8.19.2026 Fall River School Committee - Finance

I'd like to call to order this Finance Subcommittee meeting for August 19th, 2026.

Deb, would you please call the roll?

Mr. Agam.

Here.

Mr. Diaz.

Here.

Mr. Corey.

Here.

Mr. Moniz.

Here.

Miss Riley.

Miss Stewart.

Here.

Mayor Coogan.

Here.

Uh, salute to the flag.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Pursuant to the Open Meeting Law, any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium.

Attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made, whether perceived or unperceived, by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible.

Any citizens' input?

Hearing none, item number 3 is a committee of the whole.

First item up is 3.01, a discussion of the waste removal contract.

Is Mr. Pacheco here?

Okay.

This, I guess, is a discussion for next year's contract to remove waste from the school buildings.

I know I had talked to Mr. Pacheco earlier in the day and he was going to fill us in on where we stand on that before we had questions.

Yeah, Mr. Pacheco, you're up on waste removal.

Sure.

So, um, the city is entering into, or has already entered into, an agreement with, um, Capital Waste for, I think if I'm not mistaken, a 3-year contract The contract itself for us didn't present many changes, although the changes that it did— that were made were made for our benefit.

We had asked that there were certain things such as weights when materials are picked up from us, whether it's MSW, recycling, Um, plain containers.

So all of our stuff will be weighed now.

We were having difficulty before with multiple loads going to a landfill or to, um, the transfer station, and it wasn't necessarily designated Fall River Public Schools.

So we, um, we were asked to put labels on all of our dumpsters, our compactors, so that when they get to a particular site, it's noted on the slip, the tipping slip.

And by it being noted on the tipping slip, it allows us to keep better track of items going in and getting weighed and us being charged for that.

The price hasn't changed in any way significantly, up or down.

What we do have now I feel with this new contract is a lot more accountability on what we're using in our waste stream, which will allow us to make some adjustments at the individual schools in order to curb some of the waste load.

Any questions on waste?

Mr. Dias.

Yeah, just very quickly.

I don't know if this is— we don't have, at least I don't have any backup for this particular contract, so I'm not sure if this is a contract that we recently approved as a committee or is this something that's going to come before us in the near future.

You mentioned there's a waste contract.

So the city's been using this— I'm sorry, the school department has been using the city since I was DPW director.

Probably somewhere around 2010, we took over the hauling of our school department, both solid waste and recycling.

Since then, it's been a mutually agreed-upon price between the 2 groups.

As soon as the city went to a private hauler and it wasn't done in-house, that particular piece changed and the waste dollar amount became something, um, in flux, so to speak.

And the document wasn't clear as to what the school department was paying, the old contract, the 10-year contract that was given to Easy Recycling.

So with the new contract, it spells out a lot of stuff for the school department, which we asked for.

And we can share some of those items.

I'm not— I don't have a finished document because they were still negotiating some of that work, but as soon as I have that finished document, we can share that.

But what we have so far is all of the definitions are very clear and defined now.

They weren't in the old contract.

And again, I'm— as I said, the waste stream itself is being weighed, which we're only paying for what we use.

That was the biggest piece of the whole contract.

I had no way of verifying loads in the past.

Now I do.

Thank you.

I'll just ask through to the superintendent, as soon as we get something that's more defined in writing, if we can just provide that in a Friday memo.

Yep, we can do that.

It is, yeah, so we're not part of the contract.

There's no signatures required on our side.

So it is a city contract.

As soon as we have that finished document, which I think they're working on right now, as soon as we have that document, we will get it over to the school committee.

Thank you.

Mr. Aguirre, so are you saying that we could potentially have been overcharged?

No, what I'm saying is that I would have no way— I would have no way of knowing either way.

So the trash The trash, the dollar amount that the school department was paying on a monthly basis was not exorbitant.

But again, I wasn't comfortable with the fact that I couldn't pinpoint by school what I was getting billed for.

There were no glaring items on the bills that would show that I was being overcharged.

What I have now is when I receive a bill from them, it will have Westall, Durfee, all listed.

And then I will know the tonnage by each building.

I didn't have that.

So what I'm looking at is previous to the changes that were made in the contract to now, I'll be able to see the difference in those pieces.

As far as overcharging, where we know how much tonnage we use more or less on a daily basis, monthly basis and yearly basis.

Those numbers haven't fluctuated that much.

What's fluctuated is the price per ton.

That much is, is certain.

And that is a standard throughout both city, school department, housing authority.

It's the same tonnage price.

That hasn't changed.

With the new prices, obviously it did go up.

Yeah, so the, um, I just think we don't know anything about it, quite honestly.

And there is changes in the city contract that we as school committee never even heard about, talked about, never went to subcommittee, never went to anywhere where we could weigh in and say, well, this is the rationale.

So that was the reason why I asked this to be on, so we— okay, at least we could know what was happening along the way.

I, I'm curious of the amounts over the last 5, 6 years to see a historical perspective on how much we've been paying for waste.

But if things changed relative to how the city is charging and billing, it could affect us in a way that might be negative, might be positive, I don't know.

Sure.

But there is certainly changes in the way the city bid this project.

Yes.

And my concern as a school committee member is this school committee never had a chance to weigh in on any of those recommended changes, up, down, or indifferent.

We just sort of got swallowed up by the city contract.

And that, I don't know whether that's gonna be good.

You're saying it's gonna be good.

Well, that was the way it's been for 10 years.

No, I understand.

But for 10 years, the city's the one that got billed for the tonnage, correct?

Under the last contract.

And then the city billed us for the tonnage.

Correct.

Yes.

But the city billed the tonnage.

Yes.

So the city was paying the tonnage bill to some company, correct?

The city was paying the tonnage bill to either— correct— for the landfill or for— right.

So in the current contract going forward, it's exactly the same.

How are they going to pay?

Are they going to pay?

We are going to pay— we are going to pay the, um, city— the end— no, we're going to pay the end result.

So if If it's going to the transfer station in Fall River, then we will pay the transfer station for the tonnage.

I might have misled you.

The city side.

I don't know where the city— So if the city is no longer getting billed for the tonnage, so the tonnage goes up or down, the city was, the way I understand it, for the last 10 years, they were paying the bill.

So the tonnage company would say, you owe us $125 a ton.

That's what the city got billed.

Right.

From what I understand, the new contract is not going to do that.

That the new contract is built within Capital Waste is now in charge of the tonnage.

But they're still producing.

They still have to produce tipping slips.

So we're not paying.

I'm not paying any bills that I don't have a tonnage slip to pay.

I understand that, Mr. Speaker.

What I'm saying is, when you look at overall, we are now.

