were changed and i could not figure out why they were changed. the revenues went up. it was not by much, but it went up by $300,000 or so. i do not know where that came from. the expenses went down i guess $2.50 million. i am just curious. where did we cut? and there is i guess the revenue -- these numbers below would be related to how you answer it. there is one more question. at the bottom of the page, if you could explain -- at the bottom note, there are benefits cost increases and for low savings. in the june 14 document, you have put $5,368,000.

it was reduced in this document to $2,687,000. i want an explanation of how that happened. that is on page 46 and i have questions on two other pages. >> before you start, could i point out one thing? i just wanted to say that the first reading document that the vice president is pointing out -- it is true that there were some different figures two weeks ago. what i want to emphasize is that the three-year projections, the numbers that were shown in the power point from last tuesday, are consistent with the numbers in the second reading document. in case you were wondering whether these numbers have

changed since last tuesday, the answer is no. we can explain what the adjustments are that were made. vice president yee: things for the explanation. last week, i was looking at those numbers only and was not comparing it. i do not need any detailed information. a general explanation is fine. >> the numbers in the presentation are the numbers of the second reading after the book went to print for the first reading. there were some corrections that were found and incorporated in the second reading. they are primarily corrections to some revenue numbers. for instance, the revenue number changed a little bit because the first reading had a $488,000

pass-through of rainy day reserves to the charter schools. then i did a report that was an oversight on my part of not incorporating that as a line- item expenditure. so the second reading is an attempt to make the numbers agree with that report. but they are primarily technical corrections. vice president yee: you mentioned 400 something thousand, but the expenditure went down by $2.50 million. which is good. i would just like to know where you made the corrections. i guess i want to make sure the we are not cutting something you would not want to cut. >> one of those corrections was the rainy day pass through. it will be an expenditure. it just was not -- because i

failed to incorporate it into the report, i took it out of the second reading book. but when we do get the rainy day amount, there will be a to regulation and there will be a portion set aside for torture schools. the other correction is in the way benefits -- the benefit rates for calculated. in reassessing some of those benefit costs, these were lowered, which resulted in additional savings to the district on benefit costs. vice president yee: is that what i am looking at on the bottom of the page in page 46, where the calculation was basically 50% off? >> correct. the number you are looking at at the bottom really is an attempt to -- first of all, it is a real

challenge to pin down exactly what our savings are from the increases in the step and colorado -- and column. we have the 6.5% increase in salaries offset by the contribution to retirement. a lot of these are moving costs. this is more of a plug number to add up to the change in the fund balance of $28 million. vice president yee: thank you. and on page 48 -- this might really be related to page 46. it is just that when i looked at it i was tying the pages together.

on the total unrestricted general fund revenues, the last total item on that page before you get into the notes, there was an increase on the revenues as compared to the document that two weeks ago of about -- it is the some $300,000, it looks like. >> that is due to be passed through to the charter schools. it is a strict pass through. the first reading had a number that was $4.10 million. the second reading is 4.472. that was an error in the first reading which has been corrected. it really has no impact on our fund balance.

it is a pass through. we get the revenue and it goes to the charter schools. the expenditure has been adjusted appropriately. vice president yee: on page 52, on the fiscal year 2011-12 colorado -- column, on my notes it says that right here it shows some reduction. in the documents two weeks ago, there was nothing there. where did this number come from , 1,897,000? >> as i mentioned earlier, when i revisited the budget, the detailed line items, there were

adjustments made to some of the benefit line items. this is specifically related to workers' comp. we over budgeted on workers' comp. looking at what our exposure is, that amount was reduced. it was a little too late after the fact to incorporate it into every department budget. so this was put as a lump sum amount, as an offset to expenditures. vice president yee: i think you might have already explained this other one that had a zero amount here for the pass through. you already explained that. thank you very much. commissioner wynns: i want to start by making some comments on this parking lot list. i appreciate having that.

i actually think some of these things are a little too specific. i think more appropriate for us is to say is this a generalized problem. for instance, even though it is listed here because it has a budget impact, i really want to know whether we have done things in the past few years that are impacting enrollment at schools on an ongoing basis, if we have lot more kids into kindergarten. that has a facilities impact for which we have not planned, which is budgetary but also has a planning impact. i would ask that these things be looked at. for instance, the star art music comments that we heard -- i asked last week that the budget

hearing if you could tell me what is going on. this is my issue about what are we doing with those dollars. can we look at them through a different line so we understand what we are doing, not just how many people we are hiring and what their benefits are. i want to know that. i want to know what we are actually doing. if you look at the central budgets in this book and see the explanation of what they do, it does not actually say -- they say we provide this or that, but it does not say we do it by teachers listed in our budget who are assigned to schools, or they do this. we would know what we are actually doing with that money. i would like that. i particularly am interested in that for the credit recovery issue. i want to make the case which may be is different than what commissioner norton has said.

