Regular Meeting

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[21] SPEAKER_25: with, it's just setting up a meeting. I don't think it's really that level and I will function on your behalf for that.

[29] SPEAKER_36: Okay, so please vote. Four ayes with member Rodriguez not present. Members of the public who wish to address the board are welcome to do so by submitting a speaker request form located at the rear of the room. Speakers are limited to three minutes, and the board is not able to respond to items that is not on the agenda. There's one public comment on non-agenda items, so Ms. Cindy Parks. Oh, excuse me, I jumped way ahead. Excuse me, 6.1, superintendent's update.

[72] SPEAKER_25: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, members of the board, members of the audience, thanks for being with us this evening. I want to start with the first kind of update and sort of a idea that I want to present to the board for us to think about as a district. Facilitron. And I'm going to have Stephanie Anderson come to the podium and do a short presentation to us. And Stephanie, if you'd introduce your guest that's with you tonight as well, I'd appreciate that. And tell us what Facilitron is and what you guys do and why is that something we should think about.

[108] SPEAKER_15: Good evening members of the board, Superintendent Sanchez, Newark Unified staff members and community. Thank you for having us. It's an honor and a pleasure to be here with you. I'd like to introduce Hao Liu. This is my colleague.

[124] SPEAKER_30: Nice meeting everyone.

[126] SPEAKER_15: Thank you for having us. Hao is head of product. As Superintendent Sanchez said, I am director of partnerships with Facilitron. We are a platform That is cloud-based that manages your facilities, rentals, and calendaring system. So we are based out of Los Gatos, California. We were established in 2014. We have a very unique business model that I will explain to you shortly. And we can get your district up and running in two days. We are currently operating in 10 states with over 1,000 campuses. Our business model provides no out-of-pocket costs to the district. We intend this to be a partnership to work with you long term. There is a sliding scale only on external approved reservations. And there is a small fee on those external reservations, which you can see here.

[215] Nancy Thomas: So could you explain that a little bit more? So if that's an individual transaction, so for example, if we're renting a room for a meeting once a month, that would be each meeting would be a different transaction?

[234] SPEAKER_30: It depends on how they actually set it up. Oftentimes what most groups do is that they will book the entire lump of all 30 uses in one reservation, which has a larger sum, which means that their service fee will be significantly lower as compared to booking everything individually.

[258] SPEAKER_15: This is an example of a timeline of getting your district up and running. Take photos of schools, of campuses, 14 to 20 schools in two days. Have the site built and have it ready for review from your district. Training is provided and you do receive an account manager and customer service representative for that. And then we have ongoing relationships with you throughout your reservations.

[286] Nancy Thomas: What are the photos for?

[287] SPEAKER_15: It's for the website to showcase your facilities within the district. Right now, I believe you have a paper process where they do not know what is available for rental. And so we provide a link that is housed on your website.

[306] SPEAKER_30: It's essentially a video log of your facilities so that it's more of a streamlined process where folks can, within the community, can submit applications online. And with the photos and the various information about what your facilities are like, it will reduce all the admin time of having to answer questions of what type of activities I can have in this particular facility, and how many people does it host, and what type of amenities and equipment is available.

[336] Nancy Thomas: So, for now, I understand that We don't even know the square footage of various facilities that people can rent. And you would be up and running by September 1st? Yes, ma'am, that is correct. But how would you have a fee structure that takes into account the size of the facility and whether the fee is commensurate with other districts or other, like the cities, what they charge for facilities? Because they're kind of our competition. Doesn't that require a lot of work?

[369] SPEAKER_30: It's a great question. So generally, what we do is we do a cost analysis based on the California Department of Education's Joint Use Calculator. It's a calculator that's co-developed by UC Berkeley, and it's the foundation of the analysis. As soon as we can, if the board decides to approve this and move forward, we can get the cost data and square footage information from the district It would essentially take us about a week or so to provide the rough draft of cost analysis. With certain revision, it should be ready within a couple weeks.

[404] SPEAKER_25: Just for a point of order, would you please speak into the mic when you're answering?

[410] SPEAKER_30: It's OK. The cost analysis is really not as intensive of a process. As long as we have the cost data as far as your maintenance costs, your custodial, your utility costs, And also your square footage information, that's not at a per classroom base. All we need is an overall square footage information for your school broken down by the various categories. That analysis can be conducted fairly quickly.

[440] SPEAKER_36: Now conversely, you can also just adopt whatever fees that we've already have established or will establish and just apply that to the rental fees.

[451] SPEAKER_30: What most districts will do oftentimes is actually go out the gate with the existing fee structure. Over time, once you have some use data, you can make that far more accurate based on your existing operating costs.

[465] Nancy Thomas: So if we use the same fees and it's no cost to us, how does that work?

[473] SPEAKER_30: Well, whatever fees that you currently charge in the community, as long as it's an external approved reservation, We'll take a percentage off of that. In fact, there is one more option. This district can choose to absorb that fee as a commission, or you can pass that entirely on to the community and have them pay for it. Both options have actually been used by many different districts.

[497] Nancy Thomas: So we have a lot of youth groups that don't pay any fee.

[501] SPEAKER_30: Yes. So in those cases, if the sum on those reservations is zero, our commission will be zero.

[509] SPEAKER_40: What is your, what's the advantage of you doing versus us? What is the advantage for people that want to rent or utilize our facilities and in terms of payment?

[521] SPEAKER_30: Well, if I understand your question correctly, I believe that your district will remain in control of all how decisions are made. Your admins will give the final approval on who is going to use the facilities when and what type of activities can actually take place on your campuses. All we're doing is facilitating and making this process far more streamlined and transparent.

[544] SPEAKER_36: So the user group pays Facilitron via credit card, check. They pay to Facilitron. Facilitron then sends us payment.

[552] SPEAKER_40: So is there really an advantage to having that extra step? I mean, if we're doing the work about getting people in there, if we're doing the work about deciding whether it's appropriate for them to be in the school, what is the advantage of paying 7 or 8 or 9 or 10 or 12 percent?

