Anchorage School Board: 11/2/2026: School Board Work Session

Mr. Anderson and, um, Miss Parrott.

Okay, thank you. For the record, my name is Katie Parrott. I'm the Senior Director of the Office of Management and Budget. On tonight's board agenda, you have an action item. It's, uh, Memorandum, uh, 59, and that includes a transfer request to close out FY26 for, uh, student nutrition fund and some other transfers.

Um, and so that one, uh, we're going to go in a— into a little bit more depth tonight to provide some additional information to the board relevant to that fund, how it works, kind of the current status, and then the larger kind of fiscal picture moving forward, and then some, some thoughts for moving forward. So is my presentation up? Can you see that?

Let's see, you're not screen sharing. So sorry.

Thank you. Sorry, you can tell I'm a newbie.

All right, here we go. So you can see that.

Okay, so the Student Nutrition Fund is one of ASD's major funds. So there are more funds than what's on this list. However, there are some real key areas within our fiscal picture and the budgets we manage that are larger, more technically kind of challenging, or really core aspects of the business of the district. And so you can see here on the right, we have kind of 5 funds that we think of as kind of those big structural major funds. The general fund, obviously, which you're very familiar with, that we run through the budget cycle with every year.

We have a special revenues fund that houses most of the grants. That's Fund 2. We also have a capital projects fund, food service fund, and transportation, and those are all separate and apart from the general fund, and they operate kind of differently than the way that the operating fund is managed and overseen. You can see here from the graph on the left that 70% of all of our funds is that operating fund, general fund, and then the— on the side there, there's the smaller funds with a student nutrition fund being about 3% of all of the funds that we do manage.

As I mentioned, the student nutrition fund 6 is classified as a special revenue, and historically the way that we manage some of those special revenue funds, including student nutrition, is at the department level by by the subject matter experts in the departments that kind of know the technical details of the business and help us put together some of those financial projections and budgets and kind of oversee the day-to-day business with our support. So the majority of the spending in the Student Nutrition Fund, as you would imagine, is on food itself and then the food service staff who prepare and process meals and make that program work. Overall, it's about $29 million for the budget in recent years for '26 '27, which as I mentioned was about 3% of all the funds that the district manages. As you know, the priority for that program and that fund is to feed kids. It's to provide meals for students, and in recent years the meal production and participation has grown along with the budget.

ASD has a very student-focused policy when it comes to managing that program and providing guidance for how the goals and, and kind of objectives of that program our run, and really it's focused on the commitment to feeding all children and to providing that service to students and families. There is a board policy that dictates how we do some of that business with an administrative regulation 3553, and the administrative regulation essentially says that all kids will be provided a federally reimbursed meal, and that will be regardless of a family's unpaid meal balance. So the program and the department and that fund really does work to achieve that goal. Additionally, there are different classifications for programming for the school meals at some of the different schools that take into consideration student eligibility for economically disadvantaged students. And so some schools, as you know, are under the classification of a Community Eligibility Provision, which allows qualifying schools to provide free meals to all of their students and eliminate any barriers to accessing school meals.

And the expansion of that program has also led to feeding quite a few more students.

The revenue for student nutrition, kind of what keeps that program going and solvent, is largely the reimbursement model from the federal government under the National School Lunch Program.

There are other components of those programs, extensions like providing snacks and breakfast service as well, but the primary funding mechanism is through that per meal reimbursement. The meal has to meet certain qualifications with certain nutrition components, and then if that meal meets all of those requirements under the program, then there is a fixed rate reimbursement for each qualifying meal. But of course, there's eligibility components that dictate certain levels of reimbursement. So for totally free meals, reduced meals where families share some of the cost, and then total free— or sorry, total paid meals where the family doesn't qualify for any support and has to pay for those outright. There's also elements where there's kind of some metrics around the federal versus local share of covering or subsidizing that program.

And so there are rules around ensuring that there's equity so that the paid students aren't overly subsidized by other activity in the fund. So annually you might see that come through to your level for the increases to the meal rates or the charges that we charge for the paid meals. Excuse me. And then there's other elements of the program where the USDA does provide some additional direct support for dollars to purchase certain kinds of foods, commodities, and that provides some additional support in the way of supplies and resources. And then that funding is also subsidized to a smaller extent by other grants and donations.

