Regular Meeting

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[7] SPEAKER_57: Turn from closed session, where we discussed items 2.1 to 2.5. No action was taken. Can we please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance?

[19] SPEAKER_49: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

[37] SPEAKER_57: Thank you and welcome to the September 19th, 2017 Board of Education meeting of the Newark Unified School District. Again, we have returned from closed session where we discussed items 2.2 to 2.5. No action was taken. Moving on to items 5.1, approval of the board agenda as currently presented. Do we have a motion to approve?

[60] Nancy Thomas: I move approval.

[64] SPEAKER_57: By Member Thomas. Is there a second?

[68] Ray Rodriguez: I'll second.

[70] SPEAKER_57: Thank you. Seconded by member Rodriguez. Call for discussion.

[75] Aiden Hill: Yeah.

[79] SPEAKER_57: OK. Any further discussion? OK. With that, so please vote. Thank you. Five ayes. Moving on to item 6.1, school spotlight. What we're doing a little bit differently this year than previous years is we're saving the school recognition of staff and students at the very end of the year where we can do it all at one time from multiple schools. And so what we would really like to see from individual schools as they make their presentations is the various programs or academic growth or challenges for that matter. It's essentially a report or a spotlight on a particular school. So for this month we have Newark Junior High School. Principal Neal.

[173] SPEAKER_60: Good evening. My name is Clarissa. I'm in an eighth grader at Newark Junior High and tonight my friends and I will be showcasing the excellence at our school. First I'd like to thank all of the board members and Mr. Sanchez for allowing us the opportunity to show you what's so great about Newark Junior High. We also want to say hello to Ms. Scharr and let you know how much she is missed. Tonight's theme will be Newark Junior High School. Who we are and what we do. Next up is Clarissa to talk about who we are. Hi, my name is Clarissa and I'm also an 8th grader at Newark Junior High. Let me share with you the demographics at Newark Junior High. As you can see, we are a diverse group of students, which makes for a much more enjoyable experience during the school day. But also in our personal lives, we are one big diverse Cougar family. We are a PBIS school, and this is our second year. Our school rules are quite simple. Be safe, be respectful, and be responsible. Last year we were very successful with 90% of the students not receiving a referral the entire school year. This year we are also becoming a no place for hate school. You can read what we are trying to accomplish. The entire leadership class was trained by the no place for hate staff and we are planning on informing our peers about how to stamp out bullying and keep our school a safe place. Next up is Jasmine to talk about what we do.

[288] SPEAKER_02: Hi, my name is Jasmine. Let me talk to you about what we do at the Newark Junior High to prepare students for success in high school and college. First of all, our focus is to make sure all students are physically fit and can read, write, and compute mathematically at grade level. We do this with dedicated to teachers and our curricular focus. That focus this year includes the four C's, which are communication, collaboration, creative thinking, and creativity in all classes. Our other focus areas include professional learning communities for our teachers, which allow them to work together to provide the best education for all students. We also have a focus to read grade level text and write in all subject areas. Here are some pictures of students working in classes at the junior high. Coming up next is MJ to talk to you about what else we do at the Newark Junior High.

[354] SPEAKER_10: Hi, my name is MJ, and tonight I'd like to talk to you about what else we do that adds to our educational day. allow us to stimulate other areas of our brains and showcase our creativity. This is a picture of our award-winning band from Newark Days on Saturday. The interest in our elective program is growing rapidly. As you can read, our seventh grade band numbers doubled this year, and we're expecting that to trend to continue as Mr. Hernandez continues to promote music education to the elementary school. Our STEM program has exploded, and every year we continue to add more classes to meet the demand of parents and students. We are doing our best to promote the focus of Newark being a STEAM district. You can see how many students are taking STEM-related elective, which also includes computer programming. While drama is not yet an elective, Mr. Drum has started a club after school, and this year we will be putting on a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Here's a picture of our STEM classes and also our new computer lab, which allows our students to learn and be productive with the latest technology. Here's Shane again to finish off the presentation.

[447] SPEAKER_52: Hi, as we conclude tonight's presentation, I would like to fully express Newark Junior High's gratitude to the school board and Superintendent Sanchez for giving us new picnic tables, which provide much more area for our students to be able to eat their lunch. This is a very nice area that we can hang out in under the umbrellas or eat our lunch with friends. This was necessary and could not have happened with your support. We also want to give Ms. Scharr a huge thank you for spearheading this project and seeing it through. Finally, tonight we want to show you that we also have fun at Newark Junior High. This is a video that was filmed, edited, and produced by students in our computer class with the help of our awesome computer teacher, Mr. Holbrook. Thank you for giving us the time and we hope you enjoy this.

[507] SPEAKER_49: I got this feeling inside my bones It goes electric, baby, when I turn it on All from my city, all from my home. I'm crying, I'm not feeling like me and I'm done. I got a bad feeling in my back and nothing can soften my feet. I feel that hot blood in my body and it drops. Ooh, I can't take my eyes off you. Who is that? Who is that? Yeah, whole video. You're creepin' up on me, so just dance, dance, dance, come on! All those things I shouldn't do, but you dance, dance, dance, come on! Ain't nobody like this, so just keep dancin'! I guess I'm a little different, so just dance, dance, dance, come on! I guess I'm a little different, so just dance, dance, dance, come on! Ooh, somethin' magical It's in the air, I see my blood, it's rushin' on I don't need no reason, I don't need control I'll rise so high, I'll see the man, I'll make my sound It's the gas and fat, the sunshine in my pocket Got that good soul in my feet, yeah, that hot blood in my body It's just a matter of just a matter of just a matter If we could, just give it up for my leadership students, MJ, Jessica, Jasmine, and Shari.

[677] SPEAKER_29: Thank the board and superintendent for once again allowing us to just present to you as well. Before I leave, I want to introduce my assistant principal, Dr. Plaisance. Our dean of students, Jessica Bartok, over in the back as well.

[696] Michael Milliken: That's all I got. Thank you.

[698] Bowen Zhang: Thank you.

[703] SPEAKER_57: So before we move further, guests of the meeting are encouraged to submit a comment card located at the rear of the room if they wish to address the board on a non-agendized item. Each speaker is limited to a maximum of three minutes and can only speak on a single item once. Please note that the board cannot comment on non-agendized items. With that, we move to 7.1, superintendent's update.

[724] SPEAKER_17: I only have one item to update. I just want to remind everyone that tomorrow evening, At 6 p.m. in the Kennedy Library, we will have our first of our series of public engagement on budget reduction. Child care is available. And Thursday, we'll be at Lincoln at 8.30 a.m. So just to recap, tomorrow night at Kennedy, 6 p.m. Thursday, 8.30 a.m. at Lincoln. That's all I have.

[752] SPEAKER_57: Thank you. 8.1, still embargoed or we're good? I think they're good.

[766] SPEAKER_35: Good evening Board President Nguyen, members of the community, our board and our staff. This evening we still are under embargo with our data but please know that we've been working within our data as is allowed with staff to start to do some work because we can't keep waiting until this embargo is lifted to do the presentation. So what we're doing this evening is actually doing a highlight focus of mathematics and some of the work that our principals and teachers have started. So to do this presentation is our director, Ms. Amy Black.

[801] SPEAKER_62: President Nguyen, board members, Superintendent Sanchez, and executive cabinet, thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk a little bit about some of the important work that we're doing with teachers, principals, which will ultimately positively impact our students. So the Silicon Valley Math Initiative, or SVMI, is a partnership that we joined this year. And I want to give you a little bit of overview as to what it stands for, what it is, and why we've entered this partnership with SVMI. Okay, so what is SVMI? It's a comprehensive effort to improve math instruction. It's actually a partnership that was developed over 20 years ago, and the initiative is based on high-performing expectation, ongoing professional development, examining student work, and improved math instruction. A bulk of SVMI's work is based on a theory of action. You can take the moment to read through exactly what a theory of action is as defined by SVMI, but essentially it's taking a theory and putting strategies into action that is critical for good teaching and improved student learning. So basically it means great, good teaching equals greater achievement for our students. So the benefits of SVMI is we have many resources that are available to us to use for our teachers and for our principals and then ultimately that impacts our students. All their resources are Common Core aligned and aligned to the mathematical practices. And some of the resources include performance tasks, ongoing professional development, We have videos, math talks, problem of the month, and I'll highlight some of the tools in a moment in my presentation, as well as inquiry groups or cycle of inquiry that's available, lesson study, and leadership development. Why? Why are we looking at SVMI? Why do we partnership with SVMI? Again, like I mentioned before, because of the theory and action and their commitment to improved student learning through professional development of teachers. Their curricula and their assessment is Common Core aligned, something that's really powerful about the work that they've done. Their performance tasks that they have generated over the past 20 years are available for our teachers K through 12 to be able to utilize with our students. They also worked very closely with SBAC developers and they're instrumental in providing the performance tasks So that prepares our students in the spring. It, again, provides enhanced curriculum development. It supports our teachers through PD. And then, like I mentioned before, there's assessment banks available for our teachers. So I want to talk a little bit about Problem of the Month. Problem of the Month is a non-routine math problem. It's designed to be used schoolwide to promote problem solving at schools. And they're designed level A through E. So it's designed for primary grades all the way up to high school. So it also has an embedded differentiation model within this particular resource. And again, it's aligned to the Common Core. So just give me a second. There's like several minutes to this video. I just want to give you a quick snapshot of what it looks like.

[1058] SPEAKER_49: You have, so please be warned.

[1068] SPEAKER_62: So this is a second grade class talking about palm of the month. And this is the students' responses.

[1098] SPEAKER_49: Thank you for watching!

[1107] SPEAKER_50: But I feel a little different when it comes to how we became out of Econ and then I started to think about things and I think Barbara is the main because we are because of the same, like I said, the main was not Carol so now I think it's Barbara and I think Jeff is Superman because they have the same thing about Jeff And everybody doesn't have their own hospital, so I think he's super helpful.

[1141] SPEAKER_48: I couldn't figure it out, because they didn't say where the potato heads were, but they said that these two were, I know these two were second to last, but I didn't know which was which.

[1157] SPEAKER_50: and Jeff, and what made this work. So I'm pretty sure they go by the name.

[1162] SPEAKER_49: What made this work? I'm pretty sure what made this work.

[1166] SPEAKER_51: Well, I know what made this work, because they said, yes, it's, um, because they said she was first or something.

[1186] SPEAKER_62: So to give you a little bit of background, this work is really important because it allows students to be able to drive their own learning. So you'll hear this idea of four C's continue to come up throughout the year. It's our commitment at services. And four C's stands for creativity, collaboration, communication, and critical thinking. And work within problem of the month or tasks such as these allow students to utilize those four really important skills That's essential for them to be successful in their work in school as well as beyond. So I want to talk a little bit about Next Steps.

[1239] SPEAKER_62: So last week we had an opportunity for our DLT meeting, which is our bi-monthly meeting that leadership team comes together to talk about professional development and business that's school related. Something that we thought was really powerful to invite our principals to the new member meeting with SVMI. So we spent half a day together working with the consultants at SVMI to get a comprehensive overview of this partnership in this program and the resources that are available to us in order for us to be able to move forward with the work and support our teachers. We also have identified 33 teacher reps throughout the district that will participate in up to follow-up sessions throughout the year with SVMI. So, SVMI's theme this year is Creating and Navigating Divergent Thinking in the Mathematical Classroom. This week is the first breakout session week, and we had teachers, or we'll have teachers that attend the breakout session throughout the week. We also have 18 of the 33 teachers attending the Saturday session. So, they'll, they have chosen not to get a sub in their classroom. and have chosen to participate in a Saturday breakout all-day session to support their work with mathematics. What else? Oh, yeah. And then through our leadership team, we're developing a plan to integrate the SVMI resources into classrooms for our next DLT meeting. We're going to talk about next steps. Something that's going to be critical in involving elementary schools would be the number talks or math talks, and that's something that we're going to explore this year and provide support for teachers, as well as looking at and unpacking mathematical practices and a way that we can use performance tasks with our students to promote critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and creativity. And then Aleti's going to talk a little bit about our SMARQL work.

[1364] SPEAKER_35: So I think what you're noticing is that we're developing a team where we're building capacity of our teachers and our principals. The work we did at the district leadership team meeting with our principals was essentially to come up with smart goals within our PLCs. And these are actionable goals that principals will work on throughout the year. I think what that also does is it deprivatizes our practice. Principals are looking at our data, because we can look at the data, although we can't publicly share it quite yet, and then building some goals as to how we're going to support and work on our area of mathematics. You may recall I have shared previously is that this year is really the year of we're going through a process for a math textbook adoption. The state has now finally have an approved list and so that work will be a year-long process but in the meantime our teachers will continue to work with Engage Newark but having Silicon Valley Math Initiative support will be a support as we start to transition to doing Common Core within our classrooms. I want to highlight that we're also looking at restructuring our DLTs, our principal meetings. Previously, we would all kind of meet here at the district office, we're here for half a day, and then folks would return back to their school sites. We're revamping a past practice and a practice that I've seen work in many school districts where we're actually going to be in each other's schools. So at the end of the month, we will start with the high school and we're going to be working with the high school and look at mathematics at the high school. And it's not about looking at teaching practices, it's about looking at student learning. And then how do we have to engage with mathematics ourselves as administrators and ensure that our teachers have the tools to do this work. I'm really excited with Silicon Valley Math Initiative. We have a lot of support with Joe Bowler and a lot of the Stanford work that is really the critical work that all districts should be engaging in. And so I'm happy that we're able to do this. We've got a teacher leader at Lincoln Elementary who has been doing this for now for a number of years. So we're going to work with her. And then if you remember, our principals that were co-principals for the summer program actually did some of this over the summer and used our teacher leader to do the training for our teachers. So that concludes our overview. We're hoping to bring more mathematics and information back to the board and also our test scores once they're off embargo. Thank you.

[1504] SPEAKER_57: We do have a public speaker, Ms. Cindy Parks, on item 8.1.