[569] SPEAKER_25: Let me, if I may, part of what, why I thought this was attractive, it's something we should consider. There's a lot of space that is being unutilized right now or underutilized or being used for free. And I think that, you know, part of the charge of, you know, in conversation with the board relative to the budget is try to find some new revenue building. This would be a revenue building endeavor. And some of the advantages is to the staff, that does do the community use. It's not very formalized. It's kind of not consistent. And I think that just having a consistent way to approach it is interesting to me. And certainly, all the school activities have priority, number one. It's our space. And if we have certain partnerships, like with the city or with a nonprofit or with an existing partner, we could choose to not have them pay fees. But there is a fair amount of other use in our area that I think could be utilized Once folks know these are the parameters of using our space like a church or you know I'm thinking about space like for example the star lab if that were you know to be utilized or the small gym or a small gym at the high school or McGregor if those are a part of what happens if if we were to be able to build revenue I'd recommend Taking some of that revenue and reinvesting it and upgrading our facilities even more So we have more more things to offer and we have nicer facilities during the day so Some of us just managing and some of the hassle with just the daily Trying to figure out who's got what and who's storing what and who's using storage who's who's running a space? There's not any real consistent process that's in place. I think this would offer a consistent structure.

[684] SPEAKER_40: So essentially what you're doing is you're structuring our process, setting it up. I think about the times that I was involved in schools and there are times when facilities, if it's not being utilized, you know, you utilize it as a group that might be in there. If I had a club and wanted to use the gym, you know, at what point am I able to get in there? What are the parameters set up? What's going to be involved? We're going to have to set up our procedure.

[715] SPEAKER_36: Yeah, so we do that from a staff level as far as procedures and what we are allowed to book and etc.

[723] SPEAKER_25: What I would recommend is let's let them get through the presentation then I think you will have better information and be able to ask more questions. I think it'll help. It'll help clarify a lot of what you're asking I believe.

[732] SPEAKER_15: Great question. So one of the benefits is that it provides a transparency for your management. So what you're asking about, how to see what is available, who approves it, where does it go, that is the first thing. There are multiple approval levels. Some of them can be viewed at the site level. Ultimately, the approval level would go up to the district. So that provides that benefit for you. The district can view everything online. Whereas now I believe you have a paper process and that is not available to be seen by everyone. Whereas this platform will provide that for you. And then reports will provide district insight to facility use. So you're able to see the breakdown of the rentals, the equipment, the services, and the utilization of hours by each site and then each room at each site as well.

[788] SPEAKER_25: And the reporting is not something we pay for. That's just built into the system. It's built through the fees. OK. I would have to buy a software. Scroll down.

[798] SPEAKER_36: No, we're not buying software.

[799] SPEAKER_30: So essentially, actually, to kind of add on to what Stephanie had mentioned, one of the main benefits that really differentiates our service and platform from many other things that you see out there is the fact that we'll offload some of the stuff that is fairly manual and is time consuming from your staff. specifically verification of non-profit status. If a group that comes in and claims that they're a non-profit group, we will require them to provide us with their EIN number, which we'll use to validate against the IRS database, and will let us know whether they are a true non-profit or not. We'll be able to verify their COI, certificate of insurance, along with collecting payment, sending invoices, as well as providing receipts, that entire process is managed. The only thing that the district and the site admins are really doing in that process now is to really make the decision and having those conversations, which helps you to really build relationships with your customers, to understand who is coming into your schools, who are coming onto your campuses, and what type of things that they're planning on doing. So this platform offers a service that essentially streamlines the process will help reduce the amount of admin time it requires to run this as a business properly. On the back end, which is sort of what this slide shows, is we'll provide you with a lot of business intelligence. Aside from just having raw data, we're now showing you what's your demand. Is there actual demand here in this area? And if there is high demand, should you adjust your price or not? And what type of operation, as Superintendent Sanchez mentioned, are you running at various schools? Is that consistent? Is there equality in the policy and the practices? So all of these are the various type of data points in business intelligence that you can now gain using the system.

[924] SPEAKER_15: So for the calendars, for example, this will have your internal and external calendars. You can see that just the district level, or you can see it by each campus. you can know what's going on at all times. This can be publicized on your district website if you need to publicize practices or games for the public or it can only be internal if you want everything just to be viewed by your administration. As Hal mentioned, the consistent fees, this lets you know whether the groups are being charged equitably and if they're non-profit. what their rates are and that those are verified and consistently across each campus as well. Because it's housed digitally, you can easily update the forms and the records. The certificate of insurance, our team again will verify those insurance forms and if they are out of compliance, we will notify your users so that they are, do have updated insurance forms.

[995] SPEAKER_25: So, would you talk a little bit about when somebody calls to set it up, you guys have a team of people, who's on that team and how does that work? Walk us through kind of a quick example.

[1008] SPEAKER_15: With your implementation team, you'll have an account manager and a service customer representative. When your external users submit the request, it goes through an approval level. Our team receives the email automatically and they work with that user to verify, once it's approved by the district, to make sure that they have the facility that they need, that their requests for whether it's a gym, theater, whatever they need with that, custodial, security, all of that is available. In addition, anything else?

[1043] SPEAKER_30: I think the service component of it is that probably something that really, truly differentiates us. You will, for instance, have a group that has worked in a particular facility, but due to any function at the school, if the high school team makes a deep playoff run and they need to take over the gym because of additional games, we can now repurpose the groups that are already booked there into a different location and making sure that transition is very smooth. In addition to all the things that Stephanie had mentioned, just making sure that every aspect of what the renters are looking for and what the school district can offer, there's no more gap. And we kind of view ourselves as the group that really helps develop the customer relationship between the district and the renters. And making sure that any type of request and demands are met or explained and there is less friction as compared to in the past. Often times we walk into a situation like this because it is really not the district admin's job to sort of run a business, doing your normal job and then run a business on the side, so there's always some level of friction and we help smooth that over.

[1122] SPEAKER_15: You have a customer service team at all times, 24 hours.

[1125] SPEAKER_40: Who bills and do you bill? And you collect the money?

[1130] SPEAKER_30: We collect the money. We'll submit a check to the district on a monthly basis, along with a live report at senior system that your business service team can access at any given time.