And then in addition to the National School Lunch Program, there's other elements of the federal program that provides reimbursement that the district does make use of. I mentioned the School Breakfast Program, but there's also called a Child and Adult Care Food Program that helps provide some snacks to after-school programs. There's also a Summer Food Service Program, and there's an asterisk here because this comes up later in the presentation, and I'll reference this again. The Summer Food Service Program provides for free free meals to all students. They don't have to be enrolled even in the district and provides a single rate of reimbursement that tends to be a little bit higher than some of the other rates for reimbursement.

And that's provided for every meal that's provided regardless of eligibility for the student. And then there's also a Fresh Fruits and Vegetables program that provides for some financial support to provide fruits and vegetables for students to be able to access other kinds food and try different food and make sure that they're getting some of those other nutrients to supplement what they are provided at home.

So as part of the board memo tonight, we're asking for a transfer for FY27 that covers the deficit that was experienced in that fund at the end of the year. And so we wanted to go back and provide some information about what happened in FY26 because I don't believe that there's been a large transfer request for student nutrition in recent years. And so we wanted to make sure to provide some information about FY26 specifically to inform the board and the public. And so here you'll see one of the things that we did is we did a snapshot for FY26 as compared to an average of the last 10 years of expenses, um, to just take a look at if what we're spending our money on in that fund, uh, kind of is comparative to the average. And you can see here that the vast majority, as we mentioned, of expenditures in this fund is going to serve kids.

It's in that kitchens and food center that pays for all of the food that's purchased, all of the staff that prepare the meals and provide those meals and manage those programs. And so actually for FY26, we saw a little bit of an uptick in what we were spending in that area.

Um, however, we did see an uptick overall in the spending in the fund, and so we went and did a little bit of a deeper dive for a comparison between FY25 and FY26 to take a look at the cost drivers and some of those areas where we did experience a higher rate of expenditure. Uh, first and foremost, uh, we saw that in personnel costs. I'm going to come back to that, um, and, and talk about that in a little bit more detail. As you would expect, when we have an increase in what we're providing, we saw an uptick in the food supplies and that end-of-the-year inventory that we had on hand. And then we also saw an uptick in capital equipment for some of the purchases to support the program for the year.

Going back to the personnel costs, there were two main cost drivers for kind of taking a look at the increase of the expenditures there. One was the new contract. So as you may remember, there was a new negotiated agreement that was ratified by the board, and that provided a boost of salaries and wages for that bargaining unit. And that actually had the result of a higher rate of staffing in vacant positions. So the board might remember several years ago where there was a problem with hiring kitchen managers and there was a lot of shelf-stable meals, the, you know, jerky and cracker meals meals that were being provided at some of the schools, and that was largely because there wasn't a kitchen manager to be able to provide and prepare and manage the reimbursable federal meal.

And so we saw very much a trend, as we did with the transportation contract, which also, you know, you experienced that service issues that year where we couldn't hire bus drivers. We initiated a new contract that made those wages and benefits more competitive. Filled all those positions, ran all those routes. A very similar thing happened in food service for FY26, and, and they definitely had less of that attrition rate in their positions than they had seen in years prior.

And so to take a look at how this factors in with the number of positions, so you can imagine that as increased meal production is taking place, maybe more schools are included in breakfast programs or other lunch programs and snack programs.

What has the FTE looked like across a period of time? So we did do a look at that just to see if we're kind of on track with prior norms. And you can see here that for the most part, their staffing has been relatively flat, except there was an increase of the budgeted FTEs for FY26, and that was to accommodate the change in the expansion of the CEP eligible schools, which we know based on, you know, data for making that change really does impact the number of students who are participating and the number of meals that need to be produced. So there was an uptick there, but you can see also that some adjustments and restructuring for FY27 kind of rearranged that to be able to re-level the FTE to prior years level. So you can see also that across 10 years, really the staffing, the FTE for the fund and the program really has not grown.

So they are doing more with about the same level of staffing.

And there was really just a 0.65 FTE increase over a long period of time.

So then when we're taking a look at FY25 and FY26, again, taking a look at where the money is going, we did a comparison and took a look at kind of the difference between the prior year and FY26. And you can see from this slide that we're doing about the same. The money is kind of going into the same buckets. And with more going to the staff, what we would expect when we are increasing the contract, providing a more competitive wage, and also filling all of our positions. And so the categorical spending was largely the same, and again, the largest amount is being spent to feed kids.

