001Good evening. Thank you for being here. Welcome to the May 7th regularly scheduled meeting of the San Carlos School District Board of Education. I am calling this meeting to order at 630 p.m. Noting that Trustees Q Hamurani and Sarah Castanago are not present. Also, our Superintendent Jennifer Fentress is currently at a school event but will be joining us later on in the meeting. 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. First on the agenda is the approval of the agenda. Board members, anyone have any changes you'd like to make to the agenda? If not, is there a motion to approve? All those in favor say aye. Okay. Agenda is approved 3-0. Okay. Before we get started
002on 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 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'll be time for public to 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. If you'd like to address the board here in person, we ask that you fill out a blue card and if you're online, please use the raise hand feature. According to board bylaw 9323,
003each speaker will have three minutes to address the board unless changed by the board. Okay. Next agenda item is a spotlight on excellence and I'll turn it over to Hans to introduce the spotlight. All right. Well, tonight our spotlight is about Ropes. In case you're not sure what that acronym is, it's Rites of Passage Experiences. It's an opportunity for fourth, sixth, and eighth graders to do something extra outside of school, a passion project, if you will. I'm really pleased to say that we have our ropes coordinator here tonight who is kindergarten teacher extraordinaire, Rundle, in addition to being ropes coordinator, Ashley Brown. So I'm going to go ahead and invite Ashley up to the podium. She's going to talk a little bit about the ropes program this past year and we are incredibly thankful for
004her dedication and commitment to this outstanding SCSD signature program, which would not be possible had she not taken the role on. So thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So thank you. Can you hear me well? Thank you, board members for making a spotlight on ropes. So for over 20 years, the purpose has been to allow students to have self-directed project-based learning opportunities that incorporate our future ready skills. So I'm just so excited that we are able to honor them today. These personal learning projects are then presented in late March to a panel of judges, which encompass members of our community as well as board members and teachers. So it's really great to showcase this today. The scope of projects range from creativity and appreciation of arts to innovation and service. The
005main goal is for students to be able to pursue a topic of interest and present that process in which they achieve their goal. Next slide. Thank you. So all students who present are required to complete five components of their project-based learning, which include a written report, a timeline that requires a minimum of 15 hours, a one-page self-assessment and review of themselves in the project, along with a one-minute pitch video, which you will see a few of those today. And finally, the slideshow presentation, which helps our students not only convey the scope of their project, but it also shows their personality, which you'll also see today. Next slide. Thank you. So an option that we added this year is a service learning project for eighth grade only. This project requires 15 hours of community service and
006a slideshow presentation, along with a detailed report describing the organization they worked with and the experience that they had. The goal in my mind is to recognize students who are already participating in service with their local church or synagogue or another organization within the community and encourage them to show and share with us their experiences and how it's inspired them. An opportunity, though, for this year is promoting the program a little more, which will do more with flyers on campus, outreach to our local organizations to bring more awareness to this new Ropes project. Next slide. So enhancements to the program. This year, we also included Ropes ambassadors. So this is really cool. We have former participants who were selected to be interviewed and share their experiences with our current participants. So I wanted to give
007a little shout out to Kepler Gunto from TRLinda, Gavin Grayson from Arroyo, and Mirabelle Chow and Eloise Leighton from Central Middle School who worked as a team. So wanted to showcase in these three videos the range of projects. And these projects, interviews on projects, allowed us to share with students who are currently participating how they can adapt their STEM projects or STEM fair projects or focus on a personal interest project to create their Ropes. And these sessions were recorded on Zoom and then posted on our Ropes Google Classroom. So next slide is the highlight of tonight, which is the participants participation amongst our schools. So oh, it's okay. So we wanted to celebrate our schools. And so for Arroyo, we had, sorry, with Arroyo, we had 54 students. So Arroyo for Arroyo, since it's a
008fourth, sixth, and eighth grade project, it was only our fourth graders. So we had 54, which was amazing. At Mariposa, there were 60 fourth graders who participated for the first time. At Central Middle School, it was tied. There were 45 sixth graders and 45 eighth graders. So a combined 90. And then at TRLinda, we had 34 sixth graders and 42 eighth graders. And we also include Charter Learning Center. So Charter Learning Center had four, sorry, seven fourth graders for the first time, and then one sixth grader and one eighth grader participate. So we can't access right now, but we will present this in our slides in the future. But this is a very awesome pitch video from Thomas Stratton and Will Snekovich from TRLinda, whose project was to show how you can use just household
009items and like wood and other items to create their own push cart. And so they did a really cool video, which I'm sad we can't share right now, but a very, very awesome video about how you can do it and why you should do it. So we'll go ahead and go to the next one to honor some of our other participants. So next you'll see a photo. This one was amazing. It's the Golden Cat Carnival. And the Golden Cat Carnival is from, it was a motorized ferris wheel created by Viva Vinay and Ellie Jun from Mariposa. Their project consisted of a carnival made of multiple pieces, made of recyclable items and household goods. And then they motorized the pieces. During the presentation, they were able to set it up and turn it on so that
010the judges could see. And so it was a really awesome idea. And it just made me think of the artists of the 1920s who created the Sandy Circus from Calder. Next we have another one, and we're going to show you a video of this one. This is from Mariposa. We have Emma Granados who choreographed her own lyrical dance performance. She has been inspired by her over six years of competing in dance competitions and used her favorite techniques from lyrical and jazz to create this performance just for ropes. So I want to share this with you. Thank you. Our next slide is from Charter Learning Center. This is Camden Nguyen. He did a Costa Rican wildlife presentation. And for this one, I wanted to showcase how our pitch videos vary from student to student. We don't
011give specific guidelines on how students must create their videos. We leave it very open-ended so that they can show their own personalities. And I just found this one to be very dynamic. So I'd like to share with you Camden's pitch video. Yeah, so just really wanted to showcase how amazing these students are and how exciting the ropes can really be. On our next presenter, this one is just a picture of a team. This is eighth graders Grant Parrish, Reid Murphy, and Kirk Cole. And they created a coaching program. So their project was learning through youth coaching. They have gone through the years of doing flag football. And as eighth graders, they decided they're going to become the coaches. So they learned the whole process of creating the drills, teaching the students so that the students
