Regular Meeting

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[2] Ray Rodriguez: public comment. We're back from closed session. I got public comment on my mind. During closed session, we, oh, wait a minute. Let's do the pledge first. Char, do you have the young man or young lady that likes to? Young lady. Young man? Could you introduce him for us before he does the pledge?

[40] SPEAKER_40: I think he's going to be able to introduce himself.

[42] Ray Rodriguez: Oh, he is? All right.

[45] SPEAKER_07: My name's Jacob, and I'm in second grade.

[48] Ray Rodriguez: I love second grade.

[51] SPEAKER_40: You want to lead us in the pledge?

[58] SPEAKER_07: Please stand. 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.

[94] Ray Rodriguez: So since you did so well in the Pledge of Allegiance, you have to come to every meeting now and lead us in the pledge.

[105] SPEAKER_26: I don't know if you like that.

[110] Ray Rodriguez: I don't think you like that. No, no, that didn't go over too well. So just got back from closed session, and we discussed the public employee appointment. employment or discipline or dismissal, and conference with labor negotiator. We talked about NTA and CSCA. Conference with legal counsel regarding anticipated litigation. We didn't have anything there. Conference with legal counsel regarding existing litigation. We had an update. And we had a public employee performance evaluation, which we have every year with our superintendent. So now we go to the approval of the agenda. What is the pleasure of the board or the administration? Do you want to change anything? I have one. OK. Could we move public comment, if you don't mind, superintendent, before your report? OK. The reason is my sister's here. just retired from Miami Dade and Broward Community College after 35 years. And she's visiting. And she just flew from Orlando, which takes six hours. And you're going against the wind, so it's kind of a crazy flight. And so is that OK? And then she can share, unless the board allows me to do it right now. And are you OK? Cause she's tired and she wants to go home and lay down. Can you come up here? Um, miss Rodriguez Martinez. Lucy moved to Miami from the Bronx about what? 40 years ago, I think.

[234] SPEAKER_37: And, um, 45 years.

[237] Ray Rodriguez: You could tell us, tell us, tell us a little bit.

[239] SPEAKER_37: Well, good evening. Um, it's a pleasure to be here. I'm a little tired. Only because of the times change, I have to adapt to it. And also, the weather. I'm from Florida, so I believe my blood has thinned out. And I'm not used to the weather here, but I love it. I took a tour today of San Francisco. It was just beautiful. You guys are really blessed. This is a beautiful state. Florida is beautiful also. California, I was just really amazed at how beautiful it is and it's a pleasure to be here. A little bit about myself is I worked in the academia for about, I would say, 35 years. 25 years I worked for Miami Dade College and then 10 years at Broward College. I've always loved education. And that's a value that my brother Ray and I and my other siblings, we received from our parents. Our parents, you know, taught us the importance of education. And that's a legacy that they left for us. And in that, we also with our family, we kind of passed the torch down for our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. and how important education is. So I love education. I substituted. I was a teacher at the college level. I was a counselor, advisor, and I love my students. So wherever you go, whatever state you go and live in, education is very valuable because we have to teach our young ones. the importance of education because they're going to be our future leaders. So it's really very important to take time and teach them those values because they in turn are going to pass it on. And as we get older, of course, and that's a part of life, we can see them growing up and just be amazed at how much these children are learning. I look at You know, when my grandchildren, I have great-grandchildren, and it's just incredible what they're learning with science. And it's just, it touches my heart. It really does how they're learning, and they're eager to learn a lot about just life, you know, in itself. And I'm sorry I'm giving you my back.

[402] Ray Rodriguez: I forgot to tell you, I only have three minutes.

[405] SPEAKER_37: But thank you very much for letting me be here. and be here with my brother. He's a great person, and he's a great leader. For me, he is, and I'm sure that he's doing his best to make the best of the board meeting here and work with everyone. But thank you very much, and it's been a pleasure. OK? Thank you, Lucy.

[434] SPEAKER_06: May we ask questions about your early childhood? Yeah, sure. Just kidding.

[437] Ray Rodriguez: Just kidding. On a horse, right? Uh, my, my sister after age 50 got her degree, uh, her bachelor's and then, and then she also got her master's all after. So that's, that's great. That's like right there that we can, no matter how we are. So the people that were telling her what to do at Miami Dade, all of a sudden she had a master's and she got to reverse that a little bit. Right. So thank you, Lucy, for being here, for coming to be with us. I, you know, yeah, you can go if you want. You don't have to stay. Whatever you want. You can go home and go to bed.

[471] SPEAKER_06: Gracias. [Translated] Thank you. [End] [Translated] Thank you. [Translated] Thank you. [End] [End]

[474] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah. Florida time is so at 10 o'clock or 1030. Thank you. My father was here about 15 years ago and he gave a speech to the teachers that were here and, uh, and he retired teacher and it just, you know, everybody was in tears and he just passed away a few years ago and He was our role model that taught us that we need to go to school and get our education, make sure our kids are educated. OK, with that, thank you for allowing me, board. We go to the approval of the agenda. So I guess we'll just leave it the way it is. Is that OK? Student report, superintendent.

[525] Nancy Thomas: Oh, let's vote. I move that we approve the agenda.

[530] Ray Rodriguez: I'll second it. Let me open for voting. OK, motion passes six ayes. Thank you. I was going to start crying and stuff, but I won't. OK. It's OK. Superintendent, student report.

[553] SPEAKER_06: Yes, we'll start with representatives from Newark Junior High. Is anyone here from Newark Junior High? Please step to the podium. Tell us your first name and grade before you start, please.

[565] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Thank you for being here.

[570] SPEAKER_23: Good evening. I'm Vanessa, an eighth grader at Junior High School, the vice president. Recently, we finished Pennies for Patients, and we have raised so much money, we're still adding it up. Plus, we had No One Eats Alone Day. We brought kids and let them talk and start new relationships and welcome an environment. And, in support of Black History Month, a leadership student recited Martin Luther King Jr. 's famous I Have a Dream speech. Right now, we are sending Alexandra Castaneda to GLB's California State Competition. And for Valentine's Day, we pass out grams and raise about $1,000. Coming up, we have our Spring Fling Dance and a few leadership students attending a workshop. In workshop, we are constructing ideas to our peers and adults about our school and making a better place. Thank you. Thank you.

[624] Ray Rodriguez: Are you looking because you want to ask if we have any questions? No, you did great.

[628] SPEAKER_36: Thank you.

[631] SPEAKER_06: Nice job. Any representative from McGregor campus? So I guess it goes to you, Cesar, if you have a floor. Hi Cesar, how are you?

[642] SPEAKER_08: I'm good, how are you? Good. So Newark Memorial is in the middle of our multicultural week right now. Our HATS assembly is tomorrow morning at 11.30. The board and the public are welcome to attend. Ballet, Folklorico, K-pop, BSU, Tahitian, Drama, Indo-American, FSU, and Mecha will be performing. The robotics and rocketry clubs have been working with the elementary schools in recent weeks. They are working on programs to work with the elementary schools. The rocketry is currently at Lincoln Science Night right now. They're launching small model rockets. Robotics is also working on the first Lego League. We're starting up teams at the elementary schools, so that should be good. The Newark Memorial Track and Field Team will have their first home meet at Kennedy next Wednesday at 345. Again, all are invited. Seniors are starting to get college decisions. So I have a couple names here. Kat Ko was admitted to Cal Poly SLO. Joaquin Cordova was admitted to SF State. Damion Bradley, SF State. Abigail Hades, San Jose State. Ryan Coy, Universal Technical Institute. Chance Hefter, Humboldt State. Asheville, Chand, Long Beach, San Jose, Sacramento, and San Diego State. And ASB is starting to look into prom venues for next year. We're starting that process. Any questions?

[732] SPEAKER_06: I just want you to be closer to the mic. Oh, sorry.

[735] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Can you share that with the superintendent so he can put it in the Friday update for us? Yeah. Thank you. And then the HATS is tomorrow at 11.30? 11.30 in the event center, yes. That is, that whole HATS assembly is.

[751] SPEAKER_08: Yeah, it's always a good, always a good assembly. Probably the most popular one out of the year. Right.

[758] Ray Rodriguez: We good? Thank you. Spotlight. Associate Superintendent Salinas.

[770] SPEAKER_09: Good evening. It's my pleasure to introduce Principal Ditto. She's going to present all the wonderful things happening at Birch Grove Primary. And I also see a lot of supporters in the audience, but I'll leave that up to her.

[785] SPEAKER_40: Thank you, Mr. President, cabinet, and our esteemed board. I am supported today by many people. We have teaching staff, parent, student, a BGI sibling, because we are sister schools, and our amazing office manager as well. So I have a lot of support tonight. And our beautiful wall on the back full of student work. The creativity just astounded me. So please take a moment to look. Under Dr. Martin Luther King's suit jacket, you'll see some writing samples, as well as in President Lincoln's top hat. So you have to open his top hat. Art, science, math, it's all in there and it's gorgeous.

[832] SPEAKER_06: You left one person out that you should have introduced.

[836] SPEAKER_40: My husband is here.

[838] Ray Rodriguez: Alright. Where is he?

[840] SPEAKER_40: He surprised me. I didn't know he was coming on to the side of the bay today.

[844] SPEAKER_06: Alright, that's all.