It's the food and the food staff.

So then, to better understand the deficit for FY26, of course we want to take a look at the revenue and identify any blips or, or, you know, variances over a period of time. So that top chart there for meals served, you might recall this from the May— I believe it was May 5th work session at the end of the year where Student Nutrition reported on the uptick in the number of meals served and lots of the changes that were being done in that program. And so here you can see there was a very, very steady uptick and growth over time of the meal production, but the revenue tells a different story. And one of the reasons why the revenue tells a little bit of a different story that's hard to suss out, or was hard to suss out initially, is because every year essentially since COVID has been an atypical year. So it's been hard, or was hard, to kind of establish a baseline because there's been so much change.

And so you'll see, obviously, in 2021, there was that the closures really impacted functioning, and so you can see that that was an off year. However, one of the things that took place during that year was that the federal government wanted to still keep feeding kids. And so even though lots of schools across the country were out, some schools were back in. They wanted to make sure that there was, there was stability for school districts in the system and stability for families. And so you might remember that I talked about the Summer Food Service Program.

So what the federal government did is they pushed out a modified Summer Food Service Program that essentially told districts, feed everyone, just continue feeding kids, feed everyone, whether they're in school, whether they're not, whether they're enrolled in your district, whether they're not, feed kids, and we will pay you that higher flat rate for every single meal you produce. So what ended up happening, not just with ASD but across the nation, was that many food service programs that went to that model opted into that, fed kids, and were reimbursed at that higher rate for all meals that were produced. That program didn't have some of the rigorous standards for what to offer through that program as the National School Lunch Program does, and so it was a way— it was a real boon for districts, right? They were able to still feed kids, shore up their student nutrition funds, and really leverage that additional revenue to kind of float the forward years moving forward. And that's exactly what happened with ASD.

So you can see that for several years there was a difference for sure between the budgeted revenues and the actual revenues received. But because of the really healthy fund balance that had been stored up in the student nutrition fund, they were able to kind of support those operations leading up to the years of really substantial change with providing more meals and then kind of making that assumption for FY26 that that additional produce, the additional meals that were being provided and the increase in engagement and participation was going to translate to additional revenues.

So in hindsight, what we realized was that the student nutrition revenue shortfall really was the cause of the deficit in that fund. The expenditures were about on par with what was projected, but the revenue fell far short.

And there were some, there were some reasons for that, and we're going to talk about some of those. Number one, there was really obscured visibility for finance and other offices to be able to see what was happening with the revenue. And I'll get more into detail about that in a later slide. And then there were some assumptions that were made in setting those revenues that were incomplete. One of the things that was really a major factor in FY26 is there were a lot of eligibility changes, and tracking those eligibility changes per student with all of the change that had been experienced was very difficult.

And then we knew the, the information that the department and our office could see was that there were lots of meals being produced. There was an additional participation in that, but the, the revenues were lagging. And, but however, one of the things that I do want to note is this was really specific and isolated to student nutrition. So this really was not something that was taking place in other areas of the district's business. It was very specific to student nutrition.

And so as a result, our actions that we've taken to date, the first one is to request a transfer to be able to close out FY26. Um, because as we reckon with that at the end of the year, we would really like to be able to make that fund whole and then adjust and make changes moving forward. As part of that, our fund balance will remain intact, so that's not a concern or a worry moving forward. A lot of things are not known until really the books are closed in the summer. And so, for example, one of the areas that we know kind of freed up some resources to be able to make this transfer is that we've been on a trend for several years with our health insurance claims really outpacing what we have budgeted.

And finally, for FY26, that flattened. So we had planned for a trend to be able to cover some of those excesses, but at the end of the year when we kind of realized what actually happened, we didn't need that. So those are resources that are available. Additionally, we do identify, however, that there's some actions that we need to take to make sure that we can track this really closely moving forward and make sure that we're making adjustments so that we're not in the same position. And so we did an internal financial review, we did a root cause analysis.