[1142] SPEAKER_40: We have a number of groups that have contracts with us, nonprofit. So how does that work?

[1153] SPEAKER_30: It all, it's entirely up to you. We have districts, basically, with all their MOUs, long-term contracts, that they want those folks to be billed after the fact, meaning that instead of charging them at the, invoice them at the beginning of the month, we actually invoice them at the end of the month, and we'll collect payment in the rears. As long as the district is okay with that practice, we're perfectly fine basically enforcing your policy.

[1180] SPEAKER_15: We take your terms and policies and reinforce them.

[1182] SPEAKER_36: I think now I'm impressed. I wanted to ask a question, and we can double back to you, or do you want to finish off?

[1188] SPEAKER_40: I'm sorry, what?

[1188] SPEAKER_36: Did you want to finish up? Because I remember Presetto chimed in to ask.

[1191] SPEAKER_40: No, I'm just, I'm not sorry.

[1192] SPEAKER_29: Yeah. So I just have one question for us on our side. And if we went through something like this, we would just make sure that the process would always go through this facility, so then. Everybody. OK. So that's one. OK. And then for you guys, as part of developing our partnership, what's your flexibility in terms of the services? So given that we're a small district and, or alternatively, which would be more helpful for us would be maybe potentially making, leaving the service fee, but making a 1% contribution to our district for things like digital literacy or technology. So you guys can support a local school and we can be the model for that.

[1237] SPEAKER_30: Well, I mean, I think those are very interesting tasks. We haven't done anything like that. Our business model is fairly standard. It's all districts. are pretty much the same, the two different options that I mentioned earlier. Everyone basically falls under either of the choice. It's something that we can definitely consider. I think if, you know, we do make contributions to various districts in different forms, helping districts in, so far as I know, contributing to districts bond measure efforts along with

[1278] SPEAKER_29: I just think because we're unique, we're super special, and we're not like everyone else, but maybe potentially if we move forward with this, it could be like a longer-term partnership. So as part of the commitment for like a two-year, three-year commitment with Facilitron, then you guys could do that or donate to one of our foundations, and it'd be tax write-off.

[1301] SPEAKER_30: Absolutely. that makes sense long-term. And, you know, we're not, as actually I was discussing with Stephanie prior to coming to this meeting, Facilities Roundtable would not make money the first year in this partnership. But, which means that our goal really is going to any district we want to have that relationship to be five years paying. We want to be here to stay, and we're continuing. This platform, as you see today, is an ever-evolving platform. Actually, I'm gonna use President Cohen, hopefully I'm not embarrassing you, but he's been a pioneer on this platform for over two years. Eastside has, this case study actually is built around Eastside, and they've helped us develop a lot of functionality. And every district that has come onto the platform since have also done the same. So what you see today is today. Tomorrow it's going to be, there will be new things that will help drive your district into the next generation of technology that will make things more streamlined, make things simpler, make things faster for you, and give you more transparency and intelligence. So I think from that perspective, we're contributing on top of any monetary contributions that we can provide you in partnership, we're also contributing to your next generation How do we manage the district in a way that's fiscally more sound?

[1396] SPEAKER_36: So, it's... Sorry, I want to make sure I clarify, especially for the public that I have zero interest in Facilitron, because I know you said Pioneer and whatnot. There's zero personal relationship or anything of that sort. The interaction that I have had with Facilitron is that we are a user, our district, And I, as a principal of a high school, I do have to go through and approve each of the rentals. And in my experience, initially, when our district approached us about using Facilitron, our natural reaction from the site admin was, OK, we can do this. We can keep on doing this. Why are you changing it up now, right? But I think after two years, it's been awesome. It's taken a lot of the mental load and a lot of the increase just direct increase, because prior to this, every renter that would be interested in renting a facility at the school would go to my secretary or call me, and I have to meet with them. And it just could be simple, hey, is your gym available on this December? I'd like to meet with all of them. But the Facilitaton facilitates that. They can check on the website and see what facilities are available. I'm able to put in all of my school's events, all my sports practices so that the public knows not to book those particular days so they know what's off limits and what's available. And then I just respond to the email as far as reviewing the bookings and allow it to book or not book. I can decline it if I wanted to. And then after that, my job is pretty much done. Then Facilitron takes care of the insurance issue because I'm not worried about a group using my facilities without insurance. They can print out their own certificate of use so that if there's an issue of unauthorized use, they have to provide a certificate of approval for use. It's helped a lot. And I think, at least from my school's perspective, it's increased our rental rates. Not rates, but rental fees that we collect by a significant amount.

[1524] SPEAKER_29: I think it's a great idea. I'm just trying to. Throw ideas out for potential negotiations. We're a lot smaller. These are ideas, dude. And you could have the Facilitron tech lab by donating all the laptops and the computer. That's your name on everything.

[1543] SPEAKER_30: We're absolutely open to it. And in fact, in our hometown, the high school approaches us to support their robotics lab team. We do. We have a better team.

[1557] Nancy Thomas: We have a great robotics team.

[1558] SPEAKER_25: We're absolutely open to you. Ms. Thomas. Let's go through those finished. Oh, wait.

[1566] Nancy Thomas: I had a couple of questions. One of the things that we do is we provide sports teams or, you know, students, age groups, free use of our facilities, but we do charge them for direct costs if we have to bring in a... So, in effect, If we continue not charging them, we will have to pay a fee on top of, based on the cost of, you know what I'm saying? We charge them the cost of a custodian, and we don't get that cost, that percentage back from you, right?

[1608] SPEAKER_30: Totally understand. So it's kind of a decision that the district can make how you want to pass on the fee. Many districts, especially when it's groups that are only being charged for direct costs, that cost is extremely low. And if they are renting any commercial property or facilities elsewhere, it will be significantly higher.

[1632] Nancy Thomas: One way to look at it is that if our direct cost includes the cost of our admins booking and doing all that other work, so that would justify increasing the direct cost.

