2/12/26 Regular Meeting of the Governing Board

001I would like to call this meeting Thursday. This is the regular meeting of the governing board. Please let the record members are present with the exception of member. The San Marcos Unified School District Board of Education meeting is a business meeting of the board held in public. While we welcome and encourage public participation, the behavior is that this meeting will be conducted in an orderly fashion. Only the person recognized by the board president may speak. While that member of the public is speaking, members of the audience must not yell or speak out, regardless of whether you agree or disagree. While public comment is in progress, if you speak out, you are out of order and will be asked to leave the meeting. As adults participating in a public meeting, we need to model civility to

002our children and students. On behalf of the board of education, we thank you in advance for helping us conduct this meeting respectfully. The San Marcos Unified School District is an innovative and collaborative community providing an unparalleled educational experience. Through an engaging and supportive environment, all of our students are challenged, inspired, and poised to excel. Please rise for the pledge of allegiance. Ready to standy and justice for all. >> Approval of the agenda. Do I have an a motion to approve the agenda? >> So moved. >> Second. >> Uh moved by member M. Seconded by member Martine uh to approve the agenda as presented. Student board representatives say your vote. >> Uh all all those in favor say I. >> I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Report of action taken in close session. Tonight the board conferred

003with real property negotiators government code section 54956-8. Aaron Garcia and Wendy Wilds legal counsel. property, a portion of 700 Adabbury Road, San Marcos, California 92078-3301, APN22-121-04, consisting of approximately 13.5 acres. Negotiating party, the trustee of of the Paul Pearson Trust dated July 22nd, 2007 under negotiation price and terms for the purchase of real property. No action was taken. Next we discuss matters pertaining to public employee employment transfer appointment discipline dismissal release evaluation and reassignment in close session today by a motion of member Martine seconded by member Heric. The board approved the settlement agreement and release of certificated employee number 503891 effective March 30th 2026 by the following vote. Eyes. Member Miam Herrick Carlson Martin knows zero abstaining zero. Last the board discussed student readmit case number 04-2526. No action was taken. Reports by student board

004members Joure Shepard. >> So as she is coming to the the podium, you'll come up here to the podium. This is Joure. She is a student at Twin Oaks High School who is actually Yes, I met Jouri this year. She is new to our school district and right away got onto our superintendent student advisory and came in uh like a a bright sunshiny ray of sunshine. I'm not sure how how to say that exactly. Uh but really brightened up our our our team and joined right on in. So, we're happy to have you here this evening. >> Thank you. I'm happy to be here. Good afternoon. Good evening everybody. Um, my name is J and I am here at I've only been here for five months and my journey at Twin has been wonderful and

005they're very supportive and I am here today to talk about the things that we do here on campus. We have um on campus guests at the YMCA. Um, we have representatives who come who come down and talk about mental health and as well as we have love on the leash and a former agent who comes in shar orientation. Orientation is a mandatory class that we take for about a week to help students get engaged with their peers and get to know their teachers. We also have life skills our first class which helps us build exercises and just get used to working with each other and working around. We also have campus field trips such as trade day. We go to the safari park um once a year. We also do the meditation garden. The meditation

006garden I went. It's very fun, very peaceful. Um I recommend anybody to go. It's free. If you want to just look at the water and sit down somewhere, we also go down to the college. as well as off campus with going to the San Marcos Elementary School where we just help help the kids with like reading or school activities. We have classes at Palamar that we take during the fall semester. We also have um we have after school program assets. We do a lot of things and assets. Um we do a lot of things and assets in our after school program. For holidays, we have you know Thanksgiving feast for Christmas. We got together and um celebrated. We also have child development with workshop um child development. We go down to the state and we

007have about 30 minutes to an hour to spend with the kids. It's really great. A really great way to get involved with the community and >> [applause] >> You do. Good luck to you. >> [applause] >> I have to lower the mic and then my APS will have to lift the mic after I'm done. We were told it was going to change. There we go. [clears throat] So, uh, we are here present for Lamar Academy, myself, Dana Spencer, my assistant principal, Kelly, and Jillian Ryan. Um, and we have the most important people here. We have Michelle Borha who is our leadership teacher. She teaches our leadership pathway. And we have students that will be here who are the most important ones to listen to to share about their experience in our leadership. Um, good evening,

008Dr. Johnson, cabinet, and members of the board. We're excited for the opportunity to share some of the great things that are happening at Lam Marada. Um tonight we'll be sharing information about our work with the county office of education and the IAN network. We'll be highlighting some of our programs and pathways that leverage the K8 continuum and share updates on how LMA is reinventing. We are reinventing ourselves this year. A little bit about our demographics. Our total enrollment right now is 811 students. Uh we are 89% Hispanic, 4% white, 2% Asian, 1% African-American, and we have 2% with multiple ethnicities. Uh we have 28% EBS, emerging bilingual, and 21% fluent English proficient students. We are 9% McKenna and 18% special education students. Um on the right, you can see our Lam Marada Academy vision. I

009won't read it to you because I know everyone can read. Um, but our LMA vision was developed two years ago during our transition away from the international balora program. Uh, it integrates key elements from the portrait of a graduate as well as our core values that we hold dear at LMA and it has become our northstar as we continue to reimagine ourselves. As we transitioned away from the IB program in 2324, uh we established two main goals. Those goals were to increase opportunities for student choice, to support our students with academic growth and social emotional well-being, and to connect to portrait of a graduate. Um over the last or the last couple years from 232 24 and 2425 uh we significantly enhanced our elective opportunities for our middle school students and we develop began developing

010K8 pathways and they continue through middle school. Uh this current school year you can see in the from 23 to 25 we started out with a STEM pathway for K through eight. We were we were using project lead the way. We had AVID and AVID Excel classes that began in fifth grade and led through 8th grade. We had music in K8 with three levels of middle school music instruction which was new to our site. We had choir which was also new to our site for sixth through 8th grade. We had a leadership pathway we'll share with you today. ASB yearbook and Wolves TV. We had a world language pathway with Spanish one and two and Spanish for speakers one and two. This year the 25 26 specials for elementary. our elective pathways and our co-curricular

011pathways. We've grown so we continue to enhance those pathways and offer more opportunities to support our middle and elementary school kids. So at elementary we have PE, music, STEM. We now work with Cal State San Marcos and have an afterchool STEM labs that our children can take part in. We have robotics, not only a club, but we now have a team that will be competing at Legoland. We have balorico for not only elementary but middle school. Now we have music mentorship available to our elementary school students. We're finally taking advantage of that K8 continuum. Our middle school teachers are or I'm sorry, our middle school students are providing mentorship for our fifth grade students so they can see whether or not they might want to take band when they get to middle school. And we

012have a science expo that we started that we now have every year. And this year we partnered with the American Heart Association. In middle school, we have explore. Mrs. Borha also teaches explore. Um, you have about 15 prep. Um, and that is where our students are working on their executive functioning skills. So, they're really learning about organization, how to study, what it takes to get into college. Uh, we have Spanish, Spanish for speakers. This year, we created a Latin American studies class. It actually started at my home when my own daughter said, "Where's our culture? Mom, you speak Spanish, but we don't." Um, and so we thought about our students, uh, who in seventh and eighth grade are able to take Spanish and Spanish for speakers, but our sixth graders didn't have any sort of

013opportunity. So, we really wanted to start that pathway for them. So, we have Latin American studies, Wolves, TV, yearbook, ASB again have only grown and our kids will share that. We have STEM for middle school as well. We have music mentorship for our middle school students provided by outside sources. This year we have art and we have an elective fair that we started last year with San Marcos High School. It's even bigger this year. They come during a middle school lunch. They put out all of the electives that will be available. We invite families to come so parents are able to come and see if they're if they can. And it also allows our sixth and seventh graders who won't be picking classes yet to see what they have available to them. I'm going to

014pass the mic over to Kelly. Hello, I'm Kelly Hzard, assistant principal of Lam Marada. Thank you so much for having us this evening. Building on Dana's remarks about our expanded partnerships and opportunities, I am very proud to share the positive impact of our partnership with the ICA network on school culture and our learning environment here at Lamarada. Our attendance team extends far beyond those who are formally responsible for monitoring data. Attendance has become a collective responsibility amongst all of our entire staff. From classroom teachers to office personnel to support staff, every person plays a role ensuring that students feel welcomed, feel valued, and they're expected each and every day. This unified approach has strengthened Oh, there we go. This unified approach has strengthened both our positive and proactive culture building efforts along with targeted interventions

015for students who need additional support. Schoolwide, we have prioritized building positive school culture around being at school. We want our students to know that showing up matters. For example, we launched our wolf pup hunt. Coming back from a long break, our students engaged in a scavenger hunt before school and during morning recesses. When they found a wolf pup, they brought it to us and they got to exchange it for a prize from the school treasure box. It became quite an ordeal. Miss Ryan had a tourage behind her. Um, when we come back to school and on the first day of school after long breaks, our staff opens the gates with open arms, including music, celebratory signage, and staff members creating a tunnel of cheers and high fives, bringing students back to campus. This these are

016visible moments that send a clear message to our students that every student is missed when they're away and they're welcomed when they return. We have been implementing attendance blitz challenges on LMA's campus where any class with a 100% attendance could win a prize on any given day. Thank you to the generous donations from our community partners. Students earn exciting prizes and reinforce the value of just being present and being with us and available for learning. We also partnered with our families through a family attendance challenge, incentivizing parents to ensure that their students are here on time every day, reinforcing that attendance is a shared partnership between the parents and the school. At Lamarada, not only are we increasing student attendance, but we're cultivating a belonging connection and collective accountability. We are building a community where

017showing up is celebrated, where families are our partners, and where students understand that their presence matters. in order to reach their full learning potential. At Lamrada Academy, attendance is not only about being in a seat and being here. It's about being a part of our thriving comm community. Thank you. Thanks, Kelly. There's a couple pictures from the um so I have uh the opportunity now to introduce some of our students. So building on that thriving learning community depends on our students daily engagement. And it's from this engaged student body that we see our incredible leaders emerge. I'm Jillian Ryan. I'm the other assistant principal at Lamarada Academy. And I'm here uh I'm going to invite some students up to share the positive impact. Nope. I'd like to invite a few of our student leaders who

018represent the strength of our middle school leadership pathways. From ASB, Delilah and Peter. From yearbook, Ariana and Sarah. and from Wolves TVs, Sunset and Isaac. They are accompanied by our leadership teacher, Michelle Borha. Through these pathways, these students don't just participate. They actively shape our school community. Through their work, they demonstrate the core traits of our portrait of a graduate. They practice strong communication as they plan events, produce broadcasts, and share stories. They show empathy by representing the student voice and thinking about how their work impacts others. They build adaptability as they respond to real deadlines and changing needs. They use critical thinking to solve problems and make decisions. And of course, they model leadership by taking initiative and following through. These pathways are helping prepare them not just for high school, but for meaningful

019impact wherever they choose to go in life. We're so proud of the ownership these students take and the positive impact they have on our campus culture. So tonight, they'll share a little bit about their experiences in these programs, the skills they've developed, the challenges they've worked through, and how these opportunities have contributed to their own personal growth. So we wanted to give them a few minutes to tell their stories in their own words. >> Thank you, Jillian, for that lovely introduction. Um, and to Dana for inviting us all to come and speak and share with all of you. Um, good evening Dr. Johnson, cabinet, and members of the board, as well as everyone else here. My name is Michelle Boraha. Um I'm the middle school leadership teacher at Lomrad Academy. Um I'm also a proud

020alumni of the district having attended elementary, middle, and high school here. So I'm very happy to be here in front of all of you. Um today we have six incredible leadership students who are going to be sharing about um their experiences in our program. These students have been in the program through sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. Um so that's very special since they've been through the whole pathway. On top of that, they are also our founding leadership students, meaning that they were our first students on the Wolves TV, ASB, and yearbook crew at Lamada Academy. So, they have definitely set the standard for our future program. Um, at this time, I'm going to start off with ASB. I'm going to welcome Delila and Peter. Come on up. [applause] >> Good evening. Our names are >>

021Peter >> and Delilah from the associate student body program at LMA. We are both third year ASB staff, meaning we've been with the program in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. We are both co-presidents of LMA associate student body and have both served as committee heads for activities and advertising committee. >> When we first started our ASB program here at LMA, we were both in sixth grade. This is also our first year of our program as a We had to figure out what our goals would be as a program. We decided to focus on increasing student spirit and involvement through lunch events, dances, advertisement, and fundraising. We wanted our middle school students to have authentic middle school experience. We also wanted to create up schoolwide spirit weeks that encourage a sense of community in our TK

022through 8 school. By the second year of our ASB program, we move to a new leadership classroom, allowing us to work more freely, manage equipment, and keep our projects confidential. Each year being in this program, we face roadblocks, but we always find a solution as a team through communication, critical thinking, and problem solving. Our fundraising efforts through Snack Shack at home games, Valentine's, and other events go towards new equipment that we use during our lunch events, dances, schoolwide events, and field trips. Snack become a beloved part of our L community and has created an environment where students want to hang out after school and support our athletic program. >> One of the leaders leadership skills that we have become confident in is communication via public speaking. For example, every Friday as students make schoolwide announcements