I'll go over some of the findings of that in a minute. And then we're also doing some third-party process and controls audits and some deeper dive financial reviews and investigations. And the reason And the reason for that is that food service, the, um, those federal programs are some of the most complicated, technically challenging programs that exist, and there's so many factors that can impact how that program lands, especially when you're making a lot of changes and trying to kind of adjust and, and provide a good service. This. And so we really identified that we need external expert help with that and have sought that.

And so in the short term, we're working currently and have worked to strengthen our capacity and our oversight and the internal controls so that we're monitoring that in a, in a lot closer way, and then also doing the business process audits and making those improvements per the recommendations of third-party experts. So, as you can imagine, one of the findings of our root cause analysis for taking a look at the deficit was truly that there was this assumption that the, the increase of participation, the increase of meals being produced, was going to translate to that increase in revenue and reimbursement. However, there was an overly optimistic revenue assumption, and, and it was incomplete because it didn't factor in some of these larger global changes that could really impact student eligibility and the rates for certain meals to be reimbursed. And then that was kind of coupled with this delay in visibility of the problem because of lagging information. So one of the things that we identified is that we are working in some siloed systems.

The system that Student Nutrition uses, it's actually a state system to submit their claims for reimbursement and track what is paid by the state does not speak with our accounting system. So all of that work has to be done manually in adjustments that are entered into our accounting system. And sometimes there's a lag. There's, you know, a process by which a meal has to be produced. It has to be kind of certified as a reimbursable meal under the federal guidelines.

It has to be counted at the school level. That information has to be sent through the system. Then it has to be submitted in the claim system, and then we get paid, you know, a month later. So there's a lot of components to that process, and one of the things we realized is we need to shorten some of the time that— and make those systems work together and speak with each other a little bit better. The other thing we realized is that there was some siloing between departments.

So some of the preliminary findings made us take some some action steps right away. One of the first things we did is we brought the student nutrition budget analyst to be co-located with finance so that all they have to do is kind of walk around the corner and be able to access accounting and finance staff and that we can make sure that we're checking in, you know, directly to make sure some of those processes are being done. Additionally, we realized that we have a capacity issue in some of our areas, and so we immediately identified the need to hire a student nutrition accountant and to have a dedicated person who is working on our side of the house in finance and accounting to be able to facilitate a lot of the work that needs to be done. And then, as I had mentioned, we reached out to some third-party reviewers to be able to validate a lot of the findings that we saw. As I mentioned, it's a really complicated program and we wanted to make sure that we were taking a look at it appropriately, that there was nothing in the blind spot for things that we need to shore up and that we had a process in place to be able to do that.

And we wanted an external party also to provide us recommendations with the knowledge and understanding of kind of all of the systems that we have to work with to make this program successful. And then there was also a realignment to be able to really focus on operational and process improvements and to make sure that the business process of how we have that system set up within ASD is really working for the needs of that specific program. And because we have a lot of processes and systems that work for some programs better than others.

So the results of those initial steps that we took, we have the finance team, we did engage with BDO, who knows us very well, as you know, to provide recommendations for implementation of some changes and adjustments adjustments that we're working on implementing. We also focus on, as I mentioned, the business process to really ensure that we're trying to maintain the good work that has been done in that program to provide a high-quality meal program to our students and to feed as many kids as we can. We know— I think this was in the presentation from a prior work session— is there's some information to suggest that when you feed kids, they do water at school. And so we, we don't want to lose ground in those areas, but we know that we need to put some processes in place to be able to strengthen how we're managing it so that there's, there's no surprises. And then last but not least, we certainly are improving our revenue assumptions.

So as I mentioned, one of the challenges of this program is that lagging revenue. Know, and then being able to not really know how to plan forward until you wait to see what happened prior. And so one of the things that we are in the process of doing for FY28 is to shift from that revenue actuals model where you look back at what's happened to plan for the future to a predictive forecasting model so that you're using more up-to-date data and then forecasting that out. And so we've, we've made a lot of progress in that area in the last month or two and are hoping to have a much better result for FY28. And then, as I mentioned, we're also enlisting our experts to better be able to do some of that really technical work to understand how impacts in the system or changes in the system impact the revenue component.

Percent, which is very challenging.

