School Board - workshop

Good morning and welcome to the June 10th, 2026 school board workshop. The time is 10 o'clock sharp. Please stand as Board Member Santos leads us in the Pledge of Allegiance. We 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. Please pause for a moment of silent meditation. Thank you, you may be seated. And at this time, I'm going to ask our superintendent of schools to make some opening remarks for everyone who is present here to hear from you. First, prior to hearing from Mr. Steiger, our chief financial officer. So sir, you are recognized.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And I'll be, I have some really important bullets here that I want to make sure that I don't miss them. So I'm going to be reading some of this. So, you know, after five long months of the legislative season since it began, the business for this year, and we know our full revenue picture for the 2027-2028 school year. I must say that we started this cycle with predictions of gloom. to public schools. That's the actual word that I can use to describe it. But the final result, very far away from the worst case scenario, that were floated around, right? Many scenarios that were negative. I want to thank our partners in the Florida legislature for listening to our story and understanding our needs. Members in both chambers, from both sides of the aisle, facing a difficult political and fiscal climate sat down with us and made the session something we should all be proud of. The turn of events has been incredibly, incredibly encouraging. I want to thank the board chair and every single board member for joining repeatedly and advocating in Tallahassee for our school district. I know that many of you did not stop. It was an intensive, repetitive process, and we are all very, very grateful that as a team, we made our needs very well expressed. Now we know that going into this year, it'll be tough. And where we ended was far better than what I could have ever imagined. Our dollars per student is increasing to over 2%. I don't like to compare to other districts, but in many other cases, for other districts in the state, it's lower than 2%. We needed a one-time declining enrollment supplement, the mitigation dollars. And that was an interesting piece to advocate for, and the legislation Secured it for us. This is very very significant for us as well and then perhaps the most important Issue to the school district is that we were the only carve-out from the upcoming property tax reform again significant we are in We're never in the perfect place but we really started from where we started we are in a very very good place and It was a long session, but it was definitely successful. And I'm proud of all our collective efforts and our legislative team here locally. We have to recognize them as well. At this point, now we're going to go over our budget for moving forward into the new school year. Part of the presentation will be how careful and deliberately we've been based on the feedback from the board. about how do we make reductions. And I just want to say this. Moving forward, it's not only about reductions, it's about funding that we have to secure to bring into our school district. And that is why we have a business model regarding our assets and everything that we're doing. But at this point, we are really going to be looking at reductions that we'll be doing in order to downsized the school district because of the loss of enrollment last year and also what we're projecting to lose this year. So with that said, I'll hand it over. And I have to thank Mr. Steiger for his thoroughness. We met, I don't know how many times, not only myself and him, but the entire team, going over where the reductions would be most beneficial and less harmful. to the organization and I really have to thank you for exploring all angles and sometimes bringing possibilities that were not very evident as we began the process. So, Mr. Steiger, it's all yours.

Before Mr. Steiger, I would like to take this opportunity as the chair of the board to also thank a lot of people, starting with the members of the board that I know have worked tirelessly with our friends in Tallahassee to go from where we started to where we are now at today, which is a very different story than the one that was initiated as you articulated to us a moment ago, Mr. Superintendent. And so we are very, very grateful for that, but I'm also very grateful to all of my colleagues on the board. because I believe that the advocacy that you all put into this endeavor truly made a difference, but that wasn't alone. It's teamwork that makes a dream work. Mr. Superintendent, I thank you as well. I know you were up there numerous times with us and without us, and that also had an impact. I want to thank Mr. Steiger, sir, for your commitment, Mr. Steiger. to Miami-Dade County Public Schools, especially to our children. The reason why we are all here is because of our students, and I do want to thank you first and foremost for thinking about them, but we also have to think of our workforce. They have to feel valued, and they have to feel that they are respected, and that we are going to do everything in our power, even during very challenging times, to do what is best for our workforce as well because our children would not be in an a-rated school district without amazing members of the workforce and of course particularly our teachers and our administrators at our school sites so i want to thank all of them um to the uh the board attorney mr harvey many times you were called at least i know i did i called you with questions related to budgetary status, and you always have been extremely professional and available to all of us, so thank you so much. And to all of our other stakeholders, members of our union, and everyone else that was involved in this process, thank you, and a special shout-out goes to Mr. Iovari and Dr. Baglos and all of the members of your teams for what you did as well to help to get us to this point. So with that said, without any further ado, Mr. Steiger, sir, you are recognized.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So yeah, I concur with everything obviously both you and the superintendent said. I'll take us through how everything impacted Miami-Dade County Public Schools specifically, but I think there was a lot of... a lot of opportunity for a situation that could have ended up way worse than that. And before I even get started, I know we're talking about 2026-27 and a lot of the conversation has been about 2026-27, but let me also add that maybe even the biggest win of all was beyond 2026-27, right? There's been a lot of talk about property tax reform. That's gonna end up on the ballot. And I know that all of you went up and spoke and obviously our voices were heard because public education has been carved out. of the property tax reform, which is a great relief to me, every CFO in the entire state of any school system, and the students too, I'm sure. So again, it's definitely a lot of wins this session. And again, I don't think either you or the superintendent mentioned that, in particular, the two of you went up and fought for something that no one else in the state did. So we fought for a situation that was beyond our control, hurt our enrollment this year in an unexpected way, and threatened the fiscal strength of the district. And we took pretty substantial internal steps to cure ourselves, but that wasn't necessarily going to be enough. I truly don't think anyone other than Then you, Madam Chair, and the superintendent spoke about this with the legislators. I don't know of any other district who fought for this, but yet it passed. We are going to get $18.6 million to help us solidify 2025-26. And in doing so, right? substantially substantially increases our chances i don't want to say guarantee because year end hasn't happened yet so i can't guarantee anything but substantially substantially increases our chances um to end the year really fiscally strong like we want to um so we don't have to to add to our reserves in the 26 27 budget and when i go through this presentation you'll see that's not one of the items i'm having right without that we very well could have had to put bolster the reserves as our top item in this year's budget. And we don't have to do that, which means you're right, we can focus more on kids.