[1520] Cindy Parks: Good evening. First of all, if you'll remember, I mentioned a couple of times during the summer, or just prior to the summer, when you're reviewing the LCAP, my concern for this program and the expense. This program through your LCAP is costing you $190,000 for all of the professional development. Had I known this item wasn't tagged as a BSVMI, so I was a little, I didn't bring the paperwork with me, but remember it was $190,000 for all this professional development. I would like to express again my concern for the cost, not only for the professional development that's going to go on during the work week, but also now you've got Saturdays apparently that's, and I understand the cost for the subs and the fact that it's hard to find subs, but you're now going to be paying, I'm sure, some type of extra to the staff that's going to be attending on Saturdays, not their normal work day. Beyond that, you have, you're investing your money into a professional development. How many times, how many teachers did you lose this year? So you're investing in a a strategy, not in a book. And I'm not saying that that's the be all, end all. But three years ago, it's not as Ms. Salinas, I want you to understand that the state adopted the math curriculum 10 years, or I'm sorry, in 2014, so three years ago. You can go on the CDE website. You don't have state adopted math curriculum. Engage Newark did not submit their materials for approval through the state. The curriculum that is in the classrooms is not state adopted materials. You are using substandard, my terminology, substandard materials. The state goes through an arduous process to evaluate what is good curriculum. That's not what is in the classroom. That has not been evaluated by the state. Engage Newark did not submit their materials for approval. So you're putting your money in a professional development and that those teachers could leave. I would encourage you to expedite the purchase of good quality state adopted tried and true, I guess you could say, they went through the process of math curriculum. Thank you.

[1668] SPEAKER_57: 9.1, there aren't any public hearings tonight. So we then move on to item 10.1 which is public comment on non-agenda items. And so note for the audience, we do have 20 speakers who have requested to speak. There's an allocated time frame of 30 minutes. And so I think in the best interest of everyone being able to speak and also we have a lot of young students here, what we're going to do is allow a two-minute limit for each speaker. And we'll call you as your turn comes up. You will have two minutes. If you need the full three minutes, We'll keep you at two minutes and then if you want to stay to the end of the meeting and then finish off your thoughts within that one minute, you're allowed to do so. I think this is a better move than essentially allowing 10 speakers now and then another 12 speakers to wait to the very end of the meeting, potentially with young kids in the audience. And so with that, we'll start with our first speaker, Sam Matsumoto. And what we're going to do is in order to expedite this, Can we have Paula Lewis be ready behind her and then Kimberly McCarthy is next thereafter please.

[1749] SPEAKER_20: I'm going to try and keep my comments brief as I know there's many other eager speakers. I wasn't intending to speak tonight. I'm Sam Matsumoto. I teach at Newark Memorial High School. So hopefully one day I'll see all you guys. I teach visual art. And I also coordinate the Media Communications Academy. It's one of 300 California Partnership Academies. Our academy brings in about $70,000 from the California Partnership Academy grant. and anywhere from $30,000 to $40,000 from the Perkins grant. And earlier this evening, it was brought up in the study session examining potentially looking at MCA, and I welcome you to. I'd be happy to meet with any board member who's interested in the finances of the program as we're looking at budget cuts. A thing of the grant, we need to bring in matching funds from the district and from the community as well. So I'm happy to meet with you guys, happy to open the books, welcome you to come visit our program, see what it's done, and hopefully you guys will apply too when you get to Newark Memorial High School if you're interested in film, graphic design, any sort of art program. Thank you.

[1807] SPEAKER_57: Thank you. This is Paula Lewis. And Kimberly McCarthy is next, followed by Kelly Pellicer.

[1819] SPEAKER_30: All right, good evening. Hello, my name is Paula Lewis and my son is Julian Marty Lewis. He's a second grader at Kennedy. You know, last week we were asked to volunteer to have him move into a combo class, a one-two class. We were told that this was going to be in the best interest of the school, that this would help minimize any excessive movement. We were told that the class was going to remain pretty small, that the people were going to be hand-picked. that because it's a combo class, they were going to set it up so the kids could be successful, although there would be two grade levels. On Friday, we received notice that this was all changing. We received notice that almost 100 kids are now going to be moved. And we were told on Friday that this was going to happen on Monday. To me, that is not acceptable communication. That is not acceptable impact to our kids. You know, there's many things that I think that we can all, I can guarantee you that we'll disagree. As a parent, as a board, and even as teachers, we're not always going to agree upon everything. But one thing that I think we can agree upon is we need to do what's best for our kids. Absolutely. And one of that is minimizing the impact to our kids. minimizing movement after the first day of class. I don't know about you, but this world is in so much crazy chaos with fake news and all this. I want an environment where my child can go to and feel safe and comfortable away from the chaos. The fact that we're having all this movement almost a month after school has started, my child still comes home, he doesn't know what's expected of him. I speak to the teacher, well, we're still working it out. It's a month after school has started. That is not acceptable. You know, there's only nine months for my child to learn what he needs to learn. We've already lost one month. That is not acceptable. Other things that I think we need to agree upon is that we need to review the district's policies around enrollment. Like I want to know what happened. How did this happen? One of the things that I want to hear from the board or someone from authority is how this happened. I want to know, not from here, but how did this happen? I was told at the beginning there was three minutes, so I'll just go ahead and continue. You know, there's a few things that I just want to ask the board.

[1965] SPEAKER_57: So we'll cap it at 30 minutes, and then we'll just have the rest of the audience wait until after the meeting then.

[1970] SPEAKER_30: I will wrap this up. There's five things I want from the board, just five things. One, I want more communication. Communication to us, to the teachers ahead of time, not after the fact. I also want to ask the board to partner with us. You know, I don't expect you guys to have all the answers. You guys are humans just like we're humans. I don't have all the answers. But, you know, as a businesswoman and as a senior manager, when I don't have the answers, I go and I look beyond. I ask my fellow colleagues. I go beyond just the people I immediately work with. And that's what I want to ask the board to do because I guarantee you that if you brought this to the parents, we could have helped come up with a better solution than the solution that was provided. I want to get your commitment. So one of the things I want you to take away because I was thinking about as I was sitting here, what is it that I want you to do? I want your commitment to partner with us. Thank you.

[2045] SPEAKER_33: all day, so it's like 2 minutes and 45 seconds. I'm just going to plow through it. Hello, my name is Kimberly McCarthy. I have three children across three schools, including a fourth grader at Kennedy. I'm here to speak about the reconfiguration of our classrooms due to the district's refusal to pay the $3,000 overage fee due to having three extra students at our school. The district knew that we had too many students enrolled in June. Our school reported this to them. They were told to continue accepting enrollment. So we began the school with far too many students. students we knew we could not keep. The students of course did not know that. They started school on their first day fresh faced and excited for the new school year. They had no idea in the coming weeks they would be told to leave. Some were shipped off to other schools. I know of at least one family who was fed up and took their child to St. Edwards so the funding for that student is lost permanently. The school district is treating our students like an airline treats its customers. They overbooked our school the way a flight is overbooked, knowingly and with intention. Can you imagine showing up for a flight ready for a vacation? You get on that flight, get comfortable in your seat, the flight takes off, an hour later the plane abruptly lands and 30% of the passengers are removed. They're split up among other subpar planes. The new pilot knows his plane isn't up to standards, but it was what he was given and he's going to make the best of it even though it will be a very turbulent flight. and you don't have any say in the matter, you just have to deal with it. After all, you're still getting a flight. That's what is happening to our students. They are being plucked from their classrooms and shoved into a subpar class with a teacher who's going to do the absolute best she can. But because she's never taught fourth grade and suddenly has a handful of fourth graders and 18 third graders, it's going to be a significant adjustment while she learns fourth grade curriculum and learns how to split her teaching time between two grade levels. Yes, our school is used to combo classes, but they are formed over the summer with time to prepare. The loss of instructional minutes while our entire school has been reshuffled is significant. How can it not be? Nearly 100 students are going to have a brand new first day, except that it won't be remotely resemble their first first day. This time they are devastated, afraid, and lonely, having left their loving teacher and friends. These students do not feel loved and cared for. They are merely objects to be shuffled around even well after school starts. How are we supposed to make them feel safe? How do we let them know how much their teachers loved and cared for them, but the district doesn't? Our teachers and principal were forced to pick among the students like Sophie's choice. There was no positive or reasonable way to handle this. No matter what, the child is going to feel rejected. Nearly 100 of our students believe that they matter less than $3,000. The overage of students at Kennedy is neither the fault of our school, principal, teachers or students. It is the district. Make this right, pay the overage fee so our students can stay where they began this year. It is the only acceptable resolution to this matter. Thank you.

[2214] SPEAKER_57: Kelly Kleiser and then up next is Ryan McCarthy followed by Lily McCarthy. We're down to 21 minutes for the next 19 speakers.

[2232] SPEAKER_25: Good evening, my name is Kelly Pelizer. I have a daughter in the 6th grade and I have a niece in the 4th grade at Kennedy Elementary. I'm very upset to hear the district is unwilling to pay the overage fees for the overflow students at Kennedy. This not only affects the children greatly, but the teachers as well. Many teachers easily spend $500 or more of their own money to set up their classrooms with grade appropriate materials for the year. Now, not only do they have minimal time to review the curriculum and come up with lesson plans so these poor kids don't miss out on the hours of education promised to them, but they now have to spend more of their own money to prepare for a whole new grade that is coming in. It is unfair that they are essentially taking food out of their own family's mouths for this. The time taken away from their family to prepare, the money they spend, the stress it has caused them is extremely unfair. Why should they have to pay for mistakes that were made out of their control? This is not acceptable and I hope you will reconsider this decision and pay the overage fees to our teachers. I really hope you will all understand the stress this is causing our teachers, parents, and most importantly, our children.

[2303] SPEAKER_57: Go ahead, sir.

[2304] SPEAKER_41: Thanks. I'm Ryan McCarthy. You just heard my wife and my sister-in-law. My daughter here in a second. My son's in the back, and the oldest is doing her homework at home. We've had all three of our kids through the Kennedy School, and this is a little unprecedented. My daughter read me your speech last night. You'll hear it. But one thing struck me. She said, the district should treat others like it would want to be treated. And that's not a new idea. That's not novel. It is sort of coming from her, you know, how the mouths of babes, right? I know you guys care about the district. You care about the schools. You care about our kids. But we're all here because you're not showing it right now, and we want you to fix that. What do we expect from you? We expect the vision statement that is published on the website. Your Newark Unified School District will be a model of world-class education. Respectfully, that's not what's happening in Kennedy right now. I think it's closer to a Walmart education, where the kids are shuffled from aisle to aisle, wherever they might fit. And if they don't fit in, just don't want to end cap like a blue light special, right? If the kids don't fit, I'm sorry, they're not commodities.

[2387] SPEAKER_41: We care about them. They're valuable members of this community. When Walmart's freezers on the fritz, You don't take the ice cream out and put it in with the popcorn and soup. You fix the freezer. That won't work in LA. You guys can fix this. But I know you have a tough job with your budget. This isn't going to be easy. But on one side of the equation, this is easy math. You have 88 kids, or nearly 100, that are directly affected. Their parents are upset. The teachers have to part with kids that they know, take on new kids that they don't know, like it's first day of school, learn a new curriculum, maybe teach a new grade that I haven't taught before. You've got other kids indirectly affected, like my kid, who just saw a quarter of her class today get exported out of the class down the hall to some other class. She had to help bring her stuff to the next class. That's a quarter of her colleagues in her fourth grade class. Time's up, sir. I'm at the two, a couple more seconds. OK. OK. But frankly, I'll just skip what I was going to say, and I just think. The fact that the kids got shuffled around today, right before this meeting, and we get here and it's not three minutes, it's two minutes, it's symptomatic of the problem. I think we all came here with the expectation that you're going to go late. There's a way to shortcut it and just say you're going to pay the three grand. But you can't do that. I know that. There's 88 kids on one side who got upended. There's all the rest of the stuff that's going on at this school. It's touching every single grade. That's on one side of the equation. The other side is three grand. You know, you got to make tough decisions with the budget. I know that. We're going to go to the meeting tomorrow night. But if this is the way you're going to handle the budget issues, if this is the path we're on, it's going to get worse because you're going to lose these commodities to other schools. You can fix that. You can minimize the damage. You can fix the freezer. Do the right thing.

[2510] SPEAKER_57: So the decision that was made to limit to two minutes was to accommodate the young students who are here. We can certainly do the 30-minute cap. I think maybe guessing from the reaction of the room, we'll do that. We'll allow three minutes per speaker, knowing that then we'll have to save the majority of the speakers to the very end of the meeting. So we'll do that. Three minutes, please. Go ahead, Lily.

[2537] SPEAKER_47: and I'm in Mrs. Ravage's class. I feel like this decision is not nice. How do you feel if you are in a class with all of your friends, then get chosen to go into a third and fourth combo? I honestly feel disappointed because you'll only get to see your friends for 10 minutes. Then the rest of the day, you don't get to see them. Unfair, right? Basically, the school would rather make you pay $3,000 so all the students don't have to move. I feel upset about this decision. Why can't you pay $3,000 and none of the students will move different schools? Always remember, treat the way you want to be treated. You'd probably be upset if you got moved to a different class separated from your friends. I'd feel devastated. Please pay the $3,000 so none of the students will move. Thank you.

[2603] SPEAKER_57: Sophia Rollins, followed by Juanita Ortega-Clifton, and then Jason Wilson.