023in small groups to to keep our whole school updated on current school events. We make freent proposals in our class, create announcements via our TV news program for special announcements, keep our social media accounts up to date, and much more. This year, elementary has started elementary student council that will act as a pathway to ASB and other leadership classes. As student directors, we attend elementary student council meetings, support them with planning spear weeks and schoolwide lunch activities. My experience in AS has been amazing. I've met many new people and had many experiences through being one of them being attending a city council meeting to receive a red ribbon. Another memory fing. >> In my own experience, my from being ASB will always be dance whether that's blowing up balloons or creating miniature cities. Another memory

024I like about ASB is our lunch events because our student involvement in our events. >> Overall, ASB has helped us to improve our confidence with communication, risk taking, leadership, adaptability, and confidence. >> Thank you for listening to our presentation. [applause] >> All right. Thank you, Delila and Peter. At this time, I'm going to invite up our representatives from Wolves TV. That's gonna be Ariana and Sarah. Come on up. Yearbook. Ariana and Sarah. Come on up. Good afternoon. We are Sarah and Ariana and we're both eighth graders in LMA year staff. For the past three years, we have been accepted into the leadership program as part of L's yearbook fun. Our yearbook program has grown immensely throughout these past three years. When we first started yearbook, we had three digital cameras that was shared between 35

025year students. We also had to use our small Chromebooks to both create the yearbook and edit photos, which is not ideal. With these qual with these challenges, King wrote, "We have upgraded to higher quality equipment such as DSLR cameras, Max for editing and graphic design, and a portrait studio area in our classroom. A big thank you to San Marcos High School for donating Macs and cameras that are no longer being used. We also want to thank the San Marcos Educational Foundation for awarding this with a grant for other equipment. Through this growth, we became better photographers, graphic designers, photo editors, interviewers, captioners, and leaders. Now, as senior staff, we are the leads of our own teams. We act as mentors and make sure our team is on top of deadlines. Support them with our yearbook

026teach them how to take high quality photos, provide suggestions for edits, and much more. By being in this leadership program, I have learned to advocate for myself plus others, and it has helped me become more self-confident. At first, I was extremely shy, and I didn't speak my mind specific. Since then, I have learned to not be afraid of speaking out, and I have adopted to take on the role of being a leader and mentor for new students. I am now more self assured and more self-confident in myself when talking and other yearbook sorry other teaching others yearbook has helped me has helped me grow in so many ways and I hope it can continue to help people along the way throughout my years in yearbook program it has helped me in many ways I can't

027put into words feel like a part of me that would always be with me I've learned so many new things such as how to be creative how to meet new people to be more confident but most importantly I've learned how when I need it. Reading yearbook really has made such a huge impact on myself and has helped me to be my own person of yearbook has really helped me academically as it encourages me to stay on top of my grades as a leader on campus. Overall, yearbook has taught us many things about ourselves and many lessons we will continue to use for years to come. We have faced many challenges but throughout it all we chose to remain positive to overcome these hurdles. Thank you for inviting to share about our yearbook program and we

028hope you enjoyed our presentation. [applause] >> All right, last but not least, we are going to introduce our TV and media program who run Wolves TV. Um, I'm going to welcome up and good evening. My name is S and I'm the lead editor of Bulls TV, which means I'm in charge of uploading all the other team segments onto the weekly episode, double checking the material for high quality work, creating transitions for each episode, and much more. >> Hello everyone, my name is Isaac and I'm here as set manager for Wolves TV. I take care of all of our equipment and help other students with their segments. We both have been in the program for three years and I've seen a lot of growth in how our class functions and with our production. Being third year

029students in this leadership program, we have seen many positive changes. From only being able to edit on iPads and not having proper set, we now have upgraded to editing on Macs and with proper set and professional green screen and other backgrounds. Higher quality microphones and different props we use thanks to donations from San Marcos High School and a grant from San Marcos Educational Foundation. Over the years, this program has helped us gain more confidence with public speaking, video editing, and videography. We produce a high quality completed episode that is played schoolwide every Monday. Our weekly episodes consist of 11 segments with 10 different teams that we manage as lead editor and set manager. >> Our current segments are preview episodes, sports report, journalism, leaison, pop, Spanish lesson of the week, weather forecast, this or that

030event coming up. behind the scenes. Every year we are adding new segments and delivering higher quality content. >> Each episode ranges from 8 to 12 minutes long, which unless you're familiar with video editing, is a lot more work than you think. Our episodes are 100% student made from segment proposals and script writing to recording and editing. >> During our time in this program, we have grown professionally. As a senior staff, we now help new staff understand the basics of editing, recording, and polishing the work. My favorite memories are my favorite memories are the experience and skills I have gained, finding out I was accepted into this program, making friends from different ways, and as deter as a person. I have learned not to let people get into your head, to be yourself no matter what

031people say, and how to be a good role model to other people. My favorite memory is reflecting back on how far our episodes have improved in quality and professionalism. It is also encouraging to hear all the positive feedback from students and staff as well as hearing how entertained everybody is. I have learned to advocate for myself and express my ideas. To conclude, our program is very special and we love our leadership teacher. We appreciate you all listening. Thank you. Thank you. again. >> And last lastly, we just want to give you a quick update. We know that you've heard all about uh community schools from Adelita and what's been going on, but we just wanted to recap. Um we now have family and community engagement outreach. We not only had TK and kinder students come

032back to school before school started, but we had a TK and kinder parent boot camp to help out our families. We have ongoing volunteer workshops and we support uh current parent groups such as ELAC. We've already completed our initial interest surveys and pretty soon we're going to have the parent institute for quality education p at our site. We'll have evening classes for our families. We have integrated student support. So we fostered relationships with our community partners. Nordstrom's donated us some shoes. Colombia PRA I mean things that I want to wear myself. I'm so happy that we are friends with them. Um, we've had our boys basketball team. Every single one of our boys on the team got brand new shoes to play. It was fantastic. Um, we finally have a comprehensive mobile clinic with true

033care. They come out and do full medical services, sports physicals, immunization, making sure our kids are ready because I won't let them get on the ball field without taking that physical. Um, checkups, full dental services, x-rays, cleaning, everything. We've had popup food pantries that have run out of food. We've had so many families come. We're working with uh Feeding San Diego. We have a care closet with clothing, shoes, uh backpacks, school supplies, health and wellness supplies, anything that anyone needs. And as a community school, now it's available to everyone. So, not just students that may have needed it before, which is nice. Um our next steps, we just completed our family and community survey and our staff survey. So, we're going to take that uh data along with a community walk. We're going to collect

034some street data on a community walk and we are going to work on our school identity. As I said a couple of times, we're reinventing and reimagining ourselves and we're going to decide who LMA is going to be moving forward. Um, one of those ways that we're going to do that is we have the Fiesta for the future community resource fair on May 2nd and we hope to see everyone there. Thanks again for giving us this opportunity to share all the wonderful things that are happening at our school and thank you. >> Thank you. It's really exciting to see how you're >> in four years, right? >> I know it's been a while. >> We have students up here speaking now articulately. >> It's great. It's really great to see. Thank you. >> Just have

035a quick question. percentages of increase over the years. >> Um it initi it was initially through DA um because of efforts. We are no longer in DA. Um and our chronic absenteeism is much lower. Um are you at like are you 3% decreased inreased by 3% since the beginning of this year? Um our goal for the end of the year is to get 12% and we're at [laughter] >> Thank you. They love their communication session education code 35145.5 and government code 54954.3 members of the public have the opportunity to provide public comment on any agenda item as well as any non-aggenda item that is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the board for board bylaw 9323. Individual speakers will be allowed up to three minutes to address the board on each agenda or non-aggenda item

036except for representatives. In board bylaw, public comments will be limited to 20 minutes per topic. In an effort to hear as many speakers as possible, comment depending on the number of comments. Generally, if there are seven or given three minutes to 10 speakers, each speaker will be given two minutes. If there are 11 or more speakers, each speaker will be limited to one minute. One speaker time may not be seated to another speaker. If there are more than 20 speakers, which would consume more than 20 minutes, all speakers who are not able to speak during the 20 minutes allocated for each item will have the opportunity to address the board at the end of the meeting. This will allow the board to conduct the board's business during the meeting. For the Brown Act, members of

037the board are very limited in their ability to respond to statements or questions made during public comment. Unless an item has been placed on the published agenda, there should be no deliberation or action taken. The board may acknowledge receipt of the information, report and comment, refer refer to staff for further study, or refer the matter to the next agenda. A recording is made of all open sessions of the governing board. Again, on behalf of the board of education, we thank you in advance for helping us conduct this meeting respectfully. Susie, do we have any speakers? >> Yes. Um, Mr. Pearson, [clears throat] public speaking. Um, [clears throat] I just wanted to say thank you to everybody on the board and uh everybody that uh participated in the uh herculean task of uh doing the line

038adjustment for all. >> Thank you. Okay. Gustavo or gel. >> Good evening, President Carson, board members, and Dr. Johnson. My name is Gustavo Orel, president of our district English learner advisory committee and a proud uh committee member of the past six years. I will make my comments first in Spanish and then I will repeat them in English. Multilingual California. Marcos. I would like to thank you for your continued commitment to and focus on our district's emerging bilingual students. Because of your sustained attention to our multilingual learners, we have seen meaningful improvements in our long-term English learner population and positive growth on English learner progress indicator on the California dashboard. These results reflect the impact of investing in high quality professional learning for the teachers who serve our children every day. That investment is making a

039difference. Your support extends beyond our students by offering English classes for families through the San Marcos Adult School. We are creating opportunities for families to grow alongside their children. It is our hope that these classes will expand to additional school sites so that even more families in our community can benefit. Thank you for recognizing and valuing our multilingual students, their languages, and the rich culture and the rich cultures they bring to our schools. Can I just ask that if please invite us to your DAC meetings? Let us know the calendar. Gretchen Foster Good evening, Dr. Johnson. Um, I I'm trying not to take too long of your time tonight because I sent most of my thoughts to you guys email earlier this week. Um, I'd still like to encourage you to floral classes on business

040pathway. But tonight, um, I want to talk about the substitution of a new college level horicultural class for the current a bio and a chemistry classes and the um, real repercussions that it has on our students. My family, for instance, um, is going to be hugely impacted. My daughter Kate, who many of you guys know, um couldn't be here tonight, but she also owns a sheep named Maisie. Um I know most of you or some of you have been to the barn, you've probably met Maisie and her babies and held them. Um when Kate decided to keep Maisie at a a breeding U, her plan was to gift Maisie to her brother Harry, who's sitting here, eighth grader. um when she instit that was her plan to when she graduates in June to give Maisie

041to him to take care of as a freshman at San Marcos High School. Um this is something that Harry has been super excited about doing and looking forward to for years to be a part of the FFA and to be able to have Maisie as his SAE project. And anyone who knows Harry, the biggest draw is that he'll be able to sell Maisy's babies for the next four years and make money. Um, now that he's being now he's being told he can only be an FFA, he can only own Maisie if only if he takes a college level horiculture class because next year there will be no A bio to sign up for. That is not an option or a choice he or I ever thought we would be making um choosing his classes for

042next year. If he doesn't take the college level horicultural class next year, he won't be able to be in FFA. He won't be able to have the same opportunities his sister did. and that he was excited to do. No one in our family will own Maisie anymore unless we bring her home to live with us, which is probably not going to happen. Um, he won't be able to raise an animal of his own at the fair if that's something that he wanted to do. And it's not just Harry that's missing out, but it's hundreds of eighth graders who are going to be impacted by this, who are looking forward to being a part of our agriculture program, but don't want to take or it's not appropriate for them to take a college level horiculture class.

