Departments make case for budgets

Technology, nutrition, aquatics outline their requests for funding

With the final 2018-19 budget for the North Penn School District nearly complete, several district departments outlined their financial picture for the upcoming year on Tuesday night.

Information Technology

Director of Technology Kristen Landis and Technology supervisor Kimberly Rantz described a new software suite included in the 2018-19 budget that could combine several separate systems currently in use around the district.

“We essentially have three disconnected systems: a student information system, an IEP system, and then a medical system, all from technically, three differ-

ent vendors,” Landis said.

“They’re not under the same umbrella, we don’t have strong data flow, and so this year we put into our budget an upgrade to the software,” she said.

Staff established an internal committee at the start of 2018, evaluated seven responses to a request for proposals, then brought in four vendors for live presentations, and ultimately settled on a software suite called “Infinite Campus,” which Landis said will let teachers link Google-based drives and documents they use now, with third-party tools like YouTube videos, with more seamless integration across the district. With presentations to the finance and education, community and policy committee meetings in May followed by expected board adoption of the 2018-19 budget in June, implementation will start with data exporting and importing this fall, Rantz said, with training for staff to follow next spring.

“Our targeted go-live date is for July 2019, which would give us full production mode for the 2019-20 school year,” Rantz said. The total cost for the new software, setup and training is estimated at just shy of $210,000 for the first year, and a fixed cost of just over $176,000 per year for the next five years, and Landis said other vendors included annual price increases and higher overall price tags.

“Our year one cost is actually almost $30,000 lower than what we projected in the budget for next year, so hopefully that gets a couple of smiling faces,” she said.

“It’s definitely not the most expensive of all of the products we looked at, but definitely has the most feature functionality for what we need in our district,” Landis said.

Cultural Proficiency

Assistant Superintendent Diane Holben outlined areas where staff see opportunities to boost their efforts toward cultural proficiency, and understanding the needs of students from different groups or communities within the district. So far staff have included $29,500 in the draft 2018-19 budget, with an additional $50,000 possible if a federal grant is received, and Holben detailed a wish list beyond the items already in the budget.

“In the last few weeks,

we had a request to look at whether there are any additional needs for cultural proficiency, and we, as a result, took a look at things that we could add to the budget for next year,” Holben said.

Staff currently attend “Cultural cadre” sessions once every two months, and Holben said staff have discussed increasing that frequency to once per month; doing so would cost an estimated $7,000 in contracted services for a diversity consultant, plus an extra $10,000 for stipends for those who attend. More funding could also be added for staff professional development training, and Holben said one option would be to join the Delaware Valley Center for Equity and Excellence, which would cost a $12,000 annual fee and roughly $18,000 in additional funds for substitutes to release staff for training there.

“We do have our executive committee working on a three to five year cultural proficiency plan at the moment, which was also requested to be brought back to ECP in August,” Holben said, referring to the board’s Education, Community and Policy committee.

Holben said staff typically calculate how much can be spent on cultural proficiency training based on federal grant funds received, which will not be known until after the 201819 budget is adopted on June 1. Director of Business Administration Steve Skrocki said that budget does include a $1.5 million budgetary reserve the board could choose to use, and board member Elisha Gee said she would rather see the funds specifically set aside in the budget first.

“This is a very small percentage of our budget. We’re talking about adding $30,000 — what would you say that is from our entire budget?” Gee asked Skrocki.

“This is what I would call a rounding error. Out of a $260 million budget, this doesn’t even go on the radar,” he replied.

Holben said roughly 40 percent of the district’s population are members of minority communities, and Gee said while she trusted staff to develop and implement the cultural proficiency plan, the board’s role is to provide the funding to do so.

“Our budget should reflect what we are trying to push forward, and I think we have a very small commitment, in terms of what we are putting out there for our families and children of

color, and I would like to see there be a commitment in the budget,” she said.

“Not ‘if we have the money’ or ‘if federal grants come through,’ not ‘if we’re talking about an achievement gap.’ I just think it’s important, and our budget should also reflect the families that we serve in the district,” said Gee.

A lengthy discussion followed about whether to approve the funding now, or wait for the plan and make changes to the budget after it’s adopted. The board ultimately voted four to three (with one vacant seat and one member absent) against changing the budgeted amount for now, and revising the issue in August once the federal funds are known.

“We’ll know what kind of funds we’re getting, and we’ll readdress the situation at that point,” board member Ed Diasio said.

Community Education

A combination of factors led the district’s Community Education enterprise fund to run a slight deficit in 2017-18, district Director of School and Community Engagement Christine Liberaski told the board, but the causes of that deficit are clear.

“Last year was the first year our camp directors were contractors, and ran their own camps as their own enterprise funds,” she said.

“That was really different for us, and kind of costly for us as well, due to some decreased revenues there plus increased costs in salaries and benefits for some of our employees,” she said.

One theater program offered by an outside vendor in recent years changed from six to three weeks in the summer of 2017, which Liberaski said led to roughly $6,000 in lost revenue compared to prior years, and staff are looking into options for a longer program in future years.

Community education programs and courses range in price from $28 for single nights to $120 for ten-week offerings, and Liberaski said she is proposing a five percent increase to class fees, with discounts available to senior citizens who use the district’s “Gold Card” program for residents 60 and older.

