001All right, do we have everybody here? Yes, I see everybody. Okay, I'm gonna call the meeting to order. Good evening, everybody. This is the December 3rd regular meeting of the San Carlos School District Board of Trustees. Do we have any changes to the agenda tonight? All right, seeing that I'll call for a motion to approve the agenda. I move that we approve the agenda. Thank you, Irene. Thank you, Neil. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? All right, the motion carries five to zero. We're on item 3A, the board reorganization process. This is an annual process that the board does every at the first meeting in December after the election is certified. And so I am going to virtually hand the gavel to Dr. Harmeier and request that she begin the
002process of nominating new board officers. Great, thank you, Trustee Elliot. Are there, is there a nomination for board president? I'd like to nominate Neil Layton. Is there a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. Congratulations, Trustee Layton. And I'm handing the gavel back to you and you can go ahead and proceed with the rest of the elections. Awesome, thank you. Also, before we start, I would like to thank Trustee Elliot for, she's been, what year is this? Year nine or year 10, Carol? Nine. Nine, so in nine years, we thought that Carol would have not had seen anything or have seen it all and that a global pandemic hit. So officially, now she can officially say that she has seen it all from every part of board education and board president. I
003think there's one thing, you know, everyone gets a chance to see Carol online, which I think is basically a 10th of her ability of what she does and more importantly of, you know, how she advocates for St. Carlos. This last year, I had the chance to work closely with Carol in working through the pandemic and working with the county officials and then more importantly, as a trustee, farly retired than I was next. So she worked very closely with me in bringing me along and knowing and being ready for, you know, whatever this day may be. But what I want people at home to know or want the record to reflect always is that no one, and I mean no one, is a bigger advocate for the St. Carlos School District behind the scenes than Carol
004Elliot. I don't think there are many people that will go toe to toe with board of supervisors, county managers, county superintendents like Carol has that I have seen in the past year in working with her. I don't, you will never see that in a board meeting, but I got a chance to see it. It was a great way to learn. It was a great way to figure out how to be an advocate, but more importantly, what everyone I think should realize is the fact that, you know, when you have people like that fighting for you, that's what you want in an elected official. And it's not necessarily always what happens at the meetings, I like to say, that shows how much people work hard, but it's what happens outside of the meetings. And I got
005a chance to see it. Carol, thank you very much for guiding us through this year. You're not done with us yet, but I know it was a very, very hard year, and I truly appreciate you bringing us along, but more importantly, you know, everyone should truly appreciate what you mean to this district and what you have for the past nine years. And now you officially can say you've seen it all, and I'm hoping that we have nothing left for you to see at this point in time, so. Thank you, Neil, those are very kind words. I really, really appreciate it, and it's been a joy to work with you and the rest of the trustees and all of our staff and parents and stakeholders, and thank you. And I have great confidence in your ability
006to really serve as a fantastic president. And I think, Carol, I just want to add, thank you so much for working so closely with me, and I'll miss our weekly meetings and discussions. They were quite intense this year. What a year, if you think about where we were last year in December and all that we have managed, you know, through the different challenges, but also the successes, too. And I really appreciate your endurance. You are persevering. You have the endurance to stay strong and be an advocate for our students. You are so student-centered, and I think that's what we need in our leadership who are leading this community. So thank you for all of your support and working so closely with me this year. And on behalf of the board, we dropped a little bouquet
007off at Carol's house today just to say thank you. Normally we would deliver that to you at the board meeting, but just thank you. Thank you, Dr. Harmeyer. So the next step in business is we need a vice president. So at this point in time, I will call on any nominations for a vice president for the board. I nominate Irene Chen. And is there a second? I second. All right, all in favor of Trustee Chen being the vice president, please say aye. Aye. Aye. And an aye, and that will carry five, zero. The next appointment we will need is we will need to appoint a clerk. So at this point in time, I will call for nominations to appoint a clerk to the board. I nominate Wendy Doherty. I second. Okay, all in favor, please
008state by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye, and that will carry Trustee Wendy Doherty as the clerk of the San Carlos School Board. Finally, we also need to appoint a district representative to the County Committee for School District Reorganization. At this point in time, I will call for nominations for that position. I'd like to nominate Sarah Casanago for that role. Thank you, Trustee Elie. Do I have a second? I second. Great, then a second. All in favor of Trustee Casanago, excuse me, for the district representative to the County Committee for School District Reorganizations, please state by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye, and that will carry five, zero. And finally, we need an alternate to the district representative to the County Committee for School District Reorganizations. Do I have any nominations for the alternate to the district
009representative to the County Committee for School District Reorganization? I will nominate Trustee Elliott as the alternate to the district representative to the County Committee for School District Reorganizations. Is there a second? Second. All in favor, please state by saying aye. Aye. Aye. And aye too, and therefore I'll carry five, zero, that Trustee Elliott will be the district representative to the County Committee for School District Reorganization. At this point in time, we will also need, I would have called for the nomination or a motion to appoint Dr. Harmar, the superintendent, to serve as the secretary of the board. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, and all in favor, please by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Therefore, we will appoint the superintendent to serve as the secretary of the board moving forward. If we were in
010person, we would change seats, but virtually we will all stay the same and continue from there. So the next part will be the consent agenda. For reminder, everyone, the consent agenda is items that we find to be routine in nature or procedural. At this point in time, I would call for a motion to approve the consent agenda. I move the consent agenda. Thank you, Trustee Elliott. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Trustee Chen. All in favor of approving the consent agenda as is, please state by saying aye. Aye. Aye. We will approve the consent agenda five oh. Moving on to item five A, which is the 2019-2020 annual public report of developer fees. Just so sometimes this can get confusing is this is just a report designated by a government code for us to
011report how we use developer fees that we collect throughout the year. It has been attached to the agenda. I don't know if Dr. Harmar, you have anything to add to it, but it's fairly routine in nature just for our public consumption to know how we're using our fees. I have no additional information. Are there any questions? Okay. Do we have that just an informational item? So without any questions, we'll move on to item six A, our first interim budget draft. And we'll start just a little bit kind of where we're at with first interim. So the public knows first interim is just a snapshot so far of the year and how we forecast it out. I know there's kind of lots of questions of how we perceive the future to be. However, this is just
012more of a snapshot of where we're at for now. We all know lots of changes may or may not come throughout the year, but this will just be a presentation regarding kind of how we've been through the last year in terms of capturing savings, what we're forecasting going forward in regards to our reserves. So Dr. Harmar, I will give the floor to you. Great, thank you, Neil. Christine Gong, our chief financial officer has prepared a presentation. She's also attached a report. In the report, it looks like a lengthy report, but really the first 12 pages are a narrative that can really help you drill down and see the details on how to interpret the report. So you're always encouraged to take a look at the SACS report, but her slideshow is really a summary of
013those 12 pages in the report. She will do the presentation and then post some questions and discussion afterward. So Christine, you can go ahead and share your screen and I'll let you take it over. We'll check with Veronica to see if you're able to share your screen. Well, she should be able to. Okay, give it a try. Can you see it? Yes. Oops, sorry. Here we go. There we go. Okay, sorry. Here we go. Good evening. I will be talking about our first interim. So what I'll be talking about is our first interim requirements, how first interim compare to the 45-day budget, our multi-year projections and our next steps. First interim is taking a look at what happened from July to October and projecting from November to June. As we use that information to build
014our multi-year projections and we use the 2021 phase as for our multi-year projections with some assumptions. The board was adopt the first interim by December 15th. There are three type of certification. Positive, meaning the district will meet its financial obligations. Qualified, the district may not be able to meet its obligations. And a negative certification, meaning the district will not be able to meet its obligation. The districts had two qualified certifications and the county conditionally approved the 21-21, 2021 based on the 45-day budget revision. Here are the state assumptions that we use for first interim and our multi-year projections. COLA adjustments for our state funding will remain at 0% for the current year and the next two years. So that means there is no additional funding for our district. Our funded ADA for 2021 will be
015based on the 19-20 level. And since attendance is not collected for 2021, the ADA projection extends to 21-22. For fiscal 22-23, we are assuming our funding will be based on the higher reported ADA. So that will be at the 21-22 level. On the expenditure side, the two-retirement system adopts and approves the rate that we use. As you can see, STIRS and PREVUS rate are increasing each year except for 21-22 where there is a slight decrease in STIRS, but it increases the following year. The impact to the district is $80,000 for 21-22 and $517,000 for 22-23. And here are our district assumptions. Federal revenue will increase because of carryover. Carryover are funds that weren't spent in the prior year and are brought forward to be spent in the current year. For the out years, we are
016assuming flat funding with no carryover included. For our state revenue, our mental health entitlementing. Christine, you still there? We can't hear you. Yeah, I think we lost the sound with Christine and I also think that we're having some trouble with our YouTube recording. So let's take a pause and Christine, can you go ahead and kind of do a test talk again to see if we can hear you again? You hear me? Yes. Hello? Yeah. Can you hear me now? Yes, we can hear you now. I took out the pods. Where did I stop? At state revenue? Yeah, let me just take a pause, Christine, just so you know, the loop, the YouTube had a little bit of a problem. So there was a little issue with the live stream, but now it's back on. So
017we will go ahead and continue. Did I stop at state revenue? Why don't you start at the top of this slide? Oh, the top of the slide, okay. The beginning on the assumptions. Sure. So here are the district assumptions. Federal revenue increased because of carryover, and carryover are funds that weren't spent in the prior year and are brought forward in the current year to be spent. For the out years, we are assuming flat funding with no carryover included in our federal funds. For state revenue, our mental health entitlement increased, and for the out years, we are assuming flat funding. For local revenue, local rental and leases increase because at budget adoption, we were uncertain of facility rentals due to COVID. The facility uses are continuing, but at a reduced rate. Even at the reduced rates,
018it's additional local revenue, so an increase to our budget. For fiscal 21-22 and the out year, it's based on a full year with no discount. For our expenditures, we have step and column increases. Step and column means moving a step on the salary schedule. For certificated, it's about 2%, and classified, it's 2.5%. The impact to the budget is about half a million for each year. Textbook adoption are included in the current year and in 21-22. The election costs of 80,000 is included in the third year for board election. And we are assuming utilities increase, the utility rates will increase at 3%. Christine, we're not hearing you again. Wanna do a test there? I can hear you now, at first you were, oh, it's my internet. All right, tell the rest of the family that they
019can't be on the internet while Christine is presenting. So let me go back to expenditures. Yes. Did we stop at utilities or did I freeze at utilities? We've got the utilities down, go ahead and talk about staffing. Okay, for certificated positions, we are adding back two unfilled middle school positions that were filled by outside agencies in 2021 for the four to eight electives. And for the classified position, we are adding additional night custodian. This slide is taking a look at our revenue comparing first interim with our 45 day budget revision. And why are we using the 45 day revision and not the budget that was adopted in June? It's because of major changes in the final state budget. In the May revise, we were anticipating a 10% reduction in our state funding when the final
020budget was a zero core to the LCFF. Christine, I think we've lost your sound again, so we'll pause. All right, do you want to do a test? Can you hear me now? Yes, we can hear you now. Go ahead. Did I stop at freeze at? You were at state revenue of the 10%. Okay, so state revenue. So in terms of the final state budget, the impact of our district was 1.4 million of increase in state funds, 1 million of learning loss funds and adding back 2.75 custodians per SB 98. Locally, we added $1 million donation from Alexandria, $200,000 from SCAF and a one-time transfer of $200,000 from the retiree benefit fund. So this slide is comparing first interim with the 45 day budget revision and revenue has increased by close to $160,000 due to carryover
021increase in mental health funds and rentals and leases. Expenditures increased by $114,000 due to the increase in books and supplies of 1.3 million for textbook adoptions, PPE and Chromebooks. This increase was offset by the decrease in salaries for unfilled positions and reclassifying categories. By reclassifying, it means we were anticipating to spend in one category but spent in another. For example, we thought we would spend in other services and capital outlay, but instead we spent in books and supplies so funds needed to be reallocated. I don't have this as part of my slide, but it is on page 15 of that big document. But at the 45 day revised budget, our total increase was $1,128,268. Okay, we'll pause Christine and make sure that we can get your sound back on. Okay, wanna try it? No, it's
022still not on. Okay, how about now? I can hear you. Okay, we can hear you now. I'm gonna go back. At the 45 day revised budget, our total increase was about $1 million. And at first interim, the net increase is $124,000. The difference is the $1 million donation from Alexandria that is being transferred to Fund 17, the special reserve funds as directed by the board. Using 2021 as our base, including the assumptions that I mentioned in the previous slides, we will be deficit spending approximately $303,000 in 21-22 and $1.1 million in 22-23. And that's all due to step in column increase, STRS and PERS increase, increase to utilities with no additional state funding. There are two main factors are affecting our fund balance for 2021. When the board adopted the budget in June, the books
023weren't closed for 2019 and 20, and we didn't anticipate the 45 day revisions. We closed 19-20 with a higher than anticipated fund balance by $2.5 million due to additional revenue and lower expenditures. $700,000 was from redevelopment funds, transfer to Smarty and Fund 13 decreased by $900,000, the SPED contribution decreased by $600,000, and there was $300,000 of unanticipated revenue. And the second thing that impacted was the 45 day revision. We increased state revenue by 1.4 million because our LCFF wasn't being reduced by the 10%, but at COA, we had additional 1.1 million in learning loss funds, additional lottery funds, a million dollar from Alexandria and additional SCAF funds to help reduce the deficit from the adopted June budget. In this slide, I wanted to show you that Fund 17, the reserves, the Alexandra donations, has been
024included as part of our reserves. So for 2021, our anticipated reserves are projected to be around close to 9%. 21-22, the reserves will be around 8%, 8.42%. And in 22-23, our anticipated reserves would be about 5%. And this shows that our reserves are declining because of, as I mentioned, step in column costs, pension increases, and no additional funding. And by 23-24, which is not part of the slides, we will anticipate we will not be able to meet our 3% minimum. Also, any additional spending will affect our future reserves. I also wanted to let you know, oops, I also wanted to mention that if we did not include Fund 17 in our reserves, sorry, if we didn't include in our reserve, 2021, our reserves would be at 6%, 21-22 would be at 5.66, and 22-23 will
025be at 2.63 if we did not include Fund 17. We do have some budget challenges. One is no COLA increase. The state is not anticipating any increase to COLA, so we're not getting additional funding. Since our district is in declining enrollment, our funding will decrease after 21-22. Increased pension costs set by the retirement system will continue to rise. Hold on, Christine, we've lost you again. So we left with increased pension costs, and our reserves are declining. Okay. Okay, you're back. As part of the state budget and not cutting the else, my internet went down. Okay, my internet's back. As part of the state budget and not cutting the LCFF funding, the state instead included large deferrals. And the deferral means the monies that are owed to us are delayed until next fiscal year or longer.
