2021-12-09 PPS School Board Audit Committee Meeting

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District Portland Public Schools
Date 2021-12-09
Time 16:30:00
Venue BESC Windows Room
Meeting Type committee
Directors Present missing
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Event 1: 12/09/21 PPS Board of Education's Audit Committee

00h 00m 00s
[Music] to order we're going to start with our results of the annual comprehensive financial audits so um chief delegation we want to introduce this item and introduce our guest yeah sure thanks so good evening afternoon uh so i'm excited to present the annual comprehensive review our annual audit so every year we go through this process to help uh showcase our financials and transparency and in addition to uh power numbers how do they reconcile what's going on there uh and so to share the results i'd like to introduce uh tin gillette from tkw which i have not memorized the acronym breakdown but i'm sure you could do that and so i'll turn it over great thanks alberto uh i hope everybody can hear me through the mask that it's talbot corbola and warwick if you want to know but everybody just says tkw even we just say that soon thanks again it's great to be here it's great to be here in person after uh virtual last year i think i'm here to present the audit results for the annual comprehensive financial report which is uh this document right here i assume you all have a copy somewhere or access to a copy yes that's good that's a good thing and as does the public um it is a huge document i mean i think there's 130 some numbered pages most of the credit for that goes to tracy and your your accounting finance staff here there's really only a very small part of this that is mine the auditors and i will go over my parts of it i'll try and go reasonably quickly but anytime you got questions happy to take those uh so just just interrupt me whenever and ask whatever so my part actually starts on it's a numbered page 13 although it's probably 20 pages in minutes the independent auditor's report the short version is it's a good report it's the clean unmodified audit opinion the longer version is you know we go through what we do management's responsibility our responsibility and then on the top of the second page it gets into our opinion which is kind of the official part you really want from us where we say the financial statements present fairly the financial position of the district and so forth so then it goes into the degree of responsibility we take for other pieces of this giant report there's required supplementary information and certain parts of that we don't express an opinion on like the management's discussion and analysis and uh mainly the pension and open oped other post-employment benefits schedules that are in the required supplementary information or rsi and there's some other rsi mainly budgetary comparison information which covered in the next paragraph where we say that's we believe that's fairly presented in relation to the basic financial statements then there is also other supplementary information osi which also we say is fairly stated in all material respects in relation to the basic financial sequence and then there are some pieces the introductory and the statistical sections that we we don't provide any assurance at all so that's a normal standard pretty much what you've had every year since i've been involved with pps which is a while now however every year we have not had a clean on it recently we have but you do not take it for granted you should not take it for granted there can always be things and actually there are a couple of small things i will talk about later on uh that are not part of the financial statements that you show up in some of my stuff so the third part or third page the last part of my report is we talk about government auditing standards and that's really just a reference to another report that is in a separate a separate document and we will get to that later and then finally other reporting required by the state of oregon they ask us to look at certain things that we have to report on that so this just alerts you to the fact that there is that other report
00h 05m 00s
the following my report that i just talked about is management's discussion and analysis starts on page number 17. those of you who have sat with me before now i always encourage everybody to read that that part of the report even if you're not going to read all 130 whatever pages of the annual comprehensive financial report you should read the md a that provides a good overview of things it provides some comparative information which the basic financials don't have uh and really helps you understand what's gone on in the last year and what's in the the more detailed stuff in the financial statements themselves following the md a we get into the basic financial statements themselves the statement in that position and the fund statements i'm not really going to talk about those because i've already given you my opinion that they're fairly stated those are followed by the notes to the financial statements which are lots of more detailed information if you want more information about what's in the the numbers and those statements you know to read through the footnotes um most of those are similar to prior years i don't think there's anything uh wildly different that we need to talk about tonight i was going to actually just point out one thing which you all know already that you issue 399 million dollars of credit the pension obligation bonds that happen after the end of the year so actually took your curves contribution rates down to zero which is kind of a nice thing uh kind of a a different subsequent event let's say and then there's all the other other supplemental information next part that really is any part of mine goes all the way back page 130 this is that report under oregon state regulations that the state asked us to do you can see the bullet points there the different types of things they ask us to look at the positive public funds indebtedness limitations etc and if we found any issues with any of that and that is where i do have something to report it's really just for this oms report and you see it on my 130 page 131 in our test sample we looked at 60 students and we're looking for more than 10 absences and we've had two students that had 10 or more consecutive absences that were not withdrawn from adm um in an appropriate fashion so that's uh that can be a problem i mean is that just uh is that just one of many um factors that you looked at did a test case to look at or how did you arrive at that particular metric well the state asks us to look at a couple of things in addition to all these bullet point things uh we do look at adm and we look at teacher experience those two things for the adm we pull a sample obviously there are many many many more students than the 60 that 60 business of representatives sampled and we did find these two instances now it's uh it's happened before here it's happened with other school districts that i do uh i won't say it's i mean it's not nothing but it's not a huge deal either it's very challenging and i think uh part of the issue here i think some of the some of the schools set their own calendars or something so it becomes a manual process where there's manual involvement in doing that withdrawal and so mistakes can happen and um what is the dynamic the reporting process between the district and the state on these issues like this so this secondary report here you have found um something material the state gets a copy of you know the entire thing the entire 131 pages there's also something referring to the summary of revenues and expenditures and on that there is marked if we found any issues that are reported so the state will know there have been a couple of things reported i was just non-verbal with janice because that that's potentially an interesting thing
