Vote: Closure of Inactive Student Activity Accounts

Transcript (~9 min @ 25:33)

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▶ 25:32 Speaker 6: Thank you. Yeah. So, the student activity fund, this has been on my list of things to look at and

▶ 25:40 Speaker 7: modernize, bring up to date since I started. I just want to highlight the phenomenal work that Kim Candelori has done in our business office on working on the student activity fund. It needed a lot of maintenance, had not had an audit done, and it was overdue for an audit. We've had that done. So, last spring, we asked the school committee to consider the policy updates, which graciously considered and approved. So, this is now some of the work that's part of that policy and procedure, where, if there are certain groups, activities that are not active for a certain amount of time, we're obligated to look at those funds and then move them to something that we refer to as a maintenance fund or administrative fund. And those are things like paying for those external audits. Our external audit, I think, was around $11,000 to have done. So those are not inexpensive items. They're also eligible costs that we can use from these maintenance funds. So, this is a regular pattern we want to get into of revisiting activities and

▶ 26:39 Speaker 6: clubs that are no longer active, try to seek out and contact anyone that is left

▶ 26:43 Speaker 7: over from those groups, ask if there's any designation they want for those funds, and then ultimately move that to that maintenance line, part of our procedure and

▶ 26:53 Speaker 6: policy. So, this is a regular pattern you'll probably see on an annual basis to

▶ 26:56 Speaker 7: maintain the clubs. And someone did ask a question. There's some sports teams referenced in there. That's not anything to do with athletics. Student activity funds should not be any kind of custodial of any kind of athletic funds. That should be something that's either part of our operating budget or in our revolving fund for athletics. So those sports are intact. Nothing's being stopped. It's just that this is not the appropriate place to handle those funds. So, that is the gist of it. I'm happy to answer any questions that you have regarding that. But again, the student activity fund is in a much better place. The process that we run now, things like we use QuickBooks to pay invoices,

▶ 27:35 Speaker 6: and QuickBooks is a fee-based service, so the cost for QuickBooks would come out of

▶ 27:38 Speaker 7: this. So, it's a self-sustaining fund.

▶ 27:45 Speaker 3: Questions for Mr. Kelly. Ms. Leo.

▶ 27:48 Speaker 2: Two clarifying questions. I'll ask them both, and you can take them in whatever order you want. So, I see a number of these accounts that are listed as they never should have been student activities. I would love to hear a little bit more about how did the funds get there? Where did they come from? If you can speak to that. It seems a little odd.

▶ 28:08 Speaker 6: Sure. Some I can, some I can't. Some of them that were there prior to my arrival- ... 100% honestly, we cannot trace back to where the funds came from. So, it's been kept in a spreadsheet, which is good. We can see that they're there, but the actual source of all of those funds, it

▶ 28:24 Speaker 7: would take a significant amount of time to go back and do that. And we'd much rather spend time getting the fund in a good place and operating under the policy that we have.

▶ 28:35 Speaker 2: So, the related question to that, I guess I have three, because this is a part B, is for the things that were never student activities in the first place, are we obligated to move those monies into the maintenance account, or could we move them back into an account that seems to align better with the purpose?

▶ 28:53 Speaker 6: So, the student activity fund, it's student money, so we want to make sure we're

▶ 28:58 Speaker 7: not trying to move it away from the student activity fund. And this is, we've Spent a lot of time building up to the policy that we have in place, attending some of Mark Abrams' courses. If you're not familiar with Mark Abrams, he's a guru around municipal finance. So this is in alignment with his best practice. So it's the idea of any money that's there that's no longer outside the three years supporting an active student program should be moved into this maintenance line.

▶ 29:26 Speaker 2: Okay. It is just helpful to know what is sort of in our purview here. So that was super helpful. And then relatedly, I see a number of things listed that might have adjacent student activities now, but could be called something different or could have a different advisor. How have you worked to de-conflict any of that, and could you move any of those funds? For example, Chess Club or Italian Club, Gay Straight Alliance. Those things exist. Could they take these funds on, or are they duplicated in some way? It just seems messy, and I'm trying to understand.