026So we must borrow money to have the cash to cover our monthly payroll and our bills. And the next steps is staff recommends the board approve a positive certification for the first interim at the December 17th board meeting. Also at the same board meeting, I'm bringing back a resolution for TRAN so that we are able to borrow money to have enough cash to pay for our payroll and our expenditures. Our 2019-20 audit report will be completed by March 15th of 2021. The governor's budget proposal is coming out in January, and any information that comes out of that, information that comes out of that conference, we will update the board on any new information and how it will impact our district. And second interim will be brought to you to be presented in March of 2021.
027Any questions or comments from the board? All right, thank you very much, Christine. I want just kind of to touch on a few things as kind of guide our quick discussion to the beginning here. Are there some areas, I know we've gone kind of full circle from doom and gloom to this is, it sounds like in your opinion, a positive budget at this point in time, but can you highlight some of the areas in kind of your review that has helped us get to this point or saved us that we've done at the district level just so we can kind of understand some of the levers we've pulled on throughout these past couple of years to get back to a positive budget? Well, I did mention the two major things was in 1920, we ended
028up with a higher fund balance. And then because of the 45 day revision, we had additional revenue. And also because of the difficulties, the hard decisions that the board made on making reduction that help in certifying us to be positive. Just to add to that, Neil, if you recall, we reduced about $1.5 million in staffing and expenditures two years ago and almost another million dollars last year. And so that two and a half million dollars are ongoing reductions. And that has really made a substantial impact in stabilizing our budget. And I guess as well kind of along those same lines, just with it in that regards, I know sometimes you're in direct conversations with the county, Christine and Michelle, but if you can kind of just help the board understand a little bit of what
029the county's saying about our situation and then going forward, what their suggestions are and how we can help kind of manage our situations and the uncertainty that could be January. The county has reviewed our first interim and they're glad that we have a positive certification, but they do want us to continue to monitor things and also for the enterprise fund to not to continue having enterprise contribute into the general fund. I'll open up to my fellow trustees. It's just a discussion item tonight to get more information with Christine to kind of understand the first interim before we're asked to approve it on the 17th. So whatever questions you may have for her to kind of clarify the budget, understand a little more, or I always like to say anything to help those listening at home
030to understand the situations, I will open it up to everyone else. I have just a couple of clarifying questions. Christine, thank you for the presentation. It was really fantastic. And you've laid it out very clearly. You really, really appreciate it. I'm curious when I look at the revenues for our, based on our enrollment in 22, 23, it's basically the same actually a little more than in 21, 22. But if I understand correctly, we actually are having to use a lower enrollment for 22, 23. So how does that align? You see a little increase in the revenue and that's due to our supplemental funds. The base rate increases a little bit in the out year, like increases about a dollar. And I think what happens to, I asked Christine about this this morning is we still
031have the same number of unduplicated count students, but it becomes a higher percentage of our overall. So we get a higher percentage of unduplicated count funding, which is targeted for specific use. So it just changes the concentration of our funds a little bit. Is that a good way to explain it, Christine? Yes. Okay. I'm just curious if that's the most conservative way to calculate it, because if we end up having a lower number of those unduplicated count, then that's gonna hit us in the revenue. So I'm wondering if we should be more conservative in that. I think you bring up a really good point, Carol. And for the third year out, so I'll kind of go back and touch on ADA and enrollment. Last year, we had 3,017 students for enrollment, and they're letting us
032use that number for this year and next year. So our decline in enrollment isn't going to hit until year three, which you are pointing out. And that's really important for us to understand. We're at about 2850 right now, 2850. So we thought we'd be 2975. We're about 130 kids less than we thought. So we're in a whole harmless situation this year and next year. So for the third year out, we reviewed what we should use for our projected enrollment number with the county. We're waiting for the Decision Insight demographer to give us our report. It's not quite ready. Usually comes in middle of December, beginning of January. But we looked at our actuals right now, and then we looked at adding in, we've been surveying our parents as they leave. And what we're asking them
033is, are you planning on coming back or not? Because many people have told us in their exit interviews, we have a survey, that they're just going to leave for the year and they're planning on coming back. So we looked at those numbers and conservatively put some of those that said for sure we're coming back, not the maybe we're coming back. And we're kind of balancing that. So for first interim, the county felt our projection of 2886 was appropriate at this point. But by the time second interim comes and our budget development, we're going to be much more specific because we will already be in the enrollment process. We'll have the Decision Insight report and we'll be a little more accurate. But they felt this was conservative enough for where we are today. But it is
034definitely a concern with such a significant drop and it's going to hit us hard in two years. Thank you, Trustee Elliot. Any other questions, comments for Christine? Thank you. And this is Wendy. I just wanted to say, it was very helpful to see that reserve percentage and also how you reflected what that reserve percentage would have been without the contribution from Alexandria. So I think just wanted to highlight that because we've already thanked them publicly, but that was a incredible windfall for us this year. And again, just for you to highlight that for us because we've been on this teetering brink of 3% and that's been very, well, it just presents so much uncertainty for us. So we're in this place now where we can sort of breathe a bit of a sigh of relief.
035Not sure though how the conversation will be in January or February when we get the governor's budget. So it's always sort of a moving target, but I think it's just helpful. Dr. Harmeier, you highlighted the cuts that have been made in the past year or two. This is prior to my being on the board and Sarah, we're fairly new to this. So all of the context is extremely helpful to see how we've gotten to this point. And so your slides are very helpful in doing that. I did wanna, I guess I just wanted to ask for clarity. Sorry, the major district assumption slide, because if I'm going back to that without your presentation, I guess what I was trying to understand is like, what's the plus, what's the minus? I mean, we have revenue above
036and expenditures, but I guess I was just trying to understand what I'm trying to get at is like under state mental health, that's revenue. We got additional revenue for that is what we're saying. I just wanted to make sure it's very clear to people when they're looking at this slide. For mental health, we did get additional revenue, but that comes with additional expenditures. Okay, yes, right. So it's like a net zero, I mean, ultimately. Yes. It was just essentially a little gift that we were able to enhance our support services for students this year from a little bit extra revenue. But the key is like Christine said, we're in flat funding. And yet you can see our expenses are going up incredibly. And I think this slide really, really hits my heart. When you see
037the $517,000 increase contribution to STRS and PERS, again, as soon as you have to pay another, almost really now 600,000 over the next two years, then either the state needs to give us a cost of living adjustment, increase our funding, increase the Prop 98 allotment, our basic funding, or we're gonna be facing reductions in order to keep up with the cost of these things. And this is what's hitting districts all across the country. I mean, California, particularly California has made this shift to push the STRS and PERS retirement costs onto districts where the state used to pay for that amount. And now they're asking us to pay the bill, but they're not giving us increased revenue to do that, which means it's eating into our budgets. It means we have to make trade-offs. Right, yeah,
038thanks for going over that. And I said my previous sentence, like we can breathe a sigh of relief today, but as you explained the forecast, without any increased revenue, we're not gonna be in a good position. Thanks, Chris. And then just to add to what Michelle said in the capital advisors session on I think it was Monday or Tuesday with the state controller and the state treasurer and Jack O'Connell, they shared that in 23, 24, the STRS and PERS rate will actually accelerate the increase. So if we think there's pain now that, I mean, look at this, it's a half a million dollar hit, you know, in 22, 23, that's just gonna keep going up and up. We're not, that's not the ceiling. So we have to think really long-term. Thank you, Carol. Thank you,
039Wendy. Irene, Sarah, anything for Christine or Dr. Hermann? I would just say that from a kind of a tone perspective, I think it's like, it's instead of going, we didn't go over the cliff, we've just like managed to kind of like pull back. And I think we are in that still remain in that state of being chronically underfunded. And it is really important to kind of build our reserves for the increased pension costs that we see coming down the road. Fundamentally, school district finances are dependent upon how the state economy is doing. And you can kind of tell it is challenging economic times. Thank you, Irene. Sarah, anything? No, thanks Christine. And just a lot of thanks to Christine, cause this is, and staff that contributed, cause this is a huge effort and it was
040presented very clearly. So thank you to all who contributed. Yes, we all echo that I believe to Christine for your hard work in this. And it's not just, you know, in prep for the interim, it's been prepped all year long, kind of coming into it since you joined the district. So we thank you very much for that. Trustees, lastly, before we stop, this will come back to us on the 17th for approval. Is there anything anyone wants? Clarification on the come back, anything that they think they'll need more information on before asked to approve this interim budget? The other, just one other thing, like I think what we do as trustees at this point is like, we're always kind of looking for to be conservative on the assumptions. And are there any kind of assumptions
041that just didn't feel as conservative? The only thing that caught my eye was just the assumption on the rental and kind of like lease fees for 21, 22 the following year. I think we had them coming back full, kind of with no discount. So think about that. I certainly hope that all the people who rent from us are fully healthy. I would hope for that, but you might just wanna be a little bit more conservative in that area. Thank you, Irene. I think that's a really important point. We kind of hit a midway with this rental and lease for next year. We looked at our two vendors that are now renting from us and we will go to full rental rates with them. But what we did not include were all the extras that we
042might get, the camps, the enrichment classes. We were bringing about three to $400,000 of additional revenue on top for those kind of extra activities, San Carlos Children's Theater, Galileo Summer Camp, Stephen Cates. So we did not include any of those for sure. And I think that's the conservative piece just to be safe, but we are signaling to our renters that they're gonna have not a 50% discount next year and that we're gonna be adjusting the rate back to our regular contracted amount next year. Helpful, thank you. That helps. Irene, did you want us to come back with more clarification on that point or is that good enough for you? No, that's great. All right. Without that, Wendy, last check. Is there any public comment regarding 6A? I have not seen any public comment. All right.
043I just refreshed. Perfect. In that case, we'll move on to 6B, Committee Assignments. Dr. Harmar has proposed, and these are the committees we've had in the past going forward. This is a chance for us to discuss what committees we believe we feel we need going forward for the board in the community as well. And it's not, correct me if I'm wrong, Dr. Harmar, it's not for us to decide maybe necessarily who's sitting on them now to approve them, but just to have a discussion if they fit what we think is going to be necessary for us going forward. Well, I think we have an opportunity to do two things. One, just to be clear on the committees that we do want to maintain. These are district and superintendent committees that are in place. And so
044if we can just check in about the purpose of each one and making sure the board understands what the purpose is and if there's any direction on each one. But then I would like to start to have people volunteer to serve on some of these committees just to have board input, insight and communication. So I thought we could kind of talk through each one and then have people volunteer. So I made a little chart that might help us that if I could just share my screen, it might just kind of give us a visual as we talk through that. So let me go ahead and share here. Okay, so in our last meeting, we talked about having a new committee that is really connected to our two plus two city and district committee to talk
045about community benefits. And that is when there's a potential large gift from a developer or an outside agency that we have a couple of board members, kind of lead those conversations. And so that's the community benefits committee. And that connects to two plus two. The two plus two is two city council members and two school district board members who meet about quarterly to find opportunities for the district in the city to collaborate and explore shared interests. So typically it's the president of the board now Neil and the former president, which would be Carol who served on the two plus two city and district. So could we maybe agree that we would move forward with the community benefits being the same too since a lot of those conversations overlap with the city? Hope enough for any
046discussion if anyone wants to say anything, if not, we'll just, I will assume that that going forward we'll put it the same as the two plus two. I agree. You agree, okay. Next, we have a new effort in the district around diversity, equity and inclusion. We're using inclusion counts as a company to help facilitate this process. So I've put that in there for reference, but I would like to have two board members serve on the steering committee that we will be forming in January. Any volunteers? Michelle, I would love to be on that committee. That's one of the things that motivated me to explore joining the board in the first place. So I'm excited to work on that. Okay, I don't think I spelled your name right. Did I? You got it, yep. I did,
047okay, great. Anyone else want to join? Michelle, I just wondered, can we go through all of them before we then like... Oh, want to kind of have an overview of them? Yeah, yeah, then decide who's going to do what. I mean, I appreciate Sarah jumping up. That's the same as raising our hand because that's awesome and it's your passion. So thank you, Michelle. Yeah, sorry about that. I think that's a good idea. The climate committee, we proposed to have this start last year around this time of the year where the association requested an opportunity to build a more positive climate with management and superintendent, district office staff, and board members. We didn't really have a chance to launch that committee. COVID hit right when we were ready to start that work. It was going to
048be Carol and Kathleen and now that Kathleen is off the board, that's one vacancy on that committee. And then Carol was serving in that role as the president. So that will want two more people to serve in that role. Right, Michelle, sorry. I'm sorry if you said it, but can you clarify who were the stakeholders then who would be? It'd be our, well, I think Carol, do you want to speak to that a little bit since you were more involved in the planning? I think what we were, you know, in the conversations that we had had with our association, what the goal was was to have board members, the superintendent, representatives from our associations on the committee to discuss, to have an arena to discuss issues that arrive, to talk about opportunities, to build positive
049working relationships and to build trust. So yeah, I think a good question, Wendy, it would be members of our association, members of the board and district office. And I think we had also talked about having a representative from each site as well, just to have some broad representation. And, you know, I think this is going back to March with my recollection now, so I might not be completely right on that. And I'm happy to go back with the association and figure out exactly who they wanted on it. So this isn't prescriptive in any way. I also think from a board perspective, we'd wanted some continuity to it as well. So I think originally it had been president and vice president assuming that the vice president would then come on. I don't necessarily think, you know,
050we can structure, I'm open to whatever ideas, but I do think we do need some continuity that whoever's gonna take it, it's probably gonna be a two-year commitment going forward. You can go with the next one, Michelle. Okay. And a board policy committee, when board policies need to be revised or updated, this is where I tap into these two board members to help out if it was board level. Sometimes board policies need to be updated from staff and it's pretty straightforward, but other times it's nice to have the board be part of that process. So it's as needed and two people would be serving on that board policy. Questions? Okay, I talked about two plus two. In the past two years, we've had a budget advisory committee, particularly around informing and listening to a stakeholder
051group around budget issues. So we were using this group to really make sure that a diverse group was informed about what our budget challenges were, engage them and get input around budget strategies or recommendations to the board. And so that advisory group consisted of representatives from every school site, teachers, classified, administrators, some district office staff, and then also parents, SKEF, PTA, and community members. So it's a very broad stakeholder group. And so we are looking at bringing that budget advisory group back again as needed and then planning on doing that probably once the governor's budget comes out and once we start to look at putting together our 21-22 budget. Michelle, my question around this one, and I'm sorry I didn't raise it to you earlier, is what would the charge be for this committee? I
052think in the past couple of years, it was studying the need for a parcel tax, developing that, like you said, that community awareness of our budget issues, and then to help prioritize some really difficult cuts that had to be made each of those two years. And I think those are really important things to have our stakeholders and their broader community involved in. In terms of just kind of general budget setting, I don't know if that's something that we generally have had a committee for in the past. Yeah, and I think so too, Carol. What would be the purpose right now? In my past experiences, it's to constantly have a reflection group to make sure that we do have community members who are aware of the budget, can bring concerns or questions or just ideas or
053suggestions. So I think we, as a board, the board can really decide whether or not we need an advisory group at this point, but if so, we have a structure in place and we can always pivot to gather this group. In one way, we do have engagement around our LCAP. Yeah, I was just gonna ask about that. Is that the budget engagement process generally for our public? Typically, I mean, that's why we have the LCAP. I mean, this was an extra, like you said, an extra layer for some very specific initiatives that we needed to go through, but Hans Barber will be starting the LCAP engagement process in late January, which is a parallel process, which may suffice for this year, especially if we're just looking at maintaining and not making big pivots. Yeah, so
054I'm just thinking if we have eight committees, that's kind of, that's quite a lot, both for staff and trustees. So if there's an opportunity to maybe prioritize, this might be a lower one. So maybe we pause and just only bring this back as needed, and then we can ask for volunteers at that time. And lastly, this is not such a, not necessarily a committee that was generated by me or staff, but there's been a lot of conversation in our community about affordable housing, especially for teachers and staff and just the community in general. And there was interest from board members in the past to sit in on some of the county meetings or the city meetings and just be engaged with workforce housing. So this is a little bit of a leftover of a kind
055of a slot if someone was going to represent our school board. So that still remains there if there's interest. Ask this question, Michelle, is this, are you looking for two people on a committee or are you just looking for someone necessarily to be a representative toward more larger county initiatives? I think just one person would be adequate. So what happens is we will all of a sudden get invited. School districts, please attend one of these, and they are asking for a volunteer. So if we just had one board member who had that interest, that might be willing to go as invited, that would be the role. Maybe one way is we kind of go through it a little bit here. I'm thinking maybe we can have a discussion in terms of just starting with climate,
056just cause do we still want to hold it as it was when Carol and Kathleen started with president and vice president, or do we want to go another way? Cause that could make the other dominoes fall into place. No, I have a question before we start with that. There is one other committee that's on the board docs, which isn't on this one, the facilities master plan committee. That's right. Thank you. I have that on the list too. And I thought, oh, I just got like next before the meeting or something. No, I think I just didn't copy and paste well right before the meeting when this started. So thank you, Carol, for catching that. Can you tell us a little bit about what the facility master plan committee was been in the district since it