012had their own confidence to then learn to love flag football themselves and then have the skills to actually scrimmage on their own. So just really showing how with a service-based project, students can also use their interests but then share it with others. So that's our eighth graders from Central Middle School. The next one is a really cute one as well. Inger and Maddie's Barkery. Inger Morris and Maddie Harrison had a vision to create dog biscuits to sell to the community in order to raise funds for a local shelter. Through their experience, they learned that it was a bit of a challenge selling dog biscuits door to door in their neighborhood. And so they had to figure out other ways to raise money for their cause. We love how they had passion for animals but also
013wanted to bring awareness and found a way to bake healthy dog biscuits within a household kitchen. So that was a really creative project but also service-driven. And then lastly, we have Detective Taco, a comic book from Antek Trela from Central Middle School. He created his own comic book using creating his own characters, a plot, and then publishing it using an online printing source. This was a very innovative project for a student to take their idea from sketch to actually publishing. And they were able to show that with their judging panel. And this is his pitch video which talks about his characters. So here is a video and he is a sixth grader. My project folks is a comic book called Detective Taco which is 18 pages long and includes a prologue, first chapter, and cover
014of the story. It's about a little guy named Detective Taco who was greeted by a scientist and a guy. She doesn't know about robots who are trying to find six keys that could unlock and fall holding a snake with the power to destroy the world. The robots on their hand found out about him and know that he could be able to stop them. The one who did that was a robot named Fire Boss who earned his name by laying one-fifth of the robot army and possessing the power of fire. When he found out about him, he didn't know what to do. But later he found out his weaknesses and decided to do something about it. So this year I wanted to highlight that we did have a lot of writers. A lot of students were
015inspired by a lot of book series that they had read. There was one, I Survived, and so students had written, one student wrote his own I Survived book and there was another student who was interested in his own culture and so wrote a historical fiction based off of his family's background. So there were a lot of great authors that were also publishing this year. So a very great range of students to celebrate. And so for the last part of it, just want to talk about some opportunities for next year, just outreach for our service learning project, getting more students to recognize that the things that they're already doing in the community are valid and they should be rewarded. I really want to champion that. So reaching out to our local organizations and letting students know
016that if they're going to a soup kitchen or making sandwiches every Saturday or Sunday, that's something that we want to celebrate. In addition to that, reach out to our Jenny Salazar. I really want to get some Tinsley participation. So really making an effort to reach out at back to school time and build some team groups to present in ropes hopefully in the future. And then adding some mandatory onboarding meetings for new participants so they feel a little bit more welcomed and know what to do. Regardless if they are a sixth or eighth grader, if it's their first time, they need to know what is expected of a Rose project. So those are just some things that we want to add for next year. So thank you so much. Any questions? Thank you, Ashley. Yeah, go
017ahead. Yeah. Yeah. So my eighth grader has earned two ropes and we really appreciated the experience and think it's a really special component of our San Carlos education. And also thank you to all the volunteers. My husband volunteered one year as a judge and I know it's a huge army of volunteers that you put together and that's a really wonderful way that they contribute to our community as well. Yes, I would second that their volunteers are amazing. And I think once a little shout out to our volunteers, once you go, once you fall in love with ropes and you're like, I kind of want to see what happens next year. And I do have volunteers who say, Hey, can I come again next year? And I'm like, of course, we love, we love to share
018that with our community. So thank you. I guess just to echo a little bit of that, I got a chance to be a rope stretch this year. And honestly, going in, I didn't really know what I was stepping into, but I was blown away by the projects. I actually got to judge the golden cat carnival. I thought that was amazing. But we also had all sorts of other things from a kid who spent 55 hours coding his own computer game to two girls who did a bunch of, you know, happened to have a ton of interest in research on blood types and presented that as a research project. So I think it's just a wonderful program that I'm so happy it exists. My kids are too young for it at this point, but I do
019hope that they take it on because I think there's just a lot of value in sort of the self-directed, you know, project based kind of taking on a task, figuring out how to do it on their own is a huge thing and part of growth. And I guess I just want to give huge kudos to you, Ashley, for running the whole thing. I mean, this is a massive effort and there's sort of, you know, the sun around which all of this revolves is you, honestly, like, and, you know, the success of it and the interest that it generates both on volunteer side, but also on the kid's side. I think it's just a true testament. So thank you so much for the, I don't even know how many hours you must have put into all
020of it, but like a huge amount. So thank you for that. And let's celebrate our 298 students who participated this year. They were getting, we're getting a lot of students. So thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. If I could just add one more thing. Yeah, Boris, you hit on what I was going to say, but Ashley, don't go anywhere now. Hold on. Students always say, did I pass? Or the judge will say, well, do I get, how do we grade them? And we don't. However, somebody has to read every paper, look at every PowerPoint, watch all the videos. And that person is Ashley. So thank you so much for everything you do. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Now we will be moving on to the consent agenda. The
021consent agenda contains items that are routine in nature and for which no board discussion is anticipated. So we act upon them with a single vote. I did want to highlight that one of the items on the consent agenda, item number 4D, updates to board policies. We do need to make a minor change to the document. We just forgot a word. And so I'm going to state it here and then we can still continue to vote on it as a consent agenda item. So on page one, paragraph three, the word state was accidentally omitted. So right before, I'll just read the whole thing. It says, unless otherwise exempt from disclosure under, and then it should say state or federal law, executed contracts for the purchase of goods and services, yada, yada, yada. So we just forgot
022to include the word state. So when we do move to approve the consent items, we should just note that change. Yes. And maybe just to clarify, that was in policy 3312. Yes, sorry. The contracts one, board policy 3312. I forgot to mention that. Yes. Thank you. Any other comments? Okay. Let me check for public comment on any of the consent items. I don't see any raised hands. So I have a motion. Move approval of the consent agenda with the update under 4D policy 3312, adding the word state to the third paragraph. Thank you. Second. Okay. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Okay. So consent agenda is approved three zero. Okay. Moving on to item five, information discussion. These are just more for information. And so there's no action required. And what we'll do is