[846] SPEAKER_40: I took him to dinner. Nice. So I'm here to present Birch Grove Primary School. Our mission at Birch Grove Do I have to turn this on? There we go. Is that we are working to provide a safe, inspiring, and innovative learning community for our TK to second grade students. A little bit about our numbers this year. As of Monday, we are back up to 416 students. We've had a few students leave the area, move out of state, or out of the Bay Area. But we've also had new students coming in to fill those seats. We started the year at 420, so we've only had an atrophy so far of about four students. That breaks down to one very, very full TK class. And a big shout out to Mrs. Leipelt, who's in the audience. Who is down from 29 TKs to 28. And we overflowed two TK students to other schools because our enrollment was so high. And those students have opted to stay at the school where they were established this year. We have five kindergarten classes, four first grade, a first second combination class, and five second grade classes. I would like to update you a little bit because online enrollment is open. We have a complete registration for another 10 TKs and 27 kinders. We have registrations in process of new students that just need to provide their original documents of another 19 TK students and 30 kinder students, bringing us to a new enrollment total of 29 TK and 57 K. Some of our little bulldog programs, not little programs, but little bulldogs because we let our BGI sister school be the bigger bulldogs. We have afterschool enrichment with young Rembrandts. Chess Scholars and Let's Build It, which is an engineering program geared to first and second grade. And then our during school enrichment, we have music for minors too. We're getting ready for our spring musical for first grade and second grade coming up. We are ramping up our STEAM weeks. We have one coming up the week of March 18th. Our maker space is in progress. Our teachers went shopping in there on Friday for their STEAM week materials. So now they're starting to see some of the things that are available. And our science resource teacher has some spring science projects in the making to raise chickens in partnership with Schilling School, building garden towers on the backside of our campus, and solar ovens. I'm personally hoping they bake cookies, but I haven't been told what they're baking. I do want to share a little bit of our dashboard data. We don't currently have students that are assessed. So our academic data is actually linked directly to BGI's third graders, because those are our students that matriculated. And you can see from what's pulled for our school on the dashboard, we're in the green with some significant increases. But again, that's based on the third graders. So last year's third graders, when they took the assessment, that's reflected on BGP's data. And conditions and climate, we are in the green for suspensions as well. Our suspension rate is at 1.2%, which is a decline of just over 1%. And for academic engagement, when we looked at our chronic absenteeism, we are identified for additional target support for improvement, and that's specifically for our subgroup of English learners. So a couple things that I've already started doing is tracking the students that are considered chronically absent right now from TK through second grade. With our TK and some of our kindergarten students, they aren't tracked for truancy because they're not yet six, but we've been pulling the data anyway. And so since day 97, I started pulling the data, and I've already held individual parent conferences for our target subgroup. Some of those are ongoing, and as students add to the list, then my list changes. I've had already one student drop off since the 97th day, so that's good. He's back below 10%. Some of the plans that we've created, I've determined that there's a few students that have been chronically ill, so we're creating 504 plans to get them here more often. There is an academic plan for a student who left for an international family emergency and was gone so long that they missed quite a chunk of time. We gave them makeup work. They were able to complete that and we believe she's back on track academically. And then we go to our PLC work. Ms. Jorgens is here and Ms. Nguyen are here. They just went to a great PD. I've heard them raving. And I actually got this picture while they were still there. That's how excited they were for guided math game plan. So they're looking at some different ways of bringing more fun, more enjoyment in their planning as well as in the student learning. We've also been doing the PLC work that I know you've been hearing a lot about from all the other schools. And we had some outcomes from cycle one, two, and three. We just finished cycle three where we were working in partnership quite heavily with BGI on vertical articulation. And we spent a lot of our joint meetings really working on what does each grade level need to know for the students to be prepared for the basic skills of the next grade level. We are a Tier 1 PBIS school. We are continuing with Tier 1. We are teaching expectations in every setting. We're celebrating student successes with our Bulldog Bucks. And we've recently started tracking our behavior with tools and forms so that we're keeping everybody abreast. And we should have data to be able to help us and remind our students to be safe, be responsible, and be respectful. And I mentioned that our STEAM week is coming up for trimester two. It's scheduled for March 18th to 26th. And you are invited. Some highlights that I've already seen in planning. There are spaghetti towers. There is an egg drop parachute lesson. And March winds helicopters. So if you're interested, let us know and we'll invite you in when the kids are working on those projects. Maybe you can build one too. Thank you so much. And are there any questions?

[1281] Ray Rodriguez: First, I want to thank you for coming and for your report. Could you kind of explain the back, the board in the back for us and also introduce or have everyone stand up that came with you, if you don't mind?

[1300] SPEAKER_40: I would be happy to. BGP family, please stand. We have our office manager, Doreen, who's ready to go home. It's been a long day for her. In the back corner, we have Mrs. Leipelt in TK. We have Mrs. Leon from Kinder, Mrs. Jorgens from Kinder, and Mrs. Nguyen, second grade. We have Mrs. Ciorello. She's a parent, PTC member, an all-around go-to gal. And her kiddos, I totally forgot. Abby, sorry, Abby's not mine. She's a BGI. She's already graduated from me. And Jacob in second grade. Thank you, BGP family.

[1355] Ray Rodriguez: And who's that gentleman over here? What's his name? This guy? Uh-huh.

[1359] SPEAKER_40: That guy. That is my husband, Todd.

[1363] Ray Rodriguez: Great. Thank you for supporting and being a good supporting husband.

[1368] SPEAKER_40: It's true. It's true. It's very important. And our wall, starting in the upper left-hand corner, is kindergarten work. We have some math. We have some cat in the hat, some artwork and writing. Towards the middle, you see first grade, where you have art along with writing. You have some math. The students made their initials using unit cubes. And then you move into second grade, we have science from our science resource teacher, as well as from the homerooms. Miss Nguyen in second grade is the mastermind of the creative Dr. Martin Luther King writing. And President Lincoln, I believe? Yes. And then we have Monard at the end. And then over in the corner behind Mrs. Leipelt, there's some first grade one hour of coding certificates.

[1422] Ray Rodriguez: All right. Thank you. Member Thomas.

[1425] Nancy Thomas: Yeah congratulations by the way on the test scores for your third graders from last year.

[1432] SPEAKER_40: I can't take any credit. Well our amazing second grade teachers and they're building the foundational skills they did that.

[1444] Nancy Thomas: Could you say a few words, you know, we made this huge investment in Big Ideas in Math. Can you say a few words about how it's being received and any feedback that you can give to the board on it?

[1455] SPEAKER_40: I'd be happy to. So we spent a lot of our first cycle really with the materials and unpacking them in our PLCs, figuring out what the learning targets were, how to maneuver around the difference in language between Engage Newark and Big Ideas Math. And our teachers, now that they're getting a little bit more comfortable, it's going to take a while. We know that. But as they're getting more comfortable, I think they're finding success in it. They do like that the students have their own workbooks, that they're consumable and in color. The one's lucky enough to have parent volunteers come to deconstruct them so they can go home in folders. Really appreciate that. And I think we're getting to the point where we can find some success. in the implementation. The parents are seeing regular homework coming home, and the teachers are offering support for that as well to our parents. So far, it's been a successful adoption. We just need some time. Thank you.

[1513] Ray Rodriguez: I had a question. Anyone else would like to? I had a question on absenteeism when Newark comes out. And this is whatever school comes up for the spotlight, That's a big issue for us right now. And you have different subgroups. So what are your two highest subgroups that are the most, you know, as far as the absenteeism or chronic?

[1543] SPEAKER_40: You know, I actually haven't pulled that. I was more concerned about taking this first glance at it and looking at what I could do to support the students that need it the most because the district data shows that Our kindergarten and TK students are the highest, some of the highest population of chronic absenteeism. And we know our four and five-year-olds can't get themselves to school. That's been my target right now is to look at the kids that need to get to school more regularly to try to uncover those root causes of why. And then what can we as a school do to support our families in getting their kids to school.

[1579] Ray Rodriguez: Because that does come up before with us when we had our different, you know, workshops. And the Latino or the English learners population seems to be one that it's important to, and I'm sure you have a plan, to meet with them. And I think communication is the key there so that they understand that it's very important for them to have their children there. And sometimes if they're going to be gone a while, to do the five-day packets and make sure that they fill them out and bring them in?

[1618] SPEAKER_40: So I do want to make sure, especially for next year, to publicize and to share with our families the independent study process. And if they're planning a trip, a few of our families have had family emergencies where they've had to leave the country, return to India, Pakistan, Thailand. So there were some different things that popped up that weren't planned. and asking a teacher to put together 15 days worth of work in one day is very difficult. Yeah, it's hard to do. But I have been meeting with those families. I will say that at BGP, it's not all of our Latino students that are EL, so they're not in this subgroup. And it's not all of our EL students that are Latino. So we have a very diverse population. We have many other home languages that we're serving. And I'm seeing a mix of those. I did, when I looked at the data and pulled the students, I at first had the ethnicities, but then realized that doesn't matter right now. But what I do need to know is how many of these are English language learners for our dashboard. But I also need to look at all of our students to say, why aren't they coming to school? And create the plans around that. Because all of our four, five, six, and seven-year-olds need to be in school as much as possible to get those foundational skills. so that we can continue to promote those high-achieving students to BGI.

[1702] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah, your diversity at, you know, I keep thinking of BGI. BGP. It's just so different sometimes than what we have in other schools. Absolutely. And I appreciate everything you do. And I know it's your first year. And so far, we've heard so many good things about what you're doing over there. It's all good. Are you sure? At Safeway, every time we go to Safeway, we're here. Good to know. Anybody else? Thank you so much.

[1737] SPEAKER_40: Thank you. Can I send my teachers home? Can I get them back to work for a minute?

[1749] Ray Rodriguez: Superintendent. Thank you. Oh, excuse me, Superintendent. we're not going to be able to do that. We're not going to be able to do the superintendent report right. We have someone wants to speak on that's okay, it's parks.

[1772] Cindy Parks: Good evening. The reason I asked to speak on this is the latest letter the and the stakeholder engagement meetings. I can say that as someone who comes to these meetings and had heard that these meetings were taking place, I did try to find out from people like when these meetings were happening. And I can't even remember, I don't remember who I even asked. I couldn't find when these were happening. And so when I pulled this, I went back to the calendar that's online, on web, on web And none of these were listed on the calendar. So I think that if you do want to engage your community, it can't be just the parents of the students. Because it is more multifaceted than just that group. It needs to be to everybody. We all are stakeholders, not just the parents. So in order to get the information out to a broader audience, I would just ask that there be more engagement going on with the rest of the community. Thank you.

[1842] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you.

[1845] SPEAKER_06: Okay, Superintendent. Thank you, President Rodriguez, members of the board, ladies and gentlemen. A few updates. Thank you for pointing that out. We definitely need to correct that and increase our communication relative to when those are and when people can come and have input. Looks like we are currently on track with our timeline as far as the number of engagement opportunities we've created per our contract. And it was all attached to the agenda. And I think that what I'm hearing is just of the participants and visiting some of these events, a couple of highlights I want to point to. One is I'm really glad to see some of our students that started with this process at the high school are still involved. And they've added a really nice dynamic to the conversation of that group that's working on facility master planning and just really looking at how they utilize space. Today I was at the junior high where they're doing another in their series of talking with their group that's working through that. And just some excitement within the participants that are attending those. They're on track, they will be doing a report as we start moving forward. We'll anticipate doing an update to the board in more detail. But generally we're on track and on pace with what the board expected. So we'll have a full report coming soon. That was the first information item. Second one, just a brief update on Latinx Summit that occurred. We had anticipated about 80 people to attend and fortunately we've exceeded that. We had about 165 people in attendance. The meeting was run entirely in Spanish. Thank you to the board members that attended. I think that that really went a long way with the community. And I think that it's really important that they see that we're engaged in listening. I think that I'd like to also thank the parent partners and promotoras for their role in helping facilitate, plan, and execute a lot of it. I'd like to thank Mary Sayers for helping us get donations of food and coffee for people attending. I'd like to thank Ohlone College for the space that they provided to us. I'd like to thank Vivian Larson. And I also would like to thank Eileen McDonald, who stopped by from Alameda County Office of Education. So we have just now got the first version of the raw data back. We're processing it now. We'll have a report to share publicly here in probably the next couple of weeks and then start planning some next steps with the community group of our parent leaders that are there. So they're excited and I think that what I heard a lot from the community and just in the initial look at the data from the table work was just a lot of interest in helping make things better. And the exercise that we did was around, OK, what's your concern? And also, what is a potential solution? So it's not just a place to come to just have a meeting that's not going to give you solutions. And I think that really pleased in how engaged our parents and community were. And to give you an example, there was a few people I met at the beginning that said, well, I can't really stay for the full time. And almost every person that told me that ended up staying the full time. So that was really powerful. More to come on that, but I wanted to just thank those people publicly and we'll be providing a report very soon as that group processes it. I also, following up based on a request from board, we have scheduled next steps with Cadango. Associate Superintendent Salinas and I have scheduled a time to meet with them. in looking at what's next and how we can expand Cadango in our district. We also initiated and scheduled our first in a group of meetings that will start launching secondary grading and graduation requirements committees. So we'll be launching that on March 20th and start looking at how we're going to approach that as a system. I did send you all some resources in email yesterday relative to best practice on school consolidation and closure. As we look at all the options, I'm not saying that's what we're doing. It's not a recommendation. But as many board members say, we've got to look at all options, weigh all the factors, and then hopefully come to a conclusion when we feel we're ready. But that is in there. We also recently have now scheduled a meeting, which I'm very excited about, with Notre Dame denominator University, who is one of the few areas, one of the few schools in the Bay Area that has special ed credentialing, to talk about how we could work with them to establish a special ed teacher pipeline. So that's really exciting. We're scheduling that for March 12th. Again, Associate Superintendent Salinas and I will be meeting with them to hopefully begin this partnership with the university to have our own pipeline of SPED employees, which is really critical. I believe that's everything at this time. More later in my final comments, but I just wanted to give you those updates and follow up to your request as board. So, thank you. Unless there's questions.