So our next steps, again, budget transfer in the short term. We are going to be taking a closer look at revisiting the CEP groupings. So that was one of the areas where we identified a challenge and a loss of revenue. So the bonus is that we were feeding more kids, but the result of changing some of those groupings was that we were reimbursed for less. And so taking a look at that and of course engaging the board on the level to which you are comfortable and, uh, comfortable in making investments to that program to maintain the current access of student meals.

And that's really important and that's a board-level decision, but we're going to need that, that kind of support and feedback from you to know at what level you want to continue subsidizing the food service program of how this impacts families and students and schools so greatly. Also working on providing more frequent snapshots of the fund for the board's review of expenditures and actuals so that you can see how the progress is going. And that will start this year and then help to inform decisions moving forward. As I mentioned, we're building internal, uh, stronger internal controls to make sure that there's more visibility of the finance and accounting staff and oversight from our office in student— in the fund and managing that. And then we're also going to be taking a look at areas where we can do some cost reductions, trying to mitigate the impact of students in those areas and still trying to, as I mentioned, provide the nutritious meals.

And then moving forward, we're looking at you know, any changes long-term to the program. So how we're structured, what we're providing, how we're providing it, at what schools we're providing it to, and giving you that pro and con list of what it would take and what it would impact to be able to make changes across the whole system in the long term.

The— maybe it's not good news, but maybe the reassuring news in some ways is is that this is by no means an ASD challenge. This is happening across the nation. There have been a lot of federal changes that have impacted the— impacted student eligibility and other aspects of the student nutrition program and the National School Lunch Program and the rates of reimbursement that districts are able to receive. So as, as you may remember in the news in years past, there's been a lot of discussion about the eligibility requirements for SNAP, TANF, and Medicaid. One of the things that you may or may not know is that some of those programs provide automatic eligibility for certain students in ASD and across the nation.

And you can see from this list of articles is that those changes did impact eligibility and families who were able to access certain programs, and one of them being reimbursable meals through those federally funded programs.

And because this is a nationwide issue and that these deficits in this program are becoming increasingly common, there are different avenues for addressing this, and you can see in the, in the bottom of the slide here, one of the solutions that states are implementing is just providing universal school free school meals. And so up to, I believe, 26, there's 14 states that are offering, that have opted into a universal school meal program that's funded by the state. And you can see the dates there for some states when they opted for that model. Additionally, there's several other states that operate under a modified free program of some kind. So you'll see that Hawaii does that for all of their eligible economically disadvantaged, and then there's free breakfast programs also in a few states.

In addition to the states that have passed these programs, there's legislation that's been introduced in several other states, and one of them is Alaska. Jessica. So House Bill 12 that was introduced by Rep. Dibert last session essentially provides for free meals, free breakfast and lunch for public school students who would like to have them, and it also establishes a reduced-price meal fund to be able to receive donations through Pick Click Give. So that, that could come back up in this next legislative session. We're kind of watching and waiting and expressing some support for something like this, especially because some districts in the state have either done away entirely with the federal program because they just can't— they don't have the capacity to meet the requirements to receive those reimbursements, or they just districts can't afford to provide a meal program, and so some districts have moved away from it entirely.

Some districts have ceased the federal reimburse program, and their local communities or other organizations are supporting student meals, but it is a real challenge across the state.

And then there's also some information that we have in the presentation about kind of some of the feedback from people who do this work and national trends for what this looks like kind of across the board. And so then I'll hand it over to Jim to kind of go over some of this information.

So I don't think any of this is a surprise if you've gone to any of the school board conferences. It's really been a challenge for the past decade, and it really was that period of time during COVID where we had the very highest possible reimbursement rate in order to build a fund balance to support it. Um, I think it's safe to say that without some significant change at the federal government in terms of funding— I think this year was like 3.6% increase, um, it really was cost of inflation. But just like the base student allocation, for years as they kept it really low other costs became higher and higher, whether it was labor or fuel costs right now for shipping and everything else, bringing all the fresh fruit and vegetables and everything else from the lower 48 is certainly going to exceed what would be a national inflation rate. And as there was a previous slide that had— I put 4 links on it with some really good articles from different organizations, which is where we took the data for this briefing.

And it really, the percentages might be different from article to article or from study to study because they have different numbers of people that they interviewed. But it's really pretty consistent across the board, even if percentages change a little bit.

And then I don't know, Dr. Bryant, if you'd like to speak to this one, but they also did an analysis process and sought some feedback from the National Superintendents Association.

