001Okay. All right. I'm going to gavel. We are going to call this meeting to order at 6.30 p.m. Good evening. Thank you, everyone, for joining us here at our February 12th scheduled board meeting. I do need to note that Trustee Sarah Katanigo is participating remotely for this meeting under the Just Cause provision of the Brown Act, and we will be doing a roll call vote for all of our votes this evening. And I believe Sarah needs to join us and disclose if anyone is with her. Good evening, everyone. I am participating remotely with the Just Cause of needing to care for a family member, and there are no other adults over 18 in the room with me. Thank you, Trustee Katanigo. And please note, everyone here, that we are recording this meeting at the direction
002of the board, and the recording may capture images and sounds of those who are attending the meetings. And so we first need to approve the agenda. Are there any changes to the agenda? Thank you. Thank you. And then Veronica. Roll call will be Trustee Katanigo. Aye. Trustee Hamrani. Aye. Trustee Lipkin. Aye. Trustee Kinnian. Aye. Trustee Burke. Aye. All right. The agenda is approved. And before we get into the wonderful presentation that we're very excited for, I do need to review a few guidelines to help our meeting run smoothly. During tonight's meeting, there will be time for public comment on matters both on the agenda during each agenda item as well as not on the agenda towards the end of the meeting. Please wait to speak at the appropriate time. We also ask that if you're
003raising concerns about students, please refrain from sharing any information that may expose a student's identity. This is a public recorded meeting, and we are obligated to maintain student privacy. If you'd like to address the board here in person, we ask that you fill out a blue card. We will get blue cards. Yes. And if you are online, you will use the raise hand feature. According to our board bylaws, each speaker will have three minutes to address the board unless changed by a board. We appreciate and support stakeholder input at our meetings and have established these guidelines to make sure members of the public have a chance to express their thoughts and opinions and the board can conduct its business effectively and efficiently. And now we will turn to our spotlight on excellence, which features Arroyo
004Upper Elementary School. That's right. I'm super proud to introduce Principal Mindy Shelton and her Arroyo Eagles, who are going to share all the amazing things going on at Arroyo. Thank you so much, Andy. Thank you. I am thrilled to be here with all 20 members of our Eagle Council, who are selected to represent their classes. Each class has two representatives. I put it out there to them thinking a few would be interested, and all 21 have been nominated. All of them. So I really, really appreciate the time that all of our families took to be here, and we're really excited to share with you a day in the life of an eagle. I'm going to talk a little bit first about some of the things that make Arroyo special and make our Upper Elementary program
005special, and then really I'm going to leave most of the talking to our expert eagles, who can tell you all about what life is like for them at Arroyo. This is our San Carlos School District Learner Profile. I know you've all seen this before, but this is really at the heart of everything that we do at Arroyo. We're not going to spend a lot of time talking about it, and we didn't organize our presentation around this necessarily, but I share it because I hope that as you hear from our students, you'll see evidence of these pieces in the things that we do all day, every day, and we may not have time where we say we are being reflective right now, but reflection is built into so much of the work that we do at
006Arroyo, as are all nine of the pieces of our learning process. Our theme at Arroyo this year is We Soar Higher When We Soar Together. It's all about building community and using all of our strengths together to really lift up everyone in our community and make sure we're bringing out the best in everyone. So our staff has t-shirts with this design on it. We did a school-wide art project this year that you'll actually see a picture of at the end. Every student designed a wing of our eagle that lives in the library. It's good to see that at the end. But our goals at Arroyo this year are really about supporting the needs of our upper elementary students. So it's an age where having a sense of belonging and connection with their peers is really
007so important, and so it's a time when friendships can change and they really start to develop their own sense of identity and who they are, and so we have a lot of programs and things in place to help them discover that and to find people that they have connections with. Next slide. So this is where I'm going to turn it over to our eagles and they are organized into kind of three groups. First we're going to talk about community building and leadership opportunities and they're going to share a little bit about what they get to a student at Arroyo. So first group come on in. They're a little nervous so they're going to be nice and loud. I'm Hannah and I'm a fourth grader at Arroyo. I'll be talking about Eagle Council. Eagle Council members
008get elected to represent their class and we get to meet with Michelle and the rest of Eagle Council on Tuesdays or Recess. At our meetings we get to plan service drives, work on school improvement, and plan spirit days. Two to three times a year we also get to lead morning assignments. Hi I'm Sophia and I'm going to be telling and I'm in fourth grade and I'm going to be telling you about morning meetings. Morning meetings are once a week led by Eagle Council and Michelle. We tell the school about what's going on and what we need to discuss. Ms. Trezak also does the council of honor where she teaches us about emotions and everything. This is a diverse celebration at Arroyo where students can bring food from their culture to share and perform in front
009of everyone else. Hi my name is Colin and I'm in fourth grade from Arroyo. I'm here to talk about the glow party. The glow party is a fun celebration where people could connect and dance each year. Many people enjoy the celebration and light up the school with fun neon colors. My name is Quinn and I'm in fourth grade and I'm here to talk about the Halloween parade. The Halloween parade is a fun community building activity where you can show off your costume and play fun meeting game surprises. There is also a haunted house which is a fun attraction to go to with friends. We have a few other things that are listed that we didn't have students talk about. I let students choose the topics that they wanted to talk about and give you a
010little taste of that. I shouldn't say it's also a great lesson in writing because having to write something succinct in one or two paragraphs that still gives a little bit of a picture. It's not an easy thing to do but they managed it. Next slide and next we're going to talk about our standards-based academics and all the things that they are learning throughout the day. Group two, come on up. We're going to have the speaker stand on this black mat and leave the nice big lollipops. Hello, my name is Thomas and at Arroyo they give us hard enough math problems that you don't get bored but not too hard that just can't solve them at all and every teacher will adjust to every student's pace and they'll help class they learn because everyone's good or