Thank you. And I'm sorry to interrupt, but I would be remiss if I didn't take this opportunity also. When I thank my colleagues, I'm also thanking a former colleague, Dr. Steve Gallen III, who is now commissioner. uh, in the County. We are so, so very proud of him. And, um, again, of, of everything that is yet to come, but, um, he was also part of the team and he is not here. So I just wanted to make sure I mentioned that. Go ahead, sir.

So, yeah. So if you, if you look at, um, the first slide of the presentation, you'll see that we start, like you said, Madam Chair, where we always start, with our kids. So in total, the number of kids that are being funded to get a K-12 education in Miami-Dade is going up by 2,177 FTE. So that increase of 2,177 is are all the entities, right? It is district schools, charter schools, and private schools through the family empowerment scholarships. So in total, we'll have a historic high. This is the highest number that Miami-Dade has ever seen of almost 386,000 kids getting a K-12 education that is at least partially publicly funded. And that is an increase of 2,177. However, That increase really is on the backs of private school growth. So the private school vouchers will increase to a little over 82,000 next year, which is a bit over a 10,000 increase from current year. So when you flip that to district schools, because charter schools, we don't anticipate much of a change at this moment. When you flip that to district schools, we are actually anticipating about a little over an 8,000 student drop from this year to next year. for very much the same reasons that we spoke about in depth this year. By the way, the new registrations are closed for this year, and the total ended up being a little over 10,000 less. So we had a little over 10,000 student less in new enrollees from out of the country in 24-25 versus 2,025-26. Um, that's not a, um, that's not a guest. I think that number will shrink moving forward, but it's certainly an issue that's going to be around. Um, so both us and the state, and so that I shouldn't mention that 386,000, it's not just our number, right? We're not just guessing. Okay. How many, how many students are we're going to have? We have a, yes, we do have an internal FTE, um, estimating committee that does its work, but the state has the same. The state, through their Office of Economic and Demographic Research, estimates the number of students. Our estimates are usually pretty close. They were again this year. But then we enter into a conversation with the state. And in the end, these are the numbers that the state has built our budget on. So 386,000 students. It's about a 10,000 student growth in voucher schools, a little over an 8,000 student drop for Miami-Dade Public Schools. and charter schools, not much change. The next line there you'll see is the base student allocation. So as you remember, base student allocation is our most flexible pot of money. It's where we pay for teachers. It's our biggest portion of funds. That is going to be an $85 per student increase. It's a little under 1% increase. But if you look at the item just underneath, it's the dollars per kid, which is 214. And that's the number that the superintendent was referring to that is over 2%. In fact, I think it is a 2.4% increase for Miami-Dade County Public Schools. And he is correct. Statewide, that is not the case. The statewide average, I believe, is 1.65%. MDCPS is getting 2.4%. The main reason being that our comparable wage factor, it's the new word for the old DCD, went up. So we got a higher share. And I would argue that just this is me going on a tangent for a second. The reason for that is because of our cost of living and the comparable wage factor doesn't fully account for that. So this is an issue we're going to always and continue to bring up is that yes, we appreciate that we got, we are getting slightly more than the state average. However, this isn't an issue we should let die because truly we're still the 27th highest fund rate funded district in the state. and we are a top five district in terms of cost of living. So there is still a gap there, but we appreciate that the gap is slowly closing. The state and local numbers, just as a point, the reason we put it there is if you look, Local funding is substantially over state funding, and it goes to show that we are still a predominantly locally funded district. So basically meaning that if the property tax reform were to hit us, it would hit Miami-Dade particularly hard. There are other districts that are 90% state funded, right? We are 60% local, 40% state. That's not even across all counties, right? A place like Monroe is 80% local and 20% state. So that changes around the state. We are a predominantly local district. It didn't always that was not always the case. This is a lot of times you'll refer people will refer to Miami-Dade as a donor district. This is what that means is that we we we tax are the state requires us to tax our local taxpayers more because the state doesn't give us as much as a percentage as they would other districts. which means in all our total funding will go up $103 million. I will say, however, that does include family empowerment scholarships, so we'll get there in a second. So the one categorical that we have to take, because we appreciate the $103 million, but there's one line that they require us to have an additional expense that's increasing, which is the old TSIA, the Instructional Personnel Salary Increase. That equates to roughly a 1.06% increase in That was 22 million is not just from Amity County Public Schools. It's also for charter schools and also for family empowerment scholarships. So ours is less than that, but it does equate and the state knows how many teachers we have. The state does the calculation themselves. This equates to a 1.06% increase across the board. Oh, and then so at least on average. So the true increase for the district is $81 million. Skipping that $60 million, we'll come back to that in one second. If you look at the FES FTE growth is 105 million. So $81 million is new revenue we're getting in. However, like I said, FES is growing by 10,000 kids, MDCPS shrinking by 8,000 kids. So of that 81 million, actually 105 is family empowerment scholarships, which obviously, so once you look at district and charter schools, it's a net decrease, but that's because we are going down students, right? So in terms of dollars per kid we're going up, total dollars we're going down because we're losing 8,000 kids once you take out FES and private schools. And we account for that in that next line, the 26-27 projected workload adjustment. So yes, we lose 8,000 students. However, by definition, that also means less expenses, right? We have... everything that's in the school allocation plan is an automatic decrease, right? Everything that is student driven. Now there's also things that aren't student driven, but if the allocation is student driven, that goes down automatically. Um, so that is a quote unquote savings of 39.5 million. We also have some unavoidable cost increases. Um, This is really just things like utilities. We spoke last time about, even though we decreased its software expenses coming back from ESSER, very minimal expenses, but it's very few, but an unavoidable cost increases of $18.9 million, which really, if you just do that math, if you take out the $60 million, you're really talking about it would be negative three, which on a budget of $3.5 billion, $4 billion, that's pretty much break-even. We wouldn't be having much of a conversation at all. But then we go back to that $60 million, the 25, 26 net revenue loss, this non-recurring. So what this means is that this year, as we spoke about, this year we lost over 14,000 kids. About 12,000 of that was beyond expectations for the reasons that we've discussed. That meant $112 million revenue loss in December. After the school year began, we saw a final, actually we got it in January, the third calc used to come in December. So we lost $112 million in January. We had known that was coming, but it was after the school year started, so we took action and we made recurring cuts. We made recurring cuts across the district. However, there was no way to handle the entire $112 million all with recurring cuts after the school year began. But we needed to protect the district's fiscal solvency, so we needed to make non-recurring cuts as well. And all of us who have lived this, probably everybody who is listening to me right now, has lived this in some way because, as the board members know, as everyone knows, we've cut off every P-card in the system. We have made it very difficult. We've shut off the tap, truly shut off the tap for all non-schools, mostly for schools. We have taken evasive action this year to make sure that we bring our spending as low as possible. However, and I know I've spoken to each of you individually on this, that's not sustainable. It's not a way that we can run the district forever. We need to have a PCART system. We need to be able to spend. We need to be able to operate in a way... that you can get away with for one year, but you cannot get away with in perpetuity. It was necessary. We are nothing if not good stewards of taxpayer dollars. We needed to do what we needed to do. It was required, but it's not sustainable, which means that we now, of that non-recurring portion, which was 60 million, we need to take care of that this year. And I know that's what all of you told the legislature, right, is that we will write our house the moment that we have a chance. The moment that we get this opportunity, which is in this budget cycle, we will fix what we need to fix. And that's what that $60 million refers to. And that's what we have to now make recurring reductions to meet. Madam Chair, I think the superintendent wants to say something.

Well, I... Mr. Soup? Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. And all I wanted to say is that, you know, we present this number, right? We talk about the actions that we took. But we also have to thank everyone that dealt with these hardships that we had to go through. That's from the principals, basically lead every school, to also employees and our district leaders at the district level, everyone in this process of tightening our belt and securing that reduction of 60 million dollars was significant. So really there is a point of gratitude that we have to express to the organization as a whole because we really worked through this. Folks really listened and they understood that this is what we needed to do in order to end the year in the most positive point possible. Thank you Ron.

Mr. Steiger?