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for us to consider as an internal uh audit um you know enrollment role essentials yeah yes can you remind me of i guess here's two things i seem to remember this was an issue in last year's kafir as well but actually i don't remember who was last year but it's not unusual for it to come up that was my second question was um sort of sort of um what what do we find and i don't know if you could do other schools to say what do we find in districts is this i mean two out of 60s seems like a low number but but if everyone else is at zero then it's not if everyone else is there you know error rates of 10 or 15 percent they're doing great right so i'm just curious it's a benchmark i would i would say this falls within the normal range i wouldn't say it's you know way out of line that is also not zero but i don't see a whole lot of people with zero but again we do do you know it's on a test basis we audited a number of school districts it's not unusual for there to be some issues with abn usually the sample size is around 60 but that's 95 confidence also then the next thing is teacher experience again where we take a sample of 60. and again this is one that does come up every year and this one probably comes up in every school district for whatever reason it's a hard thing to get a handle on and i know i know pps did a kind of a major project on this i don't remember how many years ago that was like four or five years ago trying to make sure everything was squared away and yet uh couldn't provide us experience documentation for four teachers and found two teachers where the experience was misreported a sample of 60. what am i missing about why this is uh an important metric for the state relative to financial reports uh the state reimburses you partially based on teacher experience oh okay so teacher experiences that's it's one of the inputs and uh it's the difference between districts experience against the average of this for the average district and so it ends up being a factor in the calculation that that helps determine right right okay same thing with the ada essentially right yeah there was an instance remember again it's probably four or five years ago a school district that was found to be intentionally misreporting their adm here in oregon uh forgiven which district it was but they not taking codes off the rules or either of these was a huge thing for portland but they're things to uh be aware of and watch and try to improve in like along those lines tim would just be characterized just to be clear wouldn't be characterized as a material no no if it was a material weakness there would be a whole another form of reporting that would happen to you folks even though this is uh is this a separate report or this is like a subset of the overall well it's a separate report but it does get bound up in the whole acfr so that is at the very back and roberto do you want to tell us anything about how uh your team responds or has responded to these couple of little little findings we'll call them since they're not material yet so we just wrapped up last week so it's eventually uh surfacing and having these conversations with some of the other team members as well and being able to just gauge forgot the technical term but essentially like the the amount of effort it's depending on like if it's if it's a small number what's a sort of level of effort to try to correct would it just outweigh the effort to correct some of these minor uh situations or minor uh miscalculations but it's still worth a conversation which we would then have with like uh our instructional team with hr
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his attendance happens at the school sense and then eventually that gets put into the system and then eventually that gets reported to to the state so there's like this through line in assessing but we would start with just creating awareness making sure hey we reviewed the audit and so now like we want to share some of these uh results and be able to then have a structured conversation what sort of problem solving could we then do i just looked at last year's report and it was the same two things different number of instances uh anybody have any questions director scott director hollins director brim edwards um i have one question which uh you know talk about at the beginning of these uh special revenue funds and just your opinion on uh polaroids this is like one of my favorite topics your opinion on how those are represented in the budget in terms of their uh sort of the ease of access to that information and disaggregating those funds and expenditures from the rest of the budget do you feel like it's easy to understand do you feel like it's represented in a transparent way do you feel like it's worth talking about well actually i would say i am not a budget expert your financial reporting and compliance yes we have to look at uh certain processes with the budget and how it happened actually i just had a report earlier today on somebody who didn't you know post their notice for a supplemental budget the way they were supposed to and stuff uh so it's kind of things like that but as far as how you go about the budget process uh really not my area of expertise sorry no it's all right it's just that we we talk about it in the introduction but just interested in streaming yeah one of the big goals of the audit is around our accuracy and reporting information and and so being transparent but then being clear and then being clear depends on who you're talking to right it's uh the clarity behind the transparency i think that's that where it can like get its perspective whether it's like it may be clear to another cpa or to an accountant but to the third grade mom maybe not so i think that's where um it's the opportunity to to explore that uh anything else you want to share with us for the bit of the order well yes i have a whole another single audit we haven't talked about yet okay i should talk about that yeah that's very important the the single audit for anybody who doesn't know you are required to get a single audit if you extend over 750 000 in federal funds obviously portland public does do that so you have a single audit there are a bunch of very specific rules from the federal government about how we should audit that uh selecting certain programs you know now let's classify a programs versus programs at high risk versus low risk and so forth and then and then there are certain compliance requirements that we have to look at for each of those things so this is this smaller document that you publish separately is the report on the results of that a single audit and this one i but more of it is mine that still still your document there are there are two reports that i do in the front they're actually numbered page it's page one and uh one two and three four they look similar they actually focus on two different things kind of the first one is more on financial reporting the second one is more on compliance they do kind of overlap the good part is they're both you know unmodified clean opinions everything was good there's no no compliance findings to report no
00h 20m 00s