Just hoping that the city has a good deal and signed a good deal relative to the tonnage.

The city goes out and says, we negotiated a contract with these folks for $150 a ton, and you, as the CEO here, or the superintendent, said we have our trash and we could get rid of it for $125 a ton.

That's a savings for the school district.

We are beholden to whatever they agreed to.

And my point is we have never been told what is in it.

That's my only concern.

I understand.

It's sort of like tying in the dark, right?

You don't know.

But definitely something should have— I would think that we are paying, we are definitely in the driver's seat, not the school department, as a city, to provide a much cheaper rate than I could have individually with 18, 19 schools going to a hauling site, to whether it's, as I said, whether it's the landfill, um, transfer station, whether it's Crapo Hill, no matter where we would go, we are getting a better rate by the economy of scale going with the city.

I would hope so.

Yeah, logically.

But who knows.

The other piece of it is that what— when you say we're going to get for each of our pickups, I would assume that they're not just going to pick up one school and then go to the— drop it off if they could fit either regular— I'm talking about dumpsters where you could put multiple schools, you keep going down, right?

So we're not going to necessarily get what you suggested of everyone having it.

Now maybe is it the big roll-offs that you saw?

So you'll know.

So to that point, so the roll-offs obviously are one school at a time.

They're picking that school up, it's going to wherever that final site is.

Getting the weight slip, we're getting the weight slip.

On the anything that's not particularly done that way, so if it's a 10-yard front-load dumpster, then that 10-yard front-load dumpster, when we call that that dumpster is full and we get that picked up, the hope is, is that they are picking up 2 or 3 or 4 of our schools at the same time.

That's a piece that we can control because we can, we make the calls, we make the calls, right?

What I'm saying is, at that point, there shouldn't be anything else in that dumpster.

Part of this contract that we negotiated in along with the city is that we're going to do quarterly random checks.

So we're going to look at the pickups quarterly and say, on this month it was 3.2 tons, on this week particular, on this week it was 4.7, and we're going to look at the average over the 3 months and see what that looks like.

That's how we're going to figure out where we are in those individual schools, because I can't afford to put dumpsters at 2-unit schools.

That would just be a waste of, of our dollars.

So those are the only schools that are affected with single uses, is the smaller schools that don't have a compactor.

Yeah, compactors are— there is no way around the compactor.

We're paying for what we put into that compactor.

Right, because you're moving that entire thing.

Exactly.

So I understand, just that I think it's just more complicated than just, you know, on the city side even.

Because now what you're explaining is more work for Capital Waste to have to go back and forth instead of picking up all the city including the schools, the whatever, just putting it all in the truck, you know.

It's making it a little more complicated on their end.

But if they agreed to the contract, which I haven't seen and don't know, I mean, shame on them if they— Yeah, I talked to— I had a conversation with Mr. Pacheco earlier today, and I was talking to Matt Thomas, who negotiates a lot of these.

It's going to be 4 times a year they pick up exclusively the schools.

They go from Doran to Viveris to Green, and they just put school trash in.

Those are the weights they have that they're going to use for their average.

They're not putting any other trash on those trucks.

And I am with you, seems like a lot of work for capital, but they agreed to it.

And they're going to go around and they give us an average.

They're going to do it when it's dead in the summer from June to August.

I think it's like every 3 months.

So they're going to use a dead month, they're going to use the winter, and they're going to use the spring and use the average for us.

If they— if we weren't being overcharged, you know, I would I personally wonder, what's the point?

If we did a historical analysis and we said, for the last 5 years we've spent, I think one time I even said in a public meeting, I think it's too low.

City's not billing us appropriately, 'cause it was, I think, $40,000 or $60,000 for the whole school system or something.

We're about $30,000, for the last 4 or 5 years we've been about $300,000.

Right, so whatever the number is, you know.

Probably just gonna be the same.

You know, if you're in the ballpark, I guess, you know, I just feel like we were in the dark a little bit.

I appreciate the info, but if you can get us maybe the last 5 years of a historical number, I don't want to have you jumping around.

The other thing is, does this now include an exclusive?

Any dumpsters are done by Capital Waste?

Because I know I've seen like Wind Waste.

So there is no exclusivity in the contract that says we have to use them.

What we're hoping with the new contract is, is that I can go exclusively to Capital.

I left Capital on a few buildings because I wasn't satisfied with the service.

It was horrible.

And it was because it was a single room.

It was because they didn't have room on a particular truck, so they didn't pick it up.

The truck was full, the truck was full, the truck was full.

Those were the excuses.

This shouldn't happen now.

It's on the route.

We're going to see how these buildings work out.

And after this quarter, if we feel that they're ready and capable to, to handle the load, then we will go exclusively with Capital.

Yeah, I'm not ready to do that yet.

I know you just said that the service was horrible in those situations.

If you can get any backup relative to that of who was notified at Capital Waste or Easy Waste at the time, because I'd be curious to see that.

I'm assuming it's going to be— it is custodians who are calling and not getting any response over and over.

I understand, I'm not questioning it.

Yeah, I'm just truth but verify.

If that's what was happening, we should know, the people in charge of EasyWay should know, so it's not a surprise to anybody.

We called you 10 times and you didn't answer, we got another call.

But if on the flip side of that, if I talk to or somebody talks to the people over there and they say that's not accurate, Now we got a problem.

So I'm just truth in advertising.

Show us if it was— that was the reason, so be it.

If not, then we got a different set of issues of who was being honest or not honest.

So sure, I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Mr. Diaz.

Thank you.

Um, just to piggyback on my colleague, so just 2 follow-up questions I would have.

And first question, I know this is more of an issue more on the city side.

I don't know if it's an issue on this side.

Do we run into the issue of dumping?

Like, we have our dumpsters, like, out there.

People just throw in their trash as they're walking.

Have we— is there any inkling or evidence of that?

I don't believe that it's any kind of widespread thing.

Every once in a while, I'll see something sticking out of a container that shouldn't be there.

But it's really not that kind of thing.

Like we're not finding couches next to our containers, none of that kind of stuff.

So nothing widespread.

Okay.

Last question is, do we practice or do we like advertise like down the chain of command to principals, to staff, like best practices for throwing out waste to keep the cost down, or is that something we could look into?

So we've done some work on the green team at Durfee has done a lot of work in in trying to move our numbers, so to speak, in the recycling end.

We do our food waste, so we have contracts for food waste at all of our cooking kitchens, and we do have recycling going on in every building.

We do have some buildings that have a recycling bin, a separate cardboard bin, and a trash compactor.

So you have the 3, the MSW recycling.

We also have the food waste going on in some of the buildings.

