So, you know, let's fast forward. We had years and years of negotiations and it always started out where, you know, it was a lowball from the board and it was wanted more money from the from the teachers and we always were able to come to a resolution and give um support and give pay raises over the years. And then it became very contentious with the election of 20 when did you get elected? 21. There you go. So when you got uh Rene got elected on the board and Anita got elected, we had two different board members who had two different perspectives. Anita came from Victorville. Renee came from Victorville. So that's um little different than how Apple Valley was operating. And so they wanted to bring that style here. from what I'm just speaking from what I had had seen over the years and um then it became you know really contentious when California Teachers Association got involved and we had heard that you know Apple Valley was a was a uh a test district to see if they could rattle the district and and and uh the union became very abrasive.
They say it wasn't personal, but it became very personal. Personal attacks uh personal innuendos against uh you know different people's uh spouses, children in the district. There was there was quite a bit of uh animosity there. But we did come to a resolution and we did come what I mean by resolution we did come to a um um compromise and we were able to give give the payraises to both CSEA and through to Abuda. So, here we are um back back again with u a union member getting up here and saying there's something nefarious about this resolution and how dare us uh to bring it back because it was 22. It was very clear. I made it clear to Miss Nelson that I was going to be absent for that uh board meeting that I was ill and that I could not drive home from where I was at, which was quite a distance, and that uh I'm sorry that I can't make it.
And at no time did anybody say, "Well, we've have these items on this agenda and you know, we don't know how it's going to go." So, you know, if it was nefarious, it would have been pulled and put back on when I'm here, and it wasn't. And it was, we all know what what occurred. It was a two two uh vote. And um I if I was here, I would have supported it because I support Superintendent Nelson. I support staff. Is are things perfect? Never perfect. Can there be u improvements? Absolutely. Uh but the allegations of of malfeasants, the allegations of you know uh there's this money here, there's money there and these charts and this and going on podcasts and things like that. That is your right and we all know who the uh on the on the resolution. Uh we all, you know, we know who people are going to assume is the person that they're talking about that's not listed.
And I think that's done uh for the reason of um just not wanting to um stoop down into the gutter and start naming names and pointing fingers and making accusations which has occurred uh on this board from other board members. So, I I think that um this and I'm amazed even with you, Anita, that you would not support and I'm not chastising you for it. I'm just giving my opinion that you would not support I know Renee would not support Renee no matter what she does and would vote to get rid of her tomorrow. But I'm surprised, Anita, that you would not support uh Miss Nelson uh in her job or this this board. So, >> may you respond? >> Yeah, you can. I'm just I'm just saying. So, I I fully support the mission. I support the district. I do not support the chaos.
I do not support burning it down like it's a dumpster fire. But, um we have to move forward. And I think this is just a good a good start by supporting showing that there is a majority of the board supports the administration. >> As board members, we hire the superintendent. We support the cabinet. We support the teachers certificated. We support classified. We support the students, parents, and community. We do do resolutions that support teachers, especially we have two on here for teachers and classified or certificated and classified having a resolution to s to support our superintendent and our executive cabinet, our senior um administrators. No problem. The problem is attacking or maybe attacking is not the right word, but the rest of it with the unnamed board member, that's where I have a problem. If it was simply a resolution in support, I would not have any problem.
It's the rest of the resolution. And it's misleading because it says resolution and support for the superintendent but yet it does that but also goes in uh the unnamed board member and attacking and that leads to speculation. I have a problem with that. I I do not think it's best practice. I do not think it's the right thing. I do not think it's healing. It's divisive. If this um resolution was simply supporting, that's one thing, but it's not. >> Well, here's your chance because it says right here, adopt resolution number 252609 in support of Superintendent Train Nelson. Put all the other stuff behind it and just do the right thing. I'm I'm I'm >> basically you're asking to remove that language. That's what you're saying. >> Yes. Okay. Um, and I read everything, Rick, and it could be titled something, but I'm going to read the whole thing, and I cannot morally and ethically support that part of it.
I'm sorry, but I cannot. I've read it numerous times. I cannot. >> Well, I think uh in my line of work, it's called a copout. I think you're just using that as an excuse because of um you're feeling that um some pressure. >> I don't I feel pressure every day, but I'm going to vote how I do. You can say that I'm copying out, but I'm saying I'm true to my self and my integrity. I would not vote for something that is going to name some an unnamed person and put allegations. It's not right. It's not the right thing to do. >> Well, we could put Miss Longshore in the wording and if that makes it better, it wouldn't be anonymous and it wouldn't be misleading. Would that help? we put her name in there that she's the one that's caused a lot of these issues and a lot of the slander towards the staff and the false allegations.