[2613] SPEAKER_54: I don't know how to say this in three minutes, but let's get into it. My name is Sophia, and I'm here to say this is not fair any day. All of us are here today because we want to be heard. I really don't get why you guys would move perfectly good students around, because I know if I had to get changed, I'd be sad and mad, and you don't want to see that. Mr. Poon is my teacher, and he is one of the best. So that would be very upsetting. Even some of my friends are moving classes, classrooms. And watching them be upset upsets me even more. It upsets our whole school, and it disrupts our learning. Why do the teachers have to suffer and teach everything again? Another question I have is why did you guys spend $2 million merging Milani and Bunker? How about Kennedy? We had to wait over a year for our new playground. For the end of my speech, I'm showing two of my favorite memories. This is the tech tag from the Tech Museum in fifth grade. So if the fifth graders now are moving classmates, they're not going to experience that fun environment. My favorite memory of fifth grade is a shirt we made. This is from Mrs. Babbage's class. And we had so many memories. It would make me sad if I had to leave last year. Thank you for listening.

[2705] Michael Milliken: Thank you.

[2708] SPEAKER_57: Juanita Ortega-Clifton, followed by Jason Wilson, and then Insio, I'm sorry, I can't read the sign right, Corman, I believe. Did I get it right, Corman? All right, so Juanita Ortega-Clifton.

[2725] SPEAKER_55: Go ahead, sir. Hello, my name is Jason Wilson, and I'm in Ms. Babbage's. Hold on, Jason.

[2730] SPEAKER_57: Where is Juanita? Oh, right here. OK, so. I'm there. Yeah. Go ahead.

[2751] SPEAKER_16: Good evening. My name is Juanita Ortega-Clifton. I am a campus monitor and mother of a second grader at Kennedy Elementary. And what I basically wanted to focus on is Accountability. How can we as parents and you as the leaders of this district expect us to, explaining to our children to be accountable for things and mistakes that they make? We hold them accountable but yet we are here because you all are not being accountable for what's going on. Children don't understand all the ins and outs and the agreements and the money issues. They just know they don't feel as important. And if our children are supposed to be the main focus, this hasn't showed it at all. In fact, the complete opposite. It's quite disappointing and I hope that you can just take a look at everyone in this room and consider that We're here for a darn good reason and we would like to see some accountability on the part of the board and more importantly, we want to see our children feel respected and a part of a bigger picture and not just treated as a number. Accountability is everything and if we're teaching our children that, then obviously I think our elders and those that are in authority should do the same. Thank you for listening. Thank you.

[2865] SPEAKER_57: Thank you. All right. Go ahead, Jason. Go ahead.

[2869] SPEAKER_55: Hello, my name is Jason Wilson and I'm in Ms. Babbage's class in the fourth and fifth combo. Today, I had to let three of my classmates help him out and do another class and it was really sad.

[2913] SPEAKER_17: You got it. Take your time. It's not counting against your time. Deep breath. You're fine.

[2927] SPEAKER_55: Our school is like one big community. And you guys are taking away parts of it. It's like a puzzle piece. And the puzzle pieces are not going together. They're not fitting in the right places. And like people say, money can't buy you happiness. Thank you for your time.

[2968] SPEAKER_57: Thank you. Next up, Encio Korman, followed by Karindo Korman, and then Scott Ekstrom.

[2976] SPEAKER_53: Hello, my name is Encio Korhonen, I am also in a fourth-fifth combo, and my teacher's name is Mrs. Babich, and three kids just got moved out. It's not, it's just not fair to them, because our teachers are also okay with, they're also okay with just a few extra students, but the three students, have already started a month of school and now they have to be moved out and into a whole new class and start a whole new year without, and they've already had a month in another class. So put your feet in their shoes and what would you feel like if you were them and you were moved to a new class? after a month already. If you wanted to do this, why couldn't you have done it already before school has started?

[3069] SPEAKER_57: Thank you.

[3071] SPEAKER_61: Hi, my name is Harinder Kaurhanen and here is my son. I have two boys at Kennedy, first grade and fourth grade. They're both in combo classes. I don't have a problem with combo classes. What I have a problem with is that this was done a month into school. Kids love their teachers and they're just now taken away from that environment and it disrupts their learning and as a parent it disrupts our night. Every day I'm looking at the phone. Are they going to call me today? Is my kids being moved? And you see that everybody's so anxious and stressed out and think about the teachers and they've already made the curriculum. They've already gone out and bought all the supplies and now the new kids are coming in. Now they have to go and buy all new supplies. They were not given any time to prepare. And some of the teachers have never taught the grade level that the new kids are coming in. So what do they do now? So it's going to affect the fourth graders, the third graders, second and third. My first grader started out as K and 1, and now he has 15 second graders. And those kindergarteners just kicked out. God knows what happened. He's so little, and he's just scared. What did you learn today? Can we come to the class? No, we're still working it out. It's just very, very bad. for our kids and parents. I hope you must have kids, maybe they're grown, maybe they're little, please put yourself in our shoes. It's just $3,000. Just imagine if you had come out and said, we'll take a $500 cut, all one of you, there are eight, nine of you, they're raised already, $48,000, right? You had come out and told us, parents, we're willing to do this, I guarantee you all of us will donate and we'll match that. We can work together. We are part of this community. We don't need to be you against us. Let's work together and just pay this $3,000 and have our kids not be disrupted. Thank you.

[3186] Cary Knoop: Thank you.

[3190] SPEAKER_57: Scott Ekstrom, followed by Crystal Avila, and then Tommy Martin Edwards.

[3197] SPEAKER_26: Hello, my name is Scott Ekstrom. I'm the parent of two young children in the Newark School District. I am here tonight to voice my concerns about inter-district transfers and the effect that these transfers have on the community. Policies as I understand them today are as follows. A student is guaranteed a spot within the Newark Unified School District. A student is not guaranteed a spot at the school within their home residence where they reside. Open enrollment is allowed for all district students once a school believes it has taken all students within its boundaries. Once an inter-district transfer is complete, the student has the new school marked as their home school. The homeschool designation now gives that student priority over students who later move into the boundaries of the school for future enrollment. While I agree with the idea that students should be allowed to go to the school of their choice if there's room, I believe there's a flaw in the current implementation. When a school is popular in the community, intradistrict requests come in from grades K through six. If these intradistrict spots are consistently filled without a process to reverse them, the school becomes impacted and can no longer provide for the community within its drawn boundaries. This is a problem that's been created out of good intentions, but is now having a negative effect on the community. This system has led to kids who should be going to their local school, but are instead transferred to schools across town. While Newark is a small town by car, the miles between school and home are long for a young child to walk or ride a bike. This issue is further compounded when parents are asked to send their kid to multiple schools which have the same bell schedules. Also, several schools do not offer after school programs. and kids are left alone at the last bell. Beyond the logistical problems involved with dropping off and picking up children with the same bell schedule and congested morning and afternoon traffic, the kids asked to transfer no longer have their siblings to walk home with or friends that live in the same neighborhoods to walk home with. This in itself creates a safety issue for children who now have to navigate home through neighborhoods they do not know. At the same time, streets in Newark have become much more congested with not only the number of local people commuting, But there's an increased outside commuters on these streets due to apps such as Google and Waze, which coincide with the school children's routes walking home. If you're here tonight because you're frustrated with class sizes, mixed classes, or your child is being transferred to school outside of their neighborhood homeschool, then I suggest that the policy of inter-district transfers be re-evaluated, and that each person that is impacted by this please contact your children's principal and the school district to voice your concerns. There are children being asked to transfer out of their schools to schools across town to fill seats that students have left empty so they can transfer to the same school that's being impacted now and considered full. If a child moves into a neighborhood that is impacted due to intra-district transfers, a spot should be made for the child in their home neighborhood school, and the intra-district student status should be re-evaluated and possibly returned to their neighborhood home school. Another option is auditing and re-evaluating all student addresses, eligibility, or hardships to make sure everyone is being treated fairly within the Newark School District. The current intra-district process was created with good intentions again, as I mentioned, but it is having an impact on our students today and it is leading to this mixed classroom that we're seeing today. Again, if you have an issue with this, please talk to your principal and to the school board. Thank you.

[3389] SPEAKER_55: Thank you.

[3394] SPEAKER_57: Crystal Avila, she will be our last speaker until we take the, not necessarily recess, but the last of the speakers will go after the meeting because 30 minutes will be up. Go ahead.

[3403] SPEAKER_36: Hi, good evening. I've never been to one of these meetings, so I'm a little bit nervous. Good evening. I'm a parent at music school, so I'm not even from Kennedy, but I was surprised to hear that Kennedy is going through the same things that music has been going through for years. We have combo classes that make no sense. and only one teacher for grades 3, 4, and 5. And they have over 33 students per class. I've been the PTA president at MUSIC for the past few years, and I have known far too well the cuts that have been made to science and even math and the arts. Our teachers are having to purchase materials out of their own pocket to teach our kids. It's upsetting that the district can make such, excuse me, such a substantial profit on district property and still knowing the teachers are in need of basic materials and PTA has to make sure that there's enough fundraisers to keep costs down for our beloved teachers. I've heard that there might be teacher layoffs that should be off the table. It's the teachers who make this district. We left private school because we heard such good things about the district and now I feel like we have to go back so my younger children can get the same education and not have to feel like they're being tossed around like my oldest daughter did. PTA takes parents' feedback and voting before allocating any funds. Why don't you? Thank you.

[3506] SPEAKER_57: We started item 10.1 at 7.30, it is 8.01, that's 30 minutes. There are six speakers left for this item, so if you can be patient with us and wait until the end of the meeting to comment. At this point, I would like to ask Superintendent Sanchez to at least comment on the items or the comments that he's heard so far.

[3525] SPEAKER_17: Thank you, President Nguyen. First of all, I want to start by just saying no one at the district level is interested in having your kids feel poorly or have any kids feel like they're being shuffled or treated poorly. That's not our interest. I can tell you that you do have some bad information. I'm not sure where that came from, but we are gonna get to the bottom of that. I will get to the bottom of that. $3,000 isn't the amount we're talking about. This is a precedent that we would set district-wide. Minimum initially for families impacted district-wide, we're talking upwards of $40,000 district-wide, and if we open this and set a precedent here, It could be easily into hundreds of thousands of dollars to make right what is wrong in the system to correct this with overages and payment to teachers. Now, I can tell you the board has made some decisions on minimizing overtime and minimizing overages that we've been trying to take care of. Principals have been aware of this since we had our principal retreat this summer. This is common knowledge. Every principal knows that's been our initiative. If it was only a $3,000 problem, none of you would be here. It's larger than that. The rules that we apply to your school need to apply to every school. And I'm sorry that kids feel that they have to meet new friends and I'm sorry that they feel like, not that they feel that, it is hard to have to start over after being so far into the school year. I wish I could make that better. However, not being with your friends and not being with your siblings are two different things. And there were some families that were impacted at this site and other sites where we were trying to keep siblings together. So there was no malintent here to come and cause a problem where there was no problem. But the fact of the matter remains that this is not just a $3,000 decision. It's larger than that. Now, do we need to revisit our policies on inter-district transfer? Absolutely. And we will do that. But right now, we have to go forward with what we have to go forward with. Let me share some other facts with you. We've been overflowing students for a while. And typically, for the contract with the teacher's union, we have 20 days to do so. And our ideal is never to do that this late. And unfortunately, that's where we wound up. Sometimes we pay teachers an overage stipend. The rules of that are every student over is $150 per student per month for the entire time that student over the capacity is in that room. Multiplied times as many teachers that could be in that scenario system-wide to keep people at their site is a very significant number. It's larger than $3,000. We are facing a deficit of about $5 million, and every penny counts some way, shape, or form. So Kennedy teachers and staff were given the latitude that if you can figure out a way to keep families together without having to pay overages, you have the latitude to do that. They've known that for a while. But we just don't have a lot of money right now to pay overages system-wide, so it's not just a Kennedy issue. So Kennedy is getting caught up in this. They are getting caught up in this because of some recent events that happened there. And I'm sorry that it's impacted you greater than any other school this year. But it's not just a Kennedy decision. There were two combo classes created, a 2.3 and a 3.4, two classes. I'm clarifying things that were in the flyer and things that were in the letter. 21 students at Kennedy were moved to each of the two combo mixed grade classes that were created at Kennedy. Three students at Kennedy and upper classes were moved from over-enrolled classes to seats created so the siblings in a family could stay together and not split the families and children to a different site. The district's been working on workable solutions for quite some time. Principals were given their budget in April and began planning their teacher assignments. Elementary school principals met and came up with the first workable plan to resolve overages, August 17th. The two other plans were subsequently developed. While every plan has addressed the district wide need to place students where they are available in empty seats. None of these plans were thoroughly implemented across the district. This caused imbalances throughout the district. So balancing classes in the short term, in the short way of saying it, is always a challenge this time of year. This one has taken longer than normal. I will be looking into this deeper. I'm glad someone said accountability because I respect that. I think that accountability is a fair word. And I can tell you that I also have interest and accountability for how this misinformation has occurred, and I will find out. I'll find out how the misinformation was got out there, and I think that has to be addressed as well. But it has to be for everyone. We will be at Kennedy tomorrow night. I'm happy to have one-on-one conversations with all of you as much as we need to. I'll continue to look into this matter. But it's not just about your school. And it's larger than $3,000 when you look at it systemically. We have an agreement with the teachers union. And I will comment on one thing that was said earlier. And protecting my teachers, I don't think we have any subpar classrooms. Yes, we have teachers that don't teach and aren't strong in areas that they haven't taught a lot yet. But I have full confidence that our teachers can get there and they have the skill and will to do that. But I will tell you that the new culture and the new challenge in Newark Unified because of the budget financial challenges we face is we have to say no to some things. And I think there's going to have to be some tougher decisions. A $3,000 decision would not even have been a decision. That's within the principal's budget, $3,000. This is larger than that. It sets a precedent that we need to look at and review systemically. So I just wanted to know that this was nothing intentional by the district office to cause any kid heartache or any family heartache. I think we were really in a position where we had to look at weighing splitting siblings and having kids start with new friends in another classroom at the same site, and we wanted to keep them all on one site. So we'll continue to look at it. I'm not sure if there's any new answers on the horizon, but I promise you to revisit some of the issues you brought forth. But I did see some facts that aren't exactly right that I think are inaccurate that I felt need to be clarified. So that's all I have for now, President Nguyen. Thank you.