We are also working on a program, a couple of, not necessarily pilots, but programs that we're working on in elementary and middle and some at the high school where we're using waste diversion.

So where we're going to go a little backwards in time and start using reusable items, reusable forks and knives and spoons, reusable trays so that we can get away from Styrofoam, which all goes to the landfill.

It's not recyclable.

So those are the kind of things that we're doing on that particular piece.

Thank you.

I yield.

Mr. Anger, relative to recycling, what is the mandate in our school buildings about recycling?

The mandate where we— are we supposed to recycle?

Do we have recycling bins at every school?

We have recycle bins at every school, and we do separate recycling from trash where we can.

And cardboard, definitely at every school where we have a cardboard container that's exclusive to just cardboard, especially at our cooking kitchens where we generate the most cardboard.

Can you, uh, through the superintendent, get us any kind of data on the cash receipts for that?

Cash receipts?

Yeah, you know, when you have cardboard that you You know, there's, there's very little market anymore.

Cardboard, it wasn't like it was 10 years ago where we were selling cardboard.

The city is, is getting— so where do you put your cart— separate your cardboard?

We separate the cardboard because we don't want it to go to the more expensive side, which would be the MSW.

But unlike when I was DPW director, cardboard was worth something then.

It's not like it is today.

So we don't separate cardboard anymore?

We do.

Why?

Because we want to keep it out of the waste stream.

But we have recycling.

It's cheaper to have the cardboard picked up than it is to throw the cardboard and add weight to the MSW side.

Meaning recycling?

The MSW is trash.

Right.

So if we put cardboard into the trash, it's gonna fill the dumpsters up and require more pickups.

I guess I'm mistaken that if we pick up recycling, if we have recycling everywhere we recycle, Right.

And you're not getting any different money for the cardboard.

In my mind, you put the cardboard and the recycling in one place so they pick up one thing with the recycling.

They're both waste ban items, so that they, they both need to go to different places.

So none of them are allowed in, in the landfill.

So we have our waste now goes to Crapo Hill in Dartmouth.

So none of those items are allowed to go into the, into the landfill.

They're all banned items by DEP.

So they have to stay outside of the landfill.

So now they have to be separated because they don't go to the same recycling facility.

They go to 2 different places, right?

So where does that go?

I guess I thought we got rid of Crapo Hill City.

Where— well, we're single stream citywide.

We use Crapo Hill.

Next year it changes.

Yeah, it's changing on new contracts.

Crapeauville.

So when you take cardboard, we used to send cardboard, I think, to Mid-City.

Years ago we went to Mid-City because Mid-City was paying.

The cardboard isn't worth anything anymore, so Mid-City either takes it or takes very little of it.

We generate a lot of cardboard.

So nobody's getting cash for cardboard anymore?

If they are, it's pennies.

It's nothing like it was.

You're telling me we have to put recycling and cardboard in separate boxes?

We need to keep it separate.

Yes, at the school level we need to keep it separate because we generate so much.

I, I think we should recycle personally.

I think we should have it in our schools.

When I say that though, when we walk around a school, we should see recycling bins.

We should go in offices and see a recycling bin, things like that.

So I don't think that's happened in the past, so hopefully we just do it across the board.

Thanks.

Okay, anything further on the waste?

Oh, Anna— I mean, I'm sorry, Miss Riley.

Called you Anna.

I'm not supposed to do that.

I'm not supposed to call you by your first name.

Do we do any composting?

We do not.

No back of the house, no front of the house, no compost.

So we, we do separate food waste.

That's the only thing we do.

And the food waste goes to a facility, but we have containers at our cooking kitchens that the food waste goes into.

So back of house, back of house, but that's it.

Yeah, we do not do anything on our own.

We do hire a firm to do that work.

Perhaps an idea for the future.

It reduces a lot of waste, so when you're doing composting front of house, it definitely reduces trash.

So just, just something to be mindful of.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Mr. Monish?

Yes.

Now, um, this price of $300,000, is that included special waste also?

No.

So that, that's a total— as far as special, as far as special acid waste tanks, So no, so the acid waste tank is being done by another vendor.

Another vendor?

Yes.

And that's not part of this contract?

It's not part of our contract here, no.

You're right.

Yes.

All right, next item up.

Just a follow-up.

Could we get a— when we add for the 5-year history, can we get a 5-year history of the acid, like the special waste?

Sure.

Thank you.

3.02 is discussion on our alternative programs, Evolve.

This is from the financial side.

Uh, Mr. CFO.

I know, but I always say it wrong.

I call him Mr. Petronio.

Thank you, Mr. Good evening.

See, I told you, and even after I repeated it, Mr. Petronio.

I call you by your first name like I did her, but I'm not supposed to do that.

So, Mr. Petronio, good evening.

Um, so the request I had was, how are we budgeting, I guess, for the the new programs, the Evolve, the virtual school.

And my understanding in reviewing the budget is most of this is being broken out from the RPS.

So what I provided, which I think you have in your packets, is the budget line items from the RPS.

And my understanding is as we assign teachers to each of those schools, the finance office will move them from the RPS budget to the Evolve budget or to the virtual school budget or wherever they're going to end up.

So it's basically already budgeted, but unless we add new staff, there's no additional cost.

Any questions on Evolve?

Mr. Aguirre?

I guess my— I have a question on all of them.

So I'm trying to open, and I really can't open this, but by my own memory, when we approved the budget back in May, April, whatever, when we went through, we hadn't determined what was gonna happen with Evolve, what was gonna happen with online, RPA.

We still just didn't know at the time.

So we, as a school committee, have budgetary authority and responsibility to create line items and cost centers and the like.

I asked this for several months now because we don't have cost centers with the line items approved by this committee for all of those different programs.

Evolve, online, RPA would be a lot less because right now RPA would be based on what Mr. Petronio said and I agree, the RPA budget was totally bloated.

It was like $3-something, $2-something, $3 million.

And we had, you know, 60 kids walking around the school.

So it was definitely too, too large, and a lot of things needed to change.

But my point is, we as a school committee have never gotten that for it back to us to say, here's how the dust settled, we moved Evolve, uh, the superintendent decided to keep RPA open, here's what the staffing looks like.

So we haven't approved any of these, uh, moves.

Therefore, the positions that we keep seeing being advertised, we've never had a chance to weigh in on, which violates the school committee's right to have budgetary authority.

So I know you're new, and I'm not giving you a hard time.

It's just the fact of the matter is, is we have $3 million— let's say round numbers, maybe I'm wrong— $3.3, $3.3 for RPA.

Then you had Evolve had half a million, whatever the number would be within the Durfee budget.