Other initiatives for community education include a possible switch of registration software to align with the possible upgrade to the district’s student information systems, and possible replacement of the fixed letter message sign outside the district offices to an electronic

model if funds can be found, Liberaski said.

Aquatics

Rhonda DiLiberto, the district’s Aquatic Director, outlined the history of North Penn’s swimming, diving, and water polo programs, and said enrollment fees for public swimming programs are also scheduled for slight increases in 2018-19.

“This is because we are introducing a new online system, it’s geared specifically to swimming and diving, so when somebody goes onto our website, it’ll be just all of our community aquatics classes,” she said.

The total projected budget for 2018-19 will be $62,000 for community aquatics classes, $233,000 for swim teams, and $38,000 for water polo teams, all of which are slight increases over prior years due to increasing costs and the new software upgrades, DiLiberto said.

One change in the budget this year will be the amount transferred from the aquatics fund to the overall community education fund, which Skrocki said will now be done as a flat transfer of $25,000 instead of ten percent of aquatics revenues.

“One of the reasons we felt ten percent was something we should look at as an alternative, was because the more revenue they had from aquatics, the more money they had to ‘pay,’ quote unquote, to community education,” Skrocki said.

“If they were bringing in $300,000, it would be $30,000, if it’s $400,000, then $40,000, so it was almost like a penalty of success. We felt it was more appropriate just to have a flat, $25,000 fee, knowing it all goes into one fund anyway,” he said.

Nutrition

School Nutrition Services Coordinator Melissa Harding said her budget includes no increase in school meal prices for the fourth straight year, while working to increase the state subsidies needed to do so. 40 percent of all lunches served to North Penn students go to those who qualify for free or reduced price lunches, Harding told the school board, and the district continues to expand the number of sites where lunches are offered for children, for adults, and over the summer.

“Our summer program continues to grow: two years ago we had 32 sites, last year we had 43, and this year we already have 47 sites signed up, and still have a couple more” in the process, she said.

Total revenues for the school nutrition services fund are projected at $2.54 million in the 2018-19 projected budget, Harding said, which is down slightly from $2.58 million in 201617 but up slightly from the $2.49 million projected total for 2017-18. Factoring in federal and state subsidies, total department revenues will reach $5.49 million in 2018-19, with projected total expenses of $5.48 million and a projected surplus of just shy of $1,700.

Those numbers include a projected five percent increase in food costs, Harding said, and an $8,500 line item for new uniforms for employees, while she said staff are looking for savings in the way they package food and bid out certain supplies and vendors.

A recent inspection and audit by the Pennsylvania Department of Education resulted in five findings that required corrective action, Harding said: one was a requirement for the state to approve the serving of certain non-whole-grain items that had been submitted but not approved yet by the state, while another had to do with the way certain servings of fruit are served.

“We had a finding that we were cutting off the inedible portion of the oranges, and that was considered a corrective action, because the whole orange is considered half a cup,” Harding said.

“So to correct that, we’re now cutting them into four (slices), and not cutting off the ends of the oranges,” she said.

Board member Terry Prykowski asked if the department is able to offer 1-percent, 2-percent, or whole milk to students who may benefit from extra fat in their diets, as studies have shown the extra fat can be beneficial for brain development in young children. Harding said the district currently offers only 1-percent white, skim and chocolate milk as per state regulations, and any change would run afoul of state regulations regarding the amount of fat permitted in a student’s diet each week.

“We have regulations we

have to follow throughout the week on fat and saturated fats, and any higher fat content will impact those,” Harding said.

“Even though it may increase their brainpower?” Prykowski asked. “This is the same government that gave us a fine for cutting the ends of the oranges off,” Skrocki replied.

Extended Care

Marjorie Scott, North Penn’s Extended School Care coordinator, said the extended school care programs did not increase any fees last year so that dedicated fund could draw down part of a large balance that had accumulated in recent years.

“Through the month of March 2018, income was up approximately 3.3 percent over the previous year,” Scott said, due to higher enrollment at Gwyn Nor, Gwynedd Square, A.M. Kulp and North Wales elementary schools.

A three percent fee increase for extended care fees is expected for the 201819 school year, which Scott said staff project will produce a total income of $2.3 million, enough to cover a transfer of $50,000 to the district’s general fund.

“We ran into an issue a couple of years ago where the fund balance was actually growing very, very nicely, hence the idea of the $50,000 contribution to the general fund was born,” Skrocki said.

The extended school care fund peaked with an end of year fund balance of $454,915 in 2016-17, and the next year the $50,000 transfers to the district general fund began, leaving a current projected balance of $353,643 as of the end of the 2017-18 schoolyear. That balance will drop again to $287,420 at the end of 2018-19, which Skrocki said will be closely monitored by Scott, who he said is a “stickler with every expenditure” from her fund.

All six departmental budgets were recommended by the finance committee for adoption for the full school board, which could vote to do so when the final budget is adopted on June 21.

The school board next meets at 7:30 p.m. on June 12 and 21, both at the district Educational Services Center, 401 E. Hancock St.; for more information visit www.NPenn.org.