001Okay. Good evening. Thank you for being here. Welcome to the September 11th regularly scheduled meeting of the San Carlos district board of education. I'm calling this meeting to order at 630 p.m. Please note that a recording is being made at the direction of the board and the recording may capture images and sounds of those attending the meeting. Next on the agenda is approval of the agenda. Are there any changes Dr. Ventress or the board that you'd like to make? Is there approval of the agenda? Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, Sarah. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. The agenda is approved 5-0. Before we get started on the rest of the agenda, I'd like to state that the board appreciates and supports stakeholder input at our meetings. Part of our role that we very
002much value is to listen to what members of the public have to say. Everyone should have a chance to express their opinions within the guidelines the board has established so that we are able to conduct the meeting effectively and efficiently. During tonight's meeting, there will be time for the public to comment on matters both on the agenda as well as not on the agenda. Please wait to speak at the appropriate time. If you'd like to address the board here in person, we ask that you fill out a blue card found over there and if you're online, please use the raise hand feature. Okay. So the next on the agenda is spotlight on excellence and we are featuring Central Middle School and I'll turn it over to Jennifer. Thank you. I am excited that we are
003going to start the series of principal presentations about their schools and we're starting tonight with Tom Doemer. So I will turn it over to you, Tom. All right. Well, thank you for having me. First one, I'm proud. So we were thinking about what we could spotlight within the first 10 days of school, but we got this. So we were thinking about our learner profile and as you know, it has kind of three main pillars and it's self-aware learner, kind citizen and curious problem solver. So we decided that each kind of grade level would tackle one and focus on it for the year. So middle school sort of made sense to do the curious problem solver. And through that and through the work we're doing around the LCAP and the strategic plan, we really are and
004through our conversations in our leadership meetings, we're talking about durable skills and how they relate to all those things and thinking about the world our kids are going to enter and the jobs that they might have that don't even exist yet. So we're thinking about focusing on these durable skills. And so Christie, the new AP and I were thinking, well, let's video some students and hear what they have to say about being curious problem solvers because that's going to be our focus for this year and as a baseline kind of assessment almost so that we can fill them at the beginning of the year and then at the end of the year. So it was this kind of natural thing to have a video student voice to hear what they have to say. And so
005I'll show you some of the videos. We asked them three questions. First of all, what is a curious problem solver? Why is it important? And where it shows up in the classroom? And keep in mind, they've only been in school 10 days when we did this. It's so cute. I hope you see the love of learning that comes out. Some of these kids are so excited. It's so cute. I'll let them do the speaking for themselves and then I can kind of do some talking with our beautiful school. Someone who is interested in the problem and thinking of different ways it could work. Someone who works hard to solve problems but doesn't just do it alone, they ask questions. Someone who really wants to understand what they're learning, if they're trying to figure something out,
006they're not just figuring out the answer but they're understanding the process. A problem solver can solve the problem but a curious one will ask questions to get better knowledge of the problem. Someone when they feel like they can't really do this anymore and they're like, oh this is too hard for me, they have to just like keep going. When I think of a curious problem solver, I think of like problem and solution and I think of like what solution we could have and how it could impact every student's life. Someone who looks at problems and then can figure out other sources of information to find it, they try to like apply their current knowledge to help them solve like future problems. Get Max talking about schema. Let's take our current knowledge and work with that.
007So that was obviously them coming up with being curious problem solvers and I loved how they were like just naturally talking about some of the durable skills that we were talking about, collaboration and critical thinking obviously, and hopefully you'll see that in the next videos as well. So the next one is why is it important? So we asked them that question. I think being a curious problem solver is important because people need that. It's like one of their life skills. I think this is really important to want to be because if you just solve problems, like let's say you're in math and you're used to doing algebra or you're doing the sense and you just don't know how to, if you don't know how to apply it in the real world, then it's not useful
008and it won't help you. I think being a curious problem solver is important because it helps you tackle new challenges like without even like really being taught something. I love how they were talking about the real world too and we didn't prompt them at all. They're already thinking about the real world and how being a curious problem solver will help them. So this is my favorite, this next one, because it's how does this show up in the classroom? 10 days. Probably in math, Mr. Weber gave us something called a group quiz where in our table group, which is like four people, we have a quiz and we all get to like work on the problems together and like sometimes some of us get different answers so we step by step and solve it together. In
009Ms. Carter's class we played a shape game where there was shapes that everyone started with and everyone had to make a square but you couldn't talk so that really helped me with like collaboration. It was in science and it was a lab and in that lab there were certain jobs so for example a job was like a facilitator to keep everyone together and if something were to go wrong someone would have to like be a curious problem solver and use that to like help facilitate. He talks about how when we read books we want to think about how we can apply lessons to and how characters act to our lives. But doing group tests or practice tests and math class because you can work together with your group and discuss different ideas and solutions. In