043Currently a bio and a chemistry is taken by high achieving students as well as students who don't love school or struggle in school by saying that freshmen only by saying freshmen who only want to be in agriculture the FFA can only do so if they were high achieving students or have to be academically ready as ninth graders which is 14y olds for the rigor of college level classes. This does not sound very equitable to me. Please help us in our future knights in the class of 2030 to be able to have the option of being of FFA and agriculture program by taking a bio and a chemistry the following year. Thank you for your time. Charlie Charlie Foster. >> Good evening, Dr. Johnson, members of the board. Um, my name is Charlie Foster. I'm the

044parent of a graduating senior who has gotten so much out of the San Marcos High agriculture program of an of an eighth grader who's looking forward to that same experience. I want to first of all urge the board to vote no on moving floor design out of the egg program. As so many others have said, this is an important part of the egg path pathway and the only way for seniors to take horiculture class. It also takes 200 students out of the FFA program, which is a third of the program. I also want to register my dismay to find out that the Hort classes, which were discussed at one board meeting, are actually taking the place of a bio and a chem, which is not the way they were presented at that board meeting. Two

045very popular and successful courses. We've heard it said many times that students will vote with their feet, and they have. This year, so many students wanted to take a bio that they had have seven classes. Why would you get rid of a class like that? It makes absolutely no sense to have a college level course for freshmen. What kid is going to be ready to go from eighth grade science to a college level class? If they wanted to add a college level two-year pathway for juniors and seniors, that would make sense. Then juniors and seniors who would take an egg bio and egg chem would have a choice to continue that pathway in animal science and vet science, floral design, or in the horde option. I am positive there will be a huge drop in

046students signing up for Hort versus who would have signed up for a bio. My son has been looking forward to taking a bio four years but doesn't really want to take a Hort class. And if he doesn't take an egg class, he won't be able to raise an animal at the barn next year. This will be the case for many students. And without them, what is going to happen to the barn the district spent $5 million on? The administrators making these decisions stated that while there would be a short-term loss for the San Marcos FFA chapter, those losses would be made up in Mission Hills so it stay even across the district. This shows that they clearly don't understand how FFA works and that they made no effort to do any research. A new FFA

047chapter must be approved by the state FFA which will never approve a new chapter in a district perceived as hostile to the program. And make no mistake about it, that is the perception. All of Southern California FFA knows what is going on in this district. And there's not a single certified a teacher who would come to teach here, which is a requirement for a classes and FFA. San Marcos's dedicated a teachers have grown San Marcos FFA into one of the biggest and strongest in Southern California. Why is the district taking actions that will destroy it? I feel like the administrators were at best disingenuous when they spoke to the board as they answered board members questions by saying a bio and a chem were the pathway when they knew they were replacing those classes. They

048have taken these actions with no input from any of the stakeholders, not students, not teachers, families, or the FFA. I can't begin to describe how upsetting and stressful this has been for my family and all of the students and teachers affected. I would again urge the board to vote no on moving Florida signed classes out of agriculture and to see what can be done to stop a bio being repurposed for Hort. Thank you for your consideration. [applause] Jack Castro. Good evening, Dr. Jensen and members of the board of cabinet. My name is Jaclyn Casher and I'm a current member I'm a current junior at San Marcos High School as well as a proud member of the San Marcos FFA. This is my second year in FFA. My first year, I had originally signed up for

049a floral design class without realizing I was moving into something much bigger. When I learned that I had the opportunity to raise a goat, I committed wholeheartedly. I didn't just raise a goat. I enrolled in two agriculture classes and dedicated over 100 hours to simply spending time bonding and training with my goat. Almost by accident, I found FFA when I started a simple world design class and it became something much more. I found a community that welcomed me, challenged me, and gave me a sense of purpose and teachers who really cared about me. I never imagined I'd raise a livestock animal. When I did, my life and I started to imagine how my life would have been different if I had found FFA earlier. I'm so grateful for this program and it has taught me

050so much about myself and life and it has helped me grow and I don't know where I would be without the opportunities that I've been able to have. Not only did I raise my goat, but this year I decided to raise a steer. My goat, Tini, was my first livestock project, and she showed me what it means to work hard and be resilient and work towards a goal and achieve it. I learned so much about being responsible, working hard, and I saw it pay off. My goat gave me a purpose. She relied on me and my and was my responsibility. This was life-changing for me. Watching myself be able to raise and work through all the challenges of raising a goat gave me so much confidence enough that now that now I raised a steer

051named Bubba. I knew that this was going to be harder and I knew that it was going to be a larger challenge and it wasn't going to be easy, but it's been worth it every step of the way. This has truly changed my life and taught me so much. I'm so grateful that I've been able to have these opportunities and be have been able to raise these animals. I'm so grateful that I found something that was able to give me a restart and become helped me become the person that I am. FFA has given me something to look forward to, a reason to be myself again. This journey with Tini and Bubba has been life-changing for me and I'm so proud of how far I've come. I'm so grateful for FFA and the program and

052the teachers that I have met along the way. Without Floral Design, I would have never found this program. By keeping floral design in FFA, kids retain our biggest gateway to FFA students. We'll be able to do things such as raise livestock animals and participate in many opportunities that FFA brings to students. This is more than a program. It's a community full of many opportunities and we will lose many students by not having FFA or design class. >> [applause] [snorts] >> Denise Godfrey. >> Hi, thanks so much for for having me and um for listening me these last few times. Um I I grew up in horiculture, you know, with my parents' business. I've been working for my parents the last 26 years and um I did not go through FFA, but I'm just like really

053amazed by the the individuals that come out of that program and the dedication of the teachers and my heart breaks for what these kids are going through and you know what and what the fosters are going through with their kids and all the changes because this is a really awesome program and just the the life skills skills that they are able to develop with the different speaking opportunities and other things going on. It's just like the mentorship, it's just it's so valuable. And I I just you know with the other presentations of what's going on at the other schools and this value of leadership I just don't understand why you know it's future farmers and you know somehow it's like dismissive like I you know there's so much awesome stuff happening here and you know

054the attitude and aptitude that are coming from these students is just awesome. you know, somebody that I'd be willing to hire, you know, hire in a heartbeat to lead my employees because I know that they lead with empathy and this self-awareness are able to build trust and coach and actively listen to people and have those courageous conversations. And it's like that's what they're getting from FFA. And I just don't understand why you take a program these opportunities that I just we're trying to figure out how to propagate this to other urban areas because people need that connection with nature and natural things because you know how do you de-stress? It's being around flowers and plants and this type of stuff and you know I can't imagine you know getting hit like hitting getting hit with

055horiculture. You know it comes with an appreciation of science. You just don't like run out in the train, you know, train tracks and just get hit with the water culture train. It comes with that appreciation and I just don't understand like I don't know. I I just there you guys have a gem here. It's amazing. And you know, when I see the way the teachers like um get together, I've had teachers, you know, from all over Southern California go through the you know, my greenhouse and I tell them how much I appreciate them and the students that they're producing. They've taken classes through there. And I tell them, I'm like, "Okay, when you go and have that interview with that employer, you need to tell them like what you've, you know, what you've developed caring

056for that animal." And again, there's a gym here. I hate to see it being reduced. You know, the teacher count and the opportunities reduced and then the programs changed. It's so important. I hope you will support them and continue to support this program. Thank you, [applause] >> Jacquel Jacqueline. Uh good evening uh Superintendent Johnson and members of the board. My name is Jacqueline Aeda. I reside at 1901 Esplendito Avenue. [clears throat] I'm the mother of six-year-old twins Xander and Zoe Beta who are kindergarteners in this district. Zoe is at Paloma Elementary and Xander is in the um program at Double Peak School. I'm speaking tonight regarding board policy 5116. Um that's regarding school attendance boundaries, specifically the components regarding community identity and student welfare. Our property sits on a unique map anomaly, a jagged edge

057of the district line that historically isolates uh just two parcels from the San Marcos community we are actually a part of. Um first I want to focus on community identity. We are San Marcos residents in every functional way. Um, our safety services, um, our neighborhood has been supported by San Marcos fire for over 30 years. We have a physical connection to San Marcos. Uh, from my backyard, I can look directly down into the park where my children play with their San Marcos classmates. My children have been in this district's care since 2021. This is the only community um that knows them, sorry, and recognizes them. Um I want to focus on maximizing district facilities, um specifically the base program. My son Xander requires the specific embedded social modeling found in the base program at Double

058Peak. To our knowledge, the standard SDC options in our assigned district do not offer specific methodology. Um, under your policy to maximize facilities, the only logical placement is here where the program is already working. And um, my next point I want to focus on student welfare and stability. Currently, my daughter Zoe attends school just five minutes from our door. If the boundaries not corrected, she would be forced to meet past her neighborhood. Um, for young children with special needs who rely on routine and proximity, that delay creates an avoidable hardship. Um, board policy 5016 is designed to prevent efficient um inefficient commutes from becoming uh efficient commutes from becoming burdensome ones. We're simply asking you to maintain the safety and stability that already exists. this solution. Uh we're filing a transfer of territory petition with

059the county office of education to formally clean up this boundary line. We are not asking for a perpetual exception. We are seeking a permanent correction. When this petition reaches your desk, we simply ask that the board consent to the transfer. It costs the district nothing. It requires no new bus routes and it aligns the map with the community reality that has existed for decades. >> Thank you. As you're as you're getting seated, I just want to make sure. Have you been in touch with our staff on this issue? >> Okay, let's I'll make sure that they follow up. >> Okay, Mr. Moer. Good evening board. Dr. Johnson, staff. I'm John Moer. Tonight I'm talking as a representative um from our city for clean energy alliance on the community advisory committee. Um we're just starting this

060year of laying out what we're going to research. Um they had us reviewing their business plan for the year. Um I was fortunate today to sit by a lady from Carlsbad that's uh very focused on school districts. Us also electrification of buildings, um turning over old equipment, going to electric, you know, the clean energy that we're shooting for 2040, 2045. And um she mentioned five different school districts that she was working on plans for to go after that and we weren't one of them. I know right now we're actively rebuilding some of our campuses. Um, further in the discussions, uh, there was discussion about the Vista and and how they've gone electric and almost all of their buses are electric. Um, the one problem they ran into is delivery of the electricity to their system.

061So, the the member from Vista was talking about having Clean Energy Alliance invest in helping with the infrastructure for the school. Um, and it brought me back to here. Um, at this time of the year, we get to come up with suggestions of things we want to research for the year. And those re those items we research at the end of the year cycle, we take to our board, members of all the different cities up here, North County and along the coast. So, I I was thinking it'd be a good idea to check with you guys and see if there's anything that we could work on or I could help research um for our school district as a way to lower energy cost um help with electrification of different facilities. Uh they talk about the

062parking lot, you know, solar panels um is something that we see all the time and um at the same time it's like how can we save money? I I know budget-wise in the meetings I've been sitting in and we're going to get crunched and more and and the the last thing I heard was one of the members discussed the fact that SDG had changed the rates that were applied to school districts some years ago and it took them from a lower like a residential rate to more of a commercial rate. Um so their suggestion was is can we find um an in between rate? Can we find a different rate for the school systems to help save money on the electricity cost? So, I'm bringing this up because I would appreciate if it's something that

063we can do out of this. I'd appreciate meeting with you guys. I've got a couple months before our next meeting and we're going to start laying out exactly what we're going to target for this next year. And anything I can do to help our school district through our city, I'd be pleased to do it. >> Yeah, we So, we did an energy study a few years ago. >> Um, most of buses are electric and we have solar everywhere and we did but I I would like to get you the the actual presentation that um the person who did the study gave us because it was incredibly thorough and then that way you can kind of see if that is actually what you're talking about you're talking about something different >> no that makes sense the

064other key was how a lower cost in >> or yeah >> yeah we're heavily yeah heavily invested in that stuff and I'm going to have uh Miss Garcia get in touch with you um and walk you through because we'd all the support that we could get is great and it's really would be really important for you to be up to speed on the all the things that we're doing. >> Right. And I thought I'd heard something last year at some of these board meetings, but I couldn't remember exactly what it was. So, >> and I and I won't I won't say publicly that we're way ahead of Vista, but Oh, shoot. I just said it publicly. We're way. Sorry about that. We're partners with our our friends along the 78 corridor. But yeah, thank you.

065>> Okay, great. Thank you. >> Thank you. Uh Vinnie Vinnie Palver. >> Hi everybody. Thanks for having me. My name is Vinnie Palver. I apologize. My comments are I have two of them and they're relatively frivolous. Um, I wanted to raise some quick awareness about something that happened at Sanlejo Middle School last week. Principal Cidto and uh Cabal of hers invited about 30 students to stay after school and then she subjected them to a really unique kind of verbal torture and most kids took it well. U many left in tears. Um, this was all done to the obvious delight of a lot of staff and even some parents there. Unfortunately, one kid could win the spelling be. Uh, so I just wanted to say this is a a kind of analog practice of academic fundamentals

066that I thought should be celebrated and I wanted to recognize SES for doing that and I want to encourage it throughout the district. Uh the other thing I have is perhaps even more frivolous and um I want to say that over the last two months I've sent a few letters to the district with a special request regarding independent study PE for my daughter and I haven't heard anything and I apologize. I'm just trying to be as squeaky wheel as patiently I can and uh that's all I will get back to you about the PE. and you'll get report by superintendent. >> Thank you. I thought I had a dry sense of humor. >> I had to check my notes following that. Thank you. I appreciate your Okay. Uh thank you board. I have a couple

067quick um updates for you this evening. First of all, it is National School Counseling Week. So, I want to highlight our amazing counselors. They had it was actually last week was their uh was their official week. And I uh so yeah, I want to thank our school council for the critical role they play in supporting our students and families as I'm sure the board is aware. I also want to highlight that in the lower left photo you see there, that's one of our counselors, Christine Decker. She's at Woodland Park Middle School. She received a a council, not from the district, but a counselor of the year award that was presented during a community event. She was actually um nominated by Mayor Rebecca Jones. So, I I had worked with her on that a few months

068ago, actually, and uh she was honored. So, that's really really amazing. So, we want to thank all of our counselors. They do awesome work, a ton of it behind the scenes. I know that Andress is is in this role in neighboring district up in Ramona and thank you for all that you do as well. I will not probably oh sorry I'm skipping here. Um also wanted to highlight that uh the administrators have uh our own association called the association of California school administrators AXA and every year we have uh leadership awards. This year two of our San Marcos uh administrators were honored. So Mike Sawyer was honored with classified leader of the year for region 18 is a big deal because region 18 is actually all of San Diego and Imperial County. So it's a

069very very big um a big geographical area. So we surprised Mike with his with his staff last week. I think that was last week before. Very very exciting. So you know that he has amazing work and we can't wait to share with you all the stuff he does with our electric buses because he's he's way out in front. He's awesome. And we also were h happy to honor Mara Mloud who was assistant principal up at Sano Elementary School. We surprised her. Her family was there. Gary, her principal, arranged for her family to be there and surprised her with lots of tears and all kinds of things. So, congratulations to these two amazing administrators. [clears throat] Also, I had highlighted uh I had um shared a video with the board yesterday and I'm my my little

