Regular Meeting

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[4] Ray Rodriguez: I want to report out on discussions during closed session. We got updates, no action. We have received staff recommendation for CBO position. The name will be brought forward at our next board meeting, which is in two weeks, September 19th. The contract is pending board review. So we're talking contract right now. So before we move on, based on that, superintendent, everybody that was involved, the different committees, Mr. Schimel, thank you for your help in helping us choose. And then there was three finalists, and we have one that we're talking to. Okay, we got the pledge. You want to do it? Eliana was your sister, she was going to do it, but you're subbing for her, right?

[75] SPEAKER_08: 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.

[93] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. I ask member Gutierrez to, because member Martinez is far away now, to kind of hit me if I doze off a little bit. I was in Florida for over a week with this crazy hurricane that didn't want to move anywhere. So at the end of the meeting, if the board's okay with it, I'd like to adjourn the meeting and in memory or in honor of everyone that happened to be caught up in this crazy hurricane. And it was especially the people of the Bahamas, a lot of devastation and our thoughts and prayers go out to them. So we'll do that at the end if it's okay. Okay, superintendent student reports.

[153] SPEAKER_19: OK, let's get started. Thank you, President Rodriguez, members of the board, ladies and gentlemen. Student report tonight. We will begin with Newark Junior Hive. You guys are present? Welcome. At least tell us your first name and your grade, please.

[172] SPEAKER_28: My name is Sophia Rollins. I'm in eighth grade.

[174] SPEAKER_19: And who's with you tonight? You have a whole crew over there.

[178] SPEAKER_28: President of the leadership and two other leadership students.

[182] Ray Rodriguez: You guys can stand so we can see you. It's okay. You can stay standing or you can sit. Thank you. Whatever you want. Go ahead, it's on you.

[196] SPEAKER_28: I'm going to start by introducing myself. My name is Sophia Rollins and I'm in eighth grade leadership. Since I've been in leadership, I've experienced firsthand the great things we get to do at school. to make the school better, and also how much we get to make a difference in how people feel and make a difference at the school. At NJHS, the staff, faculty, and teachers are so helpful about the struggle students go through throughout middle school. And just by seeing and experiencing how much they care about us, it inspires me to care about my peers way more, and especially being in leadership. Being in leadership is a huge role to do, and I just want to take a second to thank Mr. Whitaker for stepping up and being an awesome teacher already when the school just started. Thanks. Continuing on about leadership, we do a lot of fun things to make sure kids are enjoying school. For example, music on the quad, morning announcements, dance rallies, et cetera. And here is president of leadership talking about what's going on on the school campus.

[263] SPEAKER_09: Good evening everyone. My name is Pratitya Lomudi and I am ASB president. So today I'm here to talk to you guys about what's going on at the school. For us, right now, we're planning a dance on the 13th next week for all students to attend. And on the 19th, we're planning to do a rally. And then on the 21st, we have our Newark Days parade. And the Newark Days parade is, if you don't know yet, themed for superheroes. So we're planning to dress up and walk in the parade while holding our leadership banner. We're also doing PBIS, which is for students and kind of wanting them to work for the better of the community, like being on time, doing good deeds, helping people in need. And we have rewards with our coupons, which students can use to get candy and other items. We also do music on the quad and we've started enforcing new rules so students will work for music on the quad and it won't just be a given. So we try to keep the campus clean and we're asking students to keep the campus clean so that they can have music on the quad. If not, we take it away until they are willing to keep the campus clean so they can have their privileges back. We also do, excuse me, our morning announcements, we do it every day so that kids can understand what's going on in school. And we talk about like activities that are happening in that day. For example, if we have tryouts for a certain sport, we try to inform our students beforehand so that they know what's going on in that day. And that's pretty much it that's going on. It's a pleasure talking to you guys. Thank you.

[382] SPEAKER_19: Good job. Representatives from McGregor campus.

[389] Ray Rodriguez: You were just up here.

[391] SPEAKER_08: Good evening, Superintendent Sanchez, board members, and cabinet members. My name is Sonia Hamidi, a senior at Bridgepoint. We have over 70 students at Bridgepoint. This is the largest opening of the school we have had in three years. students are looking to transfer soon so they can earn credits this quarter. We have a new counselor named Mr. Bailon and a new teacher named Mr. Hanlon. Coach Estrada is teaching PE. We had had first day of school assembly to honor those who received fourth quarter awards. Every week we have over 15 students who receive perfect attendance awards. Later this evening you will hear more about our yonder pouches. As a student there are a lot of positive things I could say. Crossworld has a new bell schedule. They are accepting lots of new students. Thank you.

[443] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Good job.

[448] SPEAKER_19: Cesar, you have the floor.

[449] SPEAKER_06: Hi, Cesar. Hi. Thank you. So Newark Memorial's ASB has been hard at work planning events for the new year. We're going to kick things off with our top 20 assembly. Clubs and sports teams will be nominating exceptional seniors for election to the homecoming court. That assembly is going to take place on Friday the 27th of September at 1140 in the event center. Next week will be our homecoming assembly where each class will do their skits. They'll get a chance to show off what they've been practicing this past month. That'll be on the 4th of October, also a Friday at 1140. Later that evening at 5 p.m. ASB will be hosting a tailgate. So every club that's currently active on campus will have the opportunity to sell food. And it'll be a fundraiser so that they can earn money. All proceeds will kick back directly to the clubs. And then at 7 PM, of course, our homecoming game. We'll play Kennedy High School this year. And at halftime, of course, our band performance and the announcement of our homecoming court and our king and queen. And then the next day, the 5th of October, which is a Saturday, at 7 PM in the Commons will be our homecoming dance. And that's going to be themed Casino Night. In the meantime, club councils and their advisors have been working on club paperwork for the new year. So ASB had a meeting yesterday, and we approved 30 clubs, both new and renewals. We approved new clubs like Key Club, the Jewish Student Union, Chess Club, the Quills Martial Arts Club, Journalism Club, Mixed Student Union, and Music Club. So Club Rush will be tomorrow at lunch. which is around 12-15, so we invite the board and the public to come check out what new clubs we have and of course welcome the returning clubs to campus. Some updates from athletics. Water polo, our annual water polo tournaments are of course coming back this year. The girls varsity tournament kicks off tomorrow evening or tomorrow afternoon at 4 p.m. with Newark Memorial playing Piedmont High School. Play will continue Saturday all throughout the day from 8 p.m. to 5 p.m. The boys' tournament will begin on the 13th of September, also at 4 p.m., with our boys' varsity squad. Also, Newark Memorial Athletics, in partnership with ASB, will be hosting two different football games to honor various members of our community. The first game will be on the 13th of September, versus College Park. It'll be our Heroes Night. So we're gonna honor people who are currently serving, or who have served in the armed forces, or law enforcement, or fire protection. We encourage members of the public to speak to Ms. Canales about nominating or recognizing someone during the game. And then on the 27th of September versus James Logan, we'll be having our cancer awareness night. So we also encourage the public and the board to come out and support as well. That's it for now. Thank you.

[628] Sean Abruzzi: Thank you. Thank you.

[637] Ray Rodriguez: Recognition and celebrations returning. in two weeks at our next board meeting on the 19th. We go to public comment on non-agenda items. Mary Bretz. Ms. Parks.

[669] Cindy Parks: Stephen Covey is quoted as saying, the proactive approach to a mistake is to acknowledge it instantly, correct and learn from it. This literally turns a failure into a success. At the August 1st board meeting, there was a draft copy of the agreement between Newark Unified and the city of Newark concerning the McGregor field. The agreements contained a term of two years. There was a discussion amongst three board members present to change the term to five years. However, when the approval motion was made, I didn't hear the term being amended from two years to five years. On August 4th, to confirm what I thought took place, I watched the video, then placed a call to Mr. Rodriguez. I notified him of the mistake. There was ample time to place the contract back on the agenda correcting the mistake at the August 15th meeting. Instead, during the superintendent report at that meeting, Mr. Sanchez compounded the error by stating the agreement has been sent over to the city with a five-year term as the board had directed. Based on the board's vote, which is what provides the direction to staff, the term was not authorized to be changed from two years to five years. The liaison committee is going to be reviewing the contract with a five-year term at their September 9th meeting when the board technically only approved a two-year contract. At the August 1st meeting, I also argued that the salary schedule for your approval was not corrected. I did it, I did not include, it did not include the 0.5% increase to the CBO position which I believed he had received and the current job posting did include that 0.5% increase. I spoke to Mr. Schimel before the August 15th meeting and he promised to look into the matter. to be corrected at this meeting. It is not on the agenda. I respectfully request that you place the salary schedule on the September 19 agenda correcting the CBO salary range for the 1819 school year which will then align with the salary range posted for

[796] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Ms.

[802] SPEAKER_47: Bretz.

[812] Ray Rodriguez: Welcome.

[812] SPEAKER_37: Hi, thank you. I'm Mary Bretz and I'm here today to represent my husband who could not be here today due to your actions. I'm here asking, just as all the others that have been here before me, in his place, On his behalf, why are you allowing this ethical behavior to continue? They've set out, they meaning you all, have set out to not only remove him from his job, but ruin his career. And what me and my husband and my family have worked out for so long, 24 years we've been working to get to where we are. If the charges were dropped and why couldn't he return to work? Your lawyers negotiated a return to work before the charges were even presented. Yet you saw fit to present the charges despite the evidence of, there was no evidence of wrongdoing. Why are you after him on such a personal level? That's what I want to know. Why are you looking to remove him from his teaching credentials now without any evidence again? Why? Our family is now being uprooted due to these actions. We're being forced to move from our home and pack up and leave California. So the district is not helping. The board is not helping. It prevents him from gaining other employment. So why? I want to know why Are you preventing him from gaining other employment? We're here every meeting talking because you're forcing us to be here at every meeting talking. How is he supposed to move on in his career if you're stopping that? What's the reason for this? Why? What's the objective? What is it? I was born here in a very large family. My grandparents lived right around the corner. My sister went to this very school. Is the objective to get families out? Because that's what's happening, and it's not just here in our case. I've seen other families within the district being pushed out as well. What I really wanna know is why the district, I wouldn't say, shouldn't say the district, the board, chose to hire Superintendent Sanchez, knowing full well of his past at Adams 14 in Colorado. I believe maybe President Rodriguez, you and Past board members have been able to speak to the board in Adams 14 before you hired him. Don't understand if you look at the correlation, there's so many similarities here in the situation. It doesn't make sense and I don't understand the objective for this path. Why are you continuing to go after him? Over the last several months, my family has had good intentions and hopes for this community in Newark. And we will continue to do so. I see the Newark police isn't here today. I was gonna thank them for being here. Just like they were the very first meeting we attended before we even spoke. Thank you.

[1036] Ray Rodriguez: Mr. Neal.

[1047] SPEAKER_50: Good evening, school board.

[1048] Ray Rodriguez: Good evening, Mr. Neal.

[1049] SPEAKER_50: Superintendent Letty and Jessica and Char Berry. Thanks for having me. I just wanted to come and talk about something that we are trying to make happen at Notre Dame High School. As many of you know, over the summer, There was an email sent out by Representative Ro Khanna. He had recommended North Memorial High School to represent California in the annual Memorial Day Parade in Washington, D.C., the 75th anniversary parade. And Joanne Hong was retired, so she turned it down. And then I stepped up and offered an opportunity to have the junior high school represent California in this event. And so I've talked to Superintendent Sanchez and Leti and Char about making this work. So I've written a letter that I'm going to give to you all. And I'm trying to put it out to businesses and also individuals in the Bay Area to help sponsor our school to go, because it's about $80,000 to sponsor the entire band, along with the band director as well. And we could fundraise, but it'd be a monumental feat. But I think such an event like this, that'll be on national TV, it's the 75th anniversary of Memorial Day, and it's a really big event in Washington, D.C., and Ro Khanna decided to represent Newark for that, and I think it'd be a real big event for Newark. I'm like, hey, here's Newark Memorial. I mean, here's Newark on the map. And so we just want to put it out there. I started a GoFundMe today, and I sent it to Superintendent and Char as well. So I'm hoping that everyone knows somebody who knows somebody that has a lot of money that might want to help us out, because there's a lot of money in the Bay Area. And we don't normally ask for money. We do our fundraising ourselves, but we felt like this event was big enough. that we should go and ask for help for people in the Bay who would want to just represent the Bay Area in general, even if they're not from Newark, just to help us out and represent the Bay. So everyone, ask your friends to help out. Call Facebook and Google and Apple and everybody else and even the smaller companies out there to try and see if we can raise $80,000 for our students to go to DC. It'd be a phenomenal event for us. for the school board, everybody, the parents, the families of Newark, just in general. So that's what I want to say tonight.

[1192] Ray Rodriguez: Any way we can help? And have you reached out to Congressman Khanna? We could talk. Yeah.

[1198] SPEAKER_50: I mean, we haven't yet. He recommended it. Yeah, he's got money. Let me help you write the letter. I just want to get the letter ready first before I send it out. We're going to go by rotary one day, figure that out, and then try and just hit everybody up and just ask and beg. for the money, just to see if they'll help. OK. That's it. Thanks.

