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[Edlio Webinar] Supporting Students during COVID-19: Live Discussion with CFO of Cherokee County School District

Added Apr 30, 2020 •

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How do you continue to get meals to kids in need when schools are closed? Join us for a live discussion with Kenneth Owen, Chief Financial Officer of Cherokee County School District in Atlanta. With an estimated $100k needed every week to support students in his district, Kenneth and his team have been able to provide thousands of meals during the COVID-19 crisis. Get insights on what is working for them, including: Navigating Federal regulations to feed kids at home Fundraising for additional money for their programs Getting kids and staff devices and hotspots for distance learning support How to prepare for the impacts on next year’s budget ABOUT KENNETH OWEN AND CHEROKEE COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT Cherokee County School District is a high-performing public school system in Metro Atlanta and is comprised of 40 schools, educating over 43,000 students and employing over 5,500 faculty and staff. Kenneth Owen, an Atlanta native, has worked for Cherokee County SD for almost 20 years. After 11 years managing the Educational Programs Division, he moved into Financial Management and was named Chief Financial Officer in 2015. He and his team oversee the accounting, auditing, treasury management, payroll, procurement, records retention and school nutrition functions of the school district and manage a $720M budget.

Show Transcript

Well first and foremost thanks everyone for joining us today we're super excited to be speaking with everyone. My name is Brad Mountain, and I am the Vice President of Sales here at Edlio. For those of you who you aren't too familiar with us we have been around for 19 years now, supporting schools with effective technology to your communities. So some of the things that we do is we power beautiful mobile responsive ADA accessible websites. We also provide exceptional online payment solutions and now more than ever schools need those sorts of solutions, but also we provide engagement tools as well to really help with a parent engagement. So that's just a little bit about Edlio, we've been doing this for 19 years and we work with schools and districts not only across the country but all over the world. And today we're super excited to be speaking with Mr. Ken Owen, who's the chief financial officer at Cherokee County School District. Ken is going to talk to us a little bit today about how he's been able to navigate through this Covid-19 crisis. So Ken, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks Brad I appreciate you having me. Yeah absolutely! So I guess Ken just to start out why don't you tell me a little bit about yourself. Sure, as you said I'm the Chief Financial Officer here in Cherokee County School District. I've been CFO since January 2015. I've been with the school district since July 2001.  I started out as a grant writer and promoted to grant manager eventually within the curriculum in instruction department ran their federal programs, their title programs which is 24 million dollars. Moved over to finance 8 years ago and then was as a Director of Finance and then moved up to CFO 5 years ago. Fantastic! Prior to that I worked in the post secondary education world. Ok excellent! As we get started here I just wanted to let everyone know that in the zoom you'll be able to go in and click on the Q&A panel. So if you guys have any questions you know throughout the discussion that we have go ahead and post them in here and we'll save sometime at the end to to get your questions answered. If we're unable to get to all the questions will definitely be able to follow up via email shortly after the webinar here today. So I guess let's go ahead and get things kicked off Ken. Awesome! I guess my first question for you is and when it was decided to close schools down for the near future, you guys made the commitment to still get meals to your students which is incredible. So I guess first and foremost how are you able to accomplish this because that is I mean that's a huge undertaking and I guess it's kind of a two-part question. The second part is you know can you walk us through how you're able to navigate through the federal regulations to get meals to the students at home? Sure, well the decision to the feed kids was an easy one it was a yes. The hard part was okay, now how do we fund it. Sure. And as Chief Financial Officer that is my primary goal, but School nutrition is falls under this department. So I've got a wonderful extraordinary actually, school nutrition director. And as far as the logistics of getting the kids fed; that is a huge endeavor as anybody can imagine. Our school district is 43,000 kids. We have 40 locations. Our free and reduced lunch rate is about 30% or something like that I guess. It's not real high, but we have some very high poverty pockets within our commuity. And we want to take care of those kids in those pockets. So the logistics of feeding the kids that fell on Tina, and she did a wonderful job of mobilizing her staff. It was a mobilization I got to tell you. Anybody who works in a school district is doing things everyday that they've never done before right now. And doing things in a different way than they ever thought they would do before. That's where we find ourselves