question costs uh the second one also includes our report on the schedule of expenditures the federal awards the sita so-called again fairly presented no no findings to the report then those reports are actually followed by the secret itself it shows you know all of the different programs the federal programs where yes expended money their grand total of what 66 million dollars in federal funds expended uh so we have our first so this fiscal year included our first charge of esr yep that's right yep i was going to share that as an example you have title funding you have your investor dollars uh your ida brands specifications but that's like the purpose of this single audit but this has but this is this uh that fiscal year included that yeah you gain a pandemic relief funds yes and then next year uh we have even more discreet funds like fcc and all those right it's getting uh has some details regarding our sr expenditures yeah yes [Music] secondary school emergency so pandemic relief part of the american rescue act yeah that american rescue act essentially a third round out of three rounds and we're using this information now to like you know reconcile as we can update our reports so this is helpful let's get to this point and we continue to work through the focus yeah i mean it just kind of underscores the importance of this audit because as things get more complex and all right i will say there are a lot of federal programs out there and last year i don't think i don't think he delayed your report but i know i have some other governmental agencies where we had to delay their report because the rules were changing although we haven't i think the omg issued rules in december last year on some of the compliance requirements and actually this year i was just telling you some of the folks earlier i've got another client that was about to issue their report and they have funding under a program that there was just a compliance agenda issued on friday new rules that changed how we're looking at one of the one of their larger programs and then kind of halt the presses and go back and re-audit some things under different requirements and there is another agenda unexpected uh you know addendum tune this year so which isn't how you have i'm not sure when this comes so yes this whole thing is complicated and lots of rules and very uh very fluid situation so far so good for these free folks uh well i mean it's fourth year in a row so it's a huge deal and uh i just tracy pinder couldn't be here today she's watching uh and not feeling well so we're sending her good vibes but uh tracy pender has done an amazing job her team uh uh sherwin salone ashley finch melissa and budgeting and obviously a variety of different folks that have come together put this document together it's there's a lot that goes into it a lot of long nights a lot of frustrating conversations and meeting deadlines but a huge shout out to the teams i really just want to
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extend my gratitude too now for this amazing work yeah give them our appreciation yes i would like to do that as well i mean we we couldn't do it without tracy and cheryl and the whole team and they they really do do a very good job very happy to have bps as a client thanks very much my only question that next time i would echo everything you said it's a tremendous accomplishment you know it's just it's particularly four years in a row but but you can't do much better than this this uh modifying it so i appreciate that what next steps does this go to the board for uh acceptance for yes to accept not adopt roseanne when is that schedule this week we're doing a presentation there as well or no is this sort of the presentation of the committee so tam does another like briefer opportunity to dig a little deeper but uh on tuesdays it's there is a presentation uh but then the the highlights yeah yeah then it goes to the vote great thank you very much thank you thank you thank you thank you very much good to see everyone this year and [Music] on the future oh uh i forget you know we work a lot with management that we actually work for the district so for the audit committee anybody you ever have any questions or anything please don't hesitate to contact me directly or jason romney or see your hand if you're on the job who works closely with paul and staff out here happy to answer questions thank you very much [Music] uh tell us what you've been up to tell us about your progress first okay [Music] hair hopefully um director hollinson from that rootsy face can see that okay so just quickly to give you an update on where we are on the current status of components the ach audit is done i was hoping to have the report for you guys today but it will just be a little bit later this month the hardship transfers audit um is the current audit we're working on we're working on planning and one thing that i have heard from director tom stevenson's baseball input on this in the scoping so i will be preparing sophie memo to request feedback an influence on that and you guys will be getting that sooner rather than later because i'm in the painting right now but as we get closer there will be an opportunity for you to give me that input and i am going to start doing soaking the that's moving forward to make sure i get that feedback um the next following the hardship transfers audit will be the student body activity funds audit um so that's what has already currently been approved and that's what we're working on right now other activity update um tonight we will be talking about an audit plan proposal so we will discuss that next um i also want to let you know that the oipa audit survey is done and so you guys should have gotten a test run of it the board director is in your email so you can look and see what that survey looks like fill it out and i can practice knowing what um results look like but also i sent it as a touch line so you can give me feedback on some of the questions if you have questions loving them just want to get feedback for it but it's been in the works for a while and it's right some sites hey everybody look for that myself and we don't know who returns it because
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it's intended to be anonymous so i think we got one response but we don't know this yes okay okay i just want to make sure that that's what's my first time to send him out so that's up and coming um the one other topic i wanted to address with you guys is compliance with auditing standards so auditing standards stagnates generally accepted every three years so i've now completed my second year this we're in the beginning of the third year and so i reached out to the aota peer review team and um there's a little bit more flexibility in doing your first peer review so they're not required to have one this year will probably be two years out so i will keep communicating as i learn more about it but one thing that i did learn is that until we have our first review we need to have a modified statement in our audit report so so basically we're we're taking a pass this year we're not doing a peer review but the gaga's standards uh include that as a necessary component so we just have to say in each of our audits right um that we are not did not comply with this one aspect of those standards and this is so i put a copy of what the modified statement will be in here about the bottom the modified statement so you'll see this in our audit reports i wanted to make sure and be very transparent about why this modified statement is in there moving forward and to be honest it should have been in the other ones but it will be in the movie forward until we have our first review um are there any questions about that andrew do you have an experience with external peer review for auditing or if you have any thoughts on that no i mean i know it's part of the standards and yeah i mean so and i missed what you said in terms of when are we planning it will probably be at least two more years before it's really necessary and um also the i pulled up a couple of examples of other auditors so the washington county auditor's office has this exact same disclosure in their audit reports and if you think back to a really long time ago when the district so it's not uncommon and so i would legally release one could be regarded whatsoever [Music] and so that is all that i have for the update um if you want to go directly to the article discussion yep so we will uh so we will bring the ach report to the board just after the first year uh i'll be nice to just push