[1217] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Superintendent, I just had something before you do your report. An item later on under personnel, which is a new position. Were you going to address that during your report as far as the position and the funding source? Or did you want to wait until? I didn't really want to pull the item. I just wanted to see if you.

[1261] SPEAKER_19: I was going to update the board this week. I got that request yesterday. And it wasn't time to get it for the agenda today. But I could update the board in confidential briefing this week.

[1272] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, go ahead, sorry.

[1274] SPEAKER_19: Thank you, President Rodriguez, members of the board, ladies and gentlemen. I just want to start our report tonight with just a few things. I want to remind everyone, and we've sent out invitations, but it's still on the schedule. On September 11th at Whiteford Elementary, we'll be holding the ADIS Master Facility Planning, kind of the unveiling, a little bit of what Mr. Schimel shared tonight. but a lot more relative to the work we've done with the long-term facility master plan. I know we sent individual invitations to each of the board members, if you're all able to attend. And we're doing it at Whiteford. Breakfast is at 7.30. And 8 to noon will be the actual meeting and showing the final report to the public. So I just wanted you to be aware of that. I do have a request for a special meeting study session. On October 1, if it's possible for the board, this would be ADIS and the board giving the final approval or accepting the report, I believe. Is that correct, Shara? They'll be accepting the report from ADIS. And in the meantime, I will be emailing the board the electronic copy of the report, which is pretty substantial. It's about a three-inch binder worth, so I don't recommend you print it. But we will send you the link to the current draft of the report. So, again, September 11th at Whiteford, breakfast starts at 7.30, 8 to 12 is the actual master planning meeting. And if you recall, when we contracted with ADIS, there was two big meetings, one at the beginning of the year, one at the end of the year. This is the big meeting at the end of the year to kind of reveal the results of what their findings were by every school. So, think about October 1, we'll, Char, we'll send out a request to see if you're able to attend that. So we could have a study session with ADIS on that topic to finalize the report. Second item I want to update on is, or the third item, update on the vacancy appointment. We are set for September 19th at 5 p.m. That's our next natural meeting. I will be reviewing the questions with the committee and the applications. And I believe the committee members were Ms. Martinez and Ms. Gutierrez. So we'll be reaching out to you to find a time when we can review those and get ready for the vacancy appointment. We do have four candidates. And we'll be sharing all of that information in the agenda on September 15. But that is all set for September 19. We've done this fairly recently, so not a lot of the process has changed. So mostly we'll stay in the same pattern. And we'll have four candidates for you all to interview September 19, 5 PM. Just on the to-do list, we are still getting more information. I should have somewhat of a draft for all of you to look at after discussing with legal counsel, specifically board policy and student board member and some of the updates to the law. The board asks to take a look at that and bring back at least a draft for the board to have a conversation around that. So we're hoping to have something for you guys to start looking at. Not anywhere near adoption, but at least initial reading. We're also reviewing board docs voting. Shara's getting training on board docs voting, and we will be able to present to the board probably on the 19th, you think, Shara? On that one or later? It might be later. Probably a later meeting for that. So, Shawana, we're still working on the student board policy, but we'll bring something for you guys to begin having a conversation about. Parking at Newark Junior High School, what measures have been taken? A Newark band invited to Washington, D.C., as you heard, Parking issues. They're going to be raising money Mark already covered that they say be part of that. And they have been working strengthening the partnership with the community to avoid some of those parking problems. Entirely there yet I'm sure we still have some complaints here and there but I know Mister Neal's been taking steps to work with the community on some of the Fremont Bank for their donation to Newark Junior High. And actually, you saw those today. Some of the donations from Fremont Bank are the new chairs in our board library. And we also got some other chairs from other meeting space here in the district. So shout out to Fremont Bank on that. And really important, if you look around the walls today and the images and the artwork that's up, I want to thank Mrs. Yaup. Mrs. Yop's class and Mr. Howell for the artwork and photography in the boardroom. Look at the work. It's just amazing. It looks like magazine covers and really some great photography around the room. And I think it reminds us why we're here. And I think it's important to see how talented our kids are. For me, it makes the boardroom feel much more alive. September 19, we're going to try another round of taking board member headshots. I know that it takes time to get the right picture, but we are trying to set that up. Valera will be here to help take them before the board meeting. That way we can get also the picture you want to be shared and to be on our publications. Reminder about Newark days, Saturday, September 21st. In keeping with the theme, For us, we know that the team is everyday heroes in education, and for us, our heroes are our students, staff and administration. Board members can wear their Newark Day shirt, and if you don't have one, we'll get one for you. I know we had the gray shirts from earlier. If that is okay, if not, we'll find someone else. And what I'm considering is that each of us identify a student that we're going to wear on our shirt, maybe a picture of our student that we think is our hero for the parade. I have somebody in mind, and I'm sure each of you have somebody in mind that you could put on your shirt as a hero that you could tell a little bit about to other people. So we're having the float decorated like last year. And some of the winners from the My Heroes essay contest, we're going to ask them to ride on our float with us. That's the contest that Mrs. Sisk has been supporting through Love Newark and doing a writing essay on my heroes. So more to come on that. Again, last one is again on October 3rd is our countywide Teacher of the Year Gala at the Castro Valley Center for the Arts at 6 p.m. So if you're able to attend or would like to attend, please let Char know because we have to order tickets in advance. Just let us know if you're going to attend and remember that Joanne Hong is our teacher that will be recognized there at the county event. October 3rd at the Castro Valley Center for Arts at 6 p.m. That concludes my report at this time, President Rodriguez.

[1731] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you, Superintendent. Staff report. Associate Superintendent Salinas.

[1744] SPEAKER_32: Good evening members of the board, President Rodriguez and our community. We have two staff reports today, very short but really informative and I think reflective of what we continue to do each and every day. The first that we want to highlight is an update on chronic absenteeism. If you recall, we were before you last April talking about how our district is in differentiated assistance, and we had shared with you some of the work that we had started last year, and also the work that we were going to continue this year. So I have some data, some good news, and also some next steps. So... Clicker.

[1789] Clarissa Kennedy: I'm sorry, Larry.

[1790] SPEAKER_47: I'll just do this.

[1794] SPEAKER_32: Okay, so first to begin with, we want to remember that our work is always rooted in our strategic imperatives. Thank you. In terms of chronic absenteeism and really trying to eradicate this for Newark Unified School District, this is imperative one and two. In terms of our LCAP, this looks at goal two for student engagement and improved climate for our schools. And then again, remember the California dashboard on our eight state priorities. This looks at priority number five, pupil engagement, and also school climate priority number six. So I won't go into the details, but for your reading pleasure later on, this is what we have in our LCAP to address this area of concern for our Newark Unified School District. and what I want to highlight is our action plan. So if you recall last year when we came forward we shared that we ended up starting to do these weekly monthly reports to our principals because the first thing was building awareness and getting to the root cause analysis of why are we over the county average of chronic absenteeism. If you recall, we were almost five percentage points over the county average. What we looked at is information for our principals, our front office staff. We then looked at attendance incentives. We are in the third year of Prop 47 grant monies that we're using to leverage incentives for kids. We are paying for a 50% campus monitor for the high school to help with midday wanderings off campus and making sure the kids are in class and in the room. And we also looked at data cleanup. If you recall, as we did the root cause analysis, we spoke with our attendance clerks, our front office staff, who really are doing the deep work with our kids and with our families. And what we found is that in some schools, we had some coding misconceptions. And so we cleaned that up and ensured that we had proper procedures for independent study and coding in the system. And finally, we did a urine check-in process for our principals and really looked at, again, what was the root cause analysis of chronic absenteeism and how to address it. Next steps, so for the 19-20 school year, we will be looking at some short-term impact points and long-term goals. The first is that we're going to look at an attendance campaign district-wide, starting with a group that we're going to build here at the district office with stakeholders that will include our attendance clerks, our front office staff, principals, teachers. And so we're in the very beginning levels of this to start this work and also some key parent partners as well. We're going to build on some of the work with the continued work with the attendance reports going to the school offices so that, again, there is awareness. And then we are looking at the goals that were set by each school to try to eradicate chronic absenteeism. So here's some good news and also some next steps for Newark Unified. If you look at this chart, what this chart is what was submitted to CALPADS at the end of the year and it showed, remember, our kids that were missing more than 10% of the school year, which identified them as chronically absent. And as you see, we made some great gains. We also noticed some areas of concern that we need to first address. So if you remember with the California dashboard, it looks at the attendance of K through eighth grade. So our secondary schools were not necessarily in the mix, but we wanted to make sure that we included them. So we see that, for example, at Schilling Elementary, they lessened, remember, so you want a smaller number under 18-19, so you could see, I mean, big gains with trying to really cut chronic absenteeism. I want to congratulate our front office staff, our families that really heard the message, and then our staff that worked to ensure that kids were in school. Yes, absolutely. As a reminder, we will see the new California dashboard update in December. But we're looking at all indicators. It's looking pretty good. These were the goals that were set for our district, if you remember, of the color bands changing. So we don't know this yet, but this we will see in December. But as we see this chart, we look like we're going in a good direction. So we'll know more what the state identifies in December. So very quickly, thank you again to all involved. This work is continuing. We don't stop and say, oh, good, we solved it because we didn't. We saw some areas of concern at the McGregor campus. We need to address that. I think supporting our high school more with keeping kids in school and then continuing to work with an attendance campaign for our early grades, our TK, our K, and our first to make sure that kids are in school each and every day. Thank you. And if there's any questions.

[2098] Elisa Martinez: So huge gains or huge reductions. So that's fantastic. Do we have a, maybe it's a two-part question. One is, Data cleanup is always great. So do we have a perspective on how much of this was driven by just data cleanup? And then if most of it was just through actions, what do you, you know, from your experience or from the team's experience, what has worked the best to drive these numbers down?

[2127] SPEAKER_32: So if you recall, at the time we started to kind of get an inkling of this, we did speak with Mr. Simon, my data person, and we can get those exact numbers to you all. It certainly was a bump with data cleanup, but there still was a big gain for our school sites. So it was actually their actions of following kids. What we heard from our principals, and we have to really get our group of stakeholders together, but what we heard from principals was one thing. we're going to be able to provide that support. At the elementary sites. Our front office staff it was those daily phone calls and those personal phone calls. Just checking in with the families and really checking to say hey. Is there something going on you need some support or is there are there other issues going on that seem to be the biggest bang for our buck. In One, families just really weren't aware of this new process. So our process was, we would do raffle tickets for kids who were in school the day before a spring break or a winter break, and then there was another raffle the day we returned. We didn't see that much of a bump, but we think it was because kids were just not used to that process. The kids who were there at school, we recognized them, they participated, and we seemed to get some really good progress. But I think until I get the group together of the stakeholders, of our classified staff that really are the ones making the calls will know more. So we're in the process of unpacking that.

[2220] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Anyone else? Oh, Mr. Jiang.

[2223] Bowen Zhang: Oh, I just want to ask for the December release date, which is about in three months. The data that's going to be released will reflect the 2018-2019 data, right? Not the 2019-2020 data, right? Or is that going to reflect the ongoing data for the current school year?

[2239] SPEAKER_32: No. So the California dashboard will be last April's testing data.

[2246] Bowen Zhang: Yes. So on your third to the last slide, estimated December release date, that's actually releasing the data for chronic absenteeism of the past school year, right?

[2257] SPEAKER_32: Correct. Yes. Yeah, unfortunately, we're in arrears with the way California does it, but I think that's why we want to have more opportunities to bring more of our Newark unified data, and that's what we will strive to do more of this year.

[2277] SPEAKER_43: Member Gutierrez. I recall in the past presentation, I believe it was mentioned that long vacations or students being absent for a sickness for a long period of time was also a big issue. Just briefly on that, how has that changed or was more, I know because parents were saying they wanted more information as to what the process is so that they're not accounted for, things of that sort.

[2307] SPEAKER_32: Yes, so what we found was one Our board policies are fairly antiquated, so we're trying to update that. So you will be seeing some new board policies that are coming forward in terms of long-term and short-term independent study. So we wanted to look at that. For example, a neighboring district. If a child is not in school on the first day that school starts, that child is dropped from the rosters. We don't do that. We wait 10 days as what EDCO allows us to do, but I'll be candid. We're going to start to look at that where... we could be a little bit more strict in that, and that can help us to really get the message across to the community. What we also found was that a lot of times families were very last minute saying, hey, I'm going to Mexico for the month. I need an independent study packet. And it really put teachers in a crunch that they can't put the packet together so fast. It's not fair to them, and it's just not fair all around. So one of the things that we heard and that we're in the process of doing now is seeing if we can come up with generic packets Obviously, we would want with enough time that the teacher can put together a packet because that's really where the instruction lies. But if we could have a generic packet for those last minute, it's an emergency, I need to leave the country because there's a family event or a death or what have you. That way we could support the classroom teacher, not have to rush them to get a packet together, but then the child is also going to get something at home. So it's that, but then also more of a information campaign as to what are the rules.

