Special WorkShop Meeting

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[5] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you member Thomas. Vice President Thomas. 533, I'd like to call this meeting to order. This is the special board meeting for the Newark Unified School District Board of Education, January the 22nd, 2019. As you can see there are four board members present. Member Martinez will be joining us in a little while. via telephone from 246 Perimeter Center Parkway Northeast in Atlanta, Georgia. So we need to roll call. I'm going to dial Member Martinez. She's having trouble connecting to the phone. OK.

[38] SPEAKER_18: Would you like me to get her on and then roll call?

[47] Ray Rodriguez: No, can you just do roll call first, if you don't mind? Thank you, Sharon.

[51] SPEAKER_18: President Rodriguez.

[53] Ray Rodriguez: Present.

[54] SPEAKER_18: Vice President Thomas. Here. Member Martinez. Member Gutierrez. Here. Member Zhang.

[60] Ray Rodriguez: Here.

[61] Diego Torres: OK, excellent.

[68] Ray Rodriguez: OK, so we have the approval of the board agenda. Oh, man. I forgot. We should be doing the pledge. And I didn't put that on there.

[80] Nancy Thomas: We could do it anyway.

[81] Ray Rodriguez: We could do it anyway? Sure. OK. OK, I apologize. Next time, we'll make sure we have the pledge. Join me, please.

[91] Nancy Thomas: 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.

[106] Ray Rodriguez: OK, we're going to do the first part up here. And then if the board wishes, we'll move down here. Is that OK? OK, so we need the approval of the board agenda. I need a motion and a second, please.

[122] Nancy Thomas: I move approval.

[123] Ray Rodriguez: Member Bransford and Thomas. Member Thomas moves approval.

[127] SPEAKER_32: And I'll second it.

[128] Ray Rodriguez: Member Gutierrez. OK. Make sure we have the voting is open. Please vote. And member Martinez will be joined us by phone. OK. OK. Excellent. Works. Move this thing around.

[156] SPEAKER_32: Put it on top of the paper. It's easier. There you go.

[162] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Motion passes four ayes. Member Martinez will be joining us by phone. OK. Next, we have public comment on non-agenda items, which will be on every meeting that we have. Anyone want to approach the board on anything that's not on this agenda? Okay, seeing none, we move to public comment on board study session. And the board study session is going to be on the budget. Anyone want to address the board on the study session before we start? Okay, seeing none, superintendent, we'll move to the, down here to the budget update. Okay, thank you.

[213] Nancy Thomas: Mr. Nguyen, you ready? She's getting a message that says it's been disconnected.

[272] SPEAKER_28: It's hard when you've been around for a while, huh?

[303] SPEAKER_18: Thank you for doing that, I appreciate it.

[312] Ray Rodriguez: We always tell, especially college graduates when they're applying for jobs, that, you know, try to keep it simple, right? Yeah, college graduates is very different from... Right, right, yeah.

[334] SPEAKER_26: Hi, Alyssa. You're on speaker. For some reason, this phone's acting weird, so I didn't want to delay any further. We'll just put you on my phone. I have a full battery, so we'll see how it goes.

[347] SPEAKER_26: I'll stay on mute because I'm still at the airport. Okay, no problem.

[350] SPEAKER_28: Thank you so much. Okay. Good evening, board members, Superintendent Sanchez. Last week, we talked about the budget study session. We're going to move forward because to the Enrollment, I just want to reiterate that enrollment's been declining. Actually, it declined a little bit further. We lost about 23 more students from October to now. And we're not even, we're about four months away to the end of June. So we lost 23 students. That's about 9,500 times 23 students. So we're looking at about $218,000 of lost revenues.

[392] Ray Rodriguez: Can I ask a question on that? Sure. That would be for the whole school year, though, right?

[397] SPEAKER_28: An additional, yeah. So it went from here and then it went down to $5,700.

[403] Ray Rodriguez: No, no, what I'm asking is that since they left midterm, then it wouldn't be that much, because we did get paid up until they left.

[412] SPEAKER_28: Right. But the P2, I mean, either way, we get last year's enrollment or we get this year's enrollment.

[419] SPEAKER_32: Thank you. And then just a quick question, just from my knowledge. Do we know if it's primary or secondary school?

[425] SPEAKER_28: Oh, good question. I can find that out. We're both 23, 22. Okay.

[430] Nancy Thomas: But to member Rodriguez's question, we will freeze our enrollment at P2 ADA this year, right?

[440] SPEAKER_28: That's correct.

[441] Nancy Thomas: Next year's will be, if it's lower next year, we would take the P2, not the If we lose any more, it would be less again, right? Right.

[451] SPEAKER_28: P2, what's the date of P2? P2 is in April, we submit it, and then we'll find out in June or late May or early June where our P2 is going to be at.

[461] SPEAKER_29: Okay.

[463] SPEAKER_28: All right. So again, I just want to reiterate that we're going to adopt a budget. We projected enrollment's going to be at 5,914. In reality, it did not. We are now at 5,750 something. And so the question I want to ask the board here is do we want to project conservatively or do we want to project the enrollment to be flat? that enrollment would stay stagnant. Obviously, this is going to have to change to 5,779 during the second interval to where we are at now, which is 5,500 and something, 5,750 something. So let me go to the next thing here. So we lost about $218,000 because we lost 23 students. We don't know when enrollment is going to decline. going to flatten or continue to increase with the new housing development, but since you're all here, do you feel that we should project our budget as flattened enrollment or declining enrollment?

[546] Ray Rodriguez: I think we need to be honest with the community and I think it's important, transparency, since we talk about it all the time, that we, you know, that they know that we do have the planning enrollment. However, when you say projection or project, are we talking about how we communicate to our community as a whole as far as, you know, to let them know that, you know, how we are financially. I'm just trying to understand because from a PR standpoint, you know, declining enrollment doesn't look good. It's better to have flat plus one, zero plus one. But I don't know. I'm just trying to—or is it just for us to move forward with our cuts and everything? Because it's obvious that we're having declining enrollment.

[605] Bowen Zhang: Do we know the decline of enrollment is due to there are more people leaving and the new developments, they do send additional kids to school, but it just gets outnumbered by the people who are leaving or we over-project the new development impact?

[622] SPEAKER_28: Right. So yeah, what I'm trying to get at here is that We projected, during the adopted budget, $5,914. And we hope that enrollment will increase with those new housing developments, but it has not come to fruition yet. And we don't know when those families over there can have children. We're maybe projecting four or five years out.

[650] Bowen Zhang: Well, I guess my question is, the decline is the result of lack of addition, or is under, is due to lack of addition or we just simply lost too many students?

[663] SPEAKER_28: Let me see.

[665] Ray Rodriguez: Have we identified the 23 students? Because we were going to do that, just trying to get a grip on it.

[675] SPEAKER_31: Hey, hi, and I'm just thinking about that. You know, to answer the question of how we should we project, I guess my question would be, All our data points show declining. What do we have in front of us, you know, whether it be the demographic study, anything that would substantiate us projecting flat or increasing?

[701] SPEAKER_28: Right. So David's demographic, if you look at this line right here, David's demographic is believing that enrollment is going to increase. And they're going to present this next month for sure. of their studies. But during the budget advisory committee, we all agreed that enrollment is going to stay flat, 5,779. But now that we lost 23 more, enrollment has to decline more. Yes?

[732] SPEAKER_32: I think just to add on or hopefully I'm understanding Member Rodriguez is the number that you want us to proceed with is more for budget purposes. Not for PR, not so we can really communicate to the public, just so we can move forward to see how we're going to budget and reduce. So I think it's just correct.