[2190] Ray Rodriguez: Member Martinez.

[2194] Elisa Martinez: I do have a question about the facilities master plan or the, is it ADIS, the session. So, I participated as a parent. some months ago. I don't have clear in my mind what is the expected output of that. And the reason I say that is the approach I will call a bit esoteric in terms of how the ideas were being gathered. So I'm wondering, not just us as a board, the community, what is that output we would expect to see?

[2231] SPEAKER_06: I think part of what the direction from the initial RFP we put out was just to try to identify is there areas of agreement on where we should move towards as a district and I think that will be more evident when we get to the final conclusion and they've met with all elementaries and looking at how that looks across the scale at elementary, junior and high school. But the expected outcome really was around what we had asked them to do was engage the community, try to find out where there's areas of agreement Is there specific programming or, not programming, but making sure that the use of space was aligned with our educational programming? And what I'm hearing thus far is just very preliminary data is a lot of interest in deepening and expanding some of the work we've done with STEM and STEAM and Makerspace. That's one pattern that I've seen emerge. Outside of that, for space, I haven't seen the rest of the data. I think when we bring them in to do a report or an update, I think that's a, I would hold it, hold that measure against what we had given them in the original objectives and see how they did. Of the people who've been participating, the feedback's been pretty positive. So I don't think we have enough of a sample yet to say where did we agree. But that was the original kind of broad brush of the outcomes we were looking for. And I'd have to pull up the actual RFP to tell you what more detail was. I probably should have attached that. So we can attach that as a supplemental, so that not only the board, but the audience can also see what that was, if you wouldn't mind, Shar, the original RFP. OK?

[2331] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. OK. Anyone else? Thank you, Superintendent, for your report. We now go to employee organizations. Anyone from CSCA? Or NTA? See, you jumped up right away, and I was going to call CSCA first. Thank you. I like the hat again. It looks great.

[2359] SPEAKER_15: Good evening, President Rodriguez. It was nice to meet your sister a little bit and hear from her. So there's hope for you after all.

[2369] Ray Rodriguez: Yes, a little bit. Thank you. There was eight of us, so we.

[2377] SPEAKER_15: So I left my stuff. Anyway, I have some ramblings here. So can you bear with me, please, for just a minute? So first of all, I'd like to say that we have some amazing teachers here. And I don't know how Allie Castaneda got through not only the locals, but the regionals. And now she's going to state. I wonder who her sixth grade teacher was.

[2399] SPEAKER_15: I wonder. Number two, I normally don't speak to audiences less than 30. There's more people up here than there are back here. It's not the first time. Once I was the only person back here. Well, there's people on TV, in case you're wondering. There's 10 on YouTube. Oh. And that might have counted me when I checked. That's an uptick. So it might be nine.

[2423] SPEAKER_26: Oh my goodness.

[2424] SPEAKER_15: Yeah. But I do know that there's about 297 teachers that will probably watch it later. They're probably grading papers right now, or maybe sleeping or doing some other activities. So, number three, I guess I'm a number three, ATHIS. So, I participated tonight in the third session at the junior high and found it worthwhile, but also, you said esoteric, I say pie in the sky. a little bit and, you know, you have to dream big to get there. And so, it's good to know the possibilities. Now, there were three teachers, three parents and maybe, let's see, one, two, three, four, five, six, six students and one administrator there for a site our size. And that was our third session. And our second session, I don't know that anybody attended other than our administrator and the ADIS folks. So we do have to figure out how to get more people there and how to entice them and get us there. And my schedule's not nearly as busy as everybody else's, but I taught this morning. I spent an hour and a half with HR. And then I went an hour and a half with ADIS. Then I went and grabbed my dinner, lunch, and breakfast And then I came here. So just a thought. Love the vision. Love the vision though.

[2528] Ray Rodriguez: Am I out of time? No, no, no. You're never out of time. Go ahead. Go ahead. You could talk about the breakfast if you want.

[2534] SPEAKER_15: So I'm going to talk about two breakfasts. Breakfasts. Is that two breakfasts? There we go. Yeah. Two breakfasts. So it was quite the honor to share breakfast with four of the board members. We miss you, President Rodriguez, but I ate your food for you. Thank you. So the four other board members were able to join me and a few of my fellow NTA members. And it was a pretty big crowd that represented many of the districts from Alameda and Contra Costa County. And so it was nice to see so many people there. And then this Wednesday, I guess that was yesterday. Wow, it just, yeah. Yesterday I had breakfast with Superintendent Sanchez and Member Thomas and Sue Estes and a few other people from the Alameda County Office of Education and other superintendents and board members and union representatives throughout Alameda County as we began planning for a day of action in what I believe is going to be April 3rd, where we're going to try to get folks to go to Sacramento and plead the case for education. Education is in a pretty bad place right now across the nation. And in California, it's despicable that we're such a powerful, as a nation, we'd be number five Yeah, the world economy. And in the United States, we're like 47th in funding for education. And our local elected officials seem to think that we have enough money in education with what they've done recently. And that's a myth at best. At best. OK? All right. Tired. Teachers are tired. Friday night, I went to San Jose, because again, I don't have a life. I went to San Jose for a three-day conference on equity and human rights, sponsored by CTA. And my big focus there was to learn more about restorative justice. And the big message that I took away from there is that many districts have started to adopt or Maybe even think that they fully adopted PBIS. And it seems like we forget that PBIS is Tier 1 and Tier 2 students. Those are the students that, for the most part, are going to do OK whether we do anything or not. Did you get that? They're going to do OK whether we do anything or not. And maybe I'm lost. Why did we focus on those? Why didn't we focus on the most needy? So we've had a pendulum swing. Since when I went to school, lots of things happened when you did things wrong. Luckily, I wasn't one of those kids. But the pendulum has swung. I mean, you could forget to bring a pencil to school, and you could get suspended from school. Now, who knows what you can do to get suspended from school? Because on the dashboard, nobody wants to have numbers on the dashboard for suspensions. OK? Now, that's an important number. We don't want people suspended from school. But we've got to provide the supports for those students that would have been suspended from school. Otherwise, they're preventing all those Tier 1 and Tier 2 students from being successful, that would have been successful if we wouldn't do hardly anything for them anyway. And so we have to look at how can we increase funding for the issues that are most important, special ed, counseling, health services, mental health services. The things that I worried about when I was in junior high are not the same things that kids are worrying about today. They're not. And they do not know how to cope. They cannot cope. The requirements that are placed on the teachers to fulfill the requirement of doing three interventions, and when you're sitting at a table with six of your colleagues, that sounds wonderful. But the reality is that takes hours, hours of time that teachers don't have. And if you actually want the teachers to do it, then they're going to have to give something else up, because we don't have an infinite number of hours in our day, or infinite number of energy, or our own mental health is at risk. I'm fortunate, and I want everybody to know that I was at a breaking point. And I went to a mental health specialist to get help. Not everybody is ready to do that. And it's often not even a comfortable topic to touch on. But because we're allowing our students to do whatever they want to do without any consequence and without any supports to move them away from that behavior, We're breaking our teachers. I hear it every day. My phone starts ringing. Well, it starts ringing at 730 because I have it off, so it can't ring until 730. But that's when it starts ringing. And when I'm teaching, I'm getting phone calls. I'm getting texts. I'm getting email messages every day about somebody that's in crisis. And that's our 297 teachers. That's our classified support staff. I'm guessing it's administrators, too. I mean, just from collecting some peripheral analysis, it affects us all. It affects us all. And we've got to find solutions. Every year at this time, it's really difficult for me. Later on in the agenda, you're going to see that, you know, My math is probably off, but we're approaching 50 teachers that are either resigning, being released, or retiring this early in the year. Many of those are very qualified and good teachers. Every one of us has to think. God, until June 30th, what am I going to do? And I've confessed today that I'm one of those teachers. And I do it every year. I mean, I think you have to question whether you want to come back and try again one more year. It's not like any other job, because you know you have until June 30th, and then it's over. You've got to tough it out one more year. And this time of year, it gets tough. It gets tough. We've got lots of things that we've got to accomplish. We've got students that need to learn a lot. We've got professional development that we have to go to. We have grades, reports. It's a lot. It's a lot. And I know you guys get it. But I think you forget it as well. And it's easy to think about it for just a minute and then dismiss it. But you can't. We're going to make this a destination district for our students. We have to make it a destination district for our teachers. We're the ones that are going to help you through it. We're the ones that are going to support the kids. But we can't do it alone. And we can't do it by being asked to do more, because we've given it all. Thank you. Thank you very much.

[3066] Ray Rodriguez: So working with and helping our children is more than a job. It's a calling, I think. I've always thought of it like that. And it's something that comes from the heart. So anybody from CSCA here? From NEWMA? You got lucky, Mr. Murray, because since somebody else was there, you just got a chance to get up there for a long time. OK. OK, with that, we go to public comment on non-agenda items. We don't have none. Oh, that was my sister. Do I do? Did you see any? Study session. Yeah, that was my sister.

[3127] Megan McMillan: I can talk if you want.

[3128] Ray Rodriguez: No, no, no, no, no. That was more than talking. That was more of a sermon. No? You see any? Anyone here want to approach the board? on any item that's not on the agenda. Okay, good. Seeing none, we move to O business. Okay, this is an item that I put on the agenda. Member Gutierrez and I are part of the committee that meets with the city, with the city and school liaison. We had our meeting in January, and Member Gutierrez was chosen as our next chairperson. And we have our next meeting in April, right? So, Member Gutierrez, would you, I know you've already given us an update, but can you kind of share your thoughts on the meeting? This is basically, we're going to be talking about the McGregor MOU with the city and the schools.