011not as good at math. Hello, I'm Penneby and I'm a fifth grader at Arroyo. I'm here to talk about ELA. ELA at Arroyo is a literary subject where you learn proper grammar, read novels as a class like front desk, and write creative stories using prompts. It focuses on building writing stamina and learning things from the novels we read. Hello, my name is Ashlyn and I'm in fourth grade here to talk about social studies. At Arroyo we do a lot of social studies. We learn a lot of things that happen in history and the geography around that. In fourth grade we learn about California history, for example missions, and in fifth grade we learn about US history like the 13 columns. Hi, my name is Blake. I'm from Arroyo and I'm in fifth grade. For science
012at Arroyo we learn about the properties of matter while in fifth grade. In fourth grade we learn about the adaptations of species. For example, in fourth grade we mean animals and the adaptations they need to survive in their in their environment. Hi, I'm Emily Zollmer and I'm doing PE. At Arroyo, PE is a mandatory elective taught by Coach Mack, Coach Nazar, and Coach Davis. We have fun activities and sports like volleyball, dodgeball, and demo. Hi, I'm Izzy. I'm in fifth grade and my topic is electives. At Arroyo, fourth grade has PE and rotates on a wheel of Spanish, art, and multimedia. Fifth grade also has PE and gets to choose from band, orchestra, and design. Okay, I'm talking about SEL again. SEL is a social-emotional program that we access through Sewer to Grow. Usually thrice
013a month or so we do lessons based off of slides that focus on identity, beliefs, and diversity. Sometimes we even do projects like we taught like we taught fourth graders about how to be a super learner. I'm Tommy. I'm in fourth grade at Arroyo and my topic is PBL. PBL stands for project-based learning. An example of PBL is animal adaptation for fourth grade. With little to PBL as well, the adaptation project includes California regions, research, and overall learning experience. Next slide, please. And then on top of all those community building and leadership opportunities and all of the core parts of our academic day, we offer enrichment opportunities that let students experience things outside of the classroom and in different ways. In some of these cases they can kind of pick and choose things that they
014are interested in and topics that they might be wanting to learn more about and in other cases it's just a chance for some experiential learning. So group three, come on up. My name is Eleanor. I'm Aiden. We're in fifth grade and we're going to talk about Art in Action. Art in Action is a monthly activity where parent volunteers help out with teaching about an artist and their style of art. Some examples of projects we have done are realism, abstract, water coloring, and claymation. Hi, my name is Amy and I'm in fourth grade at Arroyo. I'm here to talk to you about libraries. The library is a fun place to read books, chat with friends, and play games. Sometimes there's even a fun craft host by the San Mateo County Library and even if there isn't,
015you can still have lots of fun. I'm Ivy and I'm Alexandra. We're both in fourth grade, fifth grade, and we're going to talk about overnight field trips. Here in Arroyo, each grade has an overnight field trip. For fourth grade it's Sierra Outdoor School and for fifth grade it's at Dora. Both are for learning in the major and to learn about the history of this language. I'm Laura and I'm a fourth grader at Arroyo. I'm here to talk about Ropes. Ropes is a totally optional project for fourth graders at Arroyo. Ropes stands for right of passage experience. For this project you can work with people to community service, use tech, build stuff, and do so much more. I'm going to be talking about the STEM Fair. The STEM Fair is a chance for fifth, sixth, seventh,
016and eighth graders to be judged by real scientists on their experiment and have a slides presentation about it. Hi, I'm Wesley and I'm going to tell you a little bit about Technovation. Technovation is a program at after school where girls can learn to code and programming to change the world. I'm Alexandra, I'm Aiden, and I'm Ivy. We're in fifth grade and we're going to talk about school plays. Almost every year there's a school play for fourth and fifth graders. From Arroyo, Charter, and Mariposa. Preview shows we have done are Aladdin, Willy Wonka, and Now a Little Mermaid. Our actors who all wanted to perform together. Next slide please. And of course I would be remiss without acknowledging the hard work of our amazing staff that made all of this possible, so I wanted to show
017them. Up in the top corner is our EGLE art project. Every student created a wing as a part of our EGLE and it's hard to see but it says we soar higher when we spread together. So thank you for taking the time to learn a little bit more about a day in the life of an EGLE and I hope you've enjoyed hearing from our students and I just have to say EGLE Council, I'm so proud of you. That was fantastic. Thank you so much Principal Shelton. Thank you EGLEs. It really filled me with joy looking at the leaders of tomorrow who are joining us tonight and it took me right back. I am the mom of two EGLEs who are thriving as they enter teenagehood. This took me way back to art and action and
018Halloween and theater and it really is a special place and I think I see Angela Naughton online and wanted to just give a special shout out to her. Arroyo was our school as we came out of the pandemic and back to in-person learning and she really worked magic with both of my sons but thank you to all of our amazing educators at this school. Thank you. Appreciate that we work hard to create a joyful community and hopefully that and I think we're going to now recess for a few minutes for a photo. We are now at the consent agenda which contains items that are routine in nature and for which no board discussion is anticipated so we act upon them with a single vote. Is there any public comment on the consent agenda? I need
019a motion to approve the consent agenda. I move to approve. Okay I will do the roll call. Trustee Casanaga. Aye. Trustee Hungarani. Aye. Trustee Lipkin. Aye. Trustee Nguyen. Aye. Trustee Park. Aye. The agenda consent agenda passes. All right and now our information and discussion items. The purpose of these items is for information discussion only. No forward action will be taken. Staff will present and then there will be time to ask clarifying questions and we will start with a teaching and learning update on innovative extended learning opportunities with Assistant Superintendent Barber. Well thanks to Mindy Shelton and her cast of 20 Royal Eagles. You heard a little bit about what we're going to talk about anyway. It was very exciting that that was part of their presentation. How cool is that? As President Kinnahan said tonight
020we're going to highlight some of our extended learning opportunities. These are not the only extended learning opportunities. These are just sort of the largest opportunities that we have with the highest number of students that participate. Some of them, two of them are legacy and one of them is pretty new and we thought that would be a nice combination of things to highlight. So appreciate your attention tonight to some really exciting opportunities that our kids have. You saw that you saw part of this tonight too. You're going to see the next slide as well. I love it when we have a through line. Our strategic plan guides all that we do and at the heart of that plan is the learner profile and all of our activities that we're highlighting tonight fit directly into that learner
021profile and really our goal is to develop those future-ready durable skills in our students so that they are ready to move to the next level in our in this case high school and beyond. Those areas as you know curious problem solvers, self-warrantlers, and kind citizens as Mindy so aptly added to her presentation as well. So this is another slide you already saw tonight. In particular these projects really give students a chance to exhibit problem-solving ownership, growth mindset, self-awareness, in some cases collaboration, and in all cases community. And the others are it's not that they're not at the heart of the project it's just that they're not necessarily at the forefront of the project. As I like to say to the kids at Ropes, so I have the pleasure of greeting every student that does Ropes