070text message said, "Don't blink because Knobill is going up fast." And it really is. Uh you can see that the the crane I wanted if we talked about the crane just a couple weeks ago. We were getting used to it's done. They're out. It's gone. It's done its work and it's gone. So u here is a photo of the site when it was just getting prepared and then you blink and a couple couple weeks later does all the all the steel is up and it's going as fast as it as you could imagine. That's the new TK building. It's not the TK. That's the new TK building all framed up and ready to go. So, um, thank you again to the Knobill, uh, community for their patience through all the dust, but it is going

071up quickly and it is on schedule and we're very excited about that. Woodland Park is also on schedule and today, no, sorry, I want to go back to Sorry, I skipped I skipped an important note for Knobill. Today, 450 cubic yards of concrete uh were were poured. That's about 45 truckloads of of concrete all in one day. So, Mel Hill is moving moving quickly. Okay. Woodland Park, the buildings of uh the walls of building H are going up. We were there for our board tours this morning. Member Nam and member Carlson were there walking it and and checking it out firsthand. And we did have some rain recently, uh, as we're all aware. And so, these crews are now coming in on Saturdays to keep the pace and keep on schedule to make up for

072some of the work that they were not able to do during the uh rain. So, we're very, very excited to see that work progressing. And last thing I just wanted to share this is our friends from Lamada are are already gone home and getting their rest to come to school tomorrow. That's great. But I was there last week and uh the mo when the when I was there in the classroom. I was in this kindergarten classroom and they were just finishing a video that they had done for um enrollment. So it's out on Instagram. They did a real uh I think Facebook and all the other all the other platforms. But these little kindergarters did this did this cool little song and this little dance and it ended here. This is just freeze frame of

073the the final frame of the video. And they have these little signs. We saved a seat for you for the hopefully new new kindergarten friends who will come in. But I just thought that was so cool I had to I had to share that. And finally, so on tonight's agenda, I had one one more piece that I'll share in just a second, but on tonight's agenda, we have some important items for the board. I know it is a 4-day weekend coming up, but uh there are some important items you've heard from Lamarada already. Next up is Dr. Wabra with an LCAP midyear update. And then is going to share with us some budget information and enrollment uh information and kind of talk a little bit about the declines that we're seeing not only here but

074across the county and across the state and then we will we will close out the evening with first read of our school facilities use of facilities board policy that you know we've been working on for a number of months. Uh very excited to share with you some really really good progress on that. And before I sit down it is important for me to honor Susie who as you may know has uh had an opportunity come up that she just couldn't pass up. So Susie is going to be leaving us to be the executive assistant to the vice chancellor of the San Diego Community College District. Did I get that right? Yes. So thank you Susie. I'm a little bit half in denial, half freaking out. I'm not sure I'm not sure how I'm going to

075find my way through through my days here, but Susie's our my right hand and she's the quiet force behind uh this entire operation here every month. There's hours and hours and hours and hours that goes into making a smooth board meeting. I call her a quiet force behind this. That's the only time I think I'll call her a quiet force because she's a she's a force of nature in many other ways and all good things. So, we're going to miss you very much, Susie. And you have you're leaving big shoes uh to fill. Did we make her cry? Okay, a couple more words and we'll get you there. No, I'm just kidding. Okay, so thank you Susie and we have more more ways to roll on you as a staff as coming up, but I

076wanted to recognize you at the board this even accountability plan update. Thank you, President Carlson. Good evening, everyone. I feel like I I have to say it. I feel I I I dream to have those two students, Lam Marada, when I present so I could speak in stereo. You know how they read together. It's the greatest thing. I love it. Um it's my pleasure to be here this evening to do the midyear update. Um as you know our LCAP is our local control accountability plan and it is it drives it's the motor that drives our goals for the district. Um each year we are required under law to give provide an update regarding the implementation status uh and uh as well as our expenditures for the district and for LCAP. Um so before we be

077wise if I use the arrows um before uh as you know our goal so we have our goals uh we design our goals and our uh within those goals are our actions uh and our actions are uh tied to our expenditures. Uh there's uh we call out specifically our English learners, our students of socioeconomic disadvantage, our foster youth uh because they receive supplemental funding or we receive supplemental funding for the district. And so we account specifically for contributing actions that go along with those. So anytime we discuss our our LCAP, we want to ground it or anchor it in our strategic plan. So our portrait of a graduate uh informs our strategic promise which then informs our goals which in turn informs our actions and our metrics, our measurements for each one. So I'll be

078going through those with you. There are three uh we have a variety of funding sources that we do include in the LCAP. The ones that are specifically required to be called out are the LCAP supplemental, the learning recovery block grant as well as the equity multiplier. the learning uh the LCAP as you can see on the left hand side there is our budget of so for instance goal one which is our future ready learners uh future ready students is $4 million uh and uh as well as a LRBG or the learning recovery block grant for 2 million 2.7 million for a total of sorry for a total of of 6,700,000 and change right on far right hand side you can see that we've expended 6,291,000 that's a roughly a balance of seven about 7% remaining

079on that budget for that goal again we have federal dollars title one two three and four that we also include uh it's not part of this report but that's a separate uh that's also driven towards that goal to support that the learning recovery block grant is an additional source of money that will twlight and end in the end of the 2728 school year. Uh, and we also have equity multiplier. As you notice on the table, goal five is the only goal that has equity multiplier funding for that that's driven specifically for Twin Oaks High School. It's a measurement for uh transient uh student populations as well as SE. So, we received that. That's a three-year uh source of funds. We are in our year two that will exhaust at the end of this year. So,

080it's already we've already paid it out. I'll show you what that that funding goes first. Uh the population so there's a percentage if you have I believe it's 75% free reduced lunch plus over 50% transientness which means new students coming in. So, it's really for alternative high schools right where you have a lot of movement back and forth. So in goal one we have our uh our goal one is all all SM all SMUSD students engage in purposeful integration of rigorous academic content relevant experience that develop the portrait of a graduate competencies within this goal. This is really our the mediest of all of our goals and really our academic driven one. Um so a couple we highlighted where this where the funding sources are going. What are the actions calling out? We provide glad

081and sad strategies across the district. That's to support our merchant bilingual students. That's professional development, on-site coaching, uh among other things. Elevation is our district uh uh data source for our emerging bilingual. So, it's specific to track them and how their progress how they gain progress for acquiring English learner English as a as a second language. Um it supports our merchant bilingual TOSAs. Um we also provide support for our AVID uh programs throughout the district. Dual enrollment in AP courses. So we support uh students with that taking courses outside of our campus as well as taking the AP course. Uh our dual immersion program at Twin Oaks Elementary School is supported through the LCAP supplemental materials and supplies. So uh through my colleague colleagueuh Jacobson. We provide additional supports as needed to our students at

082our school sites. Our MTSS systems along with other grants are our MTSS TOSAs, mathtosas, e to or early literacy toas and our middle school experience toas and impact teachers are also included in that. Every year we reexamine these. So we uh we're in year two of our three-year plan. So next year will be a full rewrite where we'll have a community meeting probably m of them and we will rewrite the entire plan. We can either re keep the goals or adjust them as needed. Um but the actions within the goals we do adjust those budgets as those they change as they come in each year. The goals remain the same. Goal two is our welcoming places. Uh it's our future ready uh learning environments really focused on attendance discipline uh our student well-being and our

083staff wellbeing. So through that we have our counselors uh portion of our APS, our panorama survey that we take each year that goes for our students and our staff. Uh Twin Oaks transportation as well as any of our PBIS positive behavior intervention supports that through our student services. All of those trainings are included. Uh community liaison uh that uh Annie uh who does our last night we had a training for positive parenting. She comes out of the LCAP as well as some of our social workers. inclusive uh practices for our profession. Anytime we have any safety trainings, we do it through here. Parent trainings as well and we also supplement that with our title one funds which are not included in here. Uh providing support to address and supports the needs stemming from adverse experiences.

084So our foster youth liaison uh Cynthia Flor is fantastic. She is our mechan for our homeless students as well and she does an amazing job. to all of our staff. Um, goal three is our future ready educators and really it's professional learning. It's time for a professional learning communities. So again, we support uh for example at our elementary levels where we have PE teachers those and as music those are used for professional learning communities. So when teachers need to collaborate and work on uh building assessments, developing curriculum and instructional practices, we do it through that through this goal. Uh our instructional playbook development, our professional learning for AI, all of these things come out of our preparation for our teachers. So um math and math PD, there's lots of things that we add through there.

085So goal three is really about our staff and how we support them. Goal four is our systems, our future ready systems. Through this uh we have our district that we we run a variety of programs. So in my department we have the district translator and translation services. Not only do we have it at the district level, but uh through our human resources uh colleagues, we provide stipens for those and we test our employees that uh ensure that they are uh they're ready to provide both written and verbal translations at our school sites. We also have contracts uh for we're getting more uh exotic language. They're not exotic but different than we normally experience here. So for instance, Ukrainian, Russian, um, Tagal, we we see a lots of we have to hire that out because we

086don't have it within house to support. So we have contracts with outside vendors. The LCAP survey, the LCAP survey will be going out March. So please everyone take it. It's available to our parents, our students, our um, our community members, everyone, and our staff. So we really push that. It drives our LCAP. It gives us tremendous feedback. We partner with handover and they do the analysis there. Um technology this is part of our goal again it's our systems. So our parent square our fireplace which was more um powerhouse schools all of the different technology we we we utilize we it goes through goal four and then our goal we also do our human resources components where we make in goal 4.2 really push to uh retain attract and retain our staffs. So that's supported through

087our supplemental funding. And again, goal five, goal five is specific to Twin Oaks High School. Um really so ensure that Twin Oaks High School has established system of supports to meet the comprehensive uh wellness of each and every student including attendance, behavior, and academics. And we work with uh Mr. Phillips uh on that goal. Um but really this is specific to Twin Oaks. They received this money. this money will be this will be the end of this funding source for this year. Um so we will probably not rebench the school next year since we had some money retaining. Uh they didn't meet a lot of the the the metrics that were along with that but we wanted to keep it into the LCAP because there's still funding uh aligned with that. So what are our

088next steps for the LCAP? Uh as I said before March uh in the beginning of March you will see the LCAP survey go out. We'll do a large push that goes out. Uh my office will send out information on that as well as be on our websites. Uh we will monitor and assess our progress as we go along. We are required to do a full needs uh comprehensive needs assessment that really we do a midyear but not all of our metrics are in. We haven't taken the LCAP survey. That's a big part of my goal three. There's not any of those. Uh we wait on our panorama. We also have our chick survey. We take assessments throughout the year. We don't the cast results until well into the new year. Uh however, that is an

089important part of a function of of our LCAP. Uh it's a required uh measurement. So we do include that as well as well as the dashboard and so on. Um uh and then we'll present our local findings uh your expenditures. You will see all that in our June meeting as well as the third year of the LCAP. Um and then we'll be getting ready for next year with the full rewrite of the LCAP. that is there any questions that I will thank you and fiscal impacts by Garcia. Yeah. All right. Before I start, I just want to everybody here that um I know it's already 8 o'clock at night. Um this presentation is going to be a little bit longer um than my normal um budget presentations. Um why? Because um we're about to face

090some difficult decisions in our district. Um some difficult um budgets and so we need to spend some time taking a deep dive in declining enrollment so everyone has a very clear understanding of what's happening um in our district and the um very significant impacts that that declining enrollment has. The other thing that you're going to see in the presentation is you're going to see it switching back because I'm I'm sharing lots of data from other sources, right? State data from different um special agencies that we we work with. Um and so I'll be um switching between our local information and as well as you know statewide and um county information. Um we are going to first go through declining enrollment. I'm going to give you some county and local data. Um we'll then switch to

091talking about the fiscal impacts of declining enrollment and key cost pressures that um our district and many other school districts are facing right now. Um we will then move into a discussion on deficit spending and declining reserves. And then finally we will um go through our guiding principles for budget and basically how we make decisions when we have to make diff difficult budget decisions. Um what we use to guide those decisions and then I will share with you um some budget reductions that we um are going to be coming up very very first time enrollment. Okay. So um want to share that the voice of San Diego um has been doing a series of articles um since about June last last summer. Um and you know, not always the biggest fan of Voice of San

092Diego, but I thought they did a very very good job on this series. A lot of the data that they're using are the same data that we're reviewing and that's coming from the state from the Department of Finance that's used to develop our um Prop 98 budgets um from the state. So, I just wanted to talk through um some of these. Um the board I' I've provided the board with the actual articles. Um when you have some time to go through those, I think they did a very good job at describing um all of the details about why this declining enrollment is happening in San Diego County specifically. Um, also very interesting, when I was re researching for this presentation, I ran across an article from 2017 about how enrollment at San Marcus Unified was

093booming. Um, while almost every single other district in San Diego County was already experienced decline. It was talking about how amazing it was. Double peak school had just been open for the influx of kids that was happening in San Marcos. Only two years later in 2019, San Marcos had its first year of declining enrollment. So just as everything was growing very very rapidly, it stopped abruptly in 2019. Even here in San Marcos. Um so moving back to these articles, um July 15, 2025, San Diego County schools have 27,000 fewer students than a decade ago. and it will get worse. Over the past decade, enrollment at San Diego County schools has declined about 5%. That means there are 27,000 fewer students in local schools. State officials are projecting rates of decline will only get worse, which