023have staff present. And then at the end, if there's any clarifying questions, the board can ask them. So this one is Ralph. Yes. Thank you. So this is an update on something that's been going on behind the scenes and not behind the scenes for a lot of people. So the County Office of Education here in San Mateo County evaluated the current financial system, which is called Financial 2000, and decided to go through a process to determine if there was a better alternative to the current system we are using countywide. A request for proposals went out from the county. And all the proposals that were received, the county put together an evaluation team, which was represented by someone from each school district. So there were one or two representatives from each school district on this evaluation
024team. They sat through presentations from the vendors that submitted proposals. They worked through some questions and they had some working sessions with the software providers. And that took the most of last year to do that. The team came back with a recommendation to change financial systems. So when we say change financial systems, we're talking about the HR module. We're talking about accounts payable, accounts receivable, and payroll. And one whether you're currently using was absence management system. So that'll be currently the same company will be doing that as well now. So that process took place, and the county decided to start the implementation process and train districts in the beginning of this school year. So that means that starting in August, we were going through trainings, and we were learning the system. That's everybody that works
025in the business office and the HR departments. Smaller school districts have more of a challenge during this process, because often the people are wearing multiple hats. They're doing multiple things in the smaller school districts. So when there's trainings, they can't attend all the trainings. And when they are in a training, there's no one to cover for them. In larger school districts, you have people that are doing repetitive tasks sometimes, and you have people to cover, and there's more people to do the work. So the people here, the small department that we have did a tremendous job. It became even more challenging in October when we had to start dual entry, meaning when a change was made in our current system, a new employee was hired, a person changed positions, someone left the district. That process
026had to be done in both systems. I'll get to those in a second. I'm just kind of going over an overview. Sorry about that. So that dual entry process is really important, because you want to make sure that whatever's entered in the current system, Financial 2000, is entered exactly the same in frontline ERP. That's the new system. Because then we had to start doing payroll comparisons. Starting in October, November, December, we were looking at the months and looking at the comparisons and looking to make sure that the software was behaving the way it was supposed to. And during that process, you evaluate, you see the differences, and then you make small adjustments here and there, whether it's a vacation out on and how that's entered in, or whether it's extra duty pay, how stipends are
027paid, how benefits are paid, all of that and vacation payout, all of that has to be analyzed, has to be looked at, and then if there's any discrepancies, we have to figure out where the discrepancy is and then make the adjustments. So the staff painstakingly went through this process and has been going through this process the entire school year. We do have the benefit of having Denise as a project manager, so I thank the board for that support there, because she has been instrumental in this implementation process. She's able to work behind the scenes, able to really analyze the difference because the staff here have day jobs and they get interrupted daily, so Denise is able to focus on that, meet with each of the staff members, whether it's HR, whether it's payroll, whether it's
028accounts payable, and make sure that they are understanding the discrepancies and training them in how to look for and fix those discrepancies. Right now, we're in the middle budget, and so that's an important piece as well, making sure that we can close out this current school year in the current system, transfer all that data into the new system, and then build the budget in the new system, so that's an important process there. We just finished site-based user training this week, and so I have to give a big shout out to Lisa Sergioli, who took that on, and she's the accounts payable clerk, and she trained all of the site users, so the site administrative assistants, the district staff here that submit recs and POs, and then she'll be training all the principals on how to
029approve those POs as well, so she is the main person in doing all the training. I wanted to thank Teresa and Chris as well, they were involved in that process to make sure we have capacity so everybody is getting all their questions answered and getting trained appropriately. So now if we go to the, is this the first slide, or after, yeah, so these are the modules that we have to complete, and this is the update, so we're doing really well in comparison to some of the districts, and you can see accounts payable, account setup completed, so we had to create all the new accounts, right, vendor setup, we had to make sure all the vendors we're currently using got transferred in and are edited, and make sure that's all appropriate purchasing, AP checklist, AP workflow,
030making sure our workflow is appropriate, where does the approval path go, when a site submits a rec or a purchase, who does it go to next, electronically in the system, so that's making sure that's all done, budgeted option checklist complete, so all of these on this first page are all completed, which is really good. The next page is payroll, so you can see payroll setup, employee setup, all of these modules, again, through the hard work of the staff that we have, all of these modules have been completed already as well. The next one, we have a couple of pending items, so this is payroll continued, it's contribution setup, deduction setup, leave setup completed, so that's in progress, so we're still working through to make sure that leaves are accounted for appropriately, whether it's a teacher
031on extended leave for an illness or a family, whatever it might be, we have to make sure that's set up correctly, and the other one we are making sure of and continually checking is the net pay compares, right, that's going to be an ongoing process until we finish the school year to make sure that all of those salaries and benefits are calculated appropriately. So what's next, you know, pay comparison is an ongoing thing, like I said, estimated actuals will be completed in the current system, financial 2000, and imported into frontline ERP, budget adoption will be created in the new system, and year end close will be created in the old system, and those two will be merged to create the SACS report, which would be what we're going to present at, you know, when we
032present the budget for adoption, it'll be in the SACS report, and the full implementation will be July 1st, so we have to be ready to go live 100% by July 1st, and so I think that we're on a really good timeline, I think that we are in good shape to make this happen. So some of the benefits of the new system, right, so you can see here integration with other frontline solutions, so frontline has this idea that they're this software not just for payroll and not just for accounts payable, but they can be the absence management software for when teachers call in, and they record their absences and track all those days and vacation days. Asset tracking, so they do have a module, we're not using it currently, we're using incident IQ, but there is
033an asset tracking module where we can add in all of our assets, whether that be the technology, whether that be the furniture, whether that be any machinery, so all the assets can be tracked in frontline ERP as well. It's scalable and there's support, improved compliance and audit readiness is also something we're going to get better reporting out of this system. The back end of the system or the old system was called escape, and escape was used in other school districts, and so there's some familiarity with some people, and so we have some support around there. Another note, San Francisco Unified also transitioned to frontline ERP in the last couple of years as well, so there's some people close by that we know and we can look to for support in this transition. Improved reporting features,