022project because they come in before they get deployed to their room. I also have the pleasure of being at the STEM Fair Awards and doing a little thank you for participating before the awards are given out. And I often say to them you know your award is your participation and your award is that you finished the project. You did something from start to completion and it's not about whether you won or not it's about the fact that you did something that you wanted to do that you were interested in and you completed that project with minimal input and certainly not at school. So that takes a level of dedication and all of these qualities shine when you have a chance to do that. So I love meeting the kids and talking with them at those
023opportunities. So clearly these are not the only opportunities that our students have to participate in innovation or STEM facing activities. As you heard tonight from some of our Royal Eagles they talked about some of these pieces. They talked about science. So STEM Scopes is our core program and it is an activities-based science program that's aligned to the next generation science standards and really highlights and allows students the ability to exhibit their problem solving. And as that moves up into the middle school becomes very lab-based. So we're really lucky in our middle schools to have lab classrooms and our students engage in that type of lab activity often and if you've had a student that's gone through that you understand how important that is and that is not the case in all places. Some places it's
024science is out of a textbook and that's not our model here in St. Carlos. And we are so excited about our STEAM rotations that are underway. We had this idea a couple of years ago when we started to receive Prop 28 dollars. You might recall Proposition 28 was an initiative by voters to expand arts and music and education. And as a school district that already has a really robust arts and education program we thought well what are the other acceptable uses of these dollars. And a couple of those acceptable uses are obviously arts and makerspace which is some of it and coding is part of it. And all of the activities that our students are doing in TK to 3 are all in those two areas. So we have two STEM associates now who are
025classified employees that are facilitating these lessons at all four sites and it gets better every time I go. I was there just earlier this week. Both associates have come a really long way in a really short time thanks to some guidance from Kristin and Curtis who is our teacher on special assignment and from the teachers that they're working. Our teachers have also been phenomenal in making this happen. So we're just so excited that we have that. We've been we've been sort of toying with it the last few years. We've had a model where we used Legarza. A BA has always had a STEAM rotation from my parents and we're just so proud that it's happening at all four of the elementary sites now. And every student is getting the same opportunity. In sixth or eighth
026grade there are many opportunities for students to engage in electives that are either innovation or coding or technology minded. And then you are probably aware that some sites have other smaller level activities. There's a STEM fair for example at Rundle. I'm sure that Jennifer remembers fondly. And many of our campuses have smaller opportunities for students to do things in a more and kind of a safer format than a district-wide event. So we're going to start off with ropes and you probably remember Ashley Brown, our ropes coordinator, coming last year and giving a really a large overview of the ropes program. I think for me tonight what I really wanted to do was talk about obviously the connection to the learn profile is really what we're highlighting and the number of students that we have participating
027which continues to rise every single year. It is amazing every year I anticipate well how many do we have and this year we have over 300 students participating which is just over 10 of our population. So that's really really exciting. As you know if you if you've had a chance to judge each student has to complete a project in a certain area. So these are the areas that they can choose from and last year service learning was a new opportunity. And they have the opportunity then to be I say we say judged in quotation marks because they're really not being judged. If you've been a judge at ropes you know that you're really more listening and asking questions and observing and really encouraging the student to finish what they started because this is really a
028culmination of the project. So it's just so exciting. One of the nicest parts about ropes is the personal interactions that you get to have with students whether you're judging or the energy that's in the atrium at CMS as parents come in and engage with each other and the students are anticipating way they're so excited. And again that is a gift of our community that our community is so involved in this project and that sometimes students do it only in fourth grade sometimes they do it in all three grades. But the bottom line is it's a fantastic opportunity for them. I mentioned Ashley already but I can't highlight how much she's added to the program. So she came on not knowing a whole lot about ropes but thought it sounds like a great opportunity and she
029has since added pieces to it where students can get mentorship from former students who did projects older you know students that are in high school or maybe there's a seventh grader that's not eligible and in some cases from teachers and really trying to also help more get more participation from students that that come to us from East Palo Alto as well and providing mentors for those students too. So as I said we're up to just about 200 projects over 300 participants. Charter does have also participating students in this project. 110 independent projects. It's just amazing and I just can't wait to meet the kids that first week of March when we have three nights where we all get to interact with them. I would be remiss if I did not mention we last week we
030had actually earlier this week Monday night we had a judges training that Ashley hosted we was on zoom and we have over 90 volunteers to judge this year which is just fantastic. So we're back with this participation and with that number of judges we are back I think we have now exceeded the number of participants we had with a higher student population pre-pandemic. So it's just so exciting. I can remember my first year and thinking wow this is amazing project and it's just such it's a signature piece of what we're able to offer students in an outside of school project. So now we'll transition over to our science and STEM fair which again is pretty much completely volunteer run. Bob Dubrow has been running our science fair for since I've been here in well over
03115 or 20 years I think. He and his wife Susan remember the times when you know fifth graders had to do a science project and you know they harken back to those times and that is their passion. Their former parents in the school district they still live in the community this is their way of giving back. Both of their children are SESD graduates and I believe both have PhDs in science related fields and their daughter came back and judged last year as part of the panel. It's pretty amazing that our students have access to that level of scientists in our own community. Bob assembles an amazing group of judges every year and if you have the opportunity to go I know that Jennifer went by and Ralph was able to go and Chrisann helps facilitate.