010Mr. Weber's English class we're really asking questions about everything they read because we want to understand why the characters are doing what they're doing and what they're thinking and what's really driving the decisions they make so we're just questioning everything. So of course Mr. Richard's class is going to show up there. That's the science. So I was impressed about how they kind of touched on a lot of the durable skills. They're talking about creativity and collaboration and communication and how they're taking the group with math and how they have different some of the times they come up with different answers and they have to work it out together and that is the real world and so yeah I think that's it. Any questions? I can't wait to see what it's going to be like at
011the end of the year. Oh yeah we yeah next next week we're having our multicultural potluck. You're all the welcome to come get free food. Bring food. There's so much food you don't have to bring food. You do enough. You do enough. Thanks so much Tom. Appreciate it. Thank you Tom. Thank you for being one of our first spotlights of the year. Just jumping in I saw lots of really cool kids that I know in that video maybe texting some moms and really great teachers that were mentioned and I just want to express appreciation for Central. It was the first my older son transitioned there the first full year coming out of COVID and it really has been a safe space for us the last three years and now I have a really capable high
012schooler. It's pretty crazy but I attribute it a lot to the central TV so thank you. Well thank you. Yeah I'm proud. Okay now we'll move on to item four which is the consent agenda. The consent agenda contains items that are routine in nature and for which no four discussion is anticipated so we act upon them with a single vote. I will check for public comment. I don't see any. So can I get a motion? Move to approve the consent agenda please. Thank you Boris. I'll second. Thanks Sarah. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Okay consent agenda is approved five zero. Moving on to item five which is information and discussion. The purpose of these items is for information and discussion only so no board action will be taken. Staff will present and then
013there'll be time to ask clarifying questions. The first item is teaching and learning update summer program and I will turn that over to Megan. Great well thank you trustees. Jay Richards is here. He was our summer program principal this summer so he will be presenting for us. Hi everybody. So yeah I'm Jay Richards. I teach English at Central. This is my 19th year there and last summer I had the opportunity to work at our school program. You think about one of the big challenges for us as a district always is so many kids are thriving but how do we help like 15 to 20 percent who aren't and summer school is a really great opportunity to give kids an extra 19 days of instruction and focus on literacy and math to kind of help them
014and so that was a really great opportunity to kind of go through that. So Megan if you want to put the slides up we can kind of run through. We're working on it. Sorry. Oh we need to share. Yeah yeah right. So what's kind of nice about this is that summer school itself you can see is a combination. It was a blend of our extended school year program where we take kids with IEPs and as part of their IEP they get extra additional time and we had four ESY classes there and we blend that with the five general ed classes. We invite principals to talk to their teachers and nominate students from their classes who would would benefit from the extra help and so we get that list of students then we invite the families.
015It's optional of course but the family many families accept the invitation and then then we put that all together. At a new campus this year it's typically that at Heather that Heather was unavailable so we actually went to Britain Anchors which was a lovely layout just in terms of being centrally located and like one level all of the classes were together. One of the great things about summer school was the blending. Oh I didn't you still want it? Okay. Otherwise I can't hear you. Okay there you go. All right. So one of the great blends was the there wasn't a division between like here's the IEP ESY program and here's the general ed program. We were all on the same level and everybody worked together and so it was a really it was like one
016big kind of happy family. It was nice that there wasn't that division. So that was the kind of the blend there and the vision of course would be let's give kids extra practice in reading and writing and math right but I think the bigger goal for us is let's give them a positive experience. It's a really if you think about it it's a great setup. It's 8 30 to 11 30 right so they're there for three hours right on a nice campus. You've got teachers there who like who sign up right. It's not required. They want to be there and they've all on their own they sign up to do there. So you've got teachers we had such a good staff of teachers who wanted to be there with on a nice campus who are
017providing engaging curriculum. There was food you had breakfast and lunch right. You had a recess time. It was a really kind of nice environment. So the overall vision yes we wanted to improve their scores but part of that is giving them an idea that school can be like fun and for a lot of kids who are struggling schools and not fun and so if you can give them a sense like hey you know what this was kind of you know this wasn't bad right. I enjoyed we had we did some fun things. It was three hours. I have some lunchtime. I'm ready to go. I can go play the rest of the day and so you didn't get a lot of there was not it was very little sourness right. Kids were there. They enjoyed
018themselves and you hope that they would get that feeling towards school and a little confidence boost as well so that they're better prepared in the fall to say like okay maybe have a little better approach towards school. I got some practice. I feel like I grew there and and that's going to help them even further. So we had 138 students and this is I love this picture. This is we had a this is our staff team. We had a little staff pictured day and we had 10 teachers. Almost all of them were in district and we we had to go out of district for like one general ed teacher and one special education teacher but for the most part we had all SCSD teachers there. We had 15 para educators and I'll talk about that
019a little bit but also had a great support staff right. As a middle school teacher the idea of like it was crazy like you had a nurse there every day that Casey was like amazing right and then you had we had behaviorless there every day. We had speech therapists. We had a PE teacher right. So there were many supports for for the kids throughout and so it was again it was 19 days. We took the 4th of July off of course. All right and the 138 was kind of broken down. If we go to the next slide I think we'll get there. This slide is shows you like how it worked out. The numbers honestly are a little misleading because we ended up having to do a three four split and a four five split.
