WorkShop - Part 1 Meeting

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[12] Marie dela Cruz: Member Gutierrez.

[14] Megan McMillan: Member John.

[15] Ray Rodriguez: Here. Excellent. Thank you. So we're going to start with the study session. But before we do that, we always have a public comment. Anyone that wants to approach us on the study session can approach us now. OK, seeing none. We go to the study session, which should go between 4 and 6. And then we go to closed session. And then hopefully by 7, we come back to open session. Superintendent?

[53] SPEAKER_36: Thank you. Thank you, President Rodriguez, members of the board, ladies and gentlemen. At this time, I'm going to turn it over to our CBO, who will then, in turn, hand it over to Ryland Consulting and our consultant that's working with us. But we do want to. move down to the floor to begin our discussion.

[71] Ray Rodriguez: Is that your request that we move down?

[73] SPEAKER_36: Yes, that is my request.

[74] Ray Rodriguez: OK, good. So if there's no objections, then we'll do that. Oh, it's okay.

[141] SPEAKER_31: Good afternoon, everyone. I'm going to talk about our budget. And this is Beverly, as you all know. And we all have the board members here. We're missing Ms. Lucia Gutierrez here right now. She'll be here soon. So I don't know if we should wait for her. We have Ms. Beverly, you met Ms. Alicia. Hi Beverly, good to see you again. So we'll start with our presentation right now. Then I'm going to hand it over to Beverly and she's going to discuss about our

[198] SPEAKER_26: Okay, I was going to hand out, we just received from the county the letter of the review of our first interim, which of course is something that the district must do at every interim period, and an adopted budget, and an unaudited actuals. So hand this out and we'll give it out for the public. I wanted to start out by saying some statements ahead of time. A lot of these statements have been brought to you before in forms of the FCMAT, the fiscal price mismanagement team, and now you're hearing the same things in the county letter. Newark has been in an enrollment decline the past eight years. This is not just a thing that's happening now. This year we experienced 168 less than our adopted budget. So the decline is continuing, it's expected to continue another year. Along with the actual The revenues have been declining in the district, and that is a problem. We've been using a lot of one-time funding throughout this time. Tax override funds first, that were one-time funds used, because you were doing everything because the enrollment was declining, so you were losing revenue. But instead of making the cuts that needed to happen with that declining revenue, you brought one-time monies in to support it. The tax override first, there was residual monies coming in. Then you had the sale of a site, which you also brought in over that time. All your revenues declining from enrollment, And you're supplanting, not supplanting, but bringing one-time money in to replace it. That's one-time money. It doesn't continue. What it means is the district has been in a structural deficit for a while. You have not been able to support your ongoing expenditures. So you're bringing in one-time monies to support it. Basically, that's a structural deficit that needs to be corrected at the time your revenue is down. The district has lost over the past five years 638 students, including, I'm going to say on top of that, 168 we lost this year from the adopted budget. This is going to cause problems in the coming future. The state did not help you over this time, as they were also giving you, since 2013-14, one-time revenues in your general fund. You didn't even know that was one-time, but it was coming in. One year, it gave you $231,000. One year, it gave you $633,000. The next year, it gave you $3,185,000. So the one-time money is coming from the state, because it's going up and down. There's not going to be any more of that money next year. 17-18, it was over $1 million. This year, it's 957. So these are things that have not been helping you at all. And all this time, your revenue keeps going down because your enrollment keeps going down. The district has continued to cover with one-time funds. That is a problem because those don't come back for the ongoing expenditures. Each time your revenue goes down, you should be, at that particular time, cutting your expenditures at that point to stay in balance. You have not. This structural deficit is something that FCMAC noted in the district's books, the county has noted in the district books, and you can see it in the review from the county. At the same time that this is happening, our LCFF, the greatest portion of revenue coming from the state, has now flattened. You're not going to get any more increasing LCFF. It's funded at full funding. The only thing that's going to be in there now is cost of living increases. Those will be in there, but they're not applied how they used to be applied. So it's not as much money as we used to expect. If the district continues to spend as we are, the district on the third year is going to be in a structural problem. You're not going to have money. Now, this is something that was presented to you at the first interim. And remember when we plan a budget, we don't plan one year. We plan three years. So you don't just plan for one year. You plan for three years. You can see, looking at this, that next third year, you're going to have no funding left for an actual reserve. So if you continue doing what you've been doing, it's going to be a problem. So we project this without one-time monies coming in, and that's what we need to happen. So the enrollment, one of the first things I did was look at the books and look and see how our classes are unloaded at this district. And one thing that's painfully obvious is that student enrollment per classroom is much lower in Newark than in other districts. Basically, you have a contract that says you can operate higher, but you have been operating with lower class sizes. You can always do that within the contractual limits, and that's one of the things that's done in the budget this year so far. But one of the things the district has done is a very positive thing, is you have let the transitional kindergarten students in earlier than they normally are allowed. That's a very good thing because the transitional kindergartens come in and they get a greater opportunity to be educated because they're there before they're actually funded. This TK increases your enrollment because you start the kids, you're hoping they're going to stay in the district. So that's a very positive thing you have done in this district to make sure kids are coming into the district because most districts won't let the kid in when they're not of age.