032I've been there often. You see the interaction between the judges and students and the level of engagement that students get really prepares them if they're interested in moving into an ASM career and be you know in a science fair. So it's a unique opportunity in that way. It's like nothing I've ever seen in the realm to be honest and I've been involved obviously in math and science in my entire career and it always just makes me smile when I'm there and I get to watch the students with that level of interaction and expertise. So here we have a full gamut. This is the most projects we have had since I've been here. I don't ever remember having over 40 projects. One of the comments that Bob made to me was it's not just the number
033this year it was the the level of the projects. The quality of the projects it really the judges had a tough time choosing you know who was going to get first in second place. You can see that the topics range from you know a cookie baking project to how to predict aftershocks in an earthquake. Okay so we're talking about the full gamut of pieces. One that I want to talk about down at the bottom a cat port security entry system. We didn't embed the video but I thought about it. It was a one minute short pitch and basically what the students did was design a cat door that would not allow the cat to come in if they were bringing a present with it. A present being right a mouse or you know whatever they
034whatever rodent they might have found outside and they used AI and a camera and they made a workable model that was a four. So just amazing truly amazing great project but there were so many so many and remember that first and second place I always tell students it's not about winning it's about participating it's about finishing and it's about doing it again. That's what we want is we want them to continue to do it. First and second place winners in sixth or eighth grade do qualify for the fair at San Mateo County office and then also some of them qualify for the Golden Gate Science Fair which is the Bay Area wide science fair. A smaller set has qualified out of there to go to the state science fair and an even smaller set then
035has qualified to go to the national science fair which leads me to my next slide. I believe I believe that Bowen and his parents were going to try to be here but this slide is Bowen Bowen Wang was chosen as one of the top 300 middle school scientists last year qualified through our little San Carlos science fair and through San Mateo County and through the state science fair and there were almost 1900 entrants and he finished in the top 300. Just an amazing accomplishment. His project is highlighted here I was able to add that today just to give you a sense he was in the sixth grade competing against eighth seventh and eighth grade students who had clearly done this before and this was Bowen's first time and his project was about breakwaters and the
036best shaped block to reduce the level of of erosion and so he had the chance to talk about that numerous times and was it was just an amazing project and there's a picture of Bowen that Tom sent last week from the distinguished school logo there at CMS. This year of course Bowen did another fantastic project called the aftershock oracle where I would talk about it but I just mess it up to be honest but basically in hearing his pitch he developed a way to predict large aftershocks based on clusters of smaller aftershocks using an application so we'll see how far that one goes but a shout out to Bowen and to his family just an amazing amazing project and again not possible without Bob Dubrow and his team of scientists and the level at which
037our students have the opportunity to participate. Lastly I want to highlight something you heard a little bit about during the TL spotlight last board meeting so the entrepreneur fair was its inaugural send-off and this students have the opportunity to combine lower profile with some some business principles and we had 29 businesses that were made and 70 participants and you can see some of the businesses that were that that came out of this I know that Superintendent Frenchers had the opportunity to go in and and Trustee Park was there as well and they're in some of the pictures that we have that go with the product with this project and our students were so excited at this opportunity in fact some of them still are talking about it when I go by their campus so it's
038really exciting as as Principal Gulati said I'm advancing there it goes hey it's a gold mine literally a gold mine for innovation and world learning and the direct connections were are so clear right the the direct connections to our lower profile critical design teamwork leadership resilience growth mindset goal setting and persuasive communication right that's the that's C that comes up in all of these things but it also blends in these basic business principles you know and the opportunity is to try to talk about make some money and talk about that process and whether it fails or not it's a fantastic opportunity for our kids to go through that iterative process so that is what we have tonight so happy to the last thing I want to say is a couple of these also are highlighted
039in our LCAP ropes has an actual measure that's highlighted but they're they're also talked about in goal five which is community opportunities as well thank you so much for highlighting those three programs comments or questions no do you have a sure I'll say something I mean I think just having been a roach judge last year like I can simply bash these are all really great programs and so I'm just excited we have them I guess the only thought that I would put out there you know is just thinking about sort of succession planning for some of these because it just feels like we have some very specific individuals who are sort of the core of making these things beats and so I'm just worried that at some point you know hoping that that's not anytime
040soon but like who's going to take it on next is the thing that I would want to think about and so I don't have like a you know we must do something creative tomorrow kind of thought on it but just I want to make sure that we're building up the bench so that these things can continue for generations because they are so valuable to the community and to the schools and the kids so on those lines for us the ropes project used to lie here in the district office and somebody from the district office did it in fact initially it was the assistant to the superintendent that did the projects and then it went on to curriculum and instruction whereas you know we don't have an army of folks to do that and one of
041the one of the things we did was we thought what if we offered a stipend for somebody to do this and Ashley was had been interested in taking on some leadership opportunities and so we offered it and in that way we do feel like that makes that a little bit more sustainable and there's somebody there who can say this is what I did if you want to continue doing that should she say I don't want to do this anymore or maybe she gets a partner right that first year and ends it over of the STEM fair I have the same concern like you know how long will Bob and Susan stay in the area and yet I have faith Chrisann's been really involved the last couple of years as well and she lives in the
042community and you know I have faith that she would be able to continue it as to a certain extent and or one of Bob's judges who might also be interested in taking it over but it is definitely a concern I know that the PTA at TLS along with who's really spurring on the entrepreneur fair and I think it's getting momentum and I think it will be sticking around that's great thank you I'm glad there's great thoughts I'll just say I just realized that my kids never took these innovative extensions but they didn't they still have a love for science or other things that happen in this school district that allow them to do that but I'm glad that for those who are even you know more motivated there's opportunities for them and I think all
043of them are great and to be fair my daughter did not have an opportunity to do the entrepreneurship fair my son did but I love that there's yeah we've set out the new things that are always that we are innovating as a district creating new things for our students if I may one of the things I was talking to someone about recently is that I think it's important to give a foundation for students and everything so PE is offered to all students and they learn all the sports but then there will be some students where soccer or swimming is their jam we make sure everybody gets exposure to theater arts and creative arts and then some their thing will be theater in the same way that we're really lucky that we have such good investments