We can do that. I'm good with that. In fact, when I first read it, I thought, well, we should have probably done it. But I didn't have any part in writing this. I didn't get on the phone with anybody. I just it just showed up one day on the agenda. So, >> well, if you did get involved, that would be a violation of the Brown Act because there would be three people. But um may I say something, Madame President? Um we've been listening to this quite a bit and I and I I just I'm just a little bit troubled. Um troubled in the sense that um this conversation wouldn't have occurred if there wasn't allegations that have been floating around. And um when the first speaker was going on, I had to find the letter from the super uh San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools because that's always the conversation that keeps coming up about misappropriation of funds.
Um it keeps coming up and I'm going to read this so that I can go on record. AB1200 was created to ensure the local educational agencies throughout California are adequately prepared to meet their financial obligations and empowers county superintendent to provide fiscal and operational oversight to ensure fiscal solvency. And this is a letter that was written from the county to Mrs. Nelson on February 3rd. The county superintendent of schools is required by law to review and examine the budget and LCAP's first and second interim reports and unodudited actuals financial statements as prepared by the district to determine the financial solveny of the district. The county superintendent also reviews collective bargaining agreements and monitors district corrective action for certain audit exceptions. Oversight responsibilities are specified under Assembly Bill AB1200, AB 2756, AB1840, and related legislation. When examining adopted budgets submitted by districts, education code section subsection C requires the county superintendent of schools to determine if the budget complies with the criteria and standards adopted by the state board pursuant to education code 33127.
Two, determine whether the budget will allow the district to meet its financial obligations during the fiscal year and will enable the district to satisfy its multi-year financial state commitments. Three, determine whether the budget includes the expenditures necessary to implement the LCAP. Four, determine whether the budget includes combined assigned and unassigned ending fund balance that exceeds the minimum recommendation reserve for economic uncertainties. Five, approve, conditionally approve or disapprove the budget by September 15. Conditionally approved and disapproved budgets must then be resubmitted by October 22nd for approval or disapproval. The budget review includes an analysis of 10 criteria with standards and additional information about the status of the budget. The 10 criteria are average daily attendance enrollment ADA to enrollment local control funding formula LCFF revenue salaries and benefits other revenues and expenditures facilities maint maintenance deficit spending fund and cash balances and reserves. School district budgets are measured against the standards for each of these criteria.
In addition to the criteria and standards, the review must identify additional information regarding contingent liabilities, use of one-time revenues for ongoing expenditures, use of ongoing revenues for one-time expenditures, contingent contingent revenues, contributions, long-term commitments, unfunded liabilities, status of labor agreements, local control and accountability plan, and LCAP expenditures. Deviations from the standards must be explained and may affect the approval of the budget that is on California code of uh code of regs title 5 division 1 chapter 14 subchapter 8 article 1. When examining the interim financial reports, it requires the county superintendent of schools to determine if the report complies with the criteria and standards adopted by the state board pursuant to education code 33127. Determine whether the report will allow the district to meet its financial obligations during the fiscal year and will enable the district to satisfy its multi-year financial commitments. Three, certify the report as positive, qualified, or negative based on the financial conditions of the district.
The review includes an analysis of 10 criteria with standards and supplemental information about status of the budget at interim report time. The 10 criteria are fund and cash balances, reserves, re deficit spending, ADA, enrollment, ADA to enrollment, LCS, LCFF's revenue, salaries and benefits, other revenues and expenditures and facilities maintenance. Each of these criteria has a standard by which it is measured. In addition to the criteria and standards, the review must identify additional information regarding contingent liabilities, use of one-time revenues for ongoing expenditures, contingent revenue contributions, long-term commitments, unfunded liabilities, temporary interfund borrowing, status of labor agreements, and the status of other funds. Deviations from the standards must be explained and may affect the interim certification when reviewing audit exe exemptions contained in the district in the district's audit report education code section 421020 subsection I requires the county superintendent of schools to to determine whether each audit exception has been corrected or whether the agency has developed an acceptable plan of correction in the following areas.