[2407] Ray Rodriguez: Okay.

[2407] Elisa Martinez: Go ahead. Just a quick follow-up to Member Gutierrez's question about the independent study program, or packets. I know we've, I think we've all talked about it to some degree. Obviously the holidays are a few months away. What's the timing on some of the solutions you're looking at? Ideally, we know we're going to get hit around that time, right?

[2428] SPEAKER_32: Yes. So, we meet with our principals every Wednesday now. So, we changed our DLT meeting. So, we're hoping that the first week of October, we will be able to have some time with our principals and then put together our stakeholder groups so that our campaign can start at the end of October. I know Thanksgiving is also kind of out there, but sometimes if it's so far in advance, people forget. So, but if it's too close, it's too late. So, we're looking at that window of mid-October to start the attendance campaign.

[2461] Ray Rodriguez: Okay. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you.

[2463] SPEAKER_19: We have a second half.

[2464] SPEAKER_32: I do. I'm sorry. And so I would like to ask Principal Julie Calderon to come forward. We will be sharing an update of a pilot program that we have, and I'll have her come up with also some students, one student with her today, and she'll share some information.

[2481] SPEAKER_31: Thank you, Ms. Salinas. Good evening, board members, President Rodriguez, Superintendent Sanchez, cabinet members. It is my pleasure to be here. It's my third year as your Principal of Alternative Education. I have one of my senior students, you saw her earlier this evening, to help do a demonstration. So this past March, one of my ROP teachers from MVROP let me know that they would be investing in yonder pouches for her program. Now I was already familiar with yonder because of their work with various artists and comedians that I happen to like, as well as their work with my alma mater and former work site, San Lorenzo High. San Lorenzo High was one of the first high schools to implement the program. They were lucky enough to get a grant to be able to implement that for a year at no cost. So, you know, once the MVROP teachers let me know that this was something they were going to move forward with, I felt prompted to do some research and start to share that information with my site council, which of course includes parents and students. as well as my teaching staff. And everybody was really excited to look into this program. It was met with wide approval, widespread approval. It's also our first year of PBIS at Bridgepoint, and having these pouches supports our expectation that phones are often away during class time. So we have begun our pilot. But prior to beginning the pilot, bilingual letters were sent to all Bridgepoint families. A follow-up all call went out before the launch date, in case parents had questions or concerns. The Yonder staff came out to meet with all my teachers during our staff development in August. This year we implemented our very first advisory week for our first week of school. So every student who attended that first week at Bridgepoint got to meet with Yonder staff along with PBIS and other advisory topics. Every student has been issued a pouch for their use while they are a Bridgepoint student. Sonia is actually borrowing my pouch right now. She's going to turn it around and it says principal. If you are okay with it, she can approach you so you can see the pouch up close. Every classroom has been issued an unlocking base. There are additional bases in route because I want to have one in my office as well and we want to have extras for when we have subs. And the phones are stored in their pouches during class time only. San Lorenzo, and as you've seen in the news, San Mateo, they are going bell to bell. They use the pouches from start to finish of their school day. I decided that we weren't going to pilot that. We are only doing them during class. And so the students can unlock their pouches for brunch and lunch and, of course, whenever they leave campus. The phones are not confiscated from students. They are always in the student's possession, and that looks different for every student. Some student likes to have their pouch right on their desk in front of them. The boys seem to like putting it in their pocket, and of course, some of the young women like to have it in their purse or their backpack, but no phones are being locked in any offices. They are locked in their pouch, but they remain in the student's possession.

[2657] Ray Rodriguez: I'm sorry, where's the magnet so we can put

[2661] SPEAKER_31: I'll let Sonia do the honors. Don't get used to it, Sonia. All of my teachers, I went door to door to check in with my teachers about this program. My teachers are thrilled. They had high praise for this and the changes that they've seen in their student engagement. A guest teacher who was on campus today commented to my office manager that she has not ever seen this dramatic change in student engagement. So she was very complimentary about this pilot.

[2691] Ray Rodriguez: I like a bigotist. It'd be hard for me to lose my phone with that.

[2695] SPEAKER_31: So thank you, board members and cabinet, for approving this pilot as part of Bridgepoint's single plan. We are looking forward to increased student engagement. You know, that's in keeping with our LCAP goals, state goals. We want to see increased credit recovery. And of course, you'll be hearing in future presentations from me about an improved graduation rate. So we have time for questions.

[2719] Ray Rodriguez: Ms. Gutierrez?

[2721] SPEAKER_31: Did you have any comments, Sonia?

[2725] Ray Rodriguez: We have a, oh, go ahead.

[2728] SPEAKER_08: As a student, I really see an improvement of my classmates. We really socialize more. I see that people that I didn't talk to, I talk to. And we have a lot of more class-like discussions. And it's really, it's better. And I like how we don't, have it taken away for lunch or brunch. But the more we use it, the more I find myself not looking for it. And it makes class really better.

[2762] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Ms. Gutierrez.

[2764] SPEAKER_43: Yes, thank you. I am really excited that you guys are using this and piloting this program. I know I spoke to Ms. Salinas about it and was saying, hey, let's bring it to our school. This would be awesome. So I'm glad to see that we're trying it out. It's great. One question, well, two questions. First is in case of emergencies, what's the process that you guys have? And then the second is if a student just gets so desperate to the point they even like tear it apart or do something, what's the process on that?

[2794] SPEAKER_31: So the first question is a good one. It's one that I've heard from other teachers and other concerned community members. And every teacher has a base. The office has a base. And so in case of emergency, teachers can unlock. Teachers also, it's up to their discretion if they want to do Kahoot or other kinds of apps with phones, they are more than welcome to unlock at their discretion if there's something in their lesson where they want kids using their phones as part of the technology in the classroom. Every teacher can make that call. I trust their professional judgment on that in terms of, you know, curriculum and instruction. As far as students maybe having some, I had a student the other day who said, you know, I'm waiting for a call from my doctor. Is it okay if I have my volume up and if it rings? come and use my phone and unlock here in the office. And we said, sure, no problem. Tell your teacher. Alert your teacher. So she turned up her volume. And I would imagine whenever she got that text or call, she stepped out and came to unlock with our campus monitor or office manager. Your second question was about kids tearing the pouches. They are actually pretty. Of course, there were all the jokes about, well, I'm going to go and get a demagnetizer from Macy's or something. And I haven't seen those on campus. I don't know if they, in fact, are out there. But, I guess they have tried and according to Sonia, it's a different kind of magnet. So they are pretty sturdy. We have told them they can decorate so long as they can remove the decoration. We are finding that Sharpie is really hard to remove. But we will cross the bridge as far as damages at the end of the year because it is issued to each student until the end of the school year. And no, no one has tried to cut into it or tear it apart or bang it anywhere. Like, as you can see, they're pretty soft. So, I think the kids like that they are not hurting their phone. Thank you.

[2908] Ray Rodriguez: Member Martinez.

[2911] Elisa Martinez: I think you know how excited I am, Ms. Calderon. Yes. Because we did a walkthrough. Yes. So, anyway, thank you for being resourceful and taking the time to find the solution. This is amazing. And thank you for your comments because That was exactly what we saw, right, the lack of engagement from the students. It really was concerning. So thank you so much for taking the time to find the solution.

[2937] SPEAKER_31: No, thank you. I should have recognized that your walkthrough also kind of prompted my research. So the two things, the teacher and then your walkthrough, and it's something I discussed at length with my staff. And I think that's also why they were like, let's problem solve. We can sit here and be upset about phones, or we can take some action and be proactive.

[2954] Elisa Martinez: No, fantastic. Thank you. And so what is the cost of these? Because I know that in the junior high, I know I spoke to one of Mr. Neal's assistant principals Just in terms of learning what our policy is, right, from a consistency perspective. Because I think we all believe, to us as adults, same thing, right? If you start to get used to not looking at it, you don't need it anymore. Or you don't feel the need. So what's the cost?

[2982] SPEAKER_31: So I would say it's $30 per pouch if you include shipping, handling, and taxes. And it's not only the pouches, but it's the unlocking bases and then the PD that's involved, the staff members who come out to train your teachers and train your students. They also give you access to their materials, so for templates for letters to parents and other documents that you might find useful. So that's all included as part of the service.

[3007] Ray Rodriguez: Okay. Cesar, student board member.

[3011] SPEAKER_06: I mean, it's an ingenious solution. I can't say it would be welcomed at Memorial, per se. It's a different dynamic over there. But no, I had never heard of genre being used in schools or anything. I had heard many news articles about it being used at concerts and all that, but I'd never heard about it being used in school. So I hope that it helps Bridgepoint students meet their goals, return to Memorial, or do whatever they want to do. Yeah, congratulations on the adoption of the technology. I hope it works out well.

[3042] SPEAKER_31: Thank you, Susan.

[3043] Ray Rodriguez: And I just had, years ago, let me go again, years ago, then Senator Liz Figueroa, it was a big thing for her as far as, because of the situation, and it's gotten worse, where parents are afraid of something happens. And then years after that, we had a lockdown at the high school, and everybody was freaking out. So instead of walking away from it, you tackled it head on and came up with a solution. And as a parent, grandparent right now, knowing that if something, hopefully it never happens here, it happens in any community, that I can either reach the teacher or my kids can reach me. And it's important that we kind of thought outside the box and came up with something. And we appreciate it. And then the engagement of the young people that it affects, it's exactly as it should be. Anybody else?

[3112] SPEAKER_43: Just quickly to Cesar's comment. San Mateo High School did it. I'm sure if they can do it, our Newark Memorial students can too.

[3124] Ray Rodriguez: OK.

[3126] SPEAKER_31: Thank you so much.

[3127] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Thank you very much. Ms. Salinas, that's it? Okay. Employee organizations, NTA. Mr. Merritt, how are you?

[3160] SPEAKER_20: Good evening. Is this a different podium? Did I break the microphone the last time I was here? I think you did. I think I broke it.

[3170] SPEAKER_21: We're still waiting for your money. Okay. It's all about me.

[3188] SPEAKER_20: Mr. Shimmer. And if I can't hear myself talking, I don't know. And I'm a little offended because Prajit Jalamudi was here, and he was talking, and he didn't say that I was his former teacher. He didn't say that. And then Ms. Calderon gets up and talks about Yoder, and she mentions everybody that talked to her about it. She never mentioned that I was excited, and I came and talked to her about it. She didn't. It's about me. And in case you don't know, my name's Timothy Meredith, and I'm the president of the Newark Teachers Association. I was excited to learn about Yonder. I saw the news article about San Mateo, and I used to teach in San Mateo. And I thought, wow, they're doing it. Now, one thing I just thought of, OK, see this little thing here? My phone can be in the pouch, and I can still text. So I'm just saying. I'm just saying. Now, I don't know how many of them have a smartwatch, but it's getting more common.

[3245] SPEAKER_43: Just put it in the pouch. Put the watch in the pouch.

[3248] Ray Rodriguez: It'll fit in the pouch. You've got to put the watch in the pouch, Ms.

