Welcome and Call to Order

The meeting will be called to the order, beginning with the pledge of allegiance.

Approval of Agenda

So that there is agreement between board members on the agenda, and the amount of time spent on the meeting, the board shall vote to approve an agenda for the meeting. To the best of its ability, it will follow that agenda, and allow for the chair to move the board through the agenda as specified.

Approve Minutes

Approve minutes from the last meeting.

Review January Financial Statements

Ms. Wright presented January financials – SA asked if she included the ratios Mr. Syed asked about – Liquidity and Asset ratios and she then asked Ms. Wright to contact Mr. Syed to ask about the ratios that he would like to see in the financial dashboard. Ms. Wright will call Mr. Syed by Thursday morning.

SW shared cash on hand greater than 6 months. Wilhite – Question $179k in the hole; SW slight change may be a little lower after I make minor changes. – Wilhite – Meaning what? Asking for more or less? Susan – Title I/Food reduced to April/May estimated 20K per month totaling 40K to be more realistic – conservative. Also need to meet with Title I to determine if we can move some of the additions from the budget to eliminate some of the pressure off general funds. Additionally, the ending result is going to be higher due to additions to programming such as Math 911, having to place Ackerman Security on general unexpectedly.

JW- Do all the tabs add up and tie back in? SW – Yes, they do, last week HVH looked at HVAC system looked at items under warranty and not under warranty, and to perform the regular maintenance.

JW – Susan, check your formulas on breakout tabs. Instruction -Admin -Facilities=6.3 million – Summary not adding up -so others do not add into it? The summary did not reflect the borrowing of 52k from fund balance adjustment in totality the expense budget is $6million.

SA – All tabs should add up I will recheck the summary tabs so you won’t risk monthly tabs not adding up.

JW - If they are not linked, we really can’t use them. You have it linked backwards. SW was asked to link the breakout tabs to the summary and not to the updated financial tab.

SW – Maybe I don’t need the summary/SA the board needs the summary.

JW – If we were to run a quick book on facility, would we be able to see? This document should match what’s in QB.

SW – Yes we do have program reports; the question was then ask of SW how do you break out the tabs, SW response was by the actual expenditure category but when I associate the revenue across the divisions/categories it is broken out by the percentage of the expense to the total budget. The revenue is then divided on those percentages for example if Instruction is 75% then 75% of the QBE goes to the Instruction tab, if Admin is 20% then 20% of QBE goes to the revenue section of the Admin Tab and so on and so forth. But the true expenditures are taken directly from the Statement of Financial Income and Expense report each month.

JW – I want us to start looking at it so it will tie our since we have been mostly focusing on the dashboard. SW ok.

SW – was asked by SA the invoice for cleaning for January and SW response was Janitorial cost I believe were, $1200 for January. JW – Did he submit it late, is that why you do not know the exact amount. SW- the invoice for the prior month is always paid in the subsequent month within 5 to 10 days therefore January would be posted to February financials, he submitted it in February but the check is in the reconciliation as a check in transit.

SA – Ms. Pettis I want to know the plan we have in place for returning to school or at the very least for in-person testing. Since the CDC has given new guidelines and children are presenting with an increase in social emotional health issues due to remote learning. 

CP – Yes, we are planning for hybrid in-person instruction.  We have a readiness checklist that we have been working from since December. If state assessments are administered, we have discussed having students come in in staggered schedules, by grade level, on different days. The testing window will have to be longer than usual to ensure that we maintain social distancing. 

SA – What about substitutes? CP – If we need substitutes during testing they will have to be certified. What about a nurse? SW – We are still recruiting for a nurse. 

SA – We will need the plan for testing so the board can determine if there are any needs and if we can approve it. CP- I will have it in March. SA – No Ms. Pettis, we need it before testing, unless you’re speaking of early March. CP – Yes, I was speaking of early March. SA- ok, then that’s two weeks from now – that will be sufficient time. 

Review Enrollment Projections

SW Enrollment projections are a bit concerning for kindergarten, most of the schools were concerned that due to Covid-19 the kindergarten could see a decline in enrollment for the fall.

SW we should allow Ms. Mattie to enroll 580 with the assumption that some of the current students will not return, historically we have lost about 20 students per year in non returns and mid year transfers. Even now there have been some students who have left DPA.

SW I could get the most recent count from the HOS report and use that as a basis to estimate the March enrollment numbers?

or my suggestion would be to create a budget using 3 enrollment figures

564 current funding based on

550 or 540 ( I will review the HOS report)

480 contingency number

We agreed that 3 budget scenarios would give us more forecasting information

Reserve Account Options

SW was asked by SA to contact our Bank Relationship Manager to schedule a meeting to discuss investment options.