Yes. So the next slide we'll go to is just where we are. This is a 20-year picture of some – I'm going to go through a couple of slides of trends in the FEFP that have happened over the last 20 years. So over the last 20 years, this is what our enrollment trend looks like. So 20 years ago – taxpayers were funding 366,000 students getting a K-12 education in Miami-Dade. 20 years later, that number's up to 386,000 like we covered. And that's an increase of roughly 19,000 students. However, the district's enrollment next year will be 217,000 kids as compared to 351,000. All right, so the district, our MDCPS, is now serving 135,000 less students. Charter schools, which were still relatively new in 26, 27, about a decade in, have seen a growth of about 74,000, and the real increase, The real increase is scholarships. Not that there weren't. In fact, this year's scholarships, like I said, there will be 82,000 funded in Miami-Dade. If I go back to 2006-2007, it says 3,030 scholarships. That's true. But there were nearly 90,000 private school students even back then. There have always been private school students in Miami-Dade. Unlike charters, which formed in the 90s, Private schools go back for as long as public schools go back in Miami-Dade. There have always been private schools here. We have, and again, back then, the number of private school students hasn't changed all that much over the decades. And it's been roughly, it's 90,000 students. What's changed is that now they are funded, not entirely, but partially funded by the taxpayers. And that increase statewide equates to about $4 billion. So the increase in scholarships is over 2,600% over the last 20 years. But that's not necessarily to say that the enrollment in private schools has gone up that much. Okay. The other trend that you'll see is the slide is what our dollars per kid is versus inflation. And you've heard this mentioned in previous in the various board meetings. So this is what this means is back in 2006, seven, 20 years ago, we got $6,867 per kid. If the legislature increased that dollars per student by what inflation increased that year in 26, 27, we would see, we would have $12,017 a student, but we have 9,628 now, but look at, look at the trend real close. And what you see is Over the last few years, actually, the increase has come relatively close to matching inflation. But there was a period, there was a period just pre and post pandemic where the gap between what we, let's say, should have gotten if we wanted to keep equal to what inflation was versus what we did get began to grow. And one of the reasons why our case for being excluded from the property tax reform was so strong is that this is not the case with municipal governments, right? Municipal governments actually did. They didn't have to change their millage at all. They just kept their millage flat, and they were getting that red line. So when we compete for bus drivers, when we compete for accountants, when we compete for attorneys and everyone we compete with for, for against other municipalities, their buying power is so much higher than ours because of the way this gap between the red line and the blue line. Uh, and it is, and they, it has allowed other municipalities to have flexibility. School districts don't, right. And that over the last 10 years, it's become substantial. Um, and frankly, and the legislature feels it once done, It's really difficult to make that gap up. And even as they've tried the last couple of years, that gap remains. So that takes us to, OK, well, where we get this money, where actually are we spending it right now? And I know a lot of board members use this line. You'll see it in the executive summary of the budget. This is a simple pie chart of where MDCPS spends its money. Well, MDCPS spends 96% of its budget on school-level services. This is... State reported data. It's by function. It is clean. It is just we spent 96% of our money on services at the school level. And additionally, we don't have a chart that shows it, but over 80% of all those funds go to salaries and benefits. So where do we spend our money? For the most part, we spend our money in people at schools. That's where our revenue goes. So what I wanted to do was, and I hadn't done this in quite a while, so I thank the budget office who put this together. I wanted to compare us to our peers. So here are the six largest school districts. Here are the six largest school districts in the state of Florida. Miami-Dade County Public Schools. is the only one that is above 95%, let alone 96%. And it goes down as much as 90% to orange. And I know the numbers seem small, but let's add a $4 billion budget. 1% is $40 million. So if we, like Broward, spent 93.1% of our budget at the schools, that would be $120 million less that we were spending on school level services and more on administrative costs. If we were orange, that would be 40 million times six, so $240 million that we would be spending on administrative costs not at the school level. Given that Florida already has to be the most efficient school, one of the most efficient states on K-12 education because of our level of funding, more than likely, this means we are the most efficient school system in the entire nation, right, at 96% of school-level services. I mean, I have to give the board credit for, and not just this board, but past boards too, for pushing us to this because, you know, in the words of different board members, we've looked under every rock. We have tied ourselves in knots. We've pulled bunnies out of our hats. We've done every word that every different line board members have told us to do to ensure that students are the most important thing in our budgets, students and teachers. students and teachers, when we look at increases in function, the only function we increase is in instruction. Every other function's expense has decreased over time because that's been our priority and that's been the board's priority for a very