020So so when you see Greg Zilmer he had 14 third graders but he also had half of the fourth graders. So the the third grade class was more they were in the low to mid 20s right. So the third fourth and the fourth fifth and the middle school numbers it says 14. There were actually 11 ESY kids who moved into that class as well. So the middle school was 25. So so we did have some they weren't particularly small. They weren't huge right but we did have that and then you know then we had four of the ESY classes and those classes were much smaller. Six to seven to 12 on the ESY class. So one of the things I wanted to do in my first effort is just bringing my English teacher lens to
021it and to say the theme was it takes two to read a book right which I stole from Calkins but the idea is that and she stole it from somebody else but the idea is that let's help kids learn not just through like reading on a screen or reading by themselves and as parents you'll see this like oh my kid's reading by themselves but what are they really I mean what are they really getting out of that. So the idea is as much as we could let's get teachers working in small groups as best we could and and writing about what they were reading. So one of the things I wanted to do was I was to try to really set the tone with the teachers hey let's get them writing about what they're reading
022as best we can. If you think about it the actual process of writing about what a text really means like is obviously critical to what I do every day in the classroom but the idea in terms of literacy growth getting them to actually put the work beyond basic comprehension. So in some regards it was more challenging right it's like okay we're not just going to focus just on basic comprehension but what does like what does this book actually mean what are some of the the theme work and so we had a chance to work on that. And then again that the other things we already talked about before but but that was kind of the the big theme throughout right we did the middle school we did have a pre and post assessment which was
023really fun. As a teacher it was kind of fun just to go in and teach right so I was you know I would go into classes and you know the middle school team was central colleagues so it was great to just go in and say hey can I do a lesson on this and so the kids wrote about the theme of a story and then after a couple lessons they got a chance to write a more extended version of them and they got feedback on that and I think that was that was fun to do and I think helpful for them. So each class had its own great little kind of environment saw so many fun things it was fun to just I was joking with Marianne that my she goes how do you get
024so many steps each day right because you're like you're going all around and all the different classes I and I still can't keep it up with her but that's all right but um but each of the classrooms like Karina Carroll in the first grade was doing amazing work with um pick those stories for our first graders right like draw a picture and then let's see if you can't like draw you know just the beginning first couple like write a couple you know write a story underneath and the little caption she started with pick your own characters I'm sorry actually she started with here are two characters to write about and then she challenged them to say now write a story where you come up with the characters which I loved because they're already working on
025their own individual choice of their own to kind of challenge them that way. Marcy Correa who did our second grade team did some really nice small group work with the kids getting them working on their fluency and it was fun to go in there and help her with you know kids who were also on the kids who weren't at the small groups were doing some Lexia phonics work and so I would go in there make sure they're all that was actually their first time doing like chromebook stuff so that was helpful. Greg Zilmer did some great work he'd wear a little mystery hat each day and he'd read to them mysteries they had a mystery theme they'd read their mystery books and they had these cool little led boards that they can practice their math
026on. I think I had talked about some of the work we were doing in the middle school the fourth and fifth grade read it off they had a read aloud I just took a novel and they read the entire novel out there and I'll tell you one of the biggest surprises for me surprise is only because I hadn't done a lot of ESY work before I was just watching the the teamwork of the ESY classes because in those classes you had one teacher and you had three to four paras in the class and just the amount of teamwork that they had and how every kid was getting the one-on-one attention was just really inspiring and so like wow right and so that was just great to see I enjoyed that. You know we've got attendance
027numbers and they were good I actually think they're they're even a little higher I think because we well they're that but we had like one family of three kids who like went on vacation the last week so that's 15 that we lost but when I think about attendance again it goes back to the theme of are they having a good time do they want to be there and I think we created an environment where they did where it was like a fun place to be and so I think the numbers were up from the year before and again get good teachers teaching engaging curriculum right and people are going to want to be there and they did they showed up had a good time so again we would see different things the picture here that's
028one of our middle schoolers kind of showing her post as her post writing assessment again it was really fun to go in there we partnered with with ace 24 of our kids were able to get free aftercare after the class so they'd be there until 11 30 and then transfer right into ace that was great saw a lot of presenting in some of the esy classes it was great to see kids doing active like here being able to talk like we are now and then even karenna carol who taught first grade she would take her kids at some point after their work to the garden and she said on the first day of class the kids were like what do we do I didn't know how to handle a garden they were not spending any
029time in nature right and so they took them a day or two to realize and then they came to absolutely love it so even something as simple as having time in nature to kind of explore that was just a really nice teaching move on her behalf and again the the success goes to the amazing people that we had working there teachers had a really good time with it I will say that my general ed teachers who were fantastic did say look we've got 22 25 kids and all of them have needs right and a lot of them have more needs than your typical kid and we're by ourselves right and so um you know I could go in and help where I could and I enjoyed that but the idea is like what if we