[755] Nancy Thomas: Just to proceed with our numbers here. I think the impact will be if we stay flat and we actually decline, it won't affect next year's but it will affect the year after, which puts us further into deficit spending. And if we project a decline and we're flat, we're safe, you know? Yes. But it means we have to budget accordingly. So, like, it's not going to matter next year. It's going to matter the year after that. And then when we come up with next year's budget, we're going to have to project one year out after that. I think there may be some issues with the demographic study that they're not taking into account the housing prices and the exodus of people. And they also are basing it, did you mention that?

[817] Bowen Zhang: So they were basing that on the Hayward new housing development. Yes, the demographics. So what happened in the Hayward development is the demographics that are moving to those new developments are probably different from the demographics that are moving to Bayshore and Cedar. And that age group is actually older than the age group that are moving to New Orleans. And their profession is more non-tech, unlike our Bayshore development, are mostly from Facebook and Google. So they're younger generation. Yeah, they're younger. The people I know that are moving to Bayshore are in their late 20s or early 30s.

[854] Ray Rodriguez: So if Davis Demographics is going to come in and percent, and they're going to say it's a waste of time in my opinion.

[861] SPEAKER_26: I'm going to ask... Let me help. Part of the answer for your question, just from my perspective, is Davis Demographics is projecting an increase. I disagree with their timeline. I think it's probably going to happen later. It might be delayed two or three or maybe four years. So the question in front of us tonight is really for budgeting purposes, is really how conservative do we want to be? We know we want to be conservative, but to what degree? Because, you know, the number we were talking about here at a flat enrollment was to make reductions at about 1.8 million. But if we go with the declining model, however much decline we want to decide, it's going to grow this number that much more. The risk of not going either here, somewhere between here and declining is probably what I would recommend. Because if we go on an increase and we don't hit it, it's like you get hit twice. You get hit for the gap between here and what you didn't get, and then we still have to fill this other gap that was there below. So I think that's kind of the question for budgeting purposes, is as we get closer to what we think we need to do to remedy this situation, and as we get closer to March 15th, We've got to start thinking about, okay, how do we want to start moving in that direction? By then, we'll get more information from Davis. I'm not sure where they could tell me that's going to convince me we're going to increase. In fact, I don't even know if we'll be flat, but I think that if we look at two data points, that gives you a pretty good pitch for what we're looking at here. It looks like, in my opinion, going from 5,779 to about 5,701. That's about, you know, a little over 70 kids. And that's kind of the pitch of the angle. And what would that look like in year three? But each of these has a larger number, depending on where we have to do it. But I think that somewhere between 1.8, 2.2 million, we're going to have to figure out what do we start planning towards. And as we get more and more information getting closer to third interim, We want to not make the final call until we get there, but I think that's, but we can't build models until we actually know kind of how big and scary is the number for us to begin working toward.

[996] Ray Rodriguez: So why don't we start with looking at a 5% decline and then maybe between 5 and 0 we can come up with something.

[1003] SPEAKER_32: Did you, question, did you say flat enrollment is 1.5 million?

[1009] SPEAKER_26: That's, I believe that's where we got the.

[1011] SPEAKER_28: So 1.8 million if we have.

[1012] SPEAKER_26: That was based on that.

[1014] SPEAKER_28: But now that we lost an additional number of students.

[1019] SPEAKER_32: And then the decline would be at how much? 2.2 million. 2.2, 1.8.

[1023] SPEAKER_28: About 2.2.

[1025] Nancy Thomas: I think the pitch we should go with is between what we projected at the beginning of the year and what P2 ADA is. That tells us how many we lost this year. then if we do an equal amount next year, it keeps the pitch the same unless there's some indication that it hasn't changed.

[1048] SPEAKER_26: So that's the cohort survival method.

[1049] SPEAKER_28: Yes, the cohort survival method that I use to create this conservative projection.

[1056] Nancy Thomas: That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying use the actuals in P-288.

[1061] SPEAKER_28: Oh, that's what we're going to do. Oh, yeah, without a doubt.

[1064] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, but I mean, that would be the number. And then we would project the same number the year after that and the year after that. Rather than cohort survival, because then we're saying, okay, we'll probably get some students from the new developments.

[1083] SPEAKER_28: So just, normally school districts enrollment tend to decline throughout the year, normally. So again, there's about four months left into, or five months left until the school year ends. So we may project that enrollment may continue to decline at what rate? Maybe about hopefully no more than 10 additional students. But that's just a guess. Okay.

[1113] SPEAKER_32: I feel that just to kind of get the ball rolling on what you asked us, I would be more comfortable doing something along the lines of flat enrollment, even a slight decline.

[1125] SPEAKER_28: I don't think. Somewhere in between here.

[1127] SPEAKER_32: Even somewhere in between is manageable. But I don't know what fellow members.

[1136] Ray Rodriguez: My thinking is, you know, 2% decline. And it just seems like that's the trend right now. And it's going to be a while. And then as far as Davis demographic, that's something the superintendent and I can talk about before we ask them to come back, because it's all flawed.

[1157] SPEAKER_28: So what Beverly was mentioning that enrollment's going to, we're going to ask Davis demographic, I'm assuming this is the optimistic view from Davis demographic, but we want to see what is more conservative view, like if in the event if we were to decline, So I want them to present an optimistic, a flat line, in-between, middle-of-the-road view, as well as a pessimistic outlook in terms of our enrollment. So I can have them present that next month.

[1188] SPEAKER_26: 2% looks like it's greater than the 70% deadline. Yeah, that's 1.8%. 2% is almost 100, or is it over 100 students?

[1201] SPEAKER_28: Let me work on the numbers.

[1203] SPEAKER_31: Well, either flat. No problem. Either recommending the board consider nothing more than flat, either flat or declining, and the conversation now is kind of

[1229] SPEAKER_26: what percentage of declining are we comfortable with? Is it, you know, if we did the full 70-kid decline, that's about 1.3% or 1% decline. A 2% decline is like a pitch of losing about 115 students a year over the next two years. So somewhere in the middle where there's comfort, just to allow us to build the model, and as we move closer to the final answer, we should have more information. So that's kind of what we're discussing now is what's in between flat and the full 70 kids per year that Kai has projected with his model of cohort survival. So that's kind of where we were.

[1281] SPEAKER_31: And I think that's what I was with my original question to Kai, you know, was the, you know, what is the data saying? And I know that, you know, I know that the data demographics is predicting an increase, but we've already missed it, right?

[1295] SPEAKER_31: So I agree, I'd like to look at kind of what you guys are recommending. And if something does come in earlier or additional set of data that.

[1316] SPEAKER_26: So just to clarify, because I think this is something that member Thomas brought up, so if this was based on the cohort survival method and it's kind of projecting out roughly a decline of 70 kids on average per year, when we look at actuals from ADA, is there a different number or is it pretty close to that same number?

[1336] SPEAKER_28: Yeah, so on average for the last Let's just say 10 years, we've been declining on an average of 100 students per year.

[1342] SPEAKER_26: So somewhere between 70 and 100 is within that band of confidence? Okay.

[1348] SPEAKER_32: Just, I want, Member Thomas, did you say 50 students would be a good number?

[1354] Nancy Thomas: No, see, I look at the 23 and we're halfway through the year, so 50 would be very conservative. I would say 40, and then you know, build the budget or the three, the multi-year projection on that adjustment based on the P288. How many more kids are we going to lose?

[1372] SPEAKER_26: And some of that difference we can make up in next year's model or if we needed to. Yeah. We have a little bit of time for that outer year.

[1380] Nancy Thomas: The multi-year projection is something that we use to show the county we're going to be fluid. It changes dramatically.

[1387] SPEAKER_26: Would you press the numbers for the 40% decline? What percentage is that? Forty. A 40 student decline? What percentage is that? That's probably 0.7%.