And then online never even existed.

And then whatever this other thing from 10 to 5 or whatever that was like.

So there's all these different programs.

As far as I'm concerned, I never voted to just say take all of that money, add it together, split it up any way you want, and that becomes our new line items.

Because when we were doing the budget, we had other things that we needed as a committee to make determinations on.

Like we need to move salaries for the new deputy's position to do this.

Like we had other things that we needed to do, but it never came back to the committee.

So I for one think that we are behind, um, on doing that, but we sooner than later need to know what is happening at all the schools, what is happening with the budgets, and we have to vote to approve those line items, which we never did.

So that's my only concern.

The good part is I do think we have enough money to do what we're doing, so it's not like there's a deficit or anything.

But the committee might have plans for some of that $3.3 million because it was— I'll say it— it was a waste last year.

Maybe we have something else that we need to do, like maybe stop a structural deficit moving forward.

But if we just said, oh, okay, let's just wash our hands of it, you all can spend whatever money you want, and I had ideas to say let's put $500,000 towards a potential deficit going forward in the future.

If you all spend the money without approval of the committee, we don't have the chance to say it.

So I'm concerned about it still.

I know it's just here in finance and that's the purpose of it, but that's my main concern and I think we should get on it sooner than later.

So what I've done at this point is I had accounting set up line items for Evolve, basically regular teacher, teacher special ed, regular para, special ed para, and did that for both Evolve and for, um, the virtual school.

And as positions get moved or changed, I'm simply moving the amount that's already been budgeted for that position to those new line items.

So it's just basically reclassifying them at this point.

I haven't seen any additional requests for funds, for new funds.

So, um, yes, as soon as you approve them, I assume that would limit who's being moved to where.

Correct.

And this is the last meeting we have before school opens, so therefore the administration can do whatever they want with all this money and we have no say.

That's my concern.

It's just probably you'd get an agreement from us because it's pretty agreeable board and we want to see these programs thrive and the like.

But I can tell you, when I recall the budget, anybody else can weigh in if they heard differently, we never had a budget presentation saying the online school, for instance, who is the administration and what does the administration look like at an online school?

I'm not asking you a question.

So I don't know.

Then I saw a posting for a department head for the online school.

Then I saw other things for this, and I'm like, Wait a minute, I don't even remember that coming before the committee.

So I know, you know, it could be one or the other, but at the end of the day, my opinion, school committee was circumvented on the line item authority that we have for all the other schools in the budget except for these.

So this sort of is a little bit of a messy situation.

Hopefully we can get out of it sooner than later.

Along the way with that, on the 290 Rock, because these are basically at— all these schools are at 290 Rock, so it's relevant to this discussion.

The budgets for all of those positions, did they include all of the repairs, the new doors, all the things that we promised that we were gonna do down at 290 Rock?

Is that all included in these line items?

No, the only thing I saw included was heating.

I would assume that the general fund for operations and maintenance would have figures that cover the whole district, you know, balances that cover the whole district.

That's not school by school.

Madam Superintendent, do you know?

What I will tell you is we have been pleased that in looking at supporting our students, one of the things that was critical in our human resource office was to make sure we have had certified licensed teachers in each of those programs.

Well, you've had a lot of success with Evolve, and those numbers have— and the goal was certainly to increase as we took those students out of Durfee and put them at 290 Rock.

So I think what you're asking is, at this point, looking at the number of teachers we've hired for Evolve, what is the administration?

We presently had changed a vice principal to a principal because it is a school.

We have certainly switching to the virtual school.

We wanted to make sure also that there was content, not just, you know, you go online.

We wanted to make sure there was oversight for that.

So I know we were looking at, again, our department head of curriculum.

So I think you're asking for us to just take those 3 programs.

We can certainly show you where we're at and what we're trying to hire.

It is a work in progress.

We did have, you know, certainly those numbers to work with and we look at the numbers of students or what the expectations are, we'd want to have certainly the approval of the school committee, but making sure we have some leeway if we increase those numbers throughout the year.

So I think you're just asking for a breakdown of where we're at in each of those 3 areas, sort of.

So like, for instance, you mentioned the vice principal became a principal.

Yes, we took a vote on this board for that move, so that is not one that I'm referring to because We took a vote and said we are modifying, turning, or whatever the wording is, to take the vice principal and make it a principal.

So we took a vote on this stage for that.

I'm just talking about the costs.

No, I get it, but at this point what I'm saying is everything that you just mentioned, we have never taken a vote on.

So we're behind on it.

So we have to try to pull it back, figure out where we're at and where we're going to go.

If there's a savings, there should be a savings because We— I'm not going to sit here this year and allow what happened at RPA last year, that we spent $3.3 million and we had 40 kids walking around the school all day.

I'm not taking— I'm not doing it this year.

So there should be some money left over for certain things.

Then my question, my latest question was all the things we were promised by, we're going to do this, we're going to split the place up, we're going to have these doors, we're going to do— I'm just asking if that's done and where is the money.

Money coming from?

Okay, if it's coming from Mr. Pacheco's side on the maintenance, which Mr. Petronio just hypothesized, then it's not coming out of the $3.3 million that was from RPA.

So all of these questions are just sort of because we have no choice at this point, but I'd like an update on— is everything done?

We're 2 weeks away from school.

Is everything we promised done at RPA?

I know they're waiting for certain materials.

Yeah, we're just waiting for some some doors.

Alarms are going in this week on the pass-through doors, and furniture has already been delivered from other places.

So we are in— we are real close.

They're not— it's not finished as of today.

Yep.

But we are close.

Yes.

Thank you.

So as soon as we can get a running list, and hopefully we're not just filling positions because they have them in the budget, You know, we have to fill what we need.

Same thing with Evolve.

Like, Evolve has 150.

I listened to a radio show, uh, yes, on Friday that Jan Schreiser, the principal, was on.

Said we had 150 students this past year, we have 200 this year.

So if I'm just using that math, it's going up by 25%.

So therefore, if we had X amount of staff, we should go up by 25%, theoretically, you know.

But where, like, in the budget, I can't show you You can't show me, I can't show you, can't show my constituents.

How do we increase to be prepared for that?

So I think what we do is just again look at the 3 programs we're actually hiring.

We'll be able to show you all of those positions.

We'll take a look at any curriculum.

I know we're looking, and I know all of you are aware that when you talk about the programs last year, the expectation is that we make sure kids are just not walking around a building.

We make sure that our students students are supported.

We're looking at having collaboration with Durfee to provide CTE.

We're looking for school-to-work opportunities.

So it is a work in progress.

We'll certainly get you the information that you're requesting.