[3915] SPEAKER_57: So with that, we move on. I still want to say something.

[3923] SPEAKER_57: Thank you. With that, we move on to 11.1, which is the 2016-17 on the audit actuals. Mr. Richards.

[3943] Mark Triplett: Brad's on the speaker.

[3945] SPEAKER_57: Hold on, Mr. Richards. We do have a speaker for this item. Would you like them to go first, or would you like to present first?

[3953] SPEAKER_17: I think the speaker can go while he sets up.

[3955] SPEAKER_57: Let's have the speaker go first. We have two, actually. Ms. Cindy Parks? Cindy Parks? I thought you already said he was going to do the presentation first. No, we're opting to have you speak first, please. The speaker's first.

[3973] SPEAKER_42: What I said was option of the speakers. Oh, you said, I'm sorry? I said option of the speakers.

[3978] SPEAKER_39: Option of the speakers, would you like to go after or before in this part?

[3986] SPEAKER_42: How many speakers do we have on the item? Two. Cindy and Carrie? Yeah.

[3992] SPEAKER_11: They've both requested to go after, so I'll just go ahead and do the presentation.

[4006] SPEAKER_39: Go ahead, sir.

[4012] Guadalupe Lopez: Good evening.

[4017] SPEAKER_42: Tonight we bring to the Board of Education and to the public the district's unaudited actual financial reports. This is basically the report of where things actually ended up when we finished closing the books on June 30th of 2017. as far as all the transactions through that date, basically a report on the end of last fiscal year and then the, how that change then rolls forward against the budget. The budget information that you'll see is from the original adopted budget that was adopted on June, at the end of June. It is unchanged from there. Modifications to the budget and things the board has voted on since the budget adoption are reflected at the first interim report which will come to the board on December 15th or the board meeting just prior to that. So we ended the school year in 2016-17 in the unrestricted general fund with $55.4 million worth of revenue. The overwhelming majority of our revenue, 92% of what comes into the general fund, is in the form of what's called the local control funding formula. We have a much larger than usual audience today, so just briefly, the local control funding formula is a combination of state aid and property taxes that funds the overwhelming majority of the operations of this district. Of the amount that comes in to the unrestricted general fund from the local control funding formula, approximately 8.4 million of it gets transferred to the restricted general fund to cover programs that do not generate their own funding on the restricted side. We'll explain that a little further when we get to that graphic on the restricted general fund shortly. On the unrestricted side, there's a very small amount of federal revenue that comes without restrictions to it, about $122,000. About $2.3 million of state revenue that is not part of the local control funding formula. Primarily, that is mandated cost reimbursements and the unrestricted portion of lottery proceeds. About a million dollars of local revenue and an inter-fund transfer in of 1.06 million. This was a transfer from Fund 17, also known as the special reserve for non-capital outlay items. We'll talk a little further about Fund 17 during the course of the presentation. But this was basically covering what would otherwise have been a shortfall in the general fund in balancing for the year. The expenditures in the unrestricted general fund were about $55.7 million. And as you might expect for a school district, the overwhelming majority of the money that we spend is on employee salaries and benefits because we are a service entity and we spend most of our funding on the people who instruct your students. So between our certificated and our classified staff members and their salary related driven cost and employee benefits, it's about three quarters of the unrestricted general fund budget. Another portion, 15% there you'll notice is the contribution to the restricted side of the budget. The overwhelming majority of that is also paying salaries and benefits but it's for special education and for the routine restricted maintenance fund. And so it ends up being very close to 90% of the entire district, 91% of the general fund that's spent on those types of items. The remaining 9% of the budget is books and supplies and services and other operating expenses and some money that gets transferred out through inter-fund transfers in this year specifically to the Child Development Fund. We do have other outgo. You'll see that it's a negative number on there. Negative pi always looks kind of strange on a pi chart because Other Outgo has two different numbers that blend into it. The first is money that goes out. That amount is about $969,000. That is the support for the ROP program. But then there's also money that comes in through the Other Outgo account in the form of indirect cost transfers from the restricted side. They pay a portion back called indirect cost of about 5 percent to between 5 and 7 percent. depending on the categorical program, for the cost of administering their programs. Our expenditures, the other way we look at them, if you were here for the budget study session at the beginning of the meeting, you saw that Mr. Sanchez broke things out by what we call function codes, as opposed to looking at object codes, types of expenses. Function goes by the types of departments that are supported by the unrestricted general fund. So 51% is directly instruction. 11% is in what's called instruction related. That includes school site administration, libraries, media and technology, and instructional services. The pupil services functions, about 4% of the budget. Ancillary services, that is co-curricular at the secondary level. So that's all of your leadership slash club slash athletics. and other after school programs at the senior high school level. We have about 6% of the budget in general administration, 10% in plant services. That includes maintenance and operations. The $969,000 in other outgo, that's the money transferring out, again, to the ROP program. And then the $30,000 transfer to the child care program and the contribution to the restricted general fund. So in the end, the unrestricted general fund ended up with a net decrease of $277,000 for last year. That's the middle column of this report. The column to the left of it is where we were at estimated actuals. When we adopt our budget in June, we review where we project we're going to be at that point in time with the information that we have as of May. And we look ahead to kind of see where things are going to go. And then at the end of the year, we actually true everything up for revenue we actually get or revenue that we've earned in some cases haven't received yet. And but we record everything up and accrue things up and balance out at the end of the year. The third column is the adopted budget. That information is unchanged from when we presented the report in June. We are projecting a decrease in fund balance of $67,000 but we are also projecting a inner fund transfer in a 4.3 million dollars that in the second line of this slide where I mentioned that we had a million dollar transfer in from fund 17 from the special reserve to balance the current year budget that had to be increased to 4.3 million dollars. It was a significant amount of increase and it was largely because of its significant decline in state revenue coming in because there was a large amount of state one-time funds over the course of the past two years that have been eliminated and are not coming back. There is a slight increase that will come to the board at the first interim report, increasing some one-time money in the current year that was originally budgeted at about 200,000. The new number is going to be 800,000, so we'll have a little bit of a $600,000 good news. We'll talk about that a little further when we get to the first interim report. But at the end of the year, we ended up with a fund balance of $2.9 million. That's about two-thirds of a million above The absolute minimum that we have to have is an ending fund balance of $1,947,000, which is the line that says designated for economic uncertainties. The state mandates that we keep a 3% reserve. Now, 3%, $1,947,000, it kind of looks like a lot of money, but a 3% reserve cannot pay half of the payroll for one month for the school district. It's a very, very small amount that we have in the reserve as of the end of the year. On the restricted side, this is our categorical programs. These are programs where the state dictates certain types of things that must be done with the money. But a couple of the programs, one of them is actually completely funded from the Unrestricted General Fund. But the state says, thou shalt give in a normal year 3 percent of your entire general fund projected expenditures over to the routine restricted maintenance fund for maintenance of all of your facilities. It's an element that's required for any district that has ever received money from the state school building program. And although we haven't received money from that program in several years in Newark, there was a time about 9 or 10 years ago when the district actually did receive quite a bit of money from that program. And so, those rules apply to this district. And so, at this time and since 2009, There's been some flexibility in that and the districts have been able to reduce the mandatory contribution. In the current school year, the new minimum contribution is 2% of the general fund and that is where we are going forward into the new school year. We will have to go back up to 3% in 2021, the 2020 slash 21 school year. So the other large recipient of contribution from the unrestricted general fund is special education. Special education is a very large program in this district and as it is in most districts in comparison to many other programs on the categorical side. But it does receive a significant contribution from the general fund as well. We do receive restricted federal revenue. These are what are commonly called the title programs. If you've heard of Title I or Title III at your school. That's part of this federal revenue. And then we have other restricted state revenue, which includes the after school program known as ACES, which operates at Schilling, Graham, and the Junior High, as well as a couple of other state categorical programs. Ms. Matsumoto mentioned one of them earlier today when she was talking about the media academy at the high school. The California Partnership Academy is a state revenue program. We also have restricted local revenue of about $2.8 million. So combined, it's $17.9 million budget. And of that, during the course of the year, we spent $17.7 million. Again, the majority of it on salaries and benefits. A small amount in books and supplies, about 2% of the budget. About 18% of the budget is for services and other operating expenses. That particular object code string, services and other operating, is higher on the restricted side than on the unrestricted side, largely because of specialized services that we must contract for for special education that you don't see on the unrestricted side because they don't exist there. So students who are in non-public schools or who are receiving specialized services that we do not have staff that provide, all those charges end up in that object code of services and other operating expenses. About $110,000 of capital outlay, it was equipment that was purchased in the maintenance department, and then our other outgo. So with regard to the functions, again, Instruction, instruction related, the overwhelming majority of the budget along with pupil services, a small amount of ancillary services on the restricted side as well as some administration costs. As I mentioned, those are the indirect costs that they are charged and then the plant services, that is the maintenance department's budget. So the restricted general fund ended up with a slight increase in fund balance. That means they actually have some money left over from their grants that wasn't expended in the current year that will get expended in the subsequent year. So they end with about a 1.2 million dollar ending fund balance. They're projected to spend some of that down in the year and when we roll the balances into the new year, then you'll see the overwhelming majority of that fund balance move into projected expenditures for the new years. There are many grants that we receive that come in the form of two-year grants. We receive the money in one year and we have a second year in which to complete the expenditures. The remaining funds of the district are the next Section of the report. These funds are all substantially smaller than the general fund, but they all form important functions, but they are ones that the state requires that we account for separately. Adult education being the first one. That particular fund is running at about $330,000 of 331 in expenses. It had $352,000 in revenue, so it actually does have a slight fund balance at the end of the year. That is actually a restricted fund balance. It is from a grant that we received from the Ohlone Consortium. that will be, the remainder of which will be expended in the new year. The Child Development Program, this particular program did receive an Interfund Transparent of $30,000 so it did not quite generate enough revenue to cover its expenditures. Traditionally that program has had a rather large contribution that's been whittling down as they have been implementing a three-year plan to adjust pricing to meet the market and so they're in the process of their second year of implementation this coming year. Fund balance that's left in there mentions there that it's a legally restricted balance at $57,000 at the bottom of the second column. I just realized I didn't carry a total down to the bottom. But that $57,000 is actually funds that belong to the Food Service Fund that are in the Child Development Fund. Child Development provides after-school snack program that is run by our Child Nutrition Department. They actually receive federal funding for that. And it ended up with an ending positive fund balance So they'll be able to expand what they're offering in the new year. The Child Nutrition Fund is the next fund, Fund 13. It's about a $2.5 million program. It did have intentionally expenditures in excess of its revenues last year. The Child Nutrition Program is a bit unique in that the state mandates that they not keep more fund balance than the equivalent of three months worth of expenditures. And we were actually over that amount and so Mary Sayers, our Director of Child Nutrition and her team took care of some needs of their department and acquired some things that they needed that were longer term assets during the course of the year to utilize some of that fund balance and also utilize it for some program expansion at a couple of our schools. Fund 17, that's the special reserve that we were talking about earlier that transferred a million dollars into the general fund. So that fund still has a balance at the end of the school year of five 1,187,000. That is the fund that is transferring the 4.3 million in the budget to Fund 1 as needed to maintain cash flow and to keep the fund whole while we continue to work on the budget reduction plan. Fund 21, this is the bond known as Measure G. There's also a small amount of money left from prior bonds and interest that has accrued on old investments that were in there. It's a very small amount, but overall, the bond fund is still sitting with $16.1 million in it. We expended about $12.1 million. The $18 million of other sources you see there, that was the final bond sale. In July of 2016, we sold the last round of bonds because we, in the course of the 16-17 school year, we finished expending the second round of bonds and started spending the third round. The Capital Facilities Fund, Fund 25, is also known as the developer fee fund. If any of you have purchased a relatively new home in the past that's recently built, your builder, when they were building their house before they could get their permit, had to come in and get a permit from the city that requires that they also pay a school facilities fee for the impact on our schools. And so the funds are accumulating in that fund. We have about $7.7 million that have accumulated so far. That will be used to mitigate growth as we get subdivisions in new areas that currently do not have schools. We know that there's a south end of town where there's no schools, no elementary schools anyway, behind the high school that is slated to continue to develop as well in the future years. Fund 40 is our special reserve for capital outlay. Now these funds largely come from the sale of Russian Elementary School as far as what's left in here. There was some money in there prior to the sale of Russian Elementary School. That's the $185,000 down at the bottom. But the $12.38 million is what remains out of the proceeds of the sale of Rushen Elementary School as of the end of the school year. We spent about $1.95 million of the money in that fund during the past school year, implementing various projects around the district, including the district-wide school painting projects that have been going on. The Bond Interest and Redemption Fund. This is the fund that the county treasurer deposits your property taxes into for the repayment of the bond. So when you get your property tax bill and you see measure G or measure B on your tax bill, the revenue that you pay when you pay your property taxes goes into this fund. The district actually never sees this fund. It stays at the county treasury, but we're required to report on it as part of our financial entity. So they control all of that account at the county treasurer's office. The inner fund transfer in that came in, to Fund 51 is technically not an interfund transfer but an other source. That is the premium on the sale of the bonds. When we sold the $18 million in bonds, it was a very favorable bond market that day. And so we actually generated $1.6 million of premium. That money goes into the Bond Interest and Redemption Fund and is then utilized to pay interest on that debt. And therefore, because there's a balance in that fund, the treasurer's office and the tax assessor's office factor that in when they're setting the tax rate, and so it lowers the property taxes on the bond. Fund 67 and 68, which if you have a copy of the Big Fat Book, they combine into Fund 67 for the purposes of reporting to the state. These are our self-insurance funds. We have two self-insurance programs in the district. The first is for our post-retirement benefits. These are for our employees who have already retired from the district that continue to receive benefits for the terms of their hiring contracts when they worked in the district. That fund currently has a balance of about two and a quarter million. We assess a charge against the payroll for what's called the ARC, the annual required contribution into there that's set via actuarial study on every other year basis. And we use that to fund the actual cost of the benefits and then it's accumulating funds towards the cost of future benefits for the retirees and for the existing employees who will eventually retire and receive benefits from that fund. Fund 68 is our property and liability fund. This is our self-insurance layer with regard to our property. This is where our insurance gets paid into and then gets turned around and paid out to the insurance carrier for the upper levels of coverage. The district is self-insured currently for the first $5,000 of an incurred loss. We used to have a $25,000 layer. We knocked that down to $5,000 and insured the next $20,000 as a bulwark against being hit with additional charges that would have to be paid by the general fund as a contribution into Fund 68 a couple of years ago. That fund is ending with a balance of about $246,000. That is for claims that were still in process of being completed over the course of the end of the year. We have a couple of late bills that actually came right at the end of the year related to the Newark Memorial High School flood that have not yet been paid out, and so there's still a little bit of fund in that. particular fund. The ADA of our district, there's a form in our book here called the Form A where we report our average daily attendance in the state. Our average daily attendance dropped a little bit this year to 96 and a quarter percent. Historically we had an average that was up in the 97s and over the past couple years it's been down slightly. It dropped another half percentage point from 15-16 to 16-17. It was a bad winter. We did see more absences in winter last winter. Hopefully, we'll have a little bit better winter this year, a little healthier winter if nonetheless. And if everyone's in school every day, if your student attends school every single day for the school year, they generate one unit of ADA. For every day that your student misses during the school year, that percentage of the school year gets taken away as far as how much ADA they generate. And that's how the schools are funded. So they're funded based on the units of average daily attendance. So although we had 5,845 students as of the first Wednesday in October, which is the enrollment census day, we actually generated revenue to serve 5,625 students because that's how many units of ADA that we had. The remainder of the supplemental schedules that are part of the unaudited actuals go into a lot more detail about other elements of the district. There's the form asset. We don't normally report capital assets on the fund basis, but we have to convert and report those on our district-wide basis, and so we have a schedule of the long-term assets of the district that's part of the supplemental documents. We have the form cat, which is our categorical balance and activity report. I actually received a few public questions with regard to the budget on specific programs and where information about those programs could be found, almost every one of the answers to those questions were it's on the CAT form. And that includes the question that came up during the earlier session this evening with regard to the media academy at the high school. As Sam pointed out during her comments, the California Partnership Academy is a categorical program. The Carl Perkins Program is also a categorical program. Perkins is a federal program. It's resource code 3550. The California Partnership Academy is resource code 7220 on the state reports. So if you go into the CAT report, you can actually look at every single little categorical program of the district and how it performed during the course of the year. So it's in the back of the book in the supplemental documents. The form CEA is what California calls the minimum classroom compensation form. The state says you district, if you are an elementary district, at least 60% of your revenue must be spent on classroom compensation. That means for teachers and instructional aides in your classrooms. If you fall under that amount, then there's a whole process you have to go to with the state for justifying as to why. If you are a high school district, it's 50%. If you're a unified district, which means you have all the grade levels, they split it down the middle and say you have to be at least 55%. We are actually at 61.25% at Newark Unified, which is up from 58.5% last year. So we are well above what the state expects in classroom compensation in the district. Our debt schedule is the long-term liabilities that includes the bonds that we have in the district as well as the long-term liabilities related to compensated absences or accumulated vacation that people haven't taken as of June 30th, as well as our liabilities for post-retirement health benefits as defined in our actuarial study. The next form in the book is what's called the form GAN. For those of you who are old enough like me to remember a couple years after Prop 13 got implemented, the next round was Proposition 4. Proposition 4 is what established the GAN limit. The GAN limit basically says, okay, State of California, regardless of what's happening with your tax rates, we're only going to allow government spending to grow by so many percentage points per year. Every entity that receives state funding has to calculate its GAN limit to make sure that it's not generating more revenue than it's allowed to under the Appropriations Act. Now, because we are not what's called a basic aid district and a basic aid district is a district whose local property taxes exceed the entire amount the state allows under its normal calculation for the local control funding formula. We are not one of those districts. So anytime a non-basic aid district under current law calculates the GAN The form automatically self-balances and ends up making your appropriations exactly equal to the limit because the state sets us at the state's funding model as being our amount of appropriation under GAN. So it becomes sort of a non-issue form for our particular district but the board still has to take a separate action to adopt the GAN limit every year. And so the next thing we're going to do after I finish this report is after we adopt the unaudited actuals, we actually have to adopt the GAN limit as a second item. The next item is the indirect cost rate report. I mentioned earlier on a slide that the categorical programs have to make a payment back to the general fund for the administration of their programs. It gets set based on what our actual costs are as a district. So it fluctuates from year to year. So what occurred in 16-17 sets your rate for 18-19. So our current year rate, which is 5.22, was set two years prior to today and so it gets evaluated and the state basically runs a running total and modifies the number up or down based on actual experience of the district and then applies it retroactively. Form L is the lottery both unrestricted and restricted are reported together with more detail that the state requests because the state compiles that data from all the schools in the state from all the districts in the state and consolidates it into one giant report for the state legislature on an annual basis that's done by the state controller's office. The federal program, No Child Left Behind, still, although they're in the process of making changes to it at the federal level, still requires a maintenance of effort, and we have to do a detailed calculation to see if we make it. We've never not made it in any district that I've ever been in, but we did make it this year. So we've met our requirements. So if you fail to make your requirements, then you can actually lose some of your title funding. We didn't have a problem with that. We made our requirements. It means that we spent at our non-title related schools and our title related schools comparable enough amounts such that we didn't set ourselves into a supplanting situation with funds that are under No Child Left Behind. The program cost report is a rather complicated calculation that the state utilizes by, again, when they take all the districts together to take a look at how programs are costing across the state. And so what they do is they take all the central costs of the district and they allocate it to all of the other functions and entities of the district to see overall where we look program cost-wise. There's no penalties with relation to the program cost report. It's just a factual report that they consolidate for the state level. Then we have the summary of interfund activity. So all interfund transfers are just summarized onto one report at the back of the book. And then in the subsequent to that, we have the special education maintenance of effort calculations. Special education is a bit of a tricky program. It's not inexpensive. However, the state also expects that we don't turn all of our attention on to special education and start cutting all the services to our special needs students when we get into a difficult budget situation. We have to take a look at how things are. And so there's actually a minimum level of cost that they look at year over year to make sure that you are either spending from, it's a federal requirement that you spend either combined from state and local or just from your local dollars. either the same dollar amount that you spent in the prior year or the same dollar amount per student that you spent in the prior year. And so it gets calculated four different ways, the state and local together in total dollars, state and local together per student, local alone in dollars and local alone per student. As long as you meet one of the criteria, you meet maintenance of effort and you don't lose your federal special education funding. So it's a calculation we have to go through both at actuals and at budget to make sure that we aren't shortchanging our special education program and we more than met the requirement of maintenance of effort for that program. Then there's a couple of... Mr. Richards?