057was in place before I got here, and then it ended and then we're looking at bringing it back. Yeah, it's served, I think multiple functions over the past nine years that I've been on the board when we were designing the four or five models, looking at facilities, reviewing RFQs for architects and builders, talking about the bond, prioritizing projects, budgeting, those types of things. So very much nuts and bolts around the new facilities, the new sites, prioritizing the bond projects and yeah, they're very active at that level. And the reason we're bringing this back is because we were just notified that we will get some bond reimbursement money from the state coming back to our district. And in fact, Christine anticipated that and the county asked her to go ahead and put it in the first
058interim. You'll see that as fund 35. So there will be funds for facility related projects. And so we're going to need to pull a committee back together and do two things. One is do a, again, a five-year deferred maintenance study as to what are the essential facility improvement needs. Like for example, are roofs needing replacement? Are there plumbing issues, black top resurfacing? So there's a study that needs to be done to do that five-year deferred maintenance to assess the cost there. Then when that study is done, then the Facility Master Plan Committee then can gather to prioritize needs because as you know, we didn't finish all of our construction projects around Arroyo and Mariposa. And we also just have ongoing facility improvement needs because of aging facilities. So there's a combination of interests there. And
059so this committee would help bring recommendations to the board on how to prioritize the spending when it's time. So Carol, would you say two people should serve on that committee or just one? I'd say one would probably be fine. We could add a second one later, but I think in terms of how many projects, thinking about the prioritizing of the thing that's going to happen over the next 12 months, facilities planning is a multi-year process. So I could see this having kind of a slow ramp this year. Yeah. Okay. But I think we've got them all on there. Looks like it all. Anything else you think we missed? No, I don't. All right. Anything else I missed? Any board members? Anyone? All right. Back to the Climate Committee. Do we want to continue with the
060way we had in the past? We want to change paths on who sits. Now's the time to have that discussion. If anyone would like to chime in, let us know. I will chime in that I have a lot of interest in this committee. But, and what I'm pondering in my mind, but of course, open to whatever solution ultimately works as we kind of slot board members into these roles is, you know, with the one hat on, I kind of do think that the board president, whoever's board president, makes sense for the Climate Committee. But I'm also just, Neil, wanting to make sure you're not too like overtaxed because that would be the third committee for you. Others? Thoughts? I mean, it's the third committee, but it's eventually going to be someone else's third committee later
061on. So I don't feel bad as it circles around. Any other, I would agree with Irene just since I'm here, just because, you know, as the president, you have a, you know, you're in charge of the evaluation with the superintendent and have more direct contact. But additionally, you know, I think it's good representative of the boards have the president be part of the Climate Committee in terms of having discussions with the association. And in terms of the vice president, just naturally flows with continuity to the next year. Okay, so should I go ahead and put you in, Neil? Yeah, I will put myself and Irene in as well because she's vice president. Great, great. Board Policy Committee. I have historically sat on it in the past. Wendy and I had it last time. Is anyone
062interested in taking it? Would be my first ask. No one tried to jump at it. Yeah, I will. I mean, since I'm, you know, I mean, climate was of interest, but that decision makes sense and I'll be glad to do board policy and... All right, thank you, Wendy. Would anyone like to join, Wendy? I'd be happy to join Wendy on that. Thank you, Sarah. And can you spell my name, D-O-U? Oh, sorry, Wendy. Thanks for the help. Thanks. D-O-U. Dory. How's that look? Thanks. Okay. What about the, want to jump back up here? Is there someone else who wants to join the Steering Committee? We don't need to, but if there was interest, okay. I mean, I guess it's just trying to figure out what else we need budget and we said budget advisory as
063needed, okay. Yeah. Is there somebody who has a kind of a passion for the workforce housing conversations that are happening in the region? I mean, I think it was Irene and I previously that were listed and were saying we only need one. And because of COVID, everything got put on hold. So you can still put my name there. Okay. Because I never got to participate. Right. Okay. And facilities master planning. I can be involved in that one if you'd like. And we still need one more for inclusion? I can do that. Wendy, did you have a strong desire to be on that? Oh, I was just trying to look across the thing here. I don't have a strong preference either way, Irene. So it depends on your load because you are BP. Well, I mean,
064it's more that to be perfectly frank, things on my outside of school board life are pretty kind of at like full on tilt right now. So depending on the, I could be dangerously into the overcommitted range, but I know how important that role is too. You know, sometimes it can also be good if we just put you both down in the sense of having, we did it with budget advisory sometimes where if we'd have one board member there and switch, then you guys can work through work schedules. I think it's just important that way if you wanna do both. And from a Brown Act perspective, does that work? It can, it should be fine. You can always more long lines. It's just a matter of how you involve yourselves with it. So it's more, once
065it gets started and going, then you can kind of make the decision as it goes forward. But I think just in terms of making sure we have two board members who can be available. Yeah, that sounds good to me. Yeah, thanks, Neil. I think we're good. Is that good for you, Michelle? All right, yes, thank you very much. I appreciate that. And I'll keep you updated through our regular memos and update our board report. All right, moving on to item six. Yeah, I believe this is you, Hans, correct? About our K-8 science adoption going forward. The floor is yours. That's me and Sarah. And so Sarah, do you wanna go ahead and share your screen? Sure, let me one sec here. Move things around. Okay, can you guys see that? Yep, looks great. Okay, so
066this is our K-8 science adoption recommendation. And we wanted to start a little bit of background about the science standards. And so Hans, I think you're gonna start us off, right? I am, and before I do that though, I just wanna make sure that we recognize all of the teachers that have piloted science, literally over the last four to five years. Really an outstanding group of educators. We've had a little bit of turnover in our science ranks. And so some of the folks that joined this year were immediately put on the hot seat, so to speak, to make a choice amongst the choices that we've had. But I just wanna say how just a great group of educators who are really, really passionate about science, who understand what we want students to be doing with
067science. And by doing, I emphasize the word doing, because we want kids to be doing science. We don't want them to read about it. We don't want them to watch maybe a video as a piece of it, but we ultimately want them to do it. And we want them to make meaning out of it. And above all, that is the message of the NGSS, of the Next Generation Science Standards. You might remember a few of you that were on the board at that time about, I think it was maybe last year at this time, we might've done an overview of NGSS. So we just kind of took a couple of the slides from that. And above all, as I said, just making meaning is really the number one thing. We also want students to have
068some appreciation of science, of the beauty and wonder, and really be able to speak intelligently about science concepts and about, really have a solid understanding so that they can debate it if they want to. That's another piece, really getting environmentally friendly and understanding climate change. And we want science to be a gateway to any career that they want to be able to choose. And so that really was, some of the major underpinnings of NGSS. Go ahead, Sarah. You might remember this slide, you might not. There are three real strands of the science content under NGSS. So they're to make the expectation or what we want students to understand. You integrate cross-cutting concepts, disciplinary core ideas and science and engineering practices. So those three pieces really make up what we want students to learn. And you
069can read below, I'm not gonna read the slide for you, but ultimately it is that idea that it's an intertwined curriculum. And so it's very complex and the standards are very complex. They require quite a bit of training to really deeply understand. And again, they really just emphasize that idea that the cross-cutting concepts are the same K through 12. And we introduce them in different ways in each grade level. So they're really, these concepts go throughout the full curriculum K-12. This is one of my favorite slides. You might remember it again. This just emphasizes the iterative process of science. And in order to understand science, we first need to go, you remember that there was a song, I don't know, in the 80s or something, show my age, called Things That Make You Go Hmm.
070I don't know if you remember that one, but that's kind of what we want the kids to be doing when we're showing them. So we're showing them phenomena, like this is an eclipse here. And we want them to go, what's that all about? And I wonder what's causing that. I wonder, and I wonder, and I wonder, and what are some, what's my hypothesis? And then does that make sense? Again, it's going through that iterative process, engage, explore. So that five E idea, explain and then refine, come back to it. That didn't make sense. Let me try again. And this little Venn diagram I'm really passionate about, it kind of shows the intersection of the Common Core Standards, NGSS, and 21st century skills. That really is STEM. And really does kind of accentuate the ideals of
071our school district and of meets fits directly into our strategic plan. Awesome. Thanks Hans. This chart is just a sample of some instructional shifts with NGSS and I'm not going to read all of them, but it's really about engaging and deeper understanding versus memorizing definitions and procedures. Students are developing models instead of teachers presenting models that describe. The process is the kids are, it's an iterative dynamic process versus focusing on like a set of steps. And it's all about like Hans was saying real world learning instead of following a procedure. Lots of shifts and it's pretty exciting. In terms of the process, the county has a toolkit that they called, with every adoption, they want to make sure you follow all the steps. You're not just deciding without going through a process. So you first
072develop what they call a district lens and that's where you look at your district, your data, your kids, what kind of science program do we need in San Carlos? So the team met a lot and we reviewed our demographics and our needs and things. And so we had listed several things that we thought was important. They showed us how to do some pre-screening and some paper screening. They did a lot of training with us looking at lessons, blind lessons where we didn't know the program, but we were really looking for the NGSS in the lessons and it was pretty apparent. After extensive paper screening, you would pilot the materials. Things can look really great, but until you teach them in front of kids, you just don't know. So that's always been a really important part
073of San Carlos is piloting at least two programs to try with kids. And in both cases, it's three or more. And then the staff really looks at how it went and a recommendation. So in terms of the process, and this slide is really elementary, and this process, even though it says 2018 to 20, there was a lot of informal. We've met prior to that because the NGSS standards actually were adopted in 2013. And then programs were putting together and coming up with their things. And then we didn't actually get, the state didn't come out with their adopted list until November of 2018. And of course, Hans, I can't remember when the first cast test is. Was this the second year? I can't remember, but. Last year would have been the second year. So there was
074a pilot year, a field test, and then there was the operational year that still had some field testing components to it. And then last year when there was no testing would have been the actual first real operational, full operational test. But that in itself is a little stressful because the state will adopt standards in 2013, not come up with any curriculum until the 18, and then testing that even before that's implemented. So NGSS has been on the minds of all of us, and we were anxiously awaiting for November 2018 when they came through the list. And then from there, yeah, we launched into the presentations and the paper screening, and K5 did three pilots really, FOSS, and then I'll talk more about that in a minute, TWIG and STEM scopes. And then middle school is
075also very extensive. They had been starting long before. They had a plan starting in August, 2016 where they were writing their own curriculum to match the standards because again, nothing was approved and ready to go. And so they diligently were writing their own curriculum. And then we started the process once the things were approved and really looking at all those programs. And they did three formal pilots, McGraw-Hill, STEM scopes, and Hoop Mifflin, and a couple others, which I'll mention in a little bit. And just when we talked earlier, I said earlier about the district lens for K5, these are the things that they really wanted in a program. They really wanted, of course, with K5 hands-on, kids doing science, not just reading about it. Because we're a big PBL district, they want something that's PBL
076adaptable, less, oops, sorry, lessons in units that are around phenomena like Hans was just talking about and not just a list of topics. Kids are doing investigative learning, strong teacher content, something that's user-friendly is always a plus. And then having texts that are reading materials that are accessible. Middle school is very similar. They also want hands-on and PBL adaptable. Also, differentiation is huge. And middle school, you do have quite the range and reading levels and science abilities. And so they need something to be able to differentiate. Rigor and challenge is very important. Print and online. And of course, in this environment, everyone's adapted to so much online. So it's great that the programs we were using had a strong online content. And then you can see just engineering, investigative learning, and assessments that are multifaceted
077and including performance tasks. So when it came down to adopting the programs, there were quite a few, 11 different K-5 programs to choose from. And in middle school, we had 12. Now, some of these we were able to eliminate because our middle school program is an integrated versus course specific. And then some of these were like grades six and seven only, not eight. And so that helped us kind of define a little bit. But still, it was a huge undertaking to go through all these presentations and paper screening. And Hans, just jump in if I miss stuff. But these, I just wanted to talk briefly about the programs that we, after all the paper screening and looking at everything, these are the ones we chose to do with kids. And in K-5, as you know,
078we're a long FOSS district. So that was like the obvious one to choose. In fact, many of us on the committee, we just assumed we would adopt FOSS because it was a natural part of our culture. And so they came out with NGSS versions and kits. And so, and we got training and everything. And while there are a lot of still wonderful things about FOSS, we found that it was really similar to the old program. They kind of repackaged things and moved a couple of grade levels around, but it just didn't feel like fresh and new. And we felt with all this kind of new dynamic thinking that the team really felt like we needed kind of a reboot with that. And FOSS does, even though there's some wonderful investigations there, it does have its
079reputation as a lot of prep. And it's hard, but I think teachers, when they do it, it's worth it. But we wanted to make sure that it is really kind of fresh and new and different. And Sarah, just if I could, one of the major pieces that was lacking from FOSS was phenomena. They really just didn't do a thorough job of adding the phenomena into the program. And like Sarah said, it was more trying to fit the square peg into the round hole instead of redesigning, so. Yeah, for sure. And then we looked at Twig Science and the program looked really amazing. It had all these lovely leveled readers and it looked really nice. And I really thought that they were gonna love it. And as soon as I started teaching it, it just did
080not have any engagement. The kids even said it was boring. The hands on the labs just really didn't have much to them. So it's pretty amazing that our teachers were able to grab that so quickly and identify that this was not as an engaging program. And then the third one for K-5 was STEMscopes, which is what we're talking about tonight. They found it very engaging and it's a research-based program that was really built as an NGSS program and not repackaged. So we have a lot of things that we like about STEMscopes. And then quickly for eighth grade, they, for middle school, they piloted Amplify, mostly in eighth grade, I believe. And that was, I think, out of, I can't even remember, that was out of Lawrence Hall of Science. I'm not sure, but. It is,
081it's out of Lawrence Hall of Science. So we were. The reason they wanted to do it in eighth grade is that they were really having problems with, not problems, but it was a real challenge to write curriculum in eighth grade. And so they were like, please, can we try something? And I was right as I came on, I said, sure, presentation, why not? And so they tried it out. Yeah, and it really, while it was good, it just was not rigorous enough for our community. The kids seemed to get it very quickly. They were bored. So it just, it wasn't at media enough. So that was, they identified that pretty early on. Next, they did McGraw Hill, which was, it's a, you know, it's one of the big publisher groups, but it looked really promising
082as well. In the end though, it just, there were a lot of tech issues. The teachers didn't feel like it was well organized. The labs were just sort of activities, but not really discovery-based. And then we tried STEM scopes, which they really loved. There was just, there's so much flexibility in that program, which I'll tell you in a few minutes, but really strong. The only hangup we had was, the textbook is not its traditional three inch thick textbook, you know, where you're doing a lot of reading about science. And the textbook is, you know, most of their content is online and there's print and activities to support it. But, so we had a couple of team members that wanted to look at more of a traditional textbook, which was Houghton Mifflin. And while that did
083have a beautiful textbook, I think they found that the kids were kind of bored and they were just doing a lot of reading and answering questions, kind of the drawback to that. We also extended, we did STEM scopes last year, but kind of right at the time when we were using it, it was right in March and things were crazy back then. And so we did a second round of piloting this fall, just because I don't think we really got into the online components and our teachers really wanted to just take some more time because the last trimester of last year was a little crazy. So I just put a couple slides in here about feedback. The strongest piece of STEM scopes, I think, is the hands-on and, you know, of course, back in March
084and until now, we haven't had a huge opportunity to really demo all these. I mean, it's mostly been teachers demoing or kids doing some things at home, but they can see evidence of that, that if we were in person, and to be fair, the program has done a lot of work on distance learning and they're doing as much as they possibly can to create videos and to have these kinds of experiences at home. And then the other strong piece of STEM scopes is the phenomenon, like Hans was saying. And that, as Hans was mentioning, that really is the key to the science program is really, that has to be strong. If it's not strong, the rest just doesn't carry. Yeah, Sarah, if I could just, one of the things that I always like to talk
085about with teachers when we're piloting are strengths and gaps. And strengths are things that are inherent in the program and gaps are things that can be filled. And you can't fill the phenomenon gap. It's not possible. And so, you know, that was one of the reasons that a couple of the others were set aside, didn't meet the criteria for phenomena. So that, you know, if you just go with that concept of strengths and gaps, it usually speaks volumes. Yep, thank you. We also surveyed some of our middle schoolers and this question was just about the labs. And even though, again, we didn't get a ton of time with them, but our teachers were doing the best that they can to demo those and show those things that they can incorporate online. And so, you know,
086you could see a lot of almost half thought where they were good and then a lot excellent and such. And you can see the comments. They said the labs are pretty fun while we weren't able to do them the way they would have done in person. They were still very helpful and illustrated the topic we were learning well. They showed that there are different ways to learn other than reading from a book the whole time. I think the labs really helped me explain what we were learning. And then this one just kind of their overall impression, which it's fun to ask middle schoolers what their overall impression of it. And they're usually have strong opinions and it was pretty good. I thought STEM SCOES was a lot better than most other science curriculum out there
087so far. This was my favorite. STEM SCOES helped me learn science, distance learning, the through or during distance learning. I realized I prefer learning with a textbook, not a computer. Maybe we could have some individual textbooks. So it doesn't seem as stressful. And it was a fun way of learning. So those are some kid comments. And I just kind of wanted to sum up kind of our recommendation of STEM SCOES. 100% of both our K-5 and our 6.8 science committee members are recommending STEM SCOES. And like I said, it's been an extensive work, lots of piloting, which is not easy, but they were very committed and they feel like, and like Hans was saying, there's never like one perfect program, but you go with a strong program that you can fill in the easier gaps.
