and um coats at this time are necessary so thank you very much for for all of that yeah

I just wanted to say that I really appreciate you walking us through this and for the very thoughtful approach to thinking about how we maintain access to prek4 for all of our families... I'm very heartened to see that we have a proposal that would allow us to maintain all of that programming as well as making it financially accessible to all of our families

I really wish given that we're really talking about a handful of students that would have to pay a fee I really wish that we didn't have to even do that because the concern is anytime you say anything about a fee that's that has the potential to turn people off but we legally cannot put a child into a VPK slot we cannot receive that money if they don't qualify so that's the bind that we're in

thank you very much for keeping for being very thoughtful and and and how we're looking at these fees and trying to keep them reasonable but also keeping in mind that things are continuing to inflate a little bit and that we do need to keep somewhat of a pace so we don't end up at a later date having to have a huge jump

even though prek 3 and ECFE have additional funding streams the in increasing the fees will contribute positively to the solvency or self sustainability of the overall Community Ed program right correct yes because it's braiding funding

what's the purpose of the pay Equity report we report salary information on employees to assure that the institution is not discriminating against female employees in their compensation practices we have to file a report by January 31st 2025 and we're automatically out of compliance um background um we submit a report every three years

we haven't passed one of the areas and you can um submit a reconsideration so I know we've done couple times just saying we're a female dominated organization and years to Max they 17 and so they've accepted that

and I just want to say congratulations on on doing this and I love that we're submitting this so that they we do have an external third party looking at our process and shows that we are fiscally handling our you know financial statements correctly so thank you

I just wanted to note that um director hul had some great questions this evening but the rest of us not asking questions is not necessarily a reflection of uh our our disinterest we had substantive conversation about the audit uh at our last meeting and so if anyone in the community um is interested in that um more substantive conversation I would encourage people to go back and watch that that meeting

for anybody who who's not familiar with this process we do this every single year um the reason being is is that um to be able to consider um what positions to fill for next year that we have to um give guidance to the superintendent to be able to look into this process um it's also very important that we start this this at this time of the year so that all of these Staffing decisions can be made prior to the end of the school year

uh for the last almost 10 years we've had to cut a million dollars on one year a half a million dollars on the next year a million a half a million and so on and so forth last year we thanks to the community and supporting us through the operating Levy also thanks to our steady and increasing enrollment it was the first time since I've been in Columbia Heights that we didn't make cuts um which was incredible

when we reopen um open enrollment after it's been closed during the year do we maintain a wait list or do we reach back out to families who had wanted to enroll and let them know that it's open

I think it is really important to note that um four years ago when I first started on the board we weren't closing like this was not a conversation that was ever happening um and we've had such a fantastic growth in our school Community um that now we are having this conversation fairly regularly so it is a great problem to have I think