled to the public. And also, I would really rather not be spending money on fighting lawsuits regarding special ed as opposed to investing and having the staffing there. So, also important that we find ways to incorporate that there's not the opportunity cost, or not even, I mean, this is like a real expenditure. There, and so we're making a choice. It's not just dollars by itself, right, to not spend them on making sure that we're staffing up our special. And then we are gonna be spending those dollars on lawsuits. And I appreciate the transparency. And I think that that's necessary. There obviously has been a hesitancy to be transparent over the years, because I'm sure that there is a concern about whether that invites lawsuits. But the truth is that parents and families know it. They know it. They already know it, whether we're saying it or not. And that's why there already have been lawsuits. And so by being transparent, now we can acknowledge the problem. But we must, we have to address it. Legally, we have to address it. And for the benefit of our kids, and it's a matter of how we do that. And again, I appreciate the unions coming to the table to talk about that. One other aspect that we haven't talked a lot about, And know is a sensitive subject, but maybe we can talk a little bit more about it at one of our later April sessions is the virtual school. And as we look at how we are just going to make schooling and everything else to Council Ra Allen, ours is point affordable. There was more information, more numbers, more clarity that came out since decisions were made in the previous year. And starting to have a fuller conversation about that public, publicly I think would be beneficial and understanding what that path could and should look like. And I know that there's a lot of variables there, but there are cost savings to be found there potentially. There are also obviously relevant expenditures and there's. But there are students for example who need a one-on-one aid, right? And if they're in the school building, we have to provide that aid. And if they're at home, we do not because the person who's there with them is at one-on-one aid. And so when we're really balancing the checkbook there, I think it's worth us digging into those details to really understand and think through what makes sense there on the and this is an issue that I am continually hearing from parents about in different areas. And I've heard from families who have pulled their children out of MCPS and that's not what we want either. So I think an important conversation that we need to have a full-screen discussion about. Yeah, and I think we'll be able to dig in. I think this is good to highlight some things as we, when we go into special education, and that's whatever that I think is the second. Next time. Yeah, we can, so we'll have the appropriate people here to begin to that. Just foreshadowing that if we can include that, that would be good. And then also, I'll just note again, as we're kind of talking about cost benefit here that maintenance as you, as you mentioned. That's another one where if you don't spend, if you don't spend on it now as we're kind of talking about cost benefit here that maintenance as you as you mentioned. That's another one where if you don't spend if you don't spend on it now, we're seeing the result of not spending on it now as you mentioned. And so that's another one where it's just it only becomes more expensive. I will note also for future conversation that I think that we need to, that there's improvements that we can be made. That can be made. I know you've looked into this too on how we're constructing the buildings to start with. That would make maintenance cheaper. Down the line, the CIP conversation. But we have to have the maintenance staff and what we are, you know, the parents who are coming and talking to us about these very long standing issues are demanding and we can't have children who are in these learning environments and again these issues only get more expensive. So you know it's a very tough situation because we just we have to find savings in places but also you have given us such a broccoli budget that there's I don't know what to find it because everything you cut becomes more expensive very quickly. It already is. So yeah, I don't have anything helpful to say in that regard. I don't know what the answer is. I think that I do think that this is a place where because the number is big because we haven't invested appropriately over the years. I mean, that is where we are. And there's not a lot of places to, there's just not a lot of places to trim that aren't going to cost us here. So I appreciate the transparency with which you all have to really come to this difficult conversation. I also understand the points that Councillor Albernolce is making also. We're in a very, very tough position. So I think if we're gonna try to keep, if we have to keep funding in this space, then I think we just have to continue to be very, very clear about what the trade offs are about not, making those investments fiscally as well. All you'll. Thank you, I appreciate the points from both my colleagues. I wanted to also mention the 3.25% is actually we had a presentation yesterday. It's kind of right in the middle, actually, of our police, I think, are a little higher. Police in five, maybe a little higher. Government employees might be at three, some little lower. So you're kind of like right at the in the middle there or on par. As you said, very reasonable under the circumstance, money that stays in the community, work that is being done. People that are already underpaid in the case of the parish. And work and and work that will i you know we know the other thing we know is that when this storm continues to brew people turn inward and and are more reliant on our our safe spaces like schools uh... and not less and uh... and we know we saw that in the pandemic uh... with uh... and and you i think you saw that in a great recession. So it's just good news is there's been a willingness to partner. They'll continue to be a willingness to partner. There's already been some savings realized. Today we've already talked about the 14.4 million from the state. I think it's important even though they're going to have to come back and emerge in closing the $3 billion state deficit, they asked our wealthiest residents in the state to do more to a tune of over a billion dollars the governor did in