the there's a sub bullet there about paraprofessionals of 23 years or more of service which are five total as of july 1st 2021 will receive benefits for the full year next year it was actually two days ago in this same room here in this space where mr ishinchi and i met with about 30 of our paraprofessionals to talk through kind of as a question and answer meeting to hear questions that they had and we met also on monday afternoon in the rice media center again with about 30 of our paraprofessionals similar just an opportunity to um hear their questions hear their voices as this is um affects people who are very dear to us the there aren't any any words i could say that would make it um it would make it what it other than what it is in terms of the savings and on a pandemic this has been the toughest year in many people's careers and that is in the room with us as well we did not choose the timing of when these cuts came due right this is we go back to the slides from the earlier part of the presentation and tonight was years in the making steps not being used so among the many things that we considered and have are moving forward with i just wanted to include the things that we considered and looked into quite deeply and then have not done so the top item there we spent a long time looking at savings achievable through eliminating the middle school house system moving grade five to middle school eliminating an elementary school none of those steps comes close to the savings on the prior slide cutting educational programs which obviously is is the last thing we want to have to do and fortunately we don't have to solar expansion we looked into that not feasible additional for cell tower no interest there facility use fee increase we held off on that because our facilities weren't in use this year and we did put out a survey this was an idea that came to us from we went to every uh school and met with staff to solicit ideas and hear voices and have conversation and one of the suggestions out of that which i believe was when we were at jaggard was to um survey our staff to see if we increased the opt-out reimbursement would more of our staff opt out of health benefits and could that save money and um the results showed that we would we would be losing money if we were to increase the opt-out reimbursement additional steps being used so because actually um you know this is trying to save money for this sheet for this coming year started months ago um we eliminated as retirements and vacancies came up certain positions that total uh almost half a million dollars four of them together curriculum supervisor learning disabilities teacher consultant school counselor and media specialist each one of those is a huge position you know and instantly it makes the the work involved be distributed across the remaining pairs of hands and shoulders and all the while i did want to put this up here as it's come up at times we before we cut the curriculum supervisor so before we cut that administrative position we were already the number one most efficient district in the state among all 74 k-8 districts and administrative costs and that's for example the most students per administrator the most staff per administrator sale of property so you know that's i left that up there just as i wrote it two weeks ago because it just shows what can happen in two weeks right um and uh very soon here we will own two properties bus advertising small amount every bit matters a lot cell phone reduction activity fee increase and then that communication advocacy with state officials is um works on many levels most recently i met with assemblyman peter's assembly woman's stanfield and senator diego in separate meetings to just explain our situation and along with a few other superintendents from the lenape region um explain our situation the state funding reductions the covet costs um i think one thing that is lesser recognized is the coveted costs for districts that have been in personal year you know the funding distributed the districts hasn't been accounting for you know whether a district was in in person all year or whether they're all remote all year and we've been um very fully all very fully impersonal here so and i'm going to pass it back to mr ishnt4 this colorful slide okay so [Music] now we're going to look at the revenue side of our budget the first part we looked at the appropriation side now we're going to look at the revenue side and and look at the comparisons between our current budget uh the revenues and the tentative budget that we're proposing for next year they're the first two columns the current the tentative and then the last two columns are the increased decrease between the two and the percentage of change so the first column is our miscellaneous revenue and that's down about 305 000 for next year then we have our fund balance or surplus that we put in every year last year we put in a little bit more than we were able to put in this year and that's down 223 000.
you can't add more students to it doolittle is already 576. you wouldn't want to add too many more students to it so are you right mike mike zubat mike are you tied in now yeah i think if you guys hear me yeah yeah mike can lend a lot of insight into something yeah it feels so good to be able to speak again sorry about that i've you know worked through my difficulty switching platforms and uh i think what we're talking about is when we ran the origin when we ran scenario 1a um and looking at you know the difference in sizes and the way we view the difference in sizes when we're sort of you know facility planning we look at the number of grades in the building your loading level and then the number of sections you want to have and i think what chuck's referring to is that when we were looking at scenario 1a we had a building that would have you know housed upwards of 900 students um it was a little bit unwieldy from an educational environment but then when we look at should it be a 400 and a 600 or two roughly the same size um when we went through and started running some numbers of you know what a good size would be for an elementary school you begin working in that 550 to 600 range where um you know you have enough to be able to run it as if you were a 400 student school from a a staffing standpoint but you also have enough sections per grade where you have a little better consistency in each geographic area with class sizes so if you have a 400 student school you're limited on how many kindergarten classes you may be able to classrooms you may be able to offer a first grade classrooms where if you get a bubble in your demographics um then you ultimately end up with some class sizes that may be either a little too high or not very efficient whereas if you have a 550 to 600 student school um you're able to level that off and have a really good efficient operation and i think we also talked about being able to plan around growth so with growth being a lot of housing turnover having equal size schools not only in the south and in the north provided really good opportunities for when ultimately the construction occurs you have buildings and then you go through an actual redistricting if they look somewhat to our concepts you're able to then have sort of these relief valves at both ends of the town and really right size in the middle and provide everybody with some flexible space um versus um you know having you know more space in the north or or more space in the south um the way we've been looking at it is that um it could or may not be on those individual sites themselves so um you know we're sort of you know drafting a boundary without a site in mind but knowing that it's going to largely capture these residential neighborhoods regardless of where the actual school is just based on really the physical geography and the layout and how you move around in cheshire um hopefully that that answered the question uh yeah yeah no that in terms of the flexibility and that that makes total sense i guess the only thing my counterpoint to it that's just going through my mind is as i've said before i like the neighborhood schools and in my mind i was thinking like 400 is probably the equivalent of chapman which has been i think problematic from a districting perspective for decades um limited in the flexibility so i completely understand that i just it's just kind of nice going through my mind if there was one in the northwest corner of town with a shorter commute you know i mean anybody who lives up nearby except for darcy they're they're going all over town to get to one of their schools anyway that was a simple point on that but thank you the the point it makes a lot more sense to me now um okay and uh one more i have one more question um which is and i i mean i have an idea of this already but there's probably people who are watching it now or will be watching it um the enrollment in general so we're we i so i was skeptical in the enrollment skeptical of the enrollment spike 12 months ago and right now i i definitely am a bigger believer in it um the projected enrollment spike but i'm just wondering if you if somebody could speak to that what are the factors going into that and i could i could speak to it myself but i'd rather hear it from one of you who've been a lot closer to this yeah i'd be happy to cover that and it is a good question it is something that um you know we haven't rebounded as a whole in connecticut really um since the great recession and now what we started seeing a couple of years ago was uh probably starting about four or five years ago durga dr b schools were getting stabilizat they've been stabilizing at the elementary level holding their own um we've also been seeing um you know overall you know even before the latest boom and and sales of housing on single-family homes because of the pandemic um the housing trends have been on the up and up um you know across the board um you know in cheshire itself um what we're seeing is a little bit of a combination of um you know immigration you know taking over where you know younger families are buying homes there's a sort of a turnover of that natural population that we're seeing um and that in part is fueling um you know students moving in at various grade levels but also um you know where you're going to start to see a leading edge and we always call the leading edge it's when your birds pick up so um over the last several years you haven't seen bert's um to the level that have been reported over the last um few years here in cheshire um so you know we're tracking and even though kindergarten was typically down a little bit across the state with parents holding back for kova delayed entry um you know we you've averaged about 212 births a year for 16 17 18.
we are living in unprecedented times and it's sad to see this i understand our district is at a deficit and can't afford that but i just want you guys to know the big sacrifice that employees had to do and they are not receiving a raise and a two thousand dollar check is only for full-time employees so part-time employees will be getting less and it's just really sad to see that there is a check to price the work that these employees have done and i think they deserve a raise is not okay that others get a raise and staff teachers and employees did not get a raise in 2019 to 2020.
um then the next one is surplus uh other and that's that's actually called excess surplus so if you accumulate more than two percent surplus in your budget you have to um appropriate those dollars into your next budget so when we were putting together the 2021 budget we had 925 000 180 in excess surplus that we had to make part of that budget at the end of this current budget the one that ended in june uh we only generated 357 220 dollars of excess surplus that had to be incorporated into the 2122 budget the withdrawal from maintenance reserve we put more money into maintenance reserve this past year so we have more money that we were able to incorporate into the tentative budget for next year so that lines up three hundred and eighty thousand dollars six fifty five um our emergency reserve um the current budget we we incorporated 83 304 dollars into the budget the tentative budget for next year we only have two thousand and one dollars left in that budget in that reserve so we're budgeting the balance so where that line is down capital reserve which i already talked about a little bit before the current budget we're working in we budgeted 671 500 and the tenant of the budget for next year we are budgeting 215 500 so that lines down 456 000.
so those are reported um those become your kindergarten classes of 2021 2022 2023. the last time you had burst anywhere near that level was 2007. um so we've been on a bit of a birth you know slide and that's that's not surprising considering our aging demographic um so with some of those larger kindergarten classes coming in and with the turnover housing and with new families buying into the community as older individuals move on um you know we're seeing now some higher immigration rates higher um persistency ratios feeding in those grades and overall um the higher enrollment is now going to start waving in um starting next year okay okay so i'm just going to add to that what i heard you say is the the older some some older residents moving on empty nesters basically so just one point on that is the median age of the homeowners in town in the last 10 years has gone from 38 to 46 you know effectively saying that people just haven't left down in the past 10 years presumably directly related to you know their kids being in the school system and a lot of them may have graduated five years ago so they're not really they're not necessarily empty nesters it's sort of the boomerang generation um but there is i do think there is a good reason to believe that the enrollment will be increasing along with the births being up and um also i mean you drive around town there are the houses being built that that haven't you know that haven't been built in probably 20 years there's been no meetings from town um yeah so so to that point tim we went through um analysis of housing sales talking with the realtors um talking with um you know the town planning department getting an idea of you know residential starts you know what the activity level is and to your point they're all when we say we start to see all those key enrollment drivers align the you know even though you're a bit built out there are there's there's subdivision construction going on um you know the housing market right now is is hot and then we have these bubbles of birds now coming through um that all leads us in the direction of you know you're at your bottom and now the enrollment's on the up and up especially at the elementary level so thank you i'm gonna if i can i've i have one more question that i just want to touch on which is um the enrollment is on the increase but we have basically at least system wide not grade by great necessarily but system-wide we've we've experienced this population before so and what is a reason so we we have had all the space in the past to address this what are you know a couple of reasons why it's different today than it was say 20 30 years ago yeah i can get started on that but then i could defer to yeah okay i'll be better to answer that question yeah yeah i wasn't sure it would be so just a reason just to restate the question yep so today versus 30 years ago why haven't we redistricted no no no i basically we've we had 30 years ago we had the same number of classrooms right oh so why is there okay so why are we um at greater capacity now why are we yeah yeah what pro programmatically what has changed is yeah i put together a document on that i can share it with this group again but basically um kindergarten full-day kindergarten uh doubled the amount of kindergarten space that we need the other major driver is bringing [Music] special needs populations back in so the highland intensive special education program uh is substantially larger to accommodate needs as well as our bridges behavioral support program on top of that the needs of some of our students with respect to occupational and physical therapy so we have significantly more spaces dedicated to things like you know swings uh from the ceiling uh you know large medicine ball or yoga ball areas and mats for students to be stretched and engaged in that sort of activity those are the primary drivers but i'll pull up the uh documents so that you can see sort of a visual from our enrollment uh it didn't go 30 years back but uh roughly i think then do you remember how many years we went back i think like a decade um 15 years maybe and it really outlines where the space yeah no no i mean i think i think i'm okay with that this is i mean i have an idea i'm just thinking there are people watching this too so it's useful to have that um and one other point uh to connect some dots here is with regard to uh special ed there is this increased cost we're using all this space that we didn't use before but one of the things that where we benefited in town from the special ed program that you've developed and you know uh the cheshire public schools have developed over the past couple decades are we saving the last i remember you mentioning it you felt like there was probably a cost avoidance of about six million dollars a year by having is that the yeah the cost about placement not only for uh the services provided but transportation is incredibly high and that's why we ultimately opted to provide more in-school services because we figured at that cost we can do it better and allow our students to stay in their neighborhood schools which is also better for our students and families so um there is obviously a flip side i guess the drawback being the space necessary to do that but um it is significantly cheaper and better for our students okay yeah i'm just looking at it from an economic perspective somebody who was here 30 years ago what changed that's a real change but that's not it it was i mean it was it's stuff that it's stuff that we should do it's stuff that's required by law um and we are from that perspective we have been saving money by keeping it in house on the flip side there is you know new construction that basically would need to happen assuming that we keep all those programs in place so right okay i'm good thank you andrew thank you very much all right uh catherine sorry i got bumped off before so um hopefully i'm not gonna ask the same question that somebody else has um but one of the questions i have is that if we had the six to eight middle school the new 68 middle school my understanding has been and maybe i'm wrong but that it that would enable us to absorb um an enrollment spike um in the k through five population um and you know maybe it's not a perfect match but i always thought that once you took all the sixth graders out of the elementary schools and put them into a new sixth grade middle school that you know you're freeing up at least some space in the elementary school so um i'd like to understand better why you know the the discussion seems to be exclusively on enrollment levels in the elementary schools which of course we want to be able to plan for and manage um but you know up until this year we were of the belief and the opinion that our enrollment levels were going to be pretty much flat if if at best um might go up a little bit but not so much that all of a sudden we have to think about building you know one or two new elementary schools now it's two um and i don't hear the the discussion about what is really the best thing that we should be doing for uh um the entire student population and in my you know the middle school the new middle school was something that was really an important key to you know we wanted to think about what we could do at that level six to eight to really um i don't know like enhance what those students that age group uh was going to be you know uh be able to experience so that seems to not be part of the discussion anymore but maybe i'm not you know maybe i'm missing something um so what is my question you may be asking my question is can if a six to eight middle school was built um how much more um space really truly would we need at the elementary level that wouldn't already have if that makes sense and i get that there might have to be redistricting or whatever but anyone john or chuck want to take that yeah maybe take a crack and mike mike might build i might chime in on this as well um and they're in with the with the proposed redistricting in the in the this is in the 2a scenario um there's a proposed chapman for the and then the other numbers kind of mike and his team have kind of moved them around when we do that we just look at it from a space standard they really done a good job of really right kind of right sizing the buildings to the populations where when we do the space standard calculations they're very close to 195 to 100 percent and that kind of ties in with the capacity as well but as far as understanding if we're going to need say build maybe an addition on a school or two that's really going to be dependent on the educational specification and the program for the school when we get to that and looking at that school specifically for example highland we've had many discussions of moving the pre-k into highland and analyzing the programming of that building and how it may be affected when you're so close to 100 percent and you write the ed spec the ad spec may say you need a few more square feet because of the programs that jeff was talking about and the state by the way isn't a hundred percent support of that we met with him today and and the director of osu's yard they're 100 percent of having them in district so it's really ed spec dependent is what it comes down to and until we really develop that on the school by school basis it's they're very close to right size they're not going to be huge additions but they might need some square footage or maybe some reprogramming if we can fit them in so we really don't know definitively at this moment if we need it so chuck you you this is tony uh you mentioned quickly that scenario 2a it's not just the new sixth rate middle school because that in itself does not solve the entire enrollment problem at the elementary school level there's some work to be done at chapman as well to increase the flaw so i think i think uh as i remember four or five years ago well you know like like katherine said at the time the enrollment just doing the sixth grade middle school we knew would free up a lot you know space things have changed a little bit in this scenario so you know your own projections are i guess a good thing right if people want to come to cheshire that's a good thing for us so it would have to be a new sixth grade middle school and chapman in that phase two right chapman chapman is projected to be larger than it's kind of you know kind of right sizing me so they're closer in size and more uh i'll say uniform i mean hyland's still the biggest one right but bringing the other three to be what it appears to be by enrollment a little more uniform size so you don't have these disparities between them yeah and yeah go ahead mike yeah and i think one of the key points too are with taking darcy offline and moving the programs from darcy into highland we're now sort of displacing some of the seats that we had we had gained from moving sixth grade up um which is then you know sort of mitigating some of the games that i think when you look at sort of historically a 300 you know student sixth grade class you think that's like three quarters of a building but really that darcy move mitigated some of those gains and you know overall reduce the amount of space that we're talking about so it's nowhere near in like scenario one a or what will become six now um but it's still there and i think you know it's really just that that programmatic need from consolidating the other building yeah thanks mike i just want to add captain uh yeah no so on the smc meetings the uh the the option 2a 628 middle school is very much in discussion that that you know but at that last episode c meeting uh permission entire all 13 members didn't like the size of that you know nearly 900 elementary school um and most of bournemouth didn't either you know killing jeff was a member is that 400 to 650 range which is the ideal sweet spot and even on today's call with us cgr they bought the fact that they were definitely frowned upon and pushed back in such a large elementary school they too want to see the 400 to 600 range and even on the sixth rate middle school there raised some concerns about the size of that being almost 1200 students they would push back on that too so you know there's some discussion be had there with smc based on that feedback so so still keeping these options on the table but just do know things are still evolving adam you have a question yes thank you um that's that's pretty surprising what tony just said actually saying that the state may not even like a six to eight option like it might be too big for even their tastes i mean isn't that what the smc has kind of been spending their time on for like the last year and a half and the state is kind of like well maybe we don't like that so much anymore um that's just a comment on my part um the uh the uh for this new option 6a uh you know for for 20 years uh this town has sort of been planning has been planning and the demographics show that we've sort of been anti-growth i guess i suppose you could say we've been kind of not wanting families to come here as much we've we've been trying to uh you know make sure that we almost age in place a little bit and um if those two new elementary schools are built to the 650 capacity or whatever it is does that allow us headroom for growth in the future if like we let's say if our town population actually surpassed 30 000 or or anything like that or that if um people we have who who have been living here for for let's say 40 years until all those houses and a lot of families come in does that allow us additional capacity past the year 2030 when we've gotten past that peak mike you want to tackle that maybe yeah chuck um you know we prepared like a 10-year projection to look at this and i think it's one of the things that um when you're looking at it it's really hard to see anything past that but i will say having been you know we've been doing this for 20 years that um when you see the kind of growth that we had in say the 90s into the early 2000s that's driven by raw land new housing um subdivision style growth it comes a lot quicker and the peak is a lot sharper than built out communities that we've had we've historically worked with where there's not a lot of subdivision growth um it comes a little slower and you know connecticut and most of it in cheshire include it right now with the zoning in place the open space that's been purchased um you know we're seeing growth through turnover and communities that are attractive for older individuals to age in place um that turnover is a little slower but then again out past 10 years we don't know what economic conditions may look like or you know really anything else what we always advise upon is you know in this case we prepared three sets of projections based on what we're seeing and knowing it's a facility plan we're recommending the higher projection so that provides some headroom there as well um within the numbers so um it's really putting some of those factors in place where you know you have a little bit of a buffer you can never build for 20 years the state only lets you build for eight years and no one can ever have a 20-year outlook on enrollment in the community so you have to be smart about what you build have it where if you do build it could be expanded upon um easily and um be strategic on where you locate the space yeah mike i think it's a good time can you um why don't we get into the redistricting plan that you put together we can see that and then get back into the detail sure and i know i'm gonna go i'll just say in addition to what you as you're bringing that up mike um what's important with these multi-phase programs and i think you might have heard when dr carter presented smc is monitoring the the projections as we go we're not just you just don't want to do it now and stop you'd want to have them updated as your program progresses and monitor that so that as you get into the faith you know hopefully say a phase two program you might have to adjust those a bit that's what they do in south windsor like okay we got growth their final school doubled in size by the end i think that's a very unique situation don't get me wrong right mike i don't i don't i don't think that's common but you have to you have to monitor as we go and update those projections to watch that yeah there are there's different economic drivers and tim you said it best earlier with just driving around seeing the seeing the ramp up in in residential construction seeing you know the the sail signs you get a feel for when something's happened even before you get that wave of additional kindergartners first graders there and chuck's set of best you just continually monitor and you get ahead of when you may need space you don't ever want to over build um andrew i'm going to share my screen let me know if you guys can see we have well at least i got something right i failed on the audio earlier so i got a gift from the technology gods here [Laughter] i pulled her away from the ipad to come down here to help me fix the uh technology i probably should have to be honest with you um all right so our charge from the smc is to work hand in hand with colliers and and the committee um and we see this is what we always do when we want to be able to tie the actual geography the the the where the students are where your housing are form some conceptual boundaries these aren't the ones you're going to go out and adopt they're a good starting point and then look at what the enrollment responds to and then help kind of feed into this equation of let's size the school and cite some of the planning based on the enrollment needs of a given geographic area so you know that's the philosophy that we've always done as part of this and it works really well especially when you do you have neighborhood schools you group by a geography you group by an address list people associate your neighborhoods with different school buildings and you know the kids on the same street go together it's not a magnet system it's not a choice system um so it works really well there so what we wanted to do and these are just our assumptions and they'll apply to all of them but i do want to pause um we've been using the existing functional capacities those align well with the numbers that john and chuck have been using we've also used the 2019 um 20 school year geocoding enrollment we know from our work you know across districts that 20 20 21 school year enrollment's a little bit um you know because of the pandemic the numbers don't truly reflect what typically happens or where the kids typically arrive at the school year so we use that as our starting point but then begin our projections a year later um you know we try to look at these to right sides did a couple different iterations to eat each in order to get it in with that planning specification um but overall we see this as really that first stage of being able to then have numbers based on how it could be populated and then as chuck has talked about um that gets put over into the construction part of the equation the space planning the ed specs and all of that um so this is just to keep people who aren't informed with what the actual district boundaries look like in the community and these are our starting points with chapman up in the upper right hand corner in orange highlands shown in green we have doolittle and purple kind of making up the northwestern flank of the town and then norton school to the south so scenario 1a is going to become the backbone and really the jumping off point for scenario six this is the one that maintains the sixth grade in the elementary schools i'm closing both darcy and chapman respecting what those existing functional capacities look like at doolittle norton and highland and then really letting what the demographics tell us the size of the new elementary school should be so in our attempt to not have dramatic change in dramatic change with the closure of two school buildings um you know we try to keep schools that have historically grouped in certain areas together the best we can these areas are just calling out um the neighborhoods that we had conceptually planned on changing um you can see it's a big shift with the new school of uh you know we already had a little spoiler on the side but the new 900 student school taking up you know about a third of the entire town of cheshire to the north so kind of stretching all the way down um past chapman school and then really making up both the northeast and the northwest flank the community so we allocated the birth we allocated the students looked at our housing factors and then projected forward really getting us out to 29.30 um if a grant application were to go in this june um you know we highlighted that in in um you know this tan color but if it were next june that would then just shift to the right with those peak years um but overall the new elementary school would have been projected at about 860.
thank you miss sandejas uh mr moran anybody else no board president that's all uh dr bauer yeah and just for the last uh on item 8.02 is when it's going the rest of the staff is going to be addressed in terms of that one time only and teachers receive that in february and it was agendas just to clarify that everybody this is part of everybody's all the employees will be getting the same thing thank you thank you dr bauer um we are on item 501 um mr moran if there's nobody else from the public we'll go ahead and move to trustee commons or questions yeah there's no uh other hands thank you um at this time i'd like to open it up for trustees any questions or comments at this time trustee vegarano yes thank you uh board president so i um you know one of the things that i have been supportive of of dr bauer both as a parent um not on the board and and now on the board is and i really appreciate about her style is is you know that you could say she's a people person like that that's a phrase that we use and it's someone who you know who cares for their team who you know is trying to work with people and even evidenced by the fact that she's you know responding to the comments for a meeting and make herself making herself available as she has you know in the community and you know as far as i can remember for the many years i've been involved with the district so i appreciate that um and in addition you can't in my mind put a number on on or a value on the appreciation that i have for you know for our our principals and our vice principals and you know our district staff and everybody that that's worked as we've talked about this past year gone above and beyond like behind the scenes work that has happened is no one will ever know about it but we as board members see it and and it's amazing what this team has been able to do and so i do appreciate that um in terms of this you know dr bauer and i have i've had several questions with for dr bauer about this particular item well this one and the next one um and just trying to see if there's a way that i could um in my mind have this um you know it's difficult because i do want to recognize again the efforts and compensate the efforts for for our staff that have worked so hard but at the same time you know as has been mentioned and we all know it's very difficult times right now and you know it's when we're talking about having to bring our students back make things safe you know we've talked about mental the issues with mental health and you know i've had you know in my own personal you know life i've had a history of of having to deal with mental health you know issues with people close around me and so you know i understand the importance of all those things and it's just i'm you know it's difficult for me at this time especially with the unknowns of what it's going to take to reopen or repurpose or there's just so many variables out there that i i'm finding it hard in my mind to be able to justify at this time um you know the this this partic these particular two items 501 and 502.