[558] Nancy Thomas: Have we ever calculated how much that costs? because we don't get funding until they turn five if they turn five after December 2nd.

[570] SPEAKER_26: I don't know how many each came in each year, but we could actually look into that for you. I'd be happy to. But it literally helps you for more kids to come in.

[579] SPEAKER_31: I don't have that figured, but I can look into that for you.

[583] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, I think that we have some of the groundwork in what Larry did.

[591] SPEAKER_26: Okay, so but to me that's a very positive thing to increase attendance in your district that you've already started, which is a very positive thing. One of the things, what happened this year, literally, I wanted to make sure you understood this. The projected enrollment at the adopted budget is at 5,944. Your actual enrollment came in at 5,779. You had 165 students less. Now remember, you staffed on that projected enrollment to begin with, but that's not what realized. You took a loss of 1.8 million right off the bat before you started this year and everything was staffed at that 5944.

[636] Nancy Thomas: I remember 141 being the number. Have we lost since then or is that not the number?

[647] SPEAKER_26: This is adopted budget and the first interim.

[650] SPEAKER_31: During CBIT, right, it was $5,720. But some of the students, again, some of the students that we enroll, we don't count ADA towards them because they haven't turned five yet. And there are a few students that are out of our, that we provide services, but they get, other school districts get ADA credit. because we provide services to them. So we do get revenue from those other school districts.

[681] SPEAKER_26: OK. Oh, and one thing I was going to bring up at the beginning, thank you for your questions. We've got some questions from Nancy today. I'm going to pass those out to you. And we met with her yesterday to ask some of the things she wanted to know. And they were very good questions, and we're working on them. And we're not going to address them at this session, but we'll be happy to get back to you at the next board meeting. I just wanted to share with you the question she gave us. She went back through the budget, gave us where she thought there were some differences that shouldn't have been there. So we're actually looking into that right now. And we'll send that to you next week. So I thought you really needed to know, this district started off with $1.8 million loss.

[726] Ray Rodriguez: Can I yell? Getting back to my report. If you don't, if you don't accept them early, then potentially you could lose, let's say, out of the 100 kids, you lose 20. So even though there might be a loss for the first, you know, until they're five, you need more to make it up, I think. So I'll be glad to look at the figures. It'll be hard to determine how many kids We would have been short if we hadn't. So although it's important to have a number on what we spent, it's also important to look at the fact that we're up with more than what we projected.

[782] Nancy Thomas: We also accepted some inter-district TK kids. Presumably kids from neighboring districts who weren't eligible because their program didn't let them come when they turned five later. So that also has an impact. I'm not sure those kids will stay in Newark if they live in Fremont.

[806] SPEAKER_26: Yeah, but one of the things that most districts have found with the TK, it's been a very exemplary program that has helped districts. More districts are putting TK in and providing the instruction all year. Very few are rejecting, in fact, where they might get rejected is where they have over-enrollment and so they're looking for this district is accepting because you need the enrollment. I think the most important thing is the earlier you get to a kid, the better they learn, the better their career and education is. So I think that every district I have worked with and the district I came from, this was an extremely good program for the kids. The teachers talk about in K, the kids are much more aware. They don't have as many learning issues going on and learning occurs much earlier. Our current class size sticks to contractual guidelines. Once again, this average TK to 3 is 26 to 1. Our average here was 23 to 1. In grades 4 through 6, we're 31.1 as a contractual. We're actually operating at 23 to, at 26 to 1 as an average, once again an average. Some classes may be higher, but overall the average is 26. In 7 through 8, 31, once again, is the contractual language. Our average was 25 to 1. 7 through 12, once again, 31 is the contractual language. Average is 25.1. We saw small class sizes at the high school in the district here. And a lot of the losses that occurred in the district for the kids who didn't come were at the high school. That's where we permanently saw it happening. Here is just some information to know when we go through the budget reductions. These were the average salaries used for certificated teachers in elementary, certificated teachers in secondary, pupil support, and the classified. We have cuts across and proposed, there's proposed reductions here from my firm and me. that you can look at, but this will be the average salary we use for reduction. Because usually when you actually leave, you're either just leaving if you're retiring or if, you know, you're leaving the district. We use an average because it's generally the lower person that goes.