034improved budget modeling and projections, it allows us to go in and quickly calculate any adjustments we want to make when we're doing budget. Do we need to account for more teachers because we have more TK students, so what happens if we add three more teachers? How would that affect the budget? Well, we can quickly put that in and we can see what that would do to the budget. It's a web-based portal, so that means currently you have to be on site at one of our school districts online to access the financial system. With frontline ERP, principles and admin assistance can be on a web, on the online version of the software. There's still a lot of features, the complex features are still an enterprise software where we have to be on the network for security
035purposes, but for the general user they can just use a simple web browser and get on and it will be a lot smoother and faster for them to use that software. Streamline administrative processes, so when things talk to each other and things are tied together, that means things can move smoothly and enhance employee experience. So again, onboarding is another, it's called frontline central, so when we get to the point of including frontline central into this package of software, when a new employee gets onboarded, they're automatically entered in and so we don't have to enter them into the financial software. It's one entry and it's all online. We'll move on. In conclusion, right, this is to inform and update the board on the progress on the financial system and the huge undertaking that staff have been
036going through during this process, you know, to inspire confidence in the transition and to answer and clarify any questions. The next step is to be ready by July 1st and we'll be able to provide an update in August to see how that transition went. Thank you, Ralph. Boris or Sarah, do you have any questions or comments? So I thank the staff that have been doing double data entry, Lisa, Chris, Teresa, anyone who's been putting in that extra, I'm sure, tedious work. Thank you for that effort. Thank you. And I also thank Denise for the help that she's provided in this transition. So everyone is contributing and I feel very confident about how things will go in July, so thank you for that. Thank you. Okay. All right. Welcome, Dr. French. Now we're on agenda item
037six, which is discussion and action. So we have several under this category and basically we will, these are ones that we will have someone present, ask some clarifying questions, any things that will help you make a decision and then we will call for these items as well. I just realized I didn't ask for public comment on the financial system, so let me just, no handshakes. Okay. So now moving on to six A, this is the approval of contract with Clifford Moss. Thank you. We are here to ask the board to approve a contract with Clifford Moss and FM3 for both pulling in strategy to assess feasibility of a parcel tax measure in 2026. Team Clifford Moss and FM3 supported San Carlos's successful measure H assessment strategy and recently was in our community, so they know
038our community. At the recent budget study, session trustees learned of the current need for funding in our district to support comparable and competitive salaries for employees. We're really grateful to the community for our current parcel tax measure N. However, we know that its intent was to actually pay for more teachers than current salaries would afford at the time we passed it in 2020. The intent was that it would cover 25 teachers, it covered 24 and now in fact it's 18 teachers. So, but before we consider going back to our community, we want to make sure we do our due diligence and we want to spend some time communicating our need. So we ask that you approve this contract. It will allow us to do pulling and that we would then promise to bring back the
039results for your consideration as we did with measure H so that the board can make an informed decision. Does anyone have any questions or comments? I have more of a comment than a question. So I guess first I appreciate Dr. Prentice that you're bringing this to us. I think it's basically a month since we had that April session when we were talking about kind of our budget projections and what things things look like and the importance of thinking about what we need to do for reauthorization and for measure N. So very supportive of bringing folks on board who have helped us before in answering these important questions. I guess it's just as we're looking towards the start of this work and where we're at in kind of the overall process of understanding what might be
040before us. I think what I'm very interested in sort of understanding what are the people outer bounds of what might be feasible for us to consider in terms of options for the amount, ongoing inflator questions, duration. At this point, it'd be nice to have a good understanding of sort of as we look at those different pieces, which ones tend to give us more or less support and sort of what is the outer bound and what might be feasible. Whether we pursue that or not, it's useful to have that understanding at this point. And as we start to get into those questions, I think it's also important that we're starting to think about laying the groundwork now and thinking about what we need to do between now and the time we would actually need to make
041a decision about whether to put something on the ballot to make sure that we have confidence that if we do decide to move forward, we've done all the prep work with the community, other elected leaders and others that would need to be with us for this to go forward. So I just want to put the plug in that we should be thinking about what are all those steps we need to be doing starting now, essentially. Yeah, thank you for that. The team, the staff internally met with the team of Clifford Moss and FM3 yesterday. And since they agree, we have plenty of time for 2026, whether the board considers June or November for 2026. And they expect that they can turn around and get polling done by the end of the school year, which then
042will allow us to assess, as you point out, we have a lot of options, do we? And, you know, before I talk about those too much, I want to make sure that we pressure test them. But I completely understand the outer bounds is, you know, what are all the variations we could consider, make sure we're looking at our budget with a three-year projection, looking forward. There's a lot of uncertainty, I know, with the federal budget, with the state budget. So we want to make sure that the board has some variations on a theme. And so the team plans to assess both timelines, all possible options, etc., and then give us some good transparency. And one possibility is that the board then could assess whether or not we need to do another polling later in the
043fall as we get closer. The timeline for a resolution, if we wanted to be on the June ballot, would be February. So you can see we have a lot of time for that. And then obviously it would be somewhat later, but we're in November. So I feel confident, just like they did last time, this board will be able to see variations, what our constituents are saying about that, which can help you. And then you can also assess if we need another poll. I'm curious about the format. Would we do something like a study session where we consider the results of this and our different options? Yeah, so we did look at poll results in a board meeting, a regular board meeting. And then as we got to decision making, especially because the board needed to
044consider which projects, for instance, the extent of the projects. And we also had our partners from Keygent. So, you know, parcel tax is really different. But what I'll do is work with the board president about how comprehensive it is. I want to make sure that we're swift in getting feedback too, but also being thoughtful about the deliberation of the board. But we do anticipate at least one, maybe two study sessions also that would accompany decision making prior to a resolution. Great. Thank you. I remember working with Clifford Moss for the bond and the poll information every time. I'd be like, I wonder if they ask. And then I would flip the page and I'd be like, oh, yes, they did ask. So all those questions that you asked for us that we should think about