088It is rigorous for sure. It's definitely rigorous. It's hands-on, it's discovery-based, strong anchoring phenomena. One key thing we love about this program is really flexible. It's not the kind of program where it tells you to be on this chapter on this day. It just offers a lot of flexibility for teachers. And that I think is kind of the San Carlos way where we really value innovation and teachers designing things that fit their kids and their style. And so there's just a plethora of activities and ways to deliver the lessons and materials. So, and with that, they're just a really iterative company. They take feedback, they made a teacher's edition, a print version, they constantly are updating their platform. That's a real advantage. Their material is largely online, which allows them to change and add and
089take feedback. And it's been a real plus to have that. The platform, like any platform, does require teacher training and follow-up. I mean, when you first look at something, it's hard to piece it together, just like any new program. But once you kind of get how it all works and how it all fits, it really makes sense. Sarah, if I could- Yeah. Just going back to that idea of that slide three, I think it was with the iterative process. What I would say about this program is it is, it embodies the process. I heard about this program about five years ago for the first time. And the first time I looked at it, I thought, wow, they've got a long way to go, okay. They're not there, it's missing, it's got a lot of gaps.
090And then two years later, it was much better. And then each year, and now I think it's down to about six month intervals where they're like, hey, we did this, hey, we did that. They change things on the fly based on feedback from customers. And then what more can you ask for in a science curriculum than that? It's not your traditional, here's your giant three inch textbook and you got it for eight years, okay. Which can be, in today's day and age, it's not what we need, it's not what kids need. So that's a really exciting piece of this particular curriculum. Yeah, and I'll just end that a lot of our neighboring districts have adopted STEM scopes, which is great. That means that we can collaborate, can share resources. So that's just a real advantage
091to be able to work with our neighbors. So the last part is, I thought enough of me talking and wanting to hear just from teachers, what they think and their observations. And so I have a couple of people online. Carly Peck from Central. I don't know, oops, let's see, maybe I'll stop my share. And then Veronica, do we have to unmute Carly? I'm unmuted, yeah. There you go, thanks Carly. Hi everyone, I'm Carly Peck. I'm a sixth and seventh grade science teacher at Central Middle School. And this is my ninth year teaching. I wanted to start off by thanking Hans and Sarah for guiding all the science teachers through the process of adopting curriculum. This is the first time I have ever adopted curriculum. When I came into the district, we had a Pearson textbook
092that had been there for maybe five or six years already. And so they were very helpful in kind of guiding us and providing us insight on kind of how we should do the process. So thank you both very much for that. So I piloted three different curriculum. We started with McGraw Hill and that curriculum had a lot of issues in my opinion, especially on the online part of it. Their portal was fairly impossible to use, which is in this day and age of technology was kind of a big downer. And it kind of felt like they took what they had before and just repackaged it. Then we piloted STEM scopes and that had a little bit of a learning curve for the online portal as well as just everything is kind of named differently in
093STEM scopes. Like instead of a lab, it's an explorer. Instead of a chapter, it's a scope. And so the kids are kind of having that learning curve too of everything having kind of a weird name. And the things that I've really liked about STEM scopes are, some of these have already been mentioned, is there's such a multitude of activities and options and the teacher can really decide how they want to take that scope and like what's gonna work for their class if we feel that students need more work on vocabulary. There's like three or four options that we can use. And some are online options. Some are like fun games. Some are just kind of like background things, ideas that teachers can use to better implement vocabulary strategies since there's so much vocab and science.
094Students explore and discover concepts rather than just being told about concepts. So that's kind of the big NGSS idea. But when we piloted like HMH, for example, the Hoot-Mifflin one, it was kind of more of a traditional science thing and less of a NGSS look at it because it was this workbook that was probably two and a half, three inches thick. And you read through it and you filled in blanks. And that's actually when we started distance learning, that's what we were piloting. And so it kind of worked in that way for distance learning with how much asynchronous stuff that we were doing. But when we thought about using it in the classroom, they had like maybe one usable lab per chapter. And personally, like I like to do a bunch of hands-on stuff in
095science, like that's what makes science so exciting and fun. And so with HMH, it was just like, I felt like I would have to bring in so many outside things to make it hands-on and fun and interesting. Back to Stemscopes, also their online portal has lots of options. One thing that I really enjoy doing is they have partnered with Tuva, which provides a lot of data sets and provides online graphing opportunities, which have been really great, especially with distance learning, because that's like, I can't sit next to them and show them how to plot a graph, but on this, you can drag things to the X and Y axis. You can tell it to make it a line graph or a bar graph or a pie chart. And you can really look at that data
096and kind of do it without actually putting a pen to paper. So I really like that aspect of it. They also have something called the concept review game, which I like my students to do as a review. It takes all of the vocab words and all of the big concepts and is basically like a game that they play to review them. And then they also have something called the reading science. And this is really good for leveling the reading. They have reading science A, B, and C. And so it changes the lexile. So you give A to readers that are struggling and C to readers that are like above grade level. And so you can kind of, you can choose which student you want to give it to. And it's still the same concept, the
097same topic, the same questions at the end, but it's level to each student's reading level. And because it's the same thing, like a student sitting next to them would never know that they're reading at a different reading level. And I really like that aspect of it. So I'm pro STEM scopes. I really like it. And I can't wait to get back into the classroom so that my students can experience more of the hands-on stuff instead of just watching me trying to move my document camera around so that they can see what's going on in the lab. Awesome. Thank you, Carly. Also Brandon, Rosalyn's gonna speak, which is great. Cause he's a primary, give the primary example as well. Yeah. So thank you. Hi, everybody. I'm the opposite of the middle school science teacher. I'm the
098first grade learners that I'm just trying to fit science in my day, right? And it's really fun. I mean, science is every kid's favorite topic, every kid's favorite subject, because like Han said, it's really about phenomena. It's what you see around you and it's really engaging. So I first heard about STEM scopes about four or five years ago. I went to Boston for a training on engineering is elementary, which was a fantastic training, fantastic program. And I had this buzz from Rice University and STEM scopes was one of the curriculums I used big time down south and back east. And I had never heard of it before. And I was really intrigued. So when I was asked to be on this committee to pilot four years, three years ago, forever ago now, it was one
099of those that I had the buzz in my ear that this was really popular and Rice University as well renowned, just like Lawrence Hall of Science and Berkeley, you know, it's a very renowned university. So I knew there was something there. So once we started piloting the curriculum and the materials, it really is user-friendly. It's very engaging. I like how flexible it is for a teacher to pick and choose what fits in their day. Some of the other curriculums we piloted, it's very scripted and there's like workbooks and things you have to follow every page. And it's really difficult to fit all of that in. And as a teacher, that's very defeating. And as a child, it's like, when are we gonna do page 13? Well, page 13 is not important. What's important is where
100this is taking us. What are you interested in? So I really love the way that this dovetails into, we're a PBL district, which is really hard to do in younger grades and engineering as elementary is a great curriculum. Fit some of that in, make it engaging, make it really fun. So I am really pleased to hear that the middle school is really like the curriculum because as a lower L teacher, I'm not concerned about test scores necessarily, but I'm interested. My job is to get kids interested in science, get them engaged, get them to love it, engineering and science. And as they go up, give them the skills to develop, hypothesis and design and experiment and things like that. So it's not been easy to do over distance learning. Unfortunately, especially for our youngest learners,
101it's been really difficult. But when we were in the classroom, I had a lot of success with it. I'm really happy to hear the upper grades think it's rigorous. So I'm happy to support that. I think it's a great curriculum. I think they did a really nice job being flexible and supportive. I mean, every time our committee asked for something, they actually did it. I mean, this isn't like a big publisher that's like, sorry, that's not in there. If you don't like it, take a hike. It was really nice. Like they wanted a workbook or a textbook for teachers and they made one for us. I mean, you don't get a publisher that does things like them. Sarah, you've been doing this long enough to know that. Here it is, one size fits all. So
102I think it's hands-on. I love the phenomenon behind it. I think Hans and Sarah have done a really nice job expediting this and leading us through the process for years and budget cramps and everything that's hit us. I think it's now is a good time. The one big concern we had, Sarah, is it's really, it was very tech-based when we first started this. Here's a silver lining about a pandemic, right? A silver lining is a lot of us were concerned that teachers didn't have enough tech savviness to run an online curriculum. And we were all saying like, this is where education is going. They're gonna have online textbooks. And we're all like, oh yeah, right. And then about what? Four months later, nine months later, where everything's online. So I will say, I think for
103our members of our teachers and the district, we have a lot more experience with online tools now than we used to, a lot more experience with assigning Google Classroom and all these things that, we are more familiar and so are the kids. So I think the silver lining of a pandemic is it's really shown us that we can be flexible and tech savvy and forward thinking. So again, I'm a tech, excuse me, a STEM scopes. I vote for it and I'm not a techie person, but if I can do it, anyone can do it, so. Thank you, Brandon, that was awesome. And I will say, I was on the phone with the rep yesterday and Carly mentioned the card sorts. And he's like, yeah, we're getting them all electronic and all on Google slides so
104that kids can drag and drop and that, apparently it's already there. I just need to find and send you guys the information, but they know that they need to adapt for distance learning. So that's just an example. And I just wanna end with saying the committee, both K-5 and K-8 are just phenomenal. There are teachers who love science and have committed and I've done committee adoptions over the years and usually they're a one-year deal, right? These teachers have been doing like three or four years, I mean, where we've been like writing and then waiting for curriculum and then piloting. So I just wanna commend the committee and it's been really hard to not have a science program for the last few years. As you know, we've adopted it, we're supposed to be teaching it, but
105we haven't given teachers any of the tools or curriculum and we're being tested on it in fifth and eighth grade. So we are very hopeful that you will, that you go with our recommendation and we do hope it gets approved because this is a long time coming and teachers really need a curriculum now. So thank you and I will take any questions unless Hans you wanna add anything. I'll just sum it up really quickly. One of the underpinnings, one of the other underpinnings of NGSS is claim evidence reason. Oh, yeah. And that's a really tough concept for kids period. Making a claim is no big deal. Everybody can take a guess, but producing the evidence and really, the reason you did it are quite different. And I would liken this to a little bit, we
106talked a little bit about it's propensity to look a little like Lucy Calkins reading and writing workshop where it's pretty complex at first and it takes a while to break it down. So you heard that from both Carly and Brandon. The other beautiful thing about this is, there aren't very many districts where it's K-8 and it's the same program up. So in similar to Lucy Calkins, it'll build that vocabulary beginning in kindergarten and that vocabulary continues. So these things like it being a scope instead of a chapter, et cetera, those are things that will just become inherent for kids as they grow in the program. So that's another exciting aspect. So I think the only other thing I wanna say is what I said at the beginning, we're very fortunate to have such a passionate
107group of educators about science and they love learning from each other. And I know they're really excited about rolling this out with their colleagues, next year, hopefully, while we're in the classroom. So that's all I would say. So questions or comments? Thank you, Hans. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, Brandon. Thank you, Carly. I mean, these things are giant lifts and most people don't, they're five, six year lifts that start with a lot of thinking and planning that on top of your other job on top of it. So we truly appreciate the work you put into it. More importantly, we truly appreciate the presentation you've given us tonight to advocate for it. That's always very helpful for us. So Michelle, just a couple of procedural questions is for the board to make sure this is on
108discussion. So we're just gonna discuss it tonight. It will come back to us on the 17th for approval, kind of depending on our discussion. So tonight, while we have everyone here, including Carly and Brandon as well, any of the trustees have any questions they would like to do the talk about, the curriculum and its adoption, what they've worked on process wise. And then, after we go through our first discussion, we can discuss how we wanna bring it back on the 17th, depending on where it runs out. So Irene, go ahead. Yeah, no, this was a terrific presentation. I mean, grounding us in the standards and why this was just a complete overhaul of the standards really requires kind of new curriculum for our teachers. Thank you. I also just wanted to kind of say for
109kind of like Wendy and Sarah, like I just remember sometimes as a trustee, when you get in on the tail end of things, it seems like this thing is just kind of like delivered to you. But I want you to know that like they were, staff has definitely engaged with the board kind of at the beginning at the takeoff. It was, you know, a few years ago. You know, the state of California actually kind of has kind of written down what kind of the curriculum adoption process is and the board's role was to kind of follow that process and to kind of ensure that staff was following the process and all the right people were engaged. And I just wanna say thank Brandon and Carly, you know, I mean, you all being here are kind
110of the reasons why I'm on the board. It's so exciting to kind of see y'all so engaged with our students. Yeah, no, I mean, I just appreciate how thoughtful you were in pressure testing everything. I thought the story of how it would have been so easy to go with, you know, FOSS for something that was like naturally in our culture, but you really kind of took the extra step to kind of think about what was really engaging for students and actually even got their feedback. So now I'm just kind of impressed. I think I do need to know just to be fiscally responsible, like how often do we have to kind of renew? Like, so there's a certain kind of a cost associated with this adoption, but then for how many years does that last
111versus when we need to kind of like renew materials, Hans, do you know? Yeah, sure, this is, this actually, this cost is for an eight year adoption. Now, you know, with science, there are the classic word consumables because you're gonna be using things as you're doing science. So there's an ongoing cost to some degree each year. With science, you know, it's a little different than maybe, you know, your typical math program, for example, but, you know, generally that's not a huge cost. And, you know, this is an all in one kind of package. And as we need more, we have a lot of material in our science center as the other piece from FOSS from years past, and we don't just wanna discard that. A lot of that material fits directly into this. We just