[1396] Bowen Zhang: Yeah, I thought it was really different. No 0.7%.

[1401] SPEAKER_26: I'm afraid to hang up on Alyssa if I start running a calculator on my phone.

[1405] SPEAKER_28: Well, you know, I really hope Davidson McGrathic is correct. Yeah, that's 0.7%. That we go up in terms of enrollment.

[1412] SPEAKER_26: 40 or above. It's still a decline, but it's not so extreme. I'd be comfortable with the 40 or 50 kind of pitch.

[1424] Nancy Thomas: My intuition tells me that we had an increase last year.

[1429] SPEAKER_28: They outlawed you.

[1430] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, we had an increase last year, but the housing situation is exacerbated, and that's why Davis's numbers are so far off.

[1439] SPEAKER_26: And even though we just got a bunch of notifications that the city's going to build some more apartments, it's going to take a while.

[1446] Bowen Zhang: Nothing moves fast. Oh, that 400 apartment will be built around Newport Mall, and then it was built as a luxury. apartment for young professionals. Right. So that's a different clientele, too. Because the first row will be bar, mixed-use bar. Yeah. So that's probably not going to work.

[1465] SPEAKER_32: I would be comfortable, so we can move forward in it, of course, but I would be comfortable with the numbers that Nancy, I mean, Member Thomas gave, 40.

[1474] Ray Rodriguez: Do you want to go students or you want to do a percentage?

[1478] SPEAKER_26: I think the students is easy to understand. We know that we're going to go, so just to be explicit, 4, 5, 7, 7, 9 to 5 minus 40, which puts us at 5, 7, 49, right? Is that right? 39. So we're going to take 40, then the next year another 40. That's kind of how we're rejecting out.

[1504] Nancy Thomas: Instead of 80, we'll take 40.

[1506] SPEAKER_26: I think that's a good compromise. That's a good compromise. Great, that's a big, that's a big piece. Now let's run the number, let's see what that is.

[1516] SPEAKER_31: Hey guys, I'm sorry, that's not our professional language. The superintendent said just, you know, in terms of the work, I guess I'm comfortable I think at the starting point to say 40 because I just don't want to use the word compromise because it has to be name and ribbon.

[1533] Phuong Nguyen: Oh great.

[1536] SPEAKER_31: So I think as we just laid out that we are going a bit more conservative than what the trend would say. But I think just making sure we are very transparent to the fact that until we get some demographic numbers that the number may switch in the opposite direction. But yeah, I'm comfortable with that as well.

[1560] SPEAKER_26: Okay, thank you.

[1562] SPEAKER_28: I just want to remind the board that We are not alone. Other school districts were in the same predicament. Last year there were about 50 qualified certification. Now it's more than double to about 125 qualified certification from school districts.

[1584] SPEAKER_26: So if we were to take... Do you need a calculator? No, I can add it up here. screen. So we were at 1.8, correct? Right. Okay, so 40 times 9,500, 380,000 we added to 1.8. 400,000. About 400. 2.18. million now as a model to work toward. 2,180,000.

[1636] SPEAKER_28: That's correct. Okay. Correct number.

[1642] SPEAKER_26: Okay. All right. That was, at least it gets something to work for. And I definitely agree that it's also communicating and waiting for more information in a deeper conversation with the demographer. Because I want to know why they were off. That's the question I have. Why were you wrong?

[1663] SPEAKER_28: When are they coming? Supposedly next month, in February, the first week. The first week of February.

[1669] SPEAKER_26: The first regular meeting on the 7th. Yes. They'll be part of the regular agenda, not a study session. Okay, I see. The study's going to be allocated to LCAP, I believe. Is that right, Loni? Yes. Yes.

[1680] SPEAKER_28: So, again, I'm hoping that enrollment will flatten, if not increase, but I don't know. So I know we touched base on this last week, and I'm going to have Beverly come back up and elaborate a little bit more on this, on our enrollment, declining enrollment.

[1703] SPEAKER_24: The reason we do this is the multitude of things that change in the district when you're in decline. Multi-levels of revenue in your budget decline. I mean, I'm not just talking your revenue limit going down. You're now coming close to losing whole levels of your funding. I mean, that's how much you're declining and that could be devastating to the district. We don't want that. If you don't know what the supplemental and the concentration are, there are additional things on top of your enrollment. that give support for the students that are really qualified, free and reduced, that have special instructional needs. So that extra monies could disappear from your budget in the concentration. You have to be above 55 and right now we're barely at 55. So we have to be careful because that could impact you dramatically to lose whole level of funding. Once again, I think Nancy was mentioning it, you definitely, can't put off reducing because when you're going to reduce, your revenue is going to go down faster than you can ever take things out of the budget. You're going to lose compensation where you're able to give people compensation, and you don't want to lose teachers. So that's the definite challenge. More students mean more money. Less students like you're going to have mean there's not money there.

[1798] SPEAKER_28: You have to point the mouse this way. Pardon me? You have to point the mouse this way. Oh, OK.

[1804] Ray Rodriguez: So it's not only losing students. It's the students that we're losing. I mean, are they, you know, pre-reduced lunch? And that affects so many other things. It's basically what you're saying.

[1817] SPEAKER_24: Absolutely. And what programs you're going to need. It helps determine where the educational priorities need to be at. One of the things I want you to notice is Right here, in certificated salaries, it's almost 50%, classified as 13, and benefits are 21. You're at 83% of your budget is nothing but staffing. That doesn't leave you much flexibility in the rest of the budget. You're only at operations, well, books and supplies are very low. and capital and other things are very small. So you don't have flexibility that you need in the district. You really need to be closer to 79 to 80 and you're now at 83. With the decline, it's going to continue to go on. So we need to be very careful of that. Just so you know, Kai put this together. You were asking what's in this. here. This is the actual detail of how much is in the budget on these particular things. There's some of the things that have to be in a district. You know, you have to have audits, catering. So these are the things that I think answer your question. And I did want to talk to you a little bit, it depends on how our time goes, but we have sheets here that you can put your questions on so we can make sure. One of the things we want to do tonight is start making real progress so that we can move along because remember we have to have a lot of these decisions made by March 1st because people have to be notified. So we really need it. It would be nice if it could be done middle of February because there's a lot of steps and people notified if their assignments are going to change, because it isn't just people going away. It means people may be structured to other programs. I'll never say your district has a lot of attrition. People leave before the end of the year. So you may not have to do anything but reduce positions, but people may still have a job. But we need to be careful because 83%, you just don't have much room to make a mistake. The multi-year projection, you saw this last time, but I'm working on it right now. I'm going to be showing you how in this position, in this, the revenues, there are multi-levels that could change at this point. One of the things I was talking to you is about LCFF revenue with the dramatic declines that you've had. These numbers are going to be going down in LCFF. So I'm going to break down for you the other things that decline. Your lottery declines. We're going to lose all the discretionary next year. It's going to be at zero. So you had a lot of one-time funding that may go away. So we need to be aware of that. So I'm going to break that down for you next time so you can see the revenues of multi-levels of revenue that would be affected.

[1991] Nancy Thomas: What about federal revenue?

[1994] SPEAKER_24: Federal revenue through Title 1 is your primary one here. It could not necessarily decline. It depends on the type of students that leave the district. If it's from the free and reduced population, then, you know, you could lose some of them, and that would take that down.

[2014] Nancy Thomas: Yeah. But with our decline this year so far, have we lost?

[2018] SPEAKER_28: Let me chime in for a second here. Title I went down. We had $690,000 in Title I funds. Now it's $620,000 in Title I. So we've lost $70,000 approximately.

[2033] SPEAKER_24: That's correct. And you have multi-levels of funding that would be affected here. I'll try to get you the details of what that is next time. Yes.