045all the different parameters, I do think it'll be captured and we'll have a lot of data to help us make that decision. And also related to timing, June versus November. So, okay. So if there are, let me check for public comment. Okay. I don't see any. Is there a motion? I move to approve the item. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. The contract is approved three zero. Next is the approval of appointment of central middle school assistant principal. And that go to Hans. Yes. That it does. All right. Thank you, Tracy. So after a rigorous and thorough process, similar to the one we described in finding principal, we actually had 44 applicants for this position. So we had an amazing pool of folks. We're really excited to be able to put forward
046Christie Van Ostrand as the next assistant principal for CMS for your approval tonight. Christie brings a wealth of experience in both general and special education. Most recently she served as a fifth grade teacher and teacher in charge at Foster City Elementary or neighboring districts. It's a fairly large school and teacher in charge means when your principal is out, you're basically the principal. So she had a lot of opportunity to do a variety of things in that role. She's, as I said, she's held a variety of roles from classroom teacher to site leader and brings expertise and a deep commitment to inclusion, connection, and student growth. She's led school-wide initiatives and PBIS, positive behavior intervention systems, instructional leadership, and inclusive programs like best buddies, all with the goal of creating a culture where every student feels
047valued and empowered. So first we put forth her name for your approval. Is there a motion to approve the appointment of? I'll move approval of the appointment of the central middle school assistant principal. Second. Do we check for a comment? Oh, yes. Thank you, Boris. Okay. I don't see it. So I think you're good. I'm sorry. So second from Boris. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Okay. The appointment is approved 3-0. Welcome, Christy. Hi, everyone. I'm Christy Van Ostrand and it's really an honor and privilege to be here tonight in front of all of you and the community members online. And I'm so excited to be the assistant principal at Central Middle School. Go Mustangs. I look forward to meeting the community and the families and the parents and the students, of course, and
048working together to just really ensure that our students reach their full potential. I'm super excited to work alongside Mr. Domer. I know he's got plenty of experience in the community. So I look forward to that. And the ropes is just a small little sample of why I'm so excited to be here and how we put our students first. So thank you so much. Do you want to introduce your family? Yes. It's my mom and my wonderful fiance. Thanks for joining me. Well, we're excited to have you, Christy. And thank you, family, for coming. I also wanted to say thank you to Hans and Jennifer Long for the number of applicants that you had to interview and just coming off of having to do that for the principals for the two elementary schools. So thank you
049so much. He's really great. Tom is also a really instrumental part of the process. OK, so moving on to item 6C, approval of enterprise TECELP site lead, revised job description and salary schedule. After performing a comparable study with similarly funded districts in the county and revising the job description to reflect a reduction in clarification of duties for recommending the approval of the updated job description and salary schedule for enterprise TECELP leads retroactive to the beginning of the school year, July 1st. Just a quick note, there isn't currently anyone in these positions. This is more getting ready in preparation to fill these positions for next school year. Any questions? That was going to be my question. Is anyone in this position? Yeah. All right. I'm going to check for public comment. No public comment. Can I
050have a motion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. OK, the job description and salary schedule for TECELP site lead has been approved 3-0. Now we are moving on to 6D, which is the staff device refresh cycle. And this is Ralph. Yes, thank you. So this process was started earlier this year. Many of our teachers have devices that are from 2019 or possibly older. And in today's world, you know, that doesn't seem all that old, but that technology does get outdated and we need to make sure it's refreshed so they have the latest technology to support students like the ropes course and the videos and everything. So this is for 60 computers to complete the refresh cycle for all staff throughout the district. And so the cost is 57, $58,000 to do that. And once
051that's done, all staff in the district will have a nice new machine. Are there any questions or comments? I'm sure that they all appreciate the new machines. So yeah, 2019 is a little old. OK, I'm going to check for public comment. OK, seeing none. Can I have a motion? Are we approving the refresh cycle? Or the expenditure? This quote for 60 computers, which is $58,000. OK, I move approval of the quote for new devices. Second. OK, all those in favor say aye. Aye. OK, the quote is approved. Three zero. Thank you. OK, the final item on 6E is the approval of amendment number one to the facilities lease and authorization to enter into lease lease back agreement as amended. I think this is being presented by both Jennifer Gabri. Thank you so much. And I'd
052like to introduce to some partners that are in the audience and are available after this presentation for questions and to introduce themselves. And we have Ryan and Mitch from Flint here tonight too. So I just to acknowledge their presence and give you a measure H update and that includes some developments with our HVAC project. And so tonight our purpose is to update you and to provide some context for the guaranteed maximum price, which is being presented as an amendment to the facilities lease, which was brought forth in December 12th meeting. So we are entering into this agreement as amended with San Carlos School District and Flint Design Build. I wanted to share with you some context so that you understand what is being changed. And so as you can see, we have a presentation that
053includes the total cost of the project that will be spent over two summers with procurement of the materials needed for the projects already having begun for summers 25 and 26. The cost is shown here by school site with contingency budgets built in to account for the unexpected costs that may arise related to DSA compliance, construction issues, and owner approved decisions that may come up in the course of the work. If these contingencies are not utilized, the cost will be returned to the district. And so here's another presentation of the same number that allows you to see the breakdown by description areas. So it's a sum of expenditures by category and totaled for the six schools so that the price breakdown is visible to you. So as we work through this project, as you know, we
054began this project in 2023 when we were first looking at schematic design to see if this is something that we could afford and do as and how the scope of the work should be bid out for an RQP. And so we have, beginning with the facilities master plan cost estimates that we have embedded into each school site. You can see that our overall budget, if you skip all the way down to the last blue line, is about $30 million for this, and that includes construction costs, contingency costs, and that gives you a hard cost in the first blue line. And then the soft costs are embedded into the total project budget. And so when we set forth on this journey with our facilities master plan, we accounted for this expenditure to be in the ballpark
