amendment to this budget because i feel like i must. at the committee meeting of the whole, i reminded the board that in 2009 and 2010, we had 9 /#1911,294 being put towards [inaudible] our vehicle for violence /pr*efpbs. and so at that time the board elected to allocate -- last week you hear me saying i didn't think enough money. so i'm so glad you heard me and allocated additional funds to this. however, the additional funds i was asking for was 274 thousand dollars. you upped this, which

i think is great and very generous. also to this budget, can meet the 911 thousand dollars that was originally planned for this. i heard the talk about restorative practices, but i feel like they were trying to do it on a shoe string budget. i would like to make an amendment that we allocate up to so as you know, this is an expensive endeavor. it is very expensive to try to ship around. it is changing the culture of our schools. we're on the tip right now of

doing that. i think we wanted to see it actualized that these additional funds -- not a lot of money -- 43,430 extra to this budget. so i'd like to make the amendment that we bring up the total funding of the restorative practices to 911 thousand. >> you have made a motion. >> yes. i have. >> we have a second. now there is a motion on the floor for an amendment to the budget. so just to state it clearly, you are proposing that we add another 43,000 to the restorative budget. >> from where? >> it'd be helpful to know from where. >> i would take that from the reserve. so the reserve would

be minus 43,430 dollars. >> it's possibly an unfair question, but can you sort of give us a sense of what the impact of taking money out of the reserve and putting it back into something else is? >> i think the best thing for me to say is this is symbolic decision either way. i think it's a policy call for the board to make. the unrestricted general fund balance is really another term for the reserve. as you know, the test that we have to meet every year and for two years following the budget year is that we are meeting all of our

financial obligations and maintaining 2 percent of our budget in terms of expenditures. we have a large budget and 43,000 dollars will need to come from somewhere, and it is something that, at your direction, we will find a cut at some other part of the budget to offset that. so i think it's a decision for the board of education unless superintendent have another point of view. >> may i add something? i just wanted to mention that -- so we were at the level of 664,000 for many years. i think this is an opportunity, we have the money now, the trigger hasn't been pulled, there is a little bit more money and i think it was a testing ground for restorative practices and i

think we've seen is that people want this type of strategy, we want to implement them in their schools, they want the coaches to make it real. my fear is if we keep it at this amount that you recommend, that it will stay at this amount for many, many years so i'd like to set the bar high and i think ten years from now we will think this amount is low. but as you see, we had it at 664,000 for many, many years and we have this opportunity now to up it a little bit to its full level of funding that we originally intended it to be at. >> commission mofus. >> thank you. so to vice president fewer's point around the additional 43,430 dollars, i noted on this revised -- the revision that we have a general

infrastructure increase of 45,000 which wasn't on our budget, on the budget that we received as a committee as a whole so i don't know. i saw the explanation, but in my mind, we were just taking it from the reserve. this money which is newly added in to our budget today or yesterday -- 45,000 dollars. does that not cover the amount we were taking to restorative practices? >> i could see the general explanation of general infrastructure -- maybe just give us the two sentence explanation. >> commissioners, as we all know, the funds are increasing the number of programs are increasing, the programs themselves are increasing and

so are the evaluation needs so this is to expands our evaluation needs to continue our program to the city and to the board. >> we didn't do that before? my point is that at the committee as a whole last tuesday, that dollar amount is not in here so i believe we probably still have that need so we were going to fund it from somewhere. yes? that is my assumption -- that we were going to get it somewhere. so i hope where we were going to get it from last tuesday, we can still get it from there and this money can be sent to restorative practice. appreciate your explanation. >> my understanding of the general infrastructure expense is -- particularly this board

has been interested in documenting outcome, but it will be a very important expen /tkeu /skhaour as we look for renewal so i'm more comfortable taking money from the reserve. i'm reluctant to make last minute changes, but i'm persuaded by the comment that there's a great demand for restorative practices. when i went to the school site summit a couple years ago i saw someone accosted by teachers and parents who wanted the pack to come in and do a community convening around restorative practices. how many programs do we have with that much demand. and again, the feedback i'm receiving is it's pretty inconsistent from one school to the other. i'm comfortable with supporting the

amendment with the monies taken from the reserve. >> i'd say this is a program that in terms of the feedback, in terms of the support, in terms of the demand, it's incredibly under funded and i'm very inclined to support vice president's recommendation. one question i would have is putting out the 45,000 or around that amount of money what that means in practice. if 55 thousand can get us another coach, maybe with can talk about the mechanics of the number that's being put out there. i'd like to know more about that. >> commissioner wynn. >> i just wanted to say a couple things. one is that reserve is -- this is not a reserve. i don't know why we use the term reserve because this is actually the support for the weighted student formula. this is the money that keeps us from -- if we take money out of that fund, which is misnamed as a reserve, what we're doing is saying