[3251] SPEAKER_20: Kuchera said. And in the California Educator, which is the CTA magazine, there is a, I would say, a controversial summary of Yonder at San Mateo High from a former colleague of mine, Fernando Figueroa, who was a former technology teacher. And guess what? I teach technology, too. A little bit. So I'm supporting it 100%. And I think it's a great idea. I went to school in Montana. And when I went to school in Montana, it was ed code that you had to have a place supplied for the students to tie up their horse and have the water there. That was the law. I don't know if it's still the law. It probably is. But we figured out how to survive without taking our horse to school. And we figured out how to not, well, I don't know, not to use our chewing tobacco and our cigarettes, you know, all that. It's not allowed anymore. So, it's possible. It's progress. So, some things I'd like to talk about tonight is new hires. So, I'm going to do a little rewind because the first meeting I, maybe I was a little cranky. I don't know. I apologize if I was. No, I don't. New hires, we hired a lot of new people and we had, 32 new hires participate in the new hire orientation. Very grateful to have shared some of my time with President Rodriguez. They were excited to be recognized as coming into the district. So thank you very much for that. They seem motivated and excited. And maybe some of them are a little nervous, as they should be. We all should be. We have a very important job to do. I'm excited for the year. Now, I wasn't preparing because I was correcting homework on there, and somebody thought I was playing a video game. Well, in my class, we created a short little video game, and so I was doing those. I kept the sound down so that you didn't hear the weird sound effects, but I'm excited. The students are excited. I feel some excitement and turnaround, and I hope we can keep on with that. I want to remind you. that it, although money is important and we do need money to continue to do the work, it's not the most important thing and we can't get lost in that. There are other ways to do things and the number one thing I would say is partner with us. Don't make decisions that seem cold and surrounded completely around money. Come to us and talk to us about what the solutions, the possible solutions are before you make a decision. I think that's important. I, this is my, I don't know, let's see. It's 40 something years in learning, you know. I've had an opportunity to learn a lot of things. So there's lots of experience out there and don't discount that. and make decisions without partnering with us. This Saturday, several of the NTA members are going to be participating in an organizing training, so be ready to see some new things happen around organizing in Newark. And in October, so far we have about eight people committed to going to a leadership conference. It's going to be held in Burlingame. So we're going to be learning more about that. I do want to say that our message should always be students are the reason. Students are first. And although it seems sometimes that they're not our Our message should always be that, and we really do believe that. September is Suicide Awareness Month. And the number one thing that I believe that can happen in the schools is have smaller class size so that we don't lose that student. I personally have two friends who've committed suicide in my life so far. I hope that's the last. But September is suicide awareness, and I think we should be talking about it, and I think we should be talking about the stresses that happen, the cell phones, the addictions that happen. We need to support each other in that. Calendar issues. My goodness. Ms. Martinez, where should you be tonight? It's back to school night at BGI. How did that happen? It's also back to school night at Graham, although that's not on the calendar. And it's a board meeting night. How did that happen? I thought we fixed that last year. Could we not schedule board meetings on nights when the schools are doing important activities? Or could we not schedule school activities on nights when the board meeting is happening? You need to be there. We need to be there. So let's commit ourselves to look at that together. I know that I'm part of the calendar committee, and the limitations of the calendar committee are really looking at start dates, end dates, and stuff like that. But maybe we need to get into the nitty gritty. I don't know. Somebody does. The website. It still says Ohlone connections for summer. That banner keeps showing up there. Summer's gone. Do you know that the reason I'm grading is because I have to do progress reports starting on Friday because we've been in school so long already? And it's just after Labor Day. Back in Montana, I would have been driving the tractor still. You know, we're harvesting the corn pretty soon. But we've been in school long enough to create progress reports already. Can you believe that? I can. Okay. Oh, one more thing about the calendar. Superintendent Sanchez, you invited people to RSVP to the awards. Guess what? Board meeting. You have a board meeting scheduled that day. And our employee of the year, Ms. Hong, I'll have to check in with her. I don't know if anybody has, if she's going to be there, but she was moving out of state. I don't know if she's done that yet. So I hope she's going to be there, and if she is, I'll be at that meeting, too, or that celebration. I've never asked. So, Bort, do you have any questions for me?

[3679] Ray Rodriguez: Since your expertise is tech, why don't you help us with the district website?

[3689] SPEAKER_20: That's a great idea. And, you know, maybe you should ask the junior high leadership team if they have some expertise in it. Because I know some of them do. And they'd be happy to participate. I cost way too much. I cost way too much.

[3707] Ray Rodriguez: Oh, I forgot to say, for free. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[3711] SPEAKER_20: Yeah. All right. But that's a good point. We should be asking if there's people out there to update the website. Yeah. Absolutely.

[3721] SPEAKER_44: For the record, I went and I saw my kid's teacher today before the meeting. I know it doesn't fix everything else, but.

[3729] SPEAKER_20: All right, all right. Well, I won't chastise you too much because I know that you touched base with your child's student at the very first PD day that we had. So yeah, I saw that. All right. Any other questions or confessions or comments or chastisements? Thank you for your comments. Thank you very much.

[3760] Ray Rodriguez: Anybody from CSCA? NEWMA?

[3771] SPEAKER_31: I'm back. Hi. Hello again. I am happy to be back as your NEWMA secretary. So I am the NEWMA representative for the evening. Many of our colleagues, as you well know, have finished with their back-to-school nights or are at their back-to-school nights. So they wanted you all to know that everyone's working really hard to make these successful events for our parents and making those community connections that we've already talked about. We've already heard that we have lots of new hires, including 27 induction candidates. We are lucky to have 20 experienced teachers stepping up as their mentors. and there's going to be ongoing induction orientation through this job-embedded mentor-based program that hopefully will help retain our teachers. Our district science leadership team is scheduled to start work on Monday, September 9th, to keep working on implementation of NGSS throughout our district. And if you're interested, you can always reach out to Ms. Revasura, who is both our induction director as well as the lead for our district science leadership team. And then finally, many of us are continuing to seek our own professional development through AXA. Several of us are taking part in AXA academies to continue to expand our professional expertise.

[3856] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Thank you for doing that. Thank you. OK. OK. Now we go to all business, 15.1, the superintendent.

[3868] SPEAKER_19: We have staff here, too.

[3869] Ray Rodriguez: Oh, we have, okay. This is our second reading, so normally we'll have a motion and a second, unless there's discussion. So this is board policy 1312.1, complaints concerning district employees, second reading. Staff recommends the board approve this board policy. Okay, you need a motion and a second?

[3910] Bowen Zhang: Or discussion?

[3910] Ray Rodriguez: I move that we adopt the board policy. Okay, Member Jean moves.

[3920] Elisa Martinez: I second.

[3921] Ray Rodriguez: Member Martinez seconds. Any questions, comments? Please vote. OK, motion passes unanimously. Thank you. 15.2, proposed BAA QMD grants for district buses. Superintendent? Mr. Schimel?

[3962] SPEAKER_21: We have an opportunity to upgrade our buses, like everything in education. Thank you. Like everything in education, it changes. When many of the folks at this dais went to school, you went to school on a diesel bus. About 10, 15 years ago, they invented what is called CNG buses, compressed natural gas. And it wasn't a very successful experiment because they found that the tanks don't last very long. And a lot of districts are moving towards electric buses. So we have an opportunity. We have a consultant, Yvonne Tom, who's in the audience. And next to Yvonne is Susan Condon. And they brought to the business department a recommendation that the board look at two things. And the first one I'm going to definitely recommend, replacing our CNG tanks because January 1 of 2020, we can't run those buses. We have no spares. So things like field trips and sporting events won't happen. So that's a definite. Cost of that is $40,000 because of the grant and the work that Ms. Tom has done. The second option that the board has is to replace two of our buses with electric buses. Quite a few school districts are doing this. The new equipment is very expensive, like $400,000 a bus. But we have an opportunity to participate in a grant, and my two colleagues will drill down if the board has questions. And we can get $800,000 plus of buses because not only do you have to buy the buses, you have to have the electric charging stations put in. So when you get done with all of that stuff, you're talking about a million dollars worth of equipment. Now that's retail numbers. And we can probably obtain that for about $335,000. And districts are moving in that direction. The question before you ask it, where is it going to come from? And we can talk about that. I think 10 years from now, everybody will be using electric buses for two reasons. Energy and the range of these buses is going up by the year. The batteries are getting bigger. And so that's what we want to talk to the board about. I don't think we have a choice on the, natural gas buses, we've got to replace the tanks. Do we want to use this opportunity? I'm very familiar with districts that are moving in this direction, but it is a capital expenditure. And there's gonna be a learning curve in terms of driving them with our bus drivers. It's not exactly like driving your old bus. And so there's a lot of training that goes on. And initially when something's new, having done this role in another district last year, we had a few complaints because of the training. It's just a different system if you've ever driven an electric vehicle compared to a gas vehicle. So that's the subject for tonight. We're not asking for a motion for two reasons. We do not yet have the contract. And the devil's always in the details. And I wouldn't bring you a contract that our council hasn't looked at first, and we've not been able to obtain that because that's part of the process. So what we'll be asking is for you to let us continue the process, get the contract, make sure the district's comfortable. My question to our consultant and our in-house is, so we go ahead and do this. How long do we have to keep them? Because I was doing the economic thing. If the buses are worth $400,000 each and you cut that in half, you have $400,000 worth of buses for $335,000. But what if there's another system that comes along for moving students along? Transportation is a necessary evil. We have to have it for our program. But if somebody else could provide it, it's just something we need, like cutting our grass. That's the question before the board and we would entertain comments and both those ladies know a lot more about it than I do because they've worked on it. What's the board's pleasure?

[4264] Ray Rodriguez: It's okay, I'd like to hear from the young ladies.

[4273] SPEAKER_36: President Rodriguez and four trustees, superintendent, and executive cabinet, and our queen. Transportation for this district is one of my hearts. And when I say that, I've been in the department for 12 years. And out of those 12 years, except for me being a director, I was the transportation secretary, dispatch, and whatever you want to call it. I did everything in the transportation. something I really believe helps our kids. And although we do not do home to school, we do field trips and sports trips. And I don't want to go into all of it, but I believe that having the transportation available to the kids enriches their learning experience and the places they get to go. And I'll say just as a parent, when my children were nine and 12, I took them on a trip to Europe. And everybody said, why are you taking these kids to Europe? They've got to go to school. And I went and I asked the school for home learning. We did homework when we were in Europe. But those kids came back. And those kids won awards that year for the reports they did on the education they had from being in those places. And I know we're not taking them to Paris and Italy. when we drive our buses, but we take them to places like the Egyptian Museum and they learn about Egypt. We take them to the museums for natural history and Monterey, so they learn about the county. There's a lot of good things we learn with these kids. We take them on science camps and so on and so forth. So the importance of having buses is really, real strong in my heart. Having a bus that works is even stronger in my heart. And we have been dealing with the past several years. Like I said, I've been in the department for 12 years, 13 years. I've watched our buses deteriorate. We have smelly diesel buses that break down and don't make all the long trips. We have CNG tanks that the tanks are running out of its expiration. Like Mr. Schimel said, they don't last for long. And at the end of this year, we won't even be able to drive them if we don't get the batteries. So the other thing is with this grant, I know it's a lot of money, but we don't just get the buses and we just don't get the batteries. We also get the infrastructure for the electrical vehicles. which will help us in other cases because we're also looking at expanding our vehicles for our trucks for refrigeration and those kind of things which will open up the door for us electrically with those EV stations. The only way to get these EV stations is with a bus. We can't do it with just a truck. So that's a real important thing you should pull on that. Those EV stations and those batteries are 100% covered by the grant. What we're paying for is the cost of our buses, which works out to about $379, I think it is, right?

[4479] SPEAKER_21: $379? $335,000 for the buses and $40,000 for the CNG tanks. And that includes, as Susan said, all of the charging stations, the electrical that comes from the street, PG&E, and that will take six months to do. extremely slowly.

[4497] SPEAKER_36: And I know we have a concern about educating our drivers and our mechanics on fixing them. We've been working on this a little over a year and we've had demos and training with our drivers and our mechanic. I've already sent the mechanic up to Sacramento for a training class on how to work on that machine. And we've had our drivers drive those buses. So they're excited about getting something new. We're excited about bringing something new into the district. So I'll give it to Yvonne. She's got full detail information.

[4533] SPEAKER_42: So unfortunately, I was not able to get 100%. So maybe you'll give me a B instead of an A. But you are getting two lawnmowers. We're signing the grant now for 100% free. Taking out your diesel, putting electric. So my job, as I told you before, is I am out to get the money. The reason why I'm pushing it now is there's a big VW penalty, okay? And that money is coming now. If we don't get it now, it will not be there later. And Los Angeles is getting more of the grant from VW for the diesel scandal. And so that's part of the problem. I did not know that you did not use your buses very often. If you had used them more, you would have gotten a bigger percentage covered. It's based on your usage. And that makes sense because they're trying to take out diesel in our schools that pollute the most, okay. And so diesel is on my brain, okay. So I would hope that if you, maybe you don't want to buy two buses, maybe you only want one, okay, but at least I can get the infrastructure. Because that's really what's then going to drive for trying to replace your refrigerator trucks, which are diesel, your dump truck, which is diesel. You know, I'm really trying to, and also the compliance of your old equipment, which is 12 to 15 years old, It's breaking, just like your car. When it gets 12 to 15 years old, you got to get something else. And so, I'm trying to replace your capital equipment instead of having you pay 100%, okay?

[4639] SPEAKER_21: To add a little bit to that so the board has a little further background, our buses are approximately 15 years old. And normally, a 15-year-old bus would be between 150,000 miles and 200,000 miles. Our buses have very low mileage. One of them has 100,000 and the rest are in the 50,000 range. But with diesel, it is the age, as Ms. Tom said, diesel buses are obsolete. So to give you an idea of what a gas bus would cost, if you bought two of them, you're probably in the $250,000 to $300,000 range. So if you looked at value, you'd be kind of comparing a car to a Tesla. They're about twice as much. It's a pretty good value, as she said, because of the grant and the timing. We are going to have to replace them at some time, and relatively soon, within the next few years, by the outside. We've had some internal discussions and they were a little frustrated with me at first because I asked quite a few questions. They've been working on this for a long time.

[4723] SPEAKER_42: My job is to ask me questions.

[4726] SPEAKER_21: They've done a really good job and I think it's just a matter of the board deciding if we bring it back to you, where do we take the money from? And I asked Ms. Condon where she thought and the Russian Fund came up. So that's a capital fund going to a somewhat depreciable asset. The other would be some other kind of fund that you have. So we're not asking for that answer tonight, but we wanna see where your comfortability is with what do we do? This is planning for the future.

[4765] SPEAKER_19: May I ask a question? Mr. Rodriguez? Yeah, I was gonna ask one too, go ahead. In these EV charging stations, I know in other presentations we've learned about EV charging stations that are open to the public and they pay a fee to charge their vehicle as a potential revenue stream. Does that have this capability in the infrastructure that we're in the tech specs that we have now?