Attendance, inventory of equipment, internal control, miscellaneous, instructional material fund, program funds, teacher mis assignments, information reported on the school accountability report card. Business services performs these required duties on behalf of the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools. We have a highly technical undocumented process and experienced staff that perform these reviews. We are able to compare the district's submitted reports with the financial system to ensure the reports are accurate. Reports go through three different technical reviews to ensure that all aspects are carefully reviewed and scrutinized to ensure that an anomalies, if any, are identified. Any deviation from the criteria and standards are communicated to the district with formal letter and any technical corrections are communicated to staff. The county's fiscal oversight process supported by the district's recent Figma report and the last three annual audit reports have not exposed any instances of misappropriation of district funds.
And the reason I have chosen to read this out loud is I know that many people have a copy and many people didn't go through it, but I wanted to go on record that the county of San Bernardino that is managing billions of m dollars from different schools districts combined and all of their expert um staff that can manage that can count the money before we can count what we have in our wallet. They have come out and they have said they have not noticed any mismanagement of funds. And having said that, I think it is time for us to put to rest this conversation of mismanagement of money because if there is any mismanagement of money and the county of San Bernardino that now accounts back to the state of California of what we sent forward, they must also explain why they will not see it with all of these walls that they have put in place to be able to do the checks and balances.
At the individual schools, we have people that count money and another person counts money and another person counts the same money. Even in student monies, there are more than one people's eyes that will be counting the money. And so to rely on one person to constantly tell us that the money that the county is counting is not accurate and the money that our CBO that we have hired is not accurate and the money that the state is looking at is not accurate becomes a little bit tiring. So my question is, are we here to cater to the board or are we here to cater to the children, the families and the staff that we are working for? Because it just seems that every time we come to a board meeting, we are spending an awful amount of time car catering to one board member, two board members, three board members that can't seem to get along.
And we need to get on with the business of servicing the kids. The kids that don't have a vote yet. Their parents do. The kids who are paying the salaries of the people who are working in our district because if they don't come to school, there won't be that ADA to cover it. And why are we constantly spending so much time sitting at a board meeting having a conversation on something that is not going to make the life of a teacher better in the classroom? That is our goal to make sure that the life of a teacher is better in the classroom. If it is a verbiage that we need to cut out, cut the verbiage out. But let us be clear that on this day on this April 2nd of this board meeting that it is going to be recorded that this conversation did occur.
So even if we took out a verbiage that is offensive to one or two board members, it doesn't change anything because it's still on record that that conversation did occur. But let me go back to the superintendent for which we are here to make sure that you all understand what her job is. Her job is to cater to the children that we bring to our schools every single day. when some of us are still catching our last dream in the morning. She's already up and running. She knows when the buses leave and she knows when the buses get back home. She knows when the students are not on campus. She knows when the teachers are not on campus. She is doing everything that we've asked of her. She has put aside personal issues to be able to come out here to service our children. Our children, not your children, not our belongs to all of us.
You all sat here and watched a parent chastise me for saying something about her child. I understand that. I really truly understand it. But in order for us to move forward as a board, we have to get out of this pointing fingers. And if we must disagree as a board, it is important that we disagree in the back room and we come out here to do the service of the people. We do the service of the children, the service of our our school. I can't go all the way in San Bernardino or anywhere and somebody says we watch out your board meeting. Our board meeting cannot be that. We are a place of love. Appleo Valley is a place where I have always loved to be. We're spending way too much time fighting over, you know, what did the board do, what did the CBO do, what did this person do.
Let us move on. Our children deserve a a a functional board because if we're not functioning, our staff will not get that memo. If a teacher writes me a letter, I want the teacher to know that I have received the letter and but I'm going to forward it to the superintendent because she is the only one that makes that decision. We will tell her what we we have seen, but please handle this one. Like Mrs. Longshaw stated, we got paid $400 for over 6 months. I got paid 93 cents, but I still showed up. Let us move away from the personalities and move into the business of doing what is best for this district. What is best for us? When I see you on the street, am I going to cross the street because you are a teacher or because you are classified or because you didn't agree with me?
We need to get to a place where we agree with each other and move on. We're wasting way too much time. I've not been accustomed to board meetings that go till midnight. And I want to be very clear that we are not going to be doing this midnight run anymore because the staff here come tomorrow morning, they're getting up to go to work. We might say we are not going to be getting up today, but they're going to be at work. We are not being sensitive to the people who we are here to to serve. We need to stop this back and forth thing is enough. That's all I'm saying. And I'm I'm sure as far as I'm concerned the superintendent if she wants to be to to be on this in this district I'm here to support her. Um if I can respond. Thank you Trusty Apara.