[3212] SPEAKER_26: Just to give everybody a brief update, I believe, I would say this may be a brief update and just a reminder that it's an ongoing issue that we have been working with the city to try and see if they can help us with some of, specifically the water bill at McGregor, but just help alleviate some of the financial burden. And I believe we, at that meeting, we left off, we gave them our redline contract. They're gonna look over that and they're gonna be letting us know if there's any changes or improvements or whatsoever. So right now, we're We're waiting for them to give us information. And then we can hopefully conclude and finish this issue in April.

[3269] Ray Rodriguez: Excellent. And then I'll be attending the April meeting, and then after that, Owen. But if you want to come to the meeting, you just can't say anything. And I was going to ask a question about those individuals that went to the breakfast, that hopefully you sat, you didn't sit together and violate the program.

[3288] SPEAKER_26: We just didn't talk about issues. So it was all, it worked out.

[3292] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, good. Thank you. So getting back on the partnership we have with the, uh, with the city, um, for the last 30 years, um, the city has always paid us $1. Um, and we've had this, uh, um, this lease, and they take care of maintenance, but the water bill has gotten to an average of about $50,000, I think, superintendent?

[3324] SPEAKER_06: $60,000 this current year? Is that correct, sir?

[3328] Ray Rodriguez: So it's time that we, in my opinion, we get the city to assume this. So we're going to be meeting with the city in April, and then we'll bring it to the board in the May, probably the first May meeting to approve the MOU, okay? And that's all we have on that. Do you have anything else?

[3352] SPEAKER_26: I believe that's it.

[3353] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, great. Thank you. Okay. With that, we'll move to new business, second interim report. Who wants to speak on this one? Mr. Newt, and then Ms. Parks.

[3377] Cary Knoop: Good evening. I looked at the second interim and I think it's rather negative. You know, the board approved a budget that was positive, $166,000 in the positive. In the first interim, projected a loss of 1.2 million. And now we're projecting a loss of 1.8 million. Looking at the difference between the first and the second interim, one of the things I found out was that there's a big shuffling between restricted and unrestricted. And I tried to understand why that is. Was the first interim where the numbers entered incorrectly, or did the second interim, where there's such drastic changes that these changes had to be made. I can understand the angle with special ed, but it seems to me that it's very odd to see this big shift from unrestricted towards restricted. One of the things I don't understand is You know, I think it's so important to do proper cost management, cost control. And, you know, we try to meet the budget. And if you look at little things like traveling conferences, we budget the board to prove the budget for $170,000. Now we're at, I think we're at $330,000 over. Now that's a small budget. But still, if you're willing to cut, FTE positions in certificated, you certainly want to have that same morale in your whole organization. You can't simply say, oh, it's okay, go and travel in conferences that will loosen that up. That's not morally right, in my opinion. Dues of membership, another area where things are up. So I think cost control is very important, especially now because we are making sacrifices. The district is making sacrifices. Teachers are making sacrifices. Now, if you look at the multi-year, it's very easy to make a positive. You just take out as many FTEs as you need in 2021, and you're going to be ending at 3.07%. And you can say, well, we made it. We're positive. But with that, we have two years of deficit spending coming up. That's a negative. Plus, the board has been talking about 13 FTEs. as far as I know, haven't been talking about an additional five, six FTEs in 2021, which is according to this report, if I understand it correctly, included in order to close as a positive. So, you know, I don't see much of a positive in there. So, you know, I'm running out of time, but I really think we need to consider being disqualified. Thank you.

[3568] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Miss Park?

[3579] Cindy Parks: Just a couple of things. First of all, in the narrative, it says that on page 9, it says that the PERS is going up. And so just for your own information, it actually dropped. It went from 20.8 to 20.7. So just a minor little change. You did lose one full point on your STRS. Adult ed. So you, I know when you did the budget in June, there was an $11,000 transfer. The budget, the board wasn't too happy with that since they had specifically said that no money to be transferred to special ed, I mean to adult ed, sorry, adult ed. Sorry, let me step back a minute. So to go along with what Mr. Newp was saying, Your subagreement in your services went up 13% over your June budget. Your operations and housing services, housekeeping services went up 16%. Professional consulting services and operating expenses went up 58%. Your travel and conferences went up 22%. And your dues and memberships went up 53%. You can't balance a budget with such fluctuating objective code costs, OK? to move over to adult ed. Your budget shows that their travel and conferences, you had zero allotted, and yet the projected is $3,300. Your professional consulting, there was only going to be 6,100, and yet now it's going to be 26. I'm sorry, it was 4,100, and now it's going to be 26. You've changed $22,000 in just that one field. You transferred $11,000 to help them manage their budget, And they've already doubled that in one area in their costing. Where are they saving? I guess they're going to save something because what their ending balance is $29,000. Will you get your $11,000 back? Because that's not what happened with the $3 million. You didn't get back what you didn't spend. So again, they're spending way beyond what they're allowed to spend. to go along with what Mr. Newt was saying, you're balancing all of this on the backs of the teachers. You went from 302 at the first interim to 286 projected for next year, and then 2021, you're going down to 208. I'm sorry, you're going from 302 to 286 to 280. And it's just crazy that there's that kind of shift in, and just in one area. You're not looking at just your operating costs. and making the cuts other places. You have your cafeteria fund went from just under $700,000 in the report that's going to be presented to $312,000. And then you're going to ask that department to cough up $260,000 to pay for housekeeping for the custodians. And what are you going to have for her balance? She can't take money from you. They have to operate on their own. You're not looking at cuts across the board. You're balancing it all on one organization.

[3777] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Our Chief Business Official, Mr. Nguyen. Oh, chief business official, Mr. Nguyen.

[3811] SPEAKER_38: Good evening, board members, Superintendent Sanchez. Tonight I'm going to talk about the second interim report. The second interim report is from July 1st of 2018 to January 31st of 2019. It provides you the actual of what occurred from July 1st through January 31st, and also a projection of what our revenue and expenditure is going to be like by June 30th of this year. The interim reports consist of a detailed budget report, as well as the multi-year projections, as well as the cash flow projection. So the status of our district right now is that after compiling the data, analyzing the data, the revenues that we're bringing in from the state, the federal, local revenues, as well as looking at our expenditures, that we will meet our 3% economic of uncertainty reserves. We're monitoring special education because our enrollment in special education has been increasing. And I will show you that in a few minutes. We're also monitoring enrollment, of course, because enrollment has been declining. What we projected did not come to fruition. And I want to thank the board to approving the resolution 2130 in a reduction of $2.2 million. A big shout out to HR, to a negotiating settlement with NTA as well as NEWMA, and a tentative agreement with CSCA. So I mentioned to you about a month and a half ago regarding the governor's proposed budget. It's kind of like a broken record. But he is going to continue with LCF funding. However, the one-time discretionary fund is no longer going to be available at this point. These are all proposed from the governor. He's going to reduce CalSTRS contribution by 1 percentage point. And I'm going to show you that graph. And I believe you've seen that graph before as well. His philosophy is that early prevention will lead to reduction in special education services down the road. However, he's going to focus on mainly on low-income families. So school districts will not get funded for this. organizations such as Head Starts and the regional centers will be funded. So this is our COLA right here at the LCFF. The COLA is going to go from 2.57 to 3.46. This is the base right now that school districts nationwide is going to be receiving. He's going to add $258 to K-3 based on student to teacher ratio. as well as grades 4 through 6, 262. So we're getting more money in 19-20. This is what projected. This is what proposed by the governor, the new governor, that is. So here's a COLA percentage comparison. It's going to increase by 0.89% from 19-20 to from 2018-19 to 2019-20. I believe My assumption, I think basically what happened occurred with LA Unified School District strike as well as Oakland Unified School District strike. I would hope and believe that the governor will probably inject more COLA into the outer years, 2021, 2022, as well as 2023. Again, I will show you a chart on the next chart that the governor is injecting $3 billion of non-PROP 98 funds into CalSTRS. He's going to reduce the CalSTRS contribution from 18.3 in 1920 to 17, so that's 1 percentage point down, as well as 20, 21, and then 0.5 in the outer years, 21, 22, and 22, 23. And these are the other, sorry, what does it mean for CalSTRS for the district is that we're going to save about $322,000 by 1 percentage point from 18.3% to 17.1%. The COLA went up to 3.46%, so we'll get about $1.5 million. However, with the reduction in our, with the declining enrollment, All of that, if not more, is going away. So the COLA is going to help the school district that are in declining enrollment. I'm going to show you later on what other school districts are facing. It's just not us, but other school districts as well. So the difference between a 2.57% COLA to a 3.46% COLA, we're getting about $400,000. These are all proposed by the governor. It has to be approved by the state legislator as well. We'll know a little bit more during the May revision. These are the other assumptions, as well as we factor into the multi-year projections, is that the lotteries unrestricted is going to stay at $151 per ADA, and restricted funds will be at $53 per ADA. CalSTRS for 18-19, 16.28%. Then again, the governor went from 18.1% to 17.1%, but then CalPERS is going to go up 2021. CalPERS, on the other hand, is going to continue to increase because CalPERS, police officers, firefighters, cities, and other municipalities are part of CalPERS. So he's not going to change anything on CalPERS. Step and column, so certificate is going to be about 1.67% increase, as well as classified staff, about 0.72. And again, I want to thank the board for allowing us to make the necessary reduction so that we can be positively certified for our interim reports, ensure that our budget is fiscally sound. So here's our enrollment. At our adopted budget, We projected that our enrollment's going to be at 5,914. But in reality, at right now, it's about 5,756. In 19-20, we're projecting 6,028 students. But now we're projecting more conservatively. We're hoping that the enrollment will increase next year, but we're projecting that enrollment will decline. It's similar to also what Davis Demographic is presenting now, that enrollment is going to decrease a little bit. So we're looking at 5,729 students next year.

[4244] Nancy Thomas: What does the 849 mean?

[4248] SPEAKER_38: That what we projected. That's the total. What we projected at adopted budget versus what second interim. So we technically lost potential revenues coming in.

[4261] Nancy Thomas: Right, but I mean, does it make sense to add those three numbers to

[4266] SPEAKER_38: Well, I just want to illustrate, because what we factored in during our budget was $5,000, $6,000, $6,000. But now we have to factor in the revenues that we thought we were going to be receiving. It's not going to come to fruition.

[4280] Nancy Thomas: Right, but we're not going to lose 849 students.

[4282] SPEAKER_38: No, we're not going to lose 849 students by what we presented during our adopted budget. So our daily attendance rate, ADA to enrollment ratio, is at 96%. So here's, you've seen this before, but we projected out for 19-20, 21-22. These are, I'm hoping that after 21-22, or sooner, that our enrollment will begin to flatline or increase marginally.

[4313] Ray Rodriguez: Mr. Nguyen, could you do me a favor and go back to the prior? Sure. That 8-49 just doesn't make sense to me. I'm trying to understand it.