state aid we all know that our state is being reduced every year the difference is the the 1.7 million that we were cut this year extraordinary aid we're anticipating receiving about the same amount of extraordinary aid that we did from the previous year so that line is unchanged the medicare reimbursement also known as semi is basically the same it's down a little bit 3064.
um you know with darcy's program moving as a whole into highland um you know that peaks out at just around 780 and then we have a 475 or 470 norton school and then a 575 um do little school what we wanted to do was look at that overall capacity and balance the enrollment outside making adjustments to the boundaries that make sense geographically um and also from a transportation standpoint and overall we did a pretty good job of leveling that out you'll see uh where we have about 95 percent overall um in and in the 90s overall which is really a good target um as part of this a little head room um but not too much excessive space however when we looked at creating a planning capacity for the new school we assumed that we would load all grade levels at 22 students we would have seven grade groupings and then six sections for each grade giving us a roughly 924 student building just from our planning standpoint there even though as i mentioned the enrollment came in um you know slightly underneath that um so overall what we saw with this consideration is that you know we had a good utilization um looking at the seat count overall when you're at a district-wide utilization in your 90s um you know based off your max capacity that really is the sweet spot we had this growth this growth up factor um however when we saw our overall considerations and our experience from space planning and and talking with colliers and talking with the administration and the smc um you know we we had some questions on not only um the size of the school from an operational standpoint and what that means for the educational experience but also um that a school of that size we are going to ultimately redistrict about 40 percent of the overall elementary student body um which is a big change for any community um so we did have some concerns with it and then we also made just some suggestions on you know getting into some further due diligence to ensure that um the capacity at highland um with bringing darcy over um that it's not going to take up any more additional space than we originally thought and that would just need a space need to study there um so 1a will become the starting point for scenario 6.
um you know i would i wish that we were in different times and i would love to to give this little boost of morale or support or whatever it is the good thing though is i think i did the math about 80 of those that would be impacted by this um i mean i know it's we live in a very challenging area but in my opinion it's not like a make or break thing like there i don't feel for the most part that the individuals impacted this by this would be you know extremely detrimentally impacted by if this were not to to go through tonight and so that's at least one thing that i'm comforted by is i think the majority about 80 percent of the people in my estimation would hopefully be okay with or without you know this item so i'm i'm not 100 decided i have heard public comment about this and i have my own thoughts about it as i've talked about but i'm interested in my colleagues positions but um you know i'm still weighing whether i'll support this tonight so that's all for now thank you any others have any comments questions for president yes vice president um yeah these are very difficult times we're making a bunch of very difficult decisions or possibly typical decisions in the future that we may have to take and you know we're we're dealt with this same thing of having to to [Music] uh get ready for for budget cuts at the same time still try to retain good qualified folks that keep our district running and so i just say that to make sure that the public is aware that while we have to prepare for significant cuts we at the same time still have to retain uh our our very high qualified and very committed personnel because that's the reality of it we are in a very difficult situation where folks can walk to another district get paid a lot more in an area that has more resources and the the reason that our teachers our you know all our staff everybody sticks around because they're committed to allen ruck um and so i i you know it's very difficult the easy thing would be to jump on board with folks and [Music] and say you know you know this is a it's a tough time so we're gonna forego uh any sort of compensation that would be the easiest thing uh but that what we have to do is make sure that we do keep our staff do we keep our personnel here continuing to serve our students and and that only is going to happen by providing the appropriate remuneration uh i ask us to look at ourselves and if you are given the opportunity to earn more in another place what would you do um and i'm not directing that to my colleague ernesto because he just spoke earlier i'm just saying that in general to all of us uh and i know that the answer would be we'd probably walk if uh if we didn't get uh the compensation that you know you work very hard for uh so you know as a board member um we'd have we have to take those very difficult decisions i think the board president mentioned that you know in easy times uh it's pretty cool you need to show up and make comments and stuff like that so you have the ability to spend money on cool things and stuff of that sort um it's these trying times that uh really test your leadership skills your ability to look beyond one little thing and engage in you know myopic type of leadership and instead you have to sit back and look at everything and realize that uh you're gonna have to make cuts you're gonna still have to keep people here and not not have them walk and you know people are going to be out there that won't understand and they may make you know comments that are not that are ill-informed you know whether intentional or or maybe because just they they don't know what they're talking about um and so those are the things that we have to deal with as board members so i say that uh to in part inform the public as well as encourage your colleagues to to consider that you know we have some good folks here let's make sure that we keep them here in the district and so those are my comments well sorry thank you uh vice president um i do see chavez i see your hand up um with you and i also see because go ahead and go to bed and i'm still collecting my thoughts thank you uh yeah so i appreciate that perspective that's really that's you know that's what i want to hear um so thank you trustee quintero and you know just to answer the hypothetical you know that's a very personal question for a lot of people you know if you have other opportunities do you take them i know in my life sometimes i have taken those opportunities and sometimes i haven't i've been content regardless of the financial opportunities just with the the job that i'm doing and like i say it's been the other way other times so so that's very personal um but it's good perspective and i appreciate that you bring that the other part that i just wanted to mention is i agree like we we've talked about this in the past when we you know we've we've given raises and done things like that we've talked about the importance of keeping staff and keeping consistency within the district a huge thing in school districts is consistency because it takes a long time to to be able to learn how to navigate through all these things and all these laws and rules and regulations and and so so that's important to keep staff teachers you know from top to bottom and bottom to top in the organization so i get that we want to pay people and compensate them in a way that would make them want to stay for this particular item however i think it's a little bit different because it's a one-time well two-time i guess if my understanding is correct which i believe it is um payment so it's not like we are it's not like this is something that would you know be part of the our salary that would continue ongoing and make them in in the future competitive the price or the the salaries competitive um with other districts or other opportunities and so that's that's just the the kind of opposite side of that that i think about is yes it's something that may in the short term incentivize people to stay but it's not salary it's not on schedule that would be something that would then you know bring them up to maybe some other area so so that's the piece i wanted to add thank you trustee thomas um do these workers deserve the pay um yes but just because they deserve it at this time should we do it i don't think so um and what i i do have a question uh for dr bauer but but how do you justify especially since we're in deficit spend deficit spending we need to reduce schools we need to lay off teachers would it be the wisest thing to give this one time off schedule payment being that the budget is is in deficit spending we have to cut do all these cuts um it doesn't seem nice to me at this time and what i wanted to ask dr bauer is out of what fund is this money going to be coming from uh can i get that answered by dr bauer and then i finish my comments please i'm going to ask mr chang is is the general fund uh trustee chavez we need to be careful with how we praise questions that's all i'm going to say okay maribel sorry and i know you have a question uh trusty chavez i just want to make sure you get it answered um mr chang can you help answer that yes good evening uh madam president um the answer yes yes it's from the uh general fund itself thank you mr chang i think uh dr bauer already answered it but um i guess i'll save my other questions for later thank you uh travis i don't think anybody has her hand up so unless anybody has their hand up if you want do you have any other questions for this item i'll i'll save my um whatever i have to say for later okay do you have any other comments for this specific item though or no then actually um both of the two trustees that spoke before um said a lot of what i was already going to say so i just don't want to repeat the same things uh to save time thank you thank you okay um and with that i just uh i also don't want to repeat a lot of the same things um and the only thing that i will add is um i know that i know you asked you know if if that will really make a difference and actually being a daughter of you know um i remember my my father getting like a 10 cent raise you know and what that meant for my family when i was you know a child um it meant a lot and that was 10 cents right 10 uh i remember those raises and how we would celebrate them um and of course the cost of living was very different you know back 30 years ago or so uh not to date me so much but you know fast forward i mean i think as you all mentioned you know do they deserve it absolutely um you know they've been working hard you know it's hard it's hard it's one of those tough tough decisions um and also i think of the cost of living and i think of the comments right from our community um you know we had a comment who was maybe talking on a different item but i know was talking about raises right um it's tough times for all and i know that any amount that um we'd be able to to raise or not raise but to give them on this one time would be very helpful um and so i plan to to support it you know um knowing that we have a lot of hard work coming our way uh to ensure that our children and our staff and our community continue to have what they need in order for our children to get the best education possible um and beccarano i see you have your hand up i don't know if you have anything else to say before we move on to voting yeah yeah i'll just i'll try to be quick again um so i i appreciate that as well you know that's you're right you know any little in this area in this time any little you know whatever infusion of of you know cash flow or one-time cash helps all of us but as just as i mentioned i think about 80 roughly about 80 of the people that would be impacted by this are roughly in the like 120 to 140 000 range i think that's public information um i believe and so i think my assumption is several of us as board members are in that range i know i am and so again as i would appreciate i would appreciate that amount of money but i as i mentioned i'm fortunate enough to be in a position similar that you know it given the bigger picture of everything else it would not make or break me um but i realize that every person's situation is individual to them but um i just wanted to bring that up that the majority of people impacted by this you know in a very expensive area are compensated i believe um for this time given the situation competitively um or at least in a position to continue living as they do now so that's it thank you thank you i'm seeing no other hands up we're going to move on to the vote i'll go ahead and go down um list trust us no trusty fam trustyfam if you cannot mute yourself we'll come back to you vice president quintero hi femme i and myself i three yes who knows um thank you we'll move on with item 502 consideration and approval for superintendents one time one-time off-schedule payments of 2000 for 2019 and 2000 for 2020 2021 school years i'll go ahead and open it up for uh public comments at this time and then we'll move on to uh trustees mr moran do we have anybody with their hand raised uh yes we do we have two people at this time first person is paul soto welcome mr soto as soon as you begin speaking the timer will begin uh good evening board members my name is paul soto i'm a 52 year old uh son of sassy sausage my father um picked fruit there in the 1930s 40s 50s and 60s grew up right there on the grounds of uh of guadalupe church and went to lee matson um i'm a bit concerned as to why these kinds of types of items are even agendized the um i i don't think it's any like wild guess that people are suffering in our city and we don't have any protections there in the school there's been historic problems with elimrock unified school district you know he saw herrera just i mean decimated the reputation of any chicanos um governing the and overseeing the educational system of our children and it's one thing to experience the oppression and the redlining policies and the discriminatory practices that are associated with redlining from the galacto but when these this type of mismanagement is going on and the board is filled with chicanos yeah i got i i really take exception to that i got i have a serious problem with that serious problem you know because this is this is shameful that this is happening this ain't on le cardo i'm not gonna put everything on on le cardo no i see what he's doing he's playing chess with the with the school grounds because he wants to monetize the real estate on them i get that part but there is a degree of responsibility that this board needs to make and agendizing these particular items and wasting the time when the real core issues with regard to the education of our children should be the primary objective and the primary goal of really any of the agendized items so i'm very very disappointed with what's been going on uh what i've been hearing today in the spotlight article that just got published thank you thank you mr soto any other members um uh yes we have usario the zoom as soon as you begin speaking the timer will begin hello okay i just want to make sure that you're ready to translate thank you okay thank you foreign anybody else from the public yes we have emma welcome miss tekba see give me that um yes we have karina welcome karina as soon as you begin speaking the timer will begin gracias madam president yes uh vice president um can i uh what through you may ask our general counsel a question sure um yeah madam president i would like to know the uh some of the callers had mentioned that they are they're from the washington school now alan rock has no schools by that name that i'm recall that i that i know maybe staff can confirm but i've lived here my entire life and i don't believe we have any washington schools i know that san jose unified has a school by the name of washington school and so my question is can we represent people in san jose unified i know the answer to that question but i'd like general counsel to explain to the public how our governance works here in uh you know under our school district system that way people can be better informed thank you mr ruiz thank you so this board is uh its jurisdiction is over the schools in your district and the students and staff members who are in your schools only you do not oversee or are responsible for other schools in other school districts or jurisdictions thank you appreciate that thank you thank you uh mr moran any other members of the public wishing to address the board at this time there are none okay with that we'll move on to trustees any questions or comments from the board um and trustee chavez we're going to start with trustee vicarano yeah i mean obviously i stated what i stated in the past item um you know i if my math is correct i think the the decision was to approve the decision to approve the last one is about 268 000 over the next two years um and so it would seem that for this item another 4 000 may not make that much of a difference but i still for the same principles um like not school principles but principles like values um i i would not be supporting this again reiterating my utmost respect for dr bauer and the work that that she's done with all of us and her and i have done together the same for school you know the previous item i'm i've done had a lot of positive experiences with all of those people but just on the grounds of the situation the financial situation the bigger picture i just um i can't support this item tonight thank you trustee trustee chavez um i echo what uh joseph herrano just said and also i just can't justify especially now anyone asking for this race knowing that the budget is in such bad shape and we have been in deficit spending overspending what we don't even have not only in the bank that we don't have in the bank accounts but spending on things that shouldn't be spent we need to be spending that money and allocating every resource towards the children's education and do these people deserve a raise i'm sure they do should we do it not at this time it just looks bad to the community if there will be a time where you can and you can justify doing such but at this time and closing schools it's just shameful thanks thank you any other members of the board wishing to make a comment or share any questions or ask any questions at this time okay with i i have a question and um maybe mr chang i know you're here um and you're where the budget and where money would come from i know uh trustee chavez asked on the previous uh question where that money would come from um so if you can just confirm that that it would be the same and then also an additional question question sorry i hear my echo let me meet you additional question as you're answering that also is is this i know we um approved for the teachers to receive a raise um and is this any different from that um that raise that we just approved recently uh the amount welcome mr ching you madam president can you hear me yes okay so um the the first i'll answer your last question first um in terms of is this um any different from what we have provided to other bargaining units and the answer is no so recall um you know we approved the board approved in february um the one-time payment for 2000 in 1920 and another 2 000 for 2021 for area members and also because teamster had a week 2 class teamster was approved in february as well csda was only approved for 1920 because the v2 claw has not taken effect yet until we negotiate their successor agreement but that item is on the board agenda for tonight for consideration as well so um a short answer is no the the the proposal is identical um in terms of what other bargaining units have received um in terms of the first question i do need some clarification um what the question was where is the money coming from yeah i know the answer previously was um from the general funds so just confirming yeah yeah and the same answer thank you okay i see uh trustee chavez and trustee branano's hands up go ahead trustee chavez and then we'll go and show him um i didn't approve a raise for anybody because i decided at that time that because the district's finances are so bad and that we're closing schools and we're going to be laying off teachers that this is not the time to give more payments out thank you you're trusting me yeah um i just i just i guess it's a question maybe for mr chang hope he still has his microphone on uh but i think i just want to make sure that we're careful if we need to be in terms of he keep hearing us talk about this as a raise but am i correct and thinking that's not technically a raise because i would my assumption is that a raise would be something that goes on the on the salary on the schedule and and becomes part of the ongoing payment so this would be a one-time i don't know what you would call it but it's not a raise i just want to make sure that we're using the correct phraseology here thank you trusted i know yes that's exactly what i wanted to make sure that so one time just like the teachers um and then i just also wanted to make one clarification the difference for me between the three percent or the the not the three percent i'm sorry the the 2000 that was has been negotiated for the teachers and you know all the other bargaining units and this one to me is just the the current salary schedule compensation and and i guess the ratio of this one-time payment versus what those staff members on their salary are already compensated at that's the difference for me um so mr chang if you can clarify that and then that's all i have thank you yes thank you um and you are correct this is not an ongoing race this is a one-time payment um for a negotiation session uh for the fiscal year 1920 and the current one 2021. so um these raises will not increase the salary schedule on an ongoing basis which is a positive thing in in in some ways because it's not an ongoing cost but it's a one-time payment yes it's a one-time payment thank you thank you board vice president quintero yes uh board president i want to thank uh i want to thank her colleague uh chavez for confirming and reminding us all that she did not support any remuneration for any of any of the bargaining units and so i you know appreciate you being honest and stepping up and speaking to that i'd like to speak to that as well and remind those folks that um you know there there are those of us who do have children in the district our kids are there we've seen good teachers leave and walk for other districts you know one year they were there really encouraging our kids making a difference and they got a better opportunity and so those that's the information that i take when i made those decisions to go ahead and support our teachers and while even though there's very difficult times i inform myself by the experiences that i'm observing at my children's school and knowing that to go ahead stand here and say i'm going to stand by my principles to to know um no no remuneration because times are tough it's taking a very myopic view and really really um hampering our our ability to keep uh our our personnel here at the district uh and so that's that's with regard to you know the previous actions that we've taken so thank you for uh being very honest about that thank you vote vice president uh trustee chavez i see that you have your hand up again is that yeah um from earlier okay you want to go ahead okay i want to thank him for um i want to tell him you're welcome but um i also want to say that i'm not saying that this can't be done later on down the road do they deserve it yes but like i said before it's not the appropriate time to do this and let us fix the budget let us fix um the closing of the schools and then six months down the road we can re-examine this but right now to do this right now it just doesn't seem right thanks thank you and with that um let's see uh board vice president quintero you have something to add no that was from last time okay just want to make sure i'm looking at all the hands and making sure i'm calling on you if i need to um okay with that we'll go ahead and move on to the vote at this time so i will call you as i see you on my screen uh trustee vicarano no trustee chavez that was on the last one okay move to approve um uh the let me read it make sure move to approve the consideration for superintendents one time off schedule payments of 2000 for 2019 2020 and 2000 for 2020 2021 school years anybody said one second okay we'll go back to the vote and my screen keeps changing here so here i go uh board vice president quintero hi uh trustee vacarano uh this time i vote no as well trustee pham hi chelsea chavez no and myself i passes okay moving on to item 503 board update regarding school reopenings in alan rock union school district dr bauer i'm going to be asking there's a team of fantastic administrators who are going that have a presentation on this and it's uh this item is only for information and you will be given a brief introduction and there will be a special board meeting where this is going to be further consider so i just want to make sure that the board is aware that this is not anything for you to approve it's just to know ahead of time uh the kind of work the committee has been doing and i'm going to be asking mr moran to lead the conversation thank you welcome back mr mona okay thank you dr bauer thank you board president so i have mr sarge putting this on the screen okay perfect so good evening board president nerada louetta board of trustees dr bauer and community this evening jason sorich our ed tech administrator maria martinez principal of adelante and i will present an update on school reopening tonight's update is to inform all stakeholders on the board about the work that has been underway to support school reopening we are preparing a plan for reopening to be considered by the board in the near future based on the santa clara county's designation from purple tear to red tier and the california department of public health deeming schools safe to reopen with safety protocols in place next slide uh jason yep um our reopening committee has been meeting every friday since the beginning of november members of the committee are listed here on this slide representatives from csea teamsters area as well as several site principals district administrators and dr bauer throughout our meetings we have discussed information from the state and county as information was constantly changing and or being updated discussions about reopening of schools in the future was obviously the main purpose of our work we knew that reopening of schools for our students would happen eventually we just didn't know when maria and jason will now share some details and responsibilities required of our district for the california public health department santa clara county and other agencies as was a timeline of events from the start of this pandemic to now maria hello good evening thank you for uh taking the time to hear what the reopening committee has been working on if i could get the next slide please or have we got my apologies did we go over that last slide yeah you could start right there maria okay perfect so the responsibility of the committee has um taken on several roles so first we've been seeking out stakeholder input through various methods such as town halls and surveys and in addition to that we've also worked on developing various tools to facilitate reopening all of these tools that are hyperlinked here in the presentation are also available on the alumrock website and there are different tools such as what the reopening plan looks like when we had created it uh initially for the beginning and the start of this school year uh there's also a draft handbook in place that we would be potentially utilizing to help guide our work in making sure things are safe and in place for our students and staff and we've also created a checklist that is for the campus and that was done through our work when we did walk-throughs of the school we also have um created a safe and smart reopening video with the help of students and administrators we also have done work around monitoring the health and safety guidelines essentially all of these health and safety guidelines is what is guiding the work that we're doing and we've conducted site visits um to elementary and middle schools to really understand what is needed in all of the areas of a school site such as the cafeteria classrooms and things like that next slide please so right now i'm gonna go over the timeline and the orders um and actions that we've implemented since the school closures uh started due to covid back in march 13th of 2020.