[4789] SPEAKER_42: That grant is full. So, it was the one that was offered to schools where you can put them in your parking lots and people could come in and charge. Because these are located in your maintenance yard, you don't want strangers just coming in. So the answer.

[4806] SPEAKER_19: They could be located in somewhere else, but okay.

[4809] SPEAKER_42: But I mean that, because it's really, we're trying to put in what I call industrial uses as opposed to what I call regular vehicles. Okay, thank you.

[4817] Ray Rodriguez: So all the board has questions, so we'll start with Board Member Young.

[4827] Bowen Zhang: Thank you for the presentation and my first question is, what is the current range for the battery, like the mileage for the battery, for the EV, for the new electric bus? How many years? No, how many miles, is that 200 miles per charge?

[4845] SPEAKER_42: So for the, we're getting two buses, one is 125 miles which can get you to Sacramento, which I understand you're athletics groups and your students go to Sacramento. And then they will supercharge there and then come back. And then I have a smaller one for 100 miles. A smaller one for 100 miles.

[4868] Bowen Zhang: I see. And at the end of, say we have the battery in the bus, at the end of the battery life, how much will that cost us to replace a worn out battery?

[4878] SPEAKER_42: Okay, it's eight years. And it has to retain in year 6 or 7, 80%. So thereafter, you're going to have to buy one. I don't know the cost of it. I can look it up, or I can get that data from. But eight years is really a good warranty.

[4896] Bowen Zhang: And speaking of the improvement of the battery technologies, so once you have, once the battery is capable of going, say, up to 250, 300 miles, which is probably going to happen in two or three years, Is this box capable of having those new battery retrofit into the box?

[4913] SPEAKER_42: So the company I'm working with is the Lion Electric in Montreal. And so I'm working very closely because I prefer working with a manufacturer. They have a truck that goes 220 miles. So I'm working very closely so that I can find out when we could substitute because the chassis is the same, right? and you just put the batteries under it. So I'm working with them now because I'm looking to get big truck electric with 220 mile distances.

[4946] Bowen Zhang: Yeah, I think we just need to be extra careful when it comes to the future compatibility of the new battery back into this bus. We don't want to get a new bus just because the battery technology improved. You can't fit into this bus anymore.

[4957] SPEAKER_42: And it happened in the electric lawnmowers, where I work directly with the manufacturer. So yours can go for eight hours. So I'm really aware of that.

[4969] SPEAKER_21: I'm impressed. Miss Tom is recommending Lion from Canada. That is the major. That's the top of the line bus. I did some work for Campbell High School District. And they have their version of Yvonne Tom. And they just purchased about four or five of them with a part of a grant. And I had the opportunity to actually get in and see the battery. take a tour, and if the board wants to do that, the Lion Company will bring the bus and you get to kick the tires before we do that. It is a very reputable firm. They're new, but this whole, it's just like the Tesla car, is new.

[5016] Bowen Zhang: Well, you said they're very reputable and new. Are they funded by venture capital or they're a really established company?

[5022] SPEAKER_42: They're an established company.

[5023] Bowen Zhang: Because my concern is, company backed by venture capitals can go bust up.

[5030] SPEAKER_21: We will dig a little deeper. It's a good question and I don't know the answer.

[5035] SPEAKER_42: And we have done a demo here in Newark and all the people jumped on the buses and ran them around. I can't drive a bus so I didn't. And they are opening their shop in Sacramento because they're selling a lot of buses here in California. And they go cross-border, so they'll use Detroit automaker materials, as well as from Canada. So it's really got a very broad base. I would not recommend a company that is going to go under.

[5068] SPEAKER_21: You are correct, though. Do we have a five-year lifecycle piece of information? No, because they haven't been on the road five years.

[5078] Ray Rodriguez: OK, thank you. OK. member Gutierrez, and then member Marchena.

[5083] SPEAKER_43: The CNG buses, the tanks that are going to get replaced, that need to get replaced by January, how many of those are there? There are two of them.

[5093] SPEAKER_42: But there is a third CNG bus that will be converted to electric. So if you decide you do not want to go electric, I would convert that third one also.

[5103] SPEAKER_43: OK. And so those two tanks would be a total of 40,000? Yes. It's about 20,000 each.

[5112] SPEAKER_43: Oh, are we going to be getting rid of any buses? Yes. How many?

[5119] SPEAKER_42: You have to get rid of the ones that you're getting. Well, OK. You have to get rid of the ones that you're going to get electric buses.

[5125] SPEAKER_36: They're just replacing them.

[5126] SPEAKER_43: So that's what I was saying. So we're still keeping the body in this case.

[5128] SPEAKER_36: We still have the same amount of buses. Yeah. We actually are scrapping one of them. We have a fleet of five. And we are scrapping one of them out. I don't know if I brought the surplus to the last one or not. I think we were waiting for this to be done. We didn't, no. But the fifth bus will be scrapped out because we cannot get that extra battery and we're not going to be able to do that. And because of the mileage that has gone down over the past couple of years, because we didn't have a driver for four years, our mileage wasn't high enough for us to get buses. So what we're doing is we're placing the batteries on two of our existing CNGs. We're going to scrap the last bus because unless we end up making it an emergency center, which might be something in my head someplace, and then the other two will be replaced out for the electric. Okay. Thank you.

[5180] Elisa Martinez: Member Martinez. Thank you. I think that, you know, this is a really good opportunity for us. We know as we look ahead that we're going to have these to incur these costs anyhow. I know that when I first saw this, one of the questions I had was, so my instinct is to say absolutely this is the right direction I want to go in as a board member, looking at basically would be paying a third, right, of the value. One of the questions I had I think for the sake of not only ourselves but our community understanding the tradeoff was, you know, what is the cost if we don't have them, right? What is the cost of not doing it? I think that's an important in my head just because I've kind of been doing some math here. I mean I think it's a anytime we say we're going to go spend Russian funds everybody you know we all get nervous but what's the alternative to not if we don't spend it now and I think that's the picture that I think it's important not only for myself ourselves but for everybody to understand so that we could just make the decision and move forward.

[5248] SPEAKER_21: Let me answer that question because that was a rather heated discussion between the MOT director and myself. Because if you don't have those, then you do contract them out for them. And Susan showed me some data that it's quite a bit more expensive. I did question some of that data because there are more and more districts getting out of the busing business and contracting out for it. And having done that in several places, it can be very cost effective because you get out of a business. Busing is a big safety issue. So there's a lot of time that goes into that. Now the other point of view, and I'll let Susan respond if I miss anything, is there's a more secure feeling if they're your bus drivers. And without over speaking, that's union work. where some of the people you contract out with are not unionized. So it's a whole big issue. More and more districts are moving away, because as you see, having a fleet could be $2 million easy. I'm not recommending that at this point, because you have a limited home to school transportation. So you have a very limited approach. And she is right about that. It will drive up that cost, because you don't have a lot of busing. You don't go very many miles. But you do need to look at other options. We may not be ready to do that quite yet. That's why I want to find out how long we have to keep those electric buses.

[5352] Ray Rodriguez: OK, I had a quick one.

[5354] SPEAKER_36: I was going to say, I can give you figures if you want figures. I just did a sheet on the science camps last year. Last year, two years ago, without a bus driver, we ran into a lot of issues the last minute. There were issues about transportation in general, which held us back on knowing whether or not we can even do transportation. That took us quite a few months into the school year. With that said, by the time we found out we can do something, we were forced to either use subs to drive our buses or have to go out for charters. At that point, It was expensive for the kids. These kids raised money to take the field trips. The district does not give them money for field trips. Parents participate, and kids raise the money. So with that said, the following year, the LCAP committee decided that we can't go with the school without giving them transportation, so let's fund the transportation for science camp. But the caveat on that was they did not allow us to use district busing. And I don't know where that drawback was, but that was part of what we ran into. And we had a bus driver at that point. With that going forward, I couldn't not go with the district. I had to go with charters. And we went through four different charter companies that are certified through Newark Unified. They have to be SPAB drivers. They have to be certified with our CHP. There's a lot of, we can't just get a company to come in and drive our kids. There are rules to driving students' children. So we paid $18,000 for charter buses last year to take our kids to science camp. seven schools. Had we done it with our district, it would have cost us $7,000. We paid almost $11,000 to take outside services when we had it in-house.

[5472] Elisa Martinez: So thank you for those data points, but I think we need to look at the fully loaded cost to your point of operating the fleet and the actual usage. So, again, I think if the need is there, absolutely, I, for one, would love to support it, but we do, in good conscience, need to look at the fully loaded cost.

[5491] SPEAKER_21: Yeah.

[5492] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you.

[5493] SPEAKER_21: My recommendation to the board is that you allow us to move forward with the electric approach till we get into the details of the contract and what obligation you have, if you so choose.

[5509] Ray Rodriguez: Okay, so what you're asking for is direction. I just had a question. I think you covered it, Ms. Condon, when it comes to science camp and all the things that we tend to use buses for. I remember Ray, our bus driver from years ago, and being a former volunteer bus driver, this excites me a whole bunch. There would be a savings to the fundraising, like Science Camp and any other field trips, if they use these buses as opposed to the way it's done now.

[5555] SPEAKER_36: No. No. That's our district costs. That's the charges we charge for our students in the Newark Unified School District. You go anywhere else, the price goes higher. If you go out into charter buses and rent from other areas, you're going to pay those two and three times the amount.

[5574] Ray Rodriguez: No, I meant, I'm sorry.

[5575] SPEAKER_36: I meant a savings for the parents who are doing the... There's no savings to keep this at our level because we are still using the same pricing. Okay. It would be a savings for us to keep our transportation versus renting out and going out for charters. Right. Got it. So that's their savings. If we keep our facilities, even with overhead, and our prices are based on, and it could be reevaluated because it's been a year since it's been done, are based on the transportation, on the gas, on the people who are involved in the transportation, that was all what was part of the funding and how we came up with the amount that is charged for transportation. Okay.

[5621] Ray Rodriguez: I know the, being on the ROP board that, you know, with the electric cars and the batteries is something that you know has been going on for a while and and it's just It's exciting that the whole industry Now on the funding source You put Russian Is there somewhere else or have you already basically decided that? That's what you're going to use

[5653] SPEAKER_36: Obviously if you guys can come up with another place to go I'm well know that that's what we're asking you my Suggestion would be out of Russian. It's one-time money It's an an extra expense that we didn't really bring in and budget in for it's not something you can put in the bond because we didn't plan it into the bond and And quite frankly, there's not enough money in maintenance that we probably could come up with that extra 340. And it would be a shame to lose this opportunity. Right. Agreed. For that.

[5681] Ray Rodriguez: You're turning away a lot of money. I mean, we're only paying one third. OK. So the direction then would be for the board. What are you asking our direction?

[5691] SPEAKER_21: To move forward with applying for the grant. And I talked with Ms. Tom and Susan and they both said that we can apply for the grant and At the 11th hour when it comes back to the board to fund and we choose not to do it. There's no penalty Okay, but I want to read the contract and I have not seen the contract and then I would want our legal firm to Double-check me. Okay, so are we okay with that board?

[5721] SPEAKER_19: Correct

[5726] Ray Rodriguez: Ms. Gutierrez, Member Gutierrez has a question. [Translated] Ms. Gutierrez, Member Gutierrez has a question. [End] [Translated] Ms. Gutierrez, Member Gutierrez has a question. [Translated] Ms. Gutierrez, Member Gutierrez has a question. [End] [End]

[5728] SPEAKER_43: Just a quick question. These buses do the to the limit of what is it 250 miles? 125. Okay. They would never be able to use be used for grad night then. So at least.

[5739] SPEAKER_36: Well we would not we don't use our buses for grad night anymore.

[5742] SPEAKER_43: We would continue chartering in that situation.

[5745] SPEAKER_36: And let me explain to you why we didn't do that. Because we have several miles to go for one. With the charter company, they include all of the breaks in between and the length of time. It's still like over a 24-hour period that they do. So in the past, we used to drive our kids down, but it was a lot of, well, we had diesel. I don't know, maybe we had electric, but at this point, we wouldn't go because they don't go over. I guess they could stop in between. If at 125, you could probably schedule the trip for 125 miles, go to a charging station, their quick charge. Do you remember how? I don't know, about an hour or two. Right, it's about an hour or two. So maybe they stop at their lunch at 125 miles, and then they go in and do the quick charge, hour, an hour and a half, recharge and go. I don't think that is the way to go. And I have no clue what that would cost us internally to do that.

[5802] Ray Rodriguez: Well, maybe the science camp people have a charging station right there.

[5805] SPEAKER_36: There could be, but we don't need them on our charge. The only ones we would need it on is the trips that we take out to Sacramento because that's the furthest point. The other ones we would be okay back and forth.

[5816] Ray Rodriguez: Got it. Okay. Okay. Board, want to give the direction as being asked? I move that we approve. We don't have to vote on this. We just give directions.

[5829] Bowen Zhang: We can just proceed to apply for the two electric bus.