that out the door as quickly as we can um and then our other to do that we need to look for is the scoping memo on the hardship transfer so that we can give any input and make sure that's also well i don't know they're probably doesn't fit our timeline in terms of our next audit maybe not you need feedback before that so just be biking i will email it to you each individually because you can't respond all together so individually and you can respond okay so i'm also available for phone calls if you get my email you're like hey this one shot call me you can just quickly chat down big notes of what your thoughts are all right so let's talk about the um an audit plan proposal um i printed a copy of the pps internal performance auditing policies and a copy of our charter and i emailed them just before the meeting to direct your friends edwards and director poland so they should be fresh in your email in case you want to refresh your memory i thought it might be a good idea to have these two things that are highlighted to kind of ground our thoughts about what we're selecting what's the authority of the office did you do audits what type of audits are we allowed to do so i highlighted each of
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those sections in those two documents in case you find them a valuable that's helpful all right so let's talk about the proposal summary so before we go into the content there so we've already approved two that are on deck um so realistically for next year you think you have the capacity for two more so well in the policy it says at the beginning of the physical year here we're supposed to use the audit proposal so we are a little bit off cycle but last year we were presenting the same thing in december and so if you would like for us to get on cycles then i would recommend if the release one and then we will come back at the beginning you know early summer my thoughts behind um my preference is to do it in the fall or early winter because when we board members come in if i have to do the plan before the fiscal year so my preference is to get into the summer and present options in the fall but it's up to you so which would be on track with what we're supposed to do for the fiscal year so right uh sure i mean how do you guys feel about that just to prove one and then revisit in the late summer makes sense might as well talk about it so if you find that you just love to we can also do two totally fine we'll just keep working on them until we're ready for more and then we'll ask you to improve more so the first one i color-coded these to give you an idea of what you can take tonight so if you pick from the ready category then we can pick them tonight and present them to the workforce if you would like an audit so i guess just before we go back um i just wanted to thank janice for reaching out to everybody on the board i think you did end up with speaking with everyone right to um just solicit ideas for perspective audits and thanks for organizing them tell us when we're good to go terry just one moment we wouldn't want anybody in this this exciting stuff this is the best part i mean it's a great resource we want to use it well i mean something there really are an infinite okay okay no problem at all okay all right so the first audit option is a neon audit um this was proposed last year and considered and we passed on it last year um and said we chose to do the hardship transfers audit so we are proposing it again this on this year for consideration for approval we did speak with um dr proctor just actually a few minutes ago and she said he would fully support this audit i've also spoken to the esl staff um two of them and they also will be very conservative that's really good news i'd love to hear people you're like yeah we appreciate that so that's good um the scope of the audit is the same as previously proposed it's very high level of the soap that i'm proposing um and once we do planning i'm going to start doing the scoping memos and be very clear and concise about what the objectives are so you guys will be able to weigh in on that so again it's very high level but um the scope is on the second page one more there you go so very high level um same as we had last year so that's just for the esl consideration the next audit for consideration is um the allocation of student investment act funds to community-based organizations and this is why we're hoping to stay in a workforce because um certainly would take your input here um most of you already know that this has been an issue that's come up in the charter and alternative school committee and um i participated or i listened in a conversation recently with
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alberto director green and a couple of other pps staff and two ceo members and to kind of see where where things were and at the end of that conversation i still feel like i don't quite understand how the what happened how it happened and what would be the um if there is any compliance requirements that says we have to do it one way or the other so i i still don't feel like we have evidence to support a um moving forward in one way or the other so you don't need to have you don't necessarily have to have evidence to support your decisions on how to report on this but i do think it would be a value to have an auditor take a look and go through it one of the things that i found a little interesting is in the conversation of the cbo's really wanted to know how this happened not just moving forward how do we fix it so for those of you who aren't part of these conversations in the charter an alternative committee meeting what we're talking about is just was a misunderstanding about um allocation of sia funds to our community-based alternative programs a misunderstanding between how uh the how it was represented in the budget with which created an expectation on their part and then what eventually um was different about what their allocations were and so i mean i think regardless of an audit or no audit having had that experience have created a lot of um sort of much deeper understanding for the importance of clarity in the budget um around uh how those programs are treated and that they are treated equitably not just amongst themselves but relative to our own district based programs so the notion being our value should be that we're agnostic about the setting in which the student is being served they they deserve access to the same resources the same piece of the sia pie and there was some question as to whether that was the case so i don't know if you want to speak to sort of like i have one more comment before you know this because i said i'm gonna say this so in this conversation director green is very clear and concise and one of the things that he said and i asked for permission to say this one here um you know that he's wondering did the district make a mistake do we owe this money or is there just a misunderstanding so at the end of the conversation i ask him is that question answered but he feels like he has a full understanding of the issue and so he does not think that an audit would um i um so i'm giving you spots i personally disagree but that's okay i'm just communicating all right um yeah so i think that uh we've had several conversations about this and uh thinking about um you know if the committee wishes to have been nodded you know of course we would welcome that to have that conversation um and and to be able to show like okay where could we have done a better job of communicating because that was essentially you know one of the crux of the issue was like okay we could have done a better job it could have done a better job of explaining this information and and so like how do we learn from that to help persistence well then turn on external so uh i think that as far as like hey you know if i'm an external entity i it's it's you know how do i then uh manage my expectations with having a check in hand versus making assumptions uh but then simultaneously how are we then also managing those conversations and a good faith uh partnership to to manage that and and so like there's like the communication perspective and then there's like the math perspective and i think that's where we did spend a good amount of time in showing how we've historically kept been consistent and how we've calculated