And again, if anybody— I know there was, and it'll probably come up in the regular meeting, there was a request to go out and look at some of this.

We've had close to 17, I think, summer projects, to go out and take a look at some of the work that's happened.

This is what happens almost in every district.

You get down to the last 2 weeks and you're doing everything you can to make sure student-facing projects are, you know, the priority.

But we're happy to take the committee.

We're trying to set something up and we can take a look at what's happened at the RPA building.

So we're very hopeful.

We will break it down and show you where we're at.

I'm not sure about a cost savings.

If that's what you want us to do, we'll have to take a look at where we can, you know, cut corners, so to say.

So we'll get you the information.

Yeah, so I don't think I need to make this motion, but it's just— this is basically clarifying that each of these is their own cost center.

Does anybody disagree with that?

That's how I've set it up, because if they are recognized schools by the Department of Ed, I have to report on them individually.

Yeah, I just want to make sure everybody's on the same page.

So later on when I say it's cost centers, you can't say no, it's one big huge Opportunity Zone cost center.

It's— each one is a cost center.

Thank you.

Yes, we do have to report, you know, FTEs.

I mean, all of that is reportable.

Some of them could be shared, and that's reported also, correct?

Thank you.

I yield.

Mr. Diaz.

Thank you.

So just to clarify a few things my colleague just mentioned about, um, each of these individual schools will be in, like, reported individually.

So As we know, Evolve is its own, has its own school code.

RPS always has its own school code.

The virtual school, that's its own school code as well.

So you have 3 different schools within one.

If someone can remind me of what we did in a recent budget, because I know this is kind of the issue that we're in.

We approved a budget where, correct me if I'm wrong, Evolve, It's still listed under Durfee High School's budget.

Am I mistaken?

No.

So we just heard from DESE.

We are— all 3 schools have been accepted by DESE.

We all have a different school code.

Brian Michael Azek is putting those school codes into our DESE register, so you'll see it evolve as RPA and the virtual school.

Each one has their own school code, so they're all looking to— looked at as different high schools.

Right.

And so my question is, the budget we just approved, which I was, I was going to ask, what's the process?

I don't know if we need to, um, I'm assuming we need to change something in the budget so it matches the cost centers.

Mr. Petronio, would you think that's what we'll be doing as we move teachers from, say, from Durfee to the program?

In our system, there's orgs and objects that go with them.

The org code shows what building they're assigned to.

So HR will move— what do they do?

In other words, an internal transfer.

They'll transfer them from the org for, let's say, Durfee to the org for Evolve.

That's how it gets broken out.

So, um, if someone correct me if I'm wrong, currently Evolve is under Durfee High School's budget.

The positions in there are under Durfee High School.

If you go— if you open up the budget, it It would be under Durfee, if I'm not mistaken in saying that.

It's either under Durfee or it's under RPS.

Yes.

Okay.

So I guess where the concern comes in for this member is my colleague just mentioned there's positions that are being posted, and I'm not sure where that money is coming from.

So we have an internal policy, and I'm going to give leeway to the administration here, 'Cause I'm assuming you might not even know the policy, but we have an internal fiscal policy on the books where the school committee, there cannot be any moving of positions between cost centers.

And we have cost centers set up per school in this district.

So something that in order to be in conformance with our school committee policy, something that needs to be fixed.

I'm not sure what the situation is, if we're making positions, adding them in between cost centers.

I don't recall taking a vote.

On that, but that is the policy of the school committee which should be followed.

So I'm hoping that we can get an updated budget or something hopefully very soon so we can correct that issue.

I yield.

Anything further on the 3 alternative programs involve RPA or the virtual school?

Mr. Aguilar, can I just ask for somebody to answer that question from Mr.

Dice?

Because I— it's a valid question, and, uh, I I'd ask the superintendent, what, like, how does— how was the process watching the meetings and knowing that the money's coming from all these places?

Has there been any internal discussion amongst you and your leadership team that timeout, we have to go back to the school committee?

Has that ever been a thing here, or is it just we just doing it?

And here's my understanding.

My understanding was you passed a budget, and again, please correct me if I'm not correct here, $3.1 million was for the programs that we just talked about.

Is that figure correct?

No, that's FY26.

FY27 is $3.3 million.

But the answer to that question is no.

So there was no money appropriated for these programs?

Correct.

That's what we're talking about.

So when we said we had— RPA was a bloated budget of $3.3 million, we knew we had to divide that up over the last 2 months since we went over the budget to say this much of that is going to go to RPA.

Once it was determined that it was open, then it was how much is going to go to Evolve and how much was going to go there.

What I believe happened is you and your senior leadership team looked at it and said, we have a $3.1 million, $3.3 million pot of money and we're going to spend it in these ways without coming back to the school committee.

That's my only point.

And I'm saying you probably would have gotten a lot of agreement because we're supportive of these programs.

But the missing link, what Mr. Dias is saying and what I've been saying, is that you don't have the authority as superintendent to take that $3.3 million and spend it in 3 different schools without a vote of this committee.

That's my point.

And that's why we're asking for clarity.

Who in your administration said, timeout, we've been here before, we know the school committee does cost centers and we have to go back to them, let's say at the July 22nd meeting, meeting, or the June 30th meeting, and say, we have to do this.

Who in your leadership team that's been here, did anybody say, timeout, we've got to do this, or is it just, we'll assume that we had $3.3 million and we can divide it up on our own?

I can't answer that yes or no.

Yes, I felt that we had money for the 3 programs.

We've been busy hiring.

This has not come up before.

So obviously, we will take an immediate step back, because we have been hiring for these programs.

And we will put together for you, as, you know, Mr. Petronio said to you, we'll look at the paras, we'll look at our teachers, which is what I just said previously, our administration.

We'll break down the costs, and I guess we'll have to bring it up at our school committee meeting on the 2nd of September.

I don't know, unless you want to schedule a special meeting.

We'll do it as quickly as possible.

I did not realize that.

And I'm not suggesting that we do that.

We're trying to open a school.

We understand.

The only thing we're trying to— I'm trying to get to is how did we get to this point so it doesn't happen again.

At the end of the day, I've sent emails to you, to the deputy, to finance people, to whoever for several months now saying we don't have a budget for Evolve, RPA, and virtual.

I personally have sent those emails to all of you, so it can't be like, well, we didn't know, because I've sent you all emails.

So my point is, maybe just whatever you call it, we knew we didn't understand it, but just please come back to us at the next meeting with what it is and understand that we have to approve those numbers.

So the spending hopefully isn't going to be positions that this committee would say, no, we would never have approved that position.

So we're trusting that the administration is going to only hire the necessary people that we need, and I'm trusting that that's the case.