[5834] Ray Rodriguez: OK. Everybody will agree with that?

[5837] SPEAKER_19: OK. Also, we want to move forward with the compressed natural gas tanks. That's all included.

[5844] SPEAKER_36: Pat, it's all included in the package.

[5846] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah, you're not asking for action on this, are you? No, it says action here, but we're not.

[5851] SPEAKER_36: Right. It's action to move forward so we can continue with the grant. Right.

[5855] Ray Rodriguez: Which is direction, in my opinion.

[5858] Elisa Martinez: But we're not, sorry, not voting to buy the tanks, though, because that's what I heard you say.

[5862] SPEAKER_42: That's one of the grants. There are two grants. We're going to apply, as I understand.

[5868] SPEAKER_47: Go ahead.

[5870] SPEAKER_42: As I understand the direction from the board you just gave me, we are going to proceed on two grants, one for electric and one for CNG. There are two distinct ones. So if you say, to heck with electric, I can stop that but continue with CNG, or vice versa, or any combination.

[5888] Ray Rodriguez: Got it. Both. Is that OK? OK. Got it. Thank you. Thank you.

[5895] Elisa Martinez: We haven't said, I second.

[5901] Ray Rodriguez: Oh, there's no motion to second. We just give direction.

[5903] Elisa Martinez: Oh, this is the second.

[5904] SPEAKER_19: OK. Thank you. Thank you. Before you leave, if I may, later on we're trying to schedule a visit to a local, to visit a new school. If we're able to do that, can we use the electric bus? take us as a demo trip to do a local visit?

[5921] SPEAKER_42: How many people for the demo?

[5923] SPEAKER_19: This many, roughly?

[5925] SPEAKER_42: So you tell me when you want and I will get a line electric. We'll talk offline then, thank you. I mean they're very, the manufacturers, if I work directly with them, are very accommodating. We'll see, thank you. You could ride the electric lawnmowers too.

[5943] SPEAKER_19: I'm open for that.

[5945] Ray Rodriguez: That's fine, but have vans available in case it breaks down.

[5950] SPEAKER_19: I know it won't.

[5953] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. OK, 15.3, update determination regarding process to fill board vacancy. I added this on. Superintendent, could you just give us an update?

[5965] SPEAKER_19: Sure. So as I mentioned earlier, we are going to be going forward with our interviews on September 19. starting from 5 o'clock to 6 p.m. The time slot we usually use for our study sessions. The process will be relatively the same as we did last time. I'll be meeting with the two committee members prior to that time to certify the applications. And we have four candidates, which is good news. And we have people that are interested in being involved. So that's kind of where we are right now.

[6002] Ray Rodriguez: Thank you. Thank you much. We've got a new business, 16.1, Mr. New.

[6015] Cary Knoop: Good evening. This mic is low. Okay, so I looked at the unaudited actuals and the first thing I did was compare that with the estimated actuals. And so there's basically the estimated actuals were done June 1st. And on June 1st, the best effort estimate was that the district was going to be deficit 1.7 million. So about two months later, we now hear that the district is up $900,000 for the general fund, both restricted and unrestricted. So by itself, That's wonderful news, but I think there's some serious questions that need to be asked. And I hope board members will ask these questions. First of all, there is a significant increase in benefits of $2.4 million while the salaries are pretty much the same. So obviously the question is what happened? How can, if the salaries are, you know, classified and certificated as pretty much equal to the estimated actuals versus the unaudited actuals, why is there a $2.4 million over $13 million increase in benefits? That's significant. That's material, I think. The second item is, that is off, is the state funding. If you look at other state form funding, all other state funding, that goes from about $3 million to $6 million, almost an increase of $2.8 million. So my questions are simple. Question one is, when did the district was reasonably aware that they were going to get that money and that there was an increase for the benefits? And when did they actually receive that money from the state? Because if they did receive that money from the state or reasonably assumed that they were going to get that money, why wasn't it reported in the estimated actuals? Because that's a material misstatement if that were true. And I think that has consequences. It's also not very nice to our partners for the NTA and CSA. So I think the board needs to ask these questions and get that data out. What happened? If it's an honest mistake, mistake can happen, that's okay. But if this was a material fact that was not reported in the estimated actuals, I think that's a serious problem. Thank you.

[6182] Ray Rodriguez: Mr. Schimel.

[6193] SPEAKER_21: Okay, this evening we're going to do a tandem presentation, myself, This Lola, Kim Lola actually prepared the numbers. The two questions that the gentleman asked, I really appreciate his courtesy because he had the courtesy to come up and share those with me. And also the couple board members have called about different questions and both those questions were also raised. So we do plan on covering that. So part of the presentation tonight will be kind of high level. and then we're going to get into the details of those questions and whatever and the person that actually puts the data. So, the first disclaimer is I had nothing to do with this budget and I got the short straw and I get to present the high level because I've learned to do what Ms. Lola wants me to do. All kidding aside, the report card, I call this the report card. And where we started the year was in late June of 2018. And at that time, a different CBO stood before you in team and presented some numbers to you. And those were estimates because there was very little knowledge about what the real budget was. We had a pretty good idea of what the revenue would be. very little idea of what the expenditures would be because we hadn't even started the year. And so when I look at this number right here as the projection of what our budget was and what we actually got in revenue, and we'll share with you why, we were off about $700,000 of income. But you have to remember our budget is 60 million. So if we did a percentage, we're 98.8% to what you were told when you adopted your budget in late June of 2018. When you're talking about a budget of $60 million, this is a very, very small amount. And I don't mean to make light of it, but in our world of fiscal, CBOs and assistant suits for business, we call this fairy dust because you can lose a pipe at a school and it'll cost you 300,000 one way or another. This is not a lot of money when you look at it as a percentage. Expenditures, the same thing. And when we knew the money was going to go down, the income, your staff, these people sitting at the dais, myself excluded, took actions to sort of match those two. Because we knew we had projected a deficit spending. And if we knew the money was going down and still kept spending, you would have larger than the 1.8 million that you were told you would be deficit spending. And we'll get to that in a minute. Our other sources were pretty much right on the button. So if you look at these three numbers, and people are always saying, well, We say one thing and do something else. This is inaccurate. This is very accurate data. You were told something in June and what actually happened on June 30th, a year later, was 98.5% on average correct.

[6433] Ray Rodriguez: Can I interrupt you for a second? Sure. I'm sorry. I'm not feeling well, so Member Martinez is going to take over. It's not that I don't like your presentation. Don't take it personal. I've been up since 4 o'clock in the morning and I'm just.

[6449] SPEAKER_21: I appreciate the fact you didn't say I was making you sick.

[6452] Ray Rodriguez: No, no, no, no, no, no. No, you're always right to the point. Thank you. I'm glad that you decided to be here with us. Thank you, Ray. Thank you.

[6466] SPEAKER_21: Now let's move down to what the increase. We had thought that the budget would be about zero. In other words, every dollar in, we'd spend every dollar. When you're looking at 65 billion and you were going to have an ending balance of 44,000, you have to remember, you actually did deficit spend the prior two years and you told the administration, we need to do better. And they were saying, well, we've got salary raises and things, but we'll try to not deficit spend. So the planning was not to deficit spend right here in June of 18. In June of 19, we actually did a little better, $208,000 better. And this is kind of a misnomer, 566%. It's just because the number is so tiny. And it's five times that number. That's where you get the 500. But we're not talking about when you put 252,000 and put 65 million underneath it and divide your point something something. So we do end up the year with $208,000 more than we anticipated. That's good news, but it's not terrific news because that 5% is just 5% of your ending balance. It's not 5% of $65 million. So your ending balance was 5% better, but your ending balance is only 3% of your budget. So it's all relative. But give your staff credit, they were 98% to projection. So critics that might say they don't know what they're talking about, I would suggest they do. Now, where were the changes? The changes in income came because the state in June was talking about 3%. And the way it worked out is you got 3.7. and you ended up with 361,000 more dollars. But when the state give it in one category, they sometimes take it away in another. They had promised you for one time mandated costs. What is that? The state, when we have a mandated cost, like collective bargaining, like the Williams Act, like some healthcare kinds of things that we're required to do, the state has to reimburse you for that. But they only do that when they have money at the state. And if they don't, they say, I'll send you an IOU. Can't afford to pay you this year, so I owe you for this year, last year, two years before that. We had a pretty good budget year the year before last, and they did pay this dollar amount per ADA. Last year, with Governor Brown leaving office, he wanted his rainy day fund. And he basically said, we're going to cut this 344 in half. And so there's your drop of a million dollars in your budget. The rest of the numbers are pretty solid. So when you take the little bit more we got in, this number, minus the 900 we didn't get, we still didn't get $560,000 of money. Now, here is probably the most important part of all the slides I'm going to show. I want to take a pit stop on this, because it may be information for the community and board. You usually get paid for what your ADA is in the year. So, we began our school year July 1, and you go every day counting attendance, and they stop counting attendance sometime in April, about mid-April. But many districts have declined in enrollment and they can't make the cuts that they need to make in the year they need to do it. So the state gives you a one-year grace period. And what they say is if your enrollment for this year isn't as high as the previous year, we'll give you the previous year for one year only. So the point, important point here is we got revenue last year for the 17-18 year and we received 143 more student ADA than we actually had that came to school here. And you multiply $10,000 a student. Now that's both restricted and restricted. is a ballpark number, that's $1.4 million that we only got one time last year that we're not getting this year. And so that's very important when you're declining in enrollment because you get less money. The general fund components. I have a tendency with boards to focus on the general fund. Why? That's the money that you can make decisions with. Restricted money generally is, has rules and regulations and it is things like grants, state funded programs which we used to call categorical and now called LCAP, local decision making. You don't have direct authority over that. You have to go through a process And most of that ends up in education where it should be. So I wanted to look at just these numbers, but I think it's important to show we have a $70 million budget. It's composed of two elements, 56, 7 million in general fund, unrestricted, and 12 million. So you can kind of do the ratio and see that we're somewhere around 15, 18%. for your restricted and 82% general fund. Here's a couple for the pictorial people of what it looks like on a graph. And you see the different colors representing the totals. And we have very little control over the revenue. The governor makes a budget, he passes it, you get what you get. You do have more control over the expenditures so we want to take a look at our expenditures and you will notice that we are spending down our restricted which you should be. There's a theory that that money comes in that year and should be spent on those year's students. But sometimes all the process takes time and you can't spend it all. Like our associate superintendent for instruction, they plan ahead and it may take two years to get the new books because they're so expensive. So she'll come to business and say, I need to put this in the piggy bank so that I can get this in next year and I've got the four million I need to buy the books for the whole grade level, whatever it might be. And again, same kind of thing for those of you that are pictorial with the graphs. The next slide talks about transfers. And we need to stop right here and give Jennifer Willis a lot of credit. Every budget person, the first one that they look at is, it's not really encroachment, but a lot of people call it, special ed is not fully funded, any place in the state. And so it takes a general fund contribution every year off the top. and you don't have much choice on it because there's public law 194 that guides that. But if you notice these numbers, this is highly unusual. These numbers in most districts go up about 8 to 10 percent a year because whoever comes in the front door, you have to provide the program. And she's done a marvelous job at managing the program because it really, is not as much as you spent three years ago. I don't know how long she's been here, but that's a real credit to management of your team. Routine restricted maintenance account is an area that Susan Condon manages, and you go, how come she got $800,000 more money? Do you like her best? No, you were not funding at the full 3% because you didn't have the money. We were funding at 2 and 2, and we've already talked about the condition of our schools. Wasn't meant to offend anybody, but they are substandard. And so we funded this year's budget at a full 3%. We know we have issues with air conditioners and those kinds of things. These other items are not material, but they're part of the contribution. So let's take a look at the general fund portion of the budget, the unrestricted, and these are your ending balances. This is what at the end of the year is left over. Here's the most important numbers for you to look at as a board. Restricted money, and somebody talked about that earlier, we have $7 million, but restricted money has a lot of rules and regulations, and it's mostly in education, as I said. So this is really the board's unrestricted. So it's a misnomer to say we have $7 million unexpended. It really is. Because you, this is committed. It just isn't spent. This number is the real number. And you meet this 3% here, and you have about $1.7 million left over. And I will show you that that number used to be 4 or 5 million. And that's how you're getting the district without making the structural changes you may need to make. So you can probably do this for one more year. Because this is going to go away. Because we already talked about the deficit being about $2 million. So the $2 million will wipe out this year. And then you may not have the 3%. There'll be another person standing here, the associate superintendent for the county, asking you for a plan, and he will talk to the county superintendent. And I don't mean that to be threatening. I lived through that for two and a half years. Okay, let's look at the analysis for multi-years. So here were our actuals, actuals, actuals. This is the information we brought you this year. You recall at the August 1st meeting after a 45-day revise, and the numbers go straight across. And you can see that the number isn't going up very much. And you've heard, well, didn't you project a 3% raise? That's not 3%, Barry, between here this year and next year and next year. And there's two reasons for it. Reason number one is we're losing a million plus dollars on declining enrollment. Hasn't stopped. And actually, some estimates project it will go down another couple hundred kids in the next few years. The other estimate that everybody's forgot, I do some advising to school districts, and I advise school districts not to lower your contribution to STRS and PERS here. For the public, I make an analogy. It's like getting that credit card app in the mail. We'll give you 20 months for free and go spend the money now. So, we lowered that projection to make our ending balance bigger these two years. But this year, when we get to expenses, look at the jump in expenditures. Here, it's pretty flat. Why did it go up $4 million? Because there's no guarantee the state legislature is gonna backfill STRS and PERS. And you lower that number to have a bigger ending balance these years. I've encouraged districts not to lower it and put it into piggy bank. But you didn't do that here, so that doesn't matter. Most districts didn't either, by the way. Because the unions come in and say, that's not an expense. And it's true, it's not. But it's going to become an expense. And we're in this year. We're going to begin planning with your new CBO in December for the next fiscal year. So that year is over. And the second year out, and then what will become the third year out when you start doing your budget next June, these numbers are going to go up. So when we get down to the bottom line, We are short $2.5 million. How did we solve part of that problem? Credit to our education department because they used 600,000 of LCAP because this team did a marvelous job in staffing. Eighty-seven percent of your budgets in people can never cut pencils and construction paper and field trips. But it's very easy at $100,000 a body to let your budget. We budgeted 113 teachers at elementary. And we have exactly 113 with one more that's being paid out of this bucket here. So you will not anticipate a surprise at your first interim in terms of staffing. Our high school is right on the button. And our junior high is right on the button. Today is the magic day for the 15, is it 15 days, Jessica? 15 days? 15 days. So we will be meeting next week to make sure high schools, it's much more difficult for them to stabilize and make sure we have the correct numbers. But we're gonna be looking at that. So we're looking at this year, and we're not talking about any salary increases at all. and you can see we're deficit spending a little bit. And then when we put back in the STRS and PERS, we're in trouble the third year out. And that's why the board needs to look at maybe restructuring some different kinds of things because we need to prove to the county in June of 20 that this number is not that big, that we've got a plan. Some money is going to come in, some expenses are going to come down, and they'll say, okay. Okay, I want to take a look at all of our funds. We've talked about the general fund. We talked about our balances, and this talks about all the funds. You have to remember this is unrestricted and restricted. So I'll say it one more time, we don't have $7 million. Two and a half of that is in, money the board can't quite get. Adult education looks pretty solid. I've been working with Mary Sayers on our food service. We have been spending down a little bit. She's feeling the effect of the declining enrollment and numbers of applications for free and reduced. And I've given her some ideas that she's Hadn't thought about it before, of ways to do that. She's got some really clever things that she's gonna do. Because we do better if we can serve our children first by feeding them, and we also have a revenue stream. So you can see that she's aware of that. She has a very solid reserve. So it's not a problem, but you don't wanna see that number next year read again. We'll look at our building fund and our bonds, and from our bond money and wanted to get this straight for the public. There is under 10 million left so we are spending that down doing some things to the good. Our developer fees have, we've raised them and we're getting a substantial amount here that can be used for new schools and implementation of any thing we need to do, for example, moving, if the board chose to move something to the middle school level, those kinds of things could be justified and help with the transition to make it happen quicker. The Russian Fund, we've talked about that. Bondage, interest in redemption. People go, what is that? We have sold some of our bonds. We try not to sell all our bonds at the same time because we can't do that much construction. We have a very limited department. And if we sell them, then the community pays interest on those bonds that shows up on their November and April tax bills. So we try to just borrow what we need. That's why you've sold series of bonds, two or three. But the money that we do collect from bonds, is not sitting idle. It goes to the county treasury, and it's not a great return, probably around 1.5%. That's the money that comes from this 11 million, so you get some interest. So I wanted the community to know that their tax dollars are actually getting interest while they're waiting to be spent. Our self-insurance fund, we participated in an insurance fund. This is an important line. This one I hope the teachers unions and classified unions are looking at. It's called OPEB. OPEB is Employees Post-Employment Benefits. And we have a current balance of this. We spent $473,000 for that. And we have an obligation. to pay as people retire. And as you know, the baby boomer group from 1946 to 1964, those are the people that are retiring. They're being replaced by a smaller group of people, the X generation group from 1964 to 1977 that were born. That fund has a liability. And some of you may remember Enron, the promise is only as good as the company to do it. We do what's called pay as you go. We get the bill, we pay it. But we're not actuarially fully funded. And that should be a union, union, and district to look at that. Because if I was a millennial, I'd be a little nervous about this number growing and how are we going to pay it in 2035 as a district. So it's a collaboration thing. Districts are doing that. They're building trusts and doing some big trust funds. So it's just something to think about. So in conclusion, what comes next? Our audit, unaudited actuals are just that. A professional firm has not come in and audited. So we will have a firm come and you will get a report in December from your audit firm, Christy White. They will say, I won't be here, so I guess I'll talk to you and say she was really good. And they're actual, they didn't find anything. Then we will have our first interim in November about this year's budget. And your new CBO will work with you on taking a look at that. So at this point, I'd like to stop and have Kim come up and address those two issues, both the board members raised and questions from the audience, because she has a very clear explanation. You want to take it off?