[955] Ray Rodriguez: That seems a little high. It's an average. No, no, I know it's an average, but for instance, We settled years ago with the teachers' union, with the NTA, where we incorporated the increased salary, which is around, I think about $700 a month, into the salary. But other than that, I don't know what other benefits they would have.

[987] SPEAKER_31: So some teachers that have been here for like 15 or more years, they're probably making about $100,000, but then you include the benefits, like the CalSTRS, Workman's Compensation, et cetera, then that adds up to about another $20,000.

[1003] Nancy Thomas: Are these our figures for our teachers? Yes, they are. They're averages. Thank you. Also, should we or do we consider all the stipends that we give to our teachers as another category? Or what's the amount?

[1025] Elisa Martinez: Is it captured in benefits or in salary?

[1027] SPEAKER_31: The stipends, this is flat right here. This is real stipends.

[1033] Nancy Thomas: Right. It's interesting to know because I think over the years, I remember really early on there was a real charge to cut stipends down. And the district did that, but I think over the years, the number of stipends and the amount has crept up. And I think it would be good to see what is the growth of stipends for various programs been over the years. And is that a place we should look? Because with declining enrollment, we shouldn't have increasing stipends.

[1068] SPEAKER_26: That's something we can look into. So this is just information for what we use for salaries later on. Our current class sizes, I think, one of the things I want to take you through is that you have done some reductions in the past. This is a little history of them. Office clerks were reduced at the high school in 2017. Libraries were reduced and at this point they're still understaffed. Library reduction was not filled in 2017. A lot of things were positions you had in the past, but they just didn't get filled. English language reduction and not filled in 2017. Custodians, a reduction in 2017. Currently, we feel we're properly staffed at sites, but that's something we need to continue to look at. Probably one of the most significant things I see that differs from a lot of districts is that you guys don't have plumbers. You guys don't have HVAC people or electrical and a supervisor is not there. Those are things that happen daily in classrooms and probably why your 5,000s are high because you're having to call people in to repair because there are heating and air problems every day in the classroom and you guys have to call out people to bring them in, outside vendors. So that's normally, in most districts, a part of their staff. You don't have it here in your staff. Bilingual aid, supplemental funds were taken down. A lead child care attendant, which is outside of the district general fund. But office managers, we feel, are properly staffed. Paraeducators come in based on what special ed says that the children need. Campus monitors, we actually considered campus monitors at one point, but know that our high schools and our junior highs need to be properly supervised. So it was taken under consideration, but thought that would be something that literally we would want to reduce, especially where senior high is, it's near the mall. And we just want to make sure that the kids are safe on campus.

[1199] Nancy Thomas: Can I ask a question? The librarians, .475, I know that librarians are are often, their time is increased, is that correct? Yeah, on 2475, if the site puts some of their funds into it, or the parent group. But that takes them into where they get benefits, and I'm wondering... They would need to pay for those benefits. Do they pay for the entire benefits?

[1230] SPEAKER_26: Yes. When you tell them if they're adding, they have to add with all the benefits, so that calculation they get from the business office. If you pick up 0.3, you're going to have to pay the benefits with it.

[1240] Nancy Thomas: Yeah. But it's not the proportion of benefits over the, right? I mean, it should be all the benefits that they wouldn't get at 0.475, right? Yes.

[1252] SPEAKER_26: Literally, we're also using the cafeteria fund to help us in this, and literally Ed Services was reduced in a staff member and it wasn't filled at this point. So some things have gone away and just have never come back. Keep that in mind. You may not think about it, but it was there a few years ago.

[1271] SPEAKER_32: That's what I wanted to double check. So all these positions that were taken out and not filled in 2017 still have not been filled? Most of them have not.

[1281] SPEAKER_26: I know there's no plumber and there's no HVAC. And these are all classified.