[1648] SPEAKER_30: Absolutely. So there, I was just going to mention that there are multiple ways of doing that. One is, I've seen, you know, one district decided to increase their fee, to include our fee, so that they absorb that as a commission. In another district, it's basically a pass-through. They'll pass through whatever fee is, and you will hardly hear especially with the groups that are paying direct costs, you will hardly hear anyone complain about, is there an increase of 6 or 12%?

[1678] Nancy Thomas: Right. No, it sounds like a good deal. One other question I had is, you said that there's this tool. We could use that tool ourselves. It's available, right? We don't have to pay for it? It's available. What have you added on top of the tool that If we were to use the tool, we wouldn't get the same kind of service that you're providing. So you're talking about the calendar? Or the tool you said that Berkeley developed or something?

[1712] SPEAKER_30: No, it's basically what they call the CD calculator. It's the cost analysis calculator. It's a service that we'll provide. We're not going to charge you. We do that for all of our existing customers. And it's basically a way to take your operating costs from past year and what your square footages are, and then how do you, and also the capital costs of replacing, building a new building in this area, and how do you calculate a hard cost for every hour at every facility. So my gym, if I had a $10 million operating budget last year, operating costs last year, Part of that went to the gym maintenance and so forth. And how much is the heart cost per hour for that gym based on the square footage the gym occupies? And so that's basically what that calculator does.

[1768] Nancy Thomas: So it just helps us determine the fees that we charge. And you're doing all this other calendar, and you're doing the billing. They're managing it. And you're managing the whole process.

[1778] SPEAKER_30: Yes, we will help you conduct that analysis. The cost analysis is a little bit complex with the various, there's a lot of data points that we gather but it's all available at district level. You have your financial reports, essentially it's data coming out of your financial reports and we'll take different data points and plug into the calculator and help you figure out exactly how much you do charge, your gym, stadium, classroom, your multi-purpose room, your theater.

[1805] SPEAKER_25: Our soccer field at McGregor, things like that.

[1809] SPEAKER_15: And here's an example of that as well. This is an analysis of the approved decline.

[1813] Nancy Thomas: Our soccer field at

[1814] SPEAKER_15: and shows that their revenue when they started was $400,000 annually and brought it up to $3 million. And then this allowed them to make new decisions for 2017.

[1823] SPEAKER_30: This is essentially without having to add any additional staff. With the same amount of accounts, and you're doing, went from just under $500,000 to $3 million in requests. About half of, just under half of that $3 million was approved and processed through the system. we're looking at almost three times the increase in annual revenue for the district. Although I will probably say it's more cost recovery than revenue, because the district spends a significant amount of money in terms of maintaining the various facilities and also providing a different cost of covering the different events.

[1866] SPEAKER_25: And managing people that don't pay.

[1869] Nancy Thomas: Oh my goodness, we've had people that don't pay for years.

[1874] SPEAKER_15: And the system will let you see that. It will record all of that for you. And last but not least, here are three testimonials from three of our current partners at Gilroy, Eastside Union High School District, and then Napa Valley as well.

[1889] SPEAKER_30: And they vary in size. I think Gilroy being the smallest, it's about 13 schools comparable to you guys. The other two districts are slightly larger. Eastside Union, obviously, it's a larger district with all high schools.

[1907] SPEAKER_40: So to recap, then all things, whether they pay a fee or not, will be on the calendar. And the calendar is set by the school itself. So you have to determine what's available. Once you tell us what the going rate would be for a classroom versus a multipurpose room versus the field, whatever it is. We make a decision in terms of who gets charged and who doesn't.

[1933] SPEAKER_25: We developed the fees together and through a process.

[1936] SPEAKER_40: Right, and you've got a process for figuring out what is a logical fee. We know what it costs for custodians, we know what it costs for wear and tear that might be above and beyond what would happen if they were not there.

[1949] SPEAKER_30: Yeah, so as part of the analysis actually takes into consideration the wear and tear with the depreciation schedule for a building or for an artificial turf field or your grass fields, so that's already built into it, which is one of the reasons why it's becoming more and more popular as kind of a tool for districts to gauge if we're spending X amount of dollars on maintenance, on custodial utility and so forth, what is the hard cost? And that hard cost is essentially what they're charging the outside users.

[1982] SPEAKER_40: On places where you've gone to help them decide the fee, has the fee been adjusted higher?

[1988] SPEAKER_30: paramount or is this? In most cases I would say 90% of the situations we've gone into it's gone up just because a lot of those districts rates have not been adjusted for in some cases well over 10 years.

[2003] SPEAKER_40: So we have community groups that are depending upon a certain price is that a factor is that a problem?

[2009] SPEAKER_30: That's that's an exception that a district can always make. I think that don't I wouldn't look at the analysis as this is what you must do. This is a guideline where you can understand what your cost is.

[2026] SPEAKER_30: If you have community groups who are heavily involved with the district in terms of providing services, you have in-kind service that they can essentially will be a discount off of their reservations and so forth.

[2041] SPEAKER_36: Depending on what our board policy would be, the end user has either has or doesn't have the authority to adjust the price. So when the legacy groups makes a reservation request and it shows them a particular price, you know, if you were the one approving it, if we grant you the authority to augment the price based on legacy users, then you can actually change that price and give them a discount. It's probably not recommended but in situations where you have entities who have a long standing relationship with the district, I think we would allow that leeway.

[2078] Nancy Thomas: I have a question. Is there a way, for example, our sports facilities, we don't know if we're going to have end of the year tournaments and things like that. Up until now, we have failed to allow rentals of facilities because we might need them for our athletic teams. But I heard you say something about finding alternatives venues if something like that happens. Is there a way to set that up in advance so that if we do rent a facility to an outside group, they know that they could get bumped, but if they get bumped, they'll get bumped to a certain place? Is there a way to put that into the reservation system?

[2131] SPEAKER_30: I guess the answer would be it depends. It depends on how automated you want to become. Based on my experience, I know that instead of dedicating a specific facility as a replacement facility for your gym, let's say, for example, at the high school, the customers might be better served, just depending on their geographic location, to have the flexibility of going to the various locations that are available. So instead of forcing them to go from the high school to the middle school, if they're closer to an elementary school that has a multi-purpose room that has basketball hoops, that might work out better for them. So oftentimes what happens is leave that decision up to the customer and the renter for them to decide what would be a better fit, given both facilities are available, and have them have a choice.