044from our education foundation because we have some of the best science curriculum and makerspace and all of that and so this is the avenue then for the students who are interested in science so to your point that students should have that full access so that then if they want to compete in the thing that's their jam that that's available to them and I'm just really proud that that we have that in our district yeah I would take you back on that now that I have a high schooler and he did participate some of these I think these foundational programs really help them hit the ground running in high school when they have to take even more ownership of you know the path that they're going to pursue and I can see the through line from
045these early extended learning opportunities that they participated in are there um any public comment on this item we're also checking for says yes um and trustee casenago any comment sure I was actually just wondering how I should indicate if I had comment I don't know if you all can see me or not um and I can I can see you on my screen okay um sure yeah I'll just my daughter has done both ropes and the science fair and had a fantastic experience with both um and I got to attend the the science fair awards night and it was so cool to hear all of the different projects and sort of like tonight just to see those kids stand up in front of a you know big room and talk with big voices about the
046things that they know and care about um as always just very inspiring so thank you hans for the presentation and for continuing to support these programs sure thank you great I think we can move to our next item which is a nutrition update yeah yeah thank you it's a bit of a shift from the excellent programs you've seen but universal meals on our nutrition program is is important because students need to be well fed in order to be engaged in the learning process so if they're hungry if they don't have food you know that's a challenge for them so happy to present an update on our nutrition program so this is an informational item for the board no action is needed tonight but I'm happy to answer any questions as we go along here our
047universal meals program is open and available to all students there is no pre-ordering actually for it so go on here no pre-ordering is required students may choose from two breakfast options daily typically cereal is one of them with a rotating item depending on what the offering is for that day they receive a fruit or vegetable and milk with that meal lunch includes at least two choices sometimes three or four daily with one hot option at least one hot option along with that with fruit and vegetable and milk as well our current vendor is the lunch master we are in year four of a five-year contract the fifth year is an optional year so we do not have to choose them but we can if things are going well the slide you see here shows uh
04824,774 breakfasts served through december and 77,043 lunches served through december shows the scale that we have we just updated those numbers today for january so through january we're now up to 33,792 breakfasts and 93,825 lunches served total throughout the district so the program is currently self-sustaining which means there's no need for contribution from general fund to support the program financially we maintain a district goal of 10 or less for waste and that's what helps it maintain its fiscal stability sites carefully monitor participation and ordering to make sure they're in alignment and reduce the waste as much as possible this is an ongoing challenge because you have to order two weeks in advance so we closely monitor that we help and we we go in and visit and do site visits to ensure that things are
049going smooth at the site as well so that's one of the challenges schools have no schools ran out of food this year with the exception of one where we almost did at britain acres because there was just an error in the number of items that were one day but lunch master was able to to come in and deliver a hundred meals before lunchtime in an emergency situation so that was really good that our vendor was able to come in and make sure that everybody had a meal for that day we have parent volunteers that assist with collecting the waste at some of our schools terra linda mariposa the charter school central and arroyo so we have parent volunteers that come and deliver that food to second harvest food bank we are looking to see how
050we can incorporate the other schools into that but since they're smaller there isn't as much waste at those schools so right now we don't have them included in the process we collect feedback from our wellness committee and most recently from ptac in regards to how the program is going and so we use that feedback to to improve the experience for the students we make sure that we as much as possible provide as many choices throughout the day because you know lunch comes in shifts so we make sure that every shift has all choices available for students to make sure that as many students as possible get their first choice we do have bulk ordering lunch master has been responsive to some of these feedback in regards to the packaging making sure it's environmentally friendly the
051meals themselves and how they're presented but also the quality of the meals and the nutrition in them and so they've been responsive but there is room to grow in that area and they have to stay within the nutritional guidelines set forth by the usda federal nutrition standards for universal use there has been mixed feedback on the food and some students say this is the best meal that they've had and they really enjoy it on a regular basis but then there's others that you know it's just not to their taste and and some days they they would prefer something else so we've had mixed feedback on the popularity of the meals and how they are so based on the feedback we've had we are exploring our options for vendors we think that we have an opportunity
052now where we can work with three other school districts woodside elementary and i'm sorry that on the handout in the agenda it's at hillsboro school district that was just a mistake it's los limitas that we're working with in this and portola valley are the three other schools that we're partnering with on a group rfp which is a request for proposal so that request proposal we are working with school food solutions a a consultant that does this work for many school districts and so by partnering with school food solutions we're lowering that cost to participate in that rfp we're also gaining the expertise this a contractor this consultant has because they have existing relationships with vendors and the districts we're working with have similar setups as far as their kitchens so they have a warmer and
053they have refrigerators there isn't much else to prepare the food as far as fresh food is concerned or scratch cooking so their kitchens are similar to ours with heating the food up keeping it warm and then keeping everything else refrigerated to make sure it doesn't go bad there are small school districts they have similar concerns that we do the feedback from their community is similar to the feedback we've had in regards to packaging as regards to making environment friendly making sure we have vegan options making sure we have all of the options available for all the students so that way that's why it makes sense for us to partner with this other these other school districts to move forward the group rfp because that provides us with a greater purchasing power so we can get
054a better price per meal if a vendor knows they're working with four school districts and not just one because then they have the economy of scale this expands vendor interest so when you have four school districts and you're working with a consultant you have more vendors that are interested in participating in that there are a few vendors that only respond to rfp's where school districts are working with consultants because they know the consultants have a consistent process they know they're clear and they're familiar with the process the consultant works with so there's not any misunderstandings or anything that is going to come out of when the rfp's were presented and evaluated our consultant agreement includes assistance with onboarding with the vendor in the beginning of the school year to make sure that it's a smooth
055opening to the school year and all the operations are taken care of and handled and and we don't have any last minute details that we didn't think of when working with the other school districts we're able to share our best practices and and experiences and learn from each other as we move forward in this process the contract that we will be agreeing upon is a one-year contract with an option to extend each year up to four years every contract we have we have to go out forbid every five years by regulation for cde and the child interest and services we have to put out another rfp every five years to make sure that we are staying competitive make sure we're we're utilizing the most appropriate vendor for our current needs the trade-off working in a