So the path moving forward, we feel that it might be a good avenue to be able to provide some deep dives and additional reports and to kind of seek the will of the board through the Finance committee. We're going to be also exploring program options and communicating those out and kind of taking a look at things that we can do in the short term, medium term, and long term, as we mentioned. And then we really want to seek that board feedback from you to answer any of your questions and to kind of know moving forward how you would like to prioritize this program in the, in kind of the environment where we do have scarce resources when there's lots of competing priorities. So with that, we'll hand it over for discussion.

We'll start with Member Blixley. Thank you for this presentation. It is super disheartening and depressing, um, that we're talking about a lack of funding to feed kids, um, because I think we could probably all agree it is super important. And I've seen that in real time, how important it is for kids to be fed to succeed in life and in the classroom. So quick questions.

When you said that you're pivoting as a response to sort of all of these findings to the more predictive model for budgeting around student nutrition, at least figuring out that revenue need versus the actuals model. Are we going to be using— are you going to be using an actuals model for the FY28 budget or the predictive models? This is a quarter-to-quarter or like a month-to-month forecasted model. I don't know, how would that work for the FY28, figuring out what it is that's required for the FY28 budget? When we build the budget for FY28, we'll actually use both.

We'll be able to use the data that we're predicting for the rest of this school year based off the percentages and numbers of meals sold by type by child, and, and use that predictive model as opposed to just pulling last year's data. We'll also— and you'll see this in an upcoming finance meeting— you'll see the predictive model and how we're using it, and then you'll see that it's going to be ahead of what we can pull out of BusinessPlus us by sometimes 6 weeks, 8 weeks. Um, and so our very first poll to be able to do an end-of-year projection for deficit will be around the middle of November, so right before your Finance Committee. You'll be able to see that, and then we'll show you that using the predictive model where we thought we stood on or about 15 November, and then by January we'll be able to compare the actuals going back to November, because they will now be booked, and look at the consistency of both models in order to give us confidence, or if we find something we need to tweak, we've got time to tweak it and use that. Okay, that's great.

Yeah, that's really helpful. I guess just thinking about sort of the situation that we're sort of in right now and wanting to make sure that we're really having an appropriate conversation about the true cost of what's needed so we aren't potentially in a situation like this in the future would be great, um, to the extent possible. And then on the legislative action or the House Bill 12, which I didn't— I was not tracking, which is really interesting, from, um, Representative Dybert, um, when you mentioned that there was a component in there about Pick, Click, Give, would those donations go to individual school districts or to the state? And would would it impact— would that count towards the local contribution cap?

Well, it didn't actually pass, so— well,. If it's not introduced—. Committees is where they would have worked out the actual details. The initial bill submitted was kind of broad and general without all of the amendments that would have gone through committee process. I think we're pretty hopeful.

We'll know better after the results of this election as to whether that comes back again in January. Well, February probably, and then work with committees to try to get that— those details worked out. Regulations and other things that would have been established after the bill was passed would have been able to articulate that better. Okay,. And on the local contribution note, because that would be managed— my understanding is because that would be managed at the state level and it would likely not go to the municipality, it would not be a local contribution issue.

So We'd either receive those directly, like I don't know if they'd set up every school district, you know, to be able to do that donation directly, or if they would set up a fund at the state and have those funneled through the state. Either way, that wouldn't pose a problem. Okay, that is good to know. And I guess my other question, it's a question and a comment, is like we hear a lot and we know a lot about all of the shortfalls in state funding and how it impacts the district and districts across the whole state, right? But it's very much sort of the same problem at the federal level, and I think that gets a lot less attention, but there are other policies as well, you know, around special education, and here we are on student nutrition, that they're almost sort of these unfunded mandates, right?

And I guess I'm wondering how much we have historically advocated at the federal level with our federal delegation. And if we have not, that would be something— I mean, a question and I think comment being, I think that is equally important, of high importance for us to engage at the federal level with our federal delegation around these issues. And maybe that's something we bring in finance as well. But question part first. As a district, I don't think that we've actively engaged with our federal legislators.

I know quite a few in the district belong to Student Nutrition Association. They have advocated. The Council of Great City Schools has advocated.