055of about $30 million. So when we move closer to what is this really going to look like with a schematic design, our number was around $23 million, and the number that went out for the RFP excluded some of the costs, and so we've added them in here, so the soft costs and the contingencies. And then when we went out just to get some more additional estimates for the construction documents once they got submitted to DSA, and then the project became more real and more defined, we were able to come up with an additional increase of expenditures, but still within budget of around $29 million. And so now with our guaranteed maximum price being put forth from Flint, we see that the project hard cost is in that case number that you see right there that's
056consistent with the two documents I just showed you, as well as the soft costs which have been adjusted to stay within budget. And what's next? So this allows you to kind of see an overview of our HVAC does touch all of our eight schools. It does so in the order in which was thought through with what we currently have some air conditioning available to central middle school students and a royal school students. And so therefore their projects will be after the other schools have had their HVAC upgrades. And the building envelope is to be coming next, and so we're very excited about that. And through our work with Bureau Veritas and the Facility Condition Assessments, a schedule for our building envelope emerged that is consistent with the needs that are designated from the investigations that
057they did at each school site. And so you can see that depending on the condition of the envelope, when that will be happening for each school site with the bright spot that White Oaks has already been completed. And then our TK expansion is our phase two part of the Facilities Master Plan with some new construction coming in 2027. And so as we look at that new construction and the building envelope projects, we are looking to utilize design build as our next delivery method. And so that allows for close coordination between our contractor and design team. There's a contractor and architect, they're all in-house with one company. And so the district would have one point of contact and it allows for us to have budget management streamlined and that we can finalize projects further in advance
058because knowing that the process for DSA takes a long time, we want to make sure that we get started with that. It also allows for some creativity during the selection process of the different elements in your design, and it creates this collaboration of one single team. It's a great fit for us because we have a large and complex project, but a very small team. And so we want to make sure that we are able to complete the best value of the project overall with the team that we have. And so I just wanted to share that next steps. And tonight, the objective is to review this amendment, which we just did to the site lease and then seek some board approval of the amendment tonight. Any questions or comments from the board? Okay, I can
059jump in first. So I guess first, I just want to start off by recognizing Hugh Jefford that has happened to get to this point and for everybody collectively to be ready to have troubles in the ground this summer. I guess it's whatever the right term is for building HVAC units. And so I just want to say thank you, Jennifer, for all the work that you did to get us prepared. With the measure only passing last year, there's been a whole ton of work to get everything lined up in time so that we can stay on that schedule that you just showed, which with progress happening every single step. And I'm really glad that as we're taking this really big decision tonight on moving forward with the first piece, we're also already thinking about what the
060next piece is because these things, just as this one took a while to tee up, will take its own time to get those ready. And so I was really glad to see that kind of overall workflow chart that you had showing the multi-steps at each campus and sort of the rollout that will happen across the different campuses, across the different work packages that need to happen there. I guess the other thing I just want to say is for this particular decision that we need to make, this is our first kind of major set of Measure H projects. And so first, I'm again grateful for the Flint team and Jennifer, your work to keep it on track and in the budget that we had set out for it. I think that's huge. I know there's already
061been good collaboration to get to this point. And so I certainly want to see that going forward. And we have a lot more projects that are coming down the pike. And so I want us to get up on the right foot and really start to see the results of what people wanted us to do with these campuses. I know what I talked to parents and I mentioned, oh my gosh, we're going to do HVAC this summer. They're like, wow, things are going to happen already? This is great. So again, I think it's kudos to everyone who's been involved to this point and just high expectations that will pull this off. And thank you, Flint, for being here. Appreciate your guys' partnership and more to come. But I'm in full support and go team go. Thank
062you. Yes, echoing that, thank you for the swiftness with which we have proceeded with all of this. I think being able to lock in a price through 2026 is going to fare well for us and play with these changing external forces out there. I want to talk a little bit about the contingencies. We spent some time time at the facilities committee because they are about 10% of that GMP. And so it helped me understand better that there's a process in which those contingencies are drawn upon and it would always come before us before the final approval. So that made me. Yes, thank you. Was there anything else I learned that I learned? I was impressed there's so many layers of kind of who's keeping eyes on this project that there's also an inspector of record
063who signs off on things in addition to Jen. And so I just at the end of the facilities committee, I felt very comfortable. There's lots of layers of protection for us as a district, and it's just a very thoughtful approach to the project. Thank you, Sarah. And I echo what both of you have said. And I also appreciate that you both are serving on the facilities steering committees. Thank you for that. And I did have one question. I was looking at the slide that talks about the project hard costs and then the soft costs and then how it neatly adds up to the total project budget staying exactly the same. So if the project hard causes has is higher than expected, is it realistic to say that the soft costs is going to be smaller
064than the adjusted? Yeah, I think you have more levers within your soft costs so that you can pull those with needed. But, you know, with the hard costs, you're already building in the contingencies, as you mentioned that have to do with things that come up related to what we're asked to do to be compliant with DSA. Things do come up. And so those costs are built into this number. So the likelihood of those costs changing. And this also includes escalation of about 35% in our facilities master plan when they did the cost estimation. And so we feel really confident when we did all of this budgeting and calculations to make sure we were in line with what the FMP had planned out for this project. We felt comfortable adjusting the soft cost to make sense
065because knowing that there was some additional room for the unexpected, shall I say. All right. Great. The other thing I neglected to mention is in front of you, you have some a revision to what was originally circulated. And the front page has the revision highlighted on the third paragraph. And the second page is sort of the original document. So the revision includes that this rewording talking about the guarantee maximum price in the correct amount. Yeah, that's correct. And then I'm not Yeah, I don't know if you can speak more to it. Sure. Yeah, we just we wanted to make sure it reflected the language that we were bringing forth in the slide deck. And so we noticed that there was a difference between the two where as is and what was put on the posted