and so it's been a learning experience every single day. Tina took it by the horns, figured out the logistics of how to get the food to the children and then as far as funding goes. Our superintendent Dr. Hightower said "we'll fund this, let's just get it done we'll figure out the funding later." because we had all of one day in reality one day to figure out. Okay we're going from here where kids are coming to school everyday feeding them a hot lunch. To here now we are not coming to school everyday. In fact we are not coming to school at all anymore and we are still going to feed kids. And there was a totally different meal pattern of course. So again the decision was easy to feed the kids. The logistics was hard to figure out, but once we figured it out it was okay let's do it. And then we went back to your second part of the question, let's navigate the red tape if you will, the federal regulations. And it was really once we made the decision, the superintendent made the commitment we'll fund it. It made figuring out those regulations and how to get around them, or not around them but how to work with them a whole lot easier to run. Because we were on the firing line, we weren't trying to navigate those that red tape, before we fed kids. We feed kids and then figured out the red tape right. And that was the right way to go. I give kudos to our superintendent and school board for supporting that effort in that way. So when it came to working through the regulations. We already had, what they call a seamless summer feeding program. Okay. An agreement with USDA and they immediately said we don't know what the hecks going on here, we don't know what to do but you've got this so go ahead and go forward with that waiver if you will of certain regulations. Wow. It allowed us to package food and give kids that food outside of the cafeteria. Cause remember if you're not refunded or reimbursed by the federal government you must do things in their way. Which means giving them a hot lunch. Right, on location and in all the other pieces that go along that way. So you already have seamless summer feeding waivers, use those for now we'll figure out the rest later. So USDA really came through for us. That's huge. Set aside they realized hey were no man's land here let's just get the kids feed. So USDA really came through as well. Fantastic fantastic it sounds like it was a huge undertaking in a very quick period of time as you mentioned. You basically work things out within a 24 hour period. So you know kudos to you guys for such a fast response to that. Thank you, again I give all the credit to Tina. I was just willing to write the check. Well speaking of checks, another thing I wanted to ask you is you know obviously fundraising has been crucial for you guys. Using the Edlio Pay and online school payment tools for your funding and fundraising for numerous of your different projects that you have going on. So can you tell us a little bit about how you been able to use the fundraising tools and what you've been able to accomplish? With the donations during this tough time. Sure. When we made the commitment to feed the kids regardless of what the cost would be. We knew a little bit about what's cost was going to be. It's expensive. It wasn't a big schema thing. It's not expensive when you talk about it a five hundred million-dollar budget and we're going to spend you a million dollars here. That's not huge, but when you have no revenue source it is huge. So we had to really kind of ask our community just to step up. We didn't know when we started down this path, like I said whether we will get reimbursed from the federal government or not for feeding these kids. Right. We told the community that. We are going to do this revenue be damned okay. We are going to do it cause it is the right thing to do and that really lit a fire under our community. So hey how do we help? And so we set up through the online school payments a a button for them. For community members to go to and we set up two ways. Two different buttons, donation buttons. One of them is it a cost 26 dollars and 25 cents to feed a kid for a week. The meals that we give it's really low cost right, but that's a a breakfast and lunch for 5 days. That's the bag we give children on Monday morning's when when they pull up okay. And it's a drive-thru and we give it to them, but it's that's the cost $26.25 per week per child. So we told parents that we told the community. That this is what it cost if you'd like to sponsor a child per week. Or sponsor a hundred children a week. Or sponsor a hundred children for a hundred weeks! It had made it easy for parents to visualize and see, "oh well thats easy to do." I can click that button for $26.25 and I just pay a kid for a week. And it worked. Then we all said the second button is just a free form, where they just want to give $1,000 donation they just go in and give this $1,000 donation. They don't have to take a quantity of $26.25. You know that kind of stuff. So parents have been extremely responsive, the community has been extremely responsive. Churches have been extremely responsive. And it has really pulled together, as of this morning I think the last count I had was about $120,000. Wow! Via that method, so far in what 5 weeks. That's incredible! It is absolutely incredible. And it seems like you guys made it so easy just by putting you know simple little button there for them to go in and make that purchase. You know