030had like at least a second adult supporting they thought that would be really helpful in terms of that so I was talking to the superintendent we've got some ideas about potentially implementing a high school internship program where you might get some high school kids and say hey how about how about spending a couple days or a couple weeks helping out some kids talked about perhaps getting our reading associates from the elementary schools involved and trying maybe having them join the team to be able to rotate around and even checking in with healthy cities and seeing you know but any of your tutors be interested in like extending their year even into the summer a little bit what the idea is like let's get again let's get more kids more individual instruction to help them even
031further right because that was such a success in the esy programs and we'd love to kind of even build you know kind of have that model for you know the general ed class the kid feedback I think the kids again if you go I'm sorry the kids had a really good time as well and I think there were very few I had very few issues I had to deal with in terms of like this kid like did this kind of stuff I there was a little of it right but for the most part they did that you know it's interesting there wasn't um can you go back as well so it's fine we don't have parents on there and and I don't know if like no news is good news is like it's like a
032theme but but you know I would talk to parents when they picked up and they seem fine but for the most part I mean if you you know I wasn't getting any calls or emails about like this is not going well so so I was you know I think sometimes when you don't hear from anybody that's actually a good sign so so again for next year just got to recap like how can we get more adults into the classrooms and make it economically feasible understandably right talk to you about those ideas one thing we're thinking about is like doing a doing a job but when we when the teachers recommend the kids to get some more information like what's their end of year reading level all right and then comparing that with like the upcoming
033reading levels that the teachers will all do and then the following grade for upcoming conferences and just kind of to try to get a sense of like a to b it's a little tricky I wouldn't expect like hey after 19 days of summer school they went from grade two to grade five it was amazing right okay so it's like right at 19 half days so again it's not insignificant at all the growth that they would make but I think the you know it would be interesting to see okay from the end of the school year to October right with that little summer boost what was the growth looking like and we can get you those numbers I'll get you those like as we get closer to conference time a couple parents said especially the ESY
034classes said when you have a new school right like kids aren't used to going to britain acres and then you're throwing them in a new environment and on day one it's like here you go new school new teacher they said it was a good idea that they'd like a preview day hey maybe during the end service let's come by check it out meet your teacher while they're there on the end service day just to kind of get familiarized with it so that day one is like they're a little more you know at ease we're gonna have to coordinate I know the team's already working on this but the aftercare had field trips set up but since they set those up in march before our kids even registered they were booked so by the time we
035got in none of our kids while they could go to after care they couldn't go on the field trip so we're trying to work that out for them and then one of the things that's kind of new for this year the superintendent has worked with us on is like what about kids who are absent a lot they're chronically absent is summer school an option for kids to make up some of the attendance that they might miss throughout the year and so we're looking into monitoring attendance of those kids and perhaps like bringing them on board I think we get funding for kids if they make up the attendance and things like that that might help with the overall cost of everything right and then lastly we're just going to work with Ajay we had a
036little couple issues with trying to get teachers rosters for like online curriculum like Lexia where the the classroom that the the regular school year rostering trying to merge that with like just summer school rostering on its own was a bit of a glitch at some point but but we can work through that so I think I think we've already identified a campus for next year can we can we reveal that or no no okay okay so we'll do these things but I will say teachers know okay oh I see okay okay that their thoughts are over the summer so yes it's going to be here the district office but I will say just overall it's it's I don't want to simplify it too much but when you bring really good teachers in and you create
037an environment like that it's it's going to it's going to be a positive impact on them and it was a it was a great experience for I think all involved so I want to thank like the whole team here that was a great support to me Ralph was there like all the time helping with everything and then it was it was fantastic so yeah there you go thank you Jay um trustees do you have any questions or comments maybe a comment uh uh just really appreciate the the presentation it seems like a really great program and I'd love to when it's available uh get a little bit of that insight from sort of progression that was made from from this and I guess the question I have for you are you signed up to do
038it again next summer I'd love to do excellent yeah it looked amazing and I also appreciate the thoughtful approach sort of the continuous improvement what can we do even better next year um that's great to see you just sort of the analysis there um and it's also exciting to see that we have an exemplar teacher leader who was available to step up in the principal role this summer so thank you for doing that and thank you to all of the teachers the para educators the support staff it sounds like it was an interesting team if I may um so this summer you might remember I shared a newsletter because Jay did put out newsletters uh to make sure families knew the kinds of things that were going on so kind of back to you don't
039hear things if families know what's going on uh but how much I appreciated the esprit de corps when I was on the campus and being in the classrooms and summer school has always been near and dear to my heart because we know that for a lot of students there's a thing called the summer slide because not all families have the same opportunities to get their children to libraries or have books and materials uh and it's very real what happens for children year over year when they don't have those experiences and so to have these wonderful teachers and you know an amazing teacher step in and be the principal it was a really good environment and we have learned that attendance recovery is possible through summer school so for me the first thing is having them
040come and have them come every day and then we can really go to town on additional learning so I'm really grateful to Megan and Jay and Jay in particular for taking this on it's an amazing experience thank you so much thank you thank you now we'll move on to 5b which is the update to board policies yes I'm going to start uh so the board uh policy subcommittee reviewed numerous policies for board consideration tonight Megan BZA will start by reviewing recommendations on the policy uh policies we reviewed and then I'll invite Tracy and Sarah if they have anything that they would like to add and then we have one additional policy that Ralph will talk about but I will turn it over to Megan for now all right so thank you tonight I'm bringing forward