then you have interest on capital reserve accounts and then the last line is the tax levy and that's that's up 1.2 million which is the maximum amount we can increase the two percent that we're allowed to increase our tax levy so when you add up all the numbers um our budget is for next uh year and intended budget that we're proposing to move forward is down 1.7 million or 2.23 percent so the color code that's something new that wasn't on the slide to uh two weeks ago and the reason that i color coded these numbers you'll see in the next couple of slides at this point it's time to dispel this myth that the school district is hiding money that the school district has funds that they're not appropriating that they're hiding money and the union constantly misrepresents to their people and misinforms them what our surpluses are and what monies we have available to us and that's a disservice to this board of education that's a disservice to the sport of education okay this slide here was a little bit hard to read but up up at the top of the slide when it's available tomorrow it'll be on our on our board doc's website there's a link that you can get a clear copy of this slide in the next slide which will walk you through where all our star pluses are there are no hidden surpluses so this this slide here is actually from our audit report it's page 96 of our audit report the audit reports available you can pull that off of our word docs website as well check the numbers the exact numbers that are in our audit report our audit is done by a certified public accountant an independent firm that checks all our numbers so the uh first two numbers are our access surplus numbers which i talked about on the previous slide you can match the color code up from what we put in our budget from uh the current year what we're putting in our budget for the next year the next two numbers after that are our emergency reserve numbers those numbers will call will correlate back to the previous slide as well and they'll match up with the numbers that we put in our current budget and the numbers that we're putting into our tentative budget the next two numbers after that are maintenance reserve accounts and again those numbers will match up with the numbers that are in our current budget and what we are proposing in our budget for next year the next two are the capital reserve and again the numbers that we're putting in as far as what we put in this year is is the same however the number we're putting in next year is a little bit less than the amount we have available so we have available 356 thousand we're putting in 215 000 so we'll approximately have 142 000 left in our capital reserve account the next line it's not highlighted in any color it's 192 000 and that is money that's set aside to cover purchases that were made from the previous year that become incorporated into a into our budget and those dollars are accounted for the next line below that is the uh surplus from the that's been designated from the previous year to 1.2 million that number will match up what we had put into the current budget that we're working in then the last line 1.78 1.718 million dollars that is our two percent surplus that we are allowed to have in our budget by law we can hope we can have 200 we can have two percent surplus and that's basically monies that we have available if something goes wrong so to take it from our budget into a different situation so maybe it might be a little bit easier to understand if you had a family and you had two parents and they moved made fifty thousand dollars a year you'd make a hundred thousand dollars you would set two percent aside like we do you would spend the rest of your money like we do so we have two percent sitting aside basically called like a rainy day fund and in our situation we're not allowed to have credit cards we're not allowed to go to the bank and borrow money that's all we have so this family has two thousand dollars sitting aside and that's all they have to work with their heater goes what are they going to do they have a roof problem what are they going to do a bigger problem what happens if their employer decides they can't pay them a pay period and they have to wait for their money they still have to feed their family what are they going to do well we're no different except we're a lot bigger we're responsible for a thousand employees a thousand people the board of education is responsible for so we need our two percent god forbid that we have a roof issue the heating system breaks the state decides not to pay us our our state aid on time i'm sure all of you wouldn't be happy if we said we can't pay you because our payroll for one pay period is over two million dollars more than our two percent so let's end this nonsense that there's hidden money there's no hidden money it's all right there black and white it's just that some people in this union leadership keep pounding this drum for their own agenda and this information was given to the union two years ago after a board meeting in this room when john scavelli the former superintendent sat down with an njea wrap and explained our surplus but everyone chooses to ignore it because it doesn't work for their agenda next slide this is a little bit harder to see but this is a snapshot of the budget software that the state makes us use to prepare our budget again all the numbers are color coded you can match them up with the the slide that shows what we put in our budget you match it up with the slide that's in our audit it's all there black and white this goes to the state state has to approve it the numbers are the numbers if you look at the blue bars that go across horizontal there's our balances that there we will have at the end of the of this projected tentative budget cycle the first bar is uh miscellaneous rapidly it's projected we'll have 1.5 million in surplus that's our two percent the next one going across it says legal reserve but it's actually excess surplus none zero the next one doesn't apply to us because it deals with adult schools the next one below that is capital reserve and we'll have 142 000 dollars in capital reserve left which we are allowed to have up to six million dollars in capital reserve set aside we have 142 000 set aside for if there's a if there's a problem with a building to repair something at one point we had up to a million dollars but we continue to use our money to fund the budget so there's there's a day we're going to pay the price for that and that's why we need our two percent the next area is the maintenance reserve again zero the next one below that is tuition it doesn't apply to us then the last one is the emergency reserve and that's zero as well so let's let's put an end to all this talk about hidden money and the board has money they don't want to spend it's just all a myth it's all a room is all propaganda and let's just be adults about it and look at the problem for what it really is and face the truth and stop making up stories okay i'll get off my soapbox now so back to the budget this is our our revenue slide you're looking at [Music] what we would generate if we had a zero tax increase the first column 76.6 million if we decided to only have a one percent tax levy increase 77.2 million where we're added to two percent tax levy increase is 77.8 million uh the next column is for two percent plus waivers and bank camp there's none of that available to us the number is exactly the same and the third column is our tentative budget which represent the two percent tax levy increase okay the next slide why we went through that slide is now we're going to look at those revenue numbers and compare it to our projected expenses in our budget so if you look at this going from right to left look at the column that has the arrow pointing at it that's our tentative budget the revenues match the appropriations the next two columns are actually the same because there's no difference between our budget the two percent waiver and bank cap and just a straight two percent increase the next column over is what would happen to our budget if we just if we only went up one percent on the tax levy we would have to cut an additional six hundred and twenty three thousand dollars from this budget if we decided we only wanted to increase the tax levy by one percent if we decided to increase the budget with a zero percent tax levy we would have to cut 1.2 million dollars from this budget so i'm getting to the end of my slides that this is probably the most important slide to the taxpayers which is going to cost me so our budget is on a fiscal year the tax bills are on the calendar year so when we're looking at the 2021 tax increase we look at the first column is half of last year's budget the general fund tax levy did that service half of the amount 31 836 000 the next column we're looking at the tentative budget 2122 tax levy increase of 63 572 which gives you half of that amount is 31 0007 you add the two halves together gives it a 63 six twenty three the row below that is the 2021 tax rateables the readables are up in the township which is good news that the raidables are up that always helps us um so now you now we're going to work down to the next section we look at last year's tax levy increase which is 1.18 percent this year's tax elaborate increase which is the 20 20 21 which is 1.2013 the difference is the increase which is 0.0175 so what does that mean so if you're if your average home is assessed at 271 thousand dollars your increase for the year will be 47.50 i'll turn it back over to dr smith at this time thanks mr chinty do you have the little clicker thanks i greatly appreciate all all the uh the work you put into the slides it's very important to have the accurate information that whole the whole presentation so as we did last time so two weeks ago i gave the presentation on thursday on a friday in my email to staff and families i included the powerpoint from the night before as long as well as the live stream recording of the board meeting with all of our explanation i will do the same again tomorrow so you know i encourage everyone to take a look the colors are very helpful in terms of guiding us and um we also embedded a link in one of the prior slides that if you click it takes you to the entire um outlay that mr shinty put together all in one view so if you prefer to look at it that way you can and again i encourage all of you to to take a look so we turn the county we turn the attendant budget over to the county office by march 22nd and then on may 6th we're here again to present the final budget in between then we also have a regular board meeting at the end of march and in april so there are many opportunities for further discussion and we are very glad to have discussion about any topic anytime and that's been clear all along we had a chance to make that clear again and speaking with the the paraprofessionals who came on monday and tuesday and um so this time any questions from the board yes mr megan i just just want a quick summary on what you just presented so revenue is down expenses are up to handle it you we have removed 45 positions from the ranks wasn't enough to cover the differential you lose revenue you increase expenses and the biggest expense increase was the salary increases per the contract correct correct okay so you and your team went through you cut as much in the operating expenses as possible no stone left unturned you found as we saw hundreds of thousands of dollars focused your initiatives were focused on the children what would have the least amount of impact on the children correct correct okay transportation options courtesy transportation was examined recently the township has come in with some temporary solution and i want to emphasize that part that's a temporary solution the land sale etc um the sro issue is a temporary solution right now and the idea of taking it off of the ballot was a short-term relief but may not be a permanent solution so i again i i just want to make sure we're clear about that okay as far as other expense reductions outside of your team i'm assuming you did go to the you know you met with the with the folks the union reps and i'm assuming they came to you with ideas to help alleviate the differential which is millions of dollars and i'm assuming you digested those and acted upon them as best as you could is that a fair statement um that's so we did meet with them twice with the uni with the union leadership uh explained our financial situation both times um so and mr ishinti addressed this in this presentation but you know that they believe they have they have different numbers simply put about the budget and that the steps we're taking that we're presenting is incorrect and unnecessary and on that basis said to us they are not willing to meet us even one percent of the way okay all right that's that's what i believed was the situation so as far as the accuracy of the numbers and you you you are not allowed to move i we want you to relax and breathe turn your microphone off i wear i was worried about you so the actor shared her number so john and his team put the numbers together in conjunction with all of administration it's presented to the finance committee which i've been a member on for four years and i my my resume i'm a cpa certified fraud a lot of books i've done school audits and everything so when i hear that were quote and that i haven't heard it directly except a couple times at these meetings where they thought there was a mistake that there's five million dollars i find it insulting on behalf of the board and that so then you have us internally so let's go to the external people who validate our numbers bowman and company is our outside cpa firms maybe 125 cpas one of the most reputable cpa firms in new jersey specializing in municipal audits they give us this book every year i study it boy am i boring i look at it in depth and i know how much the reserves are so they didn't come to us when they met with us two months ago and said you got five million dollars right they agreed they confirmed they audited and they approved the numbers correct okay then those numbers get shipped to the county superintendent in the state put into their program digested and you know looked at and then they also validate those numbers right correct okay all right i just again wanted to summarize what i thought was being presented the facts and maybe a little bit more information for people so okay thank you mr megan i appreciate it miss fleming thank you i just wanted to ask um about when you met with the staff and the paraprofessionals at those meetings were they able to offer any ideas of ways to perhaps you know increase our are the monies that we could get from somewhere did they offer ideas um one thing that was consistent between both meetings okay was a desire on their part to um try to work towards some kind of agreement okay some middle ground um and we and i you know i i i um attempts were made you know we had two meetings with the within leadership on that we've remained open at every point along the way to continue conversation um you know so it so the monday and tuesday did give us a nice chance to express that to the paraprofessionals who were there um you know i didn't see any union leadership at those meetings okay so um you know i may have missed them but i did not see them okay and so are the paraprofessionals told at that time that um their suggestions would have to go through their team leadership is that correct correct correct so we wouldn't be able to negotiate directly with them correct sorry okay and so since those meetings have have you met with has the team leadership been willing to meet with you uh we have not received any uh reach out thank you dr smith other board members questions comments can i just say this filming absolutely i'm sorry thank you uh mr richenty and thank you dr smith for putting together the presentation i appreciate again the level of numbers i love the color coding that makes it nice and simple uh and so thank you very much for putting together the presentation i just would like to say also as a board member having to make these decisions are heart-wrenching no one wants to be elected to a board to say hey how can we cut salaries benefits so you know all it will take all of us and it will take everybody coming with ideas your team members your team leadership and and so that we can do the best that we can by our children thank you other questions from the board miss no i have a question dr smith i feel like can you hear me on the slide where you have the professional staff restructuring i'm looking at it in front of me i was hoping that you could walk through these bullet points at the bottom so i can better understand what's changing here and how it will impact students so the um we'll start with the first one the elementary teacher positions so there are eight reductions there positional reductions which will increase class size but just bring us on par with other districts um um can can you clarify on par with other districts please yes i'm sorry to to ask these questions but i know because i have kids in elementary and um we i spoke about this with you my my first grader last year had 16 kids in his class and his was the largest first grade in that school the other ones were like about 13 14 and i know in other districts in those lower grades they can have as much as 25. so when you say on par with other districts can you please put that put a number on that yeah gladly thank you um so uh for full for full day kindergarten this would be 20 students in a class um for first grade 22.
we are going to now as we discussed earlier have those 550 to 600 north and south um and then create some boundaries around that knowing that the site may in fact change um but we'll be able to then sort of right size and look at what it means for um you know the student body in the middle and see where we stand from an overall district-wide utilization as well as hopefully camping down that overall number of um of change from a student boundary standpoint um so from the redistricting and getting into ads was mentioned earlier um you know the size that's not only supported educationally but also um favored by the osgr so looking at scenario 2a with 6th grade moving out becoming a 6'8 middle um we're still going to close darcy um so that gets taken out of our functional capacity equation um do little norton remain and darcy pre-k program like in all the other scenarios uh moves over to highland and then we're our goal for this study was to really provide that information of sizing the new k5 chapman according to what a likely attendant zone could look like so keeping our same sort of color pattern um but with this one rather than the uh the new school being this uh this nice little you know cantaloupe color i guess um we're now calling the new chapman um that color the conceptual new chapman um identifying some area change which would shift um do little to the new chapman and then some flip-flopping between chapman and highland and then a small little area of highland to norton and then highland to do little so much more um i'll call almost like a precise or surgical redistricting not this wholesale change when we do these smaller pocket areas we sometimes call it a pocket redistricting but really it's just some cohesive collective group neighborhood moves that keep kids that are in that immediate area together rather than slicing a lot of boundary changes just because we'd rather have larger peer groups when you ultimately go through a redistricting so what that looked like i know we referenced the number earlier um looking at the new chapman of about 515 students um balancing out doolittle at 560 to 570 um highlands at about 750 overall um that peaking at last year does get up to 760 and then having pretty stable enrollment at norton um especially as the growth starts to occur in that 450 460 but then we see a little bit of a bump up there in the 480 range so when we ran our overall utilization numbers and i went through really the same exercise of coming up with a planning capacity and this is absent of the site absent of the building absent of any of the physical parameters just taking that same loading level of 22 multiplying it by six grade groupings now rather than seven um because we've now moved six up into the middle school so that's one less grade grouping in the building and then having four sections of each grade so four kindergarten classes four first grade classes gives us a 528 planning capacity there um what this did this also got us into that sweet spot especially in the last five years of in that 90 range overall all of the schools um you know performed really well um one thing that did pop up with some of the growth up in chapman getting around 98 um when the district-wide number works in that 90 95 that's just the function of having to go in and right size the boundaries at the right time um and follow the enrollment there because there is some space at a highland there is some space how to do a little there um but overall i think this one performed um really well with a good um scaling up as the enrollment comes in um even enrollment overall that's the way we were able to um apportion it out to the uh the various um new attendant zones um same caveats there of you know taking a better look at highland getting a capacity number there in case you need it um some additional space because you lost some space with the pre-k program you know those would all require some adjustments that you'd want to know before i'm going into a construction program and then really overall it moves about 15 of the student body which with the number of um the number of changes and bringing a new school online um you know that's really on par for what um you know we typically see as part of um projects of this size to be honest with you um we have three elementary schools of roughly the same size we still have the larger highland but that's just you know part function of the building itself and part function of having the pre-k program um nestled in there and then you know this really involves just you know testing out the chapman site for that 5c uh but we've left it flexible where you saw it probably covering the northern periphery of town as the you know work moves on depending on if this you know 2a falls to the waste that it becomes a 6a you know all those site questions will need to get answered but um we ultimately left enough flexibility there that um you know we feel pretty good about those geographic areas that we have we have captured in our work um so as chuck mentioned and john mentioned earlier um we've gotten started on the new scenario 6a um you know we're hopeful to be able to you know have a have a meeting um internally next week sharing where we're at um and you know within two weeks have uh have a presentable slide deck to be able to come back out um and share with everybody on that one so um you know um it was good to be able to get the guidance um needed on you know the direction of having the schools the sizes of the schools and seeing how that performs as part of uh that new iteration um i know we talked about a lot of it but if there's any other specific questions on the redistricting itself i'm glad to cover those now okay i see a question from tim thanks andrew uh yeah it's it's actually not on the redistricting per se but i think it's a quick one okay average number of years of home ownership in cheshire do you happen to know if you don't know i do not have i do not have that but if if i have it in my deck of information outside of tonight's meeting i will gladly email that back out because it's something that we may have okay i know i i found it on zillow or realtor probably like five years ago and it was 17 years and it just struck me that there's a lot of people who move into town and then probably move out after the kids have gone through the school system and i was just wondering if that had changed at all particularly in relation to the um what i mentioned before about the average median age uh sorry not average but the median age of homeowners having increased anyway if you have it i'm curious yeah we're all waiting for the 2020 census to get eventually released where they talk about housing tenure and time um which is really the best number we may have an estimate but um it would just be an estimate of it um sure but if i do if i do have something at hand i'll be be sure to send it back out do you know when the acs gets released did they said well they they feel that census 2020 um the pandemic has slowed it down they're going to start sending out some um town wide so you know for the entire community of treasure um hopefully by late fall we should start seeing some information flowing in okay thank you great thank you mike um faith yep yeah and um forgive me if if we've gone over this um where is most of the development taking place i i there's a ton going on around us out here and i'm in the north east quadrant um and clearly our biggest districts are going to be um in the area in my area but does that does that comport with i mean is there still a lot of development i know i should know this i should go to the other side of town but is there a lot of development going on on that western and southwestern side as much as going on in the east and um i i just i'm trying to say yeah i i actually haven't i drug a map over are you guys seeing a map that says future housing no no i'm gonna stop presenting then represent now um it seems to work well for john earlier um are you seeing a flight called future housing now yes you go yeah all right i'm now now i'm too up on you john just to be honest i know really making me look bad mike [Laughter] so um you know this is tracking those that are um and hopefully everybody can see all the different colors we have green stars on those developments that are under construction we have orange stars on those that are approved but not yet under construction and then we have yellow on those that are applications so what these are are some more significant units we have the number of units listed here and i can flip over to the next slide to kind of talk about the type what we're not picking up though and i think a lot of people are seeing are the smaller um infill lots so it's you know where it's a one lot subdivision here one new home one new home one new home um these were really cool to look at um some some larger you know some larger developments um but overall when we looked at what that could potentially mean um for student yield and this became part of our um projections those developments i had on the map um you know including some of the apartments at lakeside of cheshire um they really don't generate a lot of students it's when we get those single-family subdivisions um is where we get more students coming out of those units um so you'll see where we have subdivisions listed even though the overall number of units are rather small we're getting a fair number of school-aged children and this is really school-age children in the next you know five to eight years coming out of that knowing that it gets filled a family set you know a family may move in they may have a child when they move in and that child may make it in to the system and then some families move in with a kid or two in tow and then have another so you know we use these established multipliers um through two different sources to be able to gauge you know how many students we're getting um per unit um and overall for the single family it came out to i'm just under one student per unit within our projection window that's not to say that that family may not eventually have numerous children overall but it's trying to account for sort of the different family cycle of a household but overall a lot of the big numbers where we saw just the number of units um very little school-aged children come out of there just because of the the number of bedrooms most of them are um you know assumed to be one bedroom from the information that we had um so not real you know student generators however i think a key point is um you know they do allow sort of um a younger demographic to move in who may eventually become um homeowners within the community okay um slr has been asked they're gonna go back and they're gonna update this because there are additional subdivision sentences so we throw it's not on here faith that we spoke about earlier right there is uh mckinley christmas tree farm also yeah another 35 houses single-family homes okay thanks um faith you're all set adam did you have another point that i interrupt you before on before we go back to tim um i think i'm good for now thanks okay i thought i cut you off before okay tim thank you andrew yeah just uh i guess kind of for faith here uh i'm not sure i didn't quite catch it but what you were just talking about it's michael zuba correct what you were just talking about um there's also another factor like i guess from my perspective planning and zoning five or ten years ago they changed some of the zoning rules so that you know the one acre lots can now be developed into you know ten housing units something along those lines then that's basically up and down route 10 i think it crossed west across west main and the only one that's listed in that um in the list that we just saw is the development john ricky is doing at the corner higgins in route 10 but there's there's a good number of other r20a zoning parcels that could ultimately get developed and frankly my suspicion is in the next you know five or ten years is there some turnover they will get developed i'm the type of person who likes to have sidewalks i really don't want to move out to buy a two acre a two acre lot that's me there's everybody has you know different different preferences but i do think that there probably is an appetite for some of the smaller units um in those r20a zones that probably will get built out in in the years to come yep okay any other questions on the redistricting um uh hopefully quick question how much of the 827 functional capacity for highland school how much of that is um the pre-k program what size is the actual elementary school part of of that highland number approximately so i'm i'm opening that up now just give me one second so approximately i'm just trying to back into and if jeff if you have it in front of you just the pre-k um total enrollment 100 i think it's 105 mike pre-k is 105 yeah yeah 105 was that this year or what was the average over the last because it wasn't this year down a little bit so i think we might have used the average over the last few years that's why it's a little bit tougher to do we um we and we figured that based on you know that's perfect that's all i needed to know yeah give give john a gold star he nailed that at 105 that's the number we use and i got the spreadsheet open i'm catching up to you mike i'm catching up i just wanted to know the size of the of the elementary school not without without the pre-k because it's really a separate it's a separate community it's a separate piece yeah i thought i totally know so roughly like 600 and um 650 or so because as it kind of grows up over time okay um if i could i'd like to ask either somebody who was at the oscgr meeting that was held today with the state if somebody could give a little report on that to the board i know that the smc hasn't heard the results of that meeting yet today i think it's important that we at least touch on what was discussed there today so the board could hear it any preference jeff i don't know if you want to take the lead or sure i'm i'm happy to you know what i'm gonna pull up is uh i thought after the meeting um i received a couple of different uh synopsis from a couple of different folks um and i thought they were pretty good uh basically uh and we did touch on some of this and in terms of our reviews uh the elementary schools you know tony already talked about that 4 to 6 50 range so the scenario 1a wasn't really well received there that we need to make sure we're calculating appropriate space for special education which i really appreciated uh acosta's sharing that when we are doing the ed specs for our buildings those special ed room uh can be larger and another example is that of that is uh pre-k where the standard they use for pre-k is 1200 square feet and the standard for other classrooms is 900 because of the additional adults and little buckaroos in there uh so what they do say though is when you identify what building that pre-k classroom is going in that you don't build like six pre-k classrooms and then move that program of pre-k to some other building and you know re-appropriate those rooms for other classrooms so that's consideration that they weren't a fan of redistricting 40 of the community that they're not going to really support a new high school until elementary enrollment is addressed that the support uh for a middle school with enrollment over 900 i think kind of proportionally wanes as the size of the school goes up i did some my own research there's not i can't find a another middle school in connecticut that's 300 kids uh grant request must be fully support now that i don't think we could do it well but um you know there's a probably a reason that nobody else has one and there's nobody um the state's not really supportive of that which we kind of need in terms of reimbursement they want us to make sure that we have a comprehensive plan uh that we engage the community in that plan um and i think those were the marquee highlights tony i know you sent a summary as well did i miss anything there no i think it's spot on i thought they were very very helpful in fact encouraging um not what i mean not that i expect anything less but uh they seemed one thing that stood out to me and um hopefully the other folks attended was uh like like jeff said they mentioned pre-k um special education and behavioral services quite a bit and one of the big no's for them their words was they don't want to see really anything in these education specs that take space away from that or minimize it especially if there's a need in other words what jeff said not that we're going to do this but if they've seen school districts try to shoehorn or move pre-k into a space that wasn't meant for it they'll they'll reject something like that so they're they're they're encouraging uh keeping in district services that we're doing with special ed but to me it sounded like it was a carrot like if we uh if we're able to and again i think we have this need that's and pre-k c to uh too high there's a need there there could be again uh something in the spec that calls it out and they'd be more supportive of approving funding for that so i mean i thought that was very interesting um one of the things that came up was they saw the high school somewhere in the options one of the phases i think i found the lady's name said that uh it would be a big no if uh high school's done in phase one clearly because it's not a need for us immediately and there was space there that's the thing that came to an initial call was um they they um they they called out the space availability at the high school which we know but that's not the pressing need uh so to me that was just like well if you guys are thinking about doing the high school not a good idea in phase one because you had no need for it but that being said the only a they brought up was as far as a thorough comprehensive plan um you know don't rush to grant the application and you know as much as possible good costs because they don't want to see any school district you know go through the process go to referendum go out to bid and the costs come in higher that was approved they don't see that very often but i i thought overall they still gave some good advice i'm not surprised but they seem very um encouraging for lack of a better word okay has anybody else want to add anything to the meeting that was there today yeah they're just looking for us to come back and we have updates andrew yeah they're very much being a partner uh they definitely want help they love when we come to them early like we've said is partnering with that office as michelle dixon by the way tony who you know she's a grant specialist and and and you know and said you know based on what we're seeing if you start with the high school it's not resolving the need you know that's the highest need that they saw chuck and i'm just going to ask the question if if we did go forward with a 638 middle school with a 1200 capacity and they want to see a school of 900 what does that mean what could that mean um i think there'd have to be a lot of discussion and i'm speculating and i'm not i mean i build schools an engineer but i think you'd have to demonstrate a strong need and um and show that your your master your programmatic