But this is my first budget with you and the team.

I don't— I'm assuming that you're gonna do that.

I'm in favor of adding more positions.

I'm gonna vote for one later on today to give you and these kids the resources that they need.

So I'm not saying that— just somebody just needs— needed to acknowledge, yeah, we were operating under this and it was under false pretense.

But I yield, and hopefully we get a better answer.

Thank you.

Okay, I just got one question for Kevin, are you saying that that $3.3 million was not left in the budget we voted on?

No, it was there, but it's now— it's all under RPA.

I thought you meant that we were adding another $3.3 on top of the budget.

Okay, it's basically listed under RPA.

Gotcha.

And they had these grand ideas to move all that money.

I got you now.

I just thought you made it sound like there's nothing in the budget for it.

No, we got $3.3.

Okay.

I believe at least half a million dollars of that should be saved for the— for the future.

We'll see how it plays.

Thanks.

3.03 is the discussion of the budget in general, which I guess we've kind of been doing.

Is there anything that Mr. Petronio wants to tell us on that?

Yes, I gave you all a packet that I put together for the entire FY26 fiscal year.

So basically it would be like my end-of-year packet.

It's also described, I saw in the notes, as a 4th quarter.

Since it is the 4th quarter, it is the end of the year.

I just wanted to show you on the first page of it, if you have it there, the summary, that basically we're balanced to zero, which means we've spent all the funds and we've met net school spending.

Well, we've met net school spending after the Department of Ed gets the end-of-year report and agrees, but substantially we've met it.

You can see that the In the balancing, the salary line item had a surplus of 1.2 and the non-salary was negative 1.2.

And a quick analysis of that was I found that you didn't— you weren't able to fill every position last year, so you went to outside agencies, which is basically contract services.

So the money went from salary line items to contract services, the companies you've hired to fill positions to get there.

If you go to the second page, I broke it all out by cost center.

Everyone, you'll see some ended with a positive, some ended with a negative.

That's useful to me in that when I'm developing the FY28 budget, I'll be able to go through and look at what cost centers were overfunded and what cost centers were underfunded and make recommendations on how to balance that out.

Because during the year, things change.

You know, more IEPs come in, more one-to-one paras are needed.

So that could put a, a, you know, a particular cost center or a particular school in a negative position.

And at the same time, you could have, um, 1-to-1s that go away because, uh, someone's IEP no longer requires it.

Student goes from middle school to high school, no longer requires a 1-to-1.

So you'll see that go away.

So that allows me to break to— in forecasting, uh, move those numbers around.

And the third section of it, the way I did it was an overall summary, salary to non-salary, then cost center, budget by budget, and then a detail of every one of those.

And these are all printed directly from Munis, so the, the descriptions of the line items are what were originally set up in the chart of accounts.

And there's only so many spaces, so you'll see a lot of abbreviations in there.

You can basically make out what they're for.

This breaks down, so if I see that I've got a cost center that ended in the negative, I can go through and see exactly what line.

If I see it's out-of-district placements that was in the negative, I can look and say, oh, we had 2 or 3 more students go out of district this year.

So next year I'll talk to the special ed department and say, do we have— we had 112 students this year, we're going to have 112 or 115 next year?

And that'll help with developing the budget for the following year if I realize there's more.

If they say, oh, we have 5 students that have aged out that we won't have, I'll know I can reduce that line item in the following budget.

And the same thing, go through and look at the costs of the heating oil and other expenses.

And again, in building the budget, like right now, oil is out of control.

So if we were doing a new budget right now for, for next year, I'd probably increase it by 20%, you know, 15%, um, in hopes that it doesn't go that high.

But that's what I use all those for.

And again, this allows you an opportunity to look through.

If you have questions, you can email Email me, I'll go through and I'll research.

I'll, you know, if it's like the trash, if you say, why is the trash so expensive at this one school?

We'll go and we'll pull the slips.

We'll find out and get you the information and say, here's what's happening at this one school.

It's the culinary program there that goes through a lot of food and that creates a lot of waste.

Again, it's again for all your purposes.

This report is what I will use to produce the end-of-year report.

Which is basically all of our costs item by item go to the Department of Ed, line item by line item, and in turn create our statistics, which in turn for the following year, they go every district-wide across the state.

They determine what our reimbursement should be for every area of the budget.

If they see that everybody's salary across the state went up 3%, when they do next year's Chapter 70, they try and adjust their numbers to meet that.

Same thing, they try and adjust their numbers to meet health insurance.

They try and adjust it to meet heating oil.

It's all broken out line item by line item.

And that's— the end of year report is, for a district this size, is probably a 2-month project to do.

The Department of Ed gives you 1 month, but they understand larger districts like this require about 2 months because you have so much detail in there.

That gets uploaded to them.

And they in turn, they analyze it, and that helps them prepare the Chapter 70 for the following year.

So as I dig more into this budget, I'll know a lot more of it specifically, but there's a pretty good amount of detail in this report.

The second report, I haven't had a lot of time to really look at, but these I went in and looked at all the revolving and special revenue accounts that the school department has.

Some of them have balances.

Some of them, my guess, haven't been used in quite a while.

But I'll go through them one by one to determine whether they can be closed out, whether they're worth it to keep open, or whether we can spend them.

If they've got balances we can spend, I always try and move any general fund item that I can to a grant, because we want to use up the grant funds first and save the local money, which is the city money, as best as we can.

So there's quite a few, there's 2 or 3 pages of it, and over the next couple months before the next budget's in place, I'll be going through each one of those to see exactly, you know, what they're used for, whether the money has to be returned if it's, if it's expired, or whether the money's still available, and we'll, you know, try and budget for those funds.

So with that, if you have any questions.

Thank you, Mr. Petronio.

Mr. Dias.

Thank you.

When I'm looking— when I saw this for the first time, I looked at this list and I was like, wow, we actually have a lot more revolving accounts than I thought.

I don't think we've ever received like this— someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe we ever received this extensive of a list.

I think we just went over the major ones.

And when I'm looking at this for the first time, like some of these I know why we have them, why it makes sense, but then I see some, for example, I think there's one for the, actually multiple for the Bristol County Training Consortium.

Um, I see one here for like a Microsoft, um, some sort of Microsoft, um, settlement, which I have no idea what that is as a member of the school committee.

I think, would you agree, Mr. Petronio, there's some in here that Um, maybe we can look at the consolidating.

Like, there's one here for a family trust.

I don't know what that would be for.

If I'm assuming that's some sort of donation.

Exactly, it was a donation.

Maybe it's a scholarship account.