[5681] SPEAKER_17: Yes. How many slides do we still have to go? One. Okay.

[5686] SPEAKER_42: So the last are two, I'm sorry, the last two, last four forms are the government-wide statements. It's a series of conversion entries that form what are called the district-wide statements and then after the board reviews this, we have our auditors who will be here end of the month who will then review everything and then will issue our audited financial statements. They have to issue them by December the 15th to the state, and then we bring them to the board for review at the January board meeting. Meanwhile, we have budget building for the next school year, and that starts tomorrow night. And that's the end. I want to thank Kim, our director of fiscal services, and Carol, our position budget manager, my assistant Sarah, and everyone else in our department for all the work that had to go into putting this together. And we'll now open it up to public comment and then questions from the board.

[5733] SPEAKER_57: Does someone have a comment? Ms. Parks?

[5740] Cindy Parks: Thank you, Mr. Richards. I think that was the most detailed presentation I've seen of the actuals. I have about seven questions, so I guess I would ask the board what's their pleasure on, would you rather that I go through them each and that Mr. Richards answers them at the conclusion or that he answers them as I go along?

[5761] Bowen Zhang: He doesn't need to answer.

[5764] Cindy Parks: Yes, he does need to answer. This is public. I'm dealing with an item that's on the agenda. I deserve answers.

[5769] SPEAKER_57: You can choose not to answer and then give you a report after the meeting or you can meet with him and he can provide you with the answers.

[5776] Cindy Parks: That defeats the purpose of having a public meeting where I'm given my three minutes to get the answers so that the rest of the public that's here gets to hear the answers to the questions. That's transparency. It's one of your goals. As a reminder.

[5791] SPEAKER_57: So this is a presentation to accept the report, not to question it. The auditors will come and then analyze it.

[5797] Cindy Parks: You'll need your round act. The reason that you have these meetings are for public input also, Mr. Nguyen. Thank you. Under the restricted item, page 5, the unrestricted and restricted, your general fund on page 5, I see the various different revenues that you have. You have LCFF, you have federal, you have other state revenue, and you have local. I'm just wondering where the line item is for the Alameda County Behavioral Grant. You don't identify individual grants. I understood what you just said about your CAT and where that is and I was able to look at that in the document. But again, those are your federal and your state monies. I'm just wondering where the line item is for the Alameda County Behavioral Grant and the funds that are coming from that. On page 11. You have under your 16-17 unaudited actuals and under all other reserve, all other federal revenue, you have $122,000 plus change was unrestricted, yet this year you show none. It's an 86% negative impact. I was wondering what the $122,000 that you received this last year that you did not receive this year. You also have mandated cost reimbursement, same page, page 11, of $1.4 million. This year, you're only getting 206. I'd like to know what that is, what that drop was. That also was almost 86%. On page 23, you have under your restricted balance details, you have a resource code of 7338 for college readiness block grant. It's dropping from $129,600 to $49,000. I was wondering what the cost drop there was. In your Fund 11, your adult ed, very nice to see that where you had always been funding it at $100, you were having to supplement their fund by $121,000. That this last year, due to an LCFF contribution of $30,000, which that's another one of my questions. Again, page 24. You have a LCFF contributing $30,000. They never contributed. before and you have your classified salary that dropped from $125,000 to $64,000. I don't understand why that wasn't properly calculated and your books and supplies dropped from $71,600 to $40,000. I guess I'm just not fully understanding why the costs aren't closer to what you were looking for. Page 35, the consortium, I'm just wondering if that's the grant But one I would really like to focus on in my last 25 seconds is Fund 12 on page 36. You have $178,000 that was for books and supplies last year and $170,000 this year. This program is one that's always cost you money or it has for quite a while, which is why you raised the fees. I'd like to know why that's not what that is and can money be diverted or instead of using, I don't know what, you have after school child care, what are you paying $180,000 for books for?

[5997] SPEAKER_57: Okay. Thank you, Ms. Rich. Would you like to address some of them? If you don't have the information offhand, you can follow up.

[6007] SPEAKER_42: Okay. I'm going to answer as quickly as I can, as many of them as I can, off the top of my head. With regard to the Alameda County Behavioral Health, that is other local, if you go to the fifth and sixth sections of the CAP form, that's where the local grants are. So after the federal and the state come the locals and Alameda County Behavioral Health Services is on the cap form. It's resource codes 9030 and 9041 I believe. With regard to the mandated cost reimbursements, you'll recall that in the earlier presentation we talked about the one-time mandate money that went away from last year to this year. The one-time portion of that was about 1.2 million dollars and that's the difference between the 1.4 million and the 200,000. As I mentioned in my presentation, there is going to be some additional one-time money that is going to come in. So that number will be going back up a little bit at first interim. However, we haven't actually received the award amount from the state for that yet. With regard to the CRBG, the College Readiness Block Grant, that was a one-time grant. So to the extent that funds have been expended, the amount that remains in balance for the future year is less. It's not an ongoing grant. Again, the detail for that is in the state section of the CAP form. With regard to adult education, I'm going to need to take a look a little further in your question. If the question is the difference between unaudited actuals and actuals, we don't adjust the budgets of the other funds downward based on projected spending at estimated actuals because it's grant funded. to the extent they don't expend that money rolls to the bottom of the grant. Again, those will be in the CAF form in the local income section for the unrestricted portion and in the state section for, actually it's in the local section for both because we receive it as a grant through a loan, it's a pass-through from Ohlone College. With regard to the Child Development Fund and the $170,000 that is in the Books and supplies are the 4,000 object series codes. If you go into the detail, a couple more pages behind there, you'll see that almost all of that is in 4,700, which is food. It's the actual after school snack program that I mentioned during the presentation. It's the restricted portion of the Child Development Fund that's actually run by the Child Nutrition Department.

[6156] SPEAKER_57: Thank you. Mr. Kirinu.

[6158] Cary Knoop: Thank you. Welcome. Hi, Ward. I have a couple of concerns. I look at the unaudited actuals. The original budget for 16-17 was estimated to be short $3.5 million. The estimates came at $2.1 million. And now we have an actual of about $1 million. Now that's good news. That's wonderful news because it means we have more money than we thought we were going to have. Last, the year before, there was kind of a similar pattern. And, you know, I think it's wonderful if a district is very conservative in making estimates and budgeting because you do not want to be too careless with budgeting. But too careful may put the balance in the other direction. So now we're looking at a 4.5 consecutive year budget shortage and I would just based on the historical data would make sure that we make our best effort estimates with respect to how much short we're going to be. Then I have a question about the adult education fund and so maybe I totally misunderstood or I couldn't follow the discussion a couple of meetings ago but it was my impression that the adult education fund usually gets $100,000 and that the board was asked what to do with that. Shall we cut it all over, you know, $100,000 complete or shall we cut it up to $50,000? And if we look at the estimated close, the fund is, we actually have to pay $120,000 to the adult education fund. But the actuals show that the adult education fund runs a $20,000 in the plus. So my question is, when did that funding come in? And I presume that wasn't known at the time when we had these voting and presentations, because at least I was completely led astray, of course, due to my not understanding it. But I was definitely very surprised about that. My last question is about the mandated cost reimbursement from the, I guess, from the state government. which was two years ago about 3 million, this year 1.4, and then going forward 200,000. I don't know what it is. I presume it's Common Core adjustment to get used to Common Core. But at any rate, whatever it is, it was an extra covering for expenses. So I would presume that the district knew that these expenses will not have to be made. I mean, Common Core takes the time to get used to. But if the government says we're not going to provide any you know, startup money anymore, then that should be reflected, I presume, in the expenditures going down as well. And so I was just wanting to know whether there was any lowering of the expenditures due to the fact that this program was going to go down, because I would presume there's some factor is expenditures from this grant, if that is clear. These were my questions. And thank you for the comprehensive presentation, Mr. Richards. Thank you.