▶ 30:06 Speaker 6: Sure. Yeah, no, it's a good question. And the student activity fund is student money. It's nothing that the district owns. It's not district money. So the active clubs at the high school that are

▶ 30:18 Speaker 7: functioning right now are probably included in the active list. Okay. But to transfer money between activities is not something we're allowed to do. A good example is the student council, STUCO. Yeah. If they're going to do something with funds, the active student council should really take a vote within their own group about how to appropriate that money. So if we don't have the origin of the funds and there's no active group, there's no one to vote on how to move that money or what to do with that money. It really should be a student voice as to how that money is moved around or used. So if we can't trace it back to that, it should be moved to the maintenance line to support the active programs.

▶ 30:56 Speaker 2: Then we're done. Okay, thank you.

▶ 30:59 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: Any other questions? Ms. Rossi-Thomas?

▶ 31:02 Speaker 5: I really appreciate your color coding. Yes. It's really super helpful. That's Kim's color coding. Well, Kim did a phenomenal job, and it's almost like the history of clubs and- Yeah ... all sorts of things at the high school and the middle school, I suppose, because this covers both the middle school and the high school?

▶ 31:21 Speaker 6: It does. Good question. We do not have student activity funds at the elementary schools. This is mainly secondary.

▶ 31:25 Speaker 5: That's a PTO type of thing or activity. So I see the oldest thing here is from 2010, I believe.

▶ 31:37 Speaker 5: Looks like the oldest club that... And there's a lot of 2010s.

▶ 31:47 Speaker 5: And then the things that are coded in red, those never should've been part of a student activity-

▶ 31:54 Speaker 7: Correct

▶ 31:55 Speaker 5: ... fund.

▶ 31:55 Speaker 6: It's not that they're not legitimate- Yeah. Sure ... or it's just they shouldn't be housed in a student activity fund.

▶ 31:59 Speaker 5: Yes. Okay. And so just so I understand one more time, even though I know you just said it, all of this, this is $53,000, goes where?

▶ 32:14 Speaker 6: Sure. So it goes into a maintenance budget. It's still part of the student activity fund- Yep ... but it goes to supporting the actual student activity fund. In other words, like having that outside audit done. Yep. It can be anywhere from $10,000 to $15,000 as an external audit.

▶ 32:27 Speaker 7: Which is a lot of money. Yeah. We paid a lot of that at one point. Yep. The QuickBooks membership, buying supplies, the checks we write, things like that. So that's what the maintenance money is supposed to design.

▶ 32:36 Speaker 5: It's to support the activities. So it's like a business maintenance fund. Yep. Okay. So I just want to say thank you very much to you, Mr. Kelly, for all the cleaning up that you've done since you came into your office. And I appreciate all the people that have stuck by you to clean all of this up. And I know that we have other things to clean up, too, and that'll come next. Thank you. Steady Freddy. Thank you very much.

▶ 33:00 Speaker 7: This was a business office, and especially Kim, instrumental in getting this to

▶ 33:04 Speaker 5: where it is today. This must've been really big. Yeah. That was a long-

▶ 33:08 Speaker 6: Hours and hours and hours and hours of work

▶ 33:09 Speaker 5: ... process of cleaning it up and then figuring out what you were going to do next with it, and accounting. All right. Takes a special person, like I said. Thank you.

▶ 33:19 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: And I echo those comments in noting that DESE is very specific about what they allow and what they do not allow. And we certainly don't want any findings, so to me, this is compliance in a key way. And to Ms. Rossi-Thomas's point, checking off those compliance categories and developing systems and workflows sets the district up for continuing very good work, and it's much appreciated. So with that, do I have a motion to approve the closure of the inactive student activity accounts as presented? Made by Ms. Leo, seconded by Ms. Holleran. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? Opposed? That motion carries unanimously with three absent. That concludes finance and facilities. We'll now move on to policy and planning with the recommended changes to policy JF: admissions.