066and then what was needed to be included. So we adjusted that. And then we adjusted it. This is the first amendment. And in the second page, it said number two amendment. And so we adjusted those two minor edits just to make sure it was consistent. Thank you for bringing that up. Sure. Okay. I am checking for public comment. I don't see anything. So when we pass this, we need to say with the with the revised language and on the amendment. Okay. Can I get a motion to approve this? I'll move the item with the amended language might just read the whereas clause just so we have 100% clarity on what we're seeing. So we're taking out the in the recitals, the third whereas clause, which was talking about whereas the parties now desire to amend
067and supplement facilities lease, establish allowances, and then that whole paragraph is going away. And the new paragraph will read, whereas the parties now desire to amend and supplement the facilities lease to establish the total guaranteed maximum price GMP in the amount of $23,781,904 for construction of the project. And so that's the new clause. $94 is the end of that. And I would like to move on. Great. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Okay. So the amendment is approved three zero. Thank you. If you're interested in this one right here, I just want to say congratulations. That's awesome. We're super excited about this project. We've done a ton of school projects in the community and in the Bay Area, especially HVAC projects is our specialty. So we're going to knock this out of the park
068and make sure we do a great job in the collaboration already in the pre-construction side and getting the early procurement and making sure we're protecting ourselves versus tariffs and lead times. We've already started that process. We're going to make sure that this is going to be a super successful project. And one thing I did want to mention, we already reached out to Sequoia Union High School District. So we're going to have a summer intern from the community on these projects, which is great. So we just want to say thank you so much for the opportunity. And if you have any questions, you can reach out to Mitch or myself for any of the upcoming. And we'd love to, as we get into construction, do a site visit for all you. Yeah, that'd be great. Thank
069you, Ryan and Mitch for coming. Thank you. Okay. So that's it for discussion and action. Now we'll be moving to item seven, which is future agenda items. Yes. You can look forward to a lot about budgets and a lot about the local control accountability plan. The next few meetings will feature both of those items. We're not sure that we'll have a comprehensive report on the May revise at the next board meeting, but following we'll send out some communication. But really the heart of the matter now is making sure that we pass a budget and we likely have a few facilities items as well. And a bunch of board policies as well. Oh, that's right. It's really good policy. Yes. Okay. Moving on to item eight communications. Eight a is public comment. We have reached the
070portion of our meeting set aside for comments for the public about matters, not on the agenda, but within the subject matter jurisdiction of the board. Under board bylaw, 30, 93, 23 comments are limited to three minutes unless changed by the board. Since you are addressing the board on a non agenda item, please be aware that the provisions of the Brown act prohibit the board from having a discussion with you or each other on your comment. We will also not be responding, but please know that we are listening and taking note and appreciate what you have to say. So with that, I have no blue cards here in this board room and there are no raised hands. So I don't know if I should say, say all of that. And even when there's nobody here to
071comment, but why not? Okay. So now we'll move on to eight B, which is the employee group comments. Dan. Good evening. Can you hear me? Yes. Oh, great. It's a teacher appreciate teacher appreciation week. As you know, we're fortunate to have such dedicated and talented educators in our schools. Our jobs are both rewarding and demanding. Thank you to all our wonderful families and for coffees, lunches, staff room treats, cards from our students, flowers from our students, and many acts of kindness. We feel the warmth and love from our students and their families. And thank you to Jennifer for her ongoing garden visits with my students. Yesterday, she joined us for pumpkin seed planting. Many of my students recently discovered kid shovels, kid rakes and kid hose. And so they were begging to do that. And
072they did that in the native plants area. We're fortunate to have a really big outdoor area for learning. And I always enjoy when Jennifer comes to visit, she's an avid gardener and my kids love it too. One of my kids was playing with her jewelry and petting her like she was her grandma's cute or maybe not grandma, maybe not that old. Sorry. So thank you to Martin Aguiano and his maintenance team for doing major weed cutting in our school garden, our native plants area, our nature park area, they have to wear hazmat suits and masks and goggles because as they cut these weeds, there's so much pollen. And so we really appreciate them and all of our classified staff. And then I want to circle back to teacher appreciation week. I know the district is
073doing coffee carts at our schools, which we appreciate very much. But the best long term teacher appreciation gift that our district administration, this board and the voters of San Carlos have given us is the bond and especially the HVAC at our sites. So we thank you for that ongoing investment in our teachers of now and teachers in the future so that we can have air conditioning. So thank you. Great. Thank you, Dan. I don't see anyone from CSEA online. So we can move on to board member comments, Boris or Sarah. I could start. I was going to use my time to give an update on the trip that Jennifer and I took to Washington DC last week as part of the California School Board Association annual advocacy trip. There were over 300 school district trustees
074and superintendents that came together for three days of learning and then advocacy work. And I believe this is the first time our district has participated in this event. Both of us went in not quite knowing what we were getting ourselves into. But it was over the course of three days, they start out with a day sort of priming us on the key issues with some really excellent speakers. It's a nonpartisan event. So we had speakers from different parties in Congress giving their perspectives on public education. The second day we came together in our team from San Mateo County that we're going to meet with Kevin Mullen's staff to figure out our various talking points. The way CSBA works is they develop a common policy platform across all the schools in California, which bless them. So
075the topics we were advocating on were protecting core federal programs for schools, fulfilling the 40% funding promise in IDEA. So the special education funding, the feds are supposed to put in 40% of that and they are nowhere near that level. Reauthorizing the Secure Rural Schools Act, expanding connectivity and cybersecurity, both within schools and also connectivity for students at home. And tackling the educator workforce crisis, particularly in the area of providing workforce housing. So these are shared nonpartisan issues that we were all able to speak about in our delegation. So then the final day was the meetings and we only had one legislator where we were in the district for them. So that was Kevin Mullen. We met with his staffer and he took a really good long time with us. It was nice to just
076sit there and really delve into each of these issues. We all went around and shared examples from our districts about how these issues impact us. So I felt it was a very high quality event and what they really emphasized is that it's just the start of building a relationship with that elected official. So it sparked some good conversations with Jennifer and I and I hope all of us about maybe inviting elected officials to our events more often. We're obviously going to send a thank you after that visit. So just keeping in mind how we keep these ongoing relationships building. I give it two thumbs up. I think we should keep doing this. Some districts, I think we had five other districts that we were within San Mateo County and then the County Office of Ed.