long time. In fact, if you go to the next slide, you'll see, like, how did we do it? Well, over the last 20 years, same 20-year period, central office, and I'll define central office as all the general fund positions, except just a few, police, the facilities and maintenance, transportation, So in central office, we've gone down. So basically in this building, in the regions, we've gone down from over 2,000 employees to just about by 1,000 employees to just over 1,000 employees over the years. over the last 20 years. It's a 46% reduction, even in terms of dollars. And by the way, this is pure dollars. This is not adjusted in any way. So I'm not adjusting for raises, salary increases, increase in benefits. Just in pure dollars, we are spending now over $60 million less than we did back then. This has been true, true reductions. Reductions enough that we cleared out the annex enough to open a school. That used to be packed with employees. That is a full-on school now. It has been a substantial change in how we do business. I'm not starting this as a way of saying, hey, we shouldn't shrink more because that's not possible. As we shrink students, central office will continue to shrink. It has to continue to shrink. If we ever make a reduction from the school, central office will always have to be first. but it's to show how far we have actually come. And I know I've, you know, I only read articles, but I hear other districts cutting, you know, 800 people. I'm not, have you just, that's our entire, that would be the entire central law. That'd be everybody, right? We have already made such drastic reductions in this area that things like that would be literally impossible for MDCPS. We wouldn't have a payroll department, right? We wouldn't have the departments that actually, you know, would be necessary to keep the department, the district running. And it goes to show, so where did we spend our money, right? What's different? What's unique about MDCPS on what decisions we're making? Why is it that we're high? And in the end, it's these legacy programs. And I say, you know, what's the board members, like what's important to board members is I know what's important to board members and what's been important to this district because it's how we've spent our money where other people haven't. So we spend our money on things that are completely unfunded, things that have no basis. There's no categorical. There's no requirement. There's no other district who, for example, gives every student that is second grade and above gets at least once a week elementary art and elementary music. There is no other district who provides both of those to the same extent, including districts who get substantially more money per kid than us. And the reason for that is because the arts are a critical issue in Miami-Dade. They have been for decades and decades. The other critical issue in Miami-Dade, bilingual, world languages. And we spend $37 million that other districts don't so that every single student in Miami-Dade gets exposed to a second language as an elementary schooler. Some of them have it built into their school day where they get math and Spanish. Sometimes we have schools that board members know very well that get multiple languages embedded into their school day all day long, programs that no other district has. We have Spanish for Spanish speakers, right? We have Spanish where even students who are Even students who are catching up, who are making sure that we are getting double-dose reading, double-dose math, they still get a second language. This is a core crux to who we are as a district. And I told the superintendent, I'm not going to be the CFO who recommends cutting these programs. First of all, it wouldn't be good for my job, for my job length. However, also, it's not something I would ever want to do. It's not why I ended up taking this position in the first place. But there are things we've done that don't necessarily mean as much. Is there a value to them? Absolutely. But in terms of as we shrink, and we have shrunk, as we saw a few slides ago, we have shrunk. We have shrunk substantially. And I'm not sure where that will end, but I do know that there are parents who still want to send their kids to private schools because that's an avenue that's never been made available to them. And now it is available in some way. So we will get to a different number. And one of the things that stuck out, and we nibbled around this last year as a board and as a district, is the small school positions. So when we started the small school allocations, just as an example of how far we've come, We had 22 schools in 1999. We had 22 schools that qualified for this allocation. This year, it's over 200. Over 200 of our schools qualify for the small school position. And there are schools where it is vital. So I'll take, for example, boutique senior high schools. Boutique senior high schools use these positions to offer programs that are highly popular. These are schools that aren't under enrollment. These are schools that are at capacity. This was by design. As a district, we offered these programs with the knowledge that they would be giving different programs. And in those cases, it wouldn't make sense to get rid of these positions because in those cases, they need it for the program. But there's also that have just shrunk FTE. and have gotten under. So for example, talking about senior high schools, our old definition of what is a small senior high school was 1,600 kids. That's not a small school for us any longer. And I long for, I wish I was the CFO in the day when 1600 was a small school for us. That would have been fantastic. But it's not. And so what we need to do is modernize this definition, change and prioritize truly what our priorities are, which are the arts, which is bilingual. And so we're not talking about the elimination of the small school positions, but a severe rethinking about what small school means and where it's actually