[7786] SPEAKER_31: Yeah.

[7787] SPEAKER_38: OK. Good evening. I'm going to now explain to you way more than you're really going to want to know about school business accounting. And I'm not totally coherent. I'm sorry I'm very tired. I start to lose my verbal skills and I get really tired. Basically the question about both other state revenue and benefits is directly related. The two questions are related. So under other state revenues restricted you do see that there was a large increase. And if you look under employee benefits, again, if you notice, it's the restricted side. It also has increased greatly. So to put it simply, districts in the state of California have to book through their accounting. It has to show on our books what we call STRS on behalf. It means on behalf of the state. So the state has a liability of contributing to STRS retirement. Every district has to indicate that on their books, that liability as it relates to their district. Because the state has now promised to increase that liability, not only in STRS, but now in making promises for PERS, Districts were given instruction to run additional numbers higher than before. And what we basically do is we do a calculation based on our district. We give them some numbers. The state gives us this great spreadsheet. We feed it in. Gives us a journal entry back. And we book both the revenue side and the expense side for the exact same amount. So bottom line, it zeroes out. When I did our STRS on behalf this year, I did notice the number was significantly larger. And I asked some of my neighboring district's directors, have you noticed this? And they were like, no, it's pretty much the same. I'm like, okay, well, I know I did the calculation correctly. Thursday morning, last Thursday morning, we get an email from the county saying that if you haven't done the STRS increase, you need to do that and you also need to do a CalPERS on behalf. I sent that email to my auditor, because guess what? I was expecting to have sex documents done by Thursday afternoon. They also said they are highly recommending their clients to book, and if they don't, as part of the audit, they'll have to go back and adjust their book. So I decided to go ahead and completely book all of the STRS and PERS on behalf of the state through our books. It came at an additional amount of about $2.5 million. Revenue? and expense, again, it washes. It's completely in the restricted side. It has its own restricted resource. It is definitely an additional amount. Like I said, I found out about it on Thursday, and yes, it was not something we knew when we budgeted for next year. So it is something that does not affect our bottom line, but every time you look at restricted revenue, other state revenue, and restricted benefits, it's going to always be factoring in there, and you have to keep that in mind. The other piece of other state revenue is on the unrestricted side. And yes, there was about a million dollars more this year than what we budgeted for next year. And that's related to what Mr. Schimel referred to as the one-time mandate cost. We received one-time monies last year. We will not be receiving them in this coming year. So all we have booked as part of budget for this year is the regular annual mandate block grant, which is only $265,000 approximately. So is that good? If you have any further details or questions, I can answer now. If you come up with something afterwards, shoot me or Mr. Shumlin an email.

[8038] SPEAKER_19: If I may, I would just like to say thank you. I know you personally have been really working on this document for almost like giving

[8047] SPEAKER_38: 19 days straight, I slept the entire three-day weekend, I'm just saying. So, yeah, no, it's, I enjoy doing it, but it is a lot of work, and I am one of those very anal people. I guess that's why I'm an accountant, and I want every number right. That's why Thursday when they sent me that email, I dug back in, I opened it up, put journal back in, and rebalanced everything, so.

[8068] Elisa Martinez: Any questions from the board?

[8078] SPEAKER_21: I, too, would like to thank Ms. Lola. She was on the interview group when they hired me. And her first question was, I got to close the books. Can you run all the rest of this stuff and keep this stuff off my desk, please? So I think I did OK. Any other questions to the board?

[8099] Bowen Zhang: Just one comment and one question. So one comment is that It looks like we have that $200,000 in the unrestricted fund surplus. But in reality, that's like even that $200,000 is not true. Because at the time when they were closing the book, we didn't really ratify the CSCA, the negotiation result of that 1% on schedule increase and half a percent off schedule increase. Because we're not allowed to put that probably $150,000 plus into the expense from last year. Therefore, that cover up for us that we have $200,000 surplus. I just want a member of the community to realize that because that $150,000 plus, even though we didn't put onto the book of the expense, but they're indeed the expense from 2018 to 2019. It just, by the time of the ratification, we're closing the book. You cannot legally do that. I guess the question I have about this, it looks like we have that $1 million drop in the all local revenue as well, so I get the drop in the, or the other state revenue column? Can you talk about that near 1 million drop of the old local revenue of this new year compared to the 2018-2019?

[8179] SPEAKER_38: So local revenue is both restricted and unrestricted. A large portion of it is donations and grants. Some of the grants, especially on the restricted side, do come from either the county or the state. Donations and grants can only be recognized when we receive them. Unless we have a grant letter or notification from the state or county ahead of time, then of course we can budget, which we have. Anything we were aware of when we were doing budgeting, we budgeted for 19-20. But any other grant or revenue that comes in after the fact, I can't budget for a donation that I haven't seen or I haven't been promised or I don't know is coming. And yes, we did have some significant grants last spring from the county, from CCEE. We had several ones that we had never seen before, some fairly large dollar ones. So, hopefully, we'll see those again this year. But until I either have a grant award letter in my hand or a check in my hand, I can't recognize that revenue and then, of course, the expense that would go with it to implement. how the funds are used. And they generally fall into the restricted column of the... It depends, but most of those are restricted, but there is a number of unrestricted too. Those tend to get used mostly during the year. But again, the unrestricted ones are even less predictable.

[8274] Elisa Martinez: I just had a quick comment. Thank you both to Barry and Kim for the work. for taking the time to take our questions offline. We know that this is a ton of material, a lot of questions. So this was really helpful for you to spend the time beforehand. So thank you.

[8292] SPEAKER_21: Our pleasure. And kudos and compliments to the board. We had several board members that called a couple days in advance, went through it. We clearly understood it. We had a little teaching going back and forth. And compliments to Mr. Zhang. He called yesterday. and he has a great analytical ability, and he brought it up. He said, you know, I see where the $252,000 is, but you know, really, technically, you did deficit spend. And I stopped and thought about it a minute, and I said, you're right. He said, because the raise that you gave after July 1 of 19 applied to the 18-19 year. And if you would have booked it, which we couldn't have because the board hadn't approved it, in the year that it was actually being spent for, it could be up to a half a million dollars more. So if you're $250,000 up and we would have put it in that year, you'd have been $250,000 down and he's absolutely accurate. So thank you for His analytical ability, and well, I've just seen the board.

[8363] Bowen Zhang: I guess I have one correction. I think because that 1% on schedule, half a percent off schedule, I think roughly equal to $150,000, right? So if $150,000 is not as bad as we think, it's not half a million. So it's probably going to be $200,000 minus $150,000. You end up with $50,000 surplus, which is you balance the budget.

[8381] Elisa Martinez: You break it. 99.9. OK. So the staff recommends that the board approve. That's what we're going to vote on. Can I get a motion to approve? Sorry. Open voting. I think this is what I do. Do you have that?

[8404] SPEAKER_43: I move that we approve this agenda item.

[8409] Bowen Zhang: I second it.

[8411] Elisa Martinez: Please vote. Can I, what do I need to do? Do I hit close on this display? Close the display? Sorry, sorry. Thanks. Please bear with me. How did Ray vote? That was magic. Oh, hey, how did Ray vote? I don't know. Should I take him off here?

[8436] SPEAKER_19: That's all right. We'll clean it up. We have it in the notes that Ray was not present.

[8442] Elisa Martinez: OK. Vote passes with four ayes, including student member. Okay, there we go. I think I need to get him out of here. Please bear with me. Okay, next item, GAN limit adoption resolution. Phil will speak to this.

[8468] SPEAKER_21: The GAN limit is required, it's been required for almost 40 years. I've got to learn how to do that. Up is on. Up is on. The GAN limit is a requirement And what it has to do with is originally Jarvis Gann and Prop 13 and it came back a year later and it was to limit the amount of money school districts could spend on a limit. It's a calculation that's really superfluous now because of all the changes that have happened with school budgeting. But it is still in the law and we must state that we're not spending more money then we're allotted there's a calculation in your packet that Kim is prepared that's very accurate and also the county has to co-sign on it and so it's more of a procedural thing so we'd entertain a motion.