056group rfp process we all have to decide on the same vendor we're all currently using the same vendor the lunch master but in this process when we're evaluating we have to agree on that one vendor it doesn't lock us in for the entire five years like i explained with the contract it would lock us in for a year and then after that year if we evaluate the program and the vendor and we think that it's not meeting our needs we can then go out for another rfp that next year to change that situation we're planning a taste test on march 25th we'll be hosting it right here in this room and it'll be a group process loss will meet us and woodside elementary have indicated they want to participate in the group rfp with us
057portola valley has not fully committed to coming here and participate in that they have one scheduled on the 26th they felt it was important that they had students participate in their taste test which we felt the same way we wanted to have students and we wanted to have accessible to our community and you know our parents and staff that will be participating in that as well so it's just more convenient for us to house that here and have everybody with us we're incorporating the feedback we received from ptac and the wellness community committee into the evaluation and the scoring rubric that we will use to choose the vendor so in addition to that we have applied for the kitchen infrastructure training grant that's the kit grant we had a couple years ago we applied for
058that and it it replaced i think an oven or two in a refrigerator so it can also be used for training so we applied for that grant again and we're hoping we can get that and if we get that we can use that to improve some of the equipment we have in our kitchens so we can potentially expand our offerings to more scratch cooking and with that we're looking to partner with other school districts that have centralized kitchens that have the capacity to make those meals in bulk package them and serve them to deliver them and we would serve them to our students here but we would have to adjust some of the equipment and upgrade some more equipment for that to happen because right now the vended meals are packaged pre-packaged meals and they
059go in the warmer they come out and students get them and open them and they're not over the wall by our staff that concludes my short update and i will see if there are any questions thank you maybe i will start with trustee casenego if you have any other questions thank you um i can't remember the last time we talked about the nutrition program so i don't know especially for new trustees how much background they have sorry it's weird that i i'm not in the room with you all and i can't look at you talking to you um but but i think it's worth just sort of remembering as a group what a huge lift this was when the state put in the requirement um for all districts to offer free lunch and breakfast for
060any student um and you know the district has been as responsive as possible to feedback from our community in a situation where we really didn't have a lot of options or flexibility and the fact that this program is not you know that is supporting itself when we at first didn't know whether we'd be having to contribute you know hundreds of thousands of dollars in our general funding to general operating dollars to make it to make it work so um i just want to recognize and applaud the staff for you know bringing the program to where it is now um and i'm thrilled to hear that we might have um some more options or at least just have a more competitive process um so that the vendors have to hopefully you know make some improvements in
061terms of packaging and food quality um and just look forward to hearing um what we learn through the process sorry if you mentioned this but can you clarify if we're going on to rfp because of the feedback or because we have to for the every five years or both we have one more year on the contract so we're going um as a result of some of the feedback but also as a result as an opportunity to partner with other districts to see if we can improve our situation or our our our pricing so we do have one more year but we decided to take this opportunity to see if we can improve situation based on feedback and the opportunity and sorry sarah can i say one more thing about that um i think to piggyback
062on what ralph just said my memory is that when we first did this we really didn't have the option of working with any other district that every district was just sort of on its own to try to pull this together and you know there's obviously clear economies of scale but you know we really this i'm glad to hear that this is now an option because i don't recall that we even had that ability previously i have a two questions yes so on the slide where you talked about the feedback you got from keytac and committee and the last bullet said something about book ordering versus parent ordering what was the feedback that was given they did you did i think that comment were you at that meeting there have been questions uh in the beginning
063and jen gabrie could even weigh in on this uh we used to have parents order in the very beginning um and there was considerable waste as a result of that um or the adverse would happen which is uh youngsters wouldn't get meals or we couldn't match the meals up because it's really hard to uh to make sure that everybody put in their orders um there was some user error in place placing orders jen do you want to say more about that yeah the deadlines were very hard so if you forgot to put in your order it's a week a week in advance and then your child needs food that day you don't have food you have to get an emergency no i remember all that and i i'm curious are some people saying they want
064to go back to that because they do but you know what tracy i think um yeah sorry but i think sarah casenego brought up a really good point of the past of food not everybody knows the past of how how many challenges we faced in implementation of the nutrition mandate and so i think we want to hear people but i i don't think it hurts at all to revisit that we did try that and here were the results of that that you know we want to make sure that we're every student gets a meal that we don't have a lot of waste and we found that that happened but yes that comment does come almost every year and it's often just a new parent to the district why don't we do it this way the
065other school districts are working with our institute of bulk ordering as well not not individual meal ordering from parents so the other districts feel the same way we're both ordering would be the most effective to make sure there's equity across the district and i guess that was um one of my other questions but um with that as far as the rfp everyone is pretty aligned as far as what the similar type of what they want out of the vendor yeah we've had several meetings leading up to the decision to to participate in the group rfp process and we went back and forth and we determined we do have similar interests we have similar setups like i mentioned before our kitchens are very similar or we have similar needs and we want similar outcomes so we
066spent several meetings going through uh i met with the other cpos and and the consultant online going through every possibility and so yeah we we feel we're pretty pretty well aligned with what we're looking for from a vendor and then my third question the final question is um what is since we have that option for that fifth year with lunch master and we're going through like what's the timeline in which we have to decide what we're moving forward with in the next year uh that's a great question so we're hoping to have like i said the taste test on march 25th and then sometime in april we will have uh the the rfp's presented to us and the evaluation scoring so last year we renewed the contract in may so we're hoping to have a
067similar time frame where we can make that decision of going with the new vendor uh in about in around may may april or may i guess i i could go next so i first just as a general principle i'm glad to see the partnership with the other districts i think it's good to as a relatively small district it's good to find those economies of scale and and have that alignment um and i hadn't it hadn't really kind of hit me about the central kitchen until this whole conversation um and i remember i think at central there's a little bit of kitchen space that exists uh i'm just wondering if we as we think about up in the facility's master plan is there an opportunity to consider whether we want to be a central kitchen district