we're going to take money from each school and they're going to have to figure out -- unless we move it somewhere /es else. i understand that. if we just did that, made this list, we would be saying to this school a few hundred dollars less in your allocation. i think that's how this works, so i think we need to speak differently here at this table about it. because if you think it's just sitting there, again, some contingency, in the past to the schools. the second thing is i think we should do this. i think we should identify where you want to take it from. not from the schools, because i a pose the gist on that basis because that's been my priority. try not to create the weighted student formula because then you're saying

that what we do here is more important than what they use the money for. that's the first thing. the second thing is that my discussion with the people in the restorative practices, restorative practices program is they're ramping up as fast as they can. that managing this to -- it's developmental process and getting to scale -- yes, now they have actually hired a number of more new coaches and getting 'em trained and getting everything on line. so i guess i think we need to -- if we want to do this, i want somebody to identify where we would really take the money from. if we're going to take it out of that fund, i'd oppose

it. this is a finite amount of money. let's think of something we think is less important and take it from there, not from the schools, in my opinion. >> superintendent did you want to respond? >> sure, i think the question that's burdened on everybody's mind -- >> the line item is very closely related to our able to maintain or, in this case, slightly improve, /phrao*es compared to last /kwraer, the weighted funding. for a change of this magnitude, we would not send allocations out again that

reflect the weighted student formula being reduced by 43 thousand dollars. those were dis/treupbted distributed to school sites on february 22 and all the schools have or are just about finished preparing their site budgets, which they've gone through their local government chains and they've submitted, or are very close to submitting, all of those budget materials. so with that in mind, i don't think it would be practical for us to send them a change of this magnitude. we would need to depend -- >> [inaudible]. it's not a small amount of this money, it's a small amount of the whole weighted student formula. >> right. and we would need to

find an offsetting cut somewhere else in the unrestricted general fund extended budget. >> okay. >> thank you. so just a couple of thoughts for the board's consideration. i want to be very clear and be on record i wasn't here for the committee of the whole, i was in china, but were i there, i would have said my support for restorative practices is unwaivering. i think this is exactly what we should be doing. the first option is to keep kids in school, never to put them out. with that said, my support is also steadfast for peer resources. i think with that community, i've been one of their biggest champions in times of need and have involved myself very directly in helping that program. so i also sometimes have to be ba humbug.

i have to be the grinch. we're increasing the budget for peer resources 43 percent over last year's budget. we 're increasing restorative practices 31 percent over last year's budget. there's not any other program in our district that's getting that kind of a percentage increase so i think we do have a solid demonstrated commitment to really ramping up the funding for these programs. i will also share with you that one of the directions of the board has been to grade our funding so we're not relying on any one funding source and i think a good example of restorative practices is that we are also doing tremendous work. we just passed a resolution this evening around

inclusive practices and it's part of identifying our disproportionalty of our african american students. we've developed a safe plan that we've submitted to the state. in that plan there's also funding for three additional coaches which are not even reflected in this particular proposal. so we are braiding funding, we're finding more and more resources. and we will implement the board's wishes. i think there was also a discussion earlier about process. what is the process for identifying the priority work and what piece is all about, and i agree, we will bring that conversation to the board. i think it's very timely. i would just ask us to be very thoughtful about the pro/seusz of changing the recommendation after everyone has kind of had their two cents and people have burned the midnight oil and just be very

thoughtful about the process of making amendments at this late hour as well. i /aeu sewer you we're committed to restorative practices. >> i would say thank you superintendent. i just like to add that stem had a 100 percent increase because he didn't fund it before. i mean, i appreciate the 31 percent increase, but stem got a 100 percent increase. i know that 43 thousand dollars isn't really a lot of money when you're looking at a huge budget like this. so when you're talking about support for our

schools, and this is support that teachers have been asking for. this is why there is a wait list every time there is a training. it is overwhelmingly popular among our staff and schools. they are using this in their classrooms, they are using it to resolve conflict and as we know it has reduced suspensions in one year by 500. i don't know what else that we can pull out of our hat that does that. i feel like we made a decision when we first said we'd commit to restorative practices. it took a leap of faith for a lot of us and i think a lot of us now believe in this way of dealing with conflict and resolving conflict and students taking personal responsibility. so i would say then, if i was forced to take

the money from somewhere -- as i said stem got 100 percent increase, but i wouldn't take it from there. i would take it from the general infrastructure total because we're funding that at almost -- it's, like, 467 thousand dollars and it's been proposed to add another 45 thousand to it. so when i look -- i know dollars are really precious. when you talk about the weighted student formula, i'll just let you know, i've been on 11 school budget councils. it's about schools that say we're not even going to have a /su ply budget. and i know this because i ran a huge garage sale to fund a