I'm not sure where— if families donate scholarship monies to the school system, if you have a place we put them or not, if there's a 501 or whether we keep them in a, you know, revolving account.

Right.

I know, I know I had a meet a conversation with the superintendent this week around possibly, um, having the, the district form some sort of 501, either, um, indirectly— I, I know it's hard to do directly, but indirectly— so we can have more.

We, we had one, um, in Brockton that was about half a million dollars, and the superintendent took over, we raised it to about $1.2, $1.3 million just by looking for for donations, for asking for donations and, and building up that account.

So it's absolutely possible.

When you call that donations, I think, you know, to clarify a little bit, we reached out to alumni, people that had special areas they wanted to, you know, support in the district, whether it was athletics, you know, whether it was the sciences.

So you're correct, but it, but it was something that we had to form outside of the Brockton Public school.

So Fall River could do something very similar, a 501.

You set up a board, uh, you set up accounts.

I mean, we pulled a lot of accounts.

5 pillars, I think.

I'm sorry, you had 5 pillars: sports, education, um, I think the rest of them, uh, scholarship.

But it's something we could look at if you're looking to consolidate or start 501.

Last question I have is just on the, um, McKinney Bento.

The $715, is that the same amount we've had years past?

Has that fluctuated this year at all?

From what I— in going over the transportation budget, from what I saw was these were funds that were left over during the COVID period where we stopped running buses.

So, and a lot of that will be used up this year as we go through the transportation program.

So if we save money, that you know, we'll use less of it.

But, uh, once we get school up and running, we'll see exactly what a translation is going to cost, and we'll go over the ad hoc committee on that.

So it's not the plan currently of the administration to keep a balance for like a rain— even for a rainy day purpose?

Yes, in McKinney-Vento.

In the McKinney-Vento, um, we will have— well, if everything goes as budgeted for this year, we'll have almost a couple hundred thousand left over in there.

So as a balance— but the way McKinney-Vento works, McKinney-Vento is a reimbursement.

So if we use regular operating funds and pay for McKinney-Vento transportation, we get about 80% of that money back next year as a reimbursement.

But if we use reimbursement funds we've already received from McKinney-Vento, we get nothing back the next year.

So Um, it's done in such a way that you really shouldn't be building up a big balance.

You really should be using it all.

So the reason we have a balance again is because abruptly we stopped doing transportation during, during COVID So you received your reimbursement in, but it wasn't being spent because no buses were running.

I think there should be a conversation around keeping a small portion in there for, uh, Let's say we have 10 new students that move into the district.

As you know, those numbers can add up, and we don't want to run into the situation of where we have to go to the city asking for more, for more money.

So I— my understanding was we approved the, the transportation budget with, um, without using any of the McKinney-Vento, like that, that set couple hundred thousand dollar buffer.

There should be almost $200,000 left over this year.

Right.

I'm— as one member, I'm in support of keeping it in some sort of buffer for a rainy day.

Either way, the transportation obligation is of the city.

So if we were to begin running short on funds, we would have to go to the city and request additional funds.

So— or at least go to this committee and discuss it here and then go to the city.

Thank you.

I yield.

Mr. Aguirre, on that particular note, so the list that you have here, revolving accounts from Eunice.

Yes.

I would assume, and I just want to get clarification, that all of these accounts that are listed here are under the discretion of the school committee, school department.

That's my understanding, is the way the city— the system is set up, any org that begins with a 2 is school department.

Any org that begins with a— that's regular operating funds.

Anyone that begins with a 4 is our revolving and special revenue accounts.

So as I go through them one by one— you said our, like, meaning school department?

Meaning school department, yes.

So Mr.

Dice is asking about the $715,000 in McKinney-Vento.

Yes.

By seeing it on here, it's a school committee account, so the city can't just raid that account without a vote of this They can't just— the city can't just say we're gonna go into the school revolving accounts and raid it.

No, can't do that.

No, they could say this has to be used for your transportation because that's what, that's what it's for.

Transportation.

I understand, but we have to vote for that is my point.

It's a revolving account on our side.

If it's on our thing here with a 4 under your report for revolving accounts that are under the school committee, the city can come to us and say we want to use it, which I personally would agree with, but that you just can't reduce that number without having the vote of the committee, right?

So the way I've noticed the budget— I looked at the past 2 budgets as Kevin Almeida prepared them.

He had his revenues basically from the operating funds from this, from the city.

He'd list funds from, um, from Circuit Breaker, and he'd also list funds from Kenny Vento.

So when you approved the overall budget, it was described in there.

So you voted once for all the different different sources of funds that are being used.

But if it said— the budget that we approved said $1.4 million for McKinney-Vento.

Correct.

The same thing said an expense of $2 million for McKinney-Vento.

Correct.

To me, that makes no logical sense when we were going over this transportation thing back and forth with the city and everything.

But when I'm looking at this report here, it says $715,000.

So that— when you say there's going to be a couple hundred thousand left over, How is that number going to go from $715,000 to a couple hundred thousand without a vote of this committee to spend that money down?

I'd have to go back and look, but I think if the report that the prior CFO put out had $2 million in it, it had $2 million listed as the expenses and $1.4 million as the revenue, right?

So the additional would have to be Yeah, so like 1.4 is what we approved in the budget, sort of like backdoored it through the thing.

This 715 has nothing to do with the 1.4.

Correct.

Because this is carried over.

So it has nothing to do with the 1.4.

So in order for this to be used, any of these line items to be used by you, you gotta come to the school committee to say we wanna take the money out for the following reasons, or we take a vote to take it, and then you will have that authority.

Correct.

Thank you.

The third item was the long one.

It's like 14 pages.

I had the same question that was on the— at the last Senate said McKinney-Vento homeless transportation, page 14 of 14.

And it said negative $72,000.

Page 14.

Page 14 of the one with the Muniz report.

I had a whole bunch of pages.

I only have 11.

Oh, sorry, it's 14 on my screen, 11 on your page.

Oh, because there was 3 pages at the top some other way.

So page 11 at the bottom is the student transportation, $165,000 to the good, $72,000 to the negative on this homeless transportation.

Correct.

So basically it was breaking out the costs, showing you that the homeless ended up costing you more than what was budgeted.

So, but the debt— but it was made up since it's within the same category.

The funds were basically made up by the student transportation, the line item right above it.

So the net effect was $93,000 remainder of a budget of $13 million.

Right, so that $93,000, if we put the money into an account, the city didn't spend it, the city has that $93,000 to start with in the current year.

So therefore the city has $93,000 in savings from what we just had that haggling over.

Well, right, but you're looking at one line item.

If you look at all 11 pages, that money basically is in the second page here with my positive and negatives.