[1285] Ray Rodriguez: So I wanted to comment on the MOT for the classified. A lot of those decisions are made when you go through negotiations, for instance, with the classified union. And the decision, I know that based on past history, they would rather have a plumber that's a member of the union rather than you bringing somebody else in. Yes. But then you have, you know, you're paying somebody, you know, a lot of money, and sometimes... Dinner rates, yes. Right, so a decision was made at some point to just be on call, similar to depending on needs for different things. So that's a hard one to kind of put together on, you know, you're trying to save money, but you, like the HVAC, you know, we basically have new HVAC through. Right. Right. So your warranty, for instance, might cover some of that, where they come in, as opposed to having an HVAC person here all the time. And that's one of the challenges you have when you're a small school district, is to try to balance that.

[1354] SPEAKER_26: Right. And it's something I think the district needs to look at. You need to look at your work orders and see how many work orders for HVAC, how many work orders are coming in for the other services that you don't have on board. How many plumbing? I mean, that's something the district can look at, because at some point, the district may get to a size where it makes sense to put one of those positions back. But I can say most districts operate with those positions in their MOT department.

[1379] SPEAKER_32: I was going to ask if we can put it as a note to maybe have an evaluation on those expenditures, because I think it is important that if we are overspending because we are contracting out, then we should probably definitely consider it. So we could have those numbers to compare.

[1397] SPEAKER_26: Yeah, that certainly would be something the district can do.

[1399] SPEAKER_36: I would also add to that, let's also look at what it would be competitive salary, because that was a barrier in the past where we might have a plumbing position, but it's in the Bay Area, with those qualifications, there's very few that would take it for a lower salary.

[1417] Elisa Martinez: Yeah, I mean, it has to be both sides. It's what's the cost of external versus internal, so it's not just the use of, if you will. But anyway.

[1430] SPEAKER_26: But it often is, in a classified person, especially a specialty like a plumber or something, they're independent on their own. One of the reasons they look at school districts, and not necessarily the money, is the benefits that come from it, the health, the retirement. I know they will actually look for that, what will be their retirement, how long before they vest. There'll be a number of factors. These are just some other factors that we actually reduced. There was 20% reduction. in books and supplies, $300,000, and there's only about $1.5 million in books and supplies. So that was a pretty big reduction back then. It is very huge, so that needs to be considered. These are just some other facts we want to bring up to your attention because they're going on all the time and we probably forget about them. Special education has to increase every year. They have a maintenance effort that has to continue and they have to go up every year or have a reason why they didn't. Reduction in the number of kids in the program could be a reason why it didn't increase, but otherwise you'd have to prove you spent more on the kid than you did before. The increase to PERS and STERS is going on this whole time and people forget it because we're absorbing it now, but you just need to be aware that's in there. Legal settlements, those basically come from special education parents challenging us to put them in a program that the district's saying we have another program. So there's often legal settlements in special education. The outgoing professional services, plumbing, legal, speech, psychological services. In the special ed department, there's not enough speech therapists in the population in the state. So all districts are fighting for them. So they're often going out and contracting for speech therapists. Psychologists, these districts have a hard time finding psychologists. They'll find the position empty, but they'll be contracting out. So that literally is going on at the same time. So once again, that's entering your 5,000s because you're contracting it out, because you can't hire it. Out-of-state travel was eliminated a few years ago, so just so you know. And that's not really an ongoing expenditure that helps us, but it was eliminated here. These are identified savings coming from the Ryland Consulting. So what we have looked at is we have already went in and started the budget for next year. We've actually come up with a beginning balance where we think we'll be, where we'll have some savings. One of the things you're going to see is the 600,000 coming from the year before. That was inside the LCAP. The board approved about 900,000 inside the LCAP for class size reduction. We have only used about 300,000 of it right now. So we see 600,000 coming forward. And we told you we probably needed to cut 2.2. Well, it's good. There's 600 coming from last year that will help us. And we've identified 1.6 in reduction, which will basically make up the 2.2 we may need.

[1608] Nancy Thomas: Can we carry over, I assume that's supplemental, or concentration for CSR? We can carry it over. Last year at the end of the year, we were asked to spend a couple hundred thousand dollars because they said we'd lose it if we didn't, because it was in our supplemental and concentration.

[1626] SPEAKER_26: It's in your fund balance, it's in there, so you're allowed to carry it over. And it will be designated in our ending balance as $600,000 for CSR from LCAP. Yes, they don't have to spend every dollar that comes in LCAP.