supply budget for paper. but without really investing while we can while we have the opportunity to invest a little bit more into it, we can't reach our strategic goals. we need this hand in hand. we cannot keep up with the disproportional amount of /sus /spepbgss of suspensions of african american students. we are sending our children out into the 21st century and we hope they will embrace this world. i would remind people that stem got a 100 percent increase, but i would take it from general infrastructure

because i feel like this is our opportunity to change the culture of discipline in our districts. we, ourself, used the numbers of suspensions and how it's disproportionally racially divided. i think it's time we change. i hope you'll join me in this vote. >> i was actually interested in the answer to the question -- i appreciate you're trying to make a statement, like, are we committed to this program or not, and i really appreciate that because i was definitely one of the people that had to take a leap of faith originally when we passed this resolution. so i appreciate the wanting to

make a strong commitment to it. i do want to know what would another 43 thousand dollars mean? and if it were 55 is that a coach or what -- i'm wondering if any member in the staff can answer that question. i see claudia. as a corollary to that, i'd like to know what the thinking was on adding the additional 45 thousand to the general infrastructure budget. we beat up the evaluator pretty good a couple years ago and demanded evaluation and good data tracking for this program. so my understanding is that's what the general infrastructure is supposed to do is a really robust tracking, that said, what was the extra 45 thousand dollars going to be for.

>> the money will be used to increase our [inaudible] we'll be able to run more analysis on the piece programs and have some more outcome data to add to our reporting and also to reclassify our current program analyst position to a different classification. >> i want to add that we found it difficult at the current levels to be competitive in getting the quality people and keeping them. that's the reason for this. i appreciate that it wasn't there a week ago, but we had personnel changes that happened in the past week. >> miss ander son, do you have something to add? >> it could go a couple of different ways. that amount of money would represent a coach when we consider how many

/skaopls we have in the district -- over 100. one of the things we're trying to support is professional learning communities in every school so that people don't have to stay on their own time and they're choosing to do that. we have principals that are coming at 4:00 in the afternoon until 6:30 on their own. so that's another thing that we could do is to strengthen that so that people have more time to reflect on their practice and take that information back to their sites. kind of vague, but best i can provide right now on the spot. >> i'm going to propose an amendment to the amendment. i really feel like the general

infrastructure is essential. we need to have [inaudible]. we are facing renewal of the piece so i would like to propose that it be taken from the stem money -- 43,430 is equivalent of the 2 percent of the 2 million dollars that has come into being since january review of this. i am committed to stem, but it is brand new and we don't have the investments already so i feel like a 2 percent shaving off of stem is where i would take the money. >> mr. mendoza. >> thank you. i have a quick question with regards to the 43 thousand. what's the current budget of restorative justice and do we spend that amount and is this 43 going to be helpful in terms of -- i mean i know we've been gearing up, so i'm

okay -- let's just find it and put it in there, but it's just a general question about how much the current budget is first. did we spend how much we currently allocated this year and is this increase going to be -- are we going to be able to spend it for this up coming year or is this an allocation that we should add to next year's allocation. we're just kind of -- it's a small amount of money and i think we should rest it already, but i am curious if this is going to be helpful in increasing the number of workshops that are going to be available to our teachers or do you currently spend your money in restorative justice and is that where it is helpful?

>> claudia anderson again. >> i think that it's helpful if it is provided at the early part of the year. one of the challenges -- i want to be honest about this -- one of the challenges has been finding qualified coachers to do the work. we have a list of people that we've identified who we think would file for these positions. that wasn't true in the past. we didn't have enough experience from the district to feel that we had people who had been sufficiently trained. that's no longer the case. i think whatever the amount settles on, we will be able to find qualified professionals to lead the work. >> so you'll spend it in this year's budget? >> i believe it will be easy to spend. >> so commissioner proposed

amendment to amendment, so if we want to do that, we need a second for that. >> excuse me president norton. the amendment that i made -- i'm hearing a little consensus among here that i should identify where the money should come from in my original. i would like to add 43,430, i should identify it. that amendment should include an identification of where those funds are coming from? am i correct? >> i know that you said if you're going to propose rejiggering things, you should say where it comes from. but i'm hearing that these are very complex and interdependent areas, so i would almost rather say will you identify where it comes, but don't touch peer

resources and don't -- >> i was going to make the suggestion that i understand that it's this last moment where -- i would be more than happy just to take it from the reserve money and then we can work out in a regular budget because we haven't reviewed our budget yet. i'd take it out of reserve, keep stem in tact. i understand about the general infrastructure so i would make a suggestion that it would come out of the general reserve and that would be 43,430 less. >> thank you president norton. this is actually a wonderful conversation to be having. how are we going to spend additional funds. we haven't had this experience in a while so it's good. wd 40, work out the kinks, but it's