094will force educators to make some hard decisions. So, unfortunately, that is going to be the message of um this presentation tonight. um our declining enrollment has reached a level that can no longer um be ignored and requires us to make some very difficult decisions in the near future. Um the next article, August 20th, high-erforming districts are not spared from enrollment declines. Um readers have hit me with a lot of theories about what's um driving public school enrollment decline. Fewer kids is still the reason. So, we'll talk a little bit more. They focused on um Rancho Santa Fe and Delmare School District in that one. Um two districts with um very um good academic um progress in there and they are still experiencing very significant difference. August um 15, 2025. Enrollment decline can't be explained away

095by shift to private schools and homeschooling. Yes, there are more kids being homeschooled, but no, that is not why enrollment in public schools is failing. So, we'll talk about that a little bit more later in the presentation. December 23rd, 2025, San Diego County schools must prepare for fewer kids. Enrollment decline fueled by high costs and shrinking birth rates show no signs of stopping. Schools need to figure out how to respond. And I thought they were done with this series of articles. And just Monday they put another one out there on February 9th. The slowm moving train wreck of enrollment decline. Um over the past decade, San Diego schools have shrunk. The trend is likely to get worse, leaving school districts struggling to respond. Um so I hope that kind of sets the stage um understands

096um gives an understanding um of what we are going to be um talking about tonight and in the years to come. Um this is a chart uh that I'm going to show a series of charts from ThickMat. ThickMat is um the fiscal crisis management assistance team. They're a state agency um that assists districts that are um experiencing fiscal crisis. Um but they also do a lot of proactive work for districts um and kind of point out things that all districts should be paying attention to so that you make decisions early and do not get yourself in a point of fiscal crisis. So, a lot of lot of they're out there doing a lot of um warning right now and kind of telling districts that it's time to wake up and pay attention and make some

097decisions um now before it's too late. Um so this chart shows that um there's been an ongo on ongoing decline in TK through 12 enrollment since 2004 in the state of California and you can see the projections over the next decade. It's only going to get worse. Um there's some data for so department of finances is the green dots. That's what um our state budget for education is based on on their figures. And you can see there's this National Center for Education Statistics. Um they have even d more dire um projections um than our state has. We'll see who who's right get out there in 2033. Um the main number one driving factor of declining enrollment um in state of California and nationwide is that birth rates are down. So California rates are um down

09826% since 2007. Um so you can see that the first two um bars on that site is of the chart is from 2000. The births were in the 500,000 500,000 range and even in 2010 they were. And you can see we're significantly down for that. We're 300,000 range now. I'm going to tick up slightly in 2040 and then go back down again. So, this is also um a slide from ThickMat. They're just kind of laying out the issues. Um again, total TK through 12 enrollment has been declining since 2004, so over 20 years. Um and schools were experiencing enrollment declines prior to the pandemic. Um our district again The first year of decline was in the 201920 school year. So that was the year right before the pandemic. We also started declining. Um over the

099past 10 years, total enrollment has declined 6.75%. And forecasts indicate that will continue. Um and of course the annual rate of decline will vary by grades span but based on the current trends an additional decline of 11% is what we can be expected in the state. Um, and this chart kind of breaks out over the next 10 years the level of decline that counties throughout the state can expect. So, you can see San Diego's on there. Why? Because you're going to see lots of the coastal, Southern California counties on there because the cost of living is higher here. So, guess we should be thankful we're not in LA or Orange County. Um, but you can In San Diego, we should expect um a little over 9% um decline over the next decade. Now, this is

100switching to some countywide data here. This particular data set shows six year the past six-year enrollment analysis from 1920 to the 2425 school year. The county lost over 36,000 students um which is about 8 and a half% decline over that sixy year period. Um we sat above the average a little bit at 9.6%. Um we lost 2012 students over those that period of time. Um just want to point out that there's some very very small school districts that did experience some very minor you can see the numbers are very very small um of the change there. Um I want to point out a couple things. We talked about those um districts that um uh even um high performing districts are still are declining. So you can see Delmare there in the fourth spot um and

101Rancho Santa Fe just just above us. Um something very important is we're going to transition to talking about the fiscal impacts. Both of those um districts are basic a districts. they get um all their for funding from property taxes. Um so when they have a decline in students, they do not lose funding. So they they don't have to do make the adjustments that we're going to have to do. So keep that in mind if you're wondering about why they're able to do things that we're not. Um another thing, a couple things I want to point out. We have some of our neighboring districts um that have experienced a decline greater than us. Vistas on the list above us, Escandido High and Oceanside. Um so they've experienced even more um a larger percentage of decline than

102we have. Why is that? Because San Marco still has significant residential development going on. So that absolutely is offsetting our decline. Um if we didn't have all the development that's going on, our declines would be more than we're showing here. So So that's a good thing. Okay. And then some of those articles that we um talked about in the very beginning um talk about this shift um to um charter schools and also this um idea out there that some people have like oh well people are sending their kids to private schools and they're homeschooling more more frequently. So, I want to walk through these numbers. This particular chart is on one of those Voices of San Diego. If you go on on their website, you can hover over these dots and it actually shows you

103the the the data points and it's very interesting to to look at. So um I'll just share that um you can see from 2014 to 2024 um the number of students in San Diego County attending district one schools have declined and you can see that it's hard to see but on the bottom you can see that the reason is because they they shifted during that 10-year period of time. Um some students shifted over to charter schools. there was lots of charter schools opening um during that period of time. Um so in 2014 districts run schools um had 81.3% of all of the students in San Diego County by the end of the 2020 24 district students represented um just under 75% there. So about a 6% decline and that those numbers shifted to charter schools.

104Charter schools started at um 11 and a half% of the share of students and ended uh at 17%. Um it is true that private schools and homeschools also increase during that period of time but the numbers are so minuscule that it does not in any way um affect really the total number that are attending um districts and and charter schools. So said another way, the amount of kids that are um even if all of those kids disenrolled and came back to came to um districtrun schools tomorrow, we would still be declining overall. Um private schools went from 6.7% to 7.1 and home schools went 0.4% to 0.8%. So there was slight increases there. Um, okay. So, we just finished um doing our enrollment projections um with a we're using a new company with our demographer.

105We're using Power Schools. They have a new tool um and we just got the report a couple weeks ago. Um and this shows the amount of market share of the school age children that are living in San Marcos that are are coming and attending our schools. Um so remember I just shared with you on the previous slide that countywide um right at about 75% of students attend district run schools. Um you can see our rates or capture rate of those students is a little bit higher than that. So I think that's a good thing. So in 2020 um we were um 83.8% of all of the school age childrens that live within our boundaries were attending our schools. And in 2025 it went up to 89.1%. I will share that the data is a a

106little bit skewed here because the the the population is done through census data which captures students age 5 through 17. Um so it hasn't adjusted with TK yet. Right? So our numbers include some four year olds. Um so that's why the our capture rate maybe is a little bit higher than it would if the if the data was clean. This right now this is the best um data that we have. Um this is the next 10 years enrollment projections from that same report. They run the data with um with in two scenarios a conservative and a moderate. The only difference in the two numbers is that the conservative one assumes that um the housing developments that are planned will occupy at a rate 20% slower than they were originally planned. And so that is we

107are using the conservative model. We have been speaking um with the um our planners at the city and they told us the houses are selling much slower than originally anticipated. They they are all selling but they have slowed down and so we're using the conservative model model right now for all of our planning because we think that's the most re most realistic model at this point in time. >> The number that the state kind of in order to per household. I remember when we were growing, you know, sitting in a meeting, you know, wait a minute, you know, how many kids are numbers per household? it was a state number. >> Yeah, I think I think you're referring to like to um the funding for facilities for schools when you're growing and that kind of

108thing that there is they have they have very different calculations that you use for that for the state school funding um program. >> Is that number? >> No, this is not this is this is different. These are just our demographers that are projecting out in the future, not as just for our internal use. >> Okay. >> And if you if the board wants to make a note, you have the full demographic report. I think electronically it's on page seven. They describe the demographer describes that the moderate t the moderate number there summarizes the plans that are described by the developers. This is what the developers are saying >> and the conservative uh estimates are more likely scenario based on anticipated market conditions. They're actually tracking what's what's what's actually happening, what how what homes are

109actually selling, how many kids are actually showing up in those homes. >> Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And and that that does go into our projections as well. Um we provide them. Um Lynn and our facilities department tracks that. Um and we she actually has GIS programs that map like and we can a new a new development that um everybody moved in into. She can actually, you know, dot how many students live in that um at the elementary, a middle, and high school levels. And we have student generation yields that we factor that are real that are like our own that we know how many students we got from this brand new development and we feed that to the demographers and they include that in the in the projection numbers. Okay. And these are the actual numbers.

110So this year, um, again using the conservative, this is this is just the five-year um actual numbers. This year, um, we had 18,495. Um, expected next year in 2026 to drop by a little over 300 students. Um, and then the next two years somewhere between right around 150 students and and it jumps up again. The the reason why the 27 and 28 numbers are a little bit better is because we have a lot of housing units coming online during those two years that are offsetting the declines. Um and then once those are um occupied, the decline um jumps up to about 250 in 2029 and 2030. Okay. So, hopefully that helps everyone have a very clear understanding of um kind of the dynamics of of declining enrollment and why this is happening. Now, we're going

111to switch to the fiscal impacts of declining enrollment and some key cost pressures that are facing um our district right now. >> Can I ask a question? Yes. for the declining birth rates down 26% since 2000. Um, is that Can you explain that? Is is that because people are moving out of California, so there's fewer families having children or is that like a per family reduction? it is the population that's living in California at any one period of time and the bursts rates that are happening um number of births you know but I can I can share with you there there's all there's all kinds of data on this there's a there's a fertility rate um factor that um there people are looking at and it's it's a a nationwide number that you need 2.1%

112f fertility rate in order to have the same population over time. Um, so nationwide that fertility rate number is dropping to about 1.7%. So this is something that's never happened um before in previous generations. Um we're going to have fewer um bursts than the older population. >> We're seeing this also community. >> Yes. Okay. So, um I know the board's seen this chart many times. I show it at every single one of my um budget presentations, but I'm going to walk through some key key components of it. So, first I want to say that school district costs increase approximately four to six% annually just to maintain the status quo for us to do everything exactly the same. nothing new, nothing fancy. Um, just to do the same thing each year, it costs four to six%

113more um funds to do that. Um, right now we are in an environment where the state is funding our cost of living adjustment um at a rate much lower than that, much lower than the 4 to 6%. And then compounded on top of that, um, when we are getting paid on fewer students, um, we actually net a dollar fordoll increase year-over-year of much lower than that. So just walk through an example in the current year in 2526 the state funded a cost of living adjustment of 2.3%. That does not mean that San Marcos got 2.3% more money from the state of California this year. You have to actually run it through your calculation. They increased the per student funding amount by 2.3%. Um so this year we're getting $12,687 per student. We multiply that by

114by our prior three-year average um ADA, which happens to be a little over 18,000. Um that nets us $228.6 million of LCFF funding. Um which was $2.4 million more than we received last year. Um which is only a 1.06% difference in the dollars. So you can kind of kind of walk through. So next year what we're expecting um is and I've updated this chart um at the first interim report we were um projecting a col of a little over 3% um it is now officially gone down in the governor's January budget. So we've adjusted down to 2.41. we're going to get $2.7 million more next year. Um, which is 1.17% more than this year. Um, so when the state funding we receive is less than, you know, in that four to 6% range, budgets are

115going to be strained. It's going to create operating deficits um that reduce our reserves over time. Okay. Um this is a really important slide um that I took from thickmat to address kind of the strain of what happens in declining enrollment um in in the budget as well. So it kind of makes the point that the impacts of declining enrollment extend beyond well beyond the classroom. So enrollment drives expenditures, right? we have to set up a classroom based on the number of kids that enroll um and you know provide supplies and all that stuff for them. Um however we get paid on ADA. That's the basis of the revenue that we're generating coming into the district. Um and I'm going to walk you through this but basically the the point is is that classroom reductions

116alone are insufficient. Um the financial impact extends beyond the direct instructional costs. Um I have an example for our district on the next slide. So basically when you're losing students your revenue and this they're they give a sample district um and you can see this district is getting 13,560. So this is probably a a district that receives concentration funds. We don't we don't get this much money for for our kids. This is probably the average district in the state. um when you lose students, they're expecting um their revenue to drop by $1.5 million. And then if they were able to reduce the teaching staff, if those all those students left in perfect groups of 24, you could reduce five teachers and maybe some other miscellaneous costs. You could immediately reduce your expenses by 622,000. However,

117that leaves almost $900,000. um completely unressed. So if you stop there, if you only stop at looking at um reducing the teaching staff, it's it's not enough. Um and so we're seeing that and and I'll just share that our district's done an incredible job at doing that. We just spent all week with our principles looking at staffing numbers based on the number of students that um we project all of our schools will serve and we have determined the number of teachers that we need to staff all of those those classrooms. We've been doing that every year after year after year doing a very good and we call it right sizing, right? Right sizing the teaching staff based on the number of students um that we have. Um we've done a great job at doing that.