[2185] SPEAKER_15: They understand that the internal calendar, which would be your team, would trump their request.

[2190] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, but it's not a calendar yet, and we won't know until the last minute. And that leaves groups up in the air about whether they can have the facility. And as a result, we have turned away rentals from our event center because it's big enough to accommodate some things, and we don't have another facility big enough. So I mean, we lose potential revenue from the event center that way.

[2216] SPEAKER_30: And also, I would say, as you will probably find out when we start going through this process, that the live calendar, meaning that you can see the availability live, whenever someone books something, that availability immediately goes away. You can also have preset availability, meaning during school hours, no one can ever book anything except for internal staff. With that type of availability, you'll have far better control and much more flexibility in terms of updating people and making sure that they understand what are some of the things that are coming down the pipeline. This is probably a little harder to envision, but our customer service team is very on top of it. The reps are always verifying and checking for requests that's coming from the field and making sure those things that are requested, if they cannot resolve them, get escalated to your district and the avenues in a very timely fashion.

[2281] SPEAKER_40: Time to use is for internal groups?

[2284] SPEAKER_36: Yeah. We use it for everything. Essentially, it's our whole facility's use management for. It only works?

[2291] SPEAKER_15: Yeah. 95% of the calendar is internal. Yeah.

[2295] SPEAKER_36: So I have a. There's no charge? No, we just use it for that. I have a person on my staff who would get all the schedules from the coaches and the practices and the ASB events and all the internal events.

[2308] SPEAKER_40: Which they didn't have to do any of. Right. Some of them were just handed.

[2314] SPEAKER_25: Any other questions?

[2316] SPEAKER_15: No. Thank you very much. Thank you.

[2321] SPEAKER_25: Thank you guys. Thank you. It's something that I think is worth trying. And I think that my recommendation is, and I've had deeper conversations with Facilities Toronto, would be to work with them to kind of initially get the right size fee for our existing partners and start at a very kind of humble starting point, get some data over six months, and then maybe readjust it for the following year based on what we learned this year. But I think it's definitely worth a try. Yeah.

[2349] SPEAKER_40: How much work was it for set up time?

[2353] SPEAKER_36: We went through like a half day of training as far as how to use the software and the approval process. And their group has been very responsive. I get too many emails from them.

[2366] SPEAKER_25: So that concludes that portion of my report. Oh, yes. I'll do that at the end of my closing comments. Thank you for reminding me. Community engagement. Sarah, would you mind pulling up my slide for community engagement? I have a handout to share with you, and I'll put it up on the board for the public to look at. I think that I've tried to put together on a sheet something that answers a lot of the questions and the direction the board gave me at the last meeting to try to put together a community engagement process and meetings that can be meaningful. But let me kind of walk you through what the handout is ahead of you. Uh, everything in orange would be a large, uh, anybody's welcome to come, uh, community engagement meetings series. And what's in blue would be community. Uh, I guess I would call it the superintendent advisory committee. Uh, and you'll see that they're kind of back to back. Um, so even though it looks like it's just five meetings, it's really 10 meetings. So there would be five community engagement opportunities. A couple would be, well, three I think would be at night, and two would be during the day. We had some requests and input that during the day, a couple options would be desirable. And I tried to pair the advisory committee meetings to follow each of those times so that we have a broad spectrum of being able to invite people. And just quickly on the advisory committee in blue, I've reached out already to some community members, all of our employee groups and the city. I spoke with Mayor Nagy today and said, as soon as we kind of get a okay from the board on the structure, which you would think two of two or three representatives that represent the city that could be part, maybe city council person and somebody from staff. And the reason they're together is kind of the idea that some people might want to sit in both, and I don't want them to have to choose. And the other piece that I would utilize this group for is we start collecting input from the community. This group would help me take that in, and think about next steps, and modulate some ideas, and just really help give me advice and counsel on, OK, what are next steps, and what are some additional information or questions we might have. And there is some time changes. I know I met with member Crocker the other day, actually member Crocker, member Thomas. And I want to point out to member Thomas that the times have changed from what we talked about. So that's in red on those dates. So I think what I wanted to put in front of you is this is kind of the structure. I do have a structure that I'll stand out now that is a, I could provide one for the audience as well. This is just kind of a mock, That would be kind of a standing agenda where, and I think the most important piece here is we want to look at whatever the process is here on this sheet that the public has significant ways to provide input even if they can't come to the meeting. So once we get the structure and the protocol down, we want to have a structure at the meeting where they can provide input, we want to have a way for people that can't come to meetings to submit comments and recommendations for cuts. And there's always the three minute public comment at board meetings. So we're going to begin trying to operationalize the structure and the intent on a web-based and other media so that people could have input. But after going through and back and forth and checking calendars and who's available, back to the orange, Brian and I will be at every one of those meetings for community engagement. And I will be available for every one of the superintendent advisory committee dates and times. That way we have a robust representation and then we can really keep momentum going. We're working on a stronger lesson plan for the running of the meeting and making sure everyone that comes in understands, you know, how does budgeting work in California? How's it work in the County? How's it work in Newark? But I think that if we can get it down to this lower number, but make it more meaningful, and make sure that everyone knows they have a voice at every meeting, I believe this is the right way to go. And I left some blank spaces there. If other board members are able to attend some of those, just let Char and I know, and we'll begin to put your name in. But I thought this would be kind of trying to morph the best of both words what you asked me to do. Chief Salinas is going to help me with kind of the the facilitation structure and kind of the lesson plan of how do we make sure that the meeting is flowing the way that we need it to flow and it maintains productivity and allows for significant public input relative to the cuts that we're facing. But I think this is really This has not been just me sitting in a room. I think cabinet and the team has really worked to kind of try to put something together that makes sense, that's just enough. It's a different parts of the district kind of regionally. We block the space tentatively. If there's any tweaks or finalizing, I'd like to get something finalized tonight so I can go to working on it tomorrow and then we can really start planning towards that first meeting and get the contents in the vehicle.