[2040] SPEAKER_28: It's based on the demographics here, where the city in this area is more affluent. So the government is providing less

[2051] Nancy Thomas: So the, well, the students that are leaving are probably higher percentage of them are free and reduced than the students that are staying or coming in.

[2059] SPEAKER_26: And we're close to falling out of that category. We're within a few percentage points of not being able to get a lot of the additional funds from approved or smudged. I think, what's the threshold? The threshold is 55.

[2072] Nancy Thomas: And if we drop below 55, will that go from 60

[2079] SPEAKER_24: We lose concentration. We lose the whole level of funding, which is.

[2084] SPEAKER_26: It's a low concentration.

[2085] Nancy Thomas: Yes. How much concentration funding are we getting?

[2090] SPEAKER_28: I believe it's about, correct me if I'm wrong, it's about $90 per ADA for unduplicated people count students. Those are foster youth, English language learners, low-income students, pre-induced fund students.

[2103] Nancy Thomas: So it'll go from a profit. We'll lose $90 per unduplicated student, and how many unduplicated?

[2109] SPEAKER_28: I don't believe it's like about 3,000 or something like that. I have to double check the numbers. It's low compared to last year. That would be 300,000. Yeah.

[2131] Nancy Thomas: 300,000 rounding it up, that's a lot of money to lose in one year.

[2134] SPEAKER_24: Yes, especially when that money is to be used for students who have learning needs. You know, when you lose that, then you can't meet their needs. So it indicates you need to level up certain things to keep all the kids served.

[2149] Bowen Zhang: Yes. Concentration fund is 90 bucks per student? Approximately. So $3,000 an hour would be $2,000.

[2161] Ray Rodriguez: and you still got to serve the kids that are here, and yet you don't get any funding at all.

[2166] Nancy Thomas: But it's like a big one-time drop. Yes, it is. We have a lot of enrichment that we're doing in our LCAP. Maybe we need to look at the enrichment and some of the softer human type that we're doing and concentrate on the academic part of LCAP. That's just my

[2190] SPEAKER_24: And remember that to serve all the kids is okay as long as you don't use all the money you have. You are allowed to serve all kids with it. One of the things I don't like about Title I, and I think it serves, but sometimes you have to work just with the Title I kids and the other kids that might have needs outside of it, may have learning problems, can't be served with that money. And I think that's not correct, but it's the way it works right now. That's how the formula works. So I will give you some details on where we expect it to be in the coming years. Any questions on that part? It's pretty clear. This is the governor's proposed, and it's just to remind you that we totally lose the non-discretionary. There's some money coming in on preschool, but those kids are going to be probably free and reduced somewhere along the way.

[2251] SPEAKER_28: Yeah, it's mainly for low-income families for preschool. Like Head Start. Head Start, yes, and the regional center. We'll get the funding, but school district will not get any funding.

[2264] SPEAKER_24: And I want to remind you that the LCFF is now no more growth coming in. We were getting percentages for... Yes. So right now you won't be getting that additional money. You're going to be existing on these COLAs. And the COLAs are not applied all over. of the budget. They're applying a lot in special education, so it helps the contribution of special education, but COLA will be all that's really available to the district.

[2298] Nancy Thomas: What do you mean it's going to be applied to special ed?

[2301] SPEAKER_24: Special ed, it gets it on all of it. You don't get all of that of the in all the population. You don't get the COLA across the board. It's very different how this how the formula is put together for COLA. What it does in the main I would have to talk to you a little bit about LCFF, but within it, there's steps that you take up the funding model, so it'll take the funding model up, so it isn't like we used to apply it across the board. Actually, it's the steps occur in the funding model, so you don't see it as much, and special ed gets directly on the number of kids they have, and not in the general fund, unrestricted part. Does that make sense?

[2347] Nancy Thomas: the rest of the population wouldn't get that much. Is that what you're saying?

[2350] SPEAKER_24: They get a step. They get a step in the formula itself, which is not necessarily applicable to everyone in the general fund. We used to get COLA for every child coming in, and you'd get that whole percentage. That's not how it works anymore. It's in the step that we come up in the base, and it's really only in the base that it happens. It doesn't even happen in the supplemental piece. I know Clyde mentioned he's not taking you through the LCFF yet, but there are certain features inside the LCFF now that are not as friendly as they used to be. We also say the unions would grab the percentage, and that's what everyone would expect for a raise. We should get a 3.46 raise now. It's not how the formula works. And he's going to take you through the LCFF at one point? Right.

[2404] Bowen Zhang: Yes. Because that 3.46 only applies to the base, right?

[2407] SPEAKER_24: The base. It just applies to base.

[2409] Bowen Zhang: Yeah. And the concentration of supplement or not substance, we call that, right? That's correct.

[2413] SPEAKER_28: But just bear in mind, though, even though it went up to 3.46%, our enrollment's declined, so it is a wash, and we even lost, due to our heavy decline in enrollment, we even lost additional revenues.

[2429] Bowen Zhang: And that's an unfortunate... So how big is the base per student?

[2433] SPEAKER_28: It's about... I have it... I don't have the paper in front of me. It's about 8,000. Put it on the sheet and we'll put that together for you.

[2447] SPEAKER_26: I think bringing back the clarification on the title, how that threshold was approved. Between concentration and not concentration?

[2453] SPEAKER_24: Okay. Thank you for writing down so we can make sure we gather all the questions and make sure we answer you. We appreciate that. You can see how this number has varied all the place, 530 to 214 to 147 to 184 to zero next year. I mean, it's just been all over the place. So you may have been deficit spending, but you didn't know it because it's not just discretionary grants. This is one-time funding. That was the name of it when it started. But you see how many years it's gone on. So everyone got to expect it. And a lot of districts put this in their raises. And they have problems now because it's not there anymore. It was a significant number back here, and it's now nothing. So the state didn't help you here. This district, and I think you all have heard this word, but I just wanted to make sure we're real clear on it. What is a structural deficit? In the financial terms, it is only receipts and expenditures in governmental organizations that are not in balance anymore, meaning your expenditures are probably much higher than your revenues. And that's the problem you're going to be facing in the next, I think, The demographics said five years is when I looked at the data, not necessarily at their incline. And we had had a conversation during the last session that possibly you guys need to find, you came, this demographer was off because he gave you one point to budget at. They need to give you several levels. You know, if you have several levels and make the decision, where should we budget? You know, where should we be? Should it be the decline? Should it be increase? I think your increase is years off. I don't think it's occurring now. A lot of the buildings are occurring, but there's a cycle. People come in after the building's built. It takes a while for the kids to come to the school. It just doesn't happen overnight. You don't build a house until the student comes. And it depends on where the house is. Like you said, where there's young professionals, you don't necessarily see a lot of kids come out of there. What the district has had a history of doing here, and FGMAC has pointed this out to you, is you're using one-time sources of money to fund ongoing expenditures. The state didn't help you because they had some one-time money in there. So some people, why they're in trouble now is the discretionary money is going away. In declining enrollment, expenditures are increasing because we haven't really made any changes in there. But naturally, revenues are declining in the districts. We are not alone in cutting at this point. Almost all districts across the state where I came from, we had tremendous growth, which is a challenge in itself. But literally, this is a problem for a lot of districts. If the deficit increases every year, You've got to do something to reduce, and you need to be reducing by how much your revenue went down. I mean, you shouldn't wait until it gets right now we're at a point where you really should be cutting 4 to 5 million for the next few years. You know, you don't have to cut it all in one year, but you've got to strategically decide how you're going to cut. But if you go down further, if you continue to decline, you have to keep upping that number like we are going to recommend to you at 1.8. We definitely need to cut that. but now we're looking at maybe 2 to 2.2. It just depends on what the conditions are.