112have to build the kits instead of buying their pre-made kits. So that'll be another, that's kind of a corollary to the presentation is we go ahead and adopt this. We're not gonna just throw all that stuff out. 90% of it is reusable, and we wanna repackage it rather than buying all new. And Michelle, this is just to clarify, this has been budgeted for next year, and that was reflected in the first interim. Yeah, what we did is we built it into this year's budget. So it is integrated, and then next year, we built in the K-5 social studies adoption, which is coming up too. So this is included in the report that you heard tonight. I believe it was about $257,000. What we do know is the price is going up after January 1st by
113120 or 30%. So we are motivated to have you approve it at the next meeting if the board is comfortable with that. And a lot of this has been budget dependent. I mean, we really had to put the pause on things because we just couldn't afford this last year. And also we did need a little bit more time. So if the board's comfortable moving forward, we'd hope for an approval next meeting so that we can place an order as soon as possible. Carol, go ahead. Yeah, I have a question, and I echo Irene's comments and appreciation for all the presenters. Those were just really a great demonstration of what a thorough process and engaging and really what our values are around the types of curriculum that they wanna deliver for our students. Thank you so
114much. A quick question to follow up on Irene's question about the budget and the cost. So since it's online, does that mean kind of after eight years, for example, then you're gonna have to re-up for another eight or like right now, I think we've been able to extend the lifespan of our old curriculum because it's textbook but it's not electronic. And so what kind of happens, this is the first time I think we've embarked on kind of that primarily electronic curriculum base. Well, actually when you look at the calendars for adoptions, every curriculum is kind of on an eight year cycle. So, I mean, sometimes we've made it go longer than we have, but every year it's, sometimes it's math and then it's not, and then it rolls around again. So it is kind of
115always on an eight year cycle and that's why they do their pricing as eight year contract. Yeah, and I think too, Carol, it's hard to know, right? I mean, it's uncharted, I hate to use this word but it's uncharted territory when you have, but we do have, I'll give an example, CPM how also one of our math programs has a really strong online textbook and they also have textbooks in print that they're really trying to phase out. But they always have like at the end of your adoption, you have an option like, would you like to extend for a year while you pilot? Are you gonna pilot ahead of time? And the nice part is we're not buying a consumable textbook and so which is where the large cost usually comes in after the expiration.
116It's like you pay for all of that upfront but in year nine, you have to pay for that book, whatever it is, $35 a child. You have to come up with that while you're trying to figure out what you want to do. So there's not that, it's hard to say what they would charge but my guess would be it would be a pro rated base of what the original adoption was or what their pricing was at that point in time. Okay, so we do have a little bit of flexibility we think. My other question and more of a process question is around our commitment to really using our DEI lens in things like curriculum and as we adopt them to be really thorough in evaluating curriculum that we're making a commitment to for eight years
117and a very large financial commitment and knowing that we're, so to approve a curriculum just in the moments, the months before this work really starts, for me, I would like to really, before I'm comfortable approving it, approving something that's gonna have a shelf life of eight years, I would really wanna understand if this meets our goals from a DEI standpoint. So for that, I'm hoping it does because it looks like it's a really fantastic curriculum and there's been a lot of work in this. But I think in terms of my commitment to the DEI work, I would wanna really understand how it's been vetted that way and how it aligns with what our goals are. Sarah, do you wanna talk a little bit about what you learned? Yeah, I mean, first of all, if you
118look on their website, they have a commitment of inclusion and equity. And so they are doing the same work we are, they're training their staff and everything, but their program, there's not a lot of people in science is more phenomenon, but when they highlight scientists, they do a screening and make sure they're hitting a variety of backgrounds and gender and women scientists is super important. And so they do a nice job of making sure that they are as inclusive as possible. I mean, it's not social science, so it's a different lens and it's based on phenomena, but their company is very committed to equity. One of the other things that they shared with us was the process that they go through to vet their labs and their material. And so Sarah kind of alluded to
119this, I'll just add a little bit more clarity. They have a large, a wide variety of scientists that they not employ, but that they said, take a look at our curriculum, what do you think? And by large variety, I mean, ethnically diverse, women, lots of women on the group. And so they actually shared that with us as far as here are the scientists that we gave the curriculum to to vet and to give feedback on. And it's a really, it's really a thorough look demographically at all the different scientists in the world. I was very impressed when they shared that. And again, the thing is that, and Carol, I completely share your concern, first of all. And I'll use the analogy of the old, when you see a movie and the book comes out, it's
120got dust on it, you kind of go when the dust goes flying everywhere. And the concern with a book like that is it's the book. And so if you find something in it that you're not thrilled about or that you think is wrong later, it's too bad, right? That's the book. Whereas this company and it being on the online nature of it, the iterative nature of it is, hey, are we sure about this? Or do we wanna do this? Or is this picture right? They've been doing things like that immediately. They've been saying, oh yeah, no, agree. Let's get that changed. And they update it. So that's one of the nice parts about working with a company. You know, it's really more of a nonprofit almost attitude where they really just wanna serve the audience
121and listen to feedback. So that gives me a lot of confidence in the DEI lens that they used. And as far as what we're looking for in a program, that'd be one of the most important pieces along with the phenomena is the ability of, you know, the company to work with us. And you heard Carly and Brandon both say that, that, you know, we want this. Okay, well, let's see what we can put together for you. And to me, that speaks volumes. I use the word nimble, right? They're nimble. And they're also very aware of, you know, the nature of what's happening in our world right now with the social justice lens. Any other questions by any of the trustees? Yeah, I have a question or a couple of questions. One, just to follow up
122Hans on what you were just saying. So does the contract that we would be signing include that iterative process if we continue to come, you know, teachers find things that they think should be changed or, you know, additional features or materials that they would like? Is that something we can continue to ask for that's included in the cost? Yeah, I mean, that's one of their commitments to the program is to be iterative and to react to their customers. So, and again, we're not buying that. Like I said, we're not buying that classic textbook where you blow the dirt off of it. And even Carol said shelf life, it's, you know, this is a dynamic book and they're constantly taking feedback and then updating as they get this feedback. So they're committed to that process. Kind
123of like FOSS, FOSS was very much this program 15, 16 years ago, right? It was out of Berkeley. We want to be the new thing. We want kids doing science. It's very comparable in that way. It's just that, like we said, FOSS just didn't get there with their material at this point. But they're, to me, it's kind of the new FOSS. Like, you know, it's, we want to be that. Thank you. My second question is on the agenda, it mentions of public viewing of the recommended materials next week. What does that look like? Well, basically it's quite, it's a little different than a pandemic. Although this is an online program, so we would have been pushing it out to parents anyway. We'll be sending out a blast to all parents tomorrow, just informing them that,
124you know, we're looking at adopting this material that they can view it by contacting Sarah. She can set them up with an account and they can view it and give any feedback then to Sarah. And we've had, we had, most recently we had the 6.8 social science adoption and we used the same process. And then if we get, you know, any, we did get feedback and then we share that when we come bring it back, we say, here's kind of what some comments that we got from the public. So we'll bring that back for the next time prior to the adoption. Okay, thank you. Go ahead, Wendy. Thanks. Well, that's great. And I'd love to get that login as well. Obviously you're sending it out to the public. So I'd love to see that, what
125the curriculum looks like. And you've talked about this iterative process that they use. So what I just wanted to understand, you know, we have a license or, you know, we're buying this for eight years, but it sounds like they are constantly updating their curriculum in a way. So activities, I mean, Carly mentioned that she likes that there's this kind of wide variety of menu of things that they can choose from. So, and what I like about that, and then we're moving into this 21st century learning, which we should be, and now we're in this, as Brandon was saying, you know, teachers are learning how to embrace the technology. And what sounds exciting to me about it is that it just sounds like it won't be a static program, right? Like it's not a book that
126you're buying that is outdated in a year. And that is the problem with the cycle of policy. We talked about how NGSS was, you know, sort of approved and brought to life in 2013. Is that right? And here we are, how many years later, and we're finally, you know, have that alignment of the curriculum and the standards. So it just sounds, I'm just incredibly impressed with the, as Irene said, about the rigor of this process and thanks for the context, because obviously, you know, Sarah and I didn't understand the evolution of this adoption process. And so, I mean, just from what I'm hearing tonight, I'm, you know, really impressed with it and excited that I think it, you know, really meets the needs, will meet the need of our learners and our teachers. And so,
127thank you, Sarah and Carly and Brandon and Hans, of course, sorry. You're very welcome. All right, thank you, trustees. I think I'm gonna do that just discussion. Is there anything, any guidance before this comes back, you'd like to provide the Hans or Sarah that you may need before we take action on it, all right? Seeing nothing, I'll bring it back for action next time, Hans and Sarah, just because that'll give a chance for people to weigh in in public comment once you send out those links for them to take a look at. I'll do. All right, Wendy, just to check in, do we have any more public comment on this topic, just because you never know. We'll move item to 7A, return to school update, Michelle. All right, well, we were very excited leading into
128this week that we were going to start welcoming our kids back onto campus as our urgent learners. We're going to begin on Monday, November 30th on campus. But as you know, we took a pivot in the county and really across the state where we are taking a pause and we're back in the purple level or the most restrictive tier, tier one right now. Very big disappointment. We've worked so hard to get to this point to where we could finally start to welcome our kids back and we were very excited. It was a big lift to get here, but that's where we are. However, we are still moving forward. And I wanna just say thank you to our principals and our teachers for all the work that they did to get us ready for this point,
129because with our plan approved at the county, we are able to still continue moving forward and be ready for that opportunity to shift right back to where we left off as soon as the conditions improve. So first of all, a big thank you. There was a lot of work that went into preparing. So this change in status, as we know, it seems to get more severe every day. There was a news conference today by the governor that is putting some more restrictions in, some travel restrictions when certain counties reach a certain limit. So it is a very serious concern right now to really limit spread and really the focus is on altering people's personal behavior and businesses. But the message was really clear that they want schools that have already been operating in-person learning may
130continue. And those who were working toward that continue to make those steps forward. And right now there's about six schools out of 23 in our county that have some in-person learning happening right now. Plus another one at the county office, the community school. So those schools will likely continue. That's what I'm understanding. And they will be able to continue for schools. Then there's another four schools that had our plans approved, us and three others, and we can keep moving forward wherever we are in our own process. And where we are in our process, based on our agreement with our teachers association is that we would take a pause while in purple and then step up again once the conditions change and we're back in red. So just to kind of recap where we would be
131right now, our principals are still working on planning for phase three. So there's still some staff development and teacher planning happening during the school day. They're carving out a little bit of time to do that work. We are still focusing and prioritizing some urgent learner support. It's just happening virtually versus in-person, but our teachers are really committed to continuing to boost those students who need extra support. Last Friday, in preparation for this on-campus learning, our teachers had an opportunity to attend a two-hour training. It was really more of a panel discussion with our county office, Superintendent McGee and two pediatricians that would really just help to reinforce why the levels and the levels and kind of layers of prevention work in our schools. I'll say that the framework things the masking, the hand washing and
132hygiene factors, the social distancing and avoiding gatherings, they took that framework and those protective measures and really explained why it works and the success that we have seen in the county. And I think the message that we heard was that if a student or an adult is on campus and they are a case, it's not spreading because these measures are preventing the spread. So that was really good news to hear. We're feeling more confident about how schools are operating and the measures that we have in place and how that will help prevent the spread of COVID once we do come back. But I think the key is that we want is to prevent COVID from coming to school at all. That's our goal. And so we are really emphasizing the use of our new fever-free
133screening tool so that students and families are screening themselves so they don't come to school with symptoms or have any illness really on the way to school. So that's something else we're doing over these next couple of weeks is getting our parents and students trained on how to do the screening before they come to school. So the last two nights, all eight of our principals provided a virtual training for our parents for return to school. And Hans and I intended all of those presentations and the principals just did a fantastic job of clearly explaining how to come onto campus, how to prepare your student for that big day, how to reinforce masking, all the details that the students are going to need to be prepared for, standing six feet apart at school, staying on the
134dots, which restrooms to use, where the first graders enter campus, where the second graders enter campus. There's a lot of logistical details that our principals have spent months planning. And it is complex when you're managing a large system with these protocols in place. So I wanna thank our principals for just doing an outstanding job on their training videos. And I know most of them sent out their slide decks today for those who couldn't attend. They will do more follow-up trainings. We know this is not the very only training that we're going to be doing, but we wanted to get parents ready. They did some neat things. They showed what the inside of a classroom is going to look like. It looks very different than a typical classroom with just the 12 or 13 desks spread
135apart, very far apart. And we want our kids and our parents to be prepared. Things like parent volunteers, parents on campus are not allowed. So parents and kids have to be comfortable standing at the edge and launching the child into the campus instead of walking them to the door of the classroom, which is more typical. So those trainings happened last two nights. Thank you again if you attended those. And kind of the other thing that happened this week, which was really kind of a nice gift, Belmont Redwood Shores hosted a panel discussion very similar to the ones our teachers heard, but they expanded it. They had a few more specialists and doctors attend and they invited our community and San Mateo Foster City to attend as well. We're all in very similar places about ready
136to come back. And so they invited us to attend and it was again, just more information, more education, reinforcing the four pillars and what we need to do to keep our students and our staff safe on campus. That information is going to be emailed out probably tonight or tomorrow morning so that if you didn't have a chance to see that on Monday night, you'll have a chance to watch that workshop or that panel discussion. So look for that email. And then a couple of other factors that have really helped us this week. We did a little survey after the training with the teachers after that pandemic recovery training and just to really ask them, do you need more training? Are you feeling more comfortable? What else can we help you with? So thank you to