[2728] SPEAKER_36: I like it. I think it will work. I don't know about the rest, but I think this is not too hot, not too cold, just about right as far as the number of meetings that we need to host.

[2741] SPEAKER_25: Any other comments or adjustments or tweaks or questions?

[2747] SPEAKER_40: I think the calendar looks fine. We've got morning as well as evening. I think we need to decide whether we're going to have people coming that are going to be repeating. coming to all the activities or coming to just one. And that will determine what it is, what information we present out. People may choose to come and get the information and go home and have feedback by way of the website.

[2771] SPEAKER_36: I guess, I mean, we can't forbid them to come to all of them. But I guess if we're clear that all these meetings carry much the same agenda, then they'll know that it's a repeat meeting.

[2781] SPEAKER_25: It's a very similar structure on each. And whatever we do. We will have an exit card at each meeting to help us plan the following meeting to try to improve it. And we do want to operationalize whatever discussions are occurring in some way. We'd like to get that on the website so that there's some more transparency so people know what's been discussed. So we're working on putting that on the web-based kind of approach as well.

[2810] SPEAKER_40: And the value of this is going to be based on how accurate the cost reduction is going to be. So if we're talking about cutting down a program, what's the true savings?

[2820] SPEAKER_25: Right. Right. That's why we felt, and the board felt it was critical for, you know, certainly Mr. Richards and I at each meeting. Right. Okay. So is it feeling like it's a go or?

[2835] Nancy Thomas: Oh, good. Um, we have side of kind of a side conversation about trying to schedule an audit committee meeting cause that's the week the auditors are here. And I'm just wondering if it's possible to swap one of the, for example, shilling and music, so that on the 27th, we would not have 6 o'clock PM.

[2860] SPEAKER_36: It's probably for the time of day?

[2861] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, just time of day type thing.

[2863] SPEAKER_35: We have the audit committee scheduled for Tuesday, the 26th. It's not one of those? Is it Tuesday? The audit committee is scheduled for Tuesday 926 at 5 PM. So we're good. Currently.

[2877] Nancy Thomas: So the 20th is a Sunday?

[2882] SPEAKER_36: No, 25th is a Monday.

[2883] SPEAKER_40: It's a Wednesday. 20th is a Wednesday. 21st is a Thursday. 26th is a Tuesday.

[2890] SPEAKER_35: So currently, we have music elementary's budget session in the morning. And then Tuesday evening, Audit Committee. Wednesday evening is Schilling. And Thursday evening is Newark Junior High.

[2905] SPEAKER_29: I already responded that member Preciado cannot make it. But my alternate is member Rodriguez. So you can check in with him.

[2911] Nancy Thomas: Well, but really, I would like, you weren't able to make the last meeting. Is there a reason we can't do it?

[2918] SPEAKER_36: What's the request for the switch as far as, are we trying to switch to the Audit Committee meeting time?

[2921] SPEAKER_29: I think we can figure that out. In a different setting? I actually like this framework, and this is, to my respect, the priority of what we're trying to do. So this would be first.

[2932] SPEAKER_35: When does the audit committee usually meet? Actually, the audit committee meets from 5 to 6. We could actually have an audit committee meeting and then go from there to Schilling, because Schilling doesn't start until 6.30.

[2942] SPEAKER_36: Oh, I see, because it's originally scheduled for the 27th.

[2944] Nancy Thomas: Well, I thought it's been changed to 6, 26.

[2948] SPEAKER_35: I'm sorry. Oh, it does say 6. I'm sorry.

[2953] SPEAKER_29: Are you saying potentially moving the audit committee to the 27th? Five to six?

[2959] SPEAKER_36: When is it regularly scheduled?

[2961] Nancy Thomas: It isn't. We are looking for it on a monthly basis.

[2964] SPEAKER_35: We had it tentatively scheduled for the Tuesday, but the auditors, the week the auditors are here are Monday through Thursday, the 25th through the 28th.

[2971] SPEAKER_36: So if we've very tentatively scheduled audit committee for the 26th, I don't see a reason to change it at this point, right?

[2976] SPEAKER_35: Well, except that we have a member who can't make it.

[2979] SPEAKER_29: And I've already said I cannot make the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays, and that's the 4th Tuesday for every single meeting because of my work.

[2987] SPEAKER_36: So then now you're requesting to change the audit committee meeting to the 27th, which would be on Wednesday, in which case you would be able to make it.

[2993] SPEAKER_35: Yes. Or what about Thursday? Can you make Thursday? Wednesday is better. Hitches and Schilling is further than Newark Junior High.

[3003] SPEAKER_36: Can we go out of committee 4.30 to 5.30? And just solve that then?

[3011] SPEAKER_29: 4.30, 5.30, give us a half hour to go to June? No, no, I'm just interested because every time I take off work I'm doing PTO vacation, which is okay, it just has to be enough in advance.

[3023] SPEAKER_35: We could probably get the audit. Ms. Cash is out.

[3026] SPEAKER_25: We'll figure it out. Can I add one more piece? I agree that we could fix it offline. There's a time in here, help me find it, where there's a line in here where in one of these intervals, Brian, we talked that there's going to be feedback from the county that occur midstream in this? Where does that feedback from the county occur?

[3047] SPEAKER_40: That's October 7th.

[3048] SPEAKER_35: The feedback from the county actually comes on September the 15th. So it actually comes before the first meeting. OK. And our responsibility to respond to the committee is after the last meeting. So all of these meetings occurred during that three week time slot between September the 15th and October the 8th.

[3065] SPEAKER_25: So feedback to county will occur after September 28th again?

[3068] SPEAKER_38: Correct.

[3069] SPEAKER_25: I just want that noted on this grid. Okay, and we'll work to change the date for the audit committee. Okay, so other than that, I'm gonna go. It'll look nicer, but this is really... I think it's great.

[3087] SPEAKER_29: I thought it would be how we're gonna distribute it or how we're gonna let folks know about that because that's... Well, I want to release it tomorrow.