the loss of summer school has a big impact on lots of people. i understand that. but i would like to hear from the staff what the plan is from the staff point of view. we have heard from the public many times about providing the necessary support for our kids to meet the increased graduation requirements that we have imposed on them and that we think are going to be good for them in the future, if we can get them there. for instance, i know that in the past when we have had summer school and instituted saturday school, those services were used not very much by people needing to meet rhetorician requirements, but for a purpose that i think is wonderful, which is in richmond or advancing themselves, people who are interested in that.

i want to do that, but i want it to be part of our plan to get these requirements and provide the support people need. this year, to the generation of the city, we had summer school that was specific only to ninth graders who failed a-g classes. that was a different way of looking at the solution to this problem, from a budgetary point of view. i think we should do that. it does not mean i don't want to. i hope we can get the resources to have a summer school for everybody that wants to go, which i do think it addresses the issue of lost time for kids who come back to school not as prepared to start over as they do if they are able to have more enriching educational experiences in the summer. there may be other complex aspects to this. i know that looking at the cost

of summer school, one time we had one-third of our kids in summer school, to state funding for the most part. there is this issue of equity goals. i would like to hear the budget view on the staff discussion about credit recovery and other support services needed for equity goals. it would not only be, as it says here, other strategies to support more students the first time they are enrolled. that is my comment on the parking lot list. i would like it to be generalized more for us, not just flip through them in this order. others might disagree with that. and i have the same kind of questions for staff, some of which we have heard already.

generally, i want to say i find it difficult. for anybody that does not know, i think the budget is far more accessible to people. it is all of the narratives in the front. i do recommend to people that they read the whole narrative if they want to understand the budget. it is extremely helpful. but i think that the number pages are less -- we can still improve on them. let's put it that way. again, i would like to see the department of budgets tell me actually what we do. obviously, i understand this is transferred directly. we need to know how many fte's we are spending to each department. but that does not tell us or the public what they are doing with the money, and i think we need that. as well, i think we need the

ability, maybe in selective ways, to compare the budget last year to the proposed budget for this year. we are spending a lot of time going like this. almost no one else is looking at the budget either online or in printed form with both books or in front of them were both budgets available. i realize that i -- it is almost impossible unless you spend all your time doing it to know what the numbers are and where that may be significant. i actually would like to see some references, which i have to say are in the budget, which are much smaller and less complex -- someplace in the budget where it says these are the significant deviations. instead of us having to say what is that, if you said you are

seeing -- last year, we did some of the flexing. we also reorganize some of the departments. i ask the question, why we had 47 counselors listed in a department and there were not there next year. there were someplace else. if those things were explained, it would be easier for us to get a handle on what we are doing differently and where the cuts are showing up in the budget. i have a couple of specific questions, not very many. in the narrative on page 13, where it says other factors at the bottom of page 13 -- in last year's book, there was reference to the savings, just to keep it on summer school and evening school. i understand we have already canceled that and realize the salary savings. but there are other places in

the document where it says maintaining the reduction. i just want to check and make sure that there is some reason for not including that. >> are you asking for not including the original expenditures? commissioner wynns: in the narrative. it does not make clear to people that it is one of the major cuts we made and we are not proposing to add it back. by having no reference there, in the budget pages, in the exhibits, you see that cut. the reason you see it is because last year's line is in there as well. those are significant budget- cutting strategies which i hope we will not be doing any more, but we know we will. a thing by leaving those out in

some places we are leaving out a vital piece of information. i do want to talk a little bit and ask some questions about the special education budget, some of the same questions i asked last week. again, by my numbers, a little repetitious -- as i understand it, what we are talking about is increasing the general fund support to special education by $8.40 million. i would kind of like to know why. we discussed this at the committee as a whole, but i do think for budget purposes i want to know what we are spending that on. i think we should, for the public and ourselves, take note of the fact that education transportation from the general fund is reduced by $800,000 from

last year, which is what we have been looking for. i am happy to hear about that. we have some reference in the committee as a whole but were told these numbers were in flux. we should all -- the impending strokes we were all going to have when we heard the general fund encroachment was likely to grow by 20 million -- it is now less than half of that. but i would still like to know why that is growing in that way and if we think it is temporary and not going to keep on growing. we will all be in the hospital together otherwise. that is my question about that. i do not know if anybody wants to answer that before i ask another one. >> another assistant

superintendent is joining us. as we said at last week's committee as a whole meeting, the single biggest reason why that contribution is growing by that magnitude is the expiration of the idea era funds. that has represented about 6 by $5 million of funding. -- $6.50 million of funding. commissioner wynns: if we could see the sort of trajectory of the growth of general fund support for special ed and some information for why that is -- i am hoping, because our three was that by reorganizing we would be saving money, that we will eventually. if you could explain to us -- what i am hoping is that we are double funding things now by a kind of doing it the old way and hiring people to do it the new