the legislature. They also cut things. So we know that's going to be a part of, and we know the lagging indicator of the job, we already lost several thousand jobs here. That's going to have so many downstreet, it's almost impossible to talk about the downstream impacts of that, how many there are. What that means, I've for our enrollment, what that means for food service, for rents, people that need rent subsidy. And so it's just, we've got challenging times ahead. I think when you have those challenging times, the question is, okay, like, we're going to have to turn inward. We're going to be, we're going to be forced to turn inward. And kind of take first principles of what we support and how we stay on track and not lose ground. And that's kind of where we're going to be. So I do, I do, I want to reiterate the thankfulness that we're in a situation with the budget where it's very clear, you know, what the choices are aren't and what we can or what we will do or won't do. And the question is, you know, what must we do? One of the things I want to flag, and we don't, if you want to make a general comment now, or we can come back to it when we get to come to this part of the, I think it's on the impl- on the facts, the folks that you're going to hire to counter our urbanized point, just how we believe that some are just being shifted. They're already, the people exist, so they're really shifting. But how confident you are that, I think I know the answer to this, but that you'll be able to hire all of those 600 people or convert and get those people in the classroom. At the start of the school year, we were staffed at 99.5% of special education positions. For our benefit, MCPS is an attractive place to work and to the detriment of the state of Maryland, we are an attractive place to work because the majority of our special educators and really teachers that we're hiring, we're actually poaching from other districts. So they are coming here because this is a great school system. So our confidence in filling vacancies is strong. So I hope that answers that question. No it. I mean, it's a big part of the piece of like, you know, it's one thing to allocate for it, but you got to make sure we could actually have have folks in those positions because they're needed. Yes, Councillor Meade. Thanks. Speaking of shifting positions, when we talk about the cross-functional teams in some of this at the next session, if we could make sure that we include talking about that, we've talked a little bit about, you know, the restorative justice, etc. positions that folks who are moving, if we could just get an update or just make sure that that includes who's going to be who's going to be shifted where and what that there's a lot of concern we heard from quite a number number of the folks who testified yesterday talked about wanting to see to make sure that restorative practices were increased and concern about the positions. And so I do think that there is not a lot of understanding there about kind of the plan for shifting those positions and making sure that folks know that it's not going to be under value, that you are finding ways to empower them and making sure that they are going to be in the schools. And, you know, so if we can make sure that that is a focus we did here from quite a number, even than I expected last night of students and adults for whom that is a priority. And this is a conversation for another time, but I will just note also that relevant to that question is the plans for the revamping of the student code of conduct to include much more clear directives around what principles and administrations are expected to do first and second. Not part of the budget conversation but I think relevant to those concerns and highlights your commitment. Directly relevant. Directly relevant. And I think you can see a through line between the things that we are important to us from a policy perspective and how that's implemented and the dollars that back them up. So I think that that's a great conversation and a great opportunity for us to illuminate where our values are and the things that are important to us and to bring clarity to that for folks. Great. And then similarly the concern about the ETCs being cut and knowing that there's some languages going along with that. We don't have a lot of people who speak some of these languages. And knowing that that is because that was some of the last hired folks or some of the folks who speak those languages though that are most pressing in terms of our need right now, Pashto, Farsi, etc. So also I think part of that conversation will be important to understand where you see those folks being placed and how we're going to, you know, given that they were assigned to a couple of different schools and then rotating through other schools, going through the schools that had those populations, the most understanding how you all are thinking about and approaching, making sure that folks who speak the right languages and are able to build those cultural connections with their immigrant population that's growing, what that's going to look like and how you are thinking about approaching that will also be a key I think. Thank you Councillor McKinnell. So Debbie Downer today, sorry guys. So our nonprofit organizations are obviously taking it on the chin to many of these nonprofit organizations provide important services and reparants services to MCPS families. So their loss of funding is going to have an impact on you all in a myriad of different ways too. It's just another of too many to count examples of a cut here is going to mean an impact to you guys there. We've already mentioned a couple of them, but if we could add that to the mix looking at nonprofit contractors that have contracts to provide programs in schools that are often funded by the county, not by the schools would be an important thing to take a look at. HHS, we are going to have joint sessions, but there are other cuts to other Ancillary agencies that are going to have an impact on MCPS and vice versa. What we did during the recession in 2007 is we formed these leadership teams. We essentially developed a war cabinet. And so we're going to need to recycle that. So leadership from Sister County agencies worked collaboratively as we prepared the budget because what's going to be coming is a reduction. So we will undoubtedly have a mid-year savings plan. And so that will, so we should be setting up the infrastructure