[2680] Nancy Thomas: Is that because we're spending more money?

[2682] SPEAKER_24: Because we haven't made any reductions in permanent staffing, meaning your expenditures continue to go on and you try to supplement the budget with one-time funds, which are one-time.

[2694] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, but our first interim showed a $500,000 decline in certificated employee salaries.

[2702] SPEAKER_28: but that's offset by an increase in professional services because we couldn't fill what we mentioned last week.

[2708] Nancy Thomas: Well, that's the detail I would like, I was asking about last time.

[2712] SPEAKER_28: I have that report, so I can go over there and get that report. I just didn't print it out. So let me go get that report.

[2719] Nancy Thomas: Because, yeah, how many physicians are there that are certificated that we are spending contracting out?

[2730] SPEAKER_24: I think he, research that and we'll have it for you. It's primarily in special education, but also if you can hire teachers and you're a district that, if you're not getting raises, teachers don't necessarily stay and that creates a problem, especially in high school, especially in the middle schools. They're going to go where the money is. That's just how it goes. What are the reasons for increasing deficit? Decline in declining enrollment across all the categories affecting every level of funding. You're in danger of losing your concentration funding. Your lottery's going down. Your state revenue's going down. I mean, it's not one level. If you don't make the changes in permanent staffing, remember permanent staffing is increasing in their PERS and STRS. And so you have that in addition to you have lower class size at the high school. But their benefits are all going up too. Special education costs, you have to increase your special education costs every year. You're required by programmatic that they spend more on it. So you need to increase the support. learning for special education, and you can't necessarily take staff out of that because there are requirements for each child in each particular setting. You must leave them there. You may say it looks like it's overstaffed, but their class sizes are very small. You know, they could have 15. It depends on what program they're in. If they're doing a resource specialist position, definite smaller class sizes. This is where I want us to spend the bulk of our time. looking at the things we've looked at before.

[2841] SPEAKER_26: Do you want to, like, kind of try to answer Member Thomas' question to some degree?

[2846] SPEAKER_28: Sure. What was put up, this is for our speech therapist. If we bring in a consultant, it's going to cost about $90 to $110 an hour. If we have it in-house, an average salary for a speech therapist is going to be about anywhere between $63 to $99, depending on the salary schedule. So we have two in-house right now, but we need to add more. That includes benefits. If you look at it, $76 for one in-house person is $76, and then the other faculty is at $83 an hour. And that person may be here with us for quite some time.

[2887] Nancy Thomas: That's fine. Okay, so the 500,000 that we changed in the salaries and benefits is roughly 5 FTE.

[2897] SPEAKER_28: Or four, something like that, yeah.

[2899] Nancy Thomas: Okay, and so you're saying that four FTE have been added in special ed?

[2906] SPEAKER_28: Services, right? We have to increase the budget. Yeah, in services.

[2910] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, that four FTE has been added. So it's just... One of the things, you know, when we talk about position control, you showed us a projection that we projected we would have 54 students TK down from 88. So we would have projected two TK classes, but now we have five TK classes. So where did those extra three, where did the budget for those extra three TK teachers come from?

[2946] SPEAKER_28: Can you say that again? I'm trying to remember, recall what you mentioned.

[2949] Nancy Thomas: Okay, position control would dictate that you staff according to your projections. Brian projected 54 students for TK. We ended up having 125 students. So instead of two classes, which the 54 would pay for, we have five classes. How is that position controlled such that, you know, are we

[2981] SPEAKER_28: What school site was that, or is that?

[2985] Nancy Thomas: No, I'm just talking about how we budget for employees. If we budget for employees based on.

[2992] SPEAKER_28: Okay, so TK should be 24 to one, 24 students to one teacher.

[3003] Nancy Thomas: Well, some have 29.

[3005] SPEAKER_32: Just to get some clarification before you answer, I think I wanted to understand, You're saying that previous years it was budgeted to have two teachers? Yeah. And then we ended up with five. So you want to know where the discrepancies are?

[3020] Nancy Thomas: Yeah. How are we monitoring when we project an enrollment? Can I try?

[3032] SPEAKER_24: Because special education is a model you have to leave flexibility for because students come in all year long. I mean you have kids who may come in who are working in a different setting and you may have to bring in someone. I mean in a district normally you try and provide for it but special education is a very The kids come in mid-year. They're coming from another state. It's constantly changing. And I used to build in my budget just some sort of flexibility, meaning I had some other settings staffed that we could move people from. Because there are many settings inside of special education.

[3067] Nancy Thomas: It's not special ed. It's TK, transitional kindergarten. OK. Yeah. I mean, those are the kinds of things. When I look at enrollment, and I think what we've done is we have our enrollments declined, but we kept the same number of staffing, and then I'm wondering... So glad you mentioned that. Yeah, so in this case, we've added three TK teachers over what we projected the enrollment would say we should have. I mean, I just... How do we get a handle on position control so that we're not surprised by adding staff that we didn't really need, or think we needed.

[3105] SPEAKER_24: The district is very good about tracking their staff, because we do have a very operational programs. Once again, the TK kids can come in. And if you go over the class size, you can do something flexible. Apparently, they added three teachers.

[3123] Nancy Thomas: Well, that's what it would seem. Well, we didn't have two last year. We had 88 kids last year. My thinking is, what made us go from 88 to 54 in our projections for TK?

[3144] SPEAKER_28: So you're saying the overall TK for the whole entire district, 125?

[3151] Nancy Thomas: And we don't have TK at every school, but we did this year. We added TK classes.

[3157] SPEAKER_32: Do we know if the numbers of students coincide with the number of teachers, Ellen?

[3162] SPEAKER_28: I mean, did we have a high enrollment of students? I can get that information to you. Why don't you write that down on a sheet, and we'll look into it.

[3167] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, I don't remember it being that high. Yeah. Well, you told me there was 125 TK kids.

[3171] Ray Rodriguez: Right. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Because we had TK at Schilling, and then we had TK at First Grove, I think.

[3191] SPEAKER_26: and letting them share some information.

[3193] SPEAKER_22: So last year, if you recall, we had two T case settings at Schilling, and we ended up collapsing. We did collapse a class, and we couldn't figure it to the needs of the school, so they lost an FTE there. This year, as you remember, at the end of last year, we had a discussion around increasing enrollment and letting families know that we're open for business. We want to keep and retain their students and capturing them as they were coming into transitional kindergarten. So part of the strategy at that time was kids who were not the age yet, first we opened it up, first come, first serve for all of our kids who have the age. And then we hit a threshold of now the next wave of students who will turn five during the school year, so that we can capture ADA from them during some point during this school year. So that was part of the strategy. We had the FTE at that point, and so the seats were available and we wanted to fill those seats. I'd rather, and I'm not sure about the, I don't want to look at the enrollments from last year and this year, but that's what I recall was our discussion at the end of last year.

[3257] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, I think it's important, though, that that gets translated into the budget is all. And I don't know that maybe the reason we are flat, even with declining enrollment, is that we're not accounting for decisions we make like that.

[3271] Ray Rodriguez: Well, the TK, from my understanding, The approach was good, because we're trying to get more TK students, because just like having... They stay at the district most of the time. Right, just like having our Kidango, you know, we wanted to expand that from two schools, hopefully to four schools. Because then, you know, they're already here, and that's, the approach is good. But, you know, to have a better grip on the numbers, and if it's a moving target, then Then you have FTE, and you have to have flexibility where you can increase in the classroom until you get to a point where you have to hire somebody else. And I don't know if we ever had five TK teachers. I don't remember that. So 125 is a, I mean, those are good numbers, but how we dealt with the increase in TK kids from the 54 to 125.