[1639] Nancy Thomas: The money that we were told we had to spend was money that we were told couldn't be carried over. That's usually in grants and things like that.

[1647] SPEAKER_25: And that was my understanding last year, so it would be nice if Rylan can look into that for us, because that was my understanding I was told. OK.

[1654] SPEAKER_26: I'd be happy to. Because a lot of times your LCAP is very aggressive in programs you want to put in, so you'd be at a real detriment if you lose that money at the end. We keep it segregated with an LCAP so it's to be used for CSR. That money is going to carry over to be used for CSR and nothing else. That's what the board approved and that's where it will stay. Certificated staffing, you look right now, we say about five elementary teachers. would need to be looked at. And literally, I think Ms. Salinas is actually looking at it right now and working with her team to talk about how she can actually work in the configurations that they have right now. What are the, the junior high had about three sections that were extremely overstaffed, and the high school had five sections. That's about 1.3. I just want to clarify, it's three, it's not three sections, it's three FTEs. Three FTEs, I'm sorry, you're right. There's five at the elementary, which are teachers, three teachers at the junior high, which would be probably 15 sections? 15. 15, and at the high school it's 25 sections, for five teachers. Those are the certificated amount of the reductions proposed.

[1739] Nancy Thomas: Yeah. Well, going back to CSR, the 800 or whatever it was that we had, but we actually authorized going from 24 to 26. And I think that 900, wasn't it based on 24? What's your previous one? I'm not sure, you know? I mean, can we not put it in there if we, you know, go up from 24 to 26?

[1767] SPEAKER_31: I believe the board approved, like, I believe approved, the board approved to increase the class size for TK to 3 from 24 to 26.

[1776] Nancy Thomas: Right, but that would take the class sizes up, but the amount we took out of LCAP for CSR was based on K-3 class sizes of 24, not 26. So, you know, I mean, there's money in there that we can spend on something, but we may have to say, you know, it doesn't equal what we've had 900,000 from before.

[1797] SPEAKER_26: Or maybe it does, but we need to... Remember that we're saying we only use 300,000 of it? We're bringing forward 600,000 so you can use against your reductions next year.

[1806] Nancy Thomas: It doesn't have to be for reductions, though, right?

[1809] SPEAKER_26: No, it needs to be for reductions in class size.

[1812] Nancy Thomas: Why can't we redo the LCAP to have it be for

[1817] SPEAKER_26: This is the previous year's LCAP. You have LCAP you're doing this year, which you might be able to change it. But in this one, this is from LCAP the year before. Oh, from last year. OK.

[1824] Nancy Thomas: It's from last year's LCAP, where you already approved it. OK. And you said we had five sections in the high school? Five teachers. Five teachers. 25 sections. 25 sections. But is the five teachers all teaching? I mean, are they all in their certificated area where they can teach? You know what I'm saying? Right now they are.

[1848] SPEAKER_26: But that's something HR would deal with in the high school.

[1853] Elisa Martinez: I'm not sure your question... This is just a full-time equivalence.

[1856] Nancy Thomas: I don't think we've gotten to where you're headed, which is what's the overall... If you have five sections, that equals one FTE, but you may have a French teacher that's teaching only three sections, You know what I'm saying? There's the detail.

[1874] Elisa Martinez: That's in the master plan. That's the complexity.

[1876] Nancy Thomas: This is just the numbers. Oh, I know, I know, but I mean... Yeah, we don't want to sit here and go through the master plan, but we can't look at... Yeah, at the high school, I would be very clear in saying we can save 25 sections, therefore we can save 5 teachers. It's not 5 teachers. Well, it's not saving, it would be reducing.

[1894] SPEAKER_36: I mean, we can't reduce 5. We can't. We can't. I've been working with the master schedule in the high school, and it would be based on making reductions in areas where class loads are low and where those add up to 25 in a certain content area or a certain certification area. We actually looked at this today and been looking at it for the last six weeks and I'm working with the high school right now to try to figure out based on graduation requirements, incoming course option sheets, Where is the interest, but also where have we been historically? We have identified those areas that were under-enrolled, if you will, at the beginning of the year. It's right around 30 sections that I've identified that we're working through. So yes, we have been looking at that.

[1949] Ray Rodriguez: I had a question on the elementary, please.

[1951] SPEAKER_26: I just want to point before you ask a question. That was where most of our enrollment loss occurred from the adopted budget to the time we opened. So they opened with low class sizes this year.