[4323] SPEAKER_38: OK, so.

[4327] Ray Rodriguez: Again. Yeah, because if you look at prior to that, the second interim, and then we're not losing, like member Thomas says, we're not losing that many kids.

[4338] Bowen Zhang: That's what projected accumulated deficit, theoretically.

[4342] Ray Rodriguez: Right. OK. So that's what you're presenting. Right. Right. OK. Got it. Thank you.

[4348] SPEAKER_38: It would have been great if we had that type of enrollment. We projected optimistically during adopted budget. So I'm going to go and discuss some of the inquiries in the public, as well as the variance, the difference between LCFF. All right. So during our adopted budget, we were expected to get about $54,469,000. So now in the second interim, even though our enrollment declined, it's going to be at $54,246,000. That's because the former governor, Brown, decided to inject more into the base funds. So that's why there's a variance of about $223,000. We could have lost a lot more, but the governor decided to add more into the base fund of the local control funding formula. The federal revenue, there were some carryovers from previous years, Title I, Title II, Title III, so that's why our revenue for federal increased, there were some carryovers. The other state revenues, as you can see, the previous governor decided from the one-time discretionary fund, $344 per ADA, he went down to $184 per ADA. So there's a variance of about $877,000. And then the local revenue went up by about $141,000. That's with new grants and donations. So here's a pie chart of a breakdown of our revenue. 82% is from LCFF. That's the bulk of our revenue. Other state revenue is about $5.8 million, which is the one-time discretionary funds, state lotteries, restricted and unrestricted funds, The local revenues, 5%, and federal revenues only 4%. So I want to break down the general fund for the variance as well, explain each and every object codes so I can answer both the community questions. So certificate salaries went down by $1 million. It's because we couldn't fill some of these positions. at early stage as well as now. So we close some of these positions. But then let's go down to object 5000, service and other operating expenses. We have to outsource some of those professional services such as.

[4523] SPEAKER_26: Excuse me. Sorry, point of order. I don't know if you want to address it, but audience, if we could just lower the voice a little bit, we can kind of. Thank you.

[4536] SPEAKER_38: All right, thank you. So we added services, outsourced the services for special education services, such as paraeducators, not paraeducators, but speech pathologists, speech therapists, psychologists. And there was also some carryovers from previous years, from last year of Prop 39 projects, as well as Title I and Title II, like I mentioned to you earlier. And then there's also some new grants that we have to allocate that we're going to spend this year. Then our water went up, as what Mr. Sanchez was mentioning, as well as our utilities went up by $200,000. Then there's also liability insurance. And then in terms of the question about legal fees, we have to address, there were some cases that raised the legal cost that we have to pay out for the opinions of our attorneys. There's also some inquiries regarding Brown Act. So we have to address those as well. That's why it went up. So equipment repairs for facilities. Then the capital outlay, the clean energy project as well. We're working on that. Maintenance and operations are working on that to get some funding. So we want to factor that in as well. Let me see here, what else? That's the Capital Outlay for Clean Energy Act. And classified salary went down by $34,000, but not much of a difference. Employee benefits increased by 60,000. So I'm going to go to the next slide here. So I know some board members were talking about how much we contribute to special education, as well as major maintenance. This is how much we, the actuals for the last few years. In 16-17, we contribute to restricted funds about $8.4 million. It went down in 17-18 because, thank you to Jennifer, she found a new transportation company, Zoom, that lowered our transportation costs down. However, for 18-19, our contribution is going to increase. And on the next slide, I'll explain a little bit more, and maybe Jennifer can chime in if she wants to in terms of special education.

[4698] Nancy Thomas: Could I ask a question about the education, I mean the transportation? We didn't have Zoom last year, and it was 8079. We have Zoom this year, and there was about a $300,000 increase in the first interim.

[4716] SPEAKER_30: Did we save on transportation at all? So we did bring on Zoom this year, and it was supposed to be about a wash in costs if you included Go Green and Orange Cab services. And now it's looking like we're going to save about 10% or so.

[4735] Nancy Thomas: Save 10% over last year? Yes. OK, but what accounted for the $300,000 increase in the first interim for

[4744] SPEAKER_30: I have not seen these numbers yet, so I'm not sure. I'm going to have to look at them in more detail and let you know.

[4749] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, it would be good, I think, to see if we did indeed save 10% over last year.

[4754] SPEAKER_38: Right. Well, then my mistake, then, on what made the specification went down last year. So I will look into that for you. But these are actual numbers. So we did save about $300,000. from 16, 17 to 17, 18. But again, special education is going to increase in 18, 19.

[4779] SPEAKER_06: So we need to reconcile that.

[4782] SPEAKER_38: Right. So I'll have that information for you soon. Thank you. Thank you for clarifying that, addressing that. So here's special education. Our special education Enrollment went from 684 in 16-17 to 756 in 18-19, this current year, so a change of 72. SDC students went from 261 to 274. We can spend anywhere from $10,000 for an SDC student to anywhere up to $100,000, depending on the severity of the student.

[4828] Ray Rodriguez: I had a question, if you don't mind. Years ago, a few years ago, the mental health, as it applies to K-12, was switched from the county over to the school district. So can someone address that, if you don't mind? Go ahead, Jim. Thank you.

[4853] SPEAKER_30: Yes, so the funding actually came to the school districts. And it is restricted monies that we can only use on very specific costs, such as residential placements, mental health. That is directly, you can draw a direct line from emotional disturbance to mental health services.

[4870] Ray Rodriguez: So how are we doing on that? I mean, at first, when they mentioned that was coming over, we thought we were going to be short. Because when the county shifted that over to us, with evening out on that as far as the cost?

[4884] SPEAKER_30: So our costs are always a little bit more than what we get, for sure. Right. But we have kept a bit of a budget for possible residential treatments.

[4893] Ray Rodriguez: OK, got it. Thank you. Thank you much.

[4895] SPEAKER_38: All right, this is our multi-year projection. Our beginning balance is about $6 million. Our revenue is coming in, like I mentioned earlier, $66 million. Our expenditures, we're deficit spending in 18-19 by $1.8 million. Our annual balance is projected to be about $4.2 million. We're going to make the necessary reductions in 19-20, about 1.678. And then we're going to look at our fund balance at the end to increase or reduction in terms of, because there's a class size reduction in the LCAP plan that will be part of the reduction plan. We're placing in 2021, we're looking at replacing a placeholder of $686,000 of reduction. But we don't know yet because there's a lot of unknown variables that's coming into play. And I'll go into that a little bit more. The good news is that we are going to meet our economic uncertainty reserve of 3% in the current and two outer years.

[4967] Nancy Thomas: could I make a comment? Sure. The ending balance of 4.2 million was money that came from fund 17 and usually you know the board passed the resolution saying that money should be put back into fund 17 when it's not needed. It looks like we kept that fund 17 money in the ending balance so we really are deficit spending by taking money out of our reserves. We just took it out in one big chunk and now we're paying it down, it seems to me.

[5001] SPEAKER_38: Right, so there's $2.2 million available in the Special Reserve Fund 17. We can combine both Fund 1 and Fund 17 to improve our reserve if we need to. I believe I have the article in front of me here that It was passed in 2009, I believe, that if economic condition gets worse, that we were able to, the board approved back in 2009, and I don't have that statement in front of me, but we were able to inject, we're not doing it here, because I feel that we made the necessary reductions with the revenues that's coming in, the expenditures that we're able to meet the economic uncertainty.

[5051] Nancy Thomas: But you know, in 2009, we had the Great Recession. And a couple of years ago, we put $4 million from Russian into Fund 17, $4 million. And that was supposed to be only for emergencies. And already, it's been tapped into. So I don't think that money, well, never mind. I don't think it should be available for deficit spending.

[5074] SPEAKER_38: We're not using that right now. But as condition improves. we can look at gradually returning what we borrowed back to special reserve, Fund 17. But the good news here is that if you look at the outer years, our deficit spending is starting to decline. But there's a lot of unknown variables. One of the financial challenges, as you all know, is what we've been meeting for the last several sessions during the budget study sessions is that our enrollment's been declining, that we need to improve our ADA to enrollment ratio, the CalSTRS and CalPERS rate increases, and the ongoing and off-schedule salary increases. And again, the contribution to special education. Here's an interesting chart here. These are what other schools are facing and what they're doing in terms of how to improve their revenues, how to balance their budget, basically. LA Unified School District, Oakland Unified School District has been on the news for quite a while. What LA Unified School District is doing in order to give an ongoing salary increases to their teachers and classified staff is that They're going after a partial tax, or at least they're hoping to go after a partial tax. And they're hoping that the state will increase more additional funding for both state and federal funding. But let's take a look at our county. Alameda County, for the last five years, lost about 119 students. They're projecting that enrollment's going to flatten out. But they still have to cut, reduce $3.2 million. But if you look at this chart overall, what catches everyone's eye is that school districts that are declining enrollment, with the exception of Fremont, they have to make the necessary reduction. Alameda has a parcel tax of $0.33 per square footage. Castro Valley, they lost 103 students, but they still have to reduce. 1.8 million, they're going out for, they're looking at, like us, looking at for partial tax possibility exploring. Dublin, their enrollment's increasing, they're growing, but they also have a partial tax of $96 per parcel. But they're not going to do any reduction because enrollment's increasing, so more revenue for them. Fremont is a different story. They increased. by, in the last five years, 1,300 students. But if you look at 17-18 to 18-19, their enrollment went down by 250 students. That's because they have a charter school in there. So the charter school is taking away their student enrollment. However, they got to reduce $14 million. But they have a $73 parcel tax. Hayward Unified. They didn't divulge their information. They gave us some information, but they couldn't tell us how much they're going to reduce because it's not out in public yet, I guess. They lost about 1,000 students in the last five years. They have three different parcel taxes. And then there's Livermore. They're growing. They're not doing any budget reduction. They have $138 per parcel. New Haven, which is right next door to us, they lost 1,100 students, but they're cutting $4 million out of their expenditures, out of their budget. But they don't have a parcel yet. Newark, as you know, we lost 444 students. And we're exploring a parcel tax, or at least we hope. So here's the big one that we've been looking at, hearing it on the news. Oakland Unified School District, their enrollment is now looking at flatlining. They only lost about 388 students in the last five years. But they have to reduce $21.7 million. On top of that, with an 11% salary increase for the next three years, they have to make additional reduction in their budget in order to meet, in order to give their in order to give their staff the 11% salary increases. And they have three parcel taxes, and I'll show you that in a minute. And then San Lorenzo, well, San Leandro's, their enrollment increased a little bit. They're not making any reduction. They have a $39 parcel tax. San Lorenzo. They lost about 934 students. They have to reduce $6.6 million. And they have a $99 per parcel tax. So here's an example of Oakland Unified School District. From 2008 to 2016, within eight years, they passed three parcel tax. This is just an example where the verbiage on their parcel measures is that to attract and retain highly qualified teachers. What Mr. Merrick was talking about, about our teachers, trying to keep and retain our teachers. So that's Measure G that was done in 2008. And then there's also Measure N and Measure G1. We can Talk about reduce the dropout rate, provide high school students with real world work and learning opportunities. Then also measure G1, provide more educational enrichment programs, opportunities to school district, for the district and charter school students such as music, art, world language. And also pay teachers and educational staff of district schools and charter schools more so that they can better afford to live in Oakland where they work. If you look at this here they exclude some exemptions for senior citizen and low income families. So we're looking at some revenue enhancements which is outsourcing or having the city of Newark pay for the McGregor water bill. the use of facilities, improving our ADA to enrollment ratio, and the possibility of a parcel. What we can do is to do a study where we can do a marketing, not marketing, but what's the word I'm trying to find, is that a survey of our community to see if they would be willing to approve of a parcel tax, do a study. a third party organization, a marketing firm coming in and to do a survey for us.

