I attended the Franklin Public School’s Finance Committee Meeting tonight at the Education and Community Center. The committee consists of Chairperson, Jeff Traylor, and members Dave Szychlinski and Linda Witkowski. All other Board members were present except for Jim Ward.
Linda Witkowski, with her finance background, had gone over the budget that was presented June 4th and had put together some questions for Mr. Milzer, Director of Business Services and Assistant Superintendent.
I want to say that what newly elected Alderman Kristen Wilhelm is to the Common Council, newly elected Board member Linda Witkowski is to the School Board. They are intelligent, refreshing, compassionate, question-asking to the point of being obviously annoying to their fellow members, but all the more making them deserving of holding the seat they were elected to by their constituents. If either of these elected officials wants answers to questions before they make a decision that impacts an important issue in our city government…ask away, as far as I’m concerned.
Linda asked some tough financial questions tonight, and made some requests for reports that may need to be adapted to be functional as far as using district resources. But she is asking for information in order to make financial and budget information available to us, the citizens of Franklin in an easy format and in a transparent way. She has an idea as to how this might be accomplished…by comparing historical data. We’ll see if she gets her request granted.
The items covered were:
Making sure that the public understands FTE and staffing cuts regarding the budget.
Projected growth for the district: currently we are not expected to have upward growth.
Mock Budget: Linda made a request for a “mock budget” to be prepared to use to make comparisons. It would be a historical budget. Mr. Milzer said because it would be old data, it would not be accurate and would not be appropriate. Linda said data could also be compared to other school districts. Some of this data is available on the DPI website…but it is 2 yrs. old. Some of this data would take much time to gather. There was much discussion on this topic as to if it is necessary, with some disagreement between Dave Szychlinski and Linda Witkowski. Linda just wants answers available to the public when they ask questions. Dave said it isn’t of value in determining the budget at hand.
Funding from the state will change after 2011 regarding the business Park/TIF. This is a huge concern.
Brief discussion regarding fees. This should be brought up again at a Personnel and Policy meeting. According to Board policy, fees should be reviewed each year. The subject of Summer School fees was brought up by Mr. Milzer. He said that DPI complained that we couldn’t charge more than $20, even when we were providing bussing.
Another discussion - this on class sizes, and comparing Board policies from other districts. It was said the public could link to information on the web. Linda said she doesn’t think citizens should have to link to info …it should be provided to them and should be clear and transparent. People need to know what they are paying for.
Next, questions were raised about energy and buildings being energy efficient. It was said many of our buildings are not energy efficient. Linda said she wanted a rating ..on progress, are we making any progress in becoming efficient. I asked if we had an energy manager. I am aware of other districts that have them. Franklin does not. Our maintenance staff supposedly monitors this. It was suggested by the Board that perhaps the district should see about getting evaluated by WE Energies.
The MAPS program (assessment program) was discussed and its proposed cost of $25,000.
Regarding the suggestions I had offered at the June 4th budget meeting: I had been given responses from Mr. Milzer. Linda was interested in the response regarding forms. Mr. Milzer said there are currently 40 forms on the internal website. Linda asked how many forms were there total? Mr. Milzer said approximately 100.
I asked about the teacher incentive program for teacher absences in order to help curb overuse of substitute teachers. I wanted to clarify it was not a monetary incentive.
I also wanted to clarify the Senior Citizen incentive in order to allow admittance to events and help gain more volunteers. Dr. Patz said Tana Ruder is working on this.
Basically, this was a meeting about financial communication, in my opinion. And a meeting where Linda Witkowski put her footprint on the Board.