[1962] Ray Rodriguez: I just had a question on the elementary. Why wouldn't you, or can you, break that down into K-3 and then the upper grades as far as the... The elementary?

[1978] SPEAKER_31: So, yeah, it's been taken into consideration from TK to 3rd grade, then from 4th grade through 6th grade.

[1986] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, because I think the board really wanted to keep the, you know, K-3, you know, the CSR, keep that, you know, 24th, 26th. And so I don't know if these five would come from the upper grades, most of them.

[2003] SPEAKER_32: I guess the question would be if we take, based on these five, and correct me if I'm wrong. No, go ahead. But the five elementary teachers. If we take, taking those out as our class size, still going to stay the same, specifically for TK through?

[2019] SPEAKER_36: I would actually ask, let me let Leti answer part of that. Because there's two factors that come into play with this type of reduction. One is how many combo classes is it going to trigger? And the other one is how does the balance look based on actuals? So Leti did run this, the principals threw a scenario today.

[2037] SPEAKER_25: So we met with principals this morning. and looked at what would it look like to lose one teacher and so forth, or to stay flat. And so looking at that, this year we had five combination classes. If we were to do the reduction of the five, at this point it looks like it would go to seven combination classes, so we would grow by two combos. And a combination class is two grade levels in the same class. What we also looked at was that in some situations we would have to close or look at the inter-district transfer. So some schools, we would just say neighborhood. At this point, we could do a waiting list. But for the most part, if you don't live in that attendance area, you can't go to that school. Because we want to be able to save seats for the neighborhood. So we would have to put some of those provisions in. And then overflow. So something we don't want to do is to overflow students. In some schools, if we were to cut the five, we would have some possible overages or overflow of students that would have to be sent to another school. I think we looked at three schools where that might happen, but that was looking at kindergarten. And so that's the unknown factor. So what we did is we looked at the current status of students who are with us right now, and we transferred them over to the next year. And we use the business services demographic report to predict incoming kindergartners and TK students. And so based on that, that's basically where we're at. What we also looked at is that this is going to be the first year. We're very excited that we are going to do online registration. And so that's going to be a big new thing for us, so for the elementaries. So we're rolling that out in about two and a half weeks. and we will have a better picture as to what our kindergarten registration is going to look like once we see those apps coming in. And so it is a moving target. We do, with the reduction of five positions, we do see that there would possibly be a possibility of needing some second grade room because we don't have enough seats across the district and possibly some kindergarten, but that would be based on kids' applications and they're here with us. So that's fresh off the press. We met with all the principals this morning.

[2176] SPEAKER_36: The other understanding to answer Member Rodriguez's question is our goal has been with Ed Services to, if we're going to have a larger class size, it should be at secondary and not at elementary. And we still have been trying to adhere to that. Because we knew that direction came from the board last year.

[2193] SPEAKER_21: What is the reason that the teacher at elementary, I think,

[2203] SPEAKER_31: They tend to stay longer, the district versus the high school, like math teachers.

[2212] SPEAKER_26: Okay. Let me go through the last section, which are in classified staffing. One office clerk at one of the sites, and using our Fund 13 to pay for some custodial services is about 260. And I need to say that this is probably not an ongoing reduction that can be there, maybe one to two years, but at this point it helps us do some of our reductions that was agreed to early on. The custodial does occur at the cafeteria and literally our custodial do it. So they just pick up the costs and relieve the general fund. So that's in there.

[2257] SPEAKER_21: I think the funds, every year the custodian has to do work in the cafeteria during the lunchtime. Shouldn't we just move them permanently, like 20 or 25%? So this should be ongoing, going forward, right? Not just for one or two weeks.

[2271] SPEAKER_31: Yes. Depending on their budget, if they're going to be deficit spending, then you have to.

[2279] SPEAKER_21: Oh, I see. You have to review it. It depends on the health of the lunch program itself. Exactly. I see.

[2284] SPEAKER_31: But we're looking at using Fund 13 to pay for some custodial cost.

[2289] SPEAKER_26: And we're working with the cafeteria fund manager because this is something she is concerned about, and she has a right. She's fine to bill up her fund balance enough, but it needs to continually happen. It depends on kids eating in the cafeteria.

[2304] Elisa Martinez: Generally, where does this sit in other districts? Is it in general, or is it out of count? To me, it could be temporary.

[2315] SPEAKER_26: It depends on her fund status. I think some districts do it in a crunch, but it's not planned as an ongoing thing, because you really want the cafeteria fund to support what's in their fund. Generally, they don't need a full-time custodian in that fund.