uh goals and mission statement for cheshire public schools to support that i think i think it definitely involved more conversation um i don't think it's an immediate no but i i think their experience what i gathered is casa de manchester's director he's seen every district he's seen a million schools different grant applications and and my guess it's probably based upon his experience and what he's seen throughout the state of connecticut and what are some of the what are some of the norms so i i i think there's a deeper conversation there if the also the cheshire comes to that conclusion that that's say the the program you want to go with we're going to it's going to be a deeper knife and justifying why we want to go in that direction i think got it okay all right excuse me andrew i think one of the things to add um michelle did point out that a lot of the uh towns in the state are leaning towards the six to eight middle school so that was something she she did show favor to it was just you know the enrollment number was the concern so um you know they certainly aren't opposed to the six to eight middle school it's just the the enrollment number is what they are certainly going to be looking at closely understood okay faith you know okay so they're leaning toward a six to eight but we're still going to be at the well over what 1200 student capacity i don't see how that's gonna work unless you do two okay six or eight middle schools but um but it sounds like uh you know the old proverbial two steps forward one step back where are we now i you know because we can't and we know we're not gonna do an 800 student elementary school but we can't do the 6 8 middle school as proposed i mean what does this mean for the smc where where are they and what do they have to do now going forward to also meet these deadlines that we've kind of imposed to get the report to council yeah i think maybe the next steps as we said i think the the immediate next steps is this um when we talked about instead of one larger school there's two newer schools in the sixth to six fifteen seven you know depends they might shift depending on when mike and his team get done where the numbers move yeah i think we could get to that and see see where that comes out and see how that plays out um i'm going to be i'm you know haven't done this i'm very interested that's going to come out i think it's a very interesting solution um i think we got to play that up first and they're very interested in that and i think they're going to want to see what those they said they said come back and talk to us when you get that send us those results they want to see what that comes up with taking into account everything we talked about tonight you know how many how many students does it impact does it right side is these schools better um you know from a you know from an operations standpoint not having 900 kids so i think really the first step i think not to put everything in one basket i think that work that might mike and his team is going to do is going to show some interesting information to us and i think once we get that in another week week and a half when mike's done who will inform the state um of that they're they were supportive of that um but i think we're getting there just it's another refinement in the process so i think that's really the next step but i think it's going to happen sooner than later yeah i mean it just seems like they implicitly put their perimeter on the two elementary school plan yeah i don't know just i didn't necessarily take that away from the call today that they only gave us one option based on what was presented um you know on sony chuck and jeff and nikita further they you know certainly we're definitely open to the smaller elementary school idea the initial reaction to that 850 plus all these schools pretty much a non-starter for them so they like the idea that small elementary schools you know chuck and jeffrey talked about the sixth grade middle school feedback and i think like what chuck said is again it could be you know an argument to be made with him on that if we can you know prove it but just so i'm not sure if angel talked about it he might have the early in the meeting but the last time cc meeting you know appreciate the entire public group you know decided to remove the large elementary school option from phase 1a and i think almost everyone on smc voted to have um slr and team go back and come up with this two elementary school configuration so smc does want to see that and vet it through but that has to happen first so okay it may it may or may not be a solution let's see what the numbers come back um okay so hopefully we'll know soon thank you i know you were there today too but that's at least my perception is there's some still some options on the table and faith the only reason why that information yes is essentially just voted on our option six on monday evening so when when this was originally scheduled option six was not on the table i'll tune in tune in does anybody else want to add anything with os the meeting today yeah the only thing that i would add just to make it clear is what they what they said about special education programs is they would not penalize us on space standards if we had more robust special ed programs and and we do and jeff explained that we have a bridges program running out of doolittle we have our you know other programs you know primarily focused on autism at highland school which is a district-wide program and the birth to three programs so i think the state generally you know really liked hearing that and i thought that was very very helpful for us as we look at our elementary schools all right thank you then um tim you have a question yeah thank you andrew just to uh this is probably for jeff just to be clear on this with regard to our birth to three program and the pre-k program are they are we required to have those programs we are required to do k-12 right we're not chester's not quote required to have a birth through three program however um the state provides birth through green services and we're a provider the tremendous benefit to us being a provider is that it increases our contact with students in our community children in our community who have significant need and supports the transition from birth to three servings into the school system and the we bill all that to the state so there's really limited cost to that the other thing that it does is um you know provides tremendous professional development and exposure to a lot of people who work in our school system uh to support the development of students with you know different and broad range of needs so no we're not required but um i think it's it's tremendously beneficial now pre-k we have that as part of an inclusion program that we would have regardless of whether or not we had birth to three but we also have two smart start pre-ks which are grant funded for the time being by the state of connecticut next year is the end of that grant bin is that accurate you know [Music] end of the second year of the second smart start um i think that i think that grant continues the it was the capital improvement grants that for smart start that expired right so i mean there's substantial offset uh making it you know worthwhile tremendous resource for parents in our community to engage in our our preschool programming yeah no i no i appreciate the benefit i mean i agree with you on that i just the what i'm wondering about is the offset the cost which is you said that substantially these two different programs are substantially uh offset if in simple terms like operating budget and capital budget the operating budget is substantially offset in the capital budget is it just the standard rate we get like call it 40 reimbursement for construction or is it a different rate for the pre-k or b to three rooms birth to three rooms so for capital improvement we were giving given a set dollar figure to uh transition our facilities to be accommodating of preschool-aged children um so that was a flat figure the operational costs are really paid through billing so it's all through like billable services so our leadership team darcy works to work with the state it's really like a a private medical provider does billable hours back to the state and we get reimbursed um so that's that's where that money comes from so that's for the operating budget and then i'm talking i'm talking about school modernization so let's say yeah there's no money there left to be able to do that really right because it's a short-term grant so we would but we would get like just call it the forty percent reimbursement whatever the rate is thirty five forty right yeah so we would we would get whatever the prevailing rate is for either a renovation or construction okay all right thank you mr grippo thank you um firstly um we've been talking a lot tonight about all these programs and as as we have been um i wanted to commend uh chuck neff um i i watched the last i've watched almost all the smc meetings and um last the last meeting i think on march 8th was almost three hours long and i think that's maybe your second or third meeting as chairman and that meeting went from two real solid proposals to a completely abandoning one and then facilitating the group back to another proposal and i found that incredibly impressive that you were able to do that and have what it would appear to be anyway the mental stamina to to guide everyone back through it so i just wanted to commend you on that uh that i thought that was a great great show of leadership there so congratulations on that chuck because i know how hard that can be um and last uh lastly um as far as the was it the oscgr did i get the letters in the right order you did oh excellent did they talk about our reimbursement rate is it going to stay the same for these projects or is it is it going to be changing or anything yeah adam if i could your the reimbursement rate is set by it's statutory um it's constantly fluctuating a few percentage points here and there it it it doesn't vary greatly from year to year so every year is different um i i i could give you the 2021 um but it probably it will get outdated but they don't fluctuate greatly um what's really key in reimbursement especially on a renovation project um and if if you watch some of the pre the early presentations we made it's when a project is going to be renovation status we have to build support and cure that status from oscgr so that we reduce we reduce the um ineligible costs because otherwise that reduce if you have a lot of ineligibles you're you're paying for those and ultimately reduces your effective reimbursement rate as well as right sizing the building so that you keep the full reimbursement rate versus a reduction of that rate that's that's statutorily they don't have any say on it in that office whatsoever okay great that's what casa will tell you okay anybody else to our last agenda item second or last all right so agenda 3c um agenda item 3c is middle school configuration um put on the agenda there's been a lot of questions by the smc about how the board felt about a seventh through eighth there were six through eighth middle school configuration so i just wanted to throw it out to the group if anybody wants to comment on that now um you don't have to honestly or obviously but um so maybe has a strong opinion on that um the smc has looked for that information and i'll jump at once i'm sorry did you say a seven through eight a new what was that seventh or eighth middle school configuration we're sixth through eighth all right oh well did i stay here correctly yeah i'm gonna go with catherine first i'm sorry you're good um thank you thanks andrew you're welcome i will you know i have been a proponent of the six through eight middle school um for a long time now and so if the choice is between you know if the smc wants to know whether i personally favor the six or eight over seventh and eighth um there's no question i mean i am not a an expert really i'm not an educator but everything that i have seen and what i've heard from you know jeff marlene and others who are the experts is that our sixth graders would really benefit um educationally from becoming a part of the middle school environment you know in terms of academics and that they're ready for that kind of a change and i you know i'm sensitive to the fact that that could be controversial um like for mr white but you know i i do think you know the way curriculum is designed these days and um just what our kids are you know really deserve in terms of technology and uh stem sorts of courses that the six through eight middle school is the ideal from my perspective and so um i hope that the smc will really give that serious consideration and i know that um jeff and marlene had put together a um a document that sort of you know reiterated why um they're thinking on why the sixth grade middle school would be beneficial and gave that to the smc so um but that's all i have to say i mean i i'd never i think a new seven through eight middle school would be not a great use of money let's just put it that way and so um so that's my view does that help andrew no that's great thanks thank you um tim thanks andrew yeah i i just come from a different i have a different world view on it um the what i've what i've read about it i think it was last night i was reading a synopsis of a harvard study saying that the benefits there's benefits there to going one way or the other but it doesn't sound like it's that strong in either direction and i know it was mentioned before that connecticut is looking like it's moving toward a six through eight uh schools but then i think one of these things i was reading yesterday said that nationally it's actually the other direction moving away from six or eight two seven and eight take all that aside i really would just prefer you know seeing kids being kids and going through sixth grade uh with their younger siblings and i also think there's one other there's one other police to this which is when we'll have moved to town including myself and everybody else there basically has been something of a social compact which is this is what you're getting k through six um so we could change that that's totally that that is an option but i think to me there would need to be a compelling reason for that and i just haven't seen a compelling reason for it um i think the status quo works so i'm comfortable with the k through 6 model that we have and a 7 8 junior high thanks right thank you tim um adam um andrew i'm confused by the question um just by looking at the smc's um projects that they had put up it seemed like they had abandoned these seven eight school options already um and they hadn't no there's a renovation of dad oh the all right okay yes my apologies not a new construction of a seventh and eighth but renovation two dot configuration all right so but it seemed like the discussion on smc was whether or not our preference was to build a new sixth or eight over any other option regardless of the data and am i am i misinterpreting that as the that they were trying to figure out if we had a preference overall or not because for me it's like wherever the debt i'm you know i'm still on the side and it's wherever the data goes at this point um seventh or eight i mean seventh grade or sixth or eighth you know because as far as i can tell the where we still have to figure out a population problem and how what what option best fits that so i guess that would be my answer it's wherever the data leads so that'd be that'd be my answer okay thank you chuck should you want to add something noth yeah i'm you yeah sorry the the question of the the 638 middle school was if looking at a scenario 2a as the smc has been is we wouldn't want to put that forward as a recommendation if it didn't have the support of the board of ed in the end because we'd be back to square one so we wouldn't want to put that forward as our recommendation if it wasn't going to go anywhere so we're just trying to gauge what the actual support of it was that's it yeah sure my answer remains unchanged if that's where the data leads then so be it yeah just to reaffirm what chuck said the last thing we wanted was the smc to put together a proposal when it comes to the board of ed and it gets voted down um on the merit of six through eight middle school so um ann i see a hand up yeah i want to thank adam for his answer because that's the a answer adam um because that's what we're doing right that's what we've been doing for over a year now on the smc is looking at you know what's the best big picture what's going to um solve our enrollment increasing enrollment uh issues and um and you know how to best go about doing that combining it with um with renovating or with updating our aging buildings um it's a big task it has it's been hard and it's hard because all of our buildings need a lot of tlc tlc is a euphemism for what we need to do to all of our buildings um but if you're talking about purely from an educational standpoint the issue of the six through eight middle school i have to agree with catherine on on that in that there are lots of advantages for sixth graders in a middle school environment um and i honestly i'd like to know more about what you found out today from that meeting with the os cgr um as to their reasons for um not going over the 900 level it just seems to me that with the way that we can configure buildings and you know the magic that architects play when putting um school buildings together to fit the needs of whatever community problems they're trying to solve that just a pure number doesn't i just would like to know what that number is is um based on i'd like to know more and i'm sure we'll find out more so i look forward to finding out more of those facts as adam says thank you did we get back to any uh any actual information from oscgr as to why 900 was the cap or was it just anything i don't really i don't recall the specific reason andrew like factual data reason i don't know i think it was more my perception of it was more i think it was based upon them knowing the state as a whole and probably how they operate in and probably looking over long-term basis of you know what works in connecticut from their experience that that that's again a perception and kind of a speculation okay um faith um i agree with adam and ann that we have to kind of see where where things go um i would love to know why is oscgr why they i'd love to see what material they're using to say that they're they prefer a six through eight because i i you know i i'm a uh experience of one and when i did teach in a small little private school in california um which has no correlation probably with a huge district in connecticut but we did a six through eight middle school and it wasn't comfortable i mean the kids there was a noticeable difference between the seventh and eighth graders and the six such that we had to separate the sixth from the seventh eighth so but again that is just a little data point and a great big sea of data but um you know and jeff i i thank you too for the um materials that you sent and i did go back over the smc reaper or the um the um report from 2017 and you know ultimately i think what the researchers were saying is it's what's important is what's going on in the classroom if more than the model one way or the other and i think we have to keep that in mind it's it's the interaction of the kids with the teacher and vice versa and you know if if bringing the kids into the middle school so they could get robotics or you know name your program or whatever um if it's good for the sixth graders why not the fifth and why not the fourth graders so maybe what we need to do is look at what we're doing in our elementary schools but i i do think there's sixth grade is such a tough year and um you know they're given leadership opportunities in an elementary school that that helps them through those years and it's especially tough for girls it really is um well boys too but i you know so i i am very much in support of keeping those kids in an environment where they're able to have something that that um gives them encouragement and boosts their their um self-confidence going right into a middle school at that stage where the little kids on the block with other groups of kids going through major hormonal imbalances and everything else and all that comes with it i think is i just don't see how it works but um i'll see where the data goes like adam um but that's kind of where i'm coming down so i'm not sure how the smc will take all of this information together and um decide what to do but i just wanted to add my my opinion so thanks katherine thanks andrew um so i just want to clarify something that um to go to faith's point about sixth graders being with seventh and eighth graders and um i think there's no question we all know that if we did a six or eight middle school that the sixth graders would be in a you know their own space and and the design um that was done for by ts kp tksp whatever um you know we talked about that a lot you know that there would have to be a way to um have the sixth grade you know primarily on its own in its own space um so i just want to sort of throw that out there as a thing that you know obviously i think we'd all be very sensitive to the other thing that i heard a lot back when we were first thinking of a six through eight middle school was that there will be a really a tremendous benefit so the kids right now go come in for seventh grade they're gone at the end of eighth grade and the ability to for middle school teachers to have um those kids in the middle school for three years rather than two would um i think you know i mean it gives the teachers and the staff a much better um ability to really get to know these kids and um and you know educate them in a way that's different than just having them there in and out and i don't know jeff could maybe speak to this because he was a middle school middle school principal but i thought i remember hearing you know that there was a real benefit to that as well um so i just wanted to throw those two things out but you're right i don't when we say though to chuck neff you know we'll we'll follow the data that that's not giving the smc any i don't think uh assurance that we are really seriously willing to consider a six through eight middle school if in fact that's what smc comes to us with and um i know what it's like to do a whole lot of work and come up with an idea that we think is a great idea and have it shot down at you know um in our case it was the town council um so i and i am really i do not think it's fair to the smc they've you know these people have put in a gigantic amount of effort so if if they're asking for even kind of like an overall consensus from us tonight i think we owe it to them to actually you know not just say well we'll wait for the data i mean what data are we waiting for you know um you know we have a sense of the cost we have a sense of the you know what it would look like so if we are dead set against a six through eight middle school as a group then we we gotta tell them tonight i'd or soon because they only have till april 1st to figure out what they're going to present to the town council um and so i i i yeah so if it's up to me i would very much be in favor of a six to eight middle school i don't know if we can get a you know get chuck and this smc a better sense of where the rest of us are but just saying that you know we're gonna follow the data i don't know how that helps them so that my 10 cents okay thank you catherine tony yeah we can't make any assurances on anything at this point other than i keep reading this and see what i've been saying since november of 2019 is you know whatever work comes out of it the board of ed will absolutely take it seriously vet it properly get back to the question and answers i make no assurances i'm pretty sure the board tonight can't make any insurances in the options number one we don't have option six yet and that is something that smc voted on almost unanimously to get that back to tables or strong interesting so that looks like until i see that you know i'm open to the options certainly open the six to eight i'm not comboshing that but my mindset's changed a little bit since four years ago or five years ago on that i prefer smaller is better if we're all in favor of small elementary schools and we can pull that off i think that's a good thing but until it's got data the cost analysis it's hard to say what that looks like you know the other thing too is i think ideally if money was no object and we had the it was we talked about this last time and one of the option was rebuild everything as new right so we keep the smaller schools keep sounds right as it is more space the right layout the right programming we'd actually do that um if these two elementary school options pan out we have an opportunity to do more programming to a greater number of grade levels and two modernized schools that's a huge head start but i gotta see that you know so uh we can assure them that we will absolutely look at both options and quite frankly um i don't know if they're gonna offer one option or two options uh and keep in mind that when it goes to the town council it also comes to us and you know let's just be realistic here there's got to be some compromise right so you know when a town does its number crunching and looks at the long-term debt all that stuff we're going to be talking about these options in greater detail so um i think even 1a had a lot of good things in it 2a has a lot of good things in it 1a still does i think once we get through elementary so you know i i can definitely say i'm not going to rule out sixth grade middle school at this point so chuck i know that helps you but you know again uh if it was just between these two options and you know we didn't have a problem with the large elementary school i still say the same thing let the board see those final details let's talk about it education specs are another thing the one thing i want to be careful about is uh regardless of what the options are that come to us we have to as a board um you know the superintendent school district give ample opportunity for parents to weigh in the options one of the things that ocg brought up today was um you know redistricting right it's uh not against it you know but they definitely call out that there's a big difference between reducing 40 percent of your population versus 15 and they asked us several times did you get public input did you get public input did you hear from parents we have not yet not any great capacity um and that's going to have to happen regardless of what the option is so you know we'll have time for that um so i mean the insurance check because we're going to take a look at whatever comes across uh and serious no probably have questions for them but for me personally i opened the both options i kind of six looks like and i'm sure we will you know before the month's over so we'll see where those uh those chips fall great thank you anthony ann oh i was just gonna ask chuck and because i i thought it was our our goal to present more than one uh option when we go to when we bring it to the board of ed and to the town council yes so i believe at the meeting on march 1st we had uh discussed presenting a recommended option and then also a second scenario as well as a kind of a backup to that so that hasn't really changed but in fairness we haven't uh obviously talked about the uh input from osc r um with the smc committee yet so they still need to hear that and it's been said a couple times we're still waiting to see what happens with scenario six and see if there is two viable options um you know two percent so so my interpretation when i hear people say that we're um you know where we were certainly still considering it either option or both options as long as um the smc is doing what they're doing which is making sure that they're gathering all the information and putting it in there so i didn't hear adam's response as saying he's being non-committal i heard his answer is telling us that yeah he he's is would still consider a six through eight middle school if that's what if that's what our work tells us is a viable option your interpretation your interpretation is correct then it is an option an option is open in my mind let me let me just add i it's not like there's a bad option here right i mean you know i mean there were some that didn't make any sense and just to remind this board you know ann certainly knows and andrew and myself catherine too i mean there are a lot more options than the last two that you know so um and all of them were good i mean it wasn't anything that was so catastrophically bad for the school district so i i know that whatever's going to come across from smc they're going to be good choices to make and i don't think there's going to be a uh a bad choice made from the option so you know please don't feel like uh if it's not a middle school hope is lost if it's not two elementary schools it's it's not there's some good things there and so again chuck i wish i could tell you i i i would ask if there's anyone on the board that's vehemently against a sixth grade middle school at this point but i think it's a little premature for adam let's just get the rest of the information back in the other option and see where it goes we'll make the right choice i'm confident sorry andrew no you're good any other any other comments on the middle school configuration all right does anybody else have anything they want to add chuck do you want to add anything on behalf of smc before we adjourn no i think uh you know i think we've covered it obviously we're still working we got a uh the deadline here in a couple of weeks for a presentation but i think we are on to something possibly with a scenario six and we'll see what the see where we go here with scenario 2a based on the the feedback back from oscg r today so all right thank you chuck thank you everybody um can i have a motion for adjournment tim so move by faith all right thank you everybody um have a good night
so as we all remember a little more than or about a year ago we did have the school closures and we know that um there we had been initially told it was going to be for three weeks and so as a district we worked hard to make sure we addressed immediate needs such as making sure students have the devices they need the food accessibility and also the materials that they would need and later on throughout that last spring we were told that it would be distance learning for the remainder of the year so we continued as a committee and uh to plan for what a potential reopening in the fall would look like and so may through july of last year we worked to create potential scenarios for what it might look like in the fall uh we also uh worked to create teacher professional development because we knew that teachers were going to need to see different different things and apply different approaches in the classroom virtually and offered technology support next slide please and as we transitioned into the actual summer time we did come to an agreement for an mou for distance learning and as we progressed to start the school year off through distance learning in october through december the committee worked to ensure that care pods were being offered at sites that we were preparing for required state testing that would need to be held either at the sites or through virtual learning and also we had town halls to inform the public around um the health and safety uh precautions that were needing to be taken uh during at the time where kovid was spiking and so in november we know that there was an increase and there was a huge coveted spike and so we were moved to the purple tier where we were ineligible to reopen and um we did have our care pods closed up until it uh we felt that it was safe again to to resume them and then now we are here in march and there have been um laws and legislation passed uh senate bill 86 and that agreement was reached to help and determine that california schools are safe for reopening so uh now we are looking at senate bill 86 to see uh what we can do to move things forward and jason is going to go ahead and chat about the reopening considerations all right so as you can see on this slide excuse me we're focusing on the reopening considerations for you know that are in front of us right now so uh first this you know this uh graph shows you or this chart shows you um actions and then our district response right so first off we had santa clara county declaring um that it was we it was our it was our turn to enable a safe return to face-to-face instruction so immediately we contacted and communicated several stakeholders including board president our bargaining units our planning committee and the principals next up was the approval of sb 86 by the state legislature so we got to work analyzing the content and the potential impact on our district we became familiar with the term to the greatest extent possible which will guide our work and we also consulted our district legal team there was an analysis of ab 86 and sb 86 conducted by the california county superintendent's educational services association following that analysis we set to work to interpret interpret what that legislation meant for our district again focusing on how we can make sure that we're doing things to the greatest extent possible to support students in the in the district and we also got to work collecting data to inform our our capacity finally we determined interest and feasibility of a face-to-face return this was done through through stakeholder input surveying community and staff you can see that we surveyed staff and family in march and we currently have a facilities survey uh underway at this point as well here's some of our next steps right so we are analyzing survey data you know as we speak we've sought input from family from staff from facilities we need to really determine uh the practical capacity and feasibility of what our what our return will look like we've been creating scenarios for face-to-face instruction those scenarios have you know have made us uh familiar with terms such as a hybrid model where we're focusing on synchronous and asynchronous instruction uh distance learning model uh and and there's other models um being discussed we're sorry about that we are planning for positive progressive school reacclimation for all students and the planning is is not done in isolation couldn't be done without a large stakeholder group so this entire process in fact the reason why we're presenting is we're presenting it as part of a team right so as part of that team we've been working to identify student needs uh prioritize the student groups and ultimately train our teachers and staff and then the next step would be to plan uh develop a plan to address and combat learning loss we recognize uh you know the tremendous stress that students are in so we want to make sure that we are developing a robust summer plan to truly meet their needs both academically and social emotionally and as i as i stated on the previous slide this couldn't be done without a true group effort so i really want to appreciate the efforts of of all of our groups listed here from the board of trustees to the allen rock families to our teachers and staff to our site administrators uh to the reopening committee which i'm humbled to be a part of and ultimately to our to our overall district leadership um and and with that uh that concludes our our presentation for tonight thank you so much uh trustees um any questions i'm sorry raise your hands i don't see any at this time and um being that it's not on uh we'll go ahead and move on we'll move on to public comment at this time for this item um remember i don't know man i don't know no i one thing i was going to ask is if we could take public comment first but i do have questions or comments too but i would like to hear a public comment but if you prefer before discussion now it's up to you okay we'll go ahead and open it up for a public comment mr moran is there anybody from the public who would like to address the board on this item yes board president at this time first person is paul soto welcome mr soto as soon as you begin speaking the timer will begin yes thank you paul soto from the horseshoe i would uh request testing within 10 days to get a baseline to assess the intellectual impact of covid on just get your baseline okay because you're really going to need that for future research secondly future sociologists are going to be in need of those numbers criminologists need these numbers as well and here's why because the the school to prison pipeline there is a causative relationship between lack of education