The, the American School Board Association has also advocated, but I don't know of any direct intentional efforts from the district or board to individually advocate. Okay, um, yeah, I would highly recommend that we engage in a concerted strategy around federal advocacy, which, um, yes, we can talk about that later. So thank you.

Member Higgins. Thank you. Uh, first of all, I appreciate the presentation. I feel like everything was laid out completely. I don't think there's anything up your sleeve or anything else.

I appreciate that. Do we, do we provide provide, or we make it available with the daycare. I know we have one school. Do we make it available for them to buy into it to provide the food that way? We have not.

When we moved KCI into Fairview, we did make a small kitchen area for them to make food products, but it would be complicated by the rules. The USDA federal funding,. Yeah,. Would have to go to a student and not someone younger than a student, but it is something that's worth checking into, actually. Yeah, I'm glad you brought it up.

Yeah,. If we choose to expand it, then it might be an advantage that way. Hi. Um, the breakfast item has always been an issue because sometimes some schools have done real good with breakfast, others have not. Part of that issue many years ago had to do with the way the principal allowed the kids to eat in the classroom.

They had to go to the cafeteria in elementary school, that sort of thing. Have you monitored the, the use of, of that from a school standpoint? Because that's one concern that I do have, because Title I schools were the ones with the lowest at one point, and because they were required to go into the classroom— no, into the cafeteria, they weren't allowed to eat in the classroom. But I'm just wondering if that's monitored at all. I know there's a list of schools that have Breakfast in the Classroom.

Um, as, as you're well aware, it does add additional responsibilities on the teacher as well.

We have not, though, in the last couple years pushed for an expansion of it, but it's certainly worth looking at. I'll get the data and pull it up and look at the number that used to be Breakfast in the Classroom, what it is now, and see if it's shrunk or grown. Yeah, it's a great question. I know that we've had schools where it didn't have the meals, they had the plastic bags, all that kind of stuff. And I'm wondering, you know, in FY25, the staffing went up 11, FY26, '26 went down 9.

How did we manage to adjust that, to do that, to keep the— all the class— all the schools with meals now, uh, when we increased the staffing and then cut it? You know, we're serving hardly any shelf-stable meals now. Um, there might be a day or two where there's no one to fill a cafeteria, but 3 years ago we were losing about half a million dollars and shelf-stable meals. And currently, this is the first year in as long as I can remember, um, which is only 11 years in the district, but this is the first year where every single cafeteria is manned. I know we have some schools just don't provide meals at all.

I mean, Stella is one, but the charter schools, all that. Uh, do we have any neighborhood schools where we're not providing meals schools? No,. Everything's covered. I mean, Stella is technically— it's an optional school, so I'm not going to put it that way.

And those kids have their own agenda, how they, how they want to eat, what they want to do. But it's— and they do have an area there in the office where they have donations of food. Kids can pick it up. I don't feel aware of that, but it's pretty cool. Um, in regards to where to go from here, I'll tell you that I still recall 2014, and I think it was Boston, uh, where they did a video with the kids talking about what it's like going to bed hungry at night.

And the— like, you will never hear me opposing— suggesting that we reduce at all the food service we provide to these kids. It's critical. I appreciate what you're doing. I appreciate the fact that you expanded to all the schools. That's important to me.

And, um, and like I said, I appreciate the tell me what we need to do. Thank you. Member Bellamy.

Thank you. Excuse me. Excellent report. Thank you so much. Um, I agree, student meals, student nutrition for all kids, for all kids.

And I don't know what that's going to take.

But we, we have to make that happen. When you say looking to the board for the level of support, will you tell me what that means? That, that means exactly you're gonna— are those the scenarios Jim was talking about where we can see what this is going to cost, this is going to cost, or is it— tell me what that is. I think first and foremost, I think all of us know that Barring a significant change at the federal government, student nutrition deficits are going to be like the transportation deficit. It's just going to be a real thing every year.

So as we get to the middle of November and we can project out this year's with, with fairly good accuracy as to what that deficit would be, and it'll inform the budgeting process when we go in January and February and build through the I think as we look at some of the programmatic changes that are possible, some of them, you know, districts have, have really taken extreme measures to include, as Katie mentioned, completely ending the National School Lunch Program in those districts.