[5549] SPEAKER_06: So Kai, I think it's important to note on that slide that this is also a recommendation from Ryland Consulting.

[5556] SPEAKER_38: Oh, without a doubt. Ryland Consulting is recommending that we should seek a partial tax and do a survey to see what our community is going to agree if they're going to agree with going with a partial tax. We got time, like what Mr. Rodriguez was saying. We have time, whether we put it on the March ballot or we put it in June or November. But it is just an idea, just a thought only. Here's our other funds here. So we got education. There's the beginning and ending balance, child development, Fund 12, which is child care. $204,000. They're generating. They're self-sufficient. They're expecting to increase their parents paying for child care, an increase of 3% next year, which is nice, more revenue for the child care. For Fund 12, the cafeteria fund. went down from $696,000 anticipating to $312,000. That could be one-time cost, such as purchasing of kitchen appliances, stove, ovens, whatever the case may be. And then there's, again, what we mentioned, the special reserve. It's pretty much staying flat, $2.2 million. And then there's Fund 21, which is the general application fund. It's $9.5 million we're anticipating. And then there's the capital facilities fund, which is the developer fees that we're getting. We're projecting to increase about $3 million in developer fees because of all the new housing that's going on, construction that's going on. We can theoretically use the capital facilities fund to upgrade McGregor. as an example, has a district office if we need to. I spoke with the developer consulting company. They said that we can use developer fees to construct or upgrade the Whiteford area office to a district office if we need to.

[5709] Nancy Thomas: Could I ask a question about the GEO bond? Sure. That $9,000 is just what we're going to spend by the end of the year? No.

[5722] SPEAKER_38: I mean $9 million? No, this is what we'll have at $9 million at the end of the year.

[5727] Nancy Thomas: That's what I mean. But we're going from $12 million to $9 million.

[5730] SPEAKER_38: That's what's projected. $3 million. Things can change. But I believe there were some that the board approved.

[5738] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, the list that we approved. That's correct. But those expenses will come in next. They start in the summer, so they'll come in next year.

[5747] SPEAKER_38: This is what we're projecting that will end by June 30. It can go up. It can go down. But we're projecting it's going to end at $9.5 million.

[5756] Nancy Thomas: 85% we're supposed to spend.

[5760] SPEAKER_36: Right.

[5768] SPEAKER_38: All right. And then we have the Russian funds. Pretty much stays the same. A reduction of, we may be spending about $300,000 out of the Russian funds. There's the bond redemption interest fund, as well as the self-insurance fund. All right. The next step is the May revision. So the governor, like I said, there's a lot of unknowns. We don't know what the governor's going to do. We'll find out a little bit more concrete information from the governor. He may inject one time money considering what has occurred with LA Unified School District as well as Oakland Unified School District, but we don't know yet. And then we're gonna present our budget, our adopted budget in June. And then we'll present the adopted budget to the governing board on June 27th for both the LCAP as well as the adopted budget for approval. Things to consider, like I mentioned. I would feel pretty confident that in 2021, 2022, like how the previous years has been, the governors may inject more into the cost of living adjustments. Because right now, it's at 2.86%, 2.92%. But in the last few years, the quota has increased. So I'm assuming that the quota will continue to increase. He's going to make more adjustments. The governor may return one time discretionary fund again because of what occurred in those two large school districts. And then we're hoping in 2022, 2023 that enrollment will start to flatline or increase marginally, or hopefully sooner. and a possibility if the board wants to seek a study to go after a parcel tax. So with that said, I would like the board to look at the second interim report as a positive certification that will show our bond rating will stay positive and competitive for the city of Newark. That means that our second interim We will meet our financial obligation for the current and two outer years.

[5921] Ray Rodriguez: Any questions? First, I want to thank you, Mr. Nguyen, for your report. And I want to thank the board and our community members who are here. It's not easy to kind of, when you have a long report, to kind of, and we always pride ourselves on being respectful. And to the person that's making the report, because I know you put a lot of work, you and your staff, in the business office. And we appreciate all the work you do to put this together. So with that, do you have any questions? I know we had some as you were making your report. Member Thomas, do you have any questions?

[5964] Nancy Thomas: No, just that it's very disappointing that we are going to continue our deficit spending. It's disappointing that our reductions are based on the teaching staff and then the rest of it is pretty much on one-time CSR or the fund from the cafeteria which, you know, we can't sustain. So that's almost like one-time money. So too much of our ongoing is just in staffing and not in looking at other areas. We went from a balanced budget to $1.8 million. I don't think special ed accounts for all of that. I don't think utilities accounts for all of that. I think that things that we've seen increases in, like dues and fees and software, I don't think they've been sufficiently described that I feel comfortable that they're all areas that we maybe should be looking at, too. And I think the message, too, needs to be that every area should be targeted for savings if we can do it. And I know some of this is covered by grants, so I'm not complaining about any increase in expenditures that's covered by a grant, but I'm just not sure That's just my take on it.

[6065] Ray Rodriguez: Yes. Did you, excuse me, did you want an answer to what you're saying?

[6071] Nancy Thomas: No, I'm just, I'm giving my, I'm not an answer because I think, you know, you put a lot of work into, into it and I'm probably the board member that wants more detail than the other board members. So I'm not asking for more work.

[6087] Ray Rodriguez: Okay. Thank you. Member Martinez.

[6092] Elisa Martinez: I think it's more of a comment than a question. I think the math ties, right, in terms of, you know, the 3%. As I hear the report, and thank you, by the way, I'm sure it was a ton of work, but as I go into each line item and look at the variances by line item, I'm not hearing enough around, hey, this is why. and that we understand how we're going to get it back in line. And so me giving a positive means I'm comfortable that we truly have a plan that's go forward. And I didn't hear anything that helped me understand that. So it's more of a comment kind of helping maybe manage expectations in terms of what you're asking.

[6146] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Thank you.

[6151] Bowen Zhang: Yang. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you for the work. So can you go back to the multi-year projections slide? Yeah, so I want to ask you, where does the $2.2 million budget reduction come into play on this chart?

[6168] SPEAKER_38: Right. So the $1.67 million is the actual reduction of positions or whatever the case may be. And then in our fund balance that we would know more, in the third interim, is that that would be out of the CSR from the LCAL plan. That's about $6 million. That's why I'm saying is that in 2021, we may not have to make a further reduction, but I have to place that in there just in case that we may have to make more reduction if our enrollment continues to decline or if our fund balance does not come to fruition.

[6204] Bowen Zhang: Yes, so the $1.678 million in The next fiscal year plus the $600,000 balance, that add up to the $2.2 million. That's correct.

[6214] SPEAKER_38: Yes.

[6220] Ray Rodriguez: Got it? OK. So now, thank you for your report. I'd like to make a motion that we accept staff recommendation, which is, oh, I'm sorry, Superintendent Sanchez first.

[6237] SPEAKER_06: I just wanted to thank you, President Rodriguez. I just wanted to comment. One of the things that I want to share is that, yes, we're reducing, but we are actually staffing to our enrollment. We're right-sizing the district. And unfortunately, the largest employee group we have is teachers. But I wanted to clarify that because I think some of it is we have made other cuts. We're not where we want to be yet. But I think that this is always a challenge. I just want to remind everyone that we have to right-size the district. And the second thing I want to share is this is not recommendations only from staff. It's also recommendations from Ryland Consulting, which we brought in, that also agree and support the recommendations that are being presented tonight as per the direction of the board. But I do think we need to continue working with Ryland to get that specificity that I think members Thomas and Martinez have mentioned relative to the depth of the plan of how we're going to monitor progress and really have more control over variances. And I think that's legitimate. So I think that's something we take back to Beverly and to Ryland to help us with deepening that. So that's all I wanted to say. OK.

[6313] Bowen Zhang: Thank you, Mr. President. So are we going to vote on the positive certification tonight? Is that what we're going to vote on?

[6319] SPEAKER_38: Yes. We would like to have your vote tonight. OK.

[6325] Bowen Zhang: Okay, and so my question is how would this will affect our bond rating? Because right now our bond rating is A minus minus, right, if I'm correct?

[6336] SPEAKER_38: I believe that is correct. I have to go and look. I can ask our bond advisor what our rate bond rating is at. But if we do have a qualified certification, then all bond rating will go down. And then that means the community we'll have to pay a higher interest rate if we ever seek a parcel tax or a general obligation bond.

[6356] Bowen Zhang: Do you know, roughly, obviously we're going to pay higher interest. Do you know how much higher the interest will be?

[6367] SPEAKER_38: Good question. Mr. Jones, but I don't have that answer. OK.

[6373] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Student board member, Cesar.

[6377] SPEAKER_08: Yes, my question would be, obviously I'm not as experienced with this as the rest of the board, but in a hypothetical situation where we voted to reject the positive approval, what would the implications be for the upcoming years?

[6391] SPEAKER_38: Okay, so the implication is that if we have three consecutive qualified certification, a fiscal services team will come in and that the board will have no jurisdiction. What I'm trying to, we have another, we have a third interim report that we can, that will update you. But if we have three consecutive, so that's what I'm asking is that if we do a positive certification for a second interim, we have an opportunity to go back again in third interim to either do a qualified or a negative, whatever the case may be. But I don't anticipate a negative. I don't anticipate a qualified for third interim. But it'd be beneficial for the district. that we have a positive certification. There are a lot more school districts that are in more dire straits than we are. What, I mean, and like San Lorenzo, that make $6.6 million reduction, but they also have a positive certification. They know they have a game in place of the necessary, what they need to do to reduce their structural deficit.

[6460] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you, Mr. Nguyen. Do you have a, are you good? Member Martinez. Okay, after that, I'm going to call for the question.

[6473] Elisa Martinez: So, no, I just wanted to, because I think that's a very fair question, Cesar. I was quite confused the first time as well. I think, though, just from, you know, our responsibility as a board, I think about the fact that we're leaning into June to try to get you know, a viable and truly reliable budget. So I think that I've heard even the last time around, hey, we really need to keep, certify this positive so we don't get that external eye on us. You know, I really believe we need to drive the discipline and the urgency. So again, that's how I look at it. We all will look at it differently, of course, but I don't think we should shy away from pushing back.