again it's a very easy system to use and you guys just made it front center and look at the type of response that you had on it. Like I said fantastic. It really is. And OSP has been great to work with. We ran into bumps as anytime you do something new and different you're going to run into bumps, but we overcome those. We did. We had a one of our teachers is a fairly well-known musician who does work in the community an offer to do a Facebook Live Concert Benefit. Oh cool! To raise money specifically for this and it was a Thursday night and we had about a hundred people online watching, but since then he's had over 5,000 views on that concert. Only about an hour long he did a really great job but just before he went on the site went down. [laughter] They had a storm in Virginia where the server is and the electricity got cut off. Nothing that anybody can do about it, but it's just one of those things that happened. And of course it happened we have an hour before showtime and it took a while until the next day to get the site up and running. But Tony Watkins our representitive that we work with did a fantastic job! I was on the phone with him Thursday night until well after 10:30 that evening trying to figure things out. And I was back on the phone with him at 7:30 the next morning and he has cleared up and site running. And since then we have had donation after donation every time somebody views that videos of the concert. A click on that button and give another donation. Beautiful, beautiful. It really, and that's a testament to the support we get from OSP and the folks at Edlio, so we appreciate that. We're happy to support you in any way we possibly can. So Ken as we know, one of the big hot topics right now and as we look into the future to. Everyone keeps bringing up distance learning right. And that is a huge component to this Covid-19 situation in the  Ed. tech space and education space.So you know you guys have obviously had a challenge to devices and hotspots not only to your students but also to your staff during this time you know. Tell us a little about what's worked, what's you know obviously everyone is running into challenges right now and I think one of the big things is of people being able to learn from others right. We're all trying and thats we need. Cause we are trying to put it together, so what has worked for you guys? What have you learned from this? You know what can you tell our audience today about it. I appreciate that question. It is a huge challenge, as I look at other school districts across the nation. The challenges what I've read the paper and in different publications, it's a huge challenge! And once you get the device in a kids hand, how do you keep it working. To your point what about connectivity. We was at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Sitting where I'm at right now I can great Wi-Fi I get great coverage, but if you go up to the north end of this County you get into the hollows and you're not going to get very  good connectivity at all. So different devices work better in different areas. So we had to kind of navigate through that as well. We are very fortunate and that our school board is provided great leadership over the past 20 years in the area technology. All of our teachers have already assigned nice laptops. So they were set. We were middle School level, we are mostly one-to-one with laptops, Chromebook or laptops. High School level we have a lot of laptops we had moved from desktop labs to laptop Labs that's the vision of our technology department started that process for like 2 years ago. So when this hit we had a lot of laptops already assigned to kids or available to kids. If they weren't assigned to sign any kids and then we could pull them out of those labs and if they needed one we assign it to them and send them home. We ask parents don't take one of our laptops if you got [laughter] cause we need to get these to kids who need them right. Sure. Our community was like absolutely and in a lot of parents went out and bought laptops for the kids. Again we have some very affluent markets in our community. Just like we have pockets of poverty, so everybody stepped up. And we were able to get laptops for the most parts where they were needed. You know a lot of kids they don't do laptops anymore, they use phones. A lot of parents don't do laptops anymore they use phones. So we were able to navigate through that process as well. To get our online learning tools, which they're really equipped for laptops. Work with our vendors to make them also available and usable within a telephone situation- smart phone. And that's not as easy as I would have thought. We had some bumps in the road, but guess what it works. Everybody pulls together and it works. So we are going down that path we had some hot spots that are called Kajeets. Or through one mobile company and they work great for about 90% of our County, but then again when you get to the hollows they don't work so well. So we actually had to do a little research and find devices that work better. And I actually went down to an AT&T store and had one of those great you have a cell phone store experiences where you sit around for four hours waiting to get things taken care of. So much fun right. Yeah exactly and bought I think about a hundred hotspots, through a different phone service company that worked in some of those spots, which didn't work with the other devices. So it's a matter of