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that funding stream uh which has been through admw state does it then pass it on to us and then we then in turn use the same formula to distribute the funding so i i think that looking at it from that perspective i would appreciate uh dr green's uh opinion of like we don't need an audit uh but ultimately at the same time if we the committee wanted to do an audit and we can certainly support that and and and follow through with them so i have one kind of thought if the district is just wanting to make a decision to move forward he's presented options and the calculations to the charts he has i reviewed his slides and there's um just a lot of how to you know what are the different options to move forward given the circumstance what are we going to do if it is the will of the board just to move forward that's right what i heard from the conversation is that ceos are interested in figuring out how this could have happened to them and why did it happen in that situation having on both sides nobody you know very independent and no you know no worse than the race or something like that yeah there you go so um so i think that would be very helpful to maintain the trust and integrity of the situation if you're wanting to look back and say how did this happen if you just want to move forward absolutely agree no audit i think and so i come to this very limited knowledge of the specifics of the issue i saw a couple emails kind of skim them but i just didn't focus in i on that committee but i have not heard yet anyone say that that what happened was not consistent with the policy decision of the board and the superintendent and consistent with stable and and those are the things that if i were hearing that that was happening i'd say oh you know what we should how does that happen what i am hearing is that our cdo's read a number in the budget that they thought was theirs and that it wasn't um and and and i'm nervous be and i told genesis when we talked i mean i am nervous about an audit if the audit is really just a policy decision that and i'm going to be really blunt here our politically connected cbo's don't agree with and what i get nervous about is using you as our independent auditor to sort of go in and investigate something that really at its heart is just they want more money they want to convince us they want more money and they're angry because they thought they were going to get it because they misread a bunch of documents now does that mean we can't make our budget document clearer or transparent or alliance absolutely it does but i come back to what you said i mean reading something in a in a budget document and then making operational decisions on it as a cbo that's the cbo's responsibility and they need to be held accountable and i kind of wonder what our audit actually potentially go there and and it gets a little bit because you're out in the district you're not in the ceo but i'm kind of wondering just given my limited knowledge of this if in reality the findings maybe should be the cbo should have been a little more careful and should have clarified with the district how much money they were going to get my perspective is serving on that committee and uh having these conversations on nazim um that they're they're there's uh responsibility on both sides in terms of a lack of clarity and assumptions that were made that being said i am not concerned moving forward that we're gonna run into a similar situation i think you know we have had so much dialogue about this issue we will engage them in the budget process so that it's just as we do other constituencies so that it's really clear you know how they're being treated relative to other pieces of the pie in terms of those allocations so i hear what you're saying but um i don't i don't think there's a systemic issue here that we need to be concerned about and i also i think nobody's been more than responsive um to their concerns and it means a lot to me that uh director green um feels like he's he's square with the issue yeah uh as the chief as the chair of that so um i'm not hearing an appetite for that problem um the next one is offerings so this would be an audit to determine whether or not cte offerings are accessible across the district
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for all students so regardless of what high school you're in are there cte offerings provided at each school or is access to cpe offerings provided for all students this one is my favorite one right now because the board has a goal um directly related to post-secondary educators and um i the second page of this little pocket has the scope of what a potential cpe this is a very high level objective but it does say that you have more goal it can list what the goal is and you know whether or not the district is providing equitable access to cte program entries throughout the district could impact the district's ability to achieve the fourth goal but i did listen in on your work session and it sounds but that was too late to change my document but it sounds like we may have already achieved that so if i think that this uh i think gary may have brought this up again is that right but this this topic has been around for a while and i will tell you that uh we have made just quantum leap in improving our cte programming and the equity of access for cte programming and so i mean i don't think this is the highest and best use of our auditing function i do think it could be a great work session since it is related to one of our board goals to just go over that review that make sure that there aren't glitches in access uh because we we now have like aurora has a comprehensive um like clearinghouse of every single program in every single school number of students enrolled disaggregated by race uh what the outcomes are in terms of certification and pathway i mean it's pretty good um i agree with you that we've made substantial progress in getting programs um more widely accessible i was wondering if there's any consideration here or any possible way that we could work in um if this is going to be proceeded with or if a different sort of curriculum based on the actual satisfaction with the programs themselves and sort of the quality and the curriculum of the cte programs themselves um i mean a lot of it that my personal experience at vincent has been um sort of unavoidable we've moved buildings there have been constraints around that um things that are way outside of um mr wilson's reach way outside of the districts we achieved but you know sort of the satisfaction the quality of the programs themselves um they've been up you know we haven't had a shop until last week um so that was a concern but it wasn't anything that anyone really do much about um but i was just wondering if in other programs that might be something to look into is the satisfaction of the curriculum that's being taught in the cte programs and more specifically just whether they exist out there or not i agree i think it'd be interesting to look at the because i've taken my cte courses and some of them are great some of them aren't um and like why were those ones bad like a couple weeks ago and saw the spaces for like the workout class some of the studios and it's incredible like someone said there's an audio engineering class and they might have a whole lot like radio station from the school and it's incredible and so i think it would be interesting to look at various classes say that lincoln has versus other schools and the accessibility and the options oh yeah and i agree with i don't know if there's a student speaking or not because i can't see i'm on my phone um but i i have i have not spoken with the head of the cte program and i have probably setting up something to meet with her but we're looking at um and i and i love that we're making leaps and bounds and that was one of the things that they touted uh i think was yesterday therefore yesterday um at you know when we got the dismal report as far as academic achievement piece um but i i do i would really like to see the the equitable cte courses offerings at different schools so when i was looking for and this is just recently in the last couple