[3329] Nancy Thomas: It sounds kind of low. Well, yeah, it looks low, too, after we had 88 last year. It's just, you know, I think we have to be really careful in our budgeting that we are looking at the detail of both, especially when it comes to

[3347] SPEAKER_24: And the district does. They look at their detail. I mean, the position control person in this district is very attuned and notifies everyone. It's very impressive here because you have a whole position assigned to position control. Not all districts did that, especially one this size. So you do have someone who's watching it all the time and making CHI aware. So there's a watch. It's not out of control. But one of the problems if you budget with your numbers and staffing being too high, you're stuck for the year with the positions. I mean, you can't reduce. And if the kids don't show up, so that's why I would suggest the more conservative method you can. You know, don't over project and staff that because that's what you've got right now. Everybody's still here. And guess what? That's why you're sitting at 83 and could be at 84 soon, 85, and you'll be able to do less. And you don't want that. You want to be able to run good educational programs. You want to buy the proper things for the proper students. Right now, if there are any more questions, because I want to start, you have been making some decisions and us moving along. Because remember, we have to get a lot of this done by the middle of February so that people can be notified if they're affected or things can transfer in different parts of the district. One of the things we did was gather things how we thought, things you wouldn't have a problem with that will help us meet our goal. attribution, custodial to food services that we're going to allocate between the two. It's something allowed. If you see consider approval, we think you won't have much discussion with that and may be okay with it. Early retirement incentives here, it's pending. You may need to do, but you may not. Here you have a lot of people leaving and we're trying to gather that information right now who's leaving the district. Also, we don't want people to expect retirement incentives all the time. You really want to only do it when you really need to. So we have it if there's just saying pending. He got the first allocation from personnel of who's leaving, you know, that may help us develop the budget and that will be a good thing. You most districts don't have as much attrition as you have with people retiring. You do have a lot of people in the upper levels, and it just may be time for them to go. So we put pending because there's more information to be done. Traveling conference. Now this is what I call a soft cut. It may be here, but 25, it may not happen. So that's not as dependable because it may already happen. That's just not a lot of money for travel and conference. One particular position at the district office is something that needs to be looked at. The district office is always going to have concerns about that because truly, Kai's expressed to me that the district office is understaffed. But everybody else has to take some cuts, so will the district office. But you have to look at what position they're at and what function they do to make sure that it's still served at the district. Reduce attorney's fees. That's just something that, you know, you try to do. Sometimes, though, you may have a case and you need to put a lawyer on it. So, once again, I call that a soft cut. See, this district is doing a lot to just avoid the harder decisions on people.

[3566] Nancy Thomas: But some of these things, we think... You know, our special ed attorney fees were targeted at $25,000 total, and they're already $180,000. this year, and we're only halfway into the year. I mean, to me, that 25,000 does not seem reasonable with our spending rate. Good point.

[3590] SPEAKER_32: Can I write that down? Is that because of actual litigation that we incurred? Yeah.

[3595] Nancy Thomas: I mean, you know, we targeted 25,000, and it spent 180,000 so far.

[3601] SPEAKER_24: That's... Can you write that down for us so we can look that up and talk with the department?

[3606] Nancy Thomas: I sent it in a memo.

[3608] SPEAKER_24: Okay, great.

[3609] Bowen Zhang: For the custodial survey for the lunch program, you once mentioned that for the 8-hour workday, they work 2 hours in the cafeteria, right?

[3618] SPEAKER_28: Yeah, an hour and a half. Okay, I see. If it's 2 hours, then it's 25%, but we don't want to take all their funds and pay for custodial.

[3630] Bowen Zhang: Theoretically, you can allocate 2 hours of the 8-hour.

[3633] SPEAKER_28: Oh yeah, without a doubt. They spend at least 2 hours.

[3636] Bowen Zhang: 20% is done. 96 minutes. $1.36 a minute.

[3641] Nancy Thomas: Yes. Does that leave them enough money for maintenance and new equipment that they need in the kitchen and everything?

[3650] SPEAKER_28: Oh, yeah. I mean, one of the good things about food services, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that that department needs to spend their revenue that's coming in. And this is not like a. It's a separate fund. A long-term solution. This is a temporary solution. We're not anticipating using Fund 13 for multiple years. Hopefully for the next three or four years.

[3678] Ray Rodriguez: I had a question on the attorney fees. For whatever reason, I always thought that the special ed was kind of separated from that. And with your, as far as the funding, Do they pay for attorney fees as opposed to attorney fees?

[3698] SPEAKER_24: You would segregate your special education attorneys from other lawyers, right? On the special education side? Most districts do. I haven't looked at yours to see where the lawyers are. The legal expense for special ed in 5860 was budgeted at $25,000.

[3708] Nancy Thomas: And July through December, warrants are $180,000. That's a huge increase.

[3722] SPEAKER_26: That includes settlements, I believe, as well.

[3724] Nancy Thomas: Yeah. Settlements in special ed were budgeted at $3,000, and they were $30,000, according to 5047 Obstacle. So maybe they're coded wrong, but the total between the two, it's quite alarming. OK.

[3743] SPEAKER_26: So it looks like we have a request to just see a little more detail that we can share about total cost. Yeah, I see.

[3749] Nancy Thomas: Total cost. But the worst thing is that 5825 of professional services was targeted, budgeted at $876,000, and already we have spent $1.137 million, which is $261,000 more for, we've already spent more in half a year than the budget for the entire year by $261,000. Part of it is we can make these cuts, or we can say these are soft cuts, but then if we just end up spending over that, you know, at the end of the year, we're...

[3788] SPEAKER_24: I think we need to talk with the department because they need to stay in touch with you because the budget needs to be changed so we know what's available in other areas if they're using it ahead. I mean that needs to be something that's monitored very closely, special ed. I had that some years I had very little litigation. Other years I had a lot of litigation and a lot of settlements. It just depends. You have to stay quite attuned to what's going in special education. And I always kept a special reserve through the years for special ed. I haven't been in a declining district in years. But in a growth district, that was a particular big budget piece. And, you know, Kai can introduce you to This is how much, because remember, they're pulling money from the general fund to take to special ed and service. So he can continue to update you on how much the contribution increases from what you had in the budget. I mean, stay in touch with special ed all the time. That's why when they talk about declining districts, your special education could become a problem.

[3855] Nancy Thomas: But that 5825 includes a whole lot more than special ed. Some of, you know, I would say, Even if it's half special ed, there's half. And then, so what does the business office do when someone goes over budget? I mean, how can they go over budget? You shouldn't allow it, right?

[3873] SPEAKER_28: Special education.

[3875] Nancy Thomas: No, it's, this is, things are, yeah, these are things that are not special ed. They're conferences or they're people, LCFF money is used. Or other legal advice.

[3887] SPEAKER_32: And just to get a better understanding, can we, get a bit maybe a better understanding of what's allocated within that bond and that code because as much as we want to save unexpected litigation I think it's just it's something that we can't like you said unless we have we budget it or save save some money for it it's we can't expect it you know so as much as we want to save we want to say hey why are we spending so much sometimes it's completely unexpected like you said maybe there's years that there's nothing other years there's a lot I think if we do break down the numbers, because I think we do need to have an understanding of separating general fund usage compared to special education, so we can distinguish. But unfortunately, litigation, when it comes to that, it just... You've got to do it.

[3933] SPEAKER_24: You've got to do it. And usually it's a new student coming in, so in this particular instance, you could be getting students through special education.

[3943] Nancy Thomas: But I have a feeling there's a lot of areas where people are spending more than their budget. I don't know that, but it just feels that way with these big numbers.