041for your approval updates to several board policies to ensure continued compliance with state and federal law and most notably there were changes to title nine there was a change in August 1st of 2024 that happened and we had updated many of our policies related to title nine and then there was a a change in that law so we have reverted back to the 2020 title nine regulations so tonight I'm bringing forward many board policies that need to go back to those previous title nine regulations also there is a new law that beginning July 1st of 2026 public schools are prohibited from using derogatory Native American names for schools mascots and team names that's a new education code so some of these policies are going to reflect that change as well and then additionally there was
042a senate bill 1137 which now defines discrimination not only based on one protected class but also on combinations of two or more protected classes so many of these policies are reflecting that change as well so those would be then board policy 0410 non-discrimination and district programs and activities reflect the changes to title nine and the prohibited use of derogatory Native American names the uniform complaint procedures reflects the changes to title nine the non-discrimination and employment reflects the changes to that senate bill 1137 and then board policies all of them pertaining to sexual harassment for our certificated classified administrative staff and students those were changed to comply with title nine and senate bill 1137 and then as well as the non-discrimination harassment of students and then the last one is board policy 4033 which is lactation
043accommodation and that reflects a recent labor code change to improve accommodations for lactating employees did we want to know pretty straightforward yeah yeah updating what we have based on the changes in the law we had already made sort of the macro changes up yep questions not those thank you so i'm bringing forward uh for your approval tonight one board policy and it is board policy 3470 is debt issuance and management so in my presentation last year to the annual report for debt issuance we realized that we needed to bring this one forward so the district has this as a board policy and approved by the board and it is in alignment with csba policy and making sure that we are following all of the regulations uh put forth for debt issuance and management of that
044debt any questions and just to clarify i think tonight we're not approving anything this is just oh first three sorry yeah or do you have a question yeah just maybe for clarification because i when i opened it i didn't see any edits so this is a new policy that we're we didn't we had nothing on this beforehand this is a new policy that we're considering adopting is that that's correct and there's a state board policy that we've been referencing every year when we talk about the annual debt issuance when we have the bond to report from the bond debt issuance and so we've been referencing the state board policy but we looked and we didn't see one in san carlos board policy so we're bringing this forward to make sure we stay in alignment and
045we have it on record that we have this for uh reference in the future okay thank you okay so i'm gonna first check for public comment okay you don't see any um so yes this will return at our next board meeting it'll be um at one of the consent agenda items all right now we'll move on to item six which is discussion and action the items in this part of the agenda will end with the board vote prior to the vote staff present and briefly describe the decision the board is being asked to make or members can then ask questions comment and have a discussion and also take public comment and possibly deliberate some more and then take a vote so the first item is 6a approval of unaudited actuals for fiscal year 2024-25 and
046that is ralph thank you so i'm here uh before you tonight to present the annual report for the unaudited actuals for the fiscal year 24-25 we report on the what i said unaudited actuals yeah unaudited because we reported on the estimated actuals when the budget was adopted back in june for 25-26 fiscal year purpose for this presentation is to highlight the changes since estimated asked actuals for the fiscal year 24-25 we are asking for your approval of the honored actuals after the report tonight we go on to the next slide i didn't looking here sorry i'll just look up there so this is the overview and objectives for tonight we're going to review the budget cycle the revenue expenditures you know we're going to look at the ending fund balance we're going to look at
047a summary of other funds and then we're going to go into next steps so this slide here is setting the context i know tonight is about the unaudited actuals report for last year 24-25 but i wanted to take this opportunity to talk a little bit about the state of our budget and how we plan to move forward so we're like many districts when it comes to the uncertainty of future federal and state funding these are decisions made that might directly impact our funding and others that may indirectly impact our funding we have a couple of one-time grants that will be expiring the arts and music operational grant will be expiring in june of 2026 the emergency learning recovery block grant will be expiring in june of 2028 we are experiencing rising costs for essential services
048and utilities and contracted services that support students i think one of the biggest uncertainties is the measure and partial tax that is set to expire in 2028 if the current partial tax is renewed at the current rate is covering fewer teachers as a result of increased salary costs every year in 2020 and 2020-2021 when the partial tax was first renewed and increased the partial tax covered 24 teachers and is only covering 16 teachers currently what have we been doing to about these uncertainties we have been evaluating expenditures and continue to look for ways to improve our fiscal position by leveraging efficient practices and building reserves from these lost savings we moved allowable expenditures to restricted funds to take pressure off the general fund these practices have yielded positive results for the year as you will
049see in a later slide we will not be transferring funds from reserves as was initially projected and we will continue these practices to adjust our 25-26 budget as we get more information from state and federal funding in our november board study session we will be going over in more detail the strategies we will be utilizing to ensure we are prepared for our various scenarios moving forward next slide please this is the budget cycle this is the budget cycle for the 24-25 fiscal year and so you can see we're at unaudited actuals and the last step in this budget cycle is the audit report so the auditors the independent auditors will be here september 17th to collect the data they need to review our books close the books and year-end practice or year practices and they