important. critical for our program to survive. And that takes us to, okay, well, if we have to make these decisions, right, and taking us to the next slide, we already spoke about our reduction target would be roughly $63 million. So how would we get there? The board, I'm not going to cover that first box again because the board has had many discussions, I believe. Some discussions are still to take place, but we've discussed in depth about the consolidation of schools, PLCs, administrations between schools, right? This is the, we've done this, A bit in prior years, we're doing it more now. This is not the end of this conversation. And every board member, everyone in the community is fully aware of the conversation that's going to continue to happen. I'm going to say that's the result of educating so many less students than we did. But truly, it's the result of sharing the 1.5 mils. And we've had this conversation over the last five years. The only time I have ever spoken publicly in Tallahassee at any committee meeting was making sure that the Senate fully understood the long term ramifications of sharing the 1.5 mils. Not a policymaker. I don't tell anyone this is what you should do or shouldn't do. Because if I should do that, then I should run for office and set policy, right? All I do is I should inform everyone on what the consequences of decisions are, because those are real. And so the consequences of sharing the 1.5 mils means that MDCPS is gonna be able to maintain less student stations, student stations that we theoretically wouldn't need if they're funding charter schools at the same rate. And so this consolidation of schools, PSEs and administrations, I say it's the beginning because this is the ramification and it's gonna continue to unfold. But for this year, we were able to save $10 million on that. right-sizing central office. So again, we've saved, we've reduced it by 47% over the years. This is an additional 10%. I believe in D23 in this today, so we'll speak about it in a couple hours. There's a substantial right-sizing of central office. So I'll just tell you from what it means for me. So in finance, I have I have two departments. I have multiple departments, but two departments where there's overlap between it. If I go to a small school district, these two departments would be one department. Auditors have said we need segregation of duties over the years. We create different departments. It makes sense. I get that. But in this new world, We can't, at least in finance, we can't really say, hey, we have to do the same with the same structure, just with less, right? We have to do the same amount of work, but with less and keep that same structure. It's not going to work for us in finance anymore. What we have to start doing is getting flexibility and cross-training between departments. So in finance, what will happen is we'll start cross-training between departments and we'll people will start doing, it won't be as linear. Will there be a potential segregation of duties issue? Not this year, in the future, could there be? Maybe, that's what happens in small districts, right? And if we continue to get smaller, that's what will happen, and that's okay, we will live with it. The most important is we continue to prioritize what's most important, which again, Ms. Rojas is students. We spoke about the small school allocations, and that takes us to that last, that adjust the support pool. It's really adjust the support pool by 5%, right? And so if I were going to adjust that support pool by 5%, then it's half of what we have to reduce central office by. Then that's not 5% across the board because... the way the support pool came into existence never treated all schools equally. There is right now great disparity. So actually, when you right-size school support, and school support, you're talking about, and what the pool is, for those of you who haven't been principals, the pool is custodians, clerical, APs, counselors, all of the support positions put together. And principals make the decision, right? They get a pot of dollars, and principals choose. We've been a a school that gives principal discretion since I think the early 1980s, it's been a long time now. And so principals make the choice on what's most important to them. And so when we make a reduction of 5%, it's not in a 5% across the board reduction, it's actually looking from our perspective, looking on, well, how can we solve some of the historical inequities in this pool, right? So actually some would go up. Now, the superintendent has been adamant. A lot of the felt uncomfortable in a time we're making reductions to have entities go up. I know where he has a soft spot for his K-8 schools because K-8 schools deal with a lot of financial difficulties that other schooling types don't. So if there's an increase in K-8 schools, we will allow them to increase. But the net result will be 5%. Actually, it would be more than 5%. So I say it's 15 million. It would actually be more than 15 million. But I put 15 million on this slide because we're going to take some of that savings, put it in a bucket, and use that bucket to solve problems where problems come up. And I know I've spoken to all of you. In this district, I've learned that you can never say always or never. There's there's just too much. It's too big. We can't do that. And there are places and there are things that are going to be unacceptable to all of us. Right. There are there have been commitments that have been made that we have to honor. And so what that bucket will allow us to do is to solve those problems. So, again, the the the net will be a five percent reduction, but that won't be equal across schools. And that gets us through this year. The next year, the coming years, it's going to be a continuing conversation. But again, it's a year-to-year conversation. And this plan will allow us to balance the budget in a way where we think protects the things that matter most to us.