SA asked how will be pay back our fund balance what we ask to borrow

SW once we know that we are getting 60% of austerity cuts we can set aside the 500k back into fund balance operations or our Contingency fund account

Other Business

SW – Yes, I have some BAFs. Ms. Pettis will you share them. CP-Shared Renegotiated Janitorial contract and BAF. SW reviewed the terms of both documents. SA and JW asked about deep cleaning the school. They asked SW to look into getting a contractor to perform a specialized deep cleaning to the building.  JW and SA also asked about a company to clean the air ducts. 

CP – presented BAF for Securely classroom website monitoring system. SA asked if it was indeed a website monitoring system. SW said it is a student website monitoring system.  SA then asked for indepth questions about Securly which SW was not able to recite all details and SA – That is just not good enough. You cannot come to the board with an explanation like that.

CP showed the information sheet that accompanied the BAF and explained that the program allows teachers to see what their students are actually working on during class, teachers can also block undesirable websites and the company monitors this program, unlike Go-guardian. This program will provide less stress on the teachers and staff. 

Review Budget Amendment

SW -Presented budget. Budget amendment Column E.

JW – You mean reduce the changes being reported in column D,?

SA – I don’t understand how enrollment is going up but funds going down.

SW Austerity cuts decreased 97K the basic per pupil QBE and our initial funding for 2021 was based on the 4th Wednesday count and the Spring count.

SW- Per pupil funding for 564 students based on what we are currently receiving is 9, 313.99 per student.

JW – Your budget is counting on us getting 60K in private donations? Ms. Pettis do you think we will meet this?

SW – I will have to clarify that number and line item.

CP_ I will check with Tanya to be sure.

JW – Auditor not looking at internal budget but final. SA – What’s that field trip line?

SW – Some grade levels took virtual field trips? SA – That sounds strange to me. CP – The company provided a virtual experience for the students. We do that often – for example – the zoo may come out to the school to teach the students. SA – I understand that but, I need more information on the virtual programs.

SW – The virtual experiences were paid out of the money teachers still had in their grade level accounts from last year. I had Marian to check to see if the money was available and we paid for it. SA – I would like to see more details. SW ok, I will provide it to you.

SA – I want to make sure that we have sufficient supplies to manage 575 students and 60 staff members, SW – Yes we have a lot of stuff that was delivered from DCSD, and we purchased a lot. SA – stuff is not good enough for me. You cannot just say stuff. You must present more details. SW – I apologize, explained the exact items we received,

JW - $52,526 shouldn’t be a negative #. Put it in revenue section – fund balance is revenue, as well. This is a reporting document - you cannot prepare this document the same way as you would for an auditor. This is an internal document. Internal management from day to day. Add a row for fund balance adjustment at the top instead of at the bottom. show at the bottom of the document that the budget is $6 million.

SW so we are asking for $261,000.00 for shortfall) and then we need $231,000 for additional items added so we need to borrow a total of 500k. SW we can increase enrollment to 623 to bring in more revenue. SA- let me stop you right now. We must follow our charter. We have a class size waiver that indicates we have small class sizes. We cannot do that Ms. Wright. SW – ok, I guess I need to look at the charter and read it. SA – I am telling you what the charter says. 

CP. May I say something please. Some of my ideas are running our own after school program and generating revenue from that or a 21^st Century Grant. I have also discussed with Tanya the Braitmayer Grant, Walton Family Grant and Chapin Family grant. Ms. Watkins attended a virtual fundraiser training the other day and we are thinking of doing a silent auction or a virtual performance to raise funds. We were talking about a performance at the performing arts center , with dinner and an auction before the pandemic. We were also told that we were getting 60% of our austerity cuts reinstated which Ms. Wright figured to be a little over $840k.

SA – What about the CSP grant did you tell Susan about that money? No, I haven’t received any confirmation from anyone. SA – I thought I saw something the other day. Janelle did I send it to you? JW – No, you told me about it. SA – Maybe it was in my UGA email. CP. I was told at the meeting the other day that 62 schools received the grant and the names would be released on the 18^th. SA – ok, I’ll keep looking.

SA – While I’m thinking about it, I saw that we need to submit a data sharing agreement with DCSD and the deadline is February 19^th. CP. – ok, I will look for it and send it to you tomorrow.

Adjournment

the meeting was held for 3 1/2 hours and was adjourned at 9:00 pm

The Meeting was Adjourned

The meeting adjourned at approximately 8:40 pm