and anticipation of that now. So we minimize the impact because a cut here will mean a cut over there and sometimes we forget what exactly that means. So that will come post this budget but something we should be thinking about. And then conversely on the positive side, I know our incredible private philanthropy leaders are meeting and organizing around how they can strategically invest as they did during COVID. And I give Council Chair Joando, Council Vice President Joando a lot of credit. We worked collaboratively, but he took it to a different level initially, especially on connecting philanthropy to the food and security space. We need to be that strategic again and figuring out where the most pressing holes are that county government can't fill on its own to target philanthropy to those areas. They're asking, we need to be able to provide them really clear answers. So those are things we'll be discussing again during and post the budget process as well. But thank you. And lastly, I want to uplift and triple tap what Councillor Minks said in expressing our appreciation to the associations for being up front and looking proactively for reductions within their own contracts. That as long as I've been around, I haven't seen. So which is a big deal, a really big deal. And it just goes to show that they want to be partners as well as they always are. And yes, we're going to get grumpy at each other. We are through this budget process, because nobody's going to get everything that they're asking for one. That spirit is so important, especially right now. It's going to carry us through. We can't point fingers at each other the way the federal government is. We have to remain as united as we can, even as uncomfortable as these conversations are going to be. We can't take it personally. Thank you. Appreciate that. I did want to mention the fund balance because we've done some good work on that over the years. And since it's on the item list for today, this is something that historically has been some disagreement about how much was carried over but I think as it's presented in the packet we're in a good place I just want to allow. It must come, do you want to go over that and if there's any color you guys want to add to looks looks like you'll be, you're projecting to be around 9 million, which for a system this big is pretty darn good, I think. But yeah, good or scary? But we're here for you. We just talked about how we're great partners. Thank you, Chair Joanda. Just to add a little bit of information and context, starting where we left off last year in FY25, the beginning fund balance was $18,893,000, $57, with $7 million of that balance allocated for EBP, leaving approximately $12 million remaining in the unassigned funds. You mean the benefits? Yes. Thank you. And when we're looking at the projected FY25 and of your unassigned fund balance for this coming July, we're looking, as you said, at about $9 million. We did just want to know also that this estimate has increased since we spoke a little bit about the fund balance in a previous work session regarding a $17 million special education supplemental appropriation. So even in that time, we have seen growth, which is always good to see. Mr. Anything. Thank you. I don't know. We obviously did that appropriation to underscore the special education needs. We had to transfer some fund balance money this year to allow you to collect some holes. But I don't know if there's anyone add on that. Thank you, Chair Gerwondo. And I will say that being newly returned to the county and having served as a superintendent in a couple other districts, keeping your eye through financial monitoring month to month is critically important because you are looking at a couple of things. One is to figure out whether or not you're going to go to jail at the end of the year because you've overspent your budget. That is one of those things that I don't know about you, but the folks that at the table don't look particularly good in orange. It may be somebody else's color, but it's not mine and it's not any of these folks's color either. Like, well, yeah. We're going to pass on that. And so it was very troubling that one of the notifications that I had to send to council, and that I had to send to the executive was that we were projecting a deficit early on this year. We did have to institute some internal controls and to reign in some categorical funding and excuse me categorical expenditures and we did that. We had some tough internal conversations about how we need to be a little bit more fiscally disciplined and I'm delighted that we've turned the ship around. Although that does introduce another challenge that we carefully monitor and that we need to be attentive to is our cash flow and making sure that we can pay our bills and that we can do things on time. And so I appreciate the partnership. We need the partnership. If we are going to run a tight fund balance like we are, it is going to require us to have a good partnership and an understanding that when you're running a tenth of a point or three tenths of a point in your fund balance that you do need a good partnership with your funding partners. And so it is absolutely appropriate that we have a fund balance. It's important for people to know that. It would be irresponsible for us not to have a fund balance. It's just to make sure that that fund balance doesn't balloon and that we are spending money in the manner in which we communicate that we're spending money and that we are month to month managing our funds the way that we should. So far so good, it's just a little harrowing, a little white knuckle for us coming into the home stretch here, we want to make sure that we're being good stewards. We appreciate it and we appreciate the, as we do on the committee, the, getting the financial reports and I just think this is an example of the partnership and of the progress we've made and the transparency. So I wanted to mention it since it was on the agenda for this overview. So I think we're done. Today we had a good overview. We'll be back on the 23rd of next week, a couple weeks, two weeks after spring break, which everyone needs. So one of my kids was crying to get on the bus today. I was just like two more days. Two more days. You just got to get on. So we wish everyone a great spring break and pass over in Easter for everyone who celebrates. And we'll see you back in a couple of weeks. Thank you. We are adjourned.