[3096] SPEAKER_25: Well, I'm planning to write a letter to all parents, put it on the website, maybe do an auto dialer. So now that we have approval, I can start going forward with the communication plan. And just a reminder to everyone, if you have, I think the committee for the superintendent advisory is relatively full, but if there's one or two names that you think you haven't shared with me already, just let me know what that is and I'll invite people personally. But it's starting to shape up. I let people know that I reached out to them. As soon as the board kind of says this feels right, We're going to start communicating this out tomorrow.

[3135] SPEAKER_40: On the meetings for your advisory committee, are you expecting them to be there at every meeting?

[3141] SPEAKER_25: I will take people to come whenever they can come, is what I've told them. I'll have a name for you. OK, great. Thank you. I'd just like them to hold the majority. If they could hold three out of five, I'd be happy with that. Recognitions and celebrations, your last item. Yes. As far as that, I would just like to get a little bit of direction from the board. indication. We wanted to kind of move into kind of maybe even going back to more of a school spotlight. We had talked about doing something that was a little more kind of on point, getting to know the schools a little better, but still keeping it moving quickly enough where we have a different structure of how we do that. Leti, would you share some of the ideas that we had talked about? Remember we talked about just trying to make it more student and academic centered.

[3192] SPEAKER_21: So I think we appreciated having the spotlights on our student of the month and our staff members of the month that were recognized by the principals. What we're hoping to do is maybe consolidate some of that work so that it has more of a highlight on what's happening at the school site so we get kind of a current event. We hope to continue with posting at the back of the of the room all of the art highlights or writing and curricular areas that teachers and students are addressing so but we're looking at seeing a way to kind of consolidate it all and maybe also shorten some of the time because I know we've it's kind of taking a longer and that's what happens with appreciations you want to make sure everyone's here the family's here and all of that so those were some of the preliminary ideas but we are going to continue with that practice.

[3237] SPEAKER_25: So I guess what I'm asking is is there ideas or recommendations the board would like us to consider just after last year reflecting on what we want to do a little bit different this year, we're going to try to put something together for you to look at and react to. We have a little bit of time, but we do want to define it a little bit.

[3256] SPEAKER_36: Yeah, I do like the idea of kind of the school spotlight and recognizing academic and special programs on the campuses, because that gives us more information. I think maybe the recognition, we saved up for one event, one culminating event at the end of the year. And then every school just brings their nominees and we have a, you know, whether it's an hour or two hour long, you know, item, but it's all done in one shot. Because from the previous structure, it's, if my school were to go first in September, it's going to be hard for me to identify a staff member of the year in September, right? And a student of the year in September, that's, That's unfair for that particular school and it's, I don't think it holds fidelity to the concept of that.

[3311] SPEAKER_21: And actually, that would work really well. We have our collaboration with the Rotary and also the City of Newark. So, we also have the culminating event when we present recognition by the Rotary at the City of Newark. So, it's the same folks, right? So, we can do this as a culminating event at the end of the year. That's a great idea.

[3331] SPEAKER_36: Any other recommendations?

[3333] SPEAKER_40: I like having them present something from, you're talking about not getting rid of presenting a piece from the school.

[3340] SPEAKER_36: Oh, no, no.

[3341] SPEAKER_40: We're still keeping that. But just the student of the year and the, yeah.

[3346] SPEAKER_25: OK, good. So once you know we're working on it, we'll have something more that I wanted to.

[3350] Nancy Thomas: So are you saying we're going to add the spotlight back? Yeah. I think that's something that we'd, I've missed it.

[3361] SPEAKER_36: OK. And then, so that concludes your report? Yes, at this time, thank you. 7.1, public comment on non-agent items. Ms. Cindy Parks.

[3381] Cindy Parks: Good evening. Last year in October was when you received the demographic study because it floated around and got updated. It was several months from the time that the first copy was received before you received it, the finished copy. Now again, we're in the same boat in that there is not a current finished demographic study for you to be viewing to making determinations. It seems like you pay an awful lot of money for this service, and it seems to take so long for it to be readily available and useful to where it's almost out. almost outdated by the time you get it to deal with your students for the next year. So I just wanted to remind you again, maybe you need to consider a different service, or the information that you're providing them isn't enough to where they can do it in a timely fashion. The other item I'd like to bring up is your budget study sessions. At this stage of the game, I think you got an awakening call, or I hope you did at the last meeting with the ACOE representative here. You've had times in the past where you have had to deal with these. This is kind of like I keep saying this every time I get up here, but you've dealt with this before. And previously when you have, you've had a standing item on the agenda where you talk, where it's there. You have an action, you have, you know, an information item regarding the budget. You've had two meetings now where you've had no discussion about your budget cuts. You listened to Jeff Potter, but nothing was on the agenda for you to discuss your cuts. You have another meeting tonight, no cuts presented. You've had board members that have come to you with suggestions of cuts, yet you have nothing in front of you to consider. You have sacred cows that haven't even been listed, such as EBIC, which was brought up by one of the board members. And I'm gonna bring this one up again, sorry, Ms. Crocker, but the electives at the junior high. I don't know what your comments pertaining to what you were quoted the last time cost was versus what it actually ended up being. But again, there should be no sacred cows. You need to cut $5 million, not only this year, but you have over the next several years. You're going to be having no cash in the spring of 2019, according to Mr. Richards. And I believe Mr. Potter also talked about you running out of cash. You just can't be coming to these meetings as if nothing is going on. you have to cut the budget. And you need to start looking at each meeting and working efficiently to itemize the items that you can cut. And that's all I have to say.

[3553] SPEAKER_36: Thank you. Mr. Dute? Noelle Dute? I'm sorry. Noelle Dute? My apologies, Ms. Dute.