[2334] Nancy Thomas: kind of like an indirect cost? Shouldn't it be a portion of whatever the state or the federal government gives us?

[2341] SPEAKER_26: It's not an indirect cost, it's a direct cost. Custodians are a direct cost to the program. An indirect cost is the cost of, like administrators, like the superintendent, us. A direct cost is a custodian would be in the fund.

[2353] Nancy Thomas: So do other districts charge custodians to the food service program?

[2361] Jodi Croce: I do know districts that have, yes.

[2362] SPEAKER_31: Yeah, I'm reading in the newspaper that the food service program is losing money, and if they're not... Yeah, so... Like most school districts, like I wouldn't say most, but school districts that are in our financial situation, yes, they would have to use Fund 13 on a temporary basis, I've seen it.

[2383] SPEAKER_26: Yeah, and our district did it for a short period of time, at one time. especially during the crisis. During the crisis, you saw it a lot more in the five years. So those are the reductions that now total up to that we're recommending at 2.2, which is the point we had recommended. One of the impacts of these is that you're going to see possible combination classes at the elementary, which we spoke to you about. Fewer sections at the junior high and at the high school. One of the reasons there is a lot of small class sizes occurred this year. So it's, I think you spoke to the high school today too and they said they think they can make 25. Yeah, I think that working with the superintendent there it may have helped. Right now, we're going to continue looking at revenue enhancements. The more we look at revenue enhancements, our goal is to keep our revenue up. The city of Newark water fee, it would help us. Increasing your daily attendance is something this district needs to go after. We just need to get the kids that are here, that they attend 180 days. That's perfect. days the kid has to attend for us to earn one ADA. So we just need to do things there, and they can be done at the site, they can call the kids to make sure they come in. Anything the district can do to help kids be in their seat. And it isn't just to get the money, it's kids need to be in their seat to learn. So there's a double benefit here. We get increased money for the kid being in their seat, and at the same time, the child learns. The child can only learn when they're sitting in their seat. Solar is something the district is going to consider, which will help tremendously.

[2488] SPEAKER_31: I think they've already... I don't know if you recruited... We are going to have a presentation in March regarding solar.

[2494] SPEAKER_26: Okay. Water irrigation. They're still looking at what they might do about water irrigation, particularly when we have a rainy season like this, you need to work with irrigation. Make sure you're turning it off and is sensitive to that, that it can stop. Use of facilities, that's still something they've got to work with the different agencies to see if they can increase their fees. The city uses them, a lot of sports organizations use them. So you can work with them about coming up with a new fee. So all of these, we're not putting in the budget, but there's potential for increased revenue with these particular things. So I think it's really positive the district's looking at things like this. Our areas of concern, one of the biggest and frightening for the district is our unduplicated pupil count, which funds our concentration funds. We are critically close to the threshold. The threshold is 55. We're at 55.78. If we go any further and decline with the students who earn that money, We potentially lose $293,000 of our concentration money. That's a big chunk we would lose. And so we need to do what we can to make sure the free and reduced continue to apply. So you're gonna see a lot of the district making sure those applications are out there. And you tend to have a problem with the secondary students filling it out. They just don't. It's just a thing at high schools, they don't fill it out, they don't wanna be known as a free and reduced lunch kit. But you can do things to positively influence them for filling it out, because it generally helps the entire district. So we encourage parents to apply, we're gonna look at methods that the district can help with that. So we don't wanna go below that 55%, literally, we're just too close right now.

[2603] Ray Rodriguez: So that's an area at the secondary level. Because we've really, that's both the junior high and high school, they have programs to make it generic. But that's always an area that we need to communicate more, especially to the second language parents. It's meant to be positive, not a negative.

[2633] SPEAKER_26: Yeah, you're not allowed ever to identify the student who's under there. So we've got to make sure none of that's happening.

[2640] Nancy Thomas: I'm kind of wondering if this huge job we had this year seems to have been caused in great part by by the cost of living and families moving out of the area because they just can't afford to live here. At least, that's what I read in newspaper articles and stuff. If that were to continue next year, I worry that, and a lot, we had more students leaving Graham, I think, and Schilling, I don't know about Schilling, which are schools that have a lot of our low-income students. So I worry if we lose another batch of students because their families are moving out of the area, that they will definitely impact that unduplicated pupil count. And I bet we could even look at this year's number of students that didn't return and find out what the percentages of the ones that left versus coming in that were low income or would add to the unduplicated count. It means, I think, that The average family in Newark, especially with all the new homes coming in that are very expensive, the median income is probably going to continue to rise. And so we just probably have to plan for losing that. concentration.