068basically providing more of those opportunities again i i'm sure there's like ventilation and all sorts of other shenanigans that have to go on to make that feasible but just wondering if that's an opportunity that we want to at least explore at some some stage in the master plan process yeah that's something we can we can explore like i said we're partnering looking for partners redwood city is is a school district that we reached out to they're not ready they need to improve their central kitchen and upgrade that before they're ready to distribute meals to other districts so salmon tail foster city is another opportunity we can can look to maybe partner with so we're looking for these opportunities and we can learn from that so if we have that partnership where they're providing the scratch
069cooked meals we can then visit and we can learn from that and then decide from there whether we can we can incorporate it into our current facilities without you know not too much of a cost great um i just want to i know sarah talked about it already but just underscore the appreciation for how this program has remained fiscally sustainable um i know we were very concerned that it would be a drain on the general fund when the mandate first came down so kudos on that and then i just want to thank our food services staff who have had to learn and adapt and really are that part of that feedback loop between the students and our practices and so i'm appreciating staff all right uh is there any public comment we'll move to our
070discussion and action items the items in this part of the agenda will end with a board vote prior to the vote the staff will present and briefly describe the decision the board is being an estimate board members can then ask questions comment and have a discussion we will then take public comment and possibly deliberate some more and then vote so our first one is approval of management and unrepresented employees salary schedules that would be me thank you sarah uh today we're recommending the approval of a 2.25 compensation increase retroactive to july 1st 2025 and an increase in health and welfare to january 2026 levels at the same rates that we currently have which is 100 for single 60 for two-party and 50 for family um for all the following groups certificated management classified management school
071psychologists speech and language pathologists and confidential employees all of whom are unrepresented any clarifying questions is there any public comment on this item then we will need a motion to approve the new salary schedules option to approve the new salaries second let's do the roll call just the cast neighbor aye just the hamarani aye trustee woodkin aye president kenningham aye trustee burke the motion passes i'm trying to figure out if i can pin sarah so i can see you you went away i'm looking for oh now i see okay on my screen sorry good um okay our next item is approval of an increase in health and welfare benefits for our enterprise employees and that is me again uh thank you sarah uh tonight we recommend approval of an increase in health and welfare benefits
072uh to the same levels that i just mentioned for the unrepresented employees as you know our enterprise staff is also unrepresented and we are starting an annual cycle of doing comparisons and to maintain comparability with similar school districts that run programs those programs are preschool and the t kelp remember we have the t kelp after school program as well in this area and we're planning on doing that study in june and recommending a compensation increase as per that study at that time any clarifying questions okay can i get a motion so moved brief item okay uh roll call just the cast leader aye just the hamarani aye trustee woodkin aye president kenningham aye trustee burke aye okay that passes and now we will move on to adoption of resolution number 925 such 26 yonder bond
073authority yes thank you so much for the opportunity to bring this forward if you may remember previously we had some resolutions that were adopted and they were related to our work with king consulting where we are pursuing all of the state funding opportunities for our bond measure and our facilities and so one of the resolutions that's required is that we acknowledge as as a school district and then you also as a board and the that the state has money available but it doesn't have availability right now and if you are going to be engaging in con you know pre-construction or construction and you plan to apply for these funds that you acknowledge that the funds that prop 2 is exhausted at this time but there may be future bonds available that would be part of
074this program and that you will you know that whatever project we have applied for that is already in motion is that we are responsible for funding it and that we may be reimbursed and so some of these resolutions just to make sure that you're aware as a board that um this is the day you're you're acknowledging this and then we will still apply and the reasoning is we want to get in line even though there is no funding available at this time we know that it is that the grants are funded um in our state and that we are more than likely going to receive this funding and so we would like to just let you know too that the state does grant amounts that go up the grant amounts go up every year and
075once a new bond is authorized the funding that the district will receive will be in the dollars in the year the application is funded not the year in which it was received so it does account for some of those types of things too so it really helps get in place and get a place in line so that when the funding is available you don't have to wait as long so i hope that brings some clarity to it it is a kind of a a new you know a new verb beyond i had to do a little research myself to understand what exactly we're bringing forward to you tonight so hopefully that makes it okay any questions maybe just a comment that yeah thank you for doing the like work here you know to me this
076is a pretty important component of kind of looking ahead towards funding our facilities master plan and being able to tap into these state resources when they become available so um i'm just glad that we're doing all the things we need to do thank you uh i'm i'm seeing sarah now and i don't see any motioning at me um i think is there any public comment on this item and i also i think i forgot to check the last one so i need the comment i looked at the last okay great um all right and we need a motion to approve resolution number nine 25 slash 26 motion second okay uh roll call please justin casnego aye trustee hamarani trustee litken aye president kenningham aye trustee park aye all right this also passes thank you very
077much yes okay and now we are on to item seven future agenda items well i thought i would just let everyone know they can look forward to the second in-room budget report in march uh you'll also be seeing a draft tech plan soon uh transportation plan is coming forward and we will also be bringing to the board an increase in developer fees questions or comments in the future okay um now we are at our um public comment portion of our meeting this is a time for the public to comment on matters that are not on the agenda but within the subject matter jurisdiction of the board um if you would like to make public comment at this time please come forward when you are blue card or raise your hand i'm not seeing any hands
078raised so now we will move to employee group comments and we will begin with dan are you here dan yeah we're going we're going quickly i don't know um camilla if you are um ready to come on screen and we see you you are still muted though okay can you hear me now okay thank you hi so uh don't have a whole lot to share this week um we've been dealing with a lot of sickness as everyone else has um and the lack of subs for certain positions has made it a lot more difficult but um everybody's doing the best they can and um we've been doing kindness week this week and also our um custodial and maintenance staff has been working very hard because when rain comes that also means that we get leaks
079in the ceilings and stuff that they weren't planning on so um i just have a big appreciation for them because we came in one morning in our tk class and we had a big garbage can with uh wet ceiling tiles and the kids were very fascinated um and enjoyed seeing um our maintenance and custodian come in and take care of those uh ceiling tiles so um they're doing great work and um yeah i really appreciate them that's it thank you now we see you dan welcome all right i'm here good evening um some of our schools are celebrating kindness week and um so that's been a really uh great thing at our elementary schools we're having different activities today uh every day of the week and um it also coincides with valentine's day where um