okay what do we need to do and what's it take to get it done. And it took me sitting in the cell phone store for four hours, to get those devices. That's what it took. It looked like you guys had a strong foundation in place, but more importantly your community sounds like a very tight-knit community. Where they're all coming together you know and really trying to get behind the district and their students to make sure things are getting done and quite frankly. It also just sounds like you guys have a that can do attitude that you're not going to give up. You're going to go in and you're going to make things happen regardless of how hard it is. There's always a solution right and it sounds like you guys have taken if you know head-on full steam ahead. Yes sir, that's exactly right. You always run into bumps, anything you do and everything we do everyday is new right now. So a decision you make this morning, you hit three bumps before noon and you figured out ways to resolve those bumps. Absolutely. You get it done and you move on. Cause it's the right thing to do for a kid's. That's the only reason we exist right, is to educate children. If you're not willing to suffer through those bumps and get them smooth out for a kids then you don't need to be here. Exactly well said, well said. Be in a different industry, there's other industries out there. Sure. So I guess as we kind of wrap things up here, you know we look towards the future you know. What are you guys doing to prepare for summer school, but also for next school year right and I guess more importantly the question that keeps coming up is. The budget impacts right for next year, and how do we prepare for that. Something's it's kind of hard to predict right just with how long this Covid situation is going to go on. But how are you guys preparing for summer school and how are you guys preparing for it for next school year? What sort of things are you putting in place now that's going to make you successful over the next 6 to 12 months. Great questions. Summer school we originally planned on of course having face-to-face summer school for kids. We do multiple different varieties of summer school for the different types of kids and learning experiences they need. To get them and to make them successful. So really folding all that down into guess what online learning.[laughter] We just can't count on anything else this point. So we are working with our curriculum vendors to produce or to make available what we need for a kids. To for remediate some cases or to move forward and other cases. We are working with them to get that worked out, so that we will be up and running come June 1st, for summer school. Again that is a situation were it changes everyday and we got a great curriculum department that they're working extremely long hours now to make sure that works out. Budget wise for next year, that's why I was running a little bit late then intended. No problem. Yeah it's a challenge every day. I'm working on a budget version number eight as of today and that maybe budget first number nine tomorrow. Typically we would have our budget actually going to the printer on Monday. So the board would say, if a May meeting. Table it for 30 days, have her public input meetings and then passed the budget in June. Ahead of our June 30th, fiscal year. That's not happening this year. We our state is not going to pass a budget they're going to do, what is called a continuing spending resolution. So we won't know what our funding for next year's going to be until probably the end of the first quarter of next year, September 30th. We hope to have it by then. So we're going to do a continuing spending resolution for June. But we are going to go ahead and put together a budget based on current revenue that we're getting from the state. Which is about 50% of our budget, the other 50% comes from property taxes. We know as well as we ever do what our property tax receipts are going to be for next year at this time. So we will go ahead and formulate a budget based on what we do know. What we don't know, or what we think is going to happen is come September when the state does finally pass the budget we're probably going to see what in Georgia they call austerity reduction. That's a nice euphemism- for guess what a budget cut. So we feel like we will probably have austerity reduction, we saw those back after 9/11. And we saw it again during the Great Recession. Where we had up to 32 million dollars withheld from us through that austerity reduction. This time we're planning, going in planning for about a 5 million dollar budget cut. Which sure doesn't sound like a lot right, but when almost 90% of your budget is people if you cut five million dollars. You're cutting people. We don't want to do that. We don't want to increase class sizes. We were just getting back to where we were prior to the recession. So our superintendent said "let's mitigate as much as we can." Let's take cuts at the central office wherever we can. Any vacant positions are going to remain vacant. Operating costs, he told division chiefs wack them by 5%. So every penny we can save here stays in the class right. And so we're able to protect the classroom as much as possible. Again that's budget version number 8.0! Tomorrow that might be different, but that's where we stand right now. We're kind of rolling the dice a little bit and going to go ahead and pass the budget or present a budget that is based on some