[6372] SPEAKER_42: So to answer the couple of questions that are hanging out there, yes we do have a tendency to budget a bit on the conservative side. We were fairly close this year. Revenue came in about 1% higher than we initially projected. Expenditures were about 0.6 of a percent lower than we anticipated across the district. So it's a fairly close, it works out to be about a net of a million dollar difference between the two. However, with regards specifically to your question on adult education, adult education is receiving two grants from the consortium and at one point we were receiving a grant, one grant directly to the district from the state and another one from the consortium. We received initially notification during budget development of last school year that our local grant direct from the state was being disbanded and we would no longer receive it. And so we took it out and we had to backfill the adult ed fund because they'd already set their program for the year. However, the consortium ended up getting granted what had been our grant and passed it through to us. And so when that occurred, we were able to adjust the adult ed budget downward and we did not end up making the contribution to adult ed that we had anticipated during the year. Now, going forward, some of that was one-time money, some of it was ongoing money. So we are looking currently because the board took an action just after the adoption of the budget to make the reduction of $100,000 from the general fund to the adult ed fund permanent. And so we are in the process of working with the school to make those adjustments going forward. With regard to the mandated cost reimbursements, yes, that was one, the $3 million was one-time money. The 1.2 million dollar, well 1.2 of the 1.4 was also one-time money. Those funds were utilized. The district as was mentioned during the earlier presentation for many years going at least as far back as the previous FCMAT report had for many years operated in a fashion of utilizing one-time funds that were available to it to keep its program running as enrollment continued to decline across the district with the hopes that eventually things would turn around. And we would be able to not have to decimate the programs, but utilize what one-time money we had to keep things moving forward. We have done that continually, but that one-time money we all knew eventually would go away. The $200,000 is what's called the Mandated Block Grant. That's an ongoing funding source. They converted what had been the old mandate reimbursement process into a per-pupil grant amount. And so we do receive about a quarter of a million Unfortunately, it's about 25 cents on the dollar from what we used to get under the old mandate program. However, the state in the meantime has also utilized one-time funds to take care of what's called the mandate backlog. During the course of a couple of years ago, it was a huge influx of cash, but it allowed us to not have to do any transfers out of our special reserves for that year. We did transfer, as I mentioned, a million out of the reserves last year in to balance the books. But we also factored in the fact that the money was going to be going away when we built the budget for the upcoming school year. I think that's the end of the questions.

[6570] SPEAKER_57: Thank you. Moving on to 11.2. The board has to take a vote before you drop off this item. And Mr. Rodriguez, your request to speak.

[6584] Ray Rodriguez: would like to make a motion that we accept this report.

[6593] SPEAKER_57: So there's a motion on the floor, a motion by Member Rodriguez, a second by Member Crocker. We'll call for the discussion. So Member Thomas.

[6601] Nancy Thomas: Thank you. I thought you were going to call for the question. I just had kind of a question on the ending fund balance and the restricted part of the ending fund balance. In the budget, original budget, it was $305,000 that would fall to the ending fund balance. At the estimated actuals, it was $685,000. And then at the actuals, it was 1.2 million. So we went from 300,000 that we planned to have to 1.2 million. And the question maybe is for Ms. Salinas That money represents, I believe, money we didn't spend on students. What can you say about that? I'll take it.

[6652] SPEAKER_42: I'm going to actually respond to this one because it's surprisingly not that to a large extent. If you turn to page 23 of the big book, if you have the big book, there's a detail of which categorical programs had balances at the end of the year. Right there, the page that you're on. So that is actually the detail of the 1.2 million by program. You'll notice that almost half of it, 529,000 is the California Clean Energy Jobs Act. That is actually largely for the most part maintenance and operations department. We've been utilizing that, those are funds that we use for energy improvement projects. And so the lighting replacement projects for all the exterior lighting and all the parking lots at the high school, the junior high school, the MOT yard have all been part of that. The exterior lights on the buildings of the high school and the junior high school We have had a series of projects. You'll recall we had Puck and Yvonne here about a month ago that did an update on the Prop 39 things that we've been doing with the energy grant. It is the funding for that is what's called a restricted ending balance grant. So we record the full amount of the grant even though we haven't fully expended it yet and so it rolls over to the next year's carryover. We still have projects in the pipeline waiting to go to DSA that will utilize the majority of that. The Educator Effectiveness Grant which is 6264, That is what has been funding the E3 program and so it intentionally has been spent over the number of years of the grant. This coming school year is the last year of that and the amount that we had coming over is just a few thousand dollars less than exactly what we spent last year because we're projecting to pay for that program again from that grant for the upcoming school year. The rest of it, the college readiness block grant, there's a plan for spending that for this year that is one time funding. And then we have some instructional lottery funding that is utilized for textbooks and that's the only piece that's really directly instructional.

[6765] Nancy Thomas: Okay, thank you. I appreciate that. The other question I had was that we have an unassigned balance of $811,000. Is that true or is that a mistake on my... No, that is correct.

[6779] SPEAKER_42: We ended the year about $680,000 higher. than we anticipated at 16-17, so that fund balance rolls. And because the budget numbers that you're seeing are the original adopted budget, that increase of opening fund balance rolls right to the bottom of the ending fund balance. So the rest of all the income and expense items in the budget column are the exact same as they were at adopted budget. So we don't augment expenditures for the ending fund balance because we haven't rolled anything programmatically on the categorical side. It's just a report of where fund balance ended and how that rolls against the budget.

[6814] Nancy Thomas: Thank you. Is that it?

[6816] SPEAKER_57: Thank you. So there is a motion and a second. Can we please vote? Five ayes.

[6829] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. As a point of order, I have to Object to the board on the fact that we still have parents here with children and it's nine o'clock and we can easily go till ten which we've we do have precedent where we've done it before and To see children here at nine o'clock. That should really be home. It's just not the way we are as a board in my opinion So if there's a way that we can do that, I know we already approved the agenda but I really feel very uncomfortable in having parents here with children after 9 o'clock.

[6871] SPEAKER_57: I think 11.1 is the bulk of the presentations. The rest should move very quickly. And so let's reconvene that thought maybe in about 5 minutes. Thank you. 11.2, do you have a motion to accept the GAN limit? Move that we approve. Okay. Second. Moved and seconded by Rodriguez and then Preciado. No questions, please vote. Five ayes, thank you. 11.3, donations.

[6911] SPEAKER_39: I'll second.

[6912] SPEAKER_57: Moved by Member Crocker, seconded by Member Preciado. Please vote. Five ayes. Donations $40 to Child Nutrition Services by Steven and Susan Marinici. Donation of $100 to Child Nutrition Services. Donation of $50 to Child Nutrition Services. Excuse me, the first one by Kathleen Gimenti. And then $50 by Garrett and Stephanie Yamada. Donation of $50 to Child Nutrition Services. The donors Graham and J.L. Fuvanataranubala. Donation of $100 to Child Nutrition Services. by Jennifer and David McClure, another $100 donation to Child CNS from Lena Japson, $50 to CNS by Vicky Fontes, $455 to CNS by the First Presbyterian Church of Newark, and a donation of $13,200 worth of computer equipment, desktop computers, monitors, et cetera, to NUSD by Union Sanitary District. Thank you very much for all our donors. On to 11.4, special education staffing. Do you have a move to approve?

[6983] Vicenta Ditto: Move to approve.

[6985] SPEAKER_57: Moved by member Rodriguez. Is there a second? I'll second. Second by member Crocker. Please vote. Oh, excuse me. President Seattle, you'd like to speak?

[6996] SPEAKER_39: Yeah. So for that piece, I just wanted folks to know that I can't, at least at this time, based off of my last comments at the last meeting where we if we're discussing that we have to cut four million dollars or four and a half million and we continue to approve cuts I mean excuse me approve new expenditures I have an issue with that especially when we as today we're dealing with a an example of what we're saying that we we can't pay for certain things or certain overages because of cost but then we are approving we would potentially be approving an extra cost so that's where I'm at.

[7041] SPEAKER_57: Good. Ms.

[7043] SPEAKER_35: Haynes, I'm sorry. Our Director of Special Education Jennifer Willis is here to answer any specific questions but I do want to frame it by at this time after we have audited our caseloads, we are over our caseload and what this position would do is ensure that we do not go over the educational code. of caseloads for speech therapy for students. I do want to say that we would also look at posting this position. It is very hard to come by speech therapists. And if needed, we would contract out after making a search for this position, ensuring that we do not go over what has been allocated as part of the funding for this.

[7088] SPEAKER_39: So I just want to say, so I'm not generally opposed. I mean, I understand the purpose. I think it's important and it just happens that this is the first item that comes up in terms of that. I did want to point out that based off of the background, it says that adding a new full-time position will address not staffing over the maximum recommended average. So it says per education. So I see maximum recommended, which is a maximum amount, at least the way I read it. And then it's just hard. I mean, no saying no to anything in terms of any sort of service of any teacher or any support in our classrooms is difficult. But that's been the problem with us for, I mean, why we're in this position, right? We don't say no, and then we are now having to cut $4.5 million. So I mean, and then having the discussion of this, it's really hard, right? I think you have a response?

[7149] SPEAKER_40: Thank you. Yeah, so this funding is actually not at the maximum. It's really at the minimum required. We're going to be squeaking by, barely covering caseloads with this added 1.0 FTE. And ENCODE does require that we stay at that staffing level for meeting students' needs.

[7167] SPEAKER_39: So you're saying this is a typo, that it should be minimum, not maximum?

[7171] SPEAKER_54: Page 2?

[7172] SPEAKER_39: No, it's on the background of the information. It's the last sentence. Per request? Yeah, the request.

[7180] SPEAKER_40: So if you look above, we're expecting 1.3, and we have 1.0 needed now. 1.02 needed now.

[7189] SPEAKER_39: Adding a new full-time position to our district staff will address not staffing over the maximum recommended average as noted by educational code. So it's a recommended average, at least the way it reads here, not that this is a minimum required. And I'm not trying to be nitpicky about this particular thing, but at the last I said that every time we spend, and then we get more into the deficit, and then at the end of the day, that's going to affect our kids more. So we need to start figuring out what we do now, or for my moving forward, for everything that we propose to spend, we need to figure out where it's going to come from. Because that's where we're at, unfortunately.

[7229] SPEAKER_40: I completely understand. I completely understand. I do believe this is needed for students, and to make sure that we continue to retain and attract staff for speech and language therapists, which are very difficult to find.

[7244] SPEAKER_57: Thank you. Member Cracker?

[7247] SPEAKER_11: Also, I think there was a note that the speech therapist is required by IEP to fulfill the needs for special ed students, and being very careful that you are identifying a true speech need rather than being a language not understood because it's a second language for the child. There's speech therapy, and then there's learning a new language. And they're two different things. And you learn the new language with a regular teacher. Speech therapy takes care of special glitches that might be there.

[7279] SPEAKER_40: Absolutely.

[7280] SPEAKER_11: So I think that's a piece where.

[7282] SPEAKER_40: And that is something we're going to be working on very hard this year to get our percentages down to what is considered the appropriate percentages so that we're not over-identifying students with English language learning needs.

[7292] SPEAKER_57: Thank you. Thank you, Member Thomas.

[7294] Nancy Thomas: I just wanted to echo the fact that we need to be very careful not to over identify services especially in our type budget situation.

[7308] SPEAKER_40: This is going to be a major focus for my department this year.

[7311] SPEAKER_57: Thank you. So there are, I think there is a motion and a second on the floor and there are no questions so please vote. Four ayes, one abstention.

[7329] SPEAKER_39: So as I said, I'm not fundamentally opposed to it. It's just the piece that. Sure.

[7333] SPEAKER_57: OK. Thank you. 11.5, strategic imperatives. This is the three goals. Is there a motion to approve?

[7349] Nancy Thomas: Could we have a discussion first?

[7350] SPEAKER_57: Let's discuss first, OK.

[7350] Nancy Thomas: Because I'd like to make some adjustments or recommendations I think these are the three imperatives that the board discussed at our retreat and I think we probably all agree with them. I would recommend that we interchange number three and number two because I think establishing financial stability and financial fiscal solvency should be our second priority after academic excellence. That means the increasing enrollment will go down to three and I would also ask the superintendent to maybe adjust that to make it more general rather than specific numbers of students. So that would be my recommendation on making a motion that with those two modifications that we approve this. Okay. I'll second that.

[7400] SPEAKER_57: Okay. So moved by Member Thomas, seconded by Member Crocker. Member Preciado.

[7404] SPEAKER_39: So one point in terms of this, it could just be Newark Unified School District will increase our enrollment period just so that we have... That would be the general idea.

[7414] Nancy Thomas: rather than be specific about the number of students and the timing.

[7417] SPEAKER_39: Well, I mean, because if we're going to approve a motion and have language, we can't approve a language that's going to say, it should say something like this, is my thoughts.

[7428] Nancy Thomas: I can accept that as an amendment, that the second one would say Newark Unified School District will increase our enrollment.

[7436] SPEAKER_39: You mean the third one, but yeah.

[7438] Nancy Thomas: As the third bullet.

[7439] SPEAKER_57: OK. We got that notation? Yes.