[8528] SPEAKER_43: I move that we vote on item 16.2.

[8536] Elisa Martinez: Thank you.

[8567] SPEAKER_32: Yes, I have item 16.3. This is a continuation of an agreement for the I-Ready licenses. We currently, this is now going to be our fourth year of working with this assessment. We do a diagnostic assessment in English Language Arts and Mathematics, Kindergarten through 6th grade. And we also have included licenses for students in grades 3rd through 6th grade, specifically in the area of Mathematics. Additionally, you'll see an additional quote here for Schilling Elementary, who, through their SSC, approved additional licenses using their Title I funds. These are a combination of supplemental concentration and Title I as outlined in our LCAP.

[8616] Elisa Martinez: Any questions from our board?

[8620] SPEAKER_43: Just to confirm, this is a one-year license, right? Thank you.

[8627] Elisa Martinez: Quick question. Assistant Superintendent Salinas, I know that we were talking about fees. As I read the numbers, it looks like we're right back down to where we were last year. Is that? We are not seeing an increase for this year, correct?

[8642] SPEAKER_32: No, we're not. In fact, we had gotten a bit of a high quote and so this, I was hoping to bring this earlier, but we've been working with them and we're back to what we had basically paid last year, working with the company.

[8658] Elisa Martinez: Any questions? Can we see a motion to approve the agreement with Curriculum Associates? That's the official name, right?

[8671] Bowen Zhang: I move that we approve the agreement.

[8674] Elisa Martinez: I'll second it. Member Zhang, motions. Member Gutierrez, seconds. Please vote. motion passes with 4 eyes. the motion. It's just a motion motion. Can I see a motion to a point all go. Motion passes with four ayes. Next item is 16.5, the donations report. Superintendent?

[8762] SPEAKER_19: Yes, we have a donation of $1,184 for Graham Elementary from Vilma Mendoza. Fidelity flooring for a bottle filling station. An in-kind donation for Graham Elementary from OnTrack Shipping. Ms. Cindy Chavez and Ms. Christina Renteria for 60 backpacks with school supplies for students. An in-kind donation for Schilling Elementary from Mexico Tortilla Factory and Delicatessen. Catered breakfast for staff for the first week back at school. An in-kind donation for Schilling Elementary from Dino's Grill. A catered lunch for staff first week back at school. That's pretty nice. In-kind donation for Schilling Elementary Afghan Village Restaurant, a catered lunch for staff first week back at school. $500 for Graham Elementary. Granzi Davis Family Trust, Ms. Joan Davis for the library. A total of $1,684 in donations.

[8822] SPEAKER_43: I move that we approve the donations report.

[8825] Bowen Zhang: I second it.

[8828] Elisa Martinez: Please vote. motion passes with 4 ayes. Item 17 consent agenda personnel items. Can we get a motion and a second to approve unless there's any questions.

[8855] SPEAKER_43: I move that we approve the personnel report.

[8858] Bowen Zhang: I second it.

[8862] Elisa Martinez: Please vote. Motion passes with three ayes. Next item is item 18, consent agenda, non-personnel items. Are there any questions? Can I get a motion to approve?

[8895] SPEAKER_06: I do have one question. Sorry. Just as a something that I noticed here, Oh, described as curricular and non-curricular, but the whole thing is curricular for 18.2 and 18.3, the science camp ones, just as a matter of clarity. I don't know if it affects anything. I doubt it does, but I'm just pointing it out.

[8920] SPEAKER_43: Just a clarification. Do you want it to state curricular?

[8922] SPEAKER_06: Yeah, it says both curricular and non-curricular, but shouldn't it just say curricular because that's what it says in the description?

[8930] SPEAKER_32: So for clarity, we usually present them this way because a non-curricular study trip has to come to the board and overnight comes to the board. And then in this case, an overnight curricular study trip comes to the board. That's just kind of where the heading.

[8948] Bowen Zhang: Well, I move that we approve 18.1 to 18.6. Can I get a second, please? I'll second it.

[8959] Elisa Martinez: please vote. Consent agenda approve 4 ayes. Next item is. Any committee reports announcements requests. So I

[8991] SPEAKER_06: Nothing really to announce at this time, just going back to the various homecoming activities that are going on. Again, club day will be tomorrow, so we really invite the board to come check out our clubs. We hope that we'll get some continued board support, as we found last year with Rocketry, we hope to expand that to other clubs. Again, the girls water polo tournament will start tomorrow at 4 p.m. at the Newark Memorial Pool. We hope to see some support for our girls varsity water polo team and the aquatics program in general. It's a lot of fun. I was there last year. I score kept all of Saturday. And I expect that I'll be doing the same this Saturday. So I hope to see some board members there. That's it at this time. Thank you.

[9040] Elisa Martinez: Thank you. Board members on?

[9044] Bowen Zhang: Yes, so I do have sort of a comment or concern regarding our facility, the new facility fee schedule. So I was approached by some members from our non-profit organization within our city. And, you know, Newark is a city of volunteers. Non-profit organization is the backbone of our community. And regarding not just the stage one, the impact of the facility fee on stage one, also the newer symphonic wind, and many of these nonprofit organizations, they actually work very closely with our children and with our students. So I think it's imperative that we build very strong and good relationship and partnership with these nonprofit organizations. And I think there are some unease about our new facility fee, particularly the rate of increase for certain some of our non-profit organizations, so I want to see if there's a possibility that we can take a second look at our facility schedule fee because we certainly don't want these well-known non-profit organizations who are an integral part of our community to start turning on the district just because of this new facility fee schedule.

[9127] SPEAKER_43: Okay, kind of to piggyback on that, I was actually going to ask superintendent if there was any update on the facility schedule that we've heard. Oh my god, what was that? Stage one. Stage one, thank you very much.

[9144] SPEAKER_19: I will share an update in my report. If there was any update on that. Yes, we are working with them, so I'll share more when.

[9148] SPEAKER_43: Okay, and then if there's any update on your social media webpages that you're going to be working on. Thank you.

[9156] SPEAKER_19: We'll do it during my report. I got one more window.

[9158] SPEAKER_44: Yeah, that's true.

[9163] Elisa Martinez: I had a couple of requests. One, and actually the one that I always ask about is around counseling activity. And members, not members, Associate Superintendent Salinas and I met last week in terms of just trying to get clarity there. So thank you. Two other requests. One is around facilities, the condition of our facilities. We've all been talking about it. Back to school, we've all seen it firsthand. One of the requests I would have is to try to get a sense of what is our current condition. As we walk through the schools, if I were to go to the maintenance shop, would I be able to see a list of open tickets that reflect the condition of our school, of requirements that need fixing? Or is it that we have a long list and we just can't get to it? You know, that's a question not only that we have, but also our community members would like to understand how to get visibility to that. Sorry, second request, it will be around, I know we're getting counts now for actual enrollment. We know that we had a lot of discussion about class size going in in terms of not, giving visibility to us the board not on an average but an actual you know kid in seat count so if we could get visibility to that that would be great. Any other questions from the board or comments? Moving on to the superintendent report.

[9264] SPEAKER_19: Okay I'm gonna why don't we go ahead and Barry why don't you go first and answer what you can answer with more reason one.

[9271] SPEAKER_21: The answer to your question Board Member Martinez is yes, we do have an electronic work order system. And yes, we have more workers than staff. And we do have a personnel issue with people showing up to work, which we're working on. We've had a couple longer term injuries, non-work related. We also need to take a look at aligning the talents of our staff with the work that needs to be done. And if we don't have the talent, then we probably need to think about contracting out sooner than later.

[9316] SPEAKER_19: So I'm going to stop you there. So what I'd like you to do is talk with Susan about creating a report about the number of tickets, POs, open POs that have not been resolved. And then you and I can work more with her on how we can have a summary or an executive summary of that. But I think as far as facilities state, let me think about that a little bit. I think we need to come out and get a, it's more than just POs, but I think that's a good place to start. So we'll start with that. I can report that we have met with Symphonic Winds and we've also met, I've personally met with, actually Ms. Lola and I both met with Stage 1. We're in the process of working another agreement with them. And I have brought the number down for them, and we're working on a two to three year transition plan. It's in their court now, they're gonna come back and meet with us, so that's in process. I know Mr. Schimel met with Symphonic Winds. I don't know if you wanna share anything about what you've talked with Symphonic Winds about. I know we're working with them as well, to your point, Mr. John.

[9385] SPEAKER_21: We did meet and we worked out a plan for this year and the year's coming and they did sign off on it, although in all candor, they're not happy with it because they would like complete access at will and we're not willing to do that. And as I understand the board policy on facilities, it should not cost the general fund for these non-profit activities. And they are doing some in lieu things, but when staff has to come back, there's a two-hour minimum call out in overtime. And so we're, that's, we've had some very generous operations, but they've been coming out of student program dollars.

[9442] SPEAKER_19: So what I was going to do is not go further, but I'd like you to get with Mr. Jean offline and try to get more information. I can tell you I reduced the percentage of increase for stage one to a much more comfortable level that they were happy about. But we haven't got a final agreement yet. We're trying to do an MOU with both, so we have a clear agreement with both going forward. I had a few more things on my list. that I want to remember to say, we do probably need to, Char, if you would, agendize for the next meeting, unless the board wants to give direction now, in, do we need to move the October 3rd meeting? So I would say, let's think about putting that on the agenda for the next meeting, because I need to reach out to Juan Hong and see if she's even going to be here. That might be a factor the board would want to consider in that decision, but I think we can decide that on the 19th. I don't know if we need to do it before that. It's up to the board. The other item I had for the board in closing was I would like to get at least some consensus, not really direction, but from the majority of the board, I would like to transfer $5,000 into the board training budget. Actually, let me say it this way. I'd like to transfer $5,000 into the board budget for board training. We do have some conferences coming up. I think 5,000 will cover what we have that we've scheduled thus far for requests for training at the CSBA conference. And I think that with new board members, I think that's important to have training. If you're okay with that, I'll proceed and we will transfer $5,000 for that purpose. Anyone concerned about that or questions for me about that? No? We're OK? OK. Thank you. We'll transfer that money. What's that? Oh. Yes, thank you, Barry. I'll just do the last part. We're looking for dates, potential dates from the board, to go visit the other school sites that we talked about. Barry, in his presentation, said they have schools that look just like ours. But then also, around the corner, there's new schools that they recently built, just to give you an idea of what that might look like. We're open to some potential dates for that. And I would suggest that if you could give Char your preferred dates for that, then we'll try to work something out. Either before or later in the evening, if that's better for some board members. We're there to see the building, not really to see kids. So I think later might be OK for everybody if that works for you. What would you suggest? Did you have potential dates you were thinking, Barry?

[9618] SPEAKER_21: We put some potential dates in the handout. If we could get back to Char about which ones would work for you, we'd like to do it this month.

[9627] SPEAKER_19: And time of day preferably so we can kind of approximate.

[9630] SPEAKER_43: I was going to say, just in regards to time of day, I know it could be when school's out, but we're still talking about daylight so we can see. Right, true. Just thinking. It's true.

[9644] Elisa Martinez: Also, I'm sorry, how many dates do we need to come, just one day?

[9648] SPEAKER_21: Oh, okay. We can do everything we need to do in three hours. Fantastic. And it would have to be listed as a public meeting because we're going to have all of you, but we're just going up the road and we'd like to see the school from the outside and then maybe take a walk inside, see what kinds of furniture kids are using these days, what the buildings look like, electrical.

[9672] SPEAKER_41: Okay. Sure. I'd just like to keep in mind, if the majority of the board goes, we will need to call that a special meeting. I will agendize it for you to go. So, I just want to make sure we have a 24-hour notice for that. That's all.

[9684] SPEAKER_19: Thank you. That's all. Oh, update social media. Thank you. I'm getting tired too. I apologize.

[9692] SPEAKER_32: On Wednesday, Mr. Simon met with all principals and we had our beginning discussion on more uniformity on our social media. so that the message is clear to parents, so that we own, the district owns, for example, the Twitter accounts, the Facebooks, and so he will be meeting individually with each principal. We made a joke, we're so happy Ms. Ehrlich keeps retweeting a lot of our tweets, and she's still on the Lincoln Twitter account, so we all had a good laugh about that, but the point was well made. So Mr. Simon will be working with each principal.

[9726] SPEAKER_19: And my last item then will be, we do have a board liaison meeting Monday night, I believe it's member John and member Gutierrez will be there with me. And we have made some progress and we'll have some good news around billboards soon to share with the board. But we'll unveil that when we're ready. It'll be pretty cool. So, that concludes my closing comments.

[9751] Elisa Martinez: Thank you. Well, before we go ahead and adjourn tonight's meeting, member Rodriguez at the start of the meeting was hoping to close the meeting in honor of all the folks impacted by the hurricanes in the Bahamas and in our Southeast. So with that in mind, meeting is adjourned at 9.48.

No minutes available.