[3565] SPEAKER_13: Thank you. Good evening. I don't have anything to say about the budget. I do have a couple of things. Those of us who work in the classroom directly with the students recently received for the second year in a row the list of the five required courses that we are to take by December 4th, which include reporting of child abuse, sexual harassment, bullying, so on. It is beyond me as to why safe schools in Kenan, the Kenan program, takes 63 minutes to have us sit and be presented with pesticide information and only 29 minutes on child abuse reporting. About 30 minutes on sexual harassment and so on. It's just kind of crazy. But on the subject of community cohesiveness, the first Tuesday of every month of August every year for many, many years has been National Neighborhood Night Out. And this is an opportunity where communities can come together and get to know each other and celebrate and share good food and good times. My husband and I have been hosting it for many, many years in our driveway, and we have been lucky enough to have the mayor every year, the district attorney, many police officers, many firefighters, the Raven members, many city council members come and visit with us. It was unfortunate when I realized again that August 1st was a scheduled board meeting and I sent all the members and the superintendent an email saying Gee, that's kind of unfortunate because it limits those of us that might care to attend a school board meeting and kind of makes a difficult choice particularly when we've made a commitment the year before. So I guess what I'm asking is that I would urge you in the coming year to think particularly when you have the entire month of July off if there wouldn't be some kind of an alternative for that one particular Tuesday so that we could promote particularly in what our nation is experiencing now better community cohesiveness. I would like to thank member Preciado kindly for having the courtesy to reply to my email. I'm sorry you couldn't make it to join us, but I really appreciate the fact that you did respond. Thank you for your time.

[3721] SPEAKER_36: Thank you. Onto new business item 8.1. Admin AR 6142.2. Is there a move for approval? I'll move to approve.

[3738] Nancy Thomas: I'll second.

[3739] SPEAKER_36: Second by Member Thomas.

[3742] Nancy Thomas: I did have a question.

[3743] SPEAKER_36: Okay.

[3744] Nancy Thomas: There's a section in there about dual immersion that says if we have a dual immersion program to keep this in, but we don't have one, so you're just using that in case we get one in the future?

[3768] SPEAKER_21: So it's highlighted also more in board policy for English learners, the next item, where because of Proposition 58, there is an option. We actually, a new part of the law says that we will discuss this with our DLAC and also look at it with our LCAP process. So we wanted to update the board policies for the possibility of that. That doesn't mean it's happening tomorrow or in the next year, but that we're just trying to update our policies so we have more flexibility.

[3800] SPEAKER_36: With that, please vote.

[3811] SPEAKER_40: Are we voting now? 8.1.

[3815] SPEAKER_36: You haven't voted yet.

[3817] Nancy Thomas: Oh, did I not vote yet?

[3819] SPEAKER_36: Oh, we're good. Four ayes. Thank you. 8.2. AR 6174. For ELL.

[3832] Nancy Thomas: I move approval.

[3833] SPEAKER_36: By Member Thomas. Is there a second? I'll second. By Member Preciado. Please vote. Four ayes. Thank you. 8.3, Port Policy 5111, Admission. 8.3. Move for approval.

[3855] SPEAKER_40: I so move.

[3856] SPEAKER_36: By Member Crocker. Is there a second? I'll second. By Member Thomas. Please vote. Four ayes, thank you. 8.4 AR5113, redefining absences and excuses. Excuse absences, excuse me. Is there a move for approval?

[3880] Nancy Thomas: I move for approval.

[3881] SPEAKER_36: By Member Thomas, is there a second? I second. By Member Crocker. Please vote. Four ayes, thank you. And 8.5, 51-11.1, District Residency. Is there a move for approval?

[3902] SPEAKER_29: I'll move to approve.

[3903] SPEAKER_36: Member Preciado, second? I'll second. Member Thomas, please vote. Four ayes. Thank you. Employee organizations, CSCA, NEWMA, NTA, anyone here? No. On to item 10.2, consent item personnel report. Is there a move for approval?

[3937] SPEAKER_29: I move to approve.

[3937] SPEAKER_36: If I may, I will press the item. Is there a second?

[3940] SPEAKER_40: I second.

[3941] SPEAKER_36: Second by member Crocker. Please vote. Four ayes. Thank you. Consent Item 11.1 through 11.9. Is there a move for approval?

[3960] Nancy Thomas: I move the approval.

[3962] SPEAKER_36: By Member Thomas. Is there a second?

[3965] SPEAKER_40: I'll second.

[3966] SPEAKER_36: Second by Member Crocker. Please vote. Okay, four ayes. Thank you. 12.1, Board Committee Reports, Announcements, Requests, Debrief, and Discussion. I'll start with Member Crocker.

[3983] SPEAKER_40: I have nothing to add at this point.

[3985] SPEAKER_36: Thank you. Member Preciado? Ms. Thomas?

[3993] Nancy Thomas: Nothing at this time.

[3995] SPEAKER_36: And I too shall pass. And so we move on to 13.1, Superintendents concluding comments.

[4000] SPEAKER_25: Just a public service announcement. First of all, reminding all people listening and all employees that Birch Street by Birch Grove And the one that's by Birch Grove Intermediate and Maintenance and Operation will be getting repaved tomorrow. So I want to remind people to park somewhere else. And also, Music Avenue out here in front of the district office and in front of Music Elementary is also going to be repaved tomorrow by the city. So please remind everyone to park somewhere else. And I think lastly, I just want to close with little bit of a heavy heart but also a revitalization of the importance of our work. After the events this weekend in Virginia I think it really underscores how critical public education is and how critical education is in our nation and I think that it's something that I know we all were observing and watching and it just really for me underscores the importance of education to be able to move us forward as a country. So I just wanted to say that. Something I forgot, Liddy.

[4082] SPEAKER_21: Just reminding everyone that the first day of school is next week and classes start on August 24th. And our teachers will actually all be in professional development and the welcome back on Monday, August 21st. So everyone's ready to come back to school.

[4098] SPEAKER_25: So we do want to invite all board members. We'll send you the appointment to be there for the welcome back morning. And if it hasn't gone out, it probably has. And I also, just in closing, want to welcome Shara Aquino. I know she's sitting in the, looks like the sidecar of the motorcycle. But I think she'll be taking over the wheel soon. And I also want to recognize Sarah for just an outstanding job and an outstanding team member. These days working together has been phenomenal. So thank you so much. That concludes my comments.

[4131] SPEAKER_36: Thank you. It is 8.13, meeting adjourned.

[4157] SPEAKER_37: Thank you.

No minutes available.