[7442] SPEAKER_11: I'll accept it as a second.

[7444] SPEAKER_39: OK, again? Yeah, I'm going to use this as my, because I can talk on the non-agenda items. It's related to this piece. I just have to say so I didn't wait all the way to the end, which I will say. But in order for us to move forward with academic excellence, my thoughts are that we do need to do a better job in terms of communicating. I think about, as a whole, that's something that we've all been discussing, at least the time I've been here for two years, that One of the biggest pieces is that we heard folks is that people are okay with combo classes but it's we didn't communicate. We did a horrible job of outlining that piece and then I think that we should definitely apologize for that. But I'll save my rest of the comments for that but I wanted to say that it is tied to academic excellence from my perspective.

[7493] SPEAKER_57: Thank you. With that, please vote. Five ayes. Thank you. We're almost there, folks. 12.1, employee organizations. NEWMA, NTA, CSA.

[7518] SPEAKER_56: Thank you. Thank you. As we look towards ways that USD can get out of its fiscal challenges, I hope the board does not overlook the many ways that we can make our budget work through increasing our funds instead of just making cuts. I've been in talks with members of Fremont City Council, and they've reached out to Mr. Sanchez. And as many of you heard, Fremont has the opposite problem that we do. Their enrollment has ballooned to the point that their schools can barely hold their students. These council members hope to help NUSD and FUSD come to an agreement where they can send us some of their students, increasing our ADA. As we know, Alameda County Office of Ed only requires us to fix the budget this year by about $2.7 million, not the $5 million that the board has already proposed. This would take nearly eight classes, about 250 to 300 students from the entirety of Fremont Unified School District to make this happen. I hope the board and executive cabinet are willing to make a public statement that they would be willing to reach out to the FUSD for our mutual benefit. This can decrease pressure on their overcrowding schools, and we can gain higher enrollment, which was just adopted as one of our goals, to bridge our funding gaps until new residents with children come to our Newark family. Thank you, and I think we'll give the rest of our time to the board.

[7604] SPEAKER_44: Thank you. I would like to, under our agenda, we have a little bit more than three minutes to talk. So I agree with Mr. Rodriguez that it's time that the kids go home. So I would like to give up my time so that the rest of those six people, I believe it is, can discuss what they need to discuss and then go home with their kids to bed.

[7629] SPEAKER_57: Okay. Tommy Martin Edwards. That was it. Thank you.

[7640] SPEAKER_39: So then I think a way to address this just so that we get folks because I think it's been longer than 5 minutes and some of the items might take longer at least. I'm going to bring up discussion points from my perspective. We could... We got 5 speakers left. We could make a special, we can make a motion to suspend the rules to add this piece above and let them speak.

[7664] Nancy Thomas: I second that motion.

[7666] SPEAKER_57: The motion to suspend the rules in terms of the agenda.

[7669] SPEAKER_39: I don't think you can go back to 10.1 because you'd have to change the order of where it's at, so.

[7675] Ray Rodriguez: It's a separate motion.

[7677] SPEAKER_39: So I'm just saying we would, the way I, as a process thing, is suspending our rules. Sure, whichever way gets the speakers up first. Okay, cool, so then. However you guys want to do it. Okay, so then we would add for above 13.1 so that they can speak again.

[7698] SPEAKER_57: There's no questions. Motion by Preciado. Yeah. Second by Thomas. Please vote. Five ayes. Thank you.

[7711] SPEAKER_42: To suspend the rules for public comment, finish now rather than at the end of the agenda.

[7717] SPEAKER_57: I believe it's Jamie Ward. I'm sorry if I can't read the handwriting. Thank you. Jamie Ward followed by Angela Ringling. Again, I apologize if I mispronounce because some of the handwritings are not very clear. Go ahead.

[7732] SPEAKER_12: I'll be very quick. I think this all could have been prevented, and it's too bad, and it's disappointing that all this had to go down. But please just think of our children in all this, and please fix it.

[7746] Toni Stone: Thank you.

[7748] SPEAKER_57: Angela, followed by Karen Loop.

[7753] SPEAKER_31: I just wanted to have a little demonstration. If you're a Kennedy parent or a Kennedy student, can you get up and switch seats with another person? So we're two hours and 10 minutes into the meeting. It's a little disruptive. It's going to be less comfortable. You're probably not sitting next to somebody you know. Now imagine you're a student in a classroom, and you're 18 days into the school year. And you're not just switching seats for a few minutes. You were switching a class, a teacher, You've built trust, trust and bonds with your teachers are in place and then it's all just torn down at the convenience of the district. I don't know that every, I know you've tried to address some of these things and you've touched on some of them but I don't know exactly what measures were put in place before this option was resorted to. And I know this disrupted the flow of the meeting and if you just picture the elementary students, they're 10 years and under in most of the classes that were disrupted. and they're shuffled into a combo class. I know our teachers are capable and they will do what we ask of them. But how harmful is this to the student's adjustment and to the student's education and the teacher's system and what they've already put in place and been establishing? I have three children at Kennedy. One of them was affected by these shifts and at the beginning of the school year she was excited about the new school year Her new teacher and some of her friendships were reinforced by the classroom and when she learned that her class would be turning into a combo class, she expressed anxiety over the change in her classroom. Last night's homework was more stressful and a little bit more difficult than usual because it was accompanied by comments that she didn't want to go to school today. She was nervous about having new students in her classroom and likely a new seating assignment as well. I know her teacher expressed some anxiety as well over the shift in her classroom and I'm sure she had time over the summer and before the school year to prepare for her classroom and is now tackling a combo class with minimal preparation. But like you said, they will do it and they are capable but it just seems that these things could have been addressed at an earlier point. I feel like our district is becoming far too reactive rather than proactive at this point and I feel unclear about what policies are in place, is making four combos we're not going to be able to do that. We're not going to be able to do that across 5 grade levels standard operating procedure. Can we do a one-time exception to all the shifting and allow parents to fundraise for the stipend. I know you're at don't want to set a precedent for other schools to do is I know we just went with the parents in this room and shipped in $30 piece. We could probably come up with the $4500 for the 3 students at our school that to compensate for them. I know we're in a fiscal crisis. We've been looking at the coming from or cuts should be putting, cuts should be taking, but they should be not taken from the classroom and not taken from learning and affecting the students first. What number of students and teachers will we disrupt before we pay a few extra thousand dollars and keep the majority in a safe and comfortable place to benefit for their learning? Will it be a hundred? Two hundred? Three hundred? More? What's our number? How many students are we going to disrupt? You want Newark to be a community that will draw people who will be proud to have their children attending our public schools. We want to be proud of our public schools. But if attending Kennedy Elementary or other Newark schools comes with these consequences of poor judgment and a disruptive learning environment, you will find community members educating their children through alternative avenues.

[7951] Cary Knoop: Thank you. Good evening. Well, something is wrong. If so many people are upset, if so many children are upset, and so many teachers and so many parents are upset, something is wrong. I think the first thing you need to establish were the rules applied correctly. And I think you owe it to the community to explain, not, of course, any personal information of the kids, but at least to explain what the rules were and that the district has handled correctly and that Kennedy School is handled correctly. But on top of that, you need to revisit the rules because this situation should never be repeated anymore. Now, if that means that you have to step back from the 21-day rules and go back to 14 days or maybe say we can do a 21-day rules for matters that are particular to the teachers, you know, the union matters and matters that are particular to the class organization to limit that to 14 days, That may be an alternative, but something needs to change, I think. The last thing is, and, you know, I agree with one thing that the superintendent said, that we have to be fair to all the schools. We cannot make an exception to Kennedy because there's other schools in similar situations, too. That is true, but you also have to look at whether rules, when applied, are good. You know, the rules are made for the benefit of the people. People are not made for the benefit of the rules. Thank you.

[8054] SPEAKER_57: Thank you. Karina and Lynette Aquino. Karina? Lynette? Once? Twice? She left? Thank you. That concludes our public comment. Moving on to consent items. Personnel item 13.2. Is there a motion to approve?

[8087] Nancy Thomas: I move we approve.

[8088] SPEAKER_57: Moved by member. Second. Thomas, second by Rodriguez. Please vote.

[8096] SPEAKER_39: I just had a question in terms of the position in terms of the special ed. That's not what we discussed right now. That position of special ed is not filling the position that we just approved, right? It's not happening together. It's a separate position.

[8116] SPEAKER_35: The position hasn't been posted.

[8117] SPEAKER_39: OK, separate. OK, I just saw it. OK, good. Thank you.

[8125] SPEAKER_57: Five ayes. Thank you. 13.3, San Francisco State University, intern MOU. Is there a motion to approve?

[8132] Nancy Thomas: I move we approve.

[8133] SPEAKER_57: By member. I'll second. Moved by member Thomas, seconded by member Preciado. Please vote. Five ayes. Thank you. The entire block of 14.1 through 14.8 is consent item. We do have one speaker for 14.4. Mr. Parks. Move to approve all the items other than 14.4.

[8162] Ray Rodriguez: OK. I'd like to pull 14.2 and 14.5. OK. Other than 14.2. You're pulling?

[8164] SPEAKER_39: You're pulling? So 14.1, 14.3.

[8177] Ray Rodriguez: 14.6, 7, and 8.

[8179] SPEAKER_11: Did we do 13.3? Yes, we did. Yes.

[8184] SPEAKER_57: So Member Rodriguez, are you making a motion to approve 14.1, 3, 6, and 8? Right. OK. Is there a second?

[8192] SPEAKER_42: No. 14.245.

[8193] SPEAKER_39: Which one is the one we have a speaker on?

[8200] SPEAKER_39: Yes. OK. 14.5, I'll say. OK. I'll second.

[8206] Ray Rodriguez: So it would be 14.6, 14.7, and 14.8, and 14.1. Okay. Not 3? And 14.3, right? So it was that poll.

[8221] SPEAKER_57: You guys are the ones who are doing the polling. 2, 4, and 5 have been polled.

[8225] SPEAKER_39: I polled 2. Yeah, so 2, 4, and 5 are polled.

[8228] SPEAKER_57: Thank you. Okay.

[8228] Ray Rodriguez: So 14.1, 14.3, 14.5, 6, 7, and 8. No, 478. I'm sorry, 678. OK.

[8237] SPEAKER_57: Mayor Rodriguez, seconded by Member Preciado. Member Crocker, you'd like to talk on this?

[8244] SPEAKER_11: I'm sorry. I'm fine.

[8246] SPEAKER_57: OK. Please vote. Five ayes. Thank you. So we'll take this in order. So 14.2. Member Preciado. OK.

[8265] SPEAKER_39: It's again similar, I know, in terms of my thoughts of saying that any time if we're bringing in new items for bringing a new dollar amount, that where are we going to take it from? It says budget source. I'm not sure if that means it's restricted. If it is, then I'm OK with it.

[8283] SPEAKER_57: I believe this is a non-negotiable agreement for the IEP, so there's no wiggle room with this. Is that correct?

[8290] SPEAKER_35: Correct. And some of the aspect of this is also part of a mandated settlement.

[8295] SPEAKER_57: OK. Is there a motion to approve 14? I'm sorry.

[8298] Nancy Thomas: Could I ask a question? Did we go out to bid on the, that's a big item, $116,000. Did we go out to bid? Are we required to bid?

[8314] SPEAKER_42: We did not go out to bid for transportation this year. You'll recall that when we went out to bid, During the last year, the consortium ended up breaking up because the busing companies were so high. It was actually less expensive to go with the Go Green locally in Newark because we could not get any other transportation provider. And that Go Green is coming up later. But Orange Cab is specific for ones that can't be transported in any other fashion. And this is a relatively unique situation for an IEP. The student has to go to another county.

[8350] Nancy Thomas: That wasn't my question. My question was, for this amount of money, are we required to go out to bid?

[8356] SPEAKER_42: We are not required to go out to bid for this type of service at this amount. For if it were a goods, yes. OK. Any other questions?

[8365] SPEAKER_57: Is there a motion to approve 14.2? I'll move to approve it. I'll move to approve it. I'll move to approve it.

[8369] SPEAKER_57: I'll move to approve it. I'll move to approve it. I'll move to approve it. I'll move to approve it.

[8372] SPEAKER_39: I'll move to approve it. I'll move to approve it. I'll move to approve it.

[8374] SPEAKER_57: I'll move to approve it. I'll move to approve it. I'll move to approve it. I'll move to approve it. I'll move to approve it. I'll move to approve it. I'll move to approve it. I'll move to approve it. Five ayes, thank you. 14.4, that was put because we had a speaker, Ms. Parks.

[8394] Cindy Parks: Good evening. I'd like to thank Mr. Richards for some of the questions that he did answer prior to the meeting. So I only have a couple of items that I would like to address. First of all, to go along with what Mr. Preciado said is that if you're going to have another position come forward, that you're going to fill, you know, you did say that there was going to be a hiring freeze. So I assume that these are mandated type of positions that need to be filled. Along those lines, I'm concerned about the purchases. I've not heard any discussion at all with regards to the limit of purchasing in the district. Are you only, I don't know if there's something that's gone internally that's limited to necessity and emergency types of items. I don't recall ever hearing in a board meeting where you've actually discussed those types of things and limiting or setting an amount that, I don't know, departments have, I guess, budgets or whatever. I don't know. I'm just saying that even if somebody has a budget, is it an emergency item that has to be replaced? Did something break and that's what's causing it to be replaced? But one of the things that concerned me going through this is one of the things that jumped out because it was on page one of the warrants was a $515 warrant to the Dominican Sisters for the management retreat. How many acres of property, how many facilities do you oversee? And you had to pay $500 to go somewhere else. Is that the best use of your money? $500 out of a $60 million budget? Yeah, pennies. But everything adds up. And it's what you're saying to the community. You had parents here tonight that said, you know, granted their numbers were wrong. It's $150 per kid. But you're talking, you know, you've got to think about what this says to the community. Another item on here is there's about $1,500 for two principals to go to training. $1,500, that would have been one kid overage for the 10 months. So again, it's looking at these types of things. What are you saying to the community? Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. And then if anybody looks at the warrants, is that what it's really portraying? Thank you.