118It's not a problem for us. some some districts um kind of let that go too. So that's that's a problem. But what we haven't addressed yet is all the other things outside that individual classroom. And so that's kind of what we're here tonight to talk about. That's our next step that we need to do next. Okay. So here's our actual example um using next year's numbers for 2627. Um, remember our demographic report shows that we're going to lose about 300 students and that's what we're going to be putting our in our our budget, our second interim budget for next next month. Um, that is 282 ADA. You multiply that by the $13,000 per student. We can expect to lose $3.6 million of revenue um next year. Um, if those 300 students again were in perfect

119packages um all and all at the same schools, the same grade level. Um we could um reduce 12 teachers and then maybe some other miscellaneous costs of $500 per student. We'd be able to immediately um save $1.6 mill million in expenditures. However, leaves a big gap. Um so we still have over $2 million deficit there um that we have to address. So what else is needed? Additional reductions to programs, operations, and non-classroom staff are necessary to balance the budget in that scenario. Okay. And so here here's our numbers. I know you the board's seen this chart before. I want to talk about the compounding effect um that we're experiencing from our declining enrollment over the past six years. Um so you can see this is from the 20 2021 school year till now. Um this

120year in 2526 that's a real number. we did drop by 365 um students this year and again we're projecting a a decline of 300 next year and 150 the year after that. So just want to point out some things here. Um again I I've said that we we do a good job at right sizing our teaching staff on an annual basis. Just in the last two years, um, we have declined by 883 students. That is about the size of a of a healthy elementary school for us. Um, so if you think about everything, all the costs, all the staff that go into having an elementary school operate, um, we we we've reduced the teaching staff, but there's a lot of people left. There's all the support staff, the office staff, the administrators, it's the maintenance

121person that goes over and fixes, it's the gardener that goes by and and um, ms the grass once a week. So, all these other support costs into supporting 883 students. Um, when those students are gone, those all those support costs need to be scaled back a bit. But very it's very hard to do. Okay. And then um over this six-year period, we've lost almost 2,400 students. um that is the size and scale of a typical comprehensive high school. Our high schools in San Marcos are a little bit larger than that. Um but for most high schools, that's about the size of their student body. Um so think of all the people and all the efforts that go into operating a comprehensive high school. Um that that's the kind of scale we're talking about and the

122number of students we've lost. um that is impacting our budget. Um we've been able to make it um so far because of all the COVID funds that were here. The state also gave some large one-time funds. Um um and that's kind of been masking our structural deficit problem. We've been okay for a while. Um but now is the time we're going to have to start start addressing this. So just some points again here by thickmat statewide trends impacting solveny. Again they're just they're kind of going out with these these warnings right declining enrollment. It was offset in the short term by transitional kindergarten. We were bringing in fours that was helping for a little bit. They're all in now. We're not we shouldn't be expecting any more um TKERS to be coming into this our

123system. um ongoing expenditures previously supported by one-time pandemic related funds um need an exit plan. We've done that here in our district. We're not using we weren't um we've eliminated I guess all all of the um additional supports that we were using for with the one-time pandemic that that's not an issue for us. Um low um cost of living adjustments um moving forward. Again, they're stating on here, fixed costs grow. They're saying four and a half to 5% annually. Colas below this level will result in local budget difficulties. Um there are significant inflationary um cost pressures um that most districts are facing. So there's some things on this chart and I'm going to walk you through some examples for us. Um utilities are going up by 200% in some districts. liability insurance is skyrocketing. Um

124the cost of fire coverage um the um we have not yet experienced um what the impacts of the Los Angeles fires are in our liability. That's going to happen in our in our rates that we're going to get for next year. Um there's potential um federal funding changes. Um luckily um for next year um the federal government passed everything related to education and there's there's no impacts for 2627. So we're good there for another year. Um Vickmat stating that reserves are higher than they are in the great recession which is a good thing. This is a positive thing as we approach this difficult fiscal time but we're going to talk about our reserves later. um in the great recession when the housing market um collapsed and created that recession in um 2008 um that was

125when all the districts are doing furlow days and all that kind of stuff. Um they had to make more immediate decisions at that time because reserves were lower. Right now reserves are higher. So big's basically saying you have time start now to plan for this is coming. Um and again cash reserves are stronger but they're deteriorating because districts are deficit. Okay, so we're gonna go through some of these cost pressures. Um, and I'm glad Mr. Moer is still here. Um, this is a snapshot of our um, utility costs um, over the last five years. Um, this isn't this is a good news story for us. We have been doing everything we possibly can do in this district to control um, that electric bill. You can electric one is the highest one. Um we um you

126can see that significant decline in 23 24. Why that happened? We changed out LED in every single spot in the entire district. Um we also added additional solar on this building um at San Marcus High School and we brought in solar at the transportation l to electrify our buses. Um so all of those efforts we also brought on battery storage and a whole bunch of other different components um that is helping us control that electricity rate. So other districts that haven't maybe haven't done some of those efforts um are experiencing very significant increases. Um so this is good for us. This is one less cost pressure that we have to to worry about as much. But but we do I mean we still monitor it and watch it um all the time to control it.

127Okay, the next cost cost pressure is that property liability insurance. Um, so the the orange columns here is our just annual um year-to-year insurance premium that we have to pay um to ensure our entire district. Um back in 2223 we made a a switch to a different joint powers authority um to manage this and when we did that um we got a a special rate right a cut in the rate that was one of the reasons we made that decision to do that um since then from 20 in 2324 our premium then jumped um 11 uh 11.2% 2% 2425 it went up a little over 6% and this year in the current year um 5 and a half%. So again, remember our colas like, you know, 1 to 2% some of these um cost increases

128that we just we have to pay. We don't have a choice. We have to pay if we want to insure our district, we have to pay the the amount are um experiencing increases much much higher than that. Um and then this one in particular, I want to point out the blue bar on here is um what is called an AB218 assessment. Um so the one of the reasons we had that large um increase of 11% is this is when um the state passed AB218 which is the they basically um increased the statute of limitations for victims of childhood sexual abuse to file um claims and so a flood of of those claims came into school districts um statewide. Um, I have a snapshot um of this article just um was published just a couple weeks

129ago in EdSource. California school districts pay for abuse settlement despite no claims. Our district does not have any of those claims. Okay. However, um we were part of a insurance pool back in these years where many other districts throughout the state were part of and those districts are getting very large claims and the insurance pool is out of money in those particular years. So the way they cover that is they send an assessment your portion your district's portion um of that claim for the year. So we're getting these bills like literally last year we a bill for $976,000 and we have to pay it. We don't have a choice. Um so that is above and beyond our regular annual um premium. So um again just just something that we're dealing with um that um is

130putting extra pressures on our budget. Okay. And then the big one um health benefits. We pay um for the um health benefits for our active employees. That's the the dark blue bars there. Those are represent the annual costs um that we're paying out to VIBA um for our active employees. And then we also pay and the the orange portion is the portion we pay for our retirees health benefits. Um the yellow line running through is the percent that those rates have increased. It's hard to see because um it's such such large numbers here. Um but you can see in 22 23 we paid 2.3% more than we paid prior year. That's not bad. We can manage something like that. But then in 23 24 the district paid over 9%. 2425 went back back down a

131little bit more reasonable at 5.6%. This year the rates um went up over 10%. The the actual rates of the Kaiser rates went up um 11.7%. Um but the actual dollar for dollar that we're paying for our employees um and our retirees um went up 10%. Um in dollars we paid three and a half million dollars more this year than we paid last year. Um, and I I'll take back to that LCFS slide and when I shared that we got $2.4 million of new funds in LCF, that money did not even cover this one cost. That is why we have budget deficits. Definitely are running at this point in time a structural deficit in our budget. Okay, then we're that's where we're going to move to next. We're going to talk about deficit spending and

132declining reserves. Okay, this is the history of our unrestricted general fund. Um you can see back in 2021 it was everybody was feeling good. It was a great time to be the CEO. Everything was um positive. Uh we were able to, you know, give salary increases to our employees. Um but that started dwindling away and last year in 2425 we did post our first deficit in a long time in the general fund. So I definitely want to point that out. We spent $3 million more than we got in revenues last year. And you can see we're projected for for that deficit to increase 11 million this year and 10 in each of the next two years. Um this just is my multi-year projection chart um from the first generator report showing that line that has

133that I always show this um there's our $10 million deficit. So that's kind of the structural deficit problem we have. That's that's the number right around 10 million is the number that we're we need to solve at some point. Does this include um commitments? >> Um yeah, good question. So the unrestricted deficit I would say not because that's just our revenues in and expenditures out for the year. What is what is included in commitments is our ending fund balance. The dollar amount that we have in there and our reserves. Um I can share with you here the first year this year does include some commitments because I I think if we didn't have commitments set aside um we would have 10.8% reserves this year. >> Okay. The 26 27 and 27 28 do not include

134commitments because we all we're basically essentially at that point projected to spend all the commitments down and we don't have them anymore. So we have less than 10% reserves. Those two years do not have commitments in them. >> Thank you. >> Okay, this is a chart that school services of California showed at their January um governor's budget just last month. They are pointing this out about what's happening with districts throughout the state. Um talking about the condition of their local reserves. So in 24 nearly 40% of all school districts were deficit spending with a shortfall of about 3% of total expenditures. The loss of onetime dollars as well as rising employee and operational costs have a detrimental impact on local reserves. Declining enrollment has only exacerbated this impact and across all districts reserves are estimated

135to de decrease by nearly 8%. So basically we go to school services conferences. Um all of the business people from districts are in the room. This slide is intended to set off alarm bells. They're saying everybody in the room pay attention. It's time to make some adjustments. Um this we're seeing this trend all throughout. Um and they're hoping that um school districts will take notice and make some adjustments in their budgets. Okay. So um where do we sit um in terms of our reserves? So this chart shows the average um statewide reserves for districts and they're they're split by type unified elementary and high school. Um and then the yellow line is our reserves. So, um you can see that as we approach these years that are going to be um challenging for us, we

136have less reserves than the average district in the state. Um I was excited because the numbers for 2425 literally just came out this week also. So, I was able to update this chart. So um 2425 when all the districts closed their books um the average unified district in the state had 21.89% reserves. We had 14.84. Um you can see we had a little bit more last year. But why did the reserves drop? Because we had that deficit spending of that $3 million. So reserves are going to drop. You can see that we are not alone. The other unified district same to them their reserves dropped as well. They're also deficit spending. Um elementaryaries also you can see that number that coming down. Um high schools are increasing still. Why is that? Because they haven't felt

137the impact of the lower birth rates yet. It's coming to them but it hasn't fully gotten to them yet. Okay. So um the other things I I wanted to say was um on this slide that we talk about a lot is um 3% is the absolute minimum that school districts are allowed to have. Um however 3% would only cover one and a half weeks of payroll. Um the government finance officers association recommends 17% as a best practice um because that represents two months of operating expenses. So you can see we we have less than 17%. We don't have that recommended amount. Um so just something we need to keep in mind. Um reserves allow districts to be more strategic and thoughtful um when budget reductions are required. Um so it's a good thing we we

138have some reserves. we have a little bit of time to take our time and make thoughtful decisions um that and before we reduce our our budgets and programs. >> Okay. >> Just want to say back to the the slide where we were talking about the um the um the insurance costs that that's this is a really good um reason why school districts have reserves for these things that fall out of the sky that we nobody was planning. So the new law past the insurance rates go up. We get a bill for a million dollars that nobody had planned, nobody knew was coming. That's why you have reserves for those one time unexpected expenses. >> Okay. So, as we begin to approach budget reductions, want to go through some of the guiding principles that we use

139to help us make these um decisions. They are very difficult. They are not easy. Um and so we'll we'll walk through those and then I will share with you um a a list of budget reductions that we are working on right now. Okay. So um back in 2021 the board adopted some guiding principles for budget development. Um kind of the more important part of this um for from an operational standpoint is the budget reductions decision makingaking guide on the right hand side. So I'm going to walk I'm going to walk through that. Number one, we must maintain compli compliance with our local, state, and federal regulations without creating potential for financial penalties and increase costs. So you just saw Spencer present the LCAP. Um um that is a huge part of job. We can't just

140not do it. Like we have to do it. There will be significant financial penalties if we don't. It takes a huge amount of effort. It's those kinds of things. Some of these things that um staff particularly at the district office manage all kinds of reporting. Um we have to make sure we're paying our employees appropriately um with our pension, our stores and purr systems, those kinds of things. So lots of lots of compliance. Um so we have to keep that in mind as we make budget reductions. Um of course we also will always maintain compliance with our collective bargaining agreements and we will always consider non-staffing reductions before staffing reductions and I will share with you some examples of that. Um when a vacancy occurs evaluate feasibility of not filling the position. Um we do

141that on a regular basis. Uh we will consider reorganization of positions and functions for increased efficiencies. We have examples that we have already done that. We will consider the funding source and um shift resources when poss when possible. So we we we're focused right now on our unrestricted deficit. But we do have um restricted funds um available to us. When we can we will shift expenses in into restricted programs um when it's appropriate. also have examples of that. Um and then um you know all of us here want to um move forward and make progress as as quick as we possibly can. Um but realistically um sometimes we have to make tough decisions and we can't do that as quickly as we'd like to. So we will um continue working towards our board goals and

142our strategic plan over time. Just means we may not be able to get there as quick as all of us would like to get there. Okay. And these are kind of some um other principles that you know school services and fickmat um talk about all the time. So early action is critical. Waiting months or years to make budget reductions will only cause them to multiply and be more difficult to resolve. Um why? Because a dollar saved today is $2 tomorrow and $3 in that third year out. Um so if we wait, we say h we're not going to do it. We're going to let our reserves um drop. Um our our problem will will multiply out there. Um so once a structural deficit is identified, which we have a structural deficit now. Um the earlier