[3955] SPEAKER_26: Well, I think the data shows that what we're spending more than our budget is staffing positions. This is tinkering around the edges. trying to predict things are unpredictable. The predictable thing is we have to right size the district and staff according to the size. I think that's the hard part. I mean, you can't predict legal.

[3976] SPEAKER_24: 83% of your budget is people.

[3980] SPEAKER_32: Now, I have a question.

[3981] SPEAKER_26: So my point is, just to be clear, is that that may or may not be true. But even if it is true, it's not a giant part of the budget. It's less than, what, 7 or 8% of the budget, potentially. Professional services. At worst case scenario, because everything else is in staffing.

[4002] Nancy Thomas: It's $9 million. Yeah.

[4007] SPEAKER_32: What I had a question is just in regards to this list of options. It says consider approval, but you want us to decide today if possible. Is that correct?

[4016] SPEAKER_24: If you just tell us that you think that this is an okay thing. So we can check in. Yes.

[4022] SPEAKER_26: We're starting to build a number.

[4023] SPEAKER_24: Correct. Yeah. We would like to know. I mean if you want to put it on your page here, you know, on this particular slide, you agree with reducing attorney fees, reduce, you know, travel, you can go ahead. You want to just write it down on there? Yeah, that'll help us. We were deciding here if we wanted to find out, but you can just tell us, which would help us a lot. Because if we get rid of these ones that we don't have any, you know, big concerns about, then we spend time where there are concerns. You know, I want to make sure we have that time to question what we need to. This is the first. Now, these are revenue enhancements, so I don't think you're going to have a problem with these, but may have. All of these are consider approval. This MOU with the city for McGregor Field Water, I think that's already in process and scheduled, so already working on that one. A parcel tax, one of the things I want to talk to you about a parcel tax is since you haven't got a lot of money left, after staffing in this district. A parcel tax can give you money for educational programs, which you don't have necessarily in the district. So it's something for you to consider that often sells to the public in the parcel tax and which your district sorely needs is educational priorities being funded because I'm not sure all the educational priorities are being funded. People notice that and you want people to notice that because they'll be attracted to the district. That will help your enrollment. That to me is possibly one of your better ways to raise money in the district. Parcel tax, build whatever the priorities are from the curriculum department and the community will get excited about it. Yeah. And that's what they support. They're not going to support putting in somebody in the district office. They're not going to support, you know, money for board members, money, probably not money for teachers. Teachers get very disappointed about that. They want to put it in their salaries. But you can't put it in an ongoing, put another one-time source, and usually they're three years to five years. You can't put people inside of it because it's one-time money once again. We got to remember, one-time money should not support ongoing things that eat. Yes.

[4169] Nancy Thomas: I think our big concern about that is we don't have a base of donors in the district, of parents that are involved in Education Foundation. Whereas Fremont New Haven, they have huge galas. They have an already base of volunteers. But they didn't always have it. No, no, but they do. But we have to build that base, I think, before we can get the kind of support that it'll take to pass a parcel tax in this town.

[4204] SPEAKER_28: Nancy, we're the only school district in the county that does not have a parcel tax.

[4212] Nancy Thomas: I know. And I don't know that our base is open to that. That's what I'm saying, because I don't think we have the kind of people that are engaged, parents and community members that are engaged enough to go out and knock on doors. Maybe there are, maybe.

[4231] SPEAKER_28: So what would be a parcel tax rip line? We can go by square footage or we can go by parcel.

[4241] Bowen Zhang: What kind of property would there be if you go by square footage?

[4244] SPEAKER_28: So there's a total, so we can go by either by the square footage of the home or the square footage of the entire I see, I see. Right.

[4255] SPEAKER_26: You define it in the parcel tax itself. And we are trying to get an expert to come in and do a workshop with the board. I think the second meeting in February that we were talking about.

[4265] Bowen Zhang: And Vice President Thomas, last I mentioned that there used to be a vote on parcel tax. Yeah. It only got 49%. It only got 49%.

[4274] Nancy Thomas: When was that? That was Ray and I were both on the board. It was probably 20. 2004. 2004, okay. That's quite a while ago.

[4288] SPEAKER_28: 15 years ago, but it was not. So it's like San Lorenzo just passed a parcel tax last year, November 2018. So we're hoping, since our district has not passed one yet.

[4302] SPEAKER_32: Just in regards to that, I think it's hopeful. I definitely think it's beneficial. I think based on the information Member Thomas has given us, it's being hopeful. But I think it's also, just with speaking with other members of the community, if it's something that's well-written, well-executed, with focused programs and timeframe, hopefully, maybe our community will engage.

[4337] Ray Rodriguez: And it's going to be driven by, in my opinion, by our union and our partners, as opposed to coming from the Board of Education.

[4358] SPEAKER_31: I think we all agree that it's a great opportunity. I guess I will put myself out there and say that the only way I can support a parcel tax is if we do all the other restructuring, if you will, of the budget. spoken very well about the idea of going out after some of these numbers, but it's also, how are we managing the stand against the original budget? So I think to answer the original question of, you know, what are the things that we support? I just might, in my mind, this is not something I would want to push out on its own, unless we can demonstrate the fiscal discipline, I suppose, of a solid plan for the next couple of years.

[4402] Bowen Zhang: And the other thing is, timeline-wise, the parcel tax might not be in time for these decisions. No, not right now. In this case, when we make the March 1st decision, this will not be part of the equation.

[4418] SPEAKER_24: No, it will not. It's a future part. And one of the good things is they do a survey when they come in, and they will do a survey of the community to see what they would support. And their surveys are usually pretty accurate, that they go out there and say, what are you going to support? So you survey the community before you even proceed with it. They'll tell you do it or don't do it.

[4438] Nancy Thomas: Well, we don't have a foundation that will fund the cost of surveying. So we have to build that funding model to even start doing the work.

[4451] SPEAKER_26: It seems like it's something worth studying, but it's way down the road. Yeah. It's way down the road, but it's still something we should be informed about.

[4459] SPEAKER_24: Yeah, and the district can pay for the parcel tax study. I mean, the study, but not any of the campaign. I mean, the minute... Oh, we can pay for the study? Yes. Yes, you can. Because you're deciding what the educational priorities are, and that would generally come from the educational services department and the superintendent, and literally at that point, You don't run to a campaign to opt a board. It puts a resolution out there. And in that resolution, you have to define what the money is going to be used for. You know, it's going to be used for the high school intervention program. You have to define what that is, and then that money has to be spent in those categories. So when you go out, you have a pretty good idea what your percentage is going to be. And they will be honest with you if they say it's not going to look like it's positive. They'll be honest, yes.

[4512] SPEAKER_32: I'm looking at this, and I think like you mentioned in the beginning, these are more wish list, yeah, of revenue generating. So I think we can probably all agree that yeah, we like it, you know, let's say parcel tax just because that's something. We like it, it could have potential, let's put it on the list to study it moving forward. Not necessarily are we deciding that it's going to stick. Same thing with preschool partnerships, Kidango for example. That would all, of course there's question marks because that all depends on enrollment. So if we're looking at, just in my opinion here, if we're looking at this list, I personally wouldn't have a problem saying, OK, let's move forward. Because this is not going to, it's not set in stone. This is more like, OK, this is good future study. Let's study this further to see if we can actually generate revenue with this. But we still haven't got the numbers that we need to actually cut.

[4576] SPEAKER_24: Yeah, absolutely. And like this increased average daily attendance, if you actually put some emphasis on how students are being counted, and pay attention, you can increase some of your ADA, which is definitely going to take, you don't, you can't afford not to be counting some of the kids. Some of the ADA is making sure when the weather's bad that the kids come to school, that somebody's calling saying, you need to come to school. I mean, little things mean a lot. Phone calls from the secretaries at the school literally can make phone calls when a kid's not there and bring kids in. It has an impact, not just a monetary impact. You want this kid to be in school. Kid's not going to learn if they're not in school. So it actually helps support the community.