economic issues that the child is experiencing and them ending up in prisons so what happens is that the mortgage companies in the auto loan companies are actually borrowing right now against these numbers of third and fourth graders because they know that there is a causative relationship not a correlation between the criminogenic uh conditions which that's what they call these conditions right now that's happening in the various on the east side these are criminogenic and what happens is that they assess how many beds they're going to need in the future based on these numbers now this is like one of the coldest hustles in in the world on how they monetize poverty and so the reason what my purpose here is is to inform you of the awesome responsibility that you have right now at this moment is to deal with these deficits i don't care about the financial deficit that people are experiencing in their pocketbooks i do however care about the intellectual in the emotional deficits that my fellow citizens and chicanos on the east side are going to be experiencing and so what my question to you as a as board members and and overseers of of these chicanos what are you going to do about it now i suggested made a few suggestions here and and i i really hope that you take it to heart because as somebody that's experienced that school to prison pipeline it ain't no joke thank you uh mr moran any other members of the public wishing to address the board and then just just before we continue i am experiencing unstable connections so board vice president quintero in case i get logged off you can jump in um any members of the public any others yes we have three more next person is brenda sendejas board president before we jump over to the next what was there uh i know that um there was a discussion about uh um and i had a step away so maybe it was brought up really quickly about um our outreach to our other government agencies to help us deal with reopening the circumstances that i spoke about earlier um was that already discussed like i said i had to walk away so why not bring that up right now if it is going to be discussed by staff so that it can inform the members of the public as they they make their comments um sure uh dr bauer would you like to inform us about a little bit about that before we go i know miss andreas thank you for uh being patient um we want to make sure we have all the information that we can get at this time um one of the major uh considerations for us in terms of safety for the kids and i really appreciate the comments from the the uh audience member before it's also um the safety of our students walking to their schools their sites and although things are looking a little bit better around our community there are a couple of sites that have um on house uh people you know to wave way close to the schools i check with other superintendents and the only other district who has similar issues is franklin mckinley and again it's not in all of our sites i drove around today to to see where some of the the issues lie and how can we support that we have also try to find new new places for uh these people right to to have a a better place to to set up their tents or their vans and things like that and some of them we don't have the authority to ask any of that but uh shepherd is of concern madsen is of concern and a little bit of fissure so those are the three and i'm wondering if that is what uh trustee quintero was asking about we i was going to recommend to the board that we needed to send a letter to the city so that they can assist us in addressing some of these concerns we have been i have sent multiple emails uh during the fall uh to be able to mitigate some of that presence but unfortunately you know very little has been done as i mentioned um uh as of last i i drove around last week i drive around every week to check on our sites but um last week we still have an issue had an issue uh today it looked a little bit better and i just wanted the board support um because usually i'm the one asking for for that but if the board considers that in which way you would like for me to to continue our advocacy to have safe sites specifically around the areas that i mentioned to you thank you thank you dr brower um and so just to respect the public comment we'll go back to public comment uh ms sandejas thank you for your patience um as soon as you begin speaking the timer will begin i am gorgeous and superintendent um president corina louera i have a couple questions um one of them is when did this committee meet and why hasn't this been accessible for the public um i've asked this i've emailed i haven't seen it on the air usd website there's no some link for the reopening committee i don't know how that was formed as well and how were these parents or community members elected um the second question i want to ask is has there been assumed curriculum implemented if this is going to be a choice for parents and staff that has been worked on so it can be a more smoother transition than it was previously also with the surveys i have a question i know that this has been a problem for alan rock to get all the surveys in and get everyone's input my suggestion would be to do a mail with reply um a hard copy uh to their homes mailed with reply surveys because i think that not everyone looks at parent square or emails and we need to do a better job reaching out to our parents and we need to have a log a log record on how many surveys have been turned in per school and make that accessible to the public so we can kind of see as well what is it that the parents um want and also a survey with staff a survey with staff i think should be priority and have that open communication with them because that is also something that has been lacking um and to quintero's comment about the unhealth around there i think it's a little bit insensitive to say that they're all drug addicts they say because they're serving there are unhoused families from elimra that are not all drug addicts and so we need to be careful when we label or we insinuate that they're all drug addicts they're not thank you uh mrs anybody else mr yes board president we have anna robles [Music] [Applause] gracias foreign that's it carmelina okay thank you uh trustee with harano just a quick clarifying statement i i don't know if i heard that correctly but i'm not currently the board president and i don't believe i had questions with regards to the where the money comes from so just wanted to clarify that thank you thank you uh mr moran sorry uh sorry mr method i know i cut the last part you want to repeat it sorry oh sorry yeah just the clarification if i heard the comment correctly that um i am not i think i was referred to as the president i'm not the president currently and um i don't believe that any of my questions were with regards to where the money came from for the last item something like that but i just wanted to clarify that uh i believe aronia thank you thank you going back to public comment mr moran any others from the public wish me to address us we have three more next person is veronica welcome veronica as soon as you begin speaking the timer will begin good afternoon um i also want to pick you back on the um questionnaire that was sent out today it's actually um really hard um because i had to actually read it maybe two to three times to actually find out that it's a link that i have to click within the letter to fill out the survey and not only that if you don't fill out the survey then you're opting out for continuing with distance learning and not being into the hybrid cohort so it is a little bit deceiving it was very deceiving for me um you know it was hard to like figure it out um so i definitely do want to make sure that if it can be reformatted or just a link and maybe i know it's very nicely professionally done in a in the letterhead but maybe something a lot more simpler for parents um to be able to go to the link and the questionnaire right away and they know what they're like beforehand just like quick like this is the survey if you want to opt in into the hybrid right um because i did find it a little bit hard to find it and then in the parent square like i said the letter you have to go to the attachment if you haven't done it yet you have to go to the attachment and then read it and then there's the link that tells you hyperlinked and then it takes you then so um it would be great to have something a lot simpler and something mailed out to parents because not everyone has access to um apparent square thank you thank you mr mona who do we have next yes we have karina welcome back karina as soon as you begin speaking the timer we'll begin a minute [Music] is thank you so much mr moran anybody else uh yes we have uh jacqueline montejano welcome mrs montejano as soon as you begin speaking the timer will begin thank you board president um good evening board of trustees and dr bauer i just feel compelled to share um as the shepherd middle school principal proud shepherd middle school principal on behalf of the shepherd community how much i appreciate hearing vice president quintero share his knowledge about the safety concerns on our site it just affirms that some of the work that has been done to communicate the need for safeguards for our schools are is making its way to the board um as the principal and i have experienced uh you know increased uh it's just it's a it's with a heavy heart as a society that we acknowledge um we have increased unhoused families and community members i have seen those encampments increase right across the school street from our school family family concerns about that have also increased because at the end of the day we feel responsible to provide a safe passage for our children to school and so every effort that we have made to create that safeguard has included um you know connecting with the city about the encampments and reporting graffiti and responding to fires and i know that district office staff has done face-to-face interventions um kind of to know of a to no end and um every action that has been done has resulted in no change and so it's really uh inspiring that it's a potential action that the board may take to unify around this and have a stronger voice to protect our children and provide a safe passage for children to come back to school thank you thank you mr moran any others no that's it mr moran uh there was somebody else who had their hand up like five times um but they put it up and they took it down so i'm assuming they probably don't understand they have to leave it up i've been observing the the hand raising while you've been calling on other people do you uh do you have a name and i can search yeah the name the name guadalupe gonzalez has been going on up and down like four or five times so i'm assuming they probably think they have to hit the raised hand and they'll be recognized okay i found her um i could allow her to speak now yeah let's go ahead and a new um guadalupe gonzalez um would you like to address the board at this time yes um do so as soon as you begin speaking welcome okay good evening my name is guadalupe gonzalez i'm here representing the mayfair community and in our community we have 12 schools and the amount of students and parents walking to school is really large right now we've been having issues since late february 2020 with the homeless incumbent alongside the creek from the freeway in transat jackson avenue all the way to san antonio street where lim where lee matson is located we have physical assaults to residents sending them to ers at hospitals neighborhood devs from front yards car breakings and stolen cars illegal dumping of trash creating a glide zone numerous incumbents fires we go we get to a point we do not feel safe to walk around the block and we need to carry with us pepper spray for safety all of this is happening around the limax on campus my question to the board is what are your plans to protect our students and parents walking back and forth to schools and crossing the bridge at kramer i think the safety of our kids should be your first priority and right now is not safe for them with a dangerous environment you cannot openly medicine until is safe for all kids and that's what we as a community we demanding from you the border trust is for the alum rock to help us the community and work together to clean up this area to make safe for our kids to come back to school thank you um now um mr moran any other hands race that might have gone up again okay thank you um so now i'm gonna go ahead and open it up to our trustees um i see board vice president quinteto's hand up yes uh madam president i um i want to my i was addressed by name earlier and i i don't appreciate uh having individuals put words in my mouth the fact of the matter i could speak for myself and my comments were not intended to attack the unhoused i i completely um feel for those folks who are going through a very tough situation and i never mentioned that every individual out there is in uh unfortunately fallen victim to to this disease of drug addictedness what i did mention is that there are we have pictures of significant amounts of needles on the way to school and they happen to be dumped there by individuals who had encampments and so to go ahead and make those those uh those accusations are uncalled for and it's unacceptable um and so i i will not hold back and um and shy away from defending our kids the schools should be safe zones they should be kept free from individuals that aren't supposed to be on campus and i think that that's the position that every board member should take and not shy away from it to simply attempt to appease certain elements in the community that may try to pressure you i've been out there i've i've i've i've been out there pulling out buckets of unfortunate fecal matter out of uh coyote creek uh with when i was working with council member sponsors office getting down into the creeks and see what the situation is it's a tough situation it's it's really bad and it's a crisis that needs to be addressed by the appropriate authorities unfortunately we as a school district don't have the resources to deal with it but we do have the ability to speak on behalf of our children and demand that our children be kept safe and uh have a space where they can focus on learning and i have to stress about uh what's going on on their way to and from school those are my comments madam president thank you i see trustee pham and trustee de gerano we'll go ahead and go with mr pam okay thank you very much board president you know uh you know it was my you know i i was uh as the one responsible for putting this you know item on the agenda you know i want to thank the you know our reopening committee for you know for the work they have done you know uh secondly you know i i want to stress you know part of this but you know and i asked to put this on the agenda was a in response to mayor le cardo's continued reckless push to to reopen schools regardless of the situation and you know i you know i want to you know again you know re-emphasize that you know alum rock will reopen in a way that is best for our students families teachers and support staff you know i certainly want to take this opportunity to again you know to emphasize you know that you know our district should you know join the county of santa clara in uh you know lobbying for more vaccine doses to be allocated to our county and that's the only way that we can keep up this momentum uh and la you know and lastly you know that the situation has changed uh we are you know we see the light at the end of the tunnel but we're not quite there yet but uh you know uh ab-86 sp 86 has you know changed the situation where you know in you know in order to get funds you know our you know our district and many others uh are you know are thankfully in a position where we can start thinking about you know a safe reopening and i you know you know keep in mind that this is not a a full-blown reopening where you know we are not attempt you know this is not a a hail mary drive to the end zone but rather you know this sets us up you know you know and hopefully you know based upon the parent surveys and staff surveys we are able to craft that you know at a later time you know a very you know a very uh for lack of their term to use a scalpel instead of a meat cleaver to design a a soft reopening that allows us to meet the requirements of ab-86 sb 86 you know to the vulnerable populations that you know that would benefit from uh a return to some form of in-person learning while at the same time ensuring that you know we keep you know the majority of our students families and school teachers and staff safe so you know i certainly welcome public comment and you know and your input is very important as we you know embark on this uh you know uh very important issue that you know i certainly find myself about to make a very serious decision so soon in my tenure as a trustee of this district so you know let you know again plea let us know what your views are and you know let us move in a careful cautious and measured manner towards uh the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow thank you very much madam president thank you trustee from trustee yes thank you um first i just wanted to uh obviously thank the staff for the presentation and the hard work that they've continued to do from the beginning of this to move us in this direction and you know as we all know things change especially in the beginning but throughout particularly more recently things change very quickly and so to move a large organization in a particular direction is very difficult um but you know i want to thank our team for doing that secondly i want to thank um trustee quintero for all also for um bringing up the point that he brought up about the dangers um for our for our youth and also to the public um comment speaking more specifically to the matson area um you know when i when i ran for this position i had three main points one of them was the safety of our children and families and the decisions that i have made and continue to make are always with that in mind and so you know having been a part of a very proud member of the shepherd community for five years as my daughters went through there i know that um you know miss montejano and the shepherd team and community have consistently and constantly been on top of and very proactive trying to address the the multitude of issues there on rough and ready um and i know that having dropped off and picked up my daughters every single day for five years i know that it is a chronic problem so you know dr barr mentioned it does look kind of better um today and and i have seen over the passage of time i would assume this is similar mats in a fissure that things can improve but it is a chronic problem so it might look good one day and then the next day there's three you know new things on on the street or wherever it may be so so i do want to um acknowledge that that it is a chronic issue and those safety concerns like the needles that we have documentation of amongst other things it would be irresponsible for an elected person to not point those things out as a part of the reality we have to deal with the reality and obviously acknowledging the challenges of individuals who are unhoused but at the same time we need to call out those safety issues we're talking about safe reopening and this is all part of it and so um when in terms of this particular item and safety and and also part of the comments that we heard we are as a district doing what we can and doing as much as we can given our resources to advocate for that safety but as was mentioned already the we we have a limit to what we can do this appears as though the the next option that we would have is for the city to step in and be able to address some of these issues and has been mentioned there's a lot of there has been a lot of pressure on us to open to open quickly and and do things you know in a very in my estimation um um you know not as thoughtful as it would need to be processed and so if the city or individuals um you know who represent city entities are going to push that then my question might be [Music] would they would those entities at some point if something were to go to occur with regards to safety of our children be liable so for instance at shepherd i know that because of the the people who are camped there i have seen many times every morning and afternoons where students have to there's no room to walk on the sidewalk because of everything that's there they have to walk into the street large crowds of students in a street that doesn't have a stop sign it doesn't have you know speed people speed through there and everything so if that were to occur and the district has done everything that we could to try to address that would my question at that time would be would the city then become at some point liable for for what you know god forbid may happen at shepherd or matson or any of these sites these are not statements that are um you know indicative of what the reality is for those unfortunate who are unfortunately in that position right now to have to live there they're just a reality of the the safety concerns that we have and so you know this particular item just to finish up is with regards to the soft reopening um and i want uh i guess to i guess my point is i want it to be understood that we're doing everything that we can to advocate for that but at some point we don't need the city to be um against us in this process we need them to work with us on a process that we've already been working on for months and months and if they're not going to work with us then at some point the question would be are they liable for the repercussions of what may occur due to them not being able to dedicate their resources to these issues so that's all i have for now thank you thank you trustee belgiano and before we go to trustee chavez um just on that note i do want to i know dr bauer talked about a letter i'm in agreement i've been very vocal about you know not rushing and making sure that we open up our schools um safely all the wonderful things we've talked about right um and that we don't get pressured by um other members within the city or you know any other pressures around other than making sure that we open our schools safely um for everyone um so with that dr bauer um i know we talked to you mentioned a letter in regards to you know sending that to the city um i'm wondering if we can include maybe some of the um language that mr vegeta just mentioned you know in regards to and then i'm sure you would and already included but just to ensure that we include the safety of our children you know walking around that area um and i'm in agreement you know the city gets to manage what the city gets to manage and that's their area what they have jurisdiction over and they shouldn't be telling us right what to do and how to do it so honoring what the city does um you know and working closely with them and working in partnership i look forward to sending that letter for that reason to make sure that we open our schools in a safe manner and make sure that we address some of these concerns um with that trustee chavez do you have anything to say or ask at this time yes um as well as the other agencies should we be looking into and also sending letters to the sanitation department to the um the land that they're on since its city is it is it city or is it a pocket of the county and do we get because i know certain areas of alum rock are pockets and over there in that area uh since trustee vegeta says he lives in that area is that county or city can can you answer that question please where i live is city and i believe where shepherd is the city i think joseph george and curtin may be the ones that may fall within county jurisdiction but i'm not sure because we're close to the uh to the district office and we're county so like i said there is pockets and everyone who is responsible as far as the water district as far as the uh you know whose land it is and even if you could maybe start like uh start calling the neighbors because they're the first ones that see them on the scene they can alert the schools and you know it's just helping out everybody keeping out a watchful eye as well as if you have the neighborhood also sending letters can we you know also ask them to put in their input that it's just not the school district it's the whole neighborhoods around that are concerned and want this problem taken care of i'm just saying that the more the uh the more that are signing off on this and letting the council know as well as the sanitation department know maybe directly to the council we're not getting any results but what if we start count calling the sanitation department what if we start calling because later on it's going to plug up the sewers whatever they're doing if they just start dumping everything um what about uh the medical teams what about the firemen that have to go out there when they pass out and get sick uh from the covet or or just sick because they're malnutrition i mean all of the agencies should be working together should we also be sending something to them as well as the neighborhood that's it thanks thank you uh or vice president quintero just really quick a little um information all of our schools regardless if they're deep into the unincorporated areas are have been are part of the city so like half the street will be annexed and the and they'll grab the actual school so all of our schools are within city jurisdiction thank you uh trustee beccarano yeah also really quickly too first of all i didn't i did not know that so thank you trustee quintero for that um piece of knowledge um but the other thing i wanted to say um with regards to this particular issue is that um obviously the unhoused population is i mean we don't even need to say it's it's a bigger issue than what we're talking about here with our district um but i i believe as i was able to just quickly read the draft letter i think was sent this afternoon i believe it speaks in the letters where i saw it to like a buffer zone that we're requesting um around our schools that that the city would would look at and so just to make sure that we put this in context where our request is not but at least if what i saw in the letter it's not necessarily to you know solve quote-unquote homelessness but we're asking for a reasonable amount of resources and help in the zone specific to where our children and families are going to go if we're going to be able to truly safely open so and i think that's a wise approach because if we ask you know for the bigger huger problem to be solved obviously we want that but it's you know i think it's reasonable to ask for this zone that um directly impacts our students and families thank you trustee with helano for uh pointing that out for vice president sorry but i that was i haven't lowered my hand for a lesson there you go okay um any other uh see dr brower yes just to add to the conversation and remind the board i think i mentioned to you several times that i sent emails in the fall regarding medicine is probably the most critical part and as you saw there's a a community member that knows exactly what those families and the community goes um what happens in madison is that a lot of the people use the bathrooms in matson they break in so they and they break the fence and our staff are the ones that are cleaning that up so i have to be also mindful about our staff our custodians who are um who are you know uh in in in the front lines of this situation and um there is you know multiple break-ins um every weekend and so we have to go and and disinfect and and repair you know all of all of the the damage and the reason the county and the water district got i reached out to them with no response from the water district at all was because the county says well dr bauer the creek behind madison is part of the water district so i have been kind of you know kind of like moved from one place to another to and i'm trying to find kind of what trust each other says you know we're going to do this in collaboration this was about that and in uh echoing a little bit the person from mayfair who says you know we're just asking when is this going to be addressed and that's basically where we're at uh multiple emails to different entities multiple messages and and now that we're we're talking we're just beginning you know trying to figure out how do we do our soft reopening how do we make sure that our schools are safe in the past you know we were not into this mode because we didn't have code with 19.
okay for second grade 24 for third grade 24 i'm sorry the first grade was 22 22 okay second grade 24 third grade 24. fourth grade 25 and fifth grade 25 okay what is our fifth grade and fourth grade now average well it varies a bit school to school but it's lower than that i mean um and each each of those thresholds is higher than what we currently are um i would say if i could have ever wished for a year for our class size to be lower it was this year with because it has enabled us to have more social distancing um for example yeah okay i understand so then the related arts can you explain this to me please so um we we we are going to find um scheduling efficiencies we have found scheduling efficiencies within related arts where we can have um people um you know it's with eight schools like we do um sometimes we bump up against inefficiencies so for example in class size we can say class size is 24 but if you have 60 students in a grade and you it's going to be three classes of 20 we wouldn't make two classes of 30 out of that and with related arts it can be similar um where we have a certain number of related arts teachers and how their schedule is writ is written you know how they may travel which which uh schools they're in determines the number of students that they can teach so if we're able to kind of like redesign how they move and where they're located then it lets us um you know use their use them as a resource to a greater extent if that makes sense it does and can you explain to me the instrumental music position due to retirement and and what that means certainly so um that was uh mr schaefel who retired this year and um you know he uh he is um fantastic music teacher he's actually my children's music teacher um so and his wife teaches actually elementary school and kingston elementary school in cherry hill so they are a dynamic duo of teaching but um so we're very sorry to lose his talents um to retirement but what will happen there is we will have conversations with our uh music teachers and our curriculum department to figure out the best way to um assimilate that loss while keeping our services for children in instrumental music as much as we can okay and then of course the other two bullets math positions i don't know what msd tracking means so that's sorry no thank you thank you so that's middle school i know middle school so that basically um you know there are we have multiple levels of math within middle school just like a high school has multiple levels of math and um so there is a uh a small level in middle school that we could eliminate and save those two positions and then um what it will do is uh and i experience this directly at the high school level which also went through a d a strategically tracking process so i've been a part of it lived it and helped it happen is as the research for detracting shows is actually students you know with proper supports in classes you can help students rise to the level of the class that they're in and a lot of times tracking can it can create mindsets in students sometimes negative mindsets you know depending on how many levels there are so this will eliminate a level help those students raise up we'll be able to give them individualized supports to help them succeed and save two positions along the way other questions or comments from i'm sorry and then uh i apologize for the special special education bullet there so we are looking at um for example our uh we have a learning and languages differences program that's currently housed in multiple elementary schools and in both middle schools and we are going to merge that program to one elementary school and one middle school and so what that does is among other things we can have more single grade classes whereas currently like in an elementary school you might have a multi-grade class because there aren't enough students to support single grade classes so the for the teaching the kids are going to the teachers able to differentiate better because the age range is smaller in the room and the grade range is smaller um plus it creates consistency for the staff because all the staff teaching within that program are in the same building and the same in middle school level as well so and we will help the students who may be transitioning between schools due to that merging of programs um we have already been talking as a central administration with our special education department about um you know ways we can make that transition successful so for example through our esy summer program and um our child study team which is remaining consistent and we'll um move you know keep the same work with the same children and help them transition so it'll go well okay so um i do have a friend whose child is at marlton middle and was informed that we're now bussing these kids over to demacy to combine them here with demacy correct that that's that doesn't sound like that's best for the kids that's my opinion so you know they could live in my neighborhood and they're going to be bused to demacy yeah so that's my neighborhood being marlton lakes the southern end so that's what i'm questioning and i would hope that we can talk about it a little bit more i think that's a great idea getting meetings moving forward because i'm not sure i'm just concerned you know the kids are the most important and we can find efficiencies possibly somewhere else i said um i do want to make a statement though um a quick statement because i want to thank those were the only other questions i had on the presentation and i want to make a statement at as the chair of the finance committee um i think all the board members know by now that the finance committee met last night emergency meeting since there were the last minute changes that came through the township to dr smith so i'm not used to wearing masking glasses they're fogging up so let me just so i did want to um inform the board members in case they were not aware that we did meet last night and um we met late into the night and i want to thank all of the finance committee members for being flexible and willing to come out last night and to dr smith mr rashin d miss magulok and mr dante who sat with us and and walked us through the the changes to this budget so that we would better understand uh what the what the town council had proposed and how that would affect our draft budget so um you know it was so important that we understood that before tonight's meeting um i wanted to also thank the mayor and the town council township manager for working with dr smith so that we could bridge the gap for a balanced budget for next school year um but as dennis said it's just for this school year and i have major concerns about next year next two years budget and concern that if we don't take the steps that we had initially proposed and reduced costs now we're going to be up against you know significant additional cuts coming as we know totally more than 3 million through 2024 2025.
um covet 19 has changed completely because we all know that you know that's transmitted when people talk and that's why we wear masks right in a lot of a lot of that population unfortunately you know lack those the access to the services that they need so that is the reason that we're asking for this support and thank you you know i just wanted to clarify that we have tried multiple agencies and we're still kind of in the same situation thank you i also appreciate the staff you know the principal that spoke today this principle that's gone out to churches and collaborate to try to support our community members because we know it's hard for everybody and we get to keep our children safe um so with that um there's no other questions or comments um thank you again miss martinez mr moran for presenting we're working so hard um and i look forward to hearing back to what the parents you know are saying and the staff um in the surveys so i'm also taking notes of some of the feedback from our public you know in making sure that we have an equitable way of making sure that all of our parents have access to answering that so thank you again and we'll move on to the next item uh we have item we already did 504 so we'll move on to item 505.