Thank you, Mr. Steiger, for your very comprehensive presentation, but I know that my colleagues and I all probably have questions that we would like to ask at this time. Everyone, please keep in mind that we are scheduled to begin committee meetings at 11, and it's almost quarter of, so we may have to limit the questions, and if we have additional ones, we're gonna have to meet with them individually because we have to start committee at 11. So I'm going to begin by opening up to my colleagues and Is there anyone that wants to make a comment at this time? All right, Board Member Santos, you are recognized, ma'am.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair, and thank you, Superintendent, CFO, everyone who, again, I think really had to feel the cuts that we've made, the necessary cuts, and I think really dealt with it in such optimistic, positive, problem-solving, solution-centered ways. I did want to understand more clearly, Mr. Steiger, you mentioned in the final conference variance, it's a net 2,000 loss on students, but you went through the sub-numbers that make that up, some increasing, some decreasing. Can you, at the highest level, go through the sub-numbers that land us at a net 2,000 loss, please?

Madam Chair, I think it's a 2,000 increase. In terms of FTE?

Oh yes, 2,000 increase, excuse me, yes.

Yes, so again, private schools are just over a 10,000 increase to increase the estimate, all estimates. is from a little over 72,000 to a little over 82,000. Charter schools are currently, and the state doesn't estimate charter schools, that's a conversation between us and them. Some schools are growing, some schools are not. The net is a relatively no change, which means the net comes from the district, which is a slightly over 8,000 student loss.