So that money is used to balance out the overall account.

But we can't take transportation money to balance our budget.

You can if it's used for any education purpose.

It's not just transportation money.

McKinney-Vento can be used for certain programs for students.

It can be used for transportation and it can be used for tutoring.

So there's other programs within the budget.

Interesting.

Maybe we could get a 5-year request looking back to see how much McKinney-Vento money was actually used for the purpose that you just described.

OK, because we've always been told it's just for transportation only.

Now I know there's expenses and, and the like, so just knowing that, you know, if you get a 5-year look back, how much money did we spend out of McKinney-Vento reimbursements for those things, or did they continue to come out of the school budget?

There's a certain percentage of what you can use from the money that comes I don't know exactly what it is, but there's a percentage.

I think what Kevin's saying is how can the city allocate transportation money to be used for tutoring when transportation is solely our responsibility?

If that number said $200,000 short and we had to get $200,000 for school transportation, we'd have to do it.

I'm not gonna do it for tutoring if it's coming out of the same line.

I think what's happened over the— I'm guessing, just totally a guess.

Is that in the past we were just told the McKinney-Vento reimbursements from the state are for transportation only.

What Mr. Petronio is talking about, from what I believe, is when we submit requests to get reimbursed for expenses under the McKinney-Vento state number, we include tutoring, other things potentially to try to raise up our reimbursement rate.

'Cause theoretically, if it's a reimbursement, why are we getting reimbursed and then If it's only for transportation, how do we pay for tutoring or anything else out of it?

So my only question was to take a look back and see what— Right, if that line item has been overspent every year, then there's been no extra.

Ms. Riley?

It's being subsidized.

I yield, I yield.

Ms. Riley?

So just a clarification.

I always understood there to be 2 pots of money.

There was McKinney-Vento transportation funds, and then there's McKinney-Vento funds that are used for exactly what you're talking about.

Tutoring, it could be anything, any kind of supply a student might need who's homeless.

It can include clothing, it can include a bus pass, it includes many things.

So those 2 line items are separate.

This cost center says transportation, so I'm assuming these funds are for transportation only.

Yes, and it was overexpended by $72,000.

So that was the— but the overexpense was covered, was regular transportation money covered it.

Right.

So let me ask you a question.

Because I believe McKinney-Vento transportation is a year in arrears, so technically in the following year we would be allocated more funds because we overspent the previous year's funds?

All that they would see is the total spent.

They don't know that it's overspent.

They'll just see the total spent and then we'll get it.

So they'll see that increased, so then our numbers— Exactly.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay.

Anything further?

Uh, Miss Stewart, I have 2 questions.

One is on heating.

I asked the question previously on something else.

I don't understand how all the schools have something so different.

Some of the schools paid $20,000 in heating and some schools paid $2,000 in heating.

I just don't understand how schools are so different in their heating bills, and $20,000 is just so drastic.

Yeah, so, um, so the Talbot School is electric, fully electric, so it may not fall under heating.

But when we look, it's not even just Talbot.

Like, I'm looking here, so we can say Sylvia, they were— they went $145,000, so it was like minus $95,000.

But then another school, you know, they were positive $5,000.

So like, it just— even when I looked at the bills, is when I was signing the bills, is when I questioned them.

A literal bill that I was Signing was $20,000 for a bill, and I said this is astronomical.

I don't want to sign it because I don't understand.

So then they sent me the bill because we don't actually get the bill when we're signing it.

They sent me the bill, and the actual bill was $20,000.

I don't understand.

So the bill was again because I'm blind here, so I'm trying to answer a question that I don't have any information on.

However, was it a was it a national grid bill?

Was it a national grid bill?

Right.

So the national grid bill would be.

Be an electric bill, not a fuel, correct?

Right.

So that, that would be just a different situation.

Maybe on the heating here, but it may be, it may be a total utility account.

So it could be electric and natural gas.

So there may be Liberty utility bills that may be coming in also with that electric bill.

Some of them were utility, um, utility was a gas bill too, so they weren't on all things.

So if I just need to understand if somebody can just help me to understand why the bills are $20,000.

Some of them were a gas bill.

Yeah, I would have to see it.

Yes, so I could just help you to understand that for the future.

Sure.

My, and my other question is also for you too.

So as far as Stone tuition, Stone tuition has nothing was spent, but we spent, we bought those vans out of Stone tuition.

So do we not pay for the vans yet?

I don't know.

I, again, I don't have any— anything other than the spreadsheet here, so I can't— it's just— so, you know, remember the 2 vans that we had got from— for the high school?

The vans wouldn't have been paid for yet.

So we don't pay for anything in advance for the vans?

No.

Oh, okay.

All right, that was my other question.

I yield.

I'm sorry, anything further?

One more.

Sorry, quick one.

So do we have some schools that are heated with electric heat and some with gas?

So we have one school that's heated fully electric, which is Talbot.

And we have other schools that have a combination depending on what fuel they use, what equipment they're using.

If they're using heat pumps, they're all electric.

So it'll all depend on what— how the building has been upgraded.

For instance, we do have heat pumps at other schools other than just, um, Watson is heat pumps now.

It used to be natural gas.

We have a combination there, though.

We do have boilers in that school.

So a lot of them are both.

The electric bills are— when you see a building like Talbot where it's totally electric, the only gas appliances we have in there are cooking and the generator.

Everything else is totally electric in that building.

But it was built that way, so it's already on a different rate from the utility company.

Thank you.

Anything further?

Item number 4, new business.

Anything in the new business come before Finance?

Mr. Aguirre, I just wanted to say, under, uh, we had mentioned when we were scheduling this meeting that there's a job request from the administration which I referred to later that I think I support, but that the protocol is that all new job descriptions get vetted by a subcommittee.

And we did not have a special ed alternative ed subcommittee scheduled.

So the request was to put that on this finance committee, sort of checking that box to say that we vetted it in a subcommittee.

So it's on the full agenda, we'll go over it then.

But I just wanted to say that's the reason why it would have been in here.

Otherwise, if we had plenty of time and this wasn't urgent for— to try to get somebody in to help the kids, we would have had a subcommittee meeting because that's what we've always established.

New positions, new job descriptions go to a subcommittee that's relevant.

Facilities, we had 2.

We're going to talk about them today.

But I just wanted to say, for everybody's edification, that we're not like just throwing it to the full committee.

This was meant to be subcommittee.

I yield.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Motion to adjourn Finance.

I have a motion and a second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

Unanimous.

We're adjourned out of Finance.

Do we want to keep going?

Does everyone want to take a couple minutes?

Take a recess, please.

All right, 2— just 2, 3 minutes, that's all.