[6529] Ray Rodriguez: Right. And I appreciate that, by the way. One of our board members has left. She had an emergency. Member Gutierrez. So we have four board members now. I need some clarification. When we take a vote on this, it's a student board member vote?

[6547] Nancy Thomas: Symbolically only.

[6549] Ray Rodriguez: Symbolically, okay. Okay, so it could be that we have two and two, and what's the timeline on this? I mean, our next board meeting. March 15th. March what? 15th. Okay, so we have to do it now, right? Yes. Okay, with that, I'd like to make a motion that we accept staff recommendation for the second interim as of January 31st, 2019, with a positive certification. Do we have a second? I second that. OK. OK. Please vote. Member Gutierrez is not here. OK. So we have two yeses and two nos. And we don't have a third board member to break the tie.

[6606] SPEAKER_06: My suggestion would be, and if that's the case, I would recommend we go for qualified. That's my recommendation. I think that to err on the side of caution, it's going to bring the tension of the county, which could be helpful. And I think to the point of Member Martinez, it will raise the urgency. And I think that bringing in the county, the last time we were in the situation, we did that. And it seemed to help move things along in the way we wanted to. So if we do that.

[6641] Ray Rodriguez: My advice is to approve the board's decision. Right. Thank you, Superintendent. Just a suggestion. But remember, Nguyen, again, if we do qualified, how does that affect our bond rating? I mean, would that happen now? Or would it happen if we're also qualified in June?

[6658] SPEAKER_38: Well, it's going to impact us when we go out for a bond next year.

[6665] Ray Rodriguez: Right. But we still have the June one, which is the last one, right? In order to fix it, right? No, in May. In May, right. OK. So the motion failed, so I would need another one. Another motion in a second?

[6689] Bowen Zhang: So that's to certify it.

[6693] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah, well, no Someone would have to make a motion whatever they decide to make motion on and then we'll vote on that one.

[6701] Bowen Zhang: So the superintendent is Superintendent centers is recommending a qualified certification. Well, that's that's his recommendation rather than so I'll make a motion to Accept the superintendent's recommendations. Hopefully we can fix it in May right? We should be qualified, right?

[6718] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah Okay Please vote. It's not working probably because the chair is not here.

[6740] Nancy Thomas: No, it should.

[6742] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah, there you go. OK, motion passes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Nguyen. OK, with that, we move to 13.2, agreement with AT&T for a wide area network. I need a motion and a second.

[6760] Nancy Thomas: I move that we approve this.

[6764] Elisa Martinez: I second.

[6767] Nancy Thomas: Before we vote, I would like to commend the IT department and Mr. Simon in particular for the good work he's done in bringing great information to us and in qualifying the various vendors and the process he used

[6786] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, so we have a motion by Member Thomas. Did you make the motion, Member Thomas?

[6793] Nancy Thomas: Yes. I guess I did.

[6795] Ray Rodriguez: Okay. And Member Martinez seconded it? Seconded it. Okay, great. Like me, I make a motion, I forget I made it. Okay, let's vote. Okay, thank you. Motion passes. 13.3. Ms. Parks.

[6828] SPEAKER_40: Hi.

[6828] Cindy Parks: I just have a question about this one. I didn't understand why if this was a professional development conference, why there would be tax. I would think that it's not a materials. So I was just surprised by the tax. I didn't know if you had noted that or if somebody could explain why it would be taxed. I thought if you just had a consultant, it would be a service and there would be no tax. But I wanted to point it out.

[6861] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Thank you. Anyone else? OK. I need a motion and a second, please.

[6869] Nancy Thomas: I have a request.

[6870] Ray Rodriguez: Did you want to speak on it? Yeah. OK.

[6873] Nancy Thomas: Go ahead. I think in looking over other consultants that we've brought in to do professional development, we've had pretty specific contractor agreements that spell out exactly what we're going to get, when they're going to get paid, and how much. What they're actually, sometimes we have five or eight pages describing what the professional development's going to be. I think this needs a contract that spells out things like the terms, fingerprinting, you know, we have a contract template that we use sometimes like in the case of CORE when they have their contract template which we accepted. I think that this needs to have a more specific contracts so we are covered for any legal issues. Maybe have an attorney look it over or help us to develop it. Because it is $48,000. I know it's covered by a grant, but I think we still need to be following our practice of having agreements. Even if it's like with Bayside, we have an MOU that clearly spells out what the deliverables are. This doesn't spell out the deliverables.

[6965] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you for your comment. Associate Superintendent Salinas, would you like to address it?

[6968] SPEAKER_09: Yes, I can share. We definitely have more specificity to this because they've customized this training for our secondary teachers, where the author of the textbook will be doing coaching with our secondary folks. Unfortunately, this is also a time sensitive. We received the grant so late in the year in trying to get professional development for teachers per their request, and per our request, I would say. But we can certainly look at the contract template. We use this. And I can certainly work with business services to try to look at that. Unfortunately, this is a time sensitive.

[7005] Ray Rodriguez: OK. So we need to get on this. OK. I need a motion and a second. If not, I'll make a motion that we approve staff recommendation on this item. I need a second.

[7017] Elisa Martinez: I'll second.

[7019] Ray Rodriguez: OK. So member Martinez seconds. Please vote. Okay, motion passes with Member Thomas being a no. Would you like to address it again or did you already do that?

[7037] Nancy Thomas: I think I did. I would like to have a contract that has been looked over and it passes legal muster.

[7044] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, thank you. 13.4, resolution number 2131. Resolution to reduce the number of certificated employees due to a reduction of Particular kind of services for 2019-2020 school year. Need a motion and a second. And then we can also discuss it if you want. If not, I'll make the motion to approve staff recommendation on this.

[7072] Nancy Thomas: I'll second it.

[7073] Ray Rodriguez: Member Thomas seconds. OK. Discussion? OK. Please vote.

[7083] SPEAKER_36: OK.

[7088] Nancy Thomas: You didn't clear it from before, I don't think.

[7090] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah, I did. I thought I did. Want me to clear it again?

[7093] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, because I believe yes.

[7095] Ray Rodriguez: OK. There it is. Open for voting. OK, everybody vote. Vote in.

[7104] Elisa Martinez: That's correct.

[7105] Ray Rodriguez: Oh, I'm sorry. I need to speak. OK, open for voting. Everybody vote, please. There you go. OK. Member passes to no. Did you want to address this on why you voted no?

[7129] SPEAKER_08: Yeah, I think. I think. You can't vote on personnel. Point of order.

[7133] Ray Rodriguez: Oh, OK. I'm sorry.

[7135] Nancy Thomas: But can he speak? No? This isn't a personnel issue, is it?

[7140] Ray Rodriguez: It's not a. I didn't think it was personnel, but. It's a reduction.

[7143] SPEAKER_09: It's a reduction? It's a certificate of position.

[7146] Ray Rodriguez: I don't know. I have a problem with hearing what he has to say. Board members?

[7150] SPEAKER_09: We just followed the policy, so that's your discretion.

[7153] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah, because it's already been approved. So go ahead.

[7157] SPEAKER_08: Yeah, I think foreign language is really important, as any subject matter is, any core subject matter. Obviously, to apply to California College, you need to have some sort of foreign language education, at least two years. Personally, I'm a French student. It's my second year in French, so I think that, French is just as important, if not more important, than Spanish. Newark has a pretty high volume of Spanish speakers. So I think retaining French curriculum in Newark would be beneficial. So that's why I voted no. I mean, I think it's a bit nonsensical.

[7193] Ray Rodriguez: Don't give up on that. I took French also in high school. OK. Thank you. Okay, 13.5, Ms.

[7208] Cindy Parks: Parks. So this item, the last time, it was a very funky addendum and you all questioned it. I was very thankful for that because I didn't want to have to get up and talk, but this new addendum It doesn't specify the maximum amount. The last one at least had an, like the contract itself, which you all pointed out the last time, was actually dated in January, but went all the way back to June or July 1 inception. The addendum didn't have letterhead, it was just some funky little addendum. Now this at least is on letterhead but you go through and you're quoting following services up to 20% assessment required and there's all these percentages and maximum of up to 25 hours a week but there's no dollar amount allotted here and so to me this is even more vague, and it doesn't have the maximum, which the original contract says maximum of 25. This doesn't have the 39,550, which I wasn't even sure if the 39,550 was an additional to the 25 that was in the original contract, or is this meaning now that the 25 is void and null and void, and now it's 39,550. I still don't know that this actually is fulfilling kind of what you all require or requested the last time, and I just wanted to point that out.

[7291] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. So this is addendum to master contract with Ed Spetz Solution, Inc. The staff recommends that the board ratify the addendum to the original master contract. And the goals are to provide academic excellence via equity and opportunities for all students. Member Thomas.

[7312] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, I'd like a little bit more information if you don't mind on exactly how do we determine that we We need a full position and how do we determine? So I assume that every student has an IEP and the IEP specifies this type of service. So we should know or be able to estimate how much, how many hours of service and at what rates. And so that's one thing. The other thing that concerns me is that we authorized work without a contract. And I think that's very dangerous. It's not a good business practice to have someone start work without an approved signed contract. I've notified staff on other contracts that have come to us for ratification that there was not signatures or that the signatures or the contract was ratified long after the work was even completed. So I think, you know, I think we need to raise this as an issue of the kind of business practice and that everything we do has to be approved, contracts have to be approved in the business office. And then I think the question about the amount is, that's a similar question that I have when I look at this.

[7399] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, so you're asking Director Willis to answer some?

[7402] SPEAKER_30: Yeah. Okay, go ahead. So let's start with the first. So these services are twofold. One is for, we have 25 hours a week of counseling services at our therapy enhanced special day classes split between the junior high and the high school, 25 total. And so that is a known amount for sure. I keep trying to look for school psychologists. So we were allotted 5.0 FTE this year, which is just barely covering the need. We've been getting by with three to four depending on the time of the year because we actually lost one school psychologist this year due to personal issues. So that's getting down to close to half of our school psychologist needs. So that 25 hours is for the counseling and then the part that's hard to predict is the assessments. So we are required by Ed Code to conduct child find activities to find students who may be in need of special education. and then conduct extensive assessments for those. I can project what I think is likely, but I never know for sure.

[7469] Nancy Thomas: Is it possible to have a maximum based on that and then come back to the board if it goes over?

[7474] SPEAKER_30: So I've only been asking for a small amount at a time, because I keep thinking I'm hoping to actually hire a school psychologist. I actually interviewed somebody last week. It didn't turn out well, but I keep just hoping that I'm going to find someone.

[7486] Nancy Thomas: But if we do have someone? Do we still have to pay the contract? No. No, right.

[7491] SPEAKER_30: So I mean. To cover potential need.