143you start making reductions, the fewer cuts you have to make. And um unfortunately um school district budgets um have lots of Right. For us, it's ranges somewhere between 82 and 85% of our budget. Um, it is nearly impossible to balance the budget without impacting people. Okay. Another thing I want the the board to know that we looked at um we try hard to um make cuts at the school sites um last and so we did absolutely take a look hard at our district office and say are there any places where we can make cuts and we did that um I want to share that there is um the county office publishes a district office staffing survey it's on their website if you want to look at it in detail Um and for us they we

144we are in the group uh with the largest um number of students. So they compare us to school districts with 18,000 or more students. So I'm going to share some of those um comparisons with you and I want you to know that we did consider that as we made um reductions. This is the business office um compared to these other districts. Um I'll just give you a quick example with the data and the rest of these I'm going to run through quickly but I'll I'll talk through this one. So this is the business office. Um for us we have 19 and a half um FTE. Um and this includes me. It includes Lette my admin assistant. It includes the entire fiscal department. Um it also includes the risk management department. For these other districts includes

145risk management as well. Um, and you can see they do a comparison of FTE per thousand pupils. Um, and you can see that we are below that red line as the average. We are below that average. I'm just going to throw out an example. Vista, we are very most similar in number of students to Vista. Um, we actually have a little bit more students than they have. They have 28 people in their business and risk management departments and we have 19 and a half. Um so that's just an example of um by by no means in this particular department um are we overstacked. Um you can see this is the HR um department too. We're below that um average line. Information technology also below the average maintenance and operations purchasing and warehouse. The transportation department

146is the only one um in the staffing survey that we um have more um that was done very purposely um as the board knows. Um and because of the size and scale of our transportation department um we are actually um servicing many other districts um nearby. We're we're doing their special ed and gened transportation as all of their a lot of their extracurricular work that brings in funding to offset our own transportation costs. And I can share that um since we've done that in the last four years, the amount that we're actually contributing to transportation um below the 60% that the state reimbures us for has gone down over time. So this is a place where having more staff and that economies of scale is benefiting us. Okay. Um so kind of getting to getting

147to the end here. Um we are here because um we are going to have to make some very difficult decisions very soon. Um this kind of lays out the timeline for certificated and classified layoffs with state budget timelines. Um so the governor's budget came out in January and we are now sitting here in um February. Most districts and we're not we're not alone in this. You're probably seeing the articles in the paper. Lots of districts are meeting right now to approve board resolutions um to do certificated and classified layoffs. Why do we do that in February? because um we have to issue preliminary preliminary layoff notices no later than March 15th. Our board meeting um in March is March 12th, Thursday. If we waited till then, it would be too late to be able to

148issue all the notices. So, we are um planning a special board meeting on February 26 um where our doc Dr. Garcia will be bringing um that layoff resolution before the board. Um that is not the final again that's the preliminary layoff notices. Um the final um notices will be served may may be served by um May 15th. That's right at the same exact time we're getting another update on the state budget that may revision. Okay. And then we still don't really know what the final state budget is until until July. But this is kind of like like there's a long time before next year. Why are we making these decisions slowly? Because all of these timelines are in statute. So we have to make that decision now or we lose our opportunity if you know

149we're waiting for the budget to come out in. Okay. So, um, these are the budget reductions that we're considering right now. I want to make sure that we go over and review and everyone knows that we did do budget reductions for this year. We did about $1.2 million of reductions. Um, so last year already we cut district office, travel, and supplies. We did a reorganization of the warehouse department when we talked that's part of our budget guiding principles, right? Um we did a reorganization that were able to save $56,000. We reduced a supervisor a management position in the risk department for savings there already. Um we reduced classified overtime which primarily hits the large district office department. Um we did do some reduction of staff at two of our schools that had um dropped in

150enrollment and then we did um an offsetting in order to maximize ELOP is kind of a newer grant that we have. We saw an opportunity there to shift some costs um over there. Um and we also shifted some costs on an egg grant. So already moving into this year we've made those reductions. Um I think you can see that every year that we have to do this it gets a little bit harder. Um so these are the proposed reductions for next year. Um we are slashing the district office travel and supply budgets. We are um cutting all non-essential um travel in all district office um departments and we're cutting supplies again by a little over 30%. um the superintendent's office um had a staff reorganization. Um we had um an employee there um resign, move

151out of state, took that as an opportunity to re um organize that position um for a cost savings. The ad services department is going to lose a clerical position. Um the safety team budget's going to do without. So just um so we've had a safety um budget um a team working some safety efforts um for several years now. Um and um we've been able to do some really great things um around the district. Um we still have a budget to do the essential things that we have to do. So I just want to make sure that every this we're not cutting anything that's essential to safety. It's just some of those more nicer to do things. Um adding additional cameras and those kinds of things. We just won't be able to do that next year.

152Um the gate program is um being reduced in elementary Um we are going to maximize our KOC funds. So the kids on campus program is funded totally separately outside of the general fund. Um we were reviewing and we saw um someone actually in the fiscal department all their efforts are only focused on KOC. We're going to charge their salary over to KC to create a savings there. Um we are going to rightsize a couple assistant principles at sites that have that lower enrollment. Um and then we're going to do um some right sizing of certificated and classified staff. The certificated staff number here um is not that classroom teacher number I told you we do that on a regular basis. We um rightsize the teaching staff. This is um non-classroom certificated staff there. Um And

153so all of those things totaled a little over $2 million. And I will share with you that we're not done. Like we if if we're continually brainstorming, thinking we're going to keep um coming up with other other things. It's just that there won't be any after we do the layoffs this month. This month there won't be other staffing reductions. have to be other things that we come up with non non-staffing related um reductions if we can come up with anything um in addition to the so these are all things that will save the unrestricted general fund budget also want the board to know that additionally above and beyond that we are reducing two classified and 14 certificated positions due to expiration of grant funds. Okay. So, we had some some smaller grants as well as

154a larger learning recovery emergency block grant that we had been funding some somesis from. As we spent that money down, um those those staff need to go back into the the classroom because those funds are expiring soon. Okay. So in summary, um just again I want to drive home the point um that we've been talking about tonight. Declining enrollment trend will continue into the foreseeable future. State LCFF revenues are significantly impacted by the combination of declining enrollment and lowcas inflationary cost pressures particularly health benefits um is creating a budget imbalance for us. Um the combination of declining enrollment low cost pressures have created a structural deficit in our budget. Um, budget reductions are needed for next year and annual budget reductions are likely going to be needed for several years um, as long as these

155same budget conditions continue to exist. No, I think we've been asking them along the way. Does anyone have any questions? All right. Thank you, Erin. Ray of sunshine. You look a report by board members. Anyone have anything you'd like to report? I had something real quick. Um, we went to Woodland Park today and Principal Buffam mentioned like I asked about the cell phones and how it's going because that was a big change from last year at this time. Um, and she said it's been great that you know some of the eighth graders were used to it and so they're the ones that had a little bit of a harder time with the transition but like mental health has improved. Um, so I brought a book that I read last year and I just highly recommend

156it to everybody. The anxious generation. It's amazing. Um, life-changing as far as like parenting, but also we were um gifted the digital delusion last month um by a member of the community. So, I've been reading that and that's also super interesting about like tech. Um, I do feel like Samaras Unified is doing a good job with it as I'm reading it and see kind of what other areas are doing. But, um, obviously I'm be mindful of and it again talked about cell phones and I was like, I've done this, I've delved in. Um, but very interesting. So, I feel like we've been on the right track. Um I just I have one quick update and I'm not so the state of California has a set for um for students who were born uh what after

1572007 or um and very few students are actually enrolling and and like signing up for the savings account which is basically free money from the state and so they are um trying to go to school districts and um basically just trying to create awareness of the fact that there's this free money, this free pot of money that is available for students. Um and I would definitely like to see the district try to push that information out to our families because it's free money for kids. Um and I know that we have some community partners who are working on that as well. Um but uh I mean it's things are tight and this is a little a little bright spot which is nice to be able to highlight when we have the opportunity. Um I think

158I'm gonna ask for a five minute break before we move on to the action our actual agenda just to kind of uh take a minute. Uh so we will uh at 910 Okay. It took me a minute. I started crying. I'm like, "No. That's true. I think >> they're much longer. Yeah, bring it up north. Oh yeah. Oh my gosh. Andres, [laughter] are we Okay, we are back in. Okay. The governing board will now address matters related to the community facilities district number 21 of the San Marcos Unified School District for agenda items 10.1 through 10.6. The governing board will be acting as a legislative body of community facilities district 21. Agenda item 10.1 approval of form of school facilities funding agreement between San Marcos Unified School District and CRQ Haven LLC and authorized school

159district officers to execute final agreement. Tonight is the first of three board meetings to consider the resolution of intention for this new CFD formation CFD number 21. The project is being developed by Kri located in unincorporated San Diego County south of San Leho Road, east of Denning Drive and west of Hidden Canyon Road. This development feeds into Coreo Elementary, San Leho Middle, and San Marcos High. It includes 69 single family homes ranging from 4,200 to 5,500 square feet and priced from 2.7 to $3.5 million. Similar to other recently develop recently formed CFDs, CFD21 will finance a mitigation payment of 130% of the district's developer fees. This is estimated to generate $2.3 million for school facilities, which is $460,000 more than would be collected with the standard developer fees. >> Okay. Do I have a motion

160to approve the proposed funding agreement? I move to approve the form the form of school facilities funding agreement between San Marcos Unified School District and CR Quest Haven LLC and authorize school four school district officers to execute the final agreement. Moved by member Martine, seconded by member Heric to approve the form of school facilities funding agreement between San Marcus Unified School District and CR Quest Haven LLC and authorized for school district officers to execute the final agreement. All those in favor say I. >> Any opposed? Motion carries. Agenda item 10.2 initial actions for formation of proposed community facilities district number 21 of the San Marcos Unified School District. Based on the funding agreement just approved by the board, the owner of the property within the territory of proposed CFD number 21 has submitted a petition

161requesting the board take actions for the formation of that CFD, the authorization of special taxes, actions to incur bonded indebtedness and related matters. Resolution number 161,17, 18, and 19 are presented to the board this evening for action to proceed with CFD number 21 consistent with that request. District staff and consultants recommend that the board take action to approve the initial actions for the formation of proposed community facilities district number 21 of the San Marcus Unified School District. >> Do I have a motion to approve the initial actions for formation of proposed community facilities district number 21 of the San Marcus Unified School District? >> I move to approve the initial actions for the formation of proposed community facilities district number 21 of San Marcus Unified School District. Moved by member Martine, seconded by member to

162approve initial actions as presented. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? Motion carries. Agenda item 10.3 resolution number 16-2526 resolution of intention of the governing board of the San Marcos Unified School District to establish community of the San Marcos Unified School District and to authorize the levy of special tax facilities district number 21 of the San Marcos Unified School District. District staff and consultants recommended that the board take action to adopt resolution 16-26. Do I have a motion to adopt resolution number 16-2526? >> I move for the adoption of resolution number 16-25/26. >> Moved by member Martine, seconded by member M to adopt resolution number 16-2526 as presented. All those in favor say I. >> Any opposed? Motion carries. Agenda item 10.4 Resolution number 17-2526 resolution of attention of the governing

163board of the San Marcus Unified School District to occur bonded indebted indebtedness in an aggregate principal amount not to exceed $6 million within proposed community facilities district number 21 of the San Marcos Unified School District. Do I have a motion for the adoption of resolution number 17-2526? >> I move for the adoption of resolution number 17-2526. Moved by member Martine, seconded by member Miam to adopt resolution number 17-2526 as presented. All those in favor say I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Agenda item 10.5. Resolution number 18-2526. Resolution of the governing board of the San Marcos Unified School District approving the order ordering of the recording of a boundary map of proposed community facilities district number 21 of the San Marcus Unified School District. Do I have a motion for the adoption of resolution number 18-2526? >>

164I move for adoption of resolution number 18-256. >> Moved by member Martine, seconded by member Heric to adopt resolution number 18-2526 as presented. All those in favor say I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Agenda item 10.6. Resolution number 19-2526. Resolution of the governing board of the San Marcos Unified School District. consultants relative establishment of community facilities district number 21 of the San Marcus Unified School District. Do I have a motion for the adoption of resolution number 19-2526? >> I move for the adoption of resolution number 19-2526. >> Moved by member Martine, seconded by member M to adopt resolution number 19-2526 as presented. All those in favor say I. Any opposed? Motion carries. The matters related to CFD number 21 are now complete for this meeting of the governing board. The governing board will no longer be

165acting as a legislative body of CFD number 21 for the remaining items on the agenda. 10.7 resolution number 22-2526. resolution of the governing board of the San Marcus Unified School District approving the purchase agreement and ask for instructions for the acquisition of property upon which a portion of the Devil Peak School was constructed and delegating authority to complete the purchase. Tonight, the board has asked to approve a purchase agreement with the Pearson Trust and Paul Pearson for acquisition of 13 plus acres of property located at 700 Adterab Drive in San Marcos. The district has been using this property since May of 2014 when it entered into an agreement with the Pearson Trust, which granted the district an easement over the entire 15 acres held by the Pearson Trust in order for the district to construct

166a portion of the Double Peak School on the property and also granted an option to the district to purchase the entire 15 acres of the property. As the board will recall, on October 9th, 2025, the board considered environmental issues associated with the potential reduction of the amount of property that might be acquired from the Pearson Trust. Mr. Paul Pearson asked the district to reduce the property to be acquired by the district by 1.6 acres so Mr. Pearson could retain the family home located on the property. Following the October 9th, 2025 board meeting, the district has been negotiating with the Paul Pearson Trust to complete a purchase agreement for the remaining 13 acres. The purchase price for the entire property was approved in 2014 at $1,425,000. The district previously paid the Pearson Trust $840,000 and with

167the reduced acreage, the purchase price has been reduced to the amount previously paid so that no additional funds are due from the district to complete this purchase. Tonight's action item is for approval of a resolution approving the purchase agreement authorizing me to act on behalf of the district to execute the purchase agreement, open escrow with Chicago Title Company, and execute any necessary documents to close escrow, including the certificate of acceptance of the property, and we recommend approval of the resolution. Do I have a motion to adopt resolution number 22-2526? Second move by member Her seconded by member Carlson to adopt resolution number 22-2526 as presented. Uh all those in favor say I. >> Any opposed? Motion carries. 10.8 student readmit case number 04-2526. >> The board has received information about this case in close session.