00h 55m 00s
years um when we was looking at the course offerings for uh schools versus like uh say like lincoln and benson or lincoln and jeff or roosevelt and jeff or some other there were it looked to me from the court offerings that it was i was on the district's site as far as the course offerings it was they were straight there was far there was it didn't seem equitable right uh are they not going to stay equitable they didn't really see that every school had some of the basic stuff that i that i would theme could be happening at each school so for instance um one school had a business entrepreneurship course and four other schools did um and so i would really like to see or find out like that that could be a conversation with the cte lady or that could be through the audit um of those because if this is something that we're touting and this is one of the bright spots that we have i want to um build on that i want to make sure that we're building on that and we're not just saying okay we're here in our in our uh numbers but actually build on it make it better make it efficient there's some stuff in there that um with cte and there's talk about like we talked about like financial literacy piece that could be integrated integrated with cte um that's not that that's not in there you know when we were talking about construction well we're talking about construction is things in there like well how do you build a house how do you get financing for a house what you know learning about interest rates things like that um i would want to do a deeper dive um because i think those things are really crucial and especially the life of our students to be adult ready when they when they leave um high school gary and andy what do you think about a board work session tied to our horde goal and that would give us an opportunity to hear look at what's going on and then what i what i feel is leave this on here don't commit to a cte audit now have the board engage with aurora and her team on what's going on see if we think you know an audit would be helpful after that point um but it's exactly how we should be using our time digging into the strategies that are supporting our important goals yeah no i do no can you make a note of that roseanne please i'll add i think it would be interesting to look at the cte classes that focus on financial literacy as opposed to cte classes like i'm taking construction management right now and that has nothing to do with financial literacy and i think that it's such a big part of our world today and it'd be interesting to see statistics of how many students are taking classes that teach financial literacy skills yeah um and really preparing for the real world the other piece we're getting a little far afield but the other piece that's really interesting to me there is just certifications like we offer a lot fewer certifications that our students leave with than a lot of other school districts um and that's that's hugely important for kids so just to kind of look at that um so okay so one other point for consideration is by using to aurora and just today and she said that she welcomed an audit of this and also dr proctor said the same she would be welcoming of an audit of esl or both she said so um that i think that was great but one of the things i mentioned is like several well she said about five years ago we had 17 programs about the district and now we have 65 so depending on how many years ago dr holmes was looking you know it may not necessarily have been there but within the last five years there's been so much growth um at this juncture i think a boardwork session is uh a great start um i'm i would be in favor of an audit but you know i might edit my statement after i listen to your work session um okay let's i want to be mindful of our time and go through um don't you remember this
01h 00m 00s
oh i'm sorry julia do you have something you wanted to add how can you tell them julia are you there she's on me oh no julia are you there i am thank you i think i got dropped off at the same time um that gary couldn't hear the audio or i guess everybody um and i never got back in but i'm glad to hear it wasn't a conspiracy against me um i was just gonna add on the cte audit i agree with uh director constand i think we've made like tremendous progress and i think the trend line is the right one and so it's not that it wouldn't there wouldn't be value in the audit it's just maybe not not now um and i also think there's some higher value um potential audits that have been listed other than the cte audits so just wanted to add that and we just got roseanne to agree and vice chair scott to agree to a boardward session on it so we're going to start there so there's other options here i want to make sure and mention some of these that haven't talked to me talk to me um about some other offering or of other audit topics but the ones listed in yellow are acknowledged they have presented to me and i just seem to do more i don't quite see an objective for these topics yes i will continue to research them and get back to those who suggested the audit and make sure i have a better understanding so i can better see what an audit might be but i'm not there yet for those so if you liked those topics or perhaps you were the one that recommended the topic we can talk more about it later um so in the orange fair these three topics have come up multiple years so they were presented um the support center the support system for principles was presented two years ago and we passed and last year we passed and this year this year we had the equity audit and it was just issued in october so just two months ago and the district emailed out at fqa in combination with the equity audit results and explained that they are working to do an action plan to address some of the issues identified in the equity audit and i really think that any potential audit of these three topics would have a little bit of duplication of members not exactly but the equity audit really identifies some very specific issues that this you know that might be part of what an audit would identify so i would rather reconsider this after the action plan for the equity audit is created by the district administration i will take a look at it and then i'll come back and you know we can talk about this one again next year but i really think that it there would be a lot of value of waiting until we see the action thing do you know when we're expecting that or is there a timeline on that there wasn't one but and i forgot to ask i'll to help with the action plan so i'm response to the equity audit yes action plan yes i know that it's not yet um okay i agree with your reasoning there so we'll just uh keep it on that okay so the next one there um one audit that was requested was an audit of unrepresented employee compensation and benefits and i am i fall in that category so i would respectfully say that i have a conflict of interest to do this audit so i really can't even consider it if the board would like this audit we would have to contract out for it um like it's just a conflict of interest and guidance
01h 05m 00s