[8536] SPEAKER_57: Member Thomas.

[8538] Nancy Thomas: Before Ms. Parks mentioned the $515, I had also flagged it earlier today when I looked at the warrants. It seems to me that in the past, we have gotten free use of facilities at Ohlone College. I think DeVry University gave us free use of their facilities for our management retreats. I think whenever possible, we should minimize payments to other organizations for using their facilities and we should minimize the amount of food we prepare for adults at meetings.

[8576] Terrence Grindall: Thank you.

[8577] Nancy Thomas: With that, I recommend we approve 14.4.

[8580] SPEAKER_57: Okay. Motion by Member Thomas. Is there a second? Second. Second by Member Rodriguez. Please vote. Five ayes, thank you. Next item, excuse me, 14.5, go green. Member Preciado.

[8603] SPEAKER_39: So again, it's the piece in terms of this is a large amount, half a million. I know, I mean, based on the previous conversation for the other piece that we had to provide it, it's more of maybe getting clarity on the budget source, resource 6,500, special education. That's restricted funds, so it's part of the process. It feels like, again, that we keep on approving large amounts of money, and I know this one we have to per law, but what are we doing in terms of the cuts to balance and to match that?

[8639] SPEAKER_35: Yes, and so, as you said, this is requirement in students' IEPs. Our director is working diligently with our principals and with IEP teams to really provide what is the offer that we need to provide, but if you can see here, she also, this year it's a reduction of $35,000 from last year. Some of it is due to a decrease in current ridership, but it's also, without knowing the specificity of each IEP, but I do want to note that it is a decrease from last year.

[8668] SPEAKER_39: That makes sense, and I want to note, it just happens that the items this, next, we're all special education, I don't want to think that it's, Like in terms of my thought process, it's only, especially, it's like what we're doing for every single program that affects all our students and just keep an eye on that. But with that, I'll move to approve.

[8693] SPEAKER_57: We do have some comments. Second. Moved to approve by Member Creswell, second by Member Rodriguez. Ms. Crocker.

[8699] SPEAKER_11: I just want to say that that's the budget that's there. It's not necessarily what's going to be spent. Am I correct? In other words, we only pay for what we use.

[8709] SPEAKER_35: We only pay for what we use. But right now, this is based on the numbers we have with our students. Thank you.

[8715] Ray Rodriguez: I had a quick question on that. Ms. Salinas, does this replace Durham that we used to use? So a few years ago, Go Green, they were doing some transportation for the Newark Days Parade and other stuff. We got pretty lucky because we were able to get these services at a lot cheaper price, and we weren't very happy at all with Durham. So it's glad to hear that we're actually saving money here. And it's my understanding that they're willing to work with us to minimize what the cost is, to keep it to a minimum. And so I'm happy that we're approving this particular And with special ed, like Member Pichardo said, it's just, you know, we're kind of mandating on stuff, so whether we like it or not. Anyway, so I'm ready to vote.

[8780] Nancy Thomas: I guess the same question I had for Mr. Richards earlier, did we go out to bid and at what level are we required to go out to bid?

[8786] SPEAKER_42: We did not go out to bid this year for this item. The prior bid cycle was a multi-year cycle and they came in below The consortium's bid from Durham, and so we're still in that cycle. We will be due to go out to bid again for the next triennium and the next school year.

[8802] Nancy Thomas: But we were not precluded from going out to bid, I assume.

[8805] SPEAKER_42: No, we were not precluded from going out to bid.

[8807] Nancy Thomas: I just would like to make the comment that a $485,000 expenditure would warrant going out to bid.

[8818] SPEAKER_57: That's all. OK.

[8823] SPEAKER_39: No further comments? Is that a policy that we have? I want to make sure that if we vote to support this then we're not violating the policy?

[8833] SPEAKER_42: We are required to go out to bid however the last time the bids went out it was for a three-year cycle and we're going into year three so we'll be going into a new bid cycle for next school year so we will have to go out to bid for next school year. We didn't bid in the current year because we're in the third year of the three-year cycle.

[8849] SPEAKER_11: So to clarify that it means that The rates have been set for three years. So going out to bid is not going to help at this point.

[8856] SPEAKER_42: No, the rates did change slightly this year from where they were last year. They actually had been frozen. But even with the increase, it's still below where we were with Durham. So it wouldn't have made a sense to try and go back out. But we will be going out on the natural for next cycle anyway, next year. For three years. For three years.

[8875] SPEAKER_57: Thank you. Member Gregory, you want to speak again? Or was that for the last? No, that's it. So with that, please vote. Five ayes. Thank you. That takes us to 15.1, Board of Education Committee Reports, Announcements, Requests, Debrief, Discussion, et cetera. Let's start with Member Rodriguez.

[8905] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. This was a difficult meeting. Anytime you have a number amount of people and I appreciate the superintendent lending some clarity on the whole subject and I'm looking forward to the get together tomorrow night which happens to be at Kennedy and I'm hoping that it will be a very, very active and involved session. I just have one item that was brought up by one of the speakers. They were talking about teacher supplies as it applies to the fact that there was a change made, that was the district office asked the school and the teachers to do combo classes. I just don't think it would be fair that teachers would have to, if that is the case. So I was hoping that maybe if we need to take up a donation or something, that a teacher would not be, have to buy additional supplies because of this. action that was taken, which had nothing to do with them. So if you can look into that, Superintendent Sanchez, I'd appreciate it. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you.

[8984] SPEAKER_57: Member Crocker?

[8985] SPEAKER_11: Connected with that, it would be interesting to know how many teachers were actually changed. So was it two teachers or was it five teachers that were changed?

[8993] SPEAKER_17: Two classrooms, as I understand.

[8995] SPEAKER_11: So two classrooms changed? Changed there though?

[8998] SPEAKER_17: More than two teachers. It would be classes where there's constant problems.

[9002] SPEAKER_11: Right. I think it's important that they be supplied with the curriculum they need for the levels and the supplies so that there's no repeat in terms of curriculum that's given to the students there in the class. And that should be a no-brainer, which I assumed was going to happen. The other thing is I would like to maybe quickly, with the board, make a decision about who's going to be going What are the, which are the community engagements so that Shara will know exactly who's going to be. I have some conflicts that I would like not to be able to feel guilty if I don't go to all of them. And so, if we have two people at each of the sessions. So, Shara, has anyone told you what, when they're planning to go yet?

[9051] Leonor Rebosura: I don't have an exact. Oh, we have the engagement meeting?

[9054] SPEAKER_11: Yes.

[9058] SPEAKER_17: The rest of you let Shora know, then we can... Can we do that maybe on the way out?

[9063] SPEAKER_11: That would be good.

[9063] SPEAKER_57: That sounds fine. Thank you.

[9066] SPEAKER_39: So, my thoughts, and I think Superintendent Sanchez touched on this in terms of apologizing. I really think that we do need to apologize for what happened in the manner in which it happened because from my perspective, based on What the parents said is that they were OK with the combo class. It's just that it was all last minute. So my thoughts are that this should have happened earlier. And it's unacceptable that we had it later, and then we didn't communicate that. So it added to this. It gives me thoughts of also thinking about it's kind of our poor planning if it's true that the students moved today. Like, if it's moved today, we're, I mean, think about anybody who has a parent in a class and then has to change at this moment. Whether or not it's acceptable per the contract, it just feels like it is a disruption because of that drastic change. So we need to do a better job in terms of moving forward that we recognize where we're at in terms of the finances that we want to have combo classes. And I think we aren't just disputing that, but we're just, the planning process, I'm not sure if this happened at other schools. It appears it may or may not be happening at music, but it didn't happen in this manner. So my thoughts are just we need to do better for that piece. My last thought would be then, I don't know what the process is for this, but is there a way to discuss with the teachers to not have an overage for this year alone for this particular instance for these particular classes as a way to work together potentially? But I know that's more of a contracting, but as a way to try to problem solve this or figure out something else, a side letter that addresses this particular matter of how we can work together as a team and figure out with the teachers that we all care about the students. We want to do what's best for the students. So how can we map this out with parents, teachers, the board, ourselves, like how can we collaborate and work together on problem solving if that's potential resolution. So those are just my thoughts.

[9208] SPEAKER_57: Thank you. Member Thomas.

[9210] Nancy Thomas: I would like to thank Mr. Richards for the complete and detailed report this evening. I'd also like to express that it's frustrating to see numbers change so dramatically. One of the things that FCMAT said is we don't have to wait for the first interim or the second interim or the third interim to get updates on the budget and we talked about doing this monthly, so I would hope that we would be monitoring and getting reports on spending and areas where we're trying to save monthly. I would also suggest that 2.8 million is a minimum that we have to be able to show the county by October 3rd, but 4.3 two million or whatever it is, is what we really need to cut next year. And so that means we have to start now to be looking at where we're going to make our cuts, especially in the area of staffing because we have March 15th notices. And so I really, and some of these items that we have put forth as potential savings, big ticket items, need to be negotiated and I think negotiations need to start sooner rather than later. I'm really concerned that we not delay in getting data and making sound decisions based on community input, but also input from staff and input from the board members.

[9307] SPEAKER_57: Thank you. Just a couple of things. In regards to the 20 days that Member Preciado made, and as it relates to the apology, I'm very certain that administration and Principal Hughes didn't sit around for 18 days and then on the 19th they decide, you know what, we have to make this change. I think this changes came about due to a need and we as a board approved the teacher's contract to allow that 20 days of movement whether it's the high school or the elementary schools. If we are fundamentally opposed to having so much changes up until the 20 days then we can revisit and then possibly augment through negotiations 10 days, 15 days, whatever that amount of day is but the 20 day is pretty much standard as far as districts that I know of that allow, you know, the movements. So within the contract, is it tough and difficult? Yes, it is and it's hard to have students move on those, you know, at the very late minute but I'm sure that was prompted by a need that couldn't be resolved. With that, I would like to request two reports, maybe perhaps for the next board meeting. These are relatively simple. So the first one is just a compiled list of the number of combo classes that we have district-wide, maybe by per school and then just simple chart per school and then a total tabulation and then what grade levels. The second one is when we approve the donations every month, Oftentimes we see PTAs make donations to computer labs or fund staff members at various sites and whatnot. And if we can get a list of all the PTA donations and where they go, and if schools like Kennedy or MUSIC or if other schools allow their PTAs to donate their funds for specific purposes, whether they're computer labs or various support, Can this particular PTA at Kennedy or any other school for the matter donate their funds to support the O-Rich, which would then would not cause a precedent throughout the district?

[9449] SPEAKER_39: Can I respond to that? Because he, I mean, you said in terms of, you made a point in terms of something that we can change as a board in terms of negotiation. I just wanted to point out that we don't provide that level of detail in terms of negotiations. language. We're saying here's the big picture. Sure.

[9465] SPEAKER_57: And what I'm saying is the big picture we can give stock guidance says hey we don't like this 20 days maybe we should reduce it because we don't like to have you know students move that late in the game right.

[9474] SPEAKER_39: Yeah and as not being in the education profession I don't know that that's the standard in terms of right I leave it up to our negotiation team to map it out of what what's best for our kids and it's not until things like this that we find out so maybe like in terms of perspective would be maybe it's okay for 20 days at a secondary, but maybe not so much as elementary, right, as a framework. But we're not, we didn't get to that level of detail in terms of that. And I still do think in terms of the communication, we should apologize because I think about if it was any of our kids that that happened to, to me, at least it appears that it was not thorough communication. And when it's a situation that is not a great situation for anyone, you at least got to be transparent about what's happening and not, some parents mentioned that they were told the one thing and then the next day they were told the opposite. So that, if that is in fact correct, that's not acceptable. We just have to be transparent and tell people what it is, but not change their mind if that's what happened, right? This is all speculation, right? Because we just heard from one thing. So we have to work within that framework unless there's a way we can get clarity on that.

[9548] SPEAKER_57: And I'm speaking from an empathetic standpoint of the school administrator who has to make these changes, who have to face these parents and angry students that get their schedules changed, right?

[9559] Ray Rodriguez: You know, I don't mind apologizing as a board member. You can always do better. The superintendent follows our guidance and what we tell him to do. And we basically have told him to shut down any overages any overtime and and So I just want to make sure that I have Every confident now. I'm not saying member Piazzolla was talking like a confidence on superintendent. I'm sure everything was done to communicate by either the staff here at the district office or at the school and And this is tough times and I do apologize for what happened and for the parents to come up Having grandchildren that age, I know they, and remember, we all have kids or grandkids, and it's not nice, it's not good for the kids when they have to move. But we had to make tough decisions, and I have full confidence in that Superintendent Sessions and his staff communicated, in my opinion, everything as they should. Thank you.

[9633] SPEAKER_57: Member Crocker, you get the last comment.

[9634] SPEAKER_11: Yeah, having been in teaching for a long time, especially at the secondary level, this is not an unusual thing to happen when you don't know who's coming in. And I think part of the issues, how do I say this? Part of the issues is how the adults around children handle the situation. I think we can make things worse or we can make it better. We do have a budget crunch. We did tell our superintendent our staffing is too high. You have to get down to it. I appreciate the children being upset because they're going from one classroom to another. I think it was down, looking at the charts I saw, it was down to a minimum. And I think the adults around can help that transition by how they handle what they say and how they work with the kids. I'm not saying that there can't be improvement. But I'm saying it's also important what you say to your child and how you handle it. That's part of the learning process. Part of being a parent. Part of being a parent, right.

[9709] SPEAKER_57: Thank you. With that, we move on to 16.1, Superintendent's concluding comments.

[9716] SPEAKER_17: Thank you. No comments at this time. Oh, sorry.

[9719] SPEAKER_57: No? No. All right, thank you. With that it is 944 meeting is adjourned.

No minutes available.