it's an uphill battle and um we need to make smart choices now to reduce costs um [Music] i am specifically talking about the transportation changes that we discussed at our february finance committee meeting most residents should know that the state regulations say that a school district must provide transportation to students that live further than two miles from their school many people in the town don't know that currently if i understand correctly ets etsd buses everyone except for those that live within a half a mile of the school and that comes at a significant cost and it keeps increasing every year we've been at board meetings many of you have been here we've talked about hillman's contract unfortunately we cannot control how much killman's increases their contract every year they are the only bidder so it's not competitive we had seen 25 percent last year 10 percent the year before so every time we try to save money what happens we spend more money so we talked about as a board a goal would be to let's try to minimize our reliance on humans so in my mind this would be you know this would be advantageous for us to offer subscription busing because busing every kid is not sustainable and it's not required by law and many other towns do not offer this kind of courtesy busing it's unheard of anymore there's just no money and now we're being hit with it because our state aid is being reduced we were you know we were able to because we were living high but now steve sweeney says you don't need this money anymore your residents make more money now so we have to get creative and this was a wonderful in my opinion creative solution unfortunately we're walking back for now but you know um i think giving the families options if the roads are safe give them the option walk their kids drive your kid or pay for busing but only after the the township and the police they go out and they assess the safety of the roadways so i would like to see town council work with us in determining what are the safe routes that we could really confidently say yes let's take away busing not going to take away busing if it's not safe for a kid to walk use across eastbourne medford road in my opinion it's not but you know i'm not a safety traffic engineer however where we can do that how the township look at adding sidewalks there are kids that are walking without liv i mean that are bus that live right next to rice because there are no sidewalks it's not sustainable have the town invest in the sidewalks you know and then long-term i'm thinking 10 years down the road 20 years down the road so i'd like to see the township continue with the police chief to evaluate the roadways and help us determine how we can reduce our transportation costs we all know that's step one there's a whole other list of things that will have to come next year and the year after so having said all that um i'm going to vote yes to the preliminary budget tonight so that we can send it to the county next week or i'm sorry i think it's the 22nd two mondays from now however i i fully expect that the finance committee will take the next two months of meetings and with the administration and re-evaluate these options i don't like kicking the can down the road i think we need to start really seriously looking at this now otherwise i asked the parents what else are they willing to give up clubs are they willing to give up sports in middle school other towns they don't have clubs i'm sorry to tell you but they don't and if they do they certainly don't bust your kids home so i'm asking parents to think about this what are they willing to give up because i won't give up things that are important that we need like reading recovery i just won't do it so i said my piece one last thing when i was first elected i sat down with mr roshinti in his office i asked him please help me to understand the budget the audit report your the board secretary's cash summary report and he showed me we have um maintenance reserves capital reserves emergency reserves each of them had more than a million i thought myself this is wonderful he said well we got to replace the boiler what was it jagger i don't remember exactly that year but that's going to be 500 000 and that was all wonderful now now this year these reserves are almost empty so kicking the can down the road trying not to save this year is extremely important to me i don't like reserves that are empty thank you thank you miss noel other questions or comments i got miss filming anybody else just to get around this i just wanted to know dr smith um in terms of uh president biden passing the 1.9 his relief package when could we possibly expect to have any numbers from the state about how much that might help you know add add revenue to the budget thank you miss filming time timely question um as that is like heartbreaking news right now yeah 1.9 trillion um with an and of that about 170 billion which is set aside for k-12 schools so i reached out to congressman kim's office this week just to get like some try to get some insider info on that and um we are going to get just over 900 projected from that stimulus package and it does come with parameters about how it might be used as they as always happens so you know we'll be looking at um sort of the the bulleted list of ways that that money can be spent and and i um anticipate that you know well number one we'll be putting it to good use for kids and but it will need some time to look at that in light of the budget i i do anticipate um as ms knoll said about our finance committee taking advantage of the next uh couple months to take a look and we'll be talking about that uh chronovirus relief that we're getting as well so if i could add on to just uh one comment mrs nolmade i really appreciate that all the parents and the staff have sent emails i am sorry that i haven't not replied to all of them that's great to get that feedback i did notice one was a petition uh for that community and the development over there so i'm just i'm just offering in in terms of brainstorming quickly if we're able to organize to start the petition can we look at and the parents look at doing some organization to bring forth those ideas send them to all of us about ways you think it's that we could possibly raise some revenue i know all of us would welcome that thank you dr smith miss fleming i i would piggyback on that that if we're spending time as as citizens of this of this township putting together a fight for for busing we all knew this was happening four years ago no one took us seriously not a single damn soul took us seriously four years ago and the second that that we started making cuts to particular to particular groups that's when everybody looked at like what are you doing and i would hope those who are listening live stream because right now i i see a sea of red so i'm not assuming anybody of that group is here all right but i would hope that they're taking us seriously now and as i said four years ago and i'll reiterate it now this this isn't of our volition this is not something that this board of ed or the board of ed three years ago or four years ago this is not something we sought out but i have felt that we are being punished for succeeding that's how i felt and as i said before they're going to make the reductions up on the state level and then have us all duke it out and just watch in what i feel like is going to be elated glee but the reality is is that if we are that organized to create petitions for for things like like bus routes we need to get even deeper organized to make these kind of petitions in these fights to go to the state level and say what are you doing to us or for people in the audience what are you doing to us to take that that is forcing us to lose our benefits forcing me to lose my job for the people out there for me to force uh to force me to lose uh my my child's safety with an sro or or my child safety crossing a county road all right or for those who are not involved in the school district but are still citizens of yves sham what are you doing that you're taking away the state aid and forcibly raising my taxes the problem is is that we as a whole of the 45 000 people in eve sham we need to wake up because the devil's at the doorstep and it's demanding its retribution so i would advocate strongly that we all finally get organized like we believe we can and go after the people who truly are doing this to us because all we're doing right now is we're fighting each other and none of us can do a damn thing about it i said that four years ago i'll reiterate that then today um who else has questions just a good time uh as the only member of finance i wasn't spoken i feel obligated to talk um i look forward to the next two months of meetings i think it's important to reiterate that this is a tentative budget we have two more public board meetings we have two more executive sessions and we have two more finance committee meetings that i look forward to further scrutinizing our numbers and seeing where else we can we can work best for our kids um the other thing is i think it's uh both enlightening and encouraging to see the petition for for culture on right there were 200 residents who signed on and not all of them lived in coulter and i think that's important to note um so i encourage them to to reach out to us right so we have a community outreach committee right that mr lancelata chairs we also have our save our schools initiative which mrs everhart and myself are assigned to there are opportunities to advocate outside of petitions and i look forward to more community members reaching out to us so we can collaboratively advocate at the state level any other questions or comments ms everhart i just wanted to say thank you to um the council and the mayor and the deputy mayor and to our leadership who sat down to broker a deal here to help us bridge the gap of this financial fiscal challenge that we have looming now and forward i also implore and i know the finance committee will do this as well as the ancillary board members but i would hope that we not only do this this evening which is going to be very difficult decision for all nine of us but i think we need to continue to roll up our sleeves we need to continue to work sharpen our pencils talk amongst ourselves our leadership has to talk to the union leadership we need to continue to communicate so that we can make changes for the budget that we're presenting in may and for the 1.6 million dollar deficit budget that we have facing us next year we have to continue to continue to talk to one another and it is important that our leadership speak with the union leadership to get that going it's very important that we keep the communication going it's tough but we need to keep speaking thank you scandal for all the community members um who are who are interested in advocating we even have a template uh that is pre-written for you you just have to put your name on it um i'm sure we can have it on the community activities page on the website or you can email any board member and they'll be able to share it with you and then you can just send that email out to our legislators and the more of us that do that hopefully the better results we see i'm gonna i'm gonna ask a couple questions real quick i i i just wanted to allow allow the board members i took up a lot of time last time so i wanted to give you guys as much of a chance as possible um our special ed costs uh have have gone up i saw a 5.5 percent roughly but you said with that language the i i missed the what it was but you said it um we are able to reduce it so this is actually reduced special ed a reduced special ed from what it previously was so um the in the appropriations that special education that's right that's um a lot of that is out of district costs which we actually our out of district percentage is um lower than a lot of districts but it can increase from one year to the next depending on the particular children and and needs that that you know that that that money is spent to support their uh their education in ways that we try to provide in-house but we're not always able to that's yeah because that's a when you look at those numbers and you look at them by themselves that's the one that's like striking everything else looks like it's a reduction but that is but this your administration and this board has been working to cut special ed costs it just doesn't look like it in that number and i wanted to make that clear because the the number can be very misleading but i i know that seems to be and it honestly seems to be it is a mission um to to seem to want to do that well yes and so so the you can in this in the salaries and benefits the professional staff part you can see some that there's some uh special education positional reductions there um as relates to the the appropriations here for special education i'm thinking back to um at one of our finance committee meetings recently um mrs espenberg our director of services came and gave a presentation on um kind of how out of district costs work and and that you know the needs that exist the very important needs that exist for our children um in those situations um so the uh you know we're always doing what we what what is necessary and appropriate to help those to help those children yep thank you i i appreciate that um now we have about roughly uh one i think is a 1.15 million miscellaneous revenue loss i believe that's what what it said there all right and that's teddy bear academy that's full day kindergarten that's that's our ecc obviously those things have gone down there's there's no way during this pandemic that they could maintain their levels however we are now approaching that that that threshold for next year if i recall and i i'm two years off having a kindergartener and about three years off from having one again um we should be hitting that level where people should be accepting applications or asking for applications for full-day kindergarten right are we seeing anything there in terms of how that's looking or much much better enrollment okay how about how about teddy bear academy teddy bear is um teddy bear actually weathered the coved storm better than some of the programs um the uh we we anticipate our goal you know for um september and we we are advocating with the uh department of ed for guidance on what september needs to look like as soon as possible because as you can see we're we are discussing next year's budget now so next year start has already started and it is in going full bore right now um but our goal here in eastern township is to be able to provide five full days of school for as many parents as would like it you know and and and that sort of um you know we'll call it like new normal um will also that rising water will lift all the boats and including the military's revenue boats now i'm going to ask this question because my math is never good my my lovely wife is the math teacher she's the one who handles this stuff in our house much better than i do so we have a 1.15 million revenue loss but we're expecting those numbers to go up for teddy bear academy uh kindergarten uh possibly ecc will that cut into this revenue loss or is that something that's separated differently um and i'll let mr version explain how one carries over from one year to the next i was just a little confused by that and i just wanted to make sure well um as far as the um kindergarten um well they the revenue loss there is just absorbed into the budget um as far as the teddy bear and ecc they're separate programs from our budget so those those losses have to be paid back to the school district before we can even realize additional miscellaneous revenue so that's why the miscellaneous revenue in the tentative budget next year is down because we'll be working to recover the monies that we lost from those programs before we can actually start to see additional monies coming back to uh help with our budget awesome thank you mr roshinti i just i for my own edifice i wanted to make sure that was that was clear um to go upon what we were discussing and i want to thank first of all i want to thank the finance committee all right you the the group of you that that were there and there were four of you there um mr shinty dr smith and anybody else who was sitting in that room uh multiple times uh you have really done everything that you humanly can to to make this work um miss noel in particular uh with your statement i i i appreciate your honesty i i wholeheartedly appreciate your honesty some people don't so thank you honesty is a hard thing to accept sometimes um a couple couple things a couple of things about that uh i i have a tendency to agree with you on what you say about kicking the can down the road and all of that um the the other side of that that i see was that uh the township didn't have to do that they they didn't have to do it and all the years that that i have been been sitting at this table township never did that they they never did that in fact i i i can't even recall a moment where that could have happened uh so i am i am incredibly grateful for for them even thinking about it but there's a couple things that i think we need to be reminded here um one the the land sale right the land sale they there's an indication for a land sale but nothing there's final all right i mean so we we don't want to go into anything thinking that that's that's it that's a definitive and i said this last meeting and i'll repeat it again i i don't like counting money i don't have in my hand right that's a that's a very big deal all right that is a gracious offer from them i want to see how that plays out uh it's a twofold offer number one we've been trying to get that property off our hands for forever all right both those properties number two the people those of those of cambridge and country farms the the people of both of those neighborhoods have been fearful that the second we get those off of our hands they're going to become developed land and they're going to become something that's a monstrosity people country farmers in particular were worried that that land was going to get sold and built into like apartment complexes that was something that was a threat about a couple years ago or was perceived to be that anyway um the fact that they're doing that and with the with the indication that it's going to be park land uh and and it would hopeful this that they're they're gonna build upon that i think that is that's a win for for all of us now we should take into account we should take into account and i could be wrong correct me if i'm wrong here is that even though that's a one-shot sale we do have expenditures on that every year so i mean there's there's expenditures that we use on that every single year that that if that sale property is is it take it goes through um that's something that will go in the budget now i know it's not going to be big enough to solve the issues that are straight in front of us but it's something i i assume is that correct correct correct so each of those especially those two require some amount of maintenance they have trees on them and and trees fall for example so um some of trees fall on fences and uh yeah okay um the other thing i want to i want to say and i want to clarify this we talk about and i know you it was thrown out into the into the ether sphere here but when we talk about cutting clubs and activities when other districts do that i know from from where i'm at as a club and activity the majority of that cost of club activity and again please correct me if i'm wrong that usually is a that is usually the cost of that is stipend i i would imagine a majority of the cost of that is stipend all right and i i am of the belief and i will i will stand fairly fairly firm on this one that there's a there's a twofold monster there number one we're we're we're taking away we're taking away stipends from from our teachers number two i i've always been of the belief and and i i am i'm evidence of this being from van zandt de mesa marlton middle uh that our our activities and our our our clubs define who our students become all right our students become who they are uh by by playing soccer by wrestling through theater through through finding that instrument that they love through through concert band whatever it is orchestra all right they begin to develop and find who they are i i personally consider that a a program cut in my mind that's how i see that and i just want to be very careful about that i i am not going to say to the finance committee don't talk about it i mean obviously you you just everything's always on the table all right but i i'm telling you my my personal belief here is that i see a two-fold problem with that and i i am i'll you'll have a hard time convincing me that that's a that's a good idea and i am not in any way miss no please i am not in any way trying to to reject what you're i i i commend you for bringing everything onto the table um that's to me that's courageous all right but again we're on that in the position i am i i just i don't see i i just don't see the benefits of it i would be very hard very hard to convince me that there that there would be and i don't think those costs are very high it's not the difference between the uh expenses and the revenue we generate through activity it's not it's not given the benefit to students yeah yeah okay uh lastly and i apologize i i'm sure you guys are tired of me at this point and i'm really sorry i had a nice conversation before i walked in here with some some very lovely people um and this this whole situation here is deplorable this is an awful awful event that we are all a part of now in even though i i said four years ago i warned of this to happen and and i stand i stand by that it doesn't make this any easier the hardest part about this and and i say this because i look at this board and i i can't say this every year that i've worked with with my board with with the board of education that i've worked with that i i really respect this board and the reason why i respect this particular board is because you really have a heart and you really care and i know that everything that's going on here hits you extraordinarily hard now i ask for zero sympathy i ask for none of that we're elected officials we are not afforded that but i think it should be told that no one has taken anything here lightly and of all the decisions look i've made some decisions that people probably still hate me for all right whether whether it was you know whether it was uh a decision on a bus depot years ago or a decision on on on that's a family years ago or or the decision on on evans all right those decisions that were made were choices we made choices we had a legitimate choice of which way to go we measured what we thought was the right course of action versus the wrong course of action school choice being another one remember that one all right we had the ability to choose the course of action in which this district was going to go we had that ability what absolutely devastates me here and really questions what the hell i'm doing here is that i've lost that power i have lost the power of choice the only choice i get to i get to make here is how the execution is going to take place the judgment was sent off long ago not having the choice to save people is a horrible horrible thing it deadens you inside and i i just you know we're we're in a tentative budget and i hope and pray that relief comes but we we have to understand as we are tearing each other apart that we need to look at each other and and realize that that's the situation in front of us that gets lost all right that gets lost and i'm terribly sorry to physically everyone who's in this room i am terribly sorry to everyone who's live streaming at home because personally no matter what you may say i feel like personally i have i failed you there's there's it's just it's a horrible wretched feeling and the feeling i have cannot even be measured by what you're feeling because yours irreparably is worse than mine and that ladies and gentlemen is the awful terrible situation that has befallen upon all of us all of us and i just wanted to make that point heard thank you any other questions or comments before we move on seeing none all right let me move out of this i gotta get back to board docs all right first of all thank you for the presentation dr smith mr rashenti um your um your hard work does not reflect what's happening here but what you're trying to do to save what we can at this point in time we're moving into public comment and this is for agenda items only so this is specifically for anything that would be inside the budget this meeting will now be open to the public referencing agenda items only however if your questions or comments pertain to litigation student or personal items or negotiations we'd ask that you see the superintendent after the meeting since we do not discuss these matters in public please limit your comments to three minutes per person again as i said earlier a couple things here state your name state your address make sure that's nice and clear so we can hear it uh and also uh i'm not gonna i'm gonna try not to be totally strict but if you start going into the into the uh the realm way past what we need to go i'm going to politely say please wrap it up again i emphasize this because i understand how personal this is for all of us um everything that i if i ask you to wrap it up it is not in any way shape or form me disrespect to you i i i and many people in this board all people on this board respect what you have to say all right so please please do not do not take anything i i do or say in that matter floor is open hi um my name is joanna inglassis i live at 401 cedric lane thank you i'm actually a parent not a teacher like or something like everybody else it's actually quite intimidating there's a lot of red shirts in here i have two boys that go to demacy i think it's a wonderful school the teachers do a great job here i actually wanted to come to the school board meeting for a while um because i've wanted to get more information about when the kids are going to be going back full time uh it's been hard to find time to come and i finally found time to come and you guys were having a budget meeting so i feel like i picked a heck of a meeting to come to for my first school board meeting so so um anyway i work in the insurance industry um and our industry has been trending towards a remote school towards remote work um and we've been doing that in order to save money and my question to the school board is what money have you been saving in the budget by having the kids being remote my review from what i saw on the board up here was about 400 000 i mean it was quick and i honestly i didn't have time to review it that much before i came but it looked about 400 000 between maintenance and media in savings but i didn't know if there were any utility savings or any other savings but i know in the business community a lot of businesses have been trending towards remote and i didn't know if there was any savings that were made that were not reflected in the budget that were shown to us that you could expound upon and i also didn't know if there was any requests that had been made to the council in terms of grants from the council's recent program that they installed to get reimbursements in terms of the money lost from the teddy bear academy and the full day kindergarten it wasn't my understanding that the full day kindergarten was a revenue raiser but from what you're saying here today it looks like it is but i didn't know if that had been a discussion with the town council so i didn't know if that had been a discussion that you had had with the town council to get reimbursement for that that had been lost and i just hope that everyone here today we'll keep in mind that the kids have been through a lot this year my own kids pretty happy kids they really have been having a lot of psychological issues you know and a lot of issues because of the remote schooling you know and it's been tough on these kids they need to go back to school full-time um so i hope you guys can resolve your distance at differences and work this out um i'm i'm happy to pay my 45 of taxes uh for this uh further education because i think they get a good education uh for in-person education that's why my husband and i moved here uh because marlton had a good reputation they have low taxes and they had a good reputation for education when we moved here 13 years ago and i still feel like we were getting our money's worth for in-person schooling but this remote schooling is going to end i really hope you guys resolve your differences and everybody works things out i'm sorry for the people that that might have to lose their jobs i really am but it's been tough for everybody all around especially on the kids that i've seen um so that's all i have to say thank you thank you do you want to answer yeah yeah uh first first uh welcome if that's your first board meeting uh and uh and it may not maybe a little it's this is a more attended one than usual but i'm glad you picked this one in in in the sense of uh there's so much to see and learn just by um getting to you know the budget but how like a great discussion among board members and how communication works um mrs romanelli the principal of macy's sitting right in front of you um so i'm glad she was here to hear that um shout out to demacy mr hoffman sitting right next to her as well um and uh glad they could be here for that um the uh so a couple couple raised a couple great questions which i want to touch on um first working backwards your question about conversations uh between us and the township as far as um needs we've incurred you know financial impact that we've incurred this year um and so we have um you know we have had we have great communication with the township um they they've understood our plate um throughout the year um both due to you know that miscellaneous revenue piece but but there's which i'll because your questions are kind of connected actually because um the other question was about how you know essentially the financial impact of this year have there been any savings have there been additional costs and um so uh while the the financial plate that we're in has been years in the making this year did bring additional costs um which we were communicating to the township and um and they they uh you know it's it's so clear to me how uh much care they have for our district as essentially um you know that our district is our town and our town is our district in a lot of ways um the uh and that's i think what part of what um you know their understanding of our situation is is was a catalyst for their financial support that we were able to talk about tonight that the 250 000 for the sros which um and then the the purchase of the properties so that's a great um example of uh you know evidence of their understanding of our situation um and uh you know it since all that the money in the budget in the sense goes to all these different things that 250 000 for the sros is 200 000 more that helps us you know as far as the general budget and um remedying the losses due to the uh our programs like pulled a k the cost this year though and it's and it's interesting because so this year has actually been more expensive for for districts than a typical year um we've had to maintain essentially two different loads modes of learning right we've got an in-person mode and we've got all remote load and that has meant um additional personnel costs uh like for example a teacher who is out sick might be teaching from home but we still need to substitute in the room with the children at school um the uh if you have a um you know someone who's uh out let's say um due to and and you know there's been a lot of transition within staff staffing costs you saw in the um powerpoint so um the um you know we might need to bring in someone uh hire additional person uh contract out for additional services to kind of plug a gap that's emerged along the way due to something related to covid um the the p we've gotten some grant money along the way which we've burned our way through um you know the the when you came in the thermometers we've got um you know uh thermal scanners that take like groups of people's temperatures quickly as they enter a building increasing our number of chromebooks so that kids could have a one-to-one chromebooks ppe costs it's been it's been an expensive year and um ionizers yes thank you thank you the ionizers chapter 44 chapter 44 yes 800 000.