won't let me do this all right any questions about that one or if you want to listen to them i mean i guess i'd just be curious hearing whether anyone thinks that's a topic worth auditing i'm a little surprised to find it on the list yeah i'm our director scott what what was the what would be the purpose of uh of that audit i don't know we have market surveys so i i can speak to that um so currently the board um is removing some of its level of oversight and so in other in other local jurisdictions of similar sizes or of a similar budget size they would have a like a layer of accountability and oversight through and you know an independent auditor obviously we don't have that unlike some of the local jurisdictions so as the board moves away from oversight of the benefits and other things that are provided to non-representative employees it would provide a layer of just oversight that is not happening at the at the board level so i'll just respond to that i i think that's a really christmas characterization of what the board is doing and i just want to start being really clear about that in in in response we are not removing our level of oversight what we're actually doing is just um more appropriate governance and and allowing these decisions these operational decisions to be made by the superintendent i want to be really clear the policy we passed which i know you opposed director from edwards but the policy we passed um has those salary schedule or vacation schedules being posted um every year so there's incredible transparency and the board at any time the board went forward then i think it's part of our job to to reduce those as they're posted um could potentially take action if we felt like it was needed so i i think this feels a little bit more like um a topic that was suggested because the policy outcome didn't really come the way you wanted it to and so i just i actually think that's a really inappropriate use i don't have any issue auditing this if in fact there are reasons to do so i would go back to our policy on district auditing i mean it specifically refers to you know um is there potential for cost savings and service improvements um is there a level of public and school board interest is there evidence of problems of wrongdoing risk of loss or abuse availability of audits now i mean if if those things are are true um if if we think that we're we're off in terms of benchmarks or we think that that the district is doing something um inappropriate then by all means let's let's potentially take another look at that i'm not aware of those issues and i guess that's what i would want to see first before moving forward with this type of audit all right thank you all right i just have this this is just a thought for me for me um and i didn't know about the whole this audit piece but i guess my one question is is this any of these things that we're going to be auditing what i guess my question would be what is the um would be the well how i say this with any of these artists is their correlation to the academic achievement of our kids that would be one of my questions with any of these artists uh because as we've seen yes yesterday yesterday that that really needs to be a focus and if that really needs to be a focus everything that we do from the audit committee to the facilities operation committees to the charter committee should be a children achievement focus and if something is not children achievement focused um or we are the are the conversation can't come back to how this is directly affecting our kids and their achievement then we need to really take a hard look at whatever that that issue our agenda item is thank you gary this is amy i i could not agree with you more and as janice knows because when we sat down at the beginning of the year and talked about you know audit topics i said that you know my goal with this committee is to really shift the focus from uh operational issues to issues of equitable access and student achievement and um i think the hardship transfer audit that's already approved really speaks to equitable access there's a lot of a lot of issues there that you know people have raised concern about for a while i think the esl audit absolutely speaks to student achievement one of our student groups that continue has for for many many years i'm just going to say not been
01h 10m 00s
especially well served and not getting great results and so um i completely agree with you there are times you know when things come up that uh where it's sort of unarguable that there should be some kind of a review like the ach processes that was a fairly um straightforward audit that didn't take too long same with the peat part audit it's you know not the not the most lofty topic to delve into but it was something that was raised in the secretary of state's audit and it was frankly an area that uh you know didn't have the kind of oversight that it should have had a few years ago so those are behind us and i think just as a general rule i think we're all pretty much on the same page for the audit committee that we want to use this resource in ways that will really make a difference for our kids so um just so one thing out for you i hear you director hollands and dr all the other directors and um i really just want to be clear about why you don't find an overwhelming amount of audits suggested in that category it is because i am worried that the data associated with anything that i audit right now will not be so for the last year any data that i would use may not be representative of what we could expect because we were right um hybrid or or at home learning and so my problem with trying to do anything that would involve student outcome related data right now is i would need to go either pre-pandemic to get data which would not i mean it's not be timely you know it's not totally representative of what we could expect for or if i used the data in the last year it may not necessarily so for me right now it's extremely difficult to do an audit that would need student outcome related data right now but i hear what you're saying and so do you feel that specifically about the english language learner no yeah because that's about a lot about inputs as well i think the esl and the cpe offerings are full things that would be not student outcome related data reliant i would need that as an input to be able to so i guess i made it just i think to your point um talking about the student outcome data is important i actually think director holland's point was broader than that that we should be focusing on things that impact student achievement which includes things that are on here so even if it's not specifically dealing with even data would you like there's a little bit of a challenge even looking at those processes the systems the programs on a qualitative basis is going to have a potential positive impact well that's what so i think uh i think um it's good for us to keep a running list and it's good for us to keep in touch with um you know everyone on the board community students i want to ask you before we move off of this if you guys have any uh ideas because i'm not sure if you've talked to janice um but i think uh what we're looking at as far as reporting out to the board is the two audits that we already have on deck that are about to be underway and recommending uh audit on our english language learners and how we are serving them and leaving it at that for our scope of work until we revisit uh at the end of the fiscal year to create a new uh sending plan for next year okay would you please give me just a few more minutes because i have a community member who has reached out to me yes requested an audit and i have promised to absolutely like talk about this here so in the future audit considerations i want to make sure and acknowledge that the implementation of the gbc the urinary and viable curriculum um has been presented as a potential audit topic and it is not in a um i'm not proposing it at this time i could if you guys pick it i can do it but i saw a draft version of the secretary of state's audit report