050will present a report in december and it'll be before you in january for review and approval from chauvin and associates our independent auditor so this slide um a lot of numbers a lot going on here but this is a snapshot of the general fund revenues and expenditures our total revenue for 24-25 was 51.3 million dollars and our total expenditures for was 49.6 million dollars putting the district in a favorable position at the end at the year end this was achieved through a strategy mentioned earlier regarding efficiencies and allocation of expenses to appropriate resources the district also was thoughtful about vacancies throughout the year and only filling those vacancies that were absolutely necessary this also shows the district is able to maintain the required minimum reserve of three percent while building a total reserve for future
051uncertainties next one please this slide here again very busy a lot of numbers but this is the components of the ending fund balance the district ended the year with an ending fund balance of 8.7 million dollars 5.2 million of that is in the unrestricted category and 3.6 million of that is in the restricted category i want to call your attention to a couple of assigned lines where the arrows are so one of those arrows is the partial tax uncertainty so that one is the green arrow all right so that's the partial tax uncertainty which we assigned a million dollars there with the current partial tax set to expire in 2028 three years out it is in the best interest of the district to prepare in the event the partial tax is not renewed this will
052not replace the three million dollar ongoing revenue from the partial tax but it'll give some time to make some adjustments in the event that revenue is not there the next one is the i would say that's like a magenta arrow this is a hundred and fifty thousand dollars set aside for the partial tax election costs and other expenses associated with running a campaign in the event the board decides to go for a june election for partial tax renewal that's what that money is set aside for if the decision is to wait then these funds will roll over into the fiscal year which the election takes place the last arrow is the blue arrow on the right and we're also able to set aside nine hundred and fifty nine thousand dollars to add to the reserves
053to meet salary obligations for raises given and that's into fund 20 all these assignments are possible because of the intentional changes in ending fund balance on the next slide so this side shows that major categories where there were variances the district has intense had intentionality to reduce expenditures and move allowable expenses to one-time expiring funds as we look ahead at the uncertainty of the partial tax and the federal and state budgets here are the variances that have the biggest impact for estimated from estimated actuals revenues show an increase due to interest facility rentals and fair market valuation of cash as required reporting salary and benefits showed a decrease as a result of moving allowable expenses to restricted resources and funds as well as savings from vacancies and reduced sub needs books and supplies shows a
054decrease in restricted spending as a result of prioritizing essential purchases and utilizing existing resources the biggest change was the other operating expenses and services in in the amount of one point four six million dollars partial tax consulting for the year came in under budget so that was part of it telecom services for some reason we had budgeted more than the actual cost there so there was a savings there allocation of services to other funds like deferred maintenance and capital assets and then we reviewed our contracted services filling regular positions and conducted that review resulting in a reduction of expenditures for these contracted services an example was looking at the paraprofessionals how many of those contracts were filled and how many of those contracts were still on the books to be filled but never actually got
055filled so we reviewed all of that and it realized the savings for us these savings resulted in a balanced budget for 24 25 but these are not long-term solutions we were able to do this because the one-time dollars currently available as such we felt it was fiscally prudent to assign the savings to specifically target future revenue shortfalls and uncertainty as a reminder to the board there is an anticipated transfer from the fund 20 to balance the budget for 25 26 this fiscal year and we'll talk more about that in our november board study session summary of other funds this slide shows the activity the activity and ending fund balance of all the other funds aside from the general fund we have and we'll continue to look at these funds and strategically evaluate work responsibilities that
056align with these programs allocating salaries of current employees to these funds helped to eliminate the need to transfer funds from reserves to the general fund for example food service activities in this area we can charge to fund 13 directly for the staff that manage and work in that program another example is the measure h bond team and other construction projects people working on measure h and construction projects can be charged directly to fund 21 and fund 40 our fund balance for fund 20 is 6.57 million dollars and is being used to make up for revenue shortfalls when expenditures exceed those revenues this fund does not have a continual revenue source and should be treated as one-time funds with the current multi-year projection in the 25 26 adopted budget this fund is projected to be fully
057expended by the year 2027 for fund 63 it is important to note that there was an increase in last year from last year of 1.9 million dollars with but with the full implementation of transitional kindergarten our preschool programs in 25 26 will not have the four-year-olds they once had these four-year-olds will be attending and are attending currently the tk programs of the schools the four-year-olds have been replaced by two-year-olds which require a lower adult to student ratio which means higher costs and a lower margin overall future years are currently being projected to have a 1.5 million dollar margin this fund is also used when expenses exceed revenues last slide so what's next well a little summary as before we talk about that so in summary the report highlights the statutory requirements for reporting but also
058outlines proactive steps the district is taking to strengthen reserves for economic uncertainty anticipated and anticipated financial impacts on the horizon these potential impacts include the expiring one time funds and potential loss of tax partial tax revenue by closely monitoring enrollment attendance evaluating expenses for efficiencies and shifting allowable expenses to restrict resources the district is able to increase the fund 20 reserves set aside funds for potential growth in tk and build a partial tax uncertainty reserve account in the event the parcel tax is not renewed ongoing measures like these will serve the district well in meeting district and board priorities we will have more time to dig into the budget during our november report study session so the objective tonight was to review and to understand the variances from estimated actuals to unaudited actuals answer any