Thank you. And through the chair, you mentioned at some point when you were presenting that a 10,000 student out of county, I think you mentioned? It was that for this past year?

Yeah, so Madam Chair and Ms. Santos, in 24-25, there were over 13,000 new enrollees from out of the country. to Miami-Dade. This year, there were just over 3,000 new enrollees from out of the country to Miami-Dade. I know it's a number we had been talking about all year, so I wanted to give the final update on, because now we're done, right? The year's done. There's no more enrollees for this year. So the final result was just over 10,000 less kids of new enrollees from out of the country.

Thank you. And through the chair and your estimates for next year, what is that out-of-country number estimated to be?

So we're the we are assuming about this the same as current year. But the reason for the decrease is every year we have students and we've said this before, every year we have students and families who leave Miami-Dade, not because anything's wrong. It's just that's life, right? We're a big district and we are always going to have an outflow. Miami is an is is a is a port city, right? We are an entry point to the country. And once they're here, either they stick or oftentimes they don't, right? They'll move upstate in Florida. They'll move out of the state. They'll move to different parts of the United States. And that's going to continue. What's not going to continue is the 13,000 kids who always come in. So even when we were growing, even when we were going by 15,000 kids a year, We still had thousands of kids who've left every year. It's just we had more coming in. And so I think for those of you who have been educators in this county, you know full well, you know, you're a principal and you see your school grow by 100 kids, but you have 500 new kids that faces you've never seen before. Right. Not just because of kindergartners, but because you have third graders who've left. But new third graders are coming in. And I think that's something that and that's something that it's other counties don't fully understand is what Miami-Dade's mobility rate really means on the ground. Our mobility rate is always going to be high. And it's not that anyone did anything wrong. That's just the way it works.

Thank you through the chair. My final two questions are related to the proposed legacy programs and how we're shifting them. So the small school position, you clarified obviously that some of these are by design, not just due to shrinking enrollment. And so as you pursue adjusting that small school position, how are you going to differentiate for the small schools that need it for program design versus the ones that just have changed over time through the chair?

Yes. So, Madam Chair, we thought a lot about that. And I think the first cut, so first cut being what the school would see on CASAS, is that the small boutique high schools, who we know this affects them, will not see any change at all. For the rest, they'll see the change. However, that's why we have budget conferences. That's why they have regions that oversee them. If there are cases on a singleton basis that they know this is unsustainable, then they'd approach through budget conferences through the region, give us an instance where this isn't going to work, and we solve it on the back end.

Thank you. But through the chair, what's your initial definition of boutique high school?

So, Madam Chair Misantos, the unique definition is under, I'll give you two options, it's not a final decision made, but it is either high schools under 600 FTE or high schools under 500 FTE. One of those two.

Thank you. I would like to move on. We only have 10 minutes at this time, and I'd like to give all my board members an opportunity. So please wrap it up.

I didn't see any other hands, Madam Chair. That's why I took the liberty. Okay, thank you. My last question was to confirm that as you approach the right sizing of central office, as we saw, and thank you everyone, because we are an extremely efficient district, but as you pursued an additional $10 million in right-sizing central office. You gave us your example of your bureau, but can you confirm that each bureau was given the opportunity and flexibility to meet that target with what made sense for their bureau? It wasn't just a flat-out, you know, we're cutting X number of positions or percentage.

Thank you, Madam Chair. That's an excellent question because in the past, In the past, it has been a flat out. So the goal was established for each bureau and they have flexibility. And if we had a bureau that by any chance could not meet that 10% goal, we will look at it as well. Because there are bureaus that depending on the functions, because doing, like Ron said, you cannot operate on a zero or 100, right? And so we've built in structures where hardships that existed we allowed it for the flexibility to occur. The same thing as when we present our item regarding the reduction of the district and the small schools, there has to be an opportunity to say, you were given a 10% goal, but if you cannot meet it, why not? And so that was built in. In addition to, in a way, this also forces or triggers an opportunity for departments to look differently at how they operate. I call it employees now that become more fluid from one function fluidly into another. Thank you, Mr.

Superintendent, but I'm going to have to move on at this point. All right. I have one member Blanco.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And this is somewhat of a follow up to the the school support position pool and adjusting that, right, with the small allocation schools. You mentioned that some of that's left to the discretion of the principal, but some of the positions that I heard there, counselors included, you know, there has to be some level of minimum. So just assurance, I know, but assurance of what positions or number of positions, number of people at those positions will be guaranteed as a minimum and not fully left to principal discretion.

Yeah, Madam Chair, Ms. Blanco, absolutely. So there is an absolute minimum, including counselors, that no matter how small your school is, there is a minimum that includes counselors, that includes custodians, clerical. No one will ever be able to go below the minimum. And in doing this now, and as the person who unfortunately was the architect of the original pool all those years ago, I can tell you I've been watching school purchases over the years. Counselors is the only position where the schools overbuy. They buy – this is not an issue of – I don't think you can overbuy that. I get it. In terms of a percentage, I have no, that is not, that's not going to be the outcome of this.

