At its Sept. 12 meeting the Poway Unified School District Board of Education approved a new employee benefits consulting contract and accepted the district's unaudited 2023-24 financial report.

James Jimenez presented a recommendation to award RFP 2025-04 for employee benefits brokerage and consulting to Burnham. Jimenez described the role of a benefits consultant as helping the district "manage the finances of our benefits employee program, to negotiate on behalf of the district directly with our medical carriers or our drug prescription carrier" and to assist with benefits administration. Public commenter Devesh Vashishta noted the district's competitive bid process produced an "annual savings of finding a competitive bid here are $120,000 per year." The board approved the contract unanimously.

Joy Romero presented the 2023-24 unaudited actual financial report. Key figures she reported included a general fund combined net activity of negative $5.8 million, an unrestricted net activity of positive $1.2 million, and a combined general fund ending balance of $119.5 million. Romero identified $53.6 million of that balance as carryover into the 2024-25 budget, including large one-time block grants: about $13.0 million remaining in the arts and music block grant, $8.4 million in the learning recovery emergency block grant, and nearly $6.0 million in the educator effectiveness block grant. Romero said those carryovers are planned to be budgeted in 2024-25 and 2025-26 per board-approved plans.

Public commenters raised budget concerns during the meeting. Rochelle Badler said, "We currently are in a $15,000,000 budget deficit," questioned outsourcing costs versus in-house maintenance for HVACs, and asked for greater transparency about where money is going and why frequent litigation settlements are costing the district. Craig Pond, running for trustee Area E, criticized a proposed change (Item 3h in tonight's packet) that would raise the districtspending limit on new capital assets from $5,000 to $50,000 and flagged HVAC change orders that he said total over $160,000 as evidence of poor estimating.

Board members thanked staff for the financial presentation and noted the carryover stems largely from one-time categorical grants and planned expenditures in the coming budget cycle. The board voted unanimously to accept the unaudited actuals and to approve the Burnham contract.

What happens next: The district will incorporate the reported carryover amounts into the 2024-25 budget process; the new benefits consultant will begin work under the terms of the approved contract. Public concerns about transparency and spending limits were recorded in the public-comment record and may be raised again at future budget-advisory committee meetings or board hearings.