059clarifying questions and then review approve the unaudited actuals report as before you preview of upcoming events you'll see the audit report come around december and we'll have that in front of you in january they'll be here september 17th the board study session as i mentioned is in november well the first interim is in december for the 25-26 budget we'll have enough data there to collect and talk about how we're doing there and any adjustments we need to make based on expenditures and revenues that have changed since june thank you ralph um anyone have any questions comments i have comments not questions any questions okay comments comments um thank you for that presentation that was great and very clear when really budgeting is really clear as mud usually um i appreciate um all you did to
060answer all of our questions and um really point out the district's strategy that we've used the past several years of sort of building our reserves when we have the chance um you know i my time on the board talked many many times about you know we know that on it's not best practice to cover ongoing expenses with fun time funds and yet that is the reality that we operate in and so we use all the strategies that you mentioned in terms of being thoughtful about leveraging vacancies and building up our reserves and being careful about spending them down and that's how we've been able to offer salary increases and you know continue the programming that we have so i just want to commend the staff for those approaches and for keeping us fiscally in good
061health thank you sarah sarah you also had comments uh i was going to say much of the same thing thank you it was very clear i really appreciated the materials that we received ahead of time i feel like it's finally sinking in what all of the different funds are um and it is great to see those fund balances increasing um with these uh actuals um i think yeah i was going to say much less as you said but i just appreciate that we're making all these incremental decisions that hopefully are keeping that cliff at bay thank you yeah um thank you ralph i was going to echo a lot of the same things and also i know that there was a shift in the financial systems as well which i think probably presented additional challenges
062for getting all the numbers yeah i really have to thank the team chris did a fabulous job in this transition he had to close the books in the old system as we adopted the new budget in the new system so chris behind the scenes has done a phenomenal job making sure our numbers are aligned and matching and doing all the heavy lifting in order to get this presentation the way it is thank you ralph okay so um now we can i guess well before we call a vote i'll look at public comment okay i don't see any raised hands so now we can is there a motion to approve the i will move approval of the unaudited actuals for fiscal year 2425 thank you so i'm just bringing things over here um okay all those
063in favor say aye aye okay so the unaudited audited actuals approve five zero okay thank you ralph thank you um moving on we are going to 6b which is the public hearing for textbook sufficiency um okay so uh the public has an opportunity to provide comments on um textbook sufficiency so i will gavel us in do we have any raised hands online or any members of the public in the room that would like to speak no don't see any so um okay i will gavel us out all right moving on to item 6c which is the approval of resolution for 2426 for textbook slash instructional materials sufficiency that is hans okay well thank you uh in accordance with uh state law on the williams lawsuit which took place many many years ago we're happy to
064report that we have sufficiency on instructional materials and you as a board as part of statute must approve this resolution declaring that we have such uh need required that's required as fulfilled any questions i should check the public comment but there was a public hearing motion so i don't see any public comment so can i get a motion i'll move to approve resolution for 25 slash 26 second all those in favor say aye okay the resolution is approved by zero moving on to item 60 which is the approval of the gan limit resolution number 525 26 and that would be ralph yes thank you so uh the gan limit the gan limit is a constitutional spending cap on the amount of tax revenue that restricts how much tax funded revenue state and local governments including
065school districts can legally spend each year the school board must officially approve its updated gan limit as a resolution that has been provided so the resolution is in the document and the actual gan form is in the board uh agenda as well okay does anyone have any questions i'll check for public comment i don't see any raised hands motion i'd like to move approval thank you boris thank you sarah all those in favor say aye okay the um gan limit resolution is approved by zero okay now we'll move on to um item seven which is agenda setting i will um turn it over to you jennifer yes i have a preview of coming attractions in october we will have a report from the citizens bond oversight committee we'll also get a teaching and learning update
066on state test scores and the board will consider the comprehensive safety plan in october we also will have a study session on special education there's been considerable work done in that area and i look forward to hearing megan vizier share some of the details and the good results of the work they've been doing there in november we will learn more about the social emotional learning outcomes and both uh data and attendance i know that the board remembers getting to learn about the al's pals last time maybe we'll graduate up to the wayfinder curriculum and then also you'll get to look at some of the reading score data from the reading screeners that are being administered here in the fall november there will also be the board study session that you heard from ralph where the
067board can learn more about the district budget and various work that we're doing as a district to position ourselves well for increasing costs and that's what we have thank you jennifer i also want to note that the september meeting that was on the calendar is as note is has been canceled so just so our next meeting will be october okay um moving on to agenda item eight which is communications uh first item is public comment don't see any raised hands or blue cards so we can move on to employee group comments she was there so early maybe dan let me try let me get in touch with her oh early i know yeah yeah either as dan so probably okay okay so we will move on right now for two um board member comments nine
068eight any board members like to make any comments i can go okay thank you um i just wanted to quickly say thanks for a great retreat earlier this week well planned and well executed so i enjoyed it um and i wanted to um give a little shout out to skeff for their funding of our music program my daughter is learning to play the violin completely from scratch we have no string instrument players in our family so it's amazing to me that we have incredible music teachers who can somehow take a room full of kids who have never touched a string instrument and actually teach them to play it um so it's cool to be witnessing it at home um and i appreciate that you know through skeff and our community we are able to have