077So we just divvied up those five topic areas and around. But some districts brought multiple trustees and their superintendents. So I think that would make sense for us. But it was a good event. Thank you. I guess I can go next with Preston. Thank you to both of you for making that trip and representing the district in those conversations. I think it is valuable for us to be plugging in and thinking about kind of where we fit in that general advocacy world for what we need from the federal government, also what we need from the state government. So I think there's more conversations to be had there. I guess the thing that I'll share in my comments is, you know, I never went to law school, but I feel like I'm building up my judging
078repertoire. So I, besides the ropes judging that I did earlier in the year that we talked about, a couple of weekends ago was also judged for the Lions Club public speaking contest. And this is something that, again, learning all sorts of new things, but it goes through a whole progression and series of bigger and bigger regions that folks compete in and give a 10 minute speech basically on a topic of interest. And in the current world, they've been doing this for decades. So you can look at past topics that they've covered, but I got to judge six students from schools sort of in Cemetery County. I think a couple of folks were from Carlmont on the topic of AI friend or foe. And I'll just say that, you know, it felt very topical. The speeches
079were great. And I was incredibly impressed. I mean, some of these kids were freshmen in high school. I can't think about getting up in front of a bunch of adults and giving a 10 minute speech as a high school student. But I think about, especially for the kids in Carlmont and Sequoia and places, that these are sort of our alumni that are building all those skills up to be able to do something like that when they get to high school. And so I was incredibly impressed. You know, we had to, there's very strict rules about the judging process. You had to have distinct marks for every kid, every speech. And I'll just say that, you know, I walked away from it basically saying, okay, I have my one through six, but if you could pick
080any one of the six and say that they were the winner. And so, you know, it was just an incredibly talented group. And so I think we should be very proud of the kids we're sending out into the world. You know, those are big skills that they have already developed and will be able to use for a long time. Thank you, Boris. Thanks for sharing. And yes, you are building that judging resume quite extensively. I also wanted to extend my gratitude to Dr. Frentress and Sarah for spending, it sounds like very long days filled with a lot of activity, flying all the way to the East coast and representing our school district. So thank you for that. But also, I also wanted to say thank you for all the people who came out for the
081day of service, the St. College day of service, every single campus. I think it was reflected really well in the letter that went out, Dr. Frentress, to the community, just how much is going on in the school district and more is coming, right? Like May is known as May Sember because there's so much going on. And on top of what was already expressed and what's happening, there's also all the concerts, the awards, the celebrations of learning that are coming down the road. And I think we're going to have our plates full. And I appreciate the teachers and staff that are working hard to make that possible. I think you had a great week of appreciating you, but hopefully you feel the appreciation beyond just this week and we will continue to shower you with coffee
082in the coming weeks. And I think that's, I feel like I had one more thing, but I can't remember. So I will end my comment there. Thank you. The next is superintendent comments. Well, I also want to join everyone in expressing gratitude. The month of May is really long with a lot of things, but a beautiful thing is the way in which we elevate and celebrate, as we should every day, our educators, our principals, our classified employees, our nutrition people. And I look forward to being with trustees on campuses and taking coffee to people because there's nothing like hearing it in person. So I look forward to that. I also want to express gratitude for being able to be part of the delegation. I think in San Carlos, we really strive to live our values
083and the aspirations of our community that were memorialized in our strategic plan, including a learner profile, elevate things like citizenship and advocacy and making sure that we're doing what we can to make our world better. And so this opportunity to go and learn what are things that we can do to elevate the things that are really important to us. And I was, I felt really good that IDEA and services to our students who have learning differences was a priority for CSBA. IDEA is a law that was passed over 50 years ago to provide a free public education for all students, including students who have learning differences, but that was never fully funded. And so now there's kind of a small portion that we receive as districts and being able to learn the ways in which
084we can elevate our voices to make sure the funding for programs that we really care about that our legislators know. And so one of my big takeaways in addition to what trustee Kinahan said about making this like the beginning of relationship is also making sure I share with everyone that our legislators need to hear from us. And that is part of being civically engaged and modeling kind citizenship, which we want our learns to have and calls, texts, emails, and personal stories are really super important. And I am looking forward to being able to tell the beautiful stories about our district and the ways in which we're delivering on the promise, but there isn't quite enough money to do it as well as we'd like to. So I want to turn it over to Hans now
085who had a few comments he'd like to share too. Thank you, Jennifer. Well, first of all, it's also award season, as you mentioned, and last Friday, I had the pleasure of accompanying Teresa Fox and Mindy Shelton principals at Mariposa and Arroyo at the San Mateo County School Board Kent awards, which they give out annually to exceptional programs in the county. And we had four teachers join us as well, Jen Heinschoel, Stephanie Curlin, Michelle Salas, and Jamie Skinner. And the team graciously accepted an award regarding their work in project-based learning, which, as you know, has been an emphasis over the last three years. And what makes that special, I think, is it was an aspiration and it was something that we felt like we were doing well way back when and kind of waned and then
086now it's come back into the forefront. And I think it's really it's wonderful that it's been recognized as such an important practice that allows for student agency and choice. And it's wonderful that we have two leaders that are so steeped in it that they ushered in really well with their staff. So I know a couple of you have been to the celebrations that have happened after PBLs and you see the excitement on the students faces and all that they feel as they went through that process. So it's just a great way to honor that work. And then secondly, we had some awards that were given that you may or may not know from the SELPA. So we always say SELPA, but that stands for the Special Education Local Plan Area. So San Mateo County has
087their own SELPA. And we had two honorees that were granted awards. So one of them has been extremely active in SEDAC, another acronym, Special Education District Advisory Committee. Tricia Levis, who was with us the last meeting, she received an award from the SELPA along with our Student Services Administrative Secretary, Teresa Burgess, who does a phenomenal job of keeping us compliant in special education to the tune of, you know, somewhere in the high 90s, whenever the SELPA overlooks our work, she always is commended on the level of granularity that she uses to make sure that we are compliant in individualized education plans and other areas of special ed. So wonderful when we have a chance to shout out folks and this being award season, we figured there's no time like the present. Great. Congratulations. Yeah. Okay.
088So that concludes our open session. We'll be moving on to closed session now. And we are going to be discussing items 13A, B, and C. So the board will now adjourn to closed session. Okay. We will now leave closed session and reconvene into open session pursuant to California Government Code Section 54957.1. No reportable action was taken in closed session items 13A, B, or C.