On the Road with Charlie- Tuesday, August 31, 2010 from MASA on Vimeo.
This is a special message to the members of the Minnesota Association of School Administrators (MASA) from Charlie Kyte, Executive Director.
There is a video (at bottom of this message) and an audioblog. Each about 12 minutes long. when you click on the video give it about 45 seconds to load.
MASA EMPLOYEES:
Rachel Anderson has been working nearly full time this summer. She is a full time student at the University of Minnesota and will move back to part-time status as her school year begins.
Aimee Ranallo is a new employee replacing Mary Law. She will do many of the MASA and MASE communications as well as coordinating the work of the committees and the MASA Board of Directors.
We are glad to have both Rachel and Aimee as part of the MASA family.
FEDERAL JOBS BILL:
The new Jobs Bill provides more money than we expected to districts and the uses are very broad. Although it is one-time money, districts will receive between $180 and $240 per pupil unit.
Here are a few additional explanations based on the FAQ provided by the MDE:
** The dollar amounts per district are estimated since final special education funding calculations aren't made until the end of the year. Thus the MDE will allow you to spend up to 90% of the money this year and then after adjustments, you can use the rest of the money in 2011-12.
** Intermediate and Integration Districts as well as special education cooperatives funding are very soft as so much of their funding is the result of special education tuition billing.
** The state legislature cannot reduce state aid payments to offset these federal dollars and still be in compliance with state MOE requirements.
** You can use these funds this year, next year and the final dollars must be obligated by September 30, 2012.
** The funds will be available for your access by the end of September. You will use a similar system as you used for the ARRA funds to access these dollars.
** You have wide latitude for the use of these funds including paying for re-called employees, new employees or existing employees. You can cover increased costs of employee compensation. Our sources at MDE indicate that the simplest access is to simply transfer several regular employees over to this category for this year. That will require the least amount of bookwork for you and you are essentially saving district dollars that will help rebuild your fund balance for next year.
** Caution: Avoid funding special education positions with these dollars as you may negate other special education reimbursements for those positions. Rather, if you need to expand special education, use Jobs BIll dollars to pay for regular positions thus freeing up money for the special education positions.
** Be careful to not add positions in areas requiring a continuing maintenance of effort. If you add in these areas you will need to maintain the positions even after the funding runs out.
** You can only use these dollars for school level employees, not for District positions or for contracted services.
** You will track these expenditures and revenues with UFARS Finance Code 152. The MDE is making modifications now to have this set of restricted codes work for you. The update will be out by the time you want to access funds.
** The MDE has done a good job on expediting these funds to Districts. Thanks go to Assistant Commissioner Lori Grivna and to Tom Melcher (and his team). The FAQ is very understandable and they will do everything in their power to help you make this work. I addition they only reserved .4% to do the work at the MDE level, considerably less than the 2% they could have used.
MASA FALL CONFERENCE:
The MASA Conference begins on Sunday, October 3rd at Madden's Resort near Brainerd. We have an excellent conference planned and hope all MASA members consider attending.
HAVE A GOOD START TO THE SCHOOL YEAR:
A number of Districts began last week and others this week. The majority of Districts begin just after labor day. We wish all of you a good start to the school year.
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