069that i guess i'll echo the comments about the retreat i thought that was a great opportunity for all of us to have some time together to sort of take a step back from the day to day and look at some bigger pictures things so i appreciate a chance to do that and i think it's been a great start to the beginning of the school year and uh you know we're learning what homework means in first grade so uh it's been an interesting discovery so i'll leave it at that um i'll piggyback on the gratitude for skeff and congratulate them on their sold out town event on october 5th i'm forward to that event and thank you to everyone who bought tickets and is supporting our schools in that way and then i'm excited now that
070sort of the school year settled in that i'm starting to send some visits to some of the schools and i'm really looking forward to that so see folks out there in the community um i'll just echo the retreat was uh great so thanks for that um i think for me it's been maybe one month now i don't know when school started feels like a month um where i go to the school twice a day and i'll drop my son and pick him up and it's pretty really cool to just see the energy um and the schools and experience it firsthand and i know there's so much behind the scenes even though we have previewed some of it it's it's a lot going on and that's just one school so thanks to everyone for the for
071the start um even though it's been a bit um for that thank you so it's been about three weeks and a day since the first day of school and just one so i would just want to say yeah everyone's been really hard at work and will be just really appreciative of the teachers principals the assistant principal um certificated staff has classified staff and also the district office staff pta's have been very busy um trying to get everybody to all the new um families to feel um at home here in san carlos school district and also with education partners like staff and i know healthy cities tutoring is also busy at work trying to make some the tutoring pairs uh to get started um the other thing i wanted to talk about a little bit is
072uh not really related to our school district but um yesterday my my daughter attends carl want high school and um there was a situation there but it made me think like there's things we can learn from that that i think like our community could could maybe learn from what happened at carl want and um i guess specifically so so yesterday there if people are not familiar at carl mont as well as menlo atherton high school were put in secure campus um be due to some nearby police activity and um i think the way people responded was not not maybe um less than ideal and so i think there's some learnings from that right which is um and so i just thought i would share as a parent um as well as like you know being
073on the board just thinking through um some things we can learn one is like just you know the like all the schools that are in san mateo county are follow the big five um safety protocol and um you know they're at all the campuses the school leaders the teachers are very familiar with that and and there are you know five protocols and they're they all have for different reasons um and you know and then there's different measures that need to be put in place and so i think it's important to to keep the the terms clear like yesterday was called secure campus which is very different from lockdown and i think when we start calling things lockdown when it's not locked down it it's it um you know makes it more alarming than it needs
074to be and you know so i think it's important that we use the correct terms and so i would love for our school district to our community to make sure that we don't confuse the two um similarly i think um we could do or at least yeah maybe you know know that the schools are very familiar with these protocols and so showing up to campus or making phone calls to the office is sort of is maybe a little bit um counterproductive i don't know i feel like i'm on a soapbox i don't want to be on a soapbox i did but i feel like i learned a lot um as well as like you know when you don't hear something doesn't necessarily mean like you don't need to fill it in with a bunch of
075um i don't know rumors or what you see on next door or social media or text from the kids etc like i think that that is also counterproductive and and and really the know that the schools are really looking out for the safety of the students and they're focused on that and they're you know um talking to the right people and doing the right things and then we just need to trust um that's their priority and that you know we shouldn't distract from that so and you know feed the the rumor mills so i don't know that does now getting off so much that i wasn't intending to get on but i just felt like it was important to say um i think we as a district can also and parents and community can kind
076of learn from that early experience that happened yesterday and um that's it thank you right so i'll turn it over now just for superintendent um comments i wanted to highlight three things in my comments uh one is uh shout out to skeff and the pta last night they had their strategy meeting for fundraising and i want to publicly acknowledge this powerful committed group who helps harvest funds in our community that provides music and lots of wonderful things in our district uh next week i launched the superintendent advisory committee uh i'm really grateful to uh anyone who offered me some names of people to serve and we have this wonderful group that's going to help socialize the district's financial status and uncertainties and help inform the board about a parcel tax extension and then finally i've
077spent the last three and a half weeks visiting school campuses my goal was to be at every school two to three times including classroom visits with the principals and what i've seen really confirms the high quality teaching and learning environments we have the amazing educators effective operations staff and overall welcoming community for learners families and staff at elementary i visited the ba garden which i always love and watch students in learning stations i got to read some of the student writing they were writing about themselves and their experiences at upper elementary there was a project-based learning that is related to a belonging and learning about each student through a poem and at middle school math teachers were implementing new strategies and exposing students to primary documents on the middle passage so thank you to all
078of our 344 staff for making learning so amazing for our almost 3 000 students okay thank you jennifer um okay i i let me just check the zoom to see if they're there did they show up now no okay um we have nothing on closed session so i will go to item 10 which is adjournment and adjourn this meeting at um 7 37 p.m that's all right a new record maybe yeah okay thank you guys thank you