080all of our classrooms are making homemade uh cards for our families and uh it's a really fun festive time at school um and we're looking forward to having some time off next week for president's week and um so everything seems pretty calm at britain acres and our other schools hopefully thank you wonderful thank you enjoy your week off everyone great uh and now we will move to board member comments and typically i would let everyone else go first but i'm going to take my prerogative and go at the beginning here to share some reflections on our study session from last week when we considered moving bird with a measure to place a parcel tax on the june 2026 ballot we can't really get into a back and forth rehash here since it's not on the
081agenda but i thought some comments for our community just to have some transparency around our deliberations might be appropriate um so i want to thank superintendent frenchess and the team for putting together a really excellent study session we i feel the board was very well informed as to our options and we heard from a number of different voices um that were really impactful um and um also refreshing us on our long-term financial outlook and just the urgency of considering some sort of measure before we hit a cliff in our long-term financial picture um so while it was disheartening to hear that uh right now voter support is a little bit soft and it didn't look like there was a path to victory in june i was encouraged that community support about our schools and the
082quality of our schools the quality of our educators that was very high and we saw that there's enthusiasm in the advisory committee to support us as we move forward with considering november 2026 as a viable option um setting our sights on november will allow us just the time that we need to build will and also educate our community about our financial needs it was clear that they were not aware of the true need we have for this measure um and i also wanted to just remind our community that we are constantly looking at our budget and trying to be effective stewards of our funds and have already started to do um some cost-cutting measures um trying to again get ahead of that cliff um by right sizing special education staff um reducing contract care professionals
083we've scaled back recess and lunch coaching services and we've also seen a decrease in operational costs as we have brought more facilities maintenance type services in-house and less reliance on contractors and subs for our operations projects so we'll have to continue with this incremental belt tightening approach um to avoid cuts to our core academics and after our study session it's clear to me that we can't wait until 2028 as an option we really do need to get ahead of this um looming problem too much is at risk for our schools and our students but i'm confident that this um additional time to november will give us what we need to educate the community and create a viable ballot measure thank you for letting me take take my time there and now i will pass it
084on to other trustees for comments sure sarah do you want to go first um i i don't have any comments tonight other than just always thank you to staff for all your hard work and enjoy a little break next week i can go next um i attended my first petech um this week well last week um so it was good to um get a different kind of exposure point and engage in a different way um we did talk about tk open enrollment i think that was the session that i mentioned um okay as well that i attended i think last month um and i'm very excited about just the enrollments that i keep going up and list how well i've run the program is all around and then we also talked about kind of our
085board retreat and we um you know double down on this clarifying roles and responsibilities and how we feel pretty positive in general about progress towards our goals is that was a good engagement and yeah enjoy the break next week as well deserved and thank you i can go next um i just wanted to thank sarah the president came to hand for organizing um a very good board retreat that we had um we basically met every thursday last week was board retreat i think the one for last week was a study session which i'll also again thank you for that that was really well organized and informative and i just also think the board retreat was a great way to spend our time and everybody who helps organize various activities i thought it was really well
086done um and the other thing i want to show oh i also got to attend um a community meeting for the traffic calming feasibility study that we approved in in december they had a meeting in at the tl learning commons for mariposa charter tl families as well as the neighborhood and i um having dealt with the um traffic there for this is like my seventh year of taking my kids to that um area uh i knew everything but i didn't and it was very illuminating and i i just really am thankful that we got the grant and that there is this study being done and that there are people really thinking about this problem there were so many people from the city of felmont city of saint carlos they were all there um with their
087ears open and and their staff from here as well that was there and i just like for me i thought i was going as a parent and i just kind of shut up and i just listened because i was like wow like i did not know the extent of it um and although all the solution minded people that were that were there as well and i just thought it was a it was great and i i really enjoyed it and i it made me want to you know i think have my ears more closely are more open to in general everything that's going on in the community i don't know i kind of went my appetite for like having my ears bigger so anyway it was it was great so yeah i guess that leaves
088me um i guess i would echo many of the sentiments both expressed here and there so i'll do a plus one on the various things happening over the last few weeks uh two specific events that um i just want to put a little spotlight on uh one is the lunar new year celebrations that have kind of been happening across the different schools and um you know i think it's just a really fun kind of time for lots of people and so it's great to see that as part of our community uh and then i don't even know if this is just a ba thing or if it's a broader thing but the sweetheart dance then is uh as far as i understand it's like second and third graders get to bring a parent with them
089to a dance at school and so um i just think that's a really sweet event that like i got no i have no idea i think it's a pta that puts it on but like it's just uh little things in our community that people do to make it special and so um just uh grateful that that's what our schools are about thanks and now we will turn it over yeah it's hard to follow the sweetheart dance and all the kindness activities this week but i did want to echo uh some things from uh president kinahan's comments uh i want to say how grateful i am to staff families community members who joined us in elevating our message through the fall we did a lot of work on making sure people understood what's great about our
090district and our financial needs and so i was really glad for the engagement that we got i also want to recognize again the support of the superintendent's advisory committee and how helpful they were to us and to the board that the efforts resulted in amazing reminders of all the things that are the that people feel positive about our district and the reasons why those perceptions are real the confidence that was expressed in all the presentations that ralph and ans and jen and staff put out uh the feedback on polls and surveys uh echo again the quality of our educators and the school programs are very high however it did remind us that we need to do more to share the ways that decreasing funding and increasing costs have led to cuts in services and personnel
091in our district and we are hopeful we could close that funding gap through the june election and alas that is not so um but i think what we learned is overcoming the macro economic and political concerns and communicating our financial needs clearly will take some more time um but i feel very very optimistic that we have the people to do it and we're going to do it so next steps are again identifying and communicating our right sizing and the things that we're doing and the efficiencies um making sure that we communicate the facts of our budget to everyone and the why we need to increase our parcel tax so we can build greater support by fall and that's what i have thank you uh we will now go into closed session to discuss item 13a
092is there any public comment on this closed session item do we like does sarah join us somehow for that session yeah okay also we will see you in a few moments trustee cassinago um all right we are now adjourned into the session we are now reconvening to open session uh pursuant to california government code section 549 57.1 no reportable action was taken in closed session item 13a and so we are adjourned at 8 33