[4625] Nancy Thomas: We went from 94% ADA up to 97% because we had a real push, and now it dropped down a percent. Each percent is what? How much? About $400,000. That's 1% increase.

[4637] SPEAKER_32: 1% is $400,000.

[4637] Nancy Thomas: Exactly. It can have a big impact.

[4640] SPEAKER_32: And that's getting kids in school. In regards to that, I think, Lenny, a couple meetings ago, you told us that this was something that you guys were following up. Have your studies show maybe any variation?

[4655] SPEAKER_22: So we started to meet with our attendance clerks and also do a kind of a backwards map with the county office. So because we are looking at differentiated systems and how the county is going to help us, we're actually meeting with them next week to actually map out to be able to bring that back to the board as to how we can double check our numbers, our inputting of data, and then incentives for kids to come to school. And looking at the bottle next door, each principal, starting with music, has developed their own front office plan for doing the phone calls or the safety calls. Hey, Juan's not at school yet, you know, is he on his way? Supporting our families with, even if you're going away for the three-day weekend, we recognize families need to get away, but can you drop off Juan before you go to your trip? Drop him off at school, go do what you need to do, and then come pick him up on your way out the door, you know, those sorts of things. So we're moving forward. Hopefully we'll bring that back to the board as well.

[4712] Nancy Thomas: Did I see Music's Marquis had something about attendance?

[4716] SPEAKER_22: Yes, she's doing a great campaign over at Music.

[4719] SPEAKER_24: You'll be surprised at the impact. It's tremendous. Okay, so generally feel good about this. I'm going to warn you the grant writer one, which is a great thing to do, bringing in certain programs and certain monies. We tried it for years and we just couldn't find good grant writers. I mean, it's a challenge ongoing.

[4738] Nancy Thomas: And it's one-time money, usually, anyway.

[4741] SPEAKER_24: It's usually just one-time money, so... Well, some of them are ongoing, and there are basically a lot of them at the upper grade levels, but they can bring in money that will last for some of the career. Sure. That last five, six years.

[4755] SPEAKER_28: I think Gabriel, we had a director of... at San Diego Education Foundation and it was self-sustaining. The revenue that she brings in helps pay for her salary and for summer school for kids.

[4769] SPEAKER_26: But it sounds like picking up the Ed Foundation is something we should add to our long-term solutions list.

[4778] SPEAKER_24: Okay, definitely. Anybody else want to say anything on this slide?

[4784] Ray Rodriguez: On the grant writer, just like a moving target, it's just if you can find somebody that's retired and that... Has a passion for the program. Right, and can work on a, even on a percentage basis, you know, if the grant allows it, you know, every grant is different.

[4805] SPEAKER_24: Exactly.

[4805] Ray Rodriguez: But then it doesn't cost you anything and it's... A possibility to open options, yeah. The motivation being that they're doing something to enhance the education of kids.

[4819] SPEAKER_24: Right. Because almost all ex-educators still have a passion for it. I'm an ex-assistant superintendent, but I have a passion for working in education. It means I'm in retirement now. Make sure to try and promote good programs at districts and support. I support what I can. But I think it's important to our whole future. I mean, I think that people in the district do great jobs for kids, and I'm very proud of it.

[4853] Ray Rodriguez: Well, like, for instance, Facebook. I mean, it's like a hanging fruit. It's right there, right? And I keep telling myself I'm going to go over there, and we were talking about it, and going over there and approaching them.

[4868] SPEAKER_32: We have great companies that could, we do have great grant writers that could provide a lot of funds. Yeah. That's great.

[4875] Ray Rodriguez: Apple does that in Cupertino. You know, they're very involved.

[4882] SPEAKER_24: Amazon here in Newark. Yeah, you have a lot of opportunities here. We worked with our community in Dublin to bring in, how we got our biomedical program, which expanded well beyond what we even had room for. Yeah. Okay, any more comments on this? Okay. These things here that were on the list involve negotiations and some of it is not agreement, but some of it is notification. You know, teachers have to be transferred. It has the furlough days on there, which the teachers actually said for that. The problem with furloughs is it's most always the staff development days where you would train teachers. You know, so the beginning of the day of training. So that's something that you would discuss with the union. Reduction of 8 FTE at the secondary level. just so you know that we've been studying the staffing and it's very small class size at the secondary. About 25 to 1. Which is like CSR, what the state gives you for CSR being at 25 to 1. That's not normal for high school. It's not normal at all. Review the school calendar. What was the idea there of reviewing the school calendar?

[4967] SPEAKER_26: Well, to probably do some training for staff training time and, you know, it would be kind of a combination of frill plus negotiating when we do training in lieu of the existing calendar. There may be some savings there. I know there's been something in the news recently about some districts going to cost saving moving to a four-day school week. They've been able to recruit and retain teachers more in that scenario but just calendar options that they kind of provide more frequent breaks and hopefully it'll boost morale but it could also be in combination with furlough days or how we look at furlough days where it's one day but it's done over two days or done over four days so it's a shortened day so just creative ways to calendar that out if we were able to negotiate that.

[5024] SPEAKER_24: So you can't really count on a lot of these, but you can count on some of them. You got some of the information today that some of the people that just want to retire, which means the position goes, and you don't rehire it. If it's at the high school, so much the better. Because that's where we have a lot of small class sizes. Not eight. Not eight, no. These are options that we had on there, and I'm going to say a little bit about some of the discussions we've had internally and where our thoughts are. There's a number of issues with consolidation or closure of a school. You have a future of kids out there, and I think you brought it up at our last meeting. Where are you going to put the kids if that growth does come in in five to ten years? But there's also the fact that the savings you're going to get are anywhere from $350,000 to $450,000. But you're going to have to take those kids somewhere in the district, which means there's going to be additional staffing have to be there to support the additional kids at a school. We continue to look at that and think We were looking at it as a numbers thing. We need to look at it a different way. What is going to be the impact on the district as a whole? It may not be the thing to do and it may not save you as much money as you think. This is a political statement, basically, is that probably it's not the right time for you to start closing a school. And if you started closing it, you wouldn't be closing it for next year, you'd be closing it for the following year anyway. I mean, if you get a school that ends up only being 20 people, that's an issue. You know, you're not there yet, but you do have some issues with schools and you can restructure some, but It's really, I would take your discussion right now. I don't think any of us in administration are going to recommend it. It was purely there because of the numbers of how many people are at schools. But you can do some restructuring of programs to help the kids.

[5155] Bowen Zhang: So speaking of the numbers, because last time I mentioned that if you close a school, the charter might come in and take some of the students. Yes, absolutely. When we compute this number, Did we include a possibility about losing ADA to charter school? So because if you lose ADA to charter school, you might see a further decline.

[5178] SPEAKER_24: That was exactly one of our points.

[5181] Bowen Zhang: So right now, do we run any bus lines between our neighborhood to the school? No. So if we close the school and say a student lived two mile and a half away from elementary school, are we going to expect no additional bus line, just the parents will ship their children to the school.

[5203] SPEAKER_24: You can actually work with the local bus service and have the buses go to these schools.

[5212] Nancy Thomas: We already do that for junior high and high school. It might be problematic for little ones, especially if there's major roads or fairfares that they have to go across.

[5226] SPEAKER_24: And one of the things is most parents like to be with their elementary students taking them to school. So there isn't a lot of demand generally coming from elementary except for maybe working parents. They want to be with their elementary. Some of them walk in the classroom. You know, teachers have to deal with that all the time. You know, they're not supposed to be in class. Kids need to be learning.

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