[2724] SPEAKER_26: It is very possible. It's the economy in the Bay Area. It's high cost. And you know, in the district I lived in, we were not ever getting concentration funds, but you want the kids in the district that need to be there, you know, and you need to welcome all of them. Right now, one of the things that's happening, it is happening in most of the Bay Area because they're all high cost. I mean, over in the Tri-Valley where I live, You know, Livermore, Pleasanton, Dublin, all getting high cost. You're getting it over here because you're close to Silicon Valley. So all of us are getting to be more suburban. Yes, suburban? Yes. So right now, LCAP plans could be negatively affected. They'll lose the money out of the LCAP plan. So we just need to encourage parents to apply for free and reduced. It's just putting it online, making sure they fill it out.

[2776] Elisa Martinez: Superintendent, I'm sorry. Who owns dissecting this? Because, I mean, I think, I mean, we do have a lot of those cost pressures. But, I mean, if you look at, you know, generally speaking, our community, you know, how much of it is purely because we are not touching enough of our families to encourage them to do this versus, yes, I can see where, you know, we have this exodus that's affecting us, but I have to believe that there's just a lot of untapped, you know, families. So.

[2815] SPEAKER_36: improving registration and there's a lot of rules around how you collect these forms and there's a certain way that you collect them during the registration process and encourage parents and invite them to apply but you can't force it so that's one piece I think the other piece of it and that could be better and I think that's what we're working on to try to launch an online registration make it more easy for people to register that should help improve and stabilize that number But on the other side, we are seeing the average median income of our students, of our families, is starting to kind of ratchet up a little bit. And many people that leave, in fact, I heard of one specific area today where it's a big housing or apartment complex that have been notified that they'll be moving out because the owner sold the property. So there's going to be some changes. So I think that both are happening at the same time. person moving in, and we've got to do a better job of collecting those forms. So both those factors are ones that, the control of the forms is something we can't do better at. The faculty who moves in is kind of out of our control.

[2890] SPEAKER_26: And most districts are experiencing this because the same problem across the Bay Area, you know, getting the enrollment up in these particular areas.

[2898] SPEAKER_32: Can we, sorry, can we, Superintendent, do something maybe in our, that would help? I don't want to say market it, because I don't think it's the correct word, but explain it within the form registration process. Explain it better to the parents, because what I'm thinking now with online registration, though it will make it easier, the process itself, it might skip out on the explanation and the marketing aspect of, hey, parents, if you guys have questions, look, this is how this is really going to benefit you.

[2924] SPEAKER_36: I think part of it is communicating how it benefits, could benefit the student, And I think some of that, too, is it's a large government form, and it's not fun to fill out. And we can't change the form, and we have no influence on how the form is crafted. So yeah, we have, and I think part of it's just part of the communication plan.

[2949] SPEAKER_21: I think more so than the marketing piece of it. And is the online registration process binding more, or just in the lettering? It's in both languages.

[2962] SPEAKER_36: And we have more than two languages.

[2966] SPEAKER_25: Yeah, at this point, it's only English-Spanish. The free and reduced price applications come out actually in July. So they come out after the fact. So the government's kind of not our friend in that sense. But that's online. And so we're looking for a plan to do that. There are some regulations that the superintendent said. So for example, not everyone can have access to those. So we're trying to support our principals to really roll out and encourage more families The good news is that if one application can include all of the students, so we're trying to encourage our elementary parents to include the high school students and include the secondary kids on the same app.

[3005] SPEAKER_32: Sorry, I have a question. Since it will roll out later on, are the students going to get a physical application?

[3016] SPEAKER_25: No, they won't have a physical application, but there will be components So for example, we'll still have kindergarten roundups. So some elementary schools still do come in to see me because we still need to look at, for example, a birth certificate. We still have to verify some aspects. So we'll be able to catch families there for the free and reduced price application.

[3041] SPEAKER_36: I think this might be a good point. I was going to recommend we take a 10-minute break. We did bring in some food. It's in the board library for the board. If you guys would like to grab something, and then we can resume in ten minutes and continue. I know there's a lot to cover, but I also know that many of you have a full day for it.

[3060] Ray Rodriguez: So we do ask that that's okay with the board.

[3086] SPEAKER_29: you

No minutes available.