madam president did we give uh yes direction to choose staff to move forward with uh so submitting the letter using you know their discretion to to submit it since it's not a gen dive um was there any direction um i don't know if there was any formal direction so thank you for um stopping us before we move forward um so dr bauer or go ahead board vice president i would just assume that uh from our comments uh staff can ascertain what our desires are and you've provided a template so is that enough or did you can that serve as direction yeah that's it that was my question thank you so much uh trusty travis you have something done and to expedite it can we just like say who's in favor and just uh kind of like do a vote just to know whose names are going to be on there now uh are you talking when you say whose names on the letter are just saying like are you okay with your name there you know that's it it's not uh i'm not saying that we have to agendize it i'm just saying is it a like i give i'm i would give my i'm giving my consent to dr bauer when you send the letter please put my name on it that's what i'm saying okay thank you trust each other if we could do that this evening and let her know so that way it'll be done a little bit quicker yes feel free to put my name in um and i guess if any of you um have a problem with your name being on please let miss dr bauer know thank you trustee chavez i would need to see the letter just before i'm assuming i'm going to be okay but i just would want to make sure that you know it does actually reflect something that i'm comfortable signing on but i'm fairly confident it will yeah usually the superintendent just sends it out signed on behalf of the district by herself without the rest of us on their uh board president so that's the way i assumed it was going to proceed since we didn't have it agendized okay thank you dr bauer for doing that okay moving on to 505 uh the board will consider its position regarding draft city policy public quasi public facilities um mr pham i know you requested to put this on the agenda uh yes uh thank you madam board president uh you know in regards to that you know uh just to give the community a background or i um you know members of this board attended uh meetings with the mayor and planning staff and our counterparts from the other school districts uh i believe in the last week of february and you know there are certain issues that came up uh as it regards to uh how the how this change in city land use planning would affect the uh financial future of our district uh you know just to say you know this is a gross overreach of you know uh the city's authority uh you know as a school district we you know we are governed by state law so it is very disconcerting that the city of san jose has decided to wade into waters that it traditionally does not have a responsibility for and seeking in many ways to uh govern the use of you know surplus school property you know as you know as it pertains to our ability to [Music] uh maintain a revenue stream that will allow us to continue on with our mission to provide an education uh for the alum rock community so you know it is with that concern that i bring you know i ask that this item be placed on the agenda tonight for discussion because it is important for us as a district to you know take a position so that we we posit so that you know should something come down the line we are in you know we are able to take whatever legal actions uh that are necessary in order to preserve the the financial future of our district as well as to ensure that you know we are in a position to continue educating uh the children of allen walk thank you very much thank you mr fam um with that uh board vice president quintero you want to add something to that um you know what i'll speak after public comments i know uh mr fam um you're requesting to for the board to consider its position regarding draft city policy um well this item are you uh is this on for a vote uh well well and are you are you um oh i'm not like to make a motion well to continue discussion oh uh you know what i would make uh this uh you know i you know for the purposes to continue discussion yes i will make the the motion but the you know but i you know originally i had hoped that we we could take a vote tonight but i think that uh you know based upon you know advice you know after speaking with the superintendent you know uh we we could give general direction now so that uh district staff could uh produce a resolution for us to to vote that would have been uh reviewed by uh our our general counsel regalia ruiz you know just to ensure that we are on uh you know a solid legal basis before we act okay if that's the motion i'll second it okay thank you uh both mr our trusty fam and for vice president quintero um with that i'll go ahead and open it up for a public comment at this time um mr moran do we have anyone on public comment who would like to address the board yes we do we have paul soto welcome mr soto as soon as you begin speaking the timer will begin uh thank you paul soto from the horseshoe um i really like the way that uh the senora just framed what is happening in our city you know if you play chess you can see the moves that are being made and one of the things that we learned from the chicano movement and from the uh lemon grove incident that involved the schools from mendez versus westminster from border brown versus board of education and from sofia mendoza at roosevelt high school and lincoln and garfield in in los easlos what we learned is that there is power in our body and that body can exercise that by refusing to participate in the system that is constantly generationally exploiting the chicano and i think that this if there ever was a time in san jose history to exercise that power it's now you can advocate to refuse to go to school you have the power in your body to advocate that you know what i am going to refuse to continue to participate in a system and participate in my own demise by allowing my body to be counted for pay don't allow the kids to go to school strike well god this is this is what we have been taught okay and i think that we've gotten soft you know throughout the throughout the years and and not really exercising that power i think it's time i think it's time to start striking to start every single chicano every single mexicano put down their construction tools put down the cooking utensils put down the senoras inside the uh cleaning the inside these cobit hotels and refuse these kids going to school and then let's see what the system does thank you thank you mr soso anybody else mr moran no that's all board president thank you um mr quintero i see your hand up yeah i want to thank my colleague uh board member uh min pham for bringing forward this item um i am completely in agreement with your comments i think that we as a board have to take action and express our uh the sentiment of the board uh in very very strong you know terms as strongly as possible while you know keeping and maintaining her professionalism and i would ask that uh you know in your motion that you include a time frame have that letter be drafted and you know the sooner the better so you know if you would be able to amend and add some sort of a timeline uh to that i would really be appreciative of it because i think it's urgent that we demonstrate uh to the council um the position of the of of our body because they're going to be taking action on things involving these issues sometime soon so i would ask that you you know possibly reconsider the language of your motion to include a time frame that you know makes it sooner rather later what's your fault oh yeah so in in response the board vice president yes i i would be happy and you know i will go and amend the motion to include a uh you know a timeline for district staff to draft a resolution and to have it reviewed by general counsel uh so that that leads me in order to do that um question to the superintendent uh you know uh how soon could this be done you know if time is of the essence could we possibly you know include this as part of in the special meeting later in the month or you know something you know but no later than you know then the and then the board meeting scheduled for april i think we can and i just wanted to rogelio um if we're going to have the special board meeting mr freeze can we add this item to be considered by the war on march 23rd uh yes that would be fine and i would only add that the city has indicated that they intend uh their draft policy to be presented to the planning commission and council for consideration beginning in may so with it we are very we we are in a crunch for time so i would say the special meeting in this month or the regular meeting next month just a quick question there was an email that came from the the city representative this afternoon does does that they gave a time frame that i thought i read again this was like a few minutes before the board meeting but i thought i saw something about september that they were pushing things back based on feedback or something like that that could well be so i i have not seen that it came in just like in the late afternoon and i believe it believe it could be wrong again because i just saw it just prior to the meeting if i may chime in go ahead uh board president uh yes mr chang go ahead i did receive an email um that was shared by the county cbo and uh from staff notifying um district representative that the timeline is going to be delayed um they're going to take up this issue sometime in the fall they didn't or note a a month but they are pushing it a little down the road thank you so could i know any others before we move on no that was all thank you okay uh yes um uh dr barr i'm sorry were you gonna say something else or i was just gonna uh ask the board in terms of timeline because i haven't seen that email either but um if this has been delayed till september we can bring this in the april right and just for the board to consider and if there are any you know uh and and that was kind of my my request from the board if that's an okay timeline before we get involved in other stuff because sometimes that's what happens yeah mr famine uh board vice president quintero so if that is the case then you know then yes you know i would uh amend my my motion to direct the district staff to draft the resolution you know in opposition to uh the proposed general plan amendment and to have it reviewed by general counsel uh for the um board meetings scheduled for april as the second or i concur thank you trustee travis you have a comment or a question i mean i still had some too just just that one i think the sooner the better um i know they mentioned march 23rd but it's up to the board thank you trustee with hirano yeah um i just i also wanted to thank uh trustee fam for bringing this i think it is important that we that we do take a solid firm stance as a district for me there's a lot about this that has been um disappointing discouraging frankly i feel it as insulting um personally and as a representative here of this district i think it's in us an affront to our um you know ourselves as board members the district but also to the voters of this district you know who put the individuals here well four of us and then we appointed through a you know through a process our fifth colleague but i think you know we we have had thirteen thousand something members of our community vote and nine thousand and six seven thousand like large numbers of voters in this community have voted for their representatives to to make decisions about things directly related to education the education in this community and so you know to pawn that off and and to just think that some other entity could come in and and take away our you know our sovereignty or or whatever you word you want to use here um is just you know it's unacceptable to me and and i am strongly in support of of taking this stance i think individually all or most of us have gone to these meetings and made it very clear where we stand kind of shoulder to shoulder with many other districts but this this official consolidated um uh you know direct communication i think is important as well thank you trustee i see three hands up and i just wanna make sure i'm not missing anyone if that was from before no no no that was before okay uh so i'm in agreement um i think we definitely need to take a stand and come uh united you know um in our response to the city as a board uh i know many of us have gone um if not all of us to all the meetings that they've provided and advocated on behalf of our our district here and so if i'm understanding correctly uh we are directing staff to draft a resolution and bring it back in april so there's no voting tonight correct okay all right thank you so much dr brower for bringing that back in april well there was a motion in a second yeah so that's why i wanted to provide that i was understanding correctly so we can go ahead and take act you know if it's so what is the action i just want to make sure i think we were it's for action so the action was to from the motion that uh a board member fan made was to direct staff to come up with a resolution and have it ready for the next war meeting in april that way we memorialize it and make it a formal direction to staff if we just take a vote sure uh mr pam do you have anything else to add to that yes so i i concur with the uh board vice president quintero and then i just wanted to close by saying you know it you know uh you know it is a a sad situation when the mayor of san jose you know decides to unilaterally uh you know ignore you know not just the elective representatives of this of this board of this district but also the 15 other school districts in san jose this you know uh you know as a former legislative aide this is you know this is a you know uh between this and and the mayor's push to reopen the schools this you know this is a this is an example of you know heavy-handed government i'll just say that you know of the of the worst kind you know where someone is attempting to you know ram their agenda down the throats of uh others and you know do it in a way where you know we're not able to to [Music] fight back so you know i i you know i certainly hope that you know we you know when when we revisit this in april you know we are we have a formal resolution legally vetted uh that will you know express the the will of this this school district you know and to to what let the city formally know that you know uh you know that this this type of uh municipal governments is uh unacceptable thank you very much thank you mr from so with that we'll go ahead and take a vote as i see you on the on my screen uh trustee varano hi trustee chavez hi or vice president quintero hi trusty fam i and myself i thank you now moving on to item 506 the board will select two board members to participate in the strategic planning committee so at this time this will open it up for any of the trustees that are interested in being a part of the uh planning committee um uh yes i i am interested um i don't know if in the interest of time i won't say anything beyond i'm interested okay uh yeah i was just i'm i was trying to be creative to see how we were going to do this right so first to hear the interest so trustee vegeta and then i see trustee chubb is your hand up yes i'm also interested trustee chavez is interested anybody else i also know that both trustee chavez and trustee haran are very busy with the budget committees um i wonder too if uh the board um if you're all open for nominations um i'd like to see mr pham you know maybe um being that uh he doesn't have a um a current um position within the board that maybe mr pham if you're open to being one of the possible board members one of the two uh okay but if you're not interested it's okay too to say no i'm actually interested so if you say no it's okay okay i i'm declining this time okay uh trustee chavez do you have something else to add i see a hand up i just want to make sure i'm not missing oops i'm sorry i just want to make sure i acknowledge everybody on the board okay um so with that i hear trustee chavez trustee vacarano and myself um interested um any suggestions as to how we should move forward i don't have a suggestion i just have a comment uh that i think it's important this particular position at this time obviously because of all of the things that are there's like 50 balls up in the air right now that we need to be strategic about and so um whoever is selected i think it is important that that this election occurs maybe not necessarily just because of who's available or not but i think we need to be thoughtful and see you know maybe all of us have our own strengths and experiences and we can bring that to offer that to the board and i believe you know some of the i know some of the experience that i've had professionally and and in other things that i've done in commissions and stuff has has given me a lot of experience in in the strategic planning area so you know i'm confident in my abilities but i'm also comfortable with all of my colleagues as well as i mentioned we all have strengths but i just want to make sure that that we think about this in a way that we look at you know who may bring the skill set that we need for this particularly given the situation that we're in right now so that's all i wanted to say thank you uh i know board vice president quintero you have something to say and then we'll go to trustee chavez uh no it looks like the nominations are there so if we were to take a vote on on individual nominees i guess we could see who has the highest number of votes and move that way okay thank you trustee chavez let's just vote okay so i guess we'll go name by name and then just take a vote unless we all send our vote our two names to dr bauer and then she announces later which way open yeah open person by person okay let's start so um trustee vacarano um i guess we'll go ahead and uh take a vote and whoever has a majority of the votes at the end the top two will then be um on the strategic planning so we'll start with trustee veterano um aye trustee chavez hi or vice president quintero hi trustee femme i and myself i okay and then we'll go to trustee chavez um trusty vegarano i'm gonna i should pull up chavez and tell you to move on to the next person for now i'm not but i'll vote right now and i'll go with the nay on this one uh trustee chavez hi trustee uh quintero uh trusty pam nay okay uh moving on to uh myself did you do your vote for trustee chavez oh uh nay sorry thank you and now it's me for for you for you yes so trust me for myself i uh trustee chavez no trustee quinteno aye trustee phem aye okay thank you so trustworthy and myself and i'm sure we'll get more information later as to meeting dates etc what that means uh thank you we'll go ahead and move on to item 507 board will consider board policy 3311.
yeah yeah thank you mr megan so we had um and that was due to the educator healthcare plan that the state of new jersey offered this year um so that was another we'll call another um part of the perfect storm of the year essentially and then to your last point about kids being in school um you know which i'm glad that um i'm talking about last because it is the absolute most important thing of all um is is what we do for our children and um we are working you know on um classroom level school level to help more kids come in trying to stay within that six you know that there's a six foot social distancing guideline that the um you know uh is part of the road back guidelines from the department of education based on the cdc um there are some districts that are starting to go below that that six foot distancing um and uh so that's a that's a growing conversation it's one we are talking about here a bit but we haven't embarked on going below that six foot yet um but but if you know that that certainly has contributed to the larger conversation across the state um we've asked for we had a meeting uh some superintendents from the county and i recently with the deputy chief of staff from governor murphy's office basically saying can you could they you know help the collection of communities that is new jersey achieve some consistency by providing clear alternatives to that six foot guidance since districts are coming up and townships are coming up with their own methods and it was very we found a very receptive audience um and what we heard back was essentially we were berlin and county superintendents we heard back was this that scene is playing out in every county across the state um and uh i think you know though you know as it stands here we're having conversations about that but um we're also hoping that the state of new jersey will come out and uh provide some overarching guidance in that way thank you dr smith and thank you very much for coming your first meeting i'm sorry i know you were come forward come forward uh please state your name and address please uh my name is janet kimmenauer i am an eighth grade language arts teacher here at demacy um i just wanted to say a few things um as being the former president i see a lot of new faces but i also see some faces that i've worked with before and i think the most important word there is that i worked with you before um i want to let you know that when you talk about the union and the union leadership you're talking about all of us all 700 members it's just not some group at the top and my understanding was there was representation at that meeting that you so talked about um i'm not sure mr riccenti i looked through all my emails when you were talking i didn't find one email that said anything about hiding money so i do believe that that is a misrepresentation uh that's not a misrepresentation because it's been set at board meetings by your membership okay well then i apologize for that um but i would do one of this is the most important thing um when i was the union president um we all worked together mr scala valley and i very very closely and solved a lot of problems and this is not the first time that any of us i've been here for 20 years we're always reduced to digits we're just digits but we've always managed to find a way to find the humanity and i'm seeing that there's not that same i don't i i know there's two sides but it has to stop and i also need to remind this board and you are still the board even though there's new members that this association the one i represented the one that i continue to represent even though i'm not the president made a deal that perez with benefits would keep their benefits until they're retired and you that board made that that gentleman's agreement and i hate that term but that gentleman's agreement was made between you the board and us the association and i cannot in good consciousness not leave here without reminding the board of that agreement that was made when we had a fight about the paris before i need you to look back remember we did have an agreement not on paper i know those change but you at one time did find the humanity to figure it out i hope you find it again thank you debbie van curan etea president first of all i would like to thank the board for exploring the sale of district properties to eavessham township for green space as recommended by the etea we couldn't be happier that it worked out and also we would like to thank the mayor and the council for purchasing these properties i hope the sale goes through smoothly as far as the powers meeting our vice president for our support staff was there on monday on monday and tuesday we had many association reps there as well and they constitute our executive board also john i have a few things to say about the way you talk to me every meeting that we went to five million dollars five million dollars five million dollars we asked you to meet with greg jordy from njea greg is the numbers guy i teach first grade my numbers are not like greg's we called on greg we sat down with all of you at that day by the time we left there you were saying well it might be 4 million but you weren't even sure you never disputed the numbers with greg you just sat there you turned around at your computer you tried to print something out you did not seem very prepared you got very heated and defensive today in a public place with me not once was it brought up about hey we might get 959 000 from the stimulus package until we had a board member bring that up nowhere in the budget do i ever see that there's over 2 million dollars in breakage that you have to work with 2 million over 2 million dollars and anyone who doesn't understand breakage if i retire and you hire a fifty thousand dollar teacher you're saving the difference between my salary at the top of the scale and that teacher that's a first-time teacher there's over two million dollars in breakage and who knows what that number will be by september first i didn't even plan to get up here and talk about all that until after some of the comments that were made you can tell i'm not backing down i still don't believe the numbers are as bad as you're making it sound and i would propose that the finance committee because i heard you say that you you know you there were questions asked i would like the finance committee to sit down with greg and greg can go over the numbers that were submitted to the state i can't explain them like i said i teach first grade math but we could get a meeting with njea and they would be able to go over those numbers and then maybe we could finally put this to rest the reason i was getting up here tonight was just to talk about our paris my heart breaks for them it's one thing mister or dr smith that you want to put 22 kids in my first grade class i know that that's going to be hard mr scavelli always made it a point to try to keep the grades and the primary grades smaller and i know you have to do it will it be the same no that's way different than taking their benefits away i don't know if some of you know this that if you take their benefits away in this budget and they don't have them when they retire they don't have them for the rest of their life there are some of our lowest paid employees they get hit they get bit they get scratched and you're gonna take their benefits they work so hard i was talking to my husband tonight who teaches in a neighboring district he said they can't even get paris what are we gonna do when all of our powers leave i've already had one ask me would i give a letter of recommendation because that paris going to have to go to another school district we're going to lose people because you're going to cut their hours and take their benefits board members do not let the president administration shorten the hours of our paris because it's not really we're taking their benefits we're shortening their hours we're lowering their hours so that they lose the ability to be eligible for the benefits don't let that happen as you heard janet say the past administration made an agreement that our current paras would have their benefits with them until they retire will you be able to sleep at night knowing that you were part of the decision that took health care from these folks you're right joe this is a deplorable situation tonight i ask all of you to do the right thing this budget cannot move forward having our powers lose their benefits you need to work and figure it out if you have to make the class sizes 25 you're going to have to do it but taking benefits from people is deplorable thank you name and address please my name is lucia millington eight bancroft road i'm a para at marlton middle school um i know most of you i've probably voted for most if not all of you so i know you're good people i know this is a difficult situation but when i was hired the package was with benefits 22 years into it and it's being taken away i'm three years from retirement i will never have that security that i've been working for for 22 years and it's not just me i'm better off than some people that that you taking you're taking the most from the least of us not only are my benefits being taken which is half my salary not a salary i don't make a salary if i did i wouldn't be here half my pay but by being cut in hours this i have been i have substituted for gary any time you needed me in like the last 22 years 20 years i sub on a regular basis that's part of my income i do clubs that's part of my income i do basketball games wrestling matches that's part of my income so you're not only taking away the security of having health insurance which by the way i can't afford to get if you take it away because on my salary i can't afford what i've got so i'm going to go into retirement without benefits without making extra money and it you know it it's we're the we are the the core we might we might be at the bottom but we're the core of the education system we do a lot it's it's just not fair to take this away from us at this point name and address please hi my name is janelle zakotis i live in eight spring mill court washington township new jersey i teach the kindergarten first grade multiple disabilities at jaggard elementary this is my 20th year teaching 17th year in eve sham one of the reasons i have had such success in the classroom is due to the support of our paraprofessionals i am extremely saddened and disheartened of the discussion of the possible loss of benefits to our most senior talented and expert paraprofessionals i was lucky enough to be on the re-entry committee over the summer and was happy to see the thought care and time that was put into the social emotional health of staff the possible loss of benefits does nothing but destroy the social and mental well-being of our paraprofessionals and students in whom they support my focus here is twofold one to stress the importance of maintaining benefits for our powers and two to paint a picture of what the powers do on a daily basis as teachers we spend a lot of time working off the clock especially during the summer this is a choice that we make to plan and prepare for successful school year since i have started in eve sham i've had paraprofessionals that volunteer their time assisting me in this once the school year begins the paraprofessionals have to quickly adapt and take direction from teachers and staff to meet the needs of students as soon as student arrival begins the powers assist students at times physically aggressive behaviors are occurring at the door of the classroom our powers walk students through their morning routines my routine morning routine our morning routine include includes changing diapers feeding implementing behavior plan schedules assisting in sensory diets and supporting small group academic instruction as the day goes on our powers continue to support our students in all areas of school they are trained by the therapists and teachers to properly implement needed plans the success of this implementation comes from their expertise and professionalism as well as their dedication to excellence on many occasions our powers have been verbally and physically assaulted we answer these concerns by providing proper cpi training and monthly paraprofessional meetings the powers know that their job description is broad and can range from changing diapers to supporting a child in a resource room setting this is expecting of them to do their job i am speaking from my own experience that i would not be able to run my classroom in the same successful manner that i've been doing for the past 17 years without my power support having said this the repercussions of losing this effective support tremendous we know how expensive it is to send a child out of district my record shows that i've only sent one child out over the 17 years to best serve their needs that cannot be accomplished in a public school there have been others that were on the brink of being sent out and it was the support of the paraprofessionals that these students were able to remain in district i am pleading with you the board do not take the benefits from our powers as you said dr smith point of light the paraprofessionals are the point of light for our students and the teachers they serve good evening dr smith the members of the board my name is susan beck i live at 548 justice drive and i'm just here to say that if you take the benefits away from the paris it's a crushing blow to all of us we work so very hard every single day i am a paraprofessional in the preschool autism room i've been there for 15 years and yes i've been one of those people who have been bitten spit at kicked and i come back every day because i love the children and i have passion for my job and i'm begging you please do not take my benefits because if you do i'm not sure i can return and i know there are many others like me and i love the children and as i said i really love what i do thank you [Applause] good evening nicole puglia six lakefield drive in marlton i'm here tonight as a voice for a population near and dear to my heart and that is our ld program the ld program that could not run without our wonderful paris as you may or may not be aware it is the intention of the district to move our ld students from bieler to van zant this raises many concerns among them concerns for class size combining these two schools will result in a larger class size potentially replicating a regular edge situation to whose benefit is that not those children this move will split families from siblings and cause extra stress at home to juggle at all some of our district's neediest learners will shift and transition from three schools in just three years that's a lot couple that with our county our excuse me our country and our world's current state of affairs and that's just an overload for already sensitive people we strive for students to be in a program to not be in a program for the duration of their school career and making the program all at one school prohibits fluidity it seems the negatives outweigh the positives as this will cause the children of bieler to be tracked as ld making the transition into a less restrictive environment more challenging and that they will no longer be with their siblings and neighborhood friends the ultimate goal and great source of pride for eve sham township schools has always been putting our children first please do that tonight keep feeler ld students at beheller school and put these children of esham first thank you good evening merrill schindler nine dominion drive i am an eve sham township taxpayer and for the past 21 years i've worked as a paraprofessional with jagger at the time of the proposed elimination of benefits i will be in my 22nd year when i was fired to work in youth sham i accepted a full-time paraprofessional position with medical benefits and a pension i accepted the position for little pay but with excellent benefits that upon 25 years of service was best for life over the past 21 years i have poured my heart and soul into helping the children i have been extremely i've been extensively trained in every facet of my job cpr nci trainings trainings for specific disabilities such as autism down syndrome seizure disorders adhd ocd to name a few i work summer programs and after school programs as well with the children my job also entails feeding toileting implementing ptot and speech therapy programs small group instruction and remote teaching that has been signed for the children's success as well as keeping the children safety and welfare has been number one priority sorry i'm nervous dr smith's proposed plan targets the lowest wage earners in the district who max out after many years at twenty five thousand dollars his budget presentation claims that it cost the district twenty five thousand dollars for benefit in order for us to be ineligible for benefits he would also cut our work hours which would lower those wages so to be clear you're asking us to work for nothing after we seek benefits elsewhere when it would be less of a hardship to ask the higher wage earners to pay for their benefits for me this is especially troubling as my lifetime health care is in jeopardy you see i've had to rely on the medical benefits to save my life i had breast cancer and a genetic predisposition that makes the likelihood of it returning at some point pretty high you're asking paraprofessionals like myself to take the same risks without the safety coverage of sound medical benefits esham township has an excellent reputation for their special education department people move into this town for that reason we're the people that spend the most time with our kids and help to keep the consistency that our children need i understand that you're looking at the budget but if you truly care about the health and welfare of the students then surely you can find another way then cutting the medical benefits of devoted employees like myself therefore putting my lifetime healthcare in jeopardy i ask you to please reconsider eliminating the benefits that were promised to us for many of us it's a matter of life and death my name is melissa mercer i live at five darien drive in cherry hill and i've been a speech pathologist at jaggard elementary school for 20 years i have never spoke in front of the board although i've attended a lot of board meetings and i haven't been in a room with this many people in a year so i'm extremely nervous but i felt compelled to talk tonight there's so many things that came up during the board meeting line after line of cuts that are like arrows to the heart for our district um you know many things that i could speak about in terms of class sizes and program cuts and moving the children across the schools and collapsing um programs but i really wanted to focus on the paris jaggerd will be disproportionately affected by your decision to cut their benefits we have a great number of very well trained parents at our school that have been there for years and years and years and have benefited from all of the training that the district has provided and these women give their heart and soul to this job you know merrill is a fine example of that she is one of the many wonderful women who took this job knowing that if they put in the work that when they came out of it they would have lifetime health benefits there are so many of them that are struggling with health conditions with families that have health conditions and it might seem like an easy fix i know nothing is easy in this but to take away oh 20 people 30 people and we'll just hire people with no benefits um but you're also losing all of their years of experience and training if those people walk out of jagger jaggard will collapse upon itself i i can guarantee that because they are the blue that hold that school together um i also wanted to bring up s 3488 i'm not sure why the district is not discussing this further you know there is a lot of legislation that is trying to be passed right now and they're looking at consolidation of school districts to make districts k-12 i'm not saying that that is a solution for us but just being part of the pilot study would have our expenses that we have taken on from the state moved from a four-year period to an eight-year period so that we would not owe the state of new jersey as much money over a four-year period they're they're offering huge incentives for us just to be part of that pilot study so i'm not sure why that isn't being considered we don't have to agree to that we just need to become part of the pilot um and i think that you know i was hoping that we came here today and between the the recovery act money and the news articles that have been you know floating around about this legislation that we would be getting some better news and you know not that the arrows that that keep on coming thank you [Music] i'm sorry just just real quick i just want to comment on what what you what you just uh which what you just asked or proposed um this this isn't new in terms of consolidation of districts uh it's been around i want to say since 2007 was governor corzine who really started making that push for it and regionalizing and kind of doing these county districts i saw the article that was listed that listed esham township as a part of like all these options that could be consolidated that list looked like they were just naming every every district in south jersey um when we have looked at that in the past uh when it's been brought up in in the past this is like not the first time it's happened although they are kind of throwing a carrot with that you know kind of broadening out that money for eight years instead of poor it's one of those things we just have to be very careful for districts of our size and consolidate with other districts of our size it the costs usually go up far more in some instances that i've seen and what we've talked about in the past so i just you know it's one of those things that obviously it's it's coming out we don't know what those what that that law is going to be yet or how they're determining it but if i'm going to dictate from what i've seen prior about 13 14 15 years ago uh usually it was for us and districts around us it never seemed to be good usually they were they were targeting what smaller districts have like you know like one this one building district or something along those lines i just wanted to throw that out there just to just give you kind of an understanding of that sorry thank you um please please go ahead i apologize i mean interrupt you hi good evening my name is cecilia giggin i live at 15 mini sing trail in chama i am in my 24th year as a paraprofessional at rice school i work in the in pre-school inclusion program which was not brought up but it is a money maker for this district the only children that do not pay are the iep students that are in the class i am very sad mad and very disheartened that you again are proposing to cut our our benefits we work very hard all our my colleagues work very hard with very young children with all different skills with all different abilities we potty train children we change their diapers and we try to keep them academically on their levels i've had children from your families or in my class i've had families of siblings that have paid for their children to come to our class this year has been beyond stressful ask all our colleagues if we were if we could get money for all the hats we have worn in our school we would be very wealthy we have been in classes upon classes trying to help all the colleagues that have been out what has that happened that's caused a lot of us to also have been exposed guess what we all got those dreaded calls from our principal yeah you've been exposed you've been exposed we've all had to go get tests and guess what they were all right before holidays holidays that we all hoped we could have stayed maybe be remote try to be safe that didn't happen uh i i don't understand where you think that we aren't the glue that works i'm in a class right now there's three permanent staff members i'm one my other two are out of medical leave i have a sub teacher who is very new i'm helping her every day and a sub possibly maybe might come in we have all day classes preschool has not changed we go morning and afternoon four days a week we had no shortened day we have 14 15 children in each class there is no six feet apart i don't understand how you can feel that taking our benefits is no big deal it's half our salaries if you lost your benefits if someone told you guys your family will have new benefits we are holding our benefits for the reason that maybe someone in our family can how would you be it feel we are all family here at eastern i urge you please do not pass this do not let our benefits of all my colleagues go truthfully seeing this this board now i am i will be a lucky one but not all my colleagues are and they work so hard please reconsider they need their benefits just like everyone here we're going through it terrible pandemic that hasn't stopped if i didn't have my benefits all the kova tests i had to have to secure from all the times we were all exposed who would have paid for those please reconsider thank you thank you good evening corinne halibura 13 olympia drive i've been a paraprofessional here at rice preschool for the past 20 years i want to tell you that my both my children went through the eshim township school district eastern is an excellent school district and right here your paraprofessionals are your frontline workers we came in in the middle of a pandemic we went right to work we were nervous we were scared for the kids safety was our main concern safety for the kids safety for ourselves and safety for our families and we did it new jersey is the number one state in the country with the most coveted deaths to say anxiety isn't at its highest level i can't even begin to explain to you i can't even begin to explain to you what our day is like i feel like you're dismantling our district brick by brick we need our benefits we are the lowest paid employees no one's asked anybody in the upper echelon to take a pay cut or pay freeze or give something back or to lose their benefits it's always us september 29th we get the letter you're cutting our benefits then you gave them back to us now you're taking them back again it's been a yo-yo it's not fair you need to do the right thing and as far as janice your comment about doing away with clubs and activities these kids need clubs and activities more now than ever for socialization some of those kids go home to no parents being at home it keeps them off the streets maybe it keeps them off the phone and off the internet it builds great character skills and it helps them socialize and make friends so i would hate to see that happen but i implore you there's members that were in that meeting when we were grandfathered with john scafelli we were grandfathered in to have our benefits as long as we completed 25 years i ask you to find another way and to not take our benefits away and i have another question on the other budget this is a budget question on the ballot i recall seeing you were asking for 437 000 roughly for a separate ballot question for the sros and that's been taken away since there were no clubs and activities you said it was an estimated 454 268 cost i want to know what happens to that money since we didn't have any clubs and activities this year what amount are you getting for the properties that you're selling in country farms and what about the stimulus money where does that come into play and can there be a tax a budget question on a question on the ballot for additional monies in order to pay your your power professionals because the special education students need that extra support that's what makes esham so great these people behind me are very hard working and we've worked harder than we've ever worked in our lives and i ask you to reconsider thank you miss halibur i'll i'll uh address and you had a bunch of questions there at the end so i'll try to go through them um property value property sale still in discussion it will definitely be more than what we would have saved through transportation um clubs and activities that number that 400 000 number that you were referencing um that that doesn't relate to clubs and activities that was the number from the preliminary budget hearing presentation the ballot question the number there was as if about had been for the full year that 400 000 so the cost of seven sros for the year is 437 thousand 500 that was the number that was in the ballot question but the we already were budgeting for the first part of the year for the sros because the ballot isn't until november so the um essentially you know where that to be taxpayer approved the savings from that wouldn't commence until january 1st so the pro-rated amount that we needed in order to sustain the sros for the rest of the year was in the in the neighborhood of 250 000 which is why the township provided that money for us clubs and activities the difference is actually much much less between the um the cost for stipends and the activity fee amount that we generate so and i i'm trying to think uh the the uh the the chronovirus relief money you asked about what you know what will happen with that and you know that came up earlier tonight but certainly we'll be taking a look at um you know what are the parameters with which we can apply that money towards our district mission so we look forward to looking at that and um i'm sorry if i forgot one there but today is that no no so that that for that number you mentioned about the 400 something thousand that was you said that was in the last presentation that was the uh um correct okay so so the difference between the the expenditures for clubs and activity stipends versus what we raise an activity fee isn't isn't really that much so i want to say it's about a hundred thousand we haven't done clubs and activities this year so a very small savings there yeah however we never collected any fees to offset the clubs and activities so we we may have uh not spent the 454 but we didn't collect the 250 000 we usually collect to offset that so really the difference isn't 454 it's about 200 000.