Okay. Thank you. Follow up. I mean, I jokingly said I heard counselors, but there's a lot of other positions that are very important beyond the counselors. We've been talking a lot about not losing personnel, but when you look at this, there may be some people that have been at a school, perhaps a paraprofessional or, instructional support, reading specialists, curriculum specialists. When we lower that pool and the principals have to make tough decisions, we know they probably like to keep all of them. What can we do to ensure, because we've had the conversations at the central site, right? Central office, as we're minimizing, we're looking to see how we can put them in other positions. There's a few positions that we need to, and I will talk more about that in the D item, where we will provide training to be able to move them. But what about these school site people that may be lost?

Yeah, so Ms. Rojas, Ms. Blanco. No, that's a great question. First off, let me just say I've spoken to the superintendent and the board chair about this. I can 100% confirm that no matter what reductions we made, there will not be a situation where we will – No teacher will lose their job in Miami-Dade County Public Schools for a budget purpose. And it is highly, highly unlikely that we would ever come back to the board and ask for any reduction in force for any position. That's not where we feel we're going to end up. And the reason for that is, you know, I was told a long time ago that one of the most important relationships in the school district is the relationship between between the CFO and the head of HR, which is why I get along with Dr. Dodra so well. When I first came up to the CFO, he was the guy in the office next to me. But so when we first started talking about these reductions, my first conversation is always with Don, right? So when it came up that, hey, we might have to move into the pool this year, it becomes, well, okay, if it's custodians, then what are the options, right? And so Dawn and her team have been thinking about this for months now, about, well, what are the options? How can we retrain? How can we reskill to ensure that we don't get to a place where we have to carry positions for a very long time?

Okay, and just final follow-up, and that is for oppositions, not just custodial, but paraprofessionals, all. Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Superintendent. Sir, I'm going to ask you to say it in one sentence because I still have several board members that haven't spoken in less than five minutes to conclude this meeting. So please. One sentence.

I can't do it in one sentence, Madam Chair.

Then we may have to follow up, sir. I'm so sorry, but I have to give everybody an opportunity, and I have not done that yet. I would like to have Dr. Bendros-Meningo, ma'am, to at least have one question, and then any follow-ups you're going to do individually.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Just want to mention this to our CFO. I don't know if it fits, but I always think about our autistic children. Are they hampered at all the projects that we're talking about looking at? Please tell me. I think this is a yes or a no question.

Oh, yeah. So Ms. Rojas, Dr. Benjamin, the answer is definitely no. And you remind me that so when I did this run through with the superintendent, he asked me to do something and I didn't do it. So thank you for giving me the opportunity. There was there's a when we went through our unique legacy program slide slide. There are the three programs listed on that slide, but there's also things that aren't listed that we didn't even put on. So, yeah, there's no conversation about special ed kids. There's no conversation here around ESOL. The district spends a lot of money on those programs. That's not even being discussed. Yes.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

And I don't have any other board member other than myself. So very, very briefly, first of all, I wanna say that moving forward, we need to start these meetings at nine o'clock, not 10. if we have committee because I have to give everybody an opportunity equal time and some of my colleagues on the board haven't spoken and I'm only gonna say a few things very, very rapidly and I'll have to do the rest individually as will my colleagues on the board. So first and foremost, again, thank you for the presentation and the time you have given us. Very, very briefly, I would like to state that I feel a little bit more comfortable now with the small school positions. However, I recall when I was a principal, we used to have the prep units that were given to us. It was for this particular purpose because some schools cannot survive, cannot, if they do not have the additional And don't forget that last year we already cut small school allocations, but I'm glad to hear that you're gonna look at them individually and that the boutique schools are not gonna be cut. So happy to hear that. And then very briefly, In your presentation, Mr. Steiger, you proposed that central office reductions are $10 million. And I've always said schools should not be touched. And if we ever have to, they would be the last ones after we have cut every other possibility that is out there. But on D23, when I looked at it, the numbers were not exactly the same because on D23, one is $16 million and the other one was $19 million. So look at D23 and what is written on D23. I know we're not gonna have much time right now, but Which is it, is it the 10 million or is it the 16 million or is it the 19 million? And so I need to have that follow up because we will be addressing D23 in committee, so just know that that's something that I have. There are other areas that I will be addressing individually with you. I know I don't have the time to do it right now, but like my other colleagues that did not have an opportunity to speak, Mr. Superintendent, I'd like for all of them to have time to address the following questions that they may have. With that said, I'm going to thank everyone who participated in the meeting today, the workshop, and we will start in exactly one minute at 11 o'clock, which is 1059 right now. So we've got one minute to change.