01h 15m 00s
follow-up report and there are two there's a section specifically related to this topic and so you already have it's coming this is still in draft right now but i have seen it so i know what the draft is and i would rather um if another audit team secretary of state has looked at it and has formed a conclusion it would really make sense to not try to redo that at this point it makes sense to let that be and see how the district responds to that conclusion but i want to be responsive to people who would talk to me because i love it and i appreciate everybody who shares all these ideas with me and i want to make sure in two years he's been reminding me to bring it up so no like seriously but i want to make sure and be responsive to that and i really do appreciate it and while i wouldn't recommend it right now i want to keep it on my list for consideration in the future and i've also reached out to mr cruz to just get a better understanding of um you know what issues he's concerned about what what he's trying to get at um there and i i wonder if there's a you're talking about the community which should happen if there's a question about whether it's right on it because again the gvc implementation is happening you know there's going to be as part of the strategic plan there's going to be some metrics around you know how it's being implemented you know we can certainly audit things as they're being that is you know something you can do in performance auditing but often the most effective performance audits are sort of after you've had some time to see whether it's having an effective background so there may be value there too and maybe even pointing the community member towards some of the things in the strategic plan that that may be interesting to to them yeah for sure um did you have a chance to zambia you're are you guys both on ramps on this committee yes yes so did you guys have a chance to talk about audit topics or anything um we have not um dennis has reached out um i failed to email back so that is entirely my fault it happened it happened i i got you i got that yes i'm connected tonight so we will be talking soon you know what i think would be especially helpful is if you can reach out to these guys about the student body funds and and also um i might ask you guys to be sort of our primary liaisons for that in particular if you would i i'd love to do that um if it's of any interest um i've ranked my top five other topics um i personally would like to see let's hear it um okay so number one is support systems for principals um i think that's a very uh time time sensitive one but also very pertinent to our current situation um i know that it's been a particularly taxing year for everyone that's just one one tier of support number two is teachers school building administrative retention um again sort of similar thing and that's been that's been a struggle three is cte offerings um four is facility usage waiver that's sort of the future one um and then five is also a future one it's the complaint processes um i know that we've had discussions about that in the past and i think um and on it would be sort of beneficial to the chess what was your second one after support for principals i was teacher and school building administrative retention and if it's all if it is at all possible um adding um bus drivers specifically then that's been a struggle i know i've made big big leaps um i had a uh meeting with claire um she kind of explained to me how well she explained to me the progress that's been made in that area and how we're retaining them um but i think that's another area that is very visible to the public and very visible to our families i think we're learning how we can um looking into how we can retain them and what's worked i think would be enormously beneficial um the the teacher and school building administrator retention was high on my list the ct offerings to let's see uh the school support principle um it's also interesting
01h 20m 00s
how's it going i mean they all are i can see why there's a need and not a need for some of them in all of them but um those three in particular making sure we do that when we do that cte work session that these guys get noticed uh one thing i'll say about the support system for principles and then the school building administrator retention was i'm gonna follow up with you in the meeting and i will go to that we also see why i think that it could duplicate some efforts and after i explain it perhaps you might still feel the same way which is awesome but i would like an opportunity to do that yeah and my choices are based off of either the very little skinned information or my perception at this moment mine is perception also gary julia are you with us no no um anything else for the good of the order i want to circle back to what janet said about the secretary of state's audit so they have uh corresponded with us about um following up they did their they did their last pass on our uh responses to some of the original concerns now we're going to meet with them and go through uh you know where they still some of the things they say this has been fully implemented some they say this has been partially implemented and then there's a few where they still feel like they don't see evidence of progress on things they pulled out it's a little tricky because some of the things they pulled out we don't necessarily agree with some of those fall in your shop but all as soon as the staff response is done i'll send that to you guys and uh and just let you know about when we meet with them and how that goes down so we don't we don't have that in our boxes you have to drive i don't think claire sent it to everyone uh they're dropped inside sources they're not distributed back to us i don't believe so i can send it to you no it's i mean i'm having to wait for the staff response i guess i'm going back to some of the conversations we had thought it was a year ago i just want to make sure that we as a district are not hesitant about telling them or we disagree yeah and i got the feeling again was before i was on the board i got the feeling the first time around there was some hesitancy that there were things that we as a district disagreed with but we didn't politically want to say that and my position a year ago was no if we disagree with it we need to tell them we disagree and if we're not implementing we need to tell them about implementing it and not be afraid of that because that's actually what the process is supposed to be about i just want to make sure i don't know how engaged do you have been enough claire's been briefing me in pieces i don't know the whole context but i'm piecing it together there's a couple that have to do with um transparency in the budget uh documents that they still have issue with and specifically they would like to see more evidence of uh inputs related to uh performance metrics they would like to see those connections made more clearly in the budget benchmarking benchmarking yeah yeah so anyway um do we have anybody for public testimony no uh okay anything else from the good of the order to clarify you want me to move forward with the esl that we're moving forward with the esl flipping one audit two to the board to the fourth right so it's the will of the audit committee to submit the bsl audit as proposed to the board for full approval yes right yes yes okay and we vote on that right you do um yes is there a need to get on tuesday no no no rush but i will send that to you in the same format that i have not here so whenever it gets on there just in conclusion you won't be able to start one yes at all yeah we get it we got two more on that before then


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