way. is that significant? will that change? when these things that will, what year? do you imagine it might change? >> i will take a stab at that. you are correct that there are a number of things we are doing right now that are on top of the things that we eventually hope to not be doing. we hope to be reducing some of the expenditures that are less effective. you are correct in that. a few weeks ago, i did have something sent out that laid out specific ways i think we are going to be able to be more efficient in our spending as we move forward. i would be happy to try to recap some of that from memory and also to resend it. commissioner wynns: i am concerned because we have had a lot of good discussion that has

been helpful to me about the kinds of changes we are making. we did have a discussion at the committee as a whole about having to have at least temporarily more paraprofessionals for more conclusion -- more inclusion or less isolation of disabled kids, which is a good thing. i will tell you what i am most stumped about, what i know the least about. i would like to have come through a budget lens, somebody talk about the difference in the assignment of teachers. i do not mean the mechanism, although i am interested in that as well. what do we think could be the budget impact of not having so many special education classroom teachers, and when do we think such a change would happen? and do we think that is going to result in significant budget

savings? these are structural things where for me there is a disconnect between what i know, which is limited, about the kinds of structural and instructional changes we are making, and budget impact. this is all i get about the budget, which is just a whole bunch of numbers. for me, it is not very connected to the strategy and how that might come in the end, we hope -- not only hope, but believe, because of what we know, is going to result in better instruction, better outcomes, and savings. i am missing the savings peace, how it is related. >> in the audit report from the urban special education collaborative, they spent a lot of time on the topic of our programmatic approach to providing special education. the categorize children into

programs. they asked us to move to a service-delivery orientation and a more integrated way of serving the kids. as we do that, it will help. but we do have a couple of hurdles to overcome. our current labor relations, our teacher contract, is formulated in the programmatic model, with very rigid class size and program descriptions. that becomes something that needs to change. we need to agree on a new way to calculate workload. we all want to make sure special ed teachers do not have an unbearable workload. we need new ways to calculate that. that will help us greatly. it is going to take time for people to begin to use a different paradigm in how they think about laying out the services for children. but that will really help us in

potentially freeing up staff to be used more flexibly. at the same time, as we do professional development, staff will build their capacity to provide services. the work we are doing around improving instruction overall and the core curriculum is really going to help. the other recommendation in the audit report around implementing tier systems of intervention around academics and behavior will help. as we know as we look at that, that is called rti, focusing on the court, a solid frame and foundation of instruction. that is ultimately going to help all kids be successful. that will help us rely less heavily on paraprofessionals and help us integrate the services into our classrooms so we do

not have rigid recommendations for many kids to be served in a self-contained model. it is called inclusion because the kids would need heavier staffing. it is always good to come together, and it takes some time. commissioner wynns: this is what this budget made me think of. can you say to us -- i do not mean today, but could you give us something that looks at the changes in our paradigm, turning this battleship? if he said to me -- i read the report. i agree with all of those things. but there is not anywhere in that report that says we think a service model for this many kids with these many disabilities would look like this as far as staffing. now you have as many. you might have teacher is doing these things, this many.

then you could, with help from our budget staff, tell us what that might cost in today's dollars, based on today's contracts. all that we know today. then we would have some idea. for me and i think other members of the board, we were a bit taken aback. that is not what we believed would happen. we thought the first year we began to implement this change, the evolution to the service model, we would tremendously increased general fund support. i understand the issue of other funds we had before, but we did not have those a few years ago and were not spending $20 million more than we are now. do you understand what i am talking about? i do not want to get panicked over this and think we cannot afford it. in recent weeks, when i have been telling people how much our general fund is now, people are

as panicked as i am. we obviously do not have enough information about how this might work. >> i feel really lucky to be able to look, to some degree, from our budget back to the special ed budget i had in st. paul. it was similar. the same size child care. very similar demographics in terms of ethnicity, poverty, and things like that. i actually had more teachers and about the same number of paras, and the same size budget as this. we were spending less money on some other things. it is really some of those other things we are doing now that are going to take us a while to do differently. we can do them more cost

effectively. but the change cannot happen as quickly as we would like it too. it is in those areas rather than the number of teachers. we do not seem to have too many teachers. this is always its own issue. the other thing is maybe there is someone who has done a study of the general fund contributions to special lead across california districts. in minnesota, we had someone who did that kind of work on an annual basis. if we could get a hold of that, we could see if we are off track from other districts. it seems like a big number, and i do not know if it is. commissioner wynns: we should look at that. the last thing is i brought this up before and have been thinking about this since the committee as a hall meeting. i want to put this on the table for us as a structural budget issue.