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Commissioner Gordon said that she has same misgivings about going outside the per-pupil because it cuts into the school board's authority. She would like to talk with the school boards about it. Commissioner Halkiotis said that the OCS board, many years ago, made a decision to fund nurses out of their own budget. He thinks it is important to Hate that OCS chose to spend more money on nurses. He wants to know what they are actually spending for nurses today. He thinks this is an important piece of the equity argument - if students have equal access to health. Commissioner Gordon stressed that the County Commissioners need to be partners with the school boards and work with them to figure out the best thing to work for everyone. They are all elected officials and it is important to cooperate. Commissioner Carey said that he has been concerned about statutory responsibilities and the line item issues. He said that the Board of County Commissioners has a responsibility to say no to the school systems, since there is a limit to what the Board can fund, and this is dangerous. Commissioner Foushee agreed with Commissioner Gordon in terms of exercising line item veto over the school boards' budgets. She would not want to get into that. She thinks that they can talk about providing additional funding without talking about what the funding is for. Chair Jacobs said that it is clear that they should stay away from instructional or administrative positions, which makes it mare problematic how to respond to the Grumet report. He thinks that they can focus an nurses, SRO's, social workers, and mental health professionals. He thinks that they can establish criteria where there is an educational component and a public health or a public service component. He said that the school collaboration group has discussed this for some time. He said that the Manager's proposal last year for a tiered approach was some attempt to respond to the new paradigm about how to escape the bonds of per-pupil. He thinks that they could contract with positions and they could be fashioned so that it is clear what the expectations are and what the limits are. This is done with nurses at OCS. This is a way to take same of the burden off of the per-pupil and give the school systems more flexibility on how they spend their operating budget. Chair Jacobs mentioned food expenditures and said that, if the County Commissioners get involved, they could promote the County's economy and recycle same of the money within the community by purchasing local produce. Chair Jacobs said that this is a way to address the gap that is created by per- pupilfunding, because it could be scaled. He suggested "buying dawn" the district tax. Commissioner Halkiotis said that it will be interesting when staff pulls together the actual dollar amounts and that they will be surprised what the school systems are spending for these important services. He said that every time the State decides to dump some program, they dump it on the local governments. The latest one was the sales tax reimbursements. He gave credit to the school systems for hiring consultants to research ways to reduce energy casts. He suggested addressing equity by giving the school systems so much money per square foot for utility costs. This creates an incentive to save even mare. He said that bath school systems have to pay for their own activity buses and to fuel them. Both school systems run after-hour programs and non- instructional activities and they have to pay for these. John Link said that one way of addressing the slippery slope is through a contract between the Board of County Commissioners, school boards, and towns, where the entities are willing partners with the SRO's, nurses, social workers, etc. You can contract with support areas outside of instructional areas.