137the teachers who filled that out because it really does tell us what else can we do to help support you. So Hans is gathering that data and we'll be using that as a leadership team to look at what other steps we need to take for staff training, for having students come back. We've also recently sent out a parent survey and the parent survey was serving two purposes. One, let's check in again about distance learning. How is it going now compared to the first six weeks? We took a survey around week four or five. We wanted to check in again with very similar kind of the same questions to see if there are any changes. Our principals are getting that information and then they will be using that to then guide their work with staff and
138just inform our practices because even in phase three, we're going to still be in a distance learning or a virtual mode. So we want to continue to hone our practices and improve our approach in this model. And then also the second part of the survey was asking parents really about their comfort level about having students return to phase three during December, this period, or even in January because we did make this intermediate step optional for on-campus learning. For elementary, it's two afternoons per week to be on campus, to do hands-on learning, more social emotional focus than anything. But if parents weren't ready to send them back, they could opt out and teachers need to know who is coming, who is not coming. So that was important for parents to respond so that we can plan
139appropriately. So we will use that information as we move forward. And then lastly, our site readiness. Our tents are here, our umbrellas are here, the rolling whiteboards are on their way for those outdoor classroom spaces. But essentially those were the last pieces to have in place before our students came back for phase three. As you could recall, the students were going to come on campus between December 7th and the 17th for their first session of phase three, which was like an orientation training session. Now we're just going to postpone that until after the break, as soon as the health conditions change. But we wanted to really be ready by that winter break with all of these items in place for outdoor classrooms. And we will be, and the items are here. So we're feeling really
140good about our readiness. All of our teachers have air purifiers in their classrooms now that are healthy filters. We feel like we're all ready for a party and then we had to cancel the party. That's kind of how it feels this week. But I'm really pleased that our testing is continuing. We are testing people weekly still. If teachers are on campus and working from campus, they are expected to do testing. So we will continue that even while we are in this purple phase. And then I think just to kind of clarify, it's like, what are the next steps? Well, what we agreed to with our teachers is we'll take a step back during purple and stay in the distance learning mode. But as soon as it does turn red and the conditions improve again, then
141we'll just pivot and move back in. And that takes a little time. We'll probably hear about the announcement in a midweek announcement. They tend to do them on Tuesdays, but it could come at any time. Then like the following week, we'll have our orientations and be able to get started as soon as it's practicable. So we'll again, keep the staff informed. As we know about the levels, the data has to kind of be in that red area for two weeks before it can actually turn red. So we have a runway. We'll be able to really watch the data and try to be predictive and keep people aware of the possible changes as soon as we know. But again, we're not gonna just flip a switch on parents and teachers and say, oh, it looks like
142it's red. Tomorrow, come back to school. We do not want to put anyone in that position. So we'll make sure that everyone is prepared and have plenty of notice and get them ready for that next change whenever that change does come. All right, so that's kind of my update, but what questions do you have? Thanks, Michelle. Trustees, any questions in regards to kind of where we are, where we're going? Any questions for Dr. Harmar? Michelle, I just have one about kind of that coming back to school in January. So are you saying that if by some miracle, we go, our numbers turn around and over the break, we hit those two weeks of being in red. And so by January 4th, January 3rd or 4th, we're in the red tier that we would start that
143first week in that mode. Carol, I think that would be really hard to just come back after, but we have to be ready because it really, we don't know when we're gonna shift back into red. I think our county does an amazing job of responding and we aren't in the most restrictive lockdown that I just learned today that some other counties are, but they are predicting we will be in that more restrictive situation probably by mid December. But I think there's more discussion that we should have about how we handle that week back. My sense is we need to be ready, but at the same time, when people are having this break and maybe traveling, we may wanna consider pausing and having that week back more of a continuation of our virtual learning until we
144can settle in. But I think there's more discussion over the next week or so about how we want to prepare for right after break. Our teachers all have professional development, which is really a great opportunity on January 4th that's already slated in our calendar. So there's no school on Monday, January 4th. That is already a professional development day. So it is a shortened week. So I think that will be a kind of a week of transition or not, we don't know. So I think we have some more discussion and planning to do there. What I'm hearing you say is that these discussions are gonna be happening over the next couple of weeks so that before we go on break, you would communicate to parents what the plan is for that first week. So just so
145when parents can have the expectation and our staff around planning. Yeah, I really think we do. And there's been some suggestions of maybe just really kind of taking a pause and using that week back as a time to settle in and make sure people have quarantined and things like that. So I think within the next week, we really do need to make a decision. So we have another board meeting on December 17th. So that might be another opportunity to make decisions just based on the health conditions at that time. Michelle, is it fair to say that basically we're kind of every just continuing to be fluid with the situation. There's lots of options for us, but we haven't committed anything yet. We'll see where we're at in two weeks and that'll give us a better
146chance. But at this point in time, it's hard to predict given the numbers go up, they go down, they go up, they go down. And from sitting on all the calls, their predictions have always been doom and gloom. And then they turn out to be a lot different a lot of the times. So it makes it very hard to predict in that regard. So I encourage you to be flexible and make sure that everyone understands kind of where the numbers are headed. But I think it's just for anyone listening at home, it's hard to tell where they're gonna go in the next week or two, but we'll talk about it at the next meeting and have a good idea, a better idea of how we head into the break from the board. And I'll just
147add what was shared by County Health this week at the meeting for electeds was that I think it's 60 to 70% of transmission is happening when people are asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic. So that and that's one of the things that's fueling this is that people are transmitting infection when they have no idea that they are at risk. And so people let their guard down a bit, they're meeting with more people, they're eating out. Obviously that's gonna come to a halt, but it's social gatherings and household transmission that would help too. Everybody do your part and we can get these numbers down and we can get kids back in school. Dr. Hummer, can I ask you about the parent survey feedback? I know you said that principals are gonna be looking at that data and I just
148wondered, is that something in the past we'd looked at some of that survey data at a board meeting. And so I wondered how we're planning on sharing that with us or how that informs how we're thinking about phase three. Well, we didn't prepare anything to share with you tonight. There was still kind of gathering and coming in at the beginning of the week. So our intention was to use that information to guide our work. It really wasn't as the decision-making point. We had already decided and the board took action to start phase three. So it really wasn't something that is going to inform any action or decisions. But I don't know, Hans, do you have any general information that you might be able to share early about what the data is telling us in regard
149to phase three? I haven't had a chance to delve into it deeply enough to answer that either. We talked briefly about it on Monday at our leadership meeting and they were going to delve deeper. So it could very well be something that we bring up again on Monday, just to revisit. If you wanted us to compile something for the 17th, we could certainly get that together for you. And part of why I was asking is, yeah, I mean, I think it would be good to see where there are trends and how we can respond to that. I know that you described in our last board meeting a process of identifying urgent learners and we had a good discussion around that. And I think that helped clarify for our parent community, how you're really honing in
150on urgent learners and what rules and rubrics and whatever, and just teacher observation. But as far as learning loss and just sort of overall, how we're focusing in, in phase three, on just the progress we're making. It's just really hard to get a sense of where we're at at this point in the year where we might've been. And I guess there's no way to really do that enough but yeah, I mean, I guess what I'm trying to get at is, with the reopening schools committee, I was on a learning loss, I was on the learning loss committee. And so I'm just trying to get a sense of, outside of parent-teacher conferences and outside of, I mean, you are asking for input on surveys, how are we addressing, yeah, this, I just really wanted to talk
151more about the learning and I'm just reflecting and yeah, that I, we are in this fluid, ever-changing situation and we're having to constantly reposition but I just don't wanna get hung up so much in the health and safety pillar that we're not also talking about the learning. So I just wanted to say that tonight. When you can ask you a question just because if this is gonna come, they come back every meeting, do you have kind of specifics of what you wanna do in terms of diving into the information or just see the information in general, just to kind of guide Hans if he's going forward. Great, no, thank you. So I guess when I was initially thinking is some of the trends that we saw that obvious, we talked about how for the early
152learners, there was less positive response. There was more, the distance learning is more challenging. So as we're moving into phase three and then possibly considering moving in phase four, I was just hoping we could look at some of those trends in the middle school versus the lower elementary and these during grade levels to see, is middle school, are those parents and are those kids still accessing the learning that they feel that they need and is the distance learning working for them? Because that will inform us of how we may or may not transition from a phase three to a phase four. And we're only talking about phase three right now and I understand why, because of the fluid situation of our health conditions. But ultimately, I think a lot of parents and we wanna see
153more of the academic learning happening in school. So the data could help us to understand again, lower elementary, sort of the two, three, four, five, and versus middle school. And I think that'll help us along the way. And that's just something that we didn't say in the beginning that we wanted to have these pulse checks. So I appreciate that you've done it. I filled it out. I thought it was very, it was open-ended enough for people to give great feedback. So we should need the principals working with that data, but I think it would be helpful for us to look at the trends. And then just one question for you, Wendy, just as we kind of, so we free this out going forward a little bit. As we get through the data, just kind of
154maybe depending on where we are, can we see if it's still looking like everything is closed down or we've got more lockdowns, we can readdress it maybe after the break just to try to get the stuff done, if that's okay. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah, we're not even in phase three officially. This is a good pulse check. So let's like use this as a time and point and then maybe we do another pulse check. And so, yeah, I don't wanna create more work right now at the end of the year. But maybe we'll have two or three data sets that we could look at sometime later in January to make some decisions in the future. So thank you for doing that. Yes, and thank you, Wendy. We'll constantly keep in mind when we're ready to take
155an action and we need input, we will definitely reach out. And we haven't really just asked people straight out, do you wanna come back or not, right? That's really an important question, especially when we're ready to make that big leap. This phase three, I think was a beautiful transition that is going to give a lot of flexibility because there's probably just as many people who are willing to come back that are not. And we really did see some of that. I got to kind of talk to principals who shared some feedback around their trainings too, where we've had parents to say, thank you so much for keeping the academics focused and we're not gonna lose any through our virtual. And others saying, forget about that, we just wanna be on campus. So principals hearing absolute
156opposites from people in the same hour, literally. So I really think we're doing a great job of trying to balance the needs and really look at a way to ease into this in-person. And again, especially with our elementaries, we all know that we want our elementaries to have as much time on campus as much as possible, as soon as possible. So I don't think that would be a surprise data set when we receive that and we are definitely working toward that and know that it's a higher priority for more time on campus with our middles. And we're definitely going to be prioritizing that as we move into those next phases. So good reminder, thank you, Wendy. Thank you. Sarah, Irene, go ahead, Irene. Let me just kind of like, I'll give you a quick update
157on some data that had come out. This is national data. So this is not about San Carlos, but probably some of the best data has been coming out from a nonprofit association called NWEA. You can just Google them. Google 74 million NWEA. They had kind of coined the phrase COVID-19 learning loss because they had done a forecast back in the spring. But now just three days ago, they released actual data based upon how kids were testing in the fall versus like the prior year. Slide wasn't as bad as what they had thought it would be, particularly kind of in reading. Kids were making gains in reading. The slide that was happening was happening more in math. And really, I think the key takeaway and headline was in other districts, one out of four kids were
158going missing. And that is like the heartbreaking thing that like one out of four children nationwide, like they couldn't find them. So if anything, I mean, I think implication for our district like, let's make sure we're tracking attendance. Are the kids showing up? We have got sown and grown. What's the engagement looking like? Just kind of wanted to give you that as context. Thank you, Ari. Sorry, and then the other thing I'm sure that is on everybody's minds is teacher burnout as well. Like, I mean, just like the pace is sustainable. So what's constantly present is like, yes, like how are the students doing, but how's our staff doing? Cause we're not gonna have the learning without the teachers. So, you know, when staff reports out on wellbeing, I kind of want to hear it
159on both sides. Yeah, thank you for acknowledging that too, Irene. I was just reading that in the, I think it was New York Times article today. It's just, it's severe. Our teachers are working incredible hours, meeting a lot of demands, of diverse demands. And I'm just, I'm really proud of them, but I'm also concerned and we have to care for our staff. And like you said, if they're not healthy and well and able, then our students are gonna lose out. So we have to really weigh our options and our push. And I think we've done a very good measured job of easing back in and really taking all these things in consideration. So I really commend the board for really looking at this from all different angles and taking a really measured approach. So thank
160you for that. I just want to add on top of that, in addition to everything that was said, we also have to acknowledge the incredible stress on parents who are, you know, both simultaneously working and managing their child's distance learning. So everybody's carrying burden here and it's all having impacts that go, you know, right to students. So yeah, everybody's doing their best. Yeah. Sarah, do you have anything before we wrap up? I think most of what I had on my mind was covered by others. I think I just wanted to express, I mean, I did want to say, again, thank you to all the hard work that every single person who's employed by our district is doing. And I have compassion for how exhausted and overwhelmed you must be. So I wanted to acknowledge that.