of those assumptions. And hope for the best. Yeah and again it sounds like you have such a supportive community there. So you know maybe you guys can continue to use the donation modules and things like that do they help you know kind of balance a little bit of this a budget reduction you know. It sounds like your community comes together and makes things happen so you know hopefully that will continue to help out with with any sort of budget reductions that you guys might base. Yes sir, that's where our hope is and they haven't let us down so far. [laughter] Great job, perfect. Well why don't we open it up to the Q&A now, and see if anyone has any questions for us as we kind of wrap things up. So why don't we go ahead and take a look the chat here. [navigating on screen] [navigating on screen] Alright looks like Kathy from West Feliciana High School, ask you how did you get the link to payment opportunity info of the OSP to the community churches etcetera, apart from the video fundraiser button? So that's a great question. That's always a challenge in communications right. We do have a great Communications Department here and when all this started, parents were looking for information right and when you really got to strike while the iron's hot right. So when they're looking for information, get information in their hands. In a fashion that it is easily accessible. Our superintendent does a great job of communicating with parents and so he had a monthly communication was going out to parents already. And it was fairly well read. As much as you ever think things are right, but when this hit people are just dying for information. So we started putting information out on a daily basis just in a news blast via email, via Facebook, via Twitter on our website. Everywhere we can think to put it we put it and within that communication it's always talking about this is the impact for your child right. But at the bottom of that we always talked about the greater community this is what's happening. In part of that parents wanted to know how are you going to feed children, and so we told them. This is what we plan on doing and they were excited by that and we had a ton of volunteers. And we embedded with that communication every time we put it out and we're still doing it. Not every day now, but we're doing it once a week. With in that it has a link to the OSP site, with specific directions on how you make that donation. And every time we send that communication out, you see that bump in donations. It's a beautiful thing. And that's a great point to. You know so many people look at different areas for communication right, some people go to the website some people are fond of Facebook or Twitter. You know some people have you know the newsletters at that they subscribe to. So being able to communicate in a in a wide variety of ways I think is huge as you just pointed out. So you know that's great input and information to share with the team here. I appreciate that. We're trying very hard in this school district, from the top down and including our school board to be very transparent with our community. Because only thing we have with our citizens is there trust. They're giving up a significant portion of their wealth to us and want us to manage in the right way. Well how do they know we were managing in the right way? Well for us to be very transparent. We post all of our budgets, all of our audits and whatever we do finance wise, it gets posted on our website. So that anybody can pull up and look at it anytime. It's an open book literally. And by doing so you get their buy in and you get that support that you were talking about a moment ago. When we say- hey we we have a need here, man they are going to jump. Because they can see it really is needed it's not just crying wolf. Right. They look at our books and say, "yeah they need help alright!" [laughter] "Look at that school nutrition!" Right. It needs help. So that breeds support no doubt about that. Absolutely, absolutely and thank you Kathy for the question that was a great question. Do we have any other questions here. Looks like we might have one. I think that's it from the questions that I'm seeing. I tell you what if anyone has any other questions feel free to reach out to us so obviously this webinar is being recorded. So if you want any more information please you can go to edlio.com. It will have information about Covid-19 resources, also there's more information on at edlio.com surrounding the online school payment Edlio Pay features that we have and donation features that we can reviewed today. And if you guys just need any sort of help or have questions navigating through this tough time. Or would like to see you know some of our solutions on how we might be able to help we're here for you, now more than ever. So again feel free to go to edlio.com, if you need anything else there's direct numbers on there where you can talk to us directly. And we just thank everyone so much for their time today and Ken, we can't thank you enough for her spending the time with us. And have it an honest conversation on how you guys are being proactive in hanging in there during this just tough situation and tough time. Yes sir, it's my pleasure I appreciate you having me on today and I'm helping anyway please let me know. You got it thank you so much so sir, we will talk soon. Alright ya'll take care, see you. Bye bye.

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