Now, what they did do was go in for contracts, and sometimes they could do it cheaper because you didn't have the the, the, the quality and the standards are no longer in existence. And if someone were to try to sell chili dogs at a middle school or a high school, they could probably sell a lot of chili dogs or pizza that's not whole grain, or just serve anything. But then there's no nutritional standards other than the cost. If you look at cutting breakfast programs, which other districts have done, you can reduce your labor costs by cutting breakfast programs.

Times, but then you're forever stuck. Where some of our staff now keep food in, in a, in a closet or in a desk drawer or a nurse's office for kids who didn't eat that weekend or the night before.

A lot of the things that we're looking at right now, I think that's what we'll talk about when, uh, Member Blakeslee puts it on the agenda. I mean, you can look it. If you cut breakfast, you can reduce FTE, or you can cut benefits from staff. But as soon as you cut benefits, they're going to quit, and now you're going to have, you know, 15 or 20 schools without a cafeteria manager again. And so that was what Katie kind of inferred to, or intimated, when we, when we talk about it at the Finance Committee meetings, um, or, or future work sessions.

I think we just have to be open and honest that there are things you can do that save expenses, but there are real costs to doing that. Yes, the trick, the tension and the trade-off. If I can jump in from my perspective, you know, we're quickly entering into FY28 and there's lots of competing priorities without additional resources. You know, when there are funds directed to subsidize another fund such as transportation or student nutrition, that has to come from somewhere, right? Yeah,.

It's a, it's kind of a push and a pull between those funds. Now with transportation, we've requested because transportation also has a deficit. There's a difference between what the state provides to operate that program and what it actually costs. And the way that we're shoring up that fund is by requesting that amount from the municipalities. And that has been on an upward trend for the last few years as well.

And so there are strategies we can use to maybe, you know, try to address this once we firm up some of our projections, what might be available. But some of those decisions, because it's going to inevitably pull from another part of the pie, we need to kind of have an idea of the board's level of support for doing something like that. And that all makes sense. Makes sense. Yeah.

Finally, um, regarding the local contribution with the marijuana tax, can we— can we get some of that money for—. We have not had that discussion with the mayor's team, but it could be any source outside the general fund, um, from the municipality. It could be the sale of West Park, it could be— it be marijuana tax, alcohol tax, it could be anything like that. They would all not apply toward— currently under the regulations, they would not apply towards the max local contribution. Okay,.

Great. I think— oh, one final just a point. Both the National School Board Association and the Council of Greatest City Schools have both transportation and student nutrition on their legislative advocacy lists right now. I'll send it to you.

Okay, I'm going to jump in really quick to address Member Bellamy, a point you made about the local government's funding that's available through the ACE Fund for the marijuana tax proceeds. I just wanted to flag that right now the funding that currently exists for things like pre-K and childcare is being questioned, and the, the municipality and the ACE Fund Board really seem intent on getting those dollars directed to childcare and childcare-related purposes. So I wouldn't be optimistic about utilizing that revenue stream. Um, what I also understand is that municipal proceeds from that tax in particular are down from projections, and so it's one less potential resource for us. And with that said, we've got 5 minutes left and only Member McDonough left in the queue.

The floor is Sir. Yeah, thank you both to, um, well, both of you for giving this presentation. I think this question, um, I would like to see some, like, as the board finds the way to prioritize, um, just pulling from one pot to make sure the, the other one is squared up. And, um, I guess what I'm saying is there's a return on investment, um, series of lessons I remember from when I was in like an education leadership degree program where we were challenged as students, like as graduate students, to look at the research and find like what are the most valuable first dollars for a school district to spend to bring up their, their reading scores or their math scores. At the time, the systemic reviews would show largely that the two most valuable investments were getting your heating and cooling correct so that, like, the classrooms were all about 72 degrees and making sure the kids are fed.

Those dollars were more powerful than tutoring dollars or after-school programming or intervention programs.

I would be curious as we do look at next year's budget, if the evidence has shifted or if that evidence has held up over the last about 12 years since I took those programs. So it's just kind of like something to, to request for a future moment as Finance Committee sinks its teeth into this issue. If there is any modern research that could either reify that bold finding or maybe update it and show that maybe this is less of a priority than the early research showed.

Yes, I— that's a point well taken. I believe that that is consistent with more current research, but we can pull the specifics of that and provide that.

Okay, that concludes our.