161And, but also speak to the like increasing every, as every week goes by, feel increased responsibility on behalf of our students to get them back in the classroom, however we can as soon as possible. I think as trustees, the data that we're hearing from the county, from the state nationally, is just emphasizing that we, schools can reopen safely and that our plan includes, all of the different layers of risk mitigation that need to be in place to make that risk of transmission low. And so I just think we're reaching that point where the negative consequences of being in distance learning for weeks on end are getting more and more serious. And so I'm thinking about our students in that way and our families and wanting to, as soon as we can get back in phase
162three, then be thinking about a pivot to phase four, especially for the little ones, just how important that is. Thanks. Yeah, I just wanna thank staff, district and our teachers, just how much lift you put into this in terms of working through things that are flexible, right? All of our outdoor classrooms that you have the ability to set up if you choose them, those that have worked their classrooms to put the distance in and make it work. It's not easy, we'll get there, but more importantly, I appreciate the continued push to be ready when we have to, right? At this point in time, everything has always taught us that with COVID, you have to be nimble, especially with the fact that now with vaccines being where they're at, that there is some light at the
163end of the tunnel, but it doesn't mean that the work goes away. It just means that you just keep pushing to work with it because, as I've said, what could change this week, two weeks from now can be completely different when we just don't know. So I appreciate Michelle for the constant updates. We'll bring it back next week with kind of the information that you talked about a little bit more about how we transition going into the break, and then we'll see where we're at with the data, Hans, if we get to it or get to it at a later time. So Wendy, anything in public comment in regards to 7A? Thank you for that constant reminder. No, thank you. There just hasn't been anything tonight, so. I know what happened was it builds up,
164so I'd just like to be able to get to it like you can. I mean, I'm kind of in the beginning of my grade not in the right email, but yeah, no, public comment, there's nothing. We'll know if you start reading your New York Times recipes or daily briefs or whatever it is that comes through. Action item 8A, we'll move on to adoption of the 2021 budget overview for parents. Michelle, I'll let you explain, but I'll just try to guide us a little bit for the board is this is just, if I remember correctly, a new kind of COVID adoption as well, because of the LCAP changes, for us to have a simpler version for our budget going forward to kind of view, but Michelle let you kind of elaborate on a little bit and
165we'll take action from there. You wanna take this or I can do it too, Michelle? Yeah, I was gonna just hand it off to Hans and Christine. Yeah, so let's see, not LCAP last spring, but the previous spring, so that would have been 2019. This was a new report called the budget overview for parents. And it was added because of the depth and the density of the LCAP itself. Instead of parents having to go page by page if they were interested in looking at expenditures page by page, the state developed this new template called the budget overview for parents. It's basically a couple of graphs and explains, does the best it can to give kind of a really 50,000 foot view of the district's budget in a readable format. So I think Christine and I
166work together on this. And I think one of the great things about it is they ask you to make very, very brief comments, which is great. And then on the other hand, some of the comments need more explanation and you're really not supposed to give that kind of depth here. So there's two sides to it, but this year there was no budget overview for parents last spring because there was no LCAP. And so rather the state decided this time that what they would do is they would align the BOP as it's called with the first interim report. And it would be based on the LCP, not the LCAP, but the report that we had earlier this year, the learning continuity plan. And so all of those factors taken into account, we're going to have another
167one of these at the end of the year in June that will go along with the full three year LCAP that we're developing. So hopefully that gives you enough background to kind of understand at least where it's coming from. Any questions for Hans or Christine before we adopt this in regards to the budget overview for parents? I do have one and thanks for the explanation, Hans. I didn't think we had seen this before, so I appreciate that this is new. So I am curious, I know that one of the ways that the state really wants to create transparency for parents around the LCAP is to really allow parents to see how supplemental funds are being used in the way that they were intended, because we received them based on our concentration of high needs students,
168our unduplicated count, correct? And so I'm just really curious that our, and this makes it really clear that we aren't spending all of the funds that we receive through the supplemental grant on our high needs students. It looks like we received 467,000 and we're only spending 327,000 on our high needs students. So I'm just curious as we embark on our DEI work and are looking at our lens of equity, where is the rest of these funds being spent and is there a reason why we aren't spending them on our high needs students as we're supposed to? All right, you gotta unmute. I'll take this and then Christine, feel free to fill in if you'd like. The report's really misleading because normally that cell is aligned directly to our supplemental dollars. And in this case, that
169cell is actually aligned only to, there was several sections in the LCP and at the end of each section, there were some expenditures. Next to the expenditure, you saw the word yes or no, okay? That yes or no meant yes, it's directly contributing to our unduplicated count or no, it's not. So for example, one of the expenditures in that report in that plan was buying Chromebooks, right? And so that's not a direct service to students that are in unduplicated count, okay? But there were other pieces that were directly aligned and those totaled out of our, what was in the LCP was just the million or so dollars of learning loss mitigation funds, okay? And based on that, I think the number was 327,000 is what you said, Carol, in that cell. Of that million dollars
170of learning loss mitigation funds, 327,000 of it is going to direct contribution, okay? On the other hand, we have additional supplemental money that we receive to the tune of 467,000. And that is all budgeted to go to unduplicated count. So that was the misleading part about the, when Christine was working with the county, and we said, well, should we redo that? Because it looks exactly like what you said, Carol. It looks like we're not spending all of our money. Well, that dollar amount is not referring to the additional 467,000 that we actually have that we receive for unduplicated count. So our attempt to explain that is in the explanation right below that. And Christine, do you have anything you wanna add? Nope, that's basically, we did talk to the county about it and they just
171said, add verbiage on the explanation that we are spending additional 467,000 on our unduplicated students supplement. So I'm not reading where it says that. I'm reading in that, I guess, second to last paragraph where it says we receive 467,000, the same paragraph says we plan to spend 327,000 towards meeting this requirement. So I'm not seeing where it explains that we actually spend the whole 467,000 in the- It's the next paragraph. It's the second to last paragraph. It's the one under the header, increased or improved services for high-need students. It's the sentence that says, while supplemental and concentration grant expenditures are budgeted for high-need students in the district's overall budget, they are not included in the LCP. But those funds are budgeted in our, it's in our budget. So Carol, if you look at the second
172paragraph, under increased or improved services for high-need students. So in the future, maybe it would be, I mean, I know the county says maybe we don't have to include that in there. I personally would like to see it because I think, I mean, I know this is something that we're doing just because we have to, but it also does serve a purpose to our public about being transparent about how we're using our supplemental funds. So I would love to see like, what are the actual dollars that we are spending on our high-need students, especially our- Carol, this was the, I think, frustrating part because they're trying to take kind of a square peg and put it in a round hole. Like I said, normally that cell refers directly to this section in the LCAP is
173actually called DICEP is the acronym. But it's increased or improved services, okay? Or your unduplicated count pupils. And this, it doesn't align directly out of the LCP and that was the frustrating piece was, yes, of the million dollars we put into the LCP, only 327,000 of it only, which is about 30%, which is far more than our unduplicated count, is going to directly to students in the unduplicated count. We also, there's a section in the LCP. So if you go back and you refer to that, or anyone in the public goes back to that meeting back in September and looks at that, the last section is actually talks about, specifically about the unduplicated count and references the 467,000 of additional dollars that we have there. It's just not reflected in this budget or the cells
174didn't work. I'm a better way to say that. It's really just, the report's not as, not representative of the entire LCP. More obfuscation by the state. They make it very difficult for the public to follow the dollars. My comment is, I really appreciate Carol Howe and the push from the state. I appreciate the spirit, but like this, this particular process or spreadsheet isn't really working. So I'm actually more wondering, what do we wanna do as a board and as an org? We look at our budget in June and at first interim and in second interim, and Christine, is it possible at those times that we go, these are the monies that we're getting for these populations, and are we in fact spending the money on these types of services? Here are the six or seven
175things we do, and yep, we're doing, if you can figure out a process, it seems like we do wanna have that, build that capability into our tracking systems. Maybe you can think about that and see what seems feasible. One other piece I wanna add, and I just went actually to another training today on the upcoming LCAP, and generally where you denote that is in your annual update for your LCAP. And you might recall we didn't have an annual update, so we didn't do that. This upcoming LCAP, we'll follow those dollars, we'll have an annual update for 19-20, and we'll also have an annual update for 20-21. So it's inherent in that process that you'll see where those dollars went, as will the public. We can't hear you, Christine, again, I see you talking, but try
176again. I know you have something important to say. Can you hear me now? Yes. It's also part of the, my internet, it's also part of the audit requirement and the auditors audit the supplemental dollars. All right. Well, let's see. Based off of that, do we have a motion to approve 8A adoption of the 20-21 budget overview for parents? I move approval of 8A. Thank you, Irene. Is there a second? I second. Thank you, Wendy. All in favor of adoption of the 20-21 budget overview for parents, please state by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That'll carry five, zero. 8B, resolution 920-21 to lay off classified enterprise employees due to COVID-19 uncertainty. Just as a reminder for people listening, this is our kind of now, I guess, every few weeks layoff notes we have to kind
177of balance the uncertainty that surrounds our SMARTy and preschool programs. Michelle, if you want to take this one to kind of add anything to it. In addition, if we're seeing anything new or if kind of trends are anything different or is it just kind of our standard process, we continue to follow as we adapt to the COVID landscape. Yes. And Neil, we committed to making sure that we were not running the programs at a large deficit or burden or loss to the district. And one of the things that we ran into last spring is we need a 60 day runway to lay off staff if we're going to reduce a program or eliminate a program. And that's just part of ed code. And all of our employees are part of classified staff and we need
178to follow those guidelines. So what we are doing is each 60 days, we're doing a layoff resolution just in case we need it. That's essentially what it is. So 60 days from now is February 4th about. So this gives us an opportunity that if there's some adjustments in our programs that we need to make or changes that we have that flexibility to lay off staff, to take a pause or to change. Now, because of this strategy over the past month, we actually did lay off seven staff members in our preschool program to result in a savings. We ended up laying off 30 minutes of every employee, all preschool, all smarty to capture some additional savings. Because the challenge that we're having is that our class sizes in the preschool and the afterschool are very small,
179which means we are running at a break even or a slight loss depending on the month and the enrollment because kids come and go and they come and go. So our revenue is changing constantly. So we want to change our staffing to match the enrollment numbers. So because we've had this strategy in place, we've been able to pivot and adjust and reduce and consolidate some classes and we wanna continue that. So this notice will go out to all the employees upon your approval tomorrow, just to let them know that in 60 days, there may be a change. And so it kind of puts them on alert. And our employees knew that this was going to be our strategy coming into the year. And Amber and Sue Dolly are constantly talking with staff and letting them
180know where we are. So tonight we're asking you to approve this revolving layoff resolution. Just to make sure we're clear on it, Michelle, is that we still have the reserve built in at this point in time for the Interpress Fund as a backstop or cushion right now. And that was budgeted or I don't know if budget is the right term, but that was, I guess, planned at kind of a full year or six weeks. What's the timeframe I'm trying to get at is how much is in that kind of backstop? Well, what we did in our Enterprise Fund this year is we left the funds in there to act as a reserve while these programs are running. So we had a little bit of backup if needed. So instead of taking those funds and contributing
181them to the general fund. So what we wanna make sure is that we always have at least 60 days of salaries, that direct cost sitting as a reserve if necessary. So that's a new model that we wanna work toward so that our enterprise is completely independent and sustainable without interfering with our general fund like it may have happened to us last year. We were very concerned and we didn't have this backup in place. So we're gonna build that up and keep that reserve in place so that we have some stability. Questions, concerns from other trustees regarding kind of this continuing resolution we have. So I don't have a concern about the resolution. I think, I mean, that is as necessary and thanks for bringing it and keeping us on track with this. What my concern
182is, is as the numbers have been presented to the board at the beginning of, I think back in October, early November, I think early November and we already were seeing a difference than what the staff had anticipated when they presented the plan to the board for approval in August. And so the board asked to see the numbers more on a monthly basis instead of a quarterly because the environment was changing. The forecast was changing so quickly. And then in this most recent one that you sent in the board memo, we see that whereas in October, they had predicted that November would be the month that we had particularly first the Sparty afterschool, not for the preschool. The preschool seems to be on track, but for the afterschool was predicted that that was going to be
183the month that it was finally running in the black. And we see that it actually had a $33,000 loss. That's extremely concerning to me because of just what a rapid change that was. And I think that was only the only thing that I understand happened was a loss of four students, but I'm still not following how there was a $33,000, well, more than that Delta with the loss of only four students. And so I'd like to see this brought back to the board as a discussion item before January, because I think the board just needs to make some tough decisions on whether or not it's sustainable for us to continue smarty afterschool if it's operating at a consistent loss because we're gonna burn through this reserve. And even though technically it's not part of our
184general fund, it is part of our general fund because this money is money that would be transferred to the general fund and we can use it for other programming. And I don't have an appetite to continue subsidizing childcare on the backs of the funds that we have designated for our students. Yeah, and it is an ever-changing situation, Carol. You're so right. And just today we had four more enrollments at the Arundel program. Well, all of a sudden now that changes things again. So it is very volatile. We don't have that steady enrollment and predictability in a typical year. So it is something that we will continue to monitor really closely. The next planned discussion on this that we were going to bring the quarterly report on January 21st. And that's where we look at the
185last quarter through December and to be able to see where we are. So that was the next full report. And it takes extensive time to pull all that information together. So I'm wondering what kind of discussion or what would be the objective of our discussion on the 17th of December if we were to agendize that? How would we prepare that? So my concern was waiting until the 21st is that the layoff resolution goes until the fourth, correct? And so if the board receives information on the 21st, it doesn't receive information until the 21st about the financials. And it's clear that this is not sustainable that we're gonna be losing too much money then staff and in our families only have two weeks to find alternative plans. And I just don't think that's fair to our
186staff and our families. So I think we owe them a longer runway. I think also we need a runway to have discussions with the city or other partners that could take this liability on that have an interest in preserving childcare. And so I think we need to, I would like to see in November, I mean, in December, an analysis. I mean, certainly in the mid December, hopefully we would know what our numbers are going to be for December so that we will have now November data and December data and we can see where that's lining up so that we can make some predictive assumptions about the direction that we need to move in January. I think waiting till January 21st is just too late. I'm gonna make one suggestion Michelle before we dive too deep
187into this, just because this is just gonna be around the resolution and then we can have this further discussion maybe for agenda setting just to kind of take off the other stuff and then we kind of focus it a little bit around. That's all right? Yeah. Okay, anyone have any questions? I know Carol will come back to it but any more questions kind of surrounding the agenda item itself 8B in that regards? All right, is there a motion for approval of 8B? I move to approve 8B. Thank you, Wendy, is there a second? Second. Thank you, Sarah. All in favor of the resolution number nine, 2021 to lay off classified enterprise employees due to COVID-19 uncertainty, please state by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? And that motion will carry five, zero. Last action item
188is AC ransomware. I'm just gonna run into the assumption that everyone got a chance to dive into the civil grand jury report. This is kind of more procedural aspects for the board to recognize the grand jury that we did receive the report and the recommendations and to respond back in the letter. It's kind of a little bit more of a formality just giving back to them to acknowledge that that's where we have. I do appreciate the grand jury for taking on these topics, especially the civil grand jury because it's outside of their regular days and jobs and providing us with information. And I do appreciate Hans for working with the letter. And I'm assuming these always go through council and staff on the best ways to respond. And I'm guessing that happened here as well,
189Hans, right? Yeah, that's correct. County council is our primary resource on these and they prepare a template for us to use. It's really great, great partnership we have. Sarah, question? Nope. Any questions, Carol? I was gonna make a motion to approve AC. All right, there's a motion to approve AC. Anyone second? All second. All in favor, please state by saying aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right, that motion carries five, zero. To agenda setting, we had a couple of things. I'll go back to it just because the most recent that Carol was talking about to come back with more information regarding the SMARTy program. Carol, did you wanna kind of cut it off a little bit, but is there kind of more clarification outside the points you already made of the things you're looking for or
190anything in particular to talk about? Cause I know usually it's two board members to bring it back. So I just wanna make sure everyone knows what's being asked. Yes, I think, I mean, I'm not seeing a lot of change or that wild change in the numbers for preschool. So I think limiting it to the SMARTy afterschool numbers for me is what I think what the area that is of most concern. And so in terms of limiting kind of the scope of what staff has to kind of prepare for, and to Michelle's point that, you know, that's gonna be a quick turnaround. So I think that's what's most important. That's the one I have the most concerns with seeing is the wild kind of fluctuations. Like we expect some fluctuations, but, you know, 30 or $40,000
191in a single month is, that's just not sustainable. Sorry, for my own knowledge, are you asking to bring back information on kind of why the fluctuations? So why we're kind of going to and from, or are you asking for more concrete forecasting going forward? It's about the concrete forecasting. And I think, I mean, I think contextually, it's gonna require an explanation for where they were off, because I think what I don't have a sense for is how well we're able to forecast risk, because we've been dramatically off, you know, for the entirety of this year in that way. So, you know, I think that staff will have to really reflect on why it's been so far off. And then I think what I would like to see brought back is what is their worst case
192analysis? And what is that based on, you know, based on their experience these last few months of the things that have contributed to us being so off in our forecasting projections? And because I really don't feel like we've gotten a presentation on what our exposure is on this. I don't think we have a good handle on that. That's what I would wanna understand before I commit to, you know, moving forward past our resolution notice with continuing the program, because I wanna really understand what our exposure life is on it. Okay, I think I have enough information. Okay, do other board members wanna see you come back on the 17th, Carol, or is it okay if it's after the break? It doesn't matter. I think if it's doable the 17th, I mean, I look to Dr.