do we have to take a formal motion uh to appoint you both okay good one yes you may want to ask the general counsel uh general counsel so i i understood those that process you just finished to select the two members but it wouldn't it wouldn't hurt to have a another motion to clarify it or to make it clear uh based on the votes i move that we appoint uh board president carina and board clerk ernesto barrano to the strategic planning committee nice second to vote okay so um public comment before we move forward is that correct i was i was going fast i just want to make sure um yes yes right okay um mr moran do we have any members of the public wishing to address the board yes we do we have brenda sindejas welcome back miss andegas as soon as you begin speaking the timer will begin i just have a comment over this i just noticed that um there is this energy always negative towards linda and i'm just catching up to it and i don't appreciate that you guys always want to keep her out or not give her the space and i think it would have been nice to have a hedano give his seat to two ladies to women that could possibly have been a strong force to this committee i know that sometimes we want to speak of everything that we have on the table or what we have but giving it to two women to lead i think would have been a good idea and um i think they would have done a wonderful job i trust that corina will lead with grace how she's been leading these board meetings um that's my comment thank you miss and that has mr ronan do we have anybody else from the public wishing to address it for uh no no one else thank you so much um with that we'll go ahead and move to the votes trustee de carano hi trustee chavez we gonna mute yourself hi thank you uh board vice president quintero hi trustee pam i and myself i thank you okay now uh moving on to 507 um do we have uh somebody presenting on that dr bauer or is that yeah i'll be speaking to um thank you so uh board uh board president uh members of the board uh do appreciate the opportunity uh for allowing me to present uh this resolution that is coming before us that will eventually uh become part of our administrative regulations and board policies and stuff of that sort uh and so this is the initial step so appreciate the work with dr bauer as well as a general counsel to make sure that we came up with a resolution and language that would go ahead and stand the test of any challenges that might be put before us the idea behind this resolution is that at some point in time if in fact this board decides to move forward with an energy service contract basically things that the general public would understand is solar panels that we would go ahead and have in place policies that ensure that we have several things already in effect at alam rock and that we make sure that we have people who are qualified to do the job and it's people that are properly licensed and they're doing the right thing that um that we have individuals who are going through state approved apprenticeship programs because there's a lot of talk about hey let's go ahead and have people go and join the trades so they can get a job and there's no apprenticeships for them to actually get into the field and so i'm not saying that there isn't but the idea here is to make sure that we are stepping up and creating the space for people uh to be able to get into this field of of the of the the traits and uh more importantly here is the section that uh requires uh the this the contractors that do do the work for alan rock to set aside a certain number of spots for individuals that reside within our district and so the way that these things go is that the bond money that is raised to go ahead and pay for things such as solar programs and stuff that sort of construction um is derived from taxpayers in our district in alam and so it's important to make sure that those tax dollars recirculate back into our community uh and that's the intention here with this with this uh proposal as part of the process of developing the policy um general counsel was uh was very very um you know making sure that we crossed that we all about say crossed our eyes and dotted our keys but that we um crossed our t's and dot our eyes and um and so uh we did just that going out there and doing the research and so behind a policy that sets aside a certain amount of spots in a particular project there has to be a justification because it has to stand you know the very very strict legal you know scrutiny and so those are the type of things that we went out there and looked for you can't just willy-nilly say hey i want to do this because i feel good there has to be a reason and and the reasoning behind our desire to go ahead and make sure that one out of every four uh people on these projects coming out that would come out of alumrock from our district from zip codes that are in our district is due to the following uh based on uh you information from the u.s census and in particular from the american community survey which is a survey that comes out to uh the population that does obviously it's not as extensive as the census itself but it still is very very extensive and it pulls out uh key information from from all over the united states and so from that uh i was able to go ahead and determine that children in deep poverty in allen rock school district in particular um are at 10 percent whereas in our neighboring districts even in san jose unified evergreen other places we're looking at a three percent level of deep poverty for children in those areas obviously those children come from homes within our district and so it would behoove us to make sure that those families have access to good paying jobs possibly in the trades such as those 25 percent that we would set aside from these projects the median family income in alum rock from the american community survey uh shows us clearly the disparity that exists and so when i make comments like i did in the previous meeting we were talking about the situation faced by people here in alamo rock is incredibly different than in other places in the county which i i factor in things like this data that shows that in an alum rock and this is old information all right it's not old old but it's older information pre-covet and we're looking at 62 000 the median family income here in elm rock in comparison to 133k for the county as a whole i say well that county incorporates palo alto so it probably skews the numbers way off and you're right it does bump it up quite a bit but it's only by ten thousand dollars uh berryessa for example is at 122.
yeah thank you any other questions or comments all right saying none we're going to close this portion of the board close uh public comment at this point in time we're gonna move to item four which is uh adoption of the 2021-2022 tentative budget uh i need a motion to prove item 4.1 do i have a motion i'll make the motion motion by mr megan do i have a second second most polo all right questions or comments um real quick i have just a couple things again i apologize mr physical i'm sorry could i just say one thing you may say one thing absolutely i really appreciate all of you coming and giving the feedback um i don't want any of you to feel that you are not valued and and considered a great source of the kids knowledge that they do get i'm very sorry that we're in the position to have to make such a hard terrible decision uh for any of our kids for any of your families but thank you for speaking up okay a couple anybody else a couple small points here um dr smith thank you about the 900 000 from from the federal government that bill was literally signed today knowing what those parameters are right now or just there's a reason why we weren't trying to tell you what that was it's just we just don't know yet uh that we should be getting that information sooner i mean everything we got was just from congressman kim's office and that was just a here let us help you out with a couple things it wasn't we didn't get any real serious look at what that's going to be so we're still taking a look at that joe can i interject very quickly and i just want to say that that cares money i'll call it cares money i don't know what they're calling it now but it comes with stipulation oh yes you can only spend it on certain things this is not a slush fund like danny remember a year ago we got that first um chance of money and it was only for certain things and it had to be documented i just want to add that yes and thank you because we don't even know what those things are yet correct that's and that's that's the thing that was the point i wanted to make and i appreciate that ms know because that's that's the issue again it's money that we don't have yet and there's it's money that we don't know what the parameters are so it might feel like someone's coming in to rescue us and then that money could be used for things that don't apply to anything that we're having a conversation about so we the reason why again why we didn't want to really talk about that is we didn't want to talk about something we just quite frankly didn't know i just want to put that out there um increasing class sizes that involves losing staff members correct correct that's how we uh achieve some of those position eliminations yeah okay um all right finally less less tiny thought this is a preliminary budget approval tentative budget approval final budget gets proved in may i'm not going to tell you that this is the worst relationship the board and the union has ever had i've heard nightmare stories from my father when he served on this board in the 80s and the kind of fights they used to have i've witnessed things on this board when i've been here between members of the board and and staff and it's it's not pretty all right it's not pretty and the reason why it is a simple we're incredibly passionate about what we all do we're incredibly passionate about what we all do um but one thing that that does bother me and i will say this about all of us um we are not doing a great job of coming together at a time when we need to be and this is a tentative budget and if we are and i'll go back to to a phrase that was used about being numbers and not people i don't ever see you as a number and if you know me and you've spent time talking to me you know that you're not a number to me never have been all right no matter what's happening here it's never been the case i won't speak for everybody because that's not fair but you know me okay the tentative budget has to go in but we have two months which means that paraprofessionals have indicated in some way that they're willing to find a solution to bring back their benefits and if the two sides are willing to meet together to come up with some type of solution you have relatively two months to do that right now's your chance all of you now's the chance we approve this tentative budget tonight because we're not going anywhere else with that right now but you've been you've bought some time to come together and figure this out i i don't want to hear hear say or i don't want to hear so and so said this about me or so i don't i don't care i quite frankly don't care about that stuff that's nonsense to me i don't care about who is upset at who and who said i don't care about that all right i don't care about that in my class i don't care about that here all right i care about getting this done and if we're all serious about that and we're beyond talk about that then let's do it got two months you got two months to do it all right so that's my two cents on this anybody else have any other comments or questions yes ms ryan so i'm sitting up here and there's like a war between my head and my heart about what's going on with the budget crisis and we care we really truly care um it was said when was how are you going to go home tonight and sleep well i haven't had a decent night's sleep since um the last time the power question came up and you all came out in force so sitting here hearing you i get it i feel it and it's devastating and the only thing that's probably going to make me sleep tonight is knowing that this is tentative that this isn't final so we hear you we feel you you're important and you're valued just know that anybody else oh okay i i didn't know what that was i was trying to make sure okay but with that being said let's go to a roll call please this is capello yes this is everhart yes mr fizzicaro yes miss fleming no mr canton yes mrs noll yes mr lancelata yes mr megan yes mrs ryan yes motion passes at this point in time the meeting is now open to open public comment which is for any any item of interest this meeting will now be open to the public referencing any items of interest however your questions or comments pertain to litigation student or personal items or negotiations we'd ask you to see the superintendent after the meeting since we don't discuss these matters in public same parameters apply as before anybody wish to speak about anything joe before you start timing me i know i'm over four minutes but i have somebody that's willing to read mine my what i have to say but i'd rather read it myself so if you want to cut me off just give me a heads up and i'll get somebody to read it i appreciate that miss vancuren thank you all right so again my name is debbie van curan but this time my address is room 129 and my title is first grade teacher at demacy elementary school where i've been a first grade teacher in the district for the last 34 years and i've taught hundreds and hundreds of students here in eve sham this is the part of the meeting where we get to speak about things that are not on the agenda well morale is not on the agenda board members i respectfully ask you to listen this evening because i feel often you only hear see and believe the one-sided things that are presented to you i know that asking my colleagues to write hundreds of letters to you is a burdensome task for you to receive and a frustration for the authors of those emails who send them i implore you to really hear what i have to say now i am sad this evening i am sad for my colleagues my bosses my students and myself we have never been where we are this evening over the last 34 years i have worked alongside many administrators and we haven't always seen eye to eye i've carried a picket sign during a strike and i've walked with my fellow e-t-e-a members in support for many different reasons but i have never felt so low as an educator as i do this evening no matter what was going on i always felt that all parties respected each other and were fighting though passionately at times for the good of the group we always had the best interest of the students in eve shim at the forefront of our conversations i believe i speak tonight from my colleagues from all over the district we feel disrespected disposable defeated manipulated unimportant etcetera the list goes on and on we feel as though we are constantly being pitted against each other our voice doesn't matter with this current administration here's a ridiculous example of what i'm talking about a decision was made to survey the children in ysham township about how to make up snow days the staff was not asked to participate in that survey as educators we know that we have mastered remote learning and that we can present more meaningful instruction remotely in january on a snow day than on a hot half day in june when students are thinking about being outside with their friends swimming we are still trying to muddle through a pandemic catch up from last year's school closures of in-person learning and complete as much of the curriculum as we can in spite of the many curveballs that we have been thrown this school year from the beginning of this pandemic you have compared us to other surrounding districts and i think you will find that we have accomplished more academic success from last march until today when i read this to my husband he said thanks you just bashed my district and more in-person learning with more full days than most of our surrounding districts we are already light years ahead everyone has stepped up to the plate and worked harder than ever i know that in 34 years i've never worked as hard as i have the last 12 months colleagues all over the district share that morale is bad and i even asked some friends i said is it really as bad as i think it is i said is it in the toilet and one person said it's lower than the toilet morale is low because we never know what is coming next from the current administration the staff has lost faith in the direction that we are being led this the decisions that are being made often don't even make sense communication is poor and honestly a friday afternoon or evening email with songs poems and hyperboles just isn't cutting it i'm sure most of the staff members are not even reading them friday is a time when we're supposed to be trying to decompress rejuvenate and spend time with family the staff from the top to the bottom often feel blindsided we were asked to join the current administration several weeks ago to get information about the upcoming budget in the past information and charts would have been presented this meeting seemed to be an unprepared powwow members actually left the meeting saying why did i bother attending with the past administration we knew that we might not always hear things that we were going to like like hey i have to close evidence but we always respected the time that was put into the presentation we also knew that our input was valued our questions would have received answers today it seems as though our time input and questions are not valued we used to be a family if you do the math i have worked under dr mayland and everyone since then i remember john bigley starting our school year with a motivational speaker or some kind of entertainment in this very cafeteria i would come to school in september excited to see my colleagues excited for another school year board of education members i ask you tonight how do we get some of that back how do we build the tree build the trust how do we get morale out of the toilet how do we attract the best of the best to come here and to work with students in eve jam where the students that are coming in the future it must start at the top what are you going to do to help make it better you can tell i'm very passionate and very upset i'm here for a different reason at this microphone right now but i thank you for listening and i look forward to hearing how we can steer our district in the direction that it needs to go in remember it starts at the top anybody else okay i'm going to close this portion of the meeting all right and that's going to hit us to a motion of a german i need a motion uh motion to adjourn motion by miss ryan seconded by miss null all in favor [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] you
double what alan rock is and i'm not doing this to knock on anybody for any community for doing well for themselves but it's just to illustrate the fact that we have some significant differences in income between alum rock and even our neighboring districts evergreen is at 150 k um san jose unified has a median income of 120 123 000 as well based on this american community survey information now mind you this is all pre-coped so those numbers have drastically changed and not for the better um with many of our families being out of work uh being affected adversely because of cobit and so those are some of the some of the data and other more other information children with uh without secure parental employment um the percentage spikes up here in alum rock uh to 37 percent or nearly whereas uh county-wide it's hovering at so you know it's not good in any instance in both instances but it's a heck of a lot higher here in elm rock and it's based on that data uh that um this resolution is coming to you so that we can go ahead and take our you know wherever it is that we have authority to do something that we can go ahead and help our community recirculate their own tax dollars so that it's generating jobs and it's coming back into our own community and so with that said i would ask uh on the opportunity or if i can make a motion i would like to make a motion for uh for approval when it's appropriate madam president i think this is the perfect time i'll make that motion for approval second second by trustee veterano um and we'll go ahead and open it up for public comments and then we'll go to trustee commons and questions um mr moran do we have any members of the public wishing to speak on this item yes we do we have two people the first person is josue garcia welcome mr garcia as soon as you begin speaking the timer will begin thank you madam president herrera attractive hours and members of the board uh thank you for the opportunity to speak before you tonight uh first i would like to point out as mrs uh vice president quintero mentioned this is not approving any project this is just to approve the policy and a policy intends to create the following a level playing field where all contractors will play by the same rules which is very important it will provide employment opportunities for local residents and just to put things in perspective on city of san jose funded projects like libraries fire stations etc only 25 of the workers construction workers are from the city of san jose that means that 75 of the workers come from out of the area uh i don't think that is acceptable since we pay our own taxes we should put local people to work that doesn't mean that we don't want people to come from other areas we just it just means that we need to take care of our own if we don't no other district will take care of our families the policy will create apprenticeship opportunities there are plenty of people trying to get into the trades and obviously we need to have for us to provide opportunities we need to have that jobs and this will create um a lot of work for uh high school graduates and other people trying to get on into the um that trades which is a which these are good paying jobs uh the policy will require that uh all the journey level workers will be certified by the state on the electrical section and very important that it will create uh that it will uh require contractors to pay the prevailing wage which is a waste needed in our in uh for our community and as you know we are being hard hit with with a kobe 19 and for us the working class when we are economically hard hit it takes months if not years to recover so my time is up but thank you so much thank you any other members of the public mr moran yes we have brenda sendejas welcome back miss anders as soon as you begin speaking the timer will begin um i just want to say appreciate the effort of this um i support prevailing wages and opportunities for our younger generation especially a lot of students who opt out of college to go to trade school and this will be a great benefit to our community i have some questions i saw specific zip codes um and i have one question so does this override a bidding process or does this just tag to a bidding process of requirements for these bidders right according to these zip codes and my question is if this zip code let's say 95 95127 the company has a contract let's just say ng right ng solar panel um which is not local i'm not saying this is just an example and it's not a local company is there specific requirements that these companies have to provide uh local services in case that they do have contracts with an outside um company that's not in these difficulties how would that play an effect and does this limit the amount of bids we get in as a district again i support local employment and i always will but these are just some questions that i have to ensure that everything is equitable thank you any other members of the public mr monon uh no more okay thank you um now moving on to trustee um comments or questions mr behranano yes thank you um so i want to thank my colleague vice president quintero for bringing this um to us i see this as basically has been outlining his comments and some of the public comment comment as an investment in our community and i think one of the things that's that's key to what mr trustee quintero said is where we have the authority or the or the power to exert some some influence that would um you know that benefits our constituents and our residents we should do so and i think this is the case you know as the person who's who has brought previously this solar item to the board and continues to advocate for that i see that again as an investment in our community the savings that would be realized by a program like this is an investment in these bigger budgetary issues that we've been talking about for months now and so wherever we have the ability as board members to make decisions that our investments for our taxpayers here that who put us in these positions i think we should do so and so i definitely will will be supporting this as a hopeful um you know partner with with a motion that may come in the future for an actual uh solar program um and i thank again trustee quintero for bringing this thank you trustee vacarano uh trusty fun yes i too would like to thank uh board vice president quintero for bringing this up on the agenda you know uh you know career technical education was something very dear to me in my legislative service uh you know it is one of the you know great levelers for you know uh for for those who you know you know who struggle with college uh you know this the a career in the skilled trades provides uh well-paying secure job opportunities that can't be outsourced uh you know at the same time leaving the door open for additional education uh you know as life circumstances permit uh also you know uh this is an example of a power of a a local community run school district i mean you're not going to see this from from the charter schools or the private schools you know uh the you know these are you know the um these are the families we serve and if we we're in a position where we can reinvest in these families i certainly think that you know it's incumbent on us to do so so on you know so i uh you know so i am in support of the measure and i urge my colleagues to cast a knife out thank you trusty fam any other comments or questions before uh trustee chavez uh yeah um i see that where what was mentioned there but what wasn't i i would like a little bit of background if i can when the district applied and got the money and the plan was put in place uh to pay it off uh and it didn't get paid off can we see that documentation after i'm requesting that and the reasons for it not being paid off um and to me it's like this is like two things in one if it would have just been that we are committed to fiscal solvency that's one thing but another thing is that when we're gonna only get one bid from one energy company because this board has not seen three um and the way the solar thing was handled the fact that we were just gonna go with that one contractor and we haven't even seen other bids or uh it's changed since they first did the their estimates and since we didn't see the other three i would like to also see later down the line that they're b3 so this doesn't become another deltera down the line for the next board or boards um that's all thank you that was uh trustee travis uh go ahead um trustee quintero yeah um yeah madam president uh as he make as the author of this policy that is before us there i just want to make sure that we're clear that this has nothing to do with there was mention of money there was contracts this is simply a policy and in the past in the preparation of any possible action that we might take with regard to energy service contracts so there's absolutely nothing right now um this is simply making doing things like for example that uh any um sort of agreements that were entered um that it shall include not less than 25 percent of the labor employed or contracted to perform the the project work including subcontracted or subcontract subcontracted and subcontracted labor shall be persons residing within the within or the surrounding territorial jurisdiction of the district um and so it's basically elim rock or you know the zip codes that are within alum rock but might be slightly outside just to give us that buffer to have more people as a pool of people that can be part of this [Music] part of the 25 percent so there's absolutely no contracts or any money attached to this policy it's simply a policy a standalone policy thank you trustee um i see a couple different hands so i'm going to go as i see them trusty vegano yeah thank you i i was going to just say what um basically what trustee quintero said but i do want to make a clarification for possible future reference that i think i appreciate trusty trusty chavez's comments however i think they're at least partially if not um just flattered out inaccurate um i think i know that mr ruiz our our legal counsel gave us a a history and a presentation on the bidding process with regards to ng never has there been any commitment made or anything that was referred to again this item is not about that but i just want to make sure that in the future should we need to maybe mr ruiz will be able to review that presentation that described you know everything as it pertains to the bidding process and requirements and the history of it and those things so but i mean the this is a separate um item separate from that connected but separate okay thank you trustee my request was to see the documentation how come it didn't get paid off that's what my request was and and it wasn't inaccurate in saying that we didn't see three bids that was accurate thank you that's inaccurate but what did what did you not what are we talking about being paid off just for yeah if you can be clear in regards to this item what the what that means um say that again in regards to the item we're discussing your question is about getting paid i want to i'm not understanding your question in relation to the item where what was paid what did he talk about okay does dr bauer unders dr bauer do you understand my question i'm sorry chavez you you keep asking you keep saying was this paid off and i don't know what you're referring to what was okay when the district applied and got the money correct what money i don't know this has nothing to do with prop 39 if that is your understanding has nothing to do with that okay when they got the money for the cops this is mentioned in here right no it has to be paid back okay but this is a different this is a board policy about the process the district will follow uh trustee chavez there is nothing to do with cops has nothing to do with any contract that's why i'm i'm puzzled okay so this is saying that we have to be committed to fiscal solvency right are you are you in item 507 um okay i'm sorry i'm off i took a break real quick a bio break and i came back and i'm on the wrong number so what number are we on thank you 507.