168We are recommending approval of student read case 042526. I have a motion to approve student case number 04-2526. >> So moved. >> Second. >> Moved by member seconded by member Martine to approve student read case number 04-2526 as presented. All those in favor say I. Motion carries. Consent agenda. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda for discussion purposes? Okay. Moved by member Martine, seconded by member Her to approve the consent agenda for discussion purposes. Is there any discussion? >> Yes. >> I don't have anything prepared. Um I will just say from the heart we've hearing from you guys and um it's been uh powerful. I know the students aren't here tonight. I know you teachers are here and some of you parents are Can you hear me? >> Oh yeah, I know.

169>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um and um I will say personally I'm a parent of an A student. Um Miss Nav, you're awesome. Um she's my son's teacher and we love Um it's it's been an incredible opportunity for for again personally just for our family. I'm super impressed with the program. Absolutely love it. Um it's um we're in a position right now where we are voting on an addition of a class. Um and so it I think just fundamentally um I'll just myself trying to reframe what I'm what my role is here as a board member um is not to um vote on terminating a program. I'm being asked to to vote on approving a class. So I have to kind of separate all of these things to what my job is here tonight, which is

170to vote for an addition class. So um just appreciate all of your students, Gretchen. Love your kids. Um they're just amazing. So the um training, the pouring into I know Crystal, that you've done is just remarkable. The the impact that you guys have made on these kids is is extraordinary. So, I will just say that the FFA program and the A program is um is really extraordinary and I'm grateful for it and I know um it's made a huge impact on our community. >> Um I just wanted to tag in a little bit um in regard to kind of the CTE that we're looking at with the business um pathway. I I see the vision and I understand it's been a many years in the making and I I mentioned at the last meeting um

171last month after listening to everybody's comments, you know, is there any way that we can have two um you know kind of make everybody happy? Um I do understand that we need to set up like that's a new pathway and there is there are other students that will be serving um and with all the time and effort that's gone into developing that pathway that giving it giving them the chance and it's kind of always from what I understand revisited and we look at it and see how it how it's going and how it's serving the student population. Um, but looking at the full student population is obviously important. Um, I did have a question though about the A bio just from some comments like is it is it going to be too much for nth

172grade? Um, just can you give us more information on that? So with a bio we've had the opportunity to update the curriculum and work with Mira Costa so that it will offer both a bio uh students will get uh dual credit which means they will get credit for a bio in addition to getting credit for the horiculture 114 115 please don't quote me on 114 115 1516 thank you um and they will they will get um both credits uh we have the opportunity for our a teachers to teach the course, which actually is different than our other uh dual enrollment courses that we offer. Um, this is not new to us offering dual enrollment to 9th graders. We have it across the district already. For example, we have an ELA 9 mental health that is

173a dual enrollment with Cal State San Marcos. So, it's not new. Um, any student can take the course. Um, you do not have to be a high-f flyier. Most of our I say highf flyierly um many of our dual enrollment courses are not taken by our high-f flyers if you will. Um that typically is for our AP AP students typically are uh those students are typically taking AP courses. Um, so we have an opportunity here um to give kids um more so when they leave at bio um they will have college credits that they can take on with them to whatever future pathways they want to take horiculture. >> I also had a question about just in terms of if we do have multip you know, freshman bio courses. >> Um, are is the intention

174to keep some of them and also do the horiculture or are we completely replacing bio? >> The curriculum will be updated to horiculture which has the same it will have basically the same things that were in a bio plus additions so that it meets the dual enrollment requirements. >> Okay. Um, Um the course the issue is the course code something would have to shift and it will have to shift in um UC doorways as well. So there are some technicalities as far as how we report and how kids get science credit. Um that will be I will have to look into that and see. We will have to create a new course in some way. >> Okay. It's really a technical cowpads issue. >> Okay. So, does the current egg bio meet the requirements or

175no longer going to meet the requirements? >> Egg bio meets the requirements. However, we have updated egg bio in UC doorways so that it is now that it now has a curriculum and course description for horiculture. >> Okay. So we can't have two courses that are called egg bio. >> Right. Right. No, I get that. But that's why I'm like, can we keep bio? >> I will have to ask that question. But I think the answer is no because the agreement with the dual enrollment agreement is that it is being offered as egg bio. Does that make sense? But I think we can have if we could have a different class that is egg bio something else. >> Yeah. I I mean so I think um like um that the concern that I have is

176that for students who for whatever reason wouldn't want to take a college level course is there another way for them to get that you know to get their science credit. Um >> that is within an agriculture pathway is the question. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> We can look at that. We will need to look at that. >> Yeah. Can we look at that? >> Yeah. I would I would just say though that the that the um as a reminder of all the conversations we've had. What's before the board this evening are the recommended courses for next fall based on all the research that has been done. Um and we'll continue to continue to track semester by semester and year by year as we go and make adjustments, but the item that's before the board's asusion. We

177can have that conversation, but I do want to That's not a dual I mean just the rigor and everything just we can talk about Just want to say you all to my mouse. Thank you. No, no, no. I think these are very valid points. What's the full title of the biology? >> Um, currently it's agriculture biology, but the it will be it's the dual enrollment course is horiculture. I have to look it up. >> 115 1116. I don't think it has additional language after that. >> Biology fullience >> there is a separate sustainable agriculture course that we do offer. >> So just um my understanding All of this information is the bio gateway to the pathway and so isure classes still have the same appeal that's question but still have the same bones of the

178so that it can still remain powerful to the pathway. My subjective answer would be yes. Um, one of the reasons we want our egg teachers teaching it is so that it does retain its bones. The goal is for our students to get bene gain more benefits from it by being essentially the same class with sprinkle in of additions. Um, so they now are getting a gateway to egg and they are getting the dual enrollment credit. >> Yep. And they get the college credit. Um there are some finalou pieces to finalize and once everything is finalized with theou yes current course selection it's egg bio and then there is a line that says this class will receive dual dual enrollment credit through Mira Costa. All right. Move by Andreas to approve the consent agenda. Sorry. All

179those in favor say I. Any opposed? Motion carries. 12.0 information agenda 12.1 quarterly report of financial disclosures for the period ending in December 312. Government code requires school districts to disclose its investments quarterly to the governing board. Tonight's report is for the quarter ending December 31st, 2025 when SMUSD had a total of $325 million invested in various accounts. $970,000 was invested in various FDIC insured bank accounts. We also had $13.1 million invested in accounts related to our various CFD and financing authority accounts to be used for facility or construction purposes only. Um, the majority of the funds on deposit, $311.1 million, were invested with the San Diego County Treasurer Schools Investment Pool as required. The investment pool earned annualized interest of 3.79% for the quarter. >> Questions 12.2 to existing policy. >> All right. So,

180business services is bringing a first reading of board policy 13:30, use of facilities for review tonight. As a reminder, when the board approved a global adoption of all updated policies in November of 2023, this policy was not updated because because it required us to do more research internally um and engage community stakeholders that we were not ready for at that time. Um, last June 2025, Ted Norman presented to the board, making everyone aware that we were ready to engage with the community committee and conduct a thorough review of all of our facilities use processes. Um, TED is now presenting tonight the results of that work that has taken place over the last six months. Um, please know that while Ted has had the primary responsibility for this work and he's done a fabulous job, many

181other district leaders including purchasing, risk management, site principles, and many more have also contributed um to this project to ensure that every aspect of facility use considered. Um, the board policy, associated administrative regulation, fee schedule, and rental terms and conditions have all been revised and are ready for final review. The board policy will be brought back to the board in March for final approval. And with that, I'll hand the presentation over to Ted Johnson staff. Appreciate being back. It was June that we first presented um where we were going with the facilities use program and some of the work that uh was to be laid out in front of us. I'm happy to report here that we've completed that work [clears throat] after a tremendous amount of effort and a number of stakeholder meetings with

182with community members, district staff, um school site leadership, city of San Marcos, uh members from the youth sports council throughout the city, some of our own facilities use renters, including rel organizations uh and some groups providing direct services to our schools as well. So we had a very engaging process throughout the fall. Um we had a number of presentations and uh engaged tried to engage a lot of feedback and response from the community as far as where we were trying to go to to solicit a really comprehensive thoughtful package that we could bring to you all tonight. And um I think we've been pretty successful at that. So, one of the goals uh throughout this process, you know, is is a balancing of our assets versus the educational needs of the district. Erin gave a

183tremendous presentation earlier on where we are in the state of school finances. There's no mysteries about that. This program has the potential to to generate some fee reimbursement to the district. Uh last fiscal year we were able to bring in $337,000 to the general fund to offset some uh operating expenses and uh as I reported out provide some tools and equipment uh for some of our facilities and our custodians throughout the district. So uh the potential for that reimbursement can only continue if we move forward with with some of the progress that we've made. Again, just a a tremendous collaborative approach that we've taken here over the last eight months. Um, again, reaching out to all all corners of the school district and our community. Um, and I think really excited about the the progress

184that we've made and what we're trying to get to with all this. You know, the goal throughout this process is to have a transparent um, equitable process that's that's also fiscally responsible. Um, and the outcome as Aaron mentioned is we bring before you a comprehensive updated board policy, administrative regulation, set of user groups, a fee schedule, and also much more in depth terms and conditions that really outlines the rules of our program going forward. Takes a lot of the guesswork out of out of uh our facilities use program for staff and site leaders in the community. Again, the timeline that we've been on, I was here in uh June. Since that time in the fall, we had a number of uh community engagement meetings. M Garcia presented fiscal oversight budget review to the to the

185committee. We had a legal presentation by Mr. Tyrieward of Best Bess and Creger kind of explaining all the legal and liability implications of the Civics Center Act. Uh we had another meeting um with providers from Facilitron who really kind of gave a great global overview of facilities use in the state of California and some of the pitfalls of the system and the program and and really provided a good uh overview to to the community committee on on that presentation as well. I myself uh attend the city of San Marcos youth sports council meetings. They meet uh monthly. I presented to that group to get ahead of these in November and I was again with that group um as early as recent as February 3rd. I've had conversations with city leaders as recent as this past

186Friday talking about where we're going with our relationship with the city of San Marcos. Uh as you may recall, we talked about we've had a long-standing joint use agreement where there's been some uh shared use of facilities on the district side and also we've had some access to city facilities. Uh essentially with this board policy, administrative regulations, fee schedules, that long-standing agreement would go away and essentially both parties would pay their fair share for each other's use of facilities. Um I was really encouraged by the conversation the new director is actually interested in using more of our facilities for adult recreation leagues. And so there's potential to have more of an open door uh opportunity for for more of the community to get into some of our school facilities. Um tonight, obviously, we're here at

187the first reading um and hopefully board approval in March. After board approval in March, we'll be spending the into the summer, communicating out with all of our uh community members, school site leaders, um district staff on on uh where we're going with the program. So, we have a good runway to to roll this out over the next several months, working in communications on on next steps. Uh ultimately, um if approved, these changes would take effect on July one. So, we're giving the community as much uh notification as possible considering we started these discussions with the board in June. Um we feel that a July one roll out would be uh would be the best key policy updates. Um the policy allows for the superintendent to establish priority use and you'll see that in some of

188the additional documents that we've given you. Um and again as a reminder, school activities always have precedence. Um the fee schedule has been calculated in accordance with title five. Get into that a little bit more. We talk about some of the uh the rates um that we've calculated for you. Um And then the partnerships, the the new board policy also does allow for the district to enter into joint use agreements. The example being the one we had in the past with the city of San Marcos. So if there was an arrangement in the future that fell outside of civics interact facilities use, the district could always enter into a joint agreement with another agency and the board policy allows for that. the fee structure definitions. I talked at Nauseium about direct costs. What's important here

189is um the district is recouping the cost to run and maintain our facilities, right? Keeping the lights on, keeping air conditioning on, uh keeping the grass green. We've we've made a tremendous investment in some of our athletic facilities recently, and this gives us the opportunity to be able to continue to maintain those and also reinvest in those facilities um and recoup some of the wear and tear on those facilities. So, uh the statute the fee calculation allows for the district to charge an appropriate rate to allow us able to continue to maintain our facilities. Uh AB503 was signed by the governor in October 1st. This is what allowed for school districts to be able to continue to charge the capital direct cost portion of the uh of the fees. And so that's again why this

190this work is so timely and important uh so that we can legally capture those um those capital direct costs again the wear and tear portion of our facilities. fair rental value uh is