193Harmer, but I think Carol's point, which I really appreciate was that staff and parents need time after this conversation at the governing team. So it would behoove us to do it earlier if possible. Just to make sure I'm clear, Michelle, we're not recommending any kind of, there's no recommendation of any wholesale changes to the program at this point in time, nor would there be any recommendation between now and the end of the year, right? So it would just be kind of, at this point in time, it would just be the board seeking more financial information for our own knowledge, just so we can kind of obtain more information going forward. But there's no, nothing would be coming forward about, I mean, we always use the term runway, but we're not making any changes to the
194program at this point in time, or it's not recommendations. Yeah, you know, we're not in a position to make a recommended change right now. I think what I'm hearing from Carol is, let's really look at what did we think was going to happen based on the enrollment numbers in this summer? We had, let's say, I'll just make up a number, we had about 100 kids who were going to commit to the program, and then here we are now with only 60 kids. So what happened? And, you know, the forecast was, we took the number of kids that were enrolled, this is how much money we anticipated, and now instead of 100 kids, now we have 60 children. So this is now the repercussion, right? This is now, this is why we are losing money. So
195I think that's what I'm hearing from Carol is, why are we in a loss now versus our projection in the summer when we thought we would be able to run this program? You know, and I think that's what I'm hearing is that what specific is the data? You know, what did we project? Where are we now? And what is the cause of this? And then what is the possible worst case scenario as we move forward? Is this gonna get worse? Are we gonna stabilize? You know, what possible changes are going to happen so that we can make some decisions? So I think what we have right now is probably just our November payroll. We're in the middle of December, so we don't really have, our quarterly report has to do with closing down December, and
196then using those numbers in December to create a quarterly report. But what we can do is show the data that I just talked about, the actual numbers of enrolled, what we predicted and what we're at now. And I think that will tell the story. Essentially, we don't have enough kids. That's kind of the analysis. So I think what Carol is saying is, well, can we sustain where we are or not? And that's what I'm hearing. Is that right, Carol? Are we willing to subsidize to the tune of $30,000 a month out of our general fund, a childcare program? Right, right. And so I think the question about action, I actually do, I mean, I don't expect there to be an action item in December, but I think we do have to drive towards an action
197with the board is either recommitting to continuing it, or the board is saying, no, we're not gonna continue to subsidize this out of our general fund. Because February 4th will be our window where we can make that without having an extra $400,000 hit to our reserves. Well, let's see where we get on the 17th for what you can bring back. And then we've run into an issue that we can talk about the fourth and just go from there. But we'll plan on the 17th and we'll bring it back next time. We'll continue to bring back the return to school update. And we'll bring back the science adoption. Was there anything else any other trustees had that they wanted future agenda items at this point in time? I would like to understand what our timing is
198in terms of our budget conversations in January. I know we were talking about the need to really develop a more robust reserve and perhaps adopting a policy around that or codifying a policy. We have kind of a soft guidance that the board has had in place for many years, but understanding the volatility. And I think it's gonna be really important as we have some of these variables start to flesh out being federal stimulus, the governor's budget, what is our enterprise balance going to be? What's our policy around that? And as we start to make decisions around prioritizing our budget for next year, I think having understanding when in January we're gonna start that and how we wanna sequence those. So we wanna start with that reserve conversation first and what is our targets there? So
199understanding what the sequencing of that's gonna be. Seems like a good plan. Probably more toward the later on, I'm guessing more toward when decisions are made at the state and federal level in January. Okay, anything else, Irene? You know, I'm interested in student and staff mental health. How is everybody doing? I mean, I know that on the students, we've got the zone to grown. What are we seeing from that data? And I don't know how we're measuring staff mental health. Maybe it's just anecdotal. The principals know what's going on because we have relatively small schools. But I think it's important that we keep a pulse check. Okay, Michelle, is there a question around that? Or I'm guessing that's gonna be something kind of just a guidance going forward that we can discuss further along, Irene,
200just as we get kind of more information and kind of get past the year kind of how we should check in on it. Could we come back and talk about that maybe later about what the best way to do, or you can touch base with Michelle on what exactly is you think may be the best way to do it? Was that back to me? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think, look, people pay attention to what the questions are, right? So, you know, if you ask questions about test scores, people are paying attention to like test scores. If you ask questions about people's mental health, they'll be paying attention to people's mental health. So part of it is the asking of the question. Does that make sense? It does. I think the bigger question is if
201we're gonna guide staff kind of timing-wise and what the expectation would be is that, are you asking them for a survey? Are we asking for maybe, you know, later in mid-year update? Is it coming back in terms of, you know, as we check back in with our general overall, you know, mental health status, what is it exactly you may be asking them to do? Irene, I'm wondering each year we do a survey. We've done it through Panorama in the past. We're looking at using a different survey tool maybe this year, but there is a component where we are asking staff about a variety of things. And I'm wondering if we might be able to just integrate a couple of those key questions into our staff perception survey this spring as we're doing our LCAP engagement
202and input process. I think that's a way to kind of layer that in. So we can have further discussions about that, or if you have either ideas or suggestions, please reach out to us and maybe we can have more conversation. I'll have a conversation one-on-one, but that's not actually probably, I mean, because I think it's the, to me, something lightweight, not process-heavy, but more frequent is like what's more important in what this year is called for. And I also think that on the student level, we already are gathering the data. I just don't know what it is. Like we're gathering the data through this sewn and grown program that you showed us, right? So great, I think there's data there. We just don't know what it is. And then on the staff side, it could
203be, I would just say it's important. How do you know how your people are doing? And it could be that the answers every week, we check in, we go around the table, we talk about it. And how you're engaging, whether it's we're doing well, we're having dips or highs, like I care that you know, does that make sense? I'll talk about that with our team. Thank you, Ari. All right, anything else? Seeing none, let's go. Wendy, any public comments? 10-A. I'm sorry, give me one second. I have so many tabs open and I'm like taking notes. No, I haven't had anything come in tonight. All right, thank you. Dan, employee group comments. All right, good evening. I hope that you and your families are in good health during this alarming time for our country and
204our state and our county. And the San Carlos Teachers Association Executive Board and I are proud of the amazing work that our teachers are doing each day for our students. We're working long hours to gauge our students every day. And I'm thankful for all of our dedicated teachers. I'm especially thankful for our teachers who are the parents of school-aged children who are balancing teaching and the learning of their own children, sometimes in their own house. And I don't know how they do it because after a few hours on Zoom, my eyes just feel like they're kind of glazing over a little bit. And so my hat goes off to them and I hope we keep them in our thoughts because they literally are managing teaching and then suddenly their children that used to be in
205our schools are now in their own house too. So that's mainly what I wanted to say and thank you. All right, thank you, Dan. I don't see any other employee groups. Board comments, would anyone like to start us off? I'll start us off. I just wanted to say, Carol, thank you for an extraordinary year in being board president. I thought everything that Neil said earlier was just like so apt that so much of you standing up for our community was probably not seen. And when Neil talked about how he saw you, was working with you so closely this year, that I was thinking, jealous, not jealous. I was like, not jealous for all the extra time, but jealous just because you are such an amazing teacher and I've learned so much from you by serving
206on this board and I'm just so grateful, so thank you. And I hope you're gonna rejuvenate by reclaiming some time back. And then I think just like a continued thanks to all of our SCSD staff. We're in it together, pull together, support one another. It's the only way through this completely crazy year. And thank you, of course, to all of our parent communities. I'm a parent, it's not easy. And when I read the heartbreaking news of like one out of four students not showing up in many schools across this nation, I know that at least I'm kind of grateful here and we live in a community where our kids are showing up and it's because of our staff and how we're engaging. And I'm counting the blessings that we do have. So thank you, everyone.
207Anyone else? Carol. I'll comment, I just wanna share deep appreciation for our staff. I think we all know how incredibly hard they've been working. They've been designing three different teaching methods this year and they've just demonstrated, I mean, not only excellence in their profession which we already knew existed, but they're also just demonstrating a lot of resilience and modeling that perseverance and flexibility and for our students because we're all having to pivot and change as conditions change. And I just wanted them to know that I'm not taking them for granted. I really, really see that and I appreciate it. And I know that it's making our district stronger and I know moreover that it's really changing the trajectory for our students which I know is why they're committed to this work. And so I just
208wanna offer my gratitude for that. Go ahead, Wendy. I'll just jump in and say, I think echoing a little bit of what Carol was just saying, I heard something really interesting on NPR, a new book that's come out. Well, actually it came out just before the pandemic hit. Look them up, Eric Larson, he's a journalist but he wrote this interesting book and it does kind of feature Churchill and how they got through the bombings in World War II and it's just so like, it talks about that perseverance and the resilience and sort of everything that now people are living right now day to day. And I just, when I heard about some of the traits that he really reflected, they talked about courage and optimism. And I just wanna say that just my interactions with
209our district, our principals and just in recent exchanges as a parent, like I attended the meetings this week and they've just been doing such a great job, I think of demonstrating those traits, courage and optimism. So I really wanted to thank especially our principals who have been trying to be shepherd us, shepherd their staff, shepherd their school community through this right now. So thank you to them. And yeah, and just on a personal note, I mentioned to Dr. Haumeier that I had a great opportunity to have a meeting with Superintendent Tony Thurman today through my work that I do at the CDE Foundation. And I don't know, it's also, we've been doing a lot of work around bridging the digital divide and providing devices to schools across the state. And anyways, I guess I just
210wanted to share that we've also been responding to schools that have been devastated by fires this year. So I guess I just wanna say that echoing what Irene was saying too is that I am extremely grateful for the way our school district and our school community has really responded to this need. And that we were like a sort of an early adopter of all of this and just getting those devices out and just being sort of, I feel like ahead of the curve a bit. Anyways, I got the chance to just say that I'm a school board trustee with San Carlos School District and highlighted us to superintendent and took note of that. And I just wanna say that I'm very proud of our district and what Dr. Haumeier and what Hans you've been able
211to again, just kind of sort of be pushing on the front lines of being a model district. So proud of you and proud of us, thank you. All right, I'll just, I think in a sense, just comment on the fact that talking to a friend and he told me that it sounded like the quote that summarizes about what everyone's going through is he said that he's exhausted from the amount of work that he has to do on top of all the other jobs that he seems that he's doing now. And there doesn't seem to be any help in sight. So, I think that kind of summarized where I think a lot of people feel, especially up and down our staff and district. But I always wanna highlight that fact in the sense of what makes
212us different than anyone else as we get through it together. I think if we always take a step back, we all realize that what we think our individual problems are shared amongst others, our individual concerns are shared amongst others. As we kind of go through holidays, which are now gonna be different because of the situation we're in, make sure we all take that into account in our thoughts and our words and everything else, because we're all in it together. That's been basically clear by the tears we jostle back and forth on, but I appreciate everyone, especially this board, as well for putting in the work and putting in the time on top of all the other things you're doing. So, Sarah, you wanna finish us off? Do you have anything? Can I just say ditto
213to all of the above? That's all. Great, Dr. Harmar. I wanna say thanks. I just have so much gratitude right now, our teachers and the Teachers Association for working so collaboratively with all of us together. We are in this together and we are making progress. And the fact that we were ready to come back and we have the will and the ability to do that, it's because of everyone working together, being creative, figuring out schedules, and all the things that we do together. So thank you to the Teachers Association for working so hard through this, because it's hard to be on the negotiating teams right now, because we're dealing with really hard topics. So Angela Naughton, thank you so much, and the negotiating team. I wanna thank our secretaries. This is their first season. They're
214doing enrollment, and they are taking over that role. We used to have centralized enrollment, and now Amber is running all the enrollment from the district office, now that we don't have that enrollment position anymore. So Amber is doing a great job with our secretaries of enrolling new families into San Carlos. And believe it or not, people are still coming in and still enrolling, and we're still getting our kindergartners ready. And we're gonna have a wonderful kickoff on January 19th to kick off our enrollment season and our kindergarten enrollment. It's kind of a welcome to San Carlos event. So more information will be going out. And we're still looking forward to next year. So thank you secretaries for doing a great job and taking on that responsibility at the sites now. And Christine Gong, who presented
215her first interim, the first first interim tonight. I like to say Christine Gong is the right person at the right time for us and our district. She is extremely knowledgeable, very thorough, very dedicated to supporting our district and has just done an amazing job of kind of getting us kind of on the right trajectory. And it helps a lot to get a million dollar donation from Alexandria to kind of push us over the edge. But the fact that she's got some great systems in place, I wanna thank her. And lastly, Doug Johnson, our Director of Facilities, Maintenance, Operations and Transportation. I just wanna recognize Doug and thank him for overseeing all the work on the sites to get the sites ready for our students to return. There's been a lot of infrastructure updates and upgrades
216and work that he and his crew have done. And he's just done an outstanding job. And I just wanna publicly thank Doug for all he's done to get us ready for in-person learning. Thank you. All right, thank you, Dr. Harmar. We do not have any closed session tonight. So I will adjourn this meeting and I hope everyone has a great night and a great weekend. Wow, I didn't know that. Thank you. Good night, everyone. What a surprise. Thanks, Neil. Good night. Good night.