[7493] SPEAKER_09: Right. If I can add. So we tried something different this year. So if you remember the past, in July or August, we would come with these huge contracts if we had not at that point found the staffing. And then we continued to look, but really we worked with the contractors. What Director Willis wanted to do this time was to continue to look for staffing. And so that's why you started to see all these small, small contracts. In particular to this contract, the work did start because it was under the threshold. And then as we started to see, we still are not finding the staffing. So that's why we had to come forward. And so we actually were both in communication as to like, what is the plan for next year? We've tried both with the large contracts at the beginning of the year, and we unencumber contracted monies Or do we unencumber the allotted FTEs and go with contracts? But then the board will start to see all these little contracts again next year. But I think it's all in the spirit of still looking to fulfill staffing and not contract out.

[7556] Ray Rodriguez: We have another board member that has a question.

[7557] SPEAKER_30: It's close to balance. I try to balance the amount of FTE I'm allotted with the contract amount.

[7563] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Member Martinez.

[7565] Elisa Martinez: Thank you for Assistant Superintendent Salinas for the kind of the why. I think it's okay that we do, we'll go more frequent, smaller. It would help me just to get a perspective of what 20% or 25 hours, what is it? Is that 5,000 or is that 15,000? So I think I'm okay with that. It's just what is it really, what's the size of the bucket we're approving? Because you could always, ideally, we don't use it, right? If we find someone, but it helps me make a decision.

[7600] SPEAKER_30: Or if we have fewer assessments than anticipated. Exactly. Yeah.

[7605] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Thank you. OK. I'd like to make a motion that we accept 13.5, addendum to master contract with Ed's Pet Solution, Inc. I need a second, please.

[7622] Nancy Thomas: I'll second.

[7622] Ray Rodriguez: Member Thomas seconds. Please vote. Okay, thank you. Motion passes. Thank you, Director Willis and Associate Superintendent Salinas. That helps out when you kind of break everything down. Okay, we go to 14.1, Mr. Newt. And then Ms. Parks.

[7652] Cary Knoop: Hi. I just wanted to make some comments about the employee personnel report. As long as I have been following board meetings, I've never seen employee IDs. You know, when somebody retires or leaves or gets hired or gets rehired or changes the number of hours, I mean, for me, you know, they're people. You know, they have names. And I'm sure the community wants to know when somebody retires. So I don't understand this idea of using, and in some cases, half. Some have a real name and the others have IDs of using IDs. I think it's not a good practice. You want to call people by their names. And of course, in a timely fashion, make sure that you discuss anything with employee conditions so that before it comes to the board. you know, I really think that's, I hope that's going to be a practice that's not going to be continued to see IDs there. Thank you.

[7719] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Ms. Parks.

[7727] Cindy Parks: I too have the same concerns. I've been coming to board meetings for over 20 years and I've never seen this. And I understand the 14.2, why you would perhaps want to just put ID numbers until they're notified or whatever. But we're talking about retirements. We're talking about people that are resigning. We're talking about things that people, like Mr. Newp was saying, would be celebrating their retirement. I'm just kind of wondering if I could get an answer on why numbers are being used.

[7764] Ray Rodriguez: We don't really have to.

[7766] SPEAKER_06: I would wait until we finish the comments and then if you want staff to respond.

[7772] Ray Rodriguez: Okay. Can we do that? Okay. We'll wait until the motion passes and then you want to respond. Is that okay? Okay. That's fine. Thank you, Ms. Parks. Okay. I need a motion and a second on 14.1. Please.

[7792] Bowen Zhang: I move to approve 14.1.

[7794] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, let me do it again, sorry.

[7795] Nancy Thomas: Okay, again, Mr. member,

[7823] Ray Rodriguez: the motion and who made the second again? Member Thomas, okay. Please vote. Okay, motion passes unanimously. Our HR director.

[7838] SPEAKER_25: Yes, good evening everybody. I just wanted to clarify that this is following EDCO provision and it's nothing but personnel, it's We're doing it this way in order to prevent or to protect employees' confidentiality. Nothing more. It's been consulting with our labor partners. And they don't have any problems with us protecting the confidentiality of our employees. And that's just basically the only reason why we're doing it this way.

[7870] Ray Rodriguez: So is this something new we're doing? Did something happen in order for us to do it this way?

[7874] SPEAKER_25: Yes. I'm following the lead of other districts and also the recommendation from our legal counsel.

[7881] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, good, thank you. 14.2, I need a motion and a second.

[7890] Nancy Thomas: I move that we approve 14.2.

[7892] Elisa Martinez: I second.

[7895] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, member Thomas moves, member Martinez seconds, please vote. No discussion. When there's a Motion and a second we still have an opportunity if we want to to say something, okay Thank you Motion passes unanimously. Thank you Fifteen point one Consolidated Application and reporting system 2018-2019 winter Data collection public. Staff recommends ratification of the consolidated application and reporting system. Need a motion. And a second.

[7948] Nancy Thomas: I move approval.

[7949] Ray Rodriguez: Member Thomas moves.

[7950] Elisa Martinez: I second.

[7954] Ray Rodriguez: Member Martinez seconds. Please vote. Any discussion before? OK, thank you. Motion passes unanimously. Member Gutierrez not being here. Unanimously with everybody that's here. OK. OK. That's now we're at the end of the meeting and we have Board of Education Committee reports, announcements, requests, debrief, and discussion. Member Thomas, you want to go first?

[7991] Nancy Thomas: Oh, gee. I didn't write anything down but I enjoyed the two breakfasts that I was able to go to. I'm looking forward to a fun week next week. I'm going to be out of town on a cruise. And other than that, I've had requests in the past that I hope will be captured. And some of it, thank you, was updated tonight. update was good and some of the other updates the superintendent provided, so I appreciate that.

[8031] Ray Rodriguez: Member Martinez.

[8036] Elisa Martinez: I actually do have a couple of notes this time. Just as a follow-up to the, to ADIS, Superintendent Sanchez, in terms of, you know, next steps, I know we heard earlier in terms of a concern around just the the number of folks that are given the opportunity to be in these sessions. I think that's one thing. One other thing that actually just struck me, again, I participated as a parent, and it was actually a relatively small group, very few students, and because it was my school, I know the kids. And something that Mr. Merritt mentioned earlier, they're the kids that are going to do just fine. Parents are very involved. Kids are on a straight line, if you will. I mentioned the word esoteric. I thought it was very pie in the sky. But because if we are really trying to get a sense of what do our kids need, I think we need to look and make sure we have a cross section of all of our students. Because, you know, the kids that, again, like I said, are already on their way, you know, maybe the needs aren't, we're not going to capture the needs of the kids that have a hard time focusing, that have a hard time, you know, being in a confined space. So anyhow, that was just something that kind of was in the back of my head. So I'm glad it was brought up today. The other thing that, in the subject of expulsions, I know that we've had some discussion. Again, Mr. Mayor's comments around restorative justice. I would like to, there's a huge list of things I'd like to have a study session on. But I know that we're in the land of dollars and the land of budgets. There are several things that we, I know that you're going to talk about, study sessions, but this is one thing along with, sorry I'm being long winded, I'm tired, I'm having a hard time focusing, but restorative justice and along with looking at ways to try to recapture those four points of ADA. So those are just really high on my list, so thank you.

[8195] Bowen Zhang: Oh, I just probably want to repeat my request last time, because I made a request to see a clear plan and strategy to contain our costs in the professional services and consulting costs. And by looking at your report, we are running up close to 2.2 million deficit in this column just for this year. As you probably can see today in our vote on the certification of budget, the board is not ready to move to make a positive certification. I think every member on the board probably really want to see a strategy to how we bring down one of the biggest driver for our deficit, which is professional services and consulting. And so going forward in the next two or three months, I think business officer Nguyen and superintendent Sanchez, you guys have a pretty challenging job to do. And the cost of dropping the bond rating is incalculable for our district. Particularly when it comes to, in the future, tapping the public financing when it comes to building new schools or building teachers housing. The cost of a pound rating drop is incalculable. You have a tough job ahead.

[8271] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you.

[8273] SPEAKER_08: Student board member, Cesar? One thing that I'm looking at right now is the The superintendent's report and the facility master plan, I'm not sure if I misunderstood it, but at one point, are there going to be improvements to the school facilities that are going to be made or what exactly is the goal of these studies that have been done in the past months?

[8297] SPEAKER_06: I can try to clarify. So what will happen at the end of this process for this cycle that the consultant's going through, they'll bring recommendations to the board and then the board will weigh in on what parts or all of it or part of it that they wish to move forward with and how we move forward. So their job is just to create the recommendations and deliver the parts of the contract. So what we'll probably see next time as I was taking notes will be, what was the original thing we asked ATIS to do? Have they done it? And have they met the deliverables we asked for? So that'll come back, and then the board will decide.

[8333] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Thank you. You good? Yeah. I just have a couple of things. First, I want to thank the board for allowing me to have my sister here and address us. And it looks like I'll be going back to Florida with her for about a week next week to help out with some family stuff. But I want to thank everybody for that. She's a great lady. And she's one year younger than me, but I won't tell you what age that is. Please don't ask me. My grandkids ask me, and they don't get Christmas presents anymore. So one question I had is, Superintendent, I mean, maybe in a Friday update, the cost of conferences, maybe you can address that in a Friday update, and why is it trending up? The funding source.

[8392] SPEAKER_38: I can break it down by funding source, unrestricted and restricted funds.

[8396] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Good. And then the other thing is we have the consultants that you mentioned that help us with the budget. And I'd like to get something from them on how, being that it's qualified, how does it affect us? Does it affect us actually now? Or would it, you know, if we do better in June, and would that take care of it? Because, you know. We can do that. OK. OK. OK, anything else? OK, 9.30. Meeting adjourned. Superintendent. Oh. I want to go home. Superintendent report. I'm sorry. Superintendent, you have five minutes.

[8438] SPEAKER_06: I'll do it a little shorter than that. Just a reminder, board workshop is confirmed for Friday, April 6 from 8 to 12.30 at Whiteford Elementary. Student leadership class meeting on March 27th at 11 a.m. If any one other board member is available to join President Rodriguez and myself, just let us know. You don't need to do that now, but it would be at the high school on March 27th at 11 a.m. Student leadership continuing meeting with ninth graders with member Thomas and I. We'd like to invite one more board member. That would be on March 28th. at 11.15 a.m. at the high school. And we'll send you these dates in the email, so you don't have to remember them right now. The draft study session calendar, please get your requests in. We've attached a sample calendar to the packet. Please get those to Shara so we can start mapping that out per some of the comments from member Martinez. And Friday update, just want you to think about is it useful? Do you like it? Do we keep doing it? Do we do it every Friday, every other Friday? Think about that. Let us know your thoughts. We don't mind doing it, but if it's not useful or if we need to change it, I want to just revisit that. That concludes my closing comments.

[8516] Ray Rodriguez: So I would like to go with Member Thomas, but if somebody else wants to go, I'll relinquish. And I forgot to mention that on Employee housing could we get some kind of an update on and on employee housing and also the move to? Whiteford that is in the queue for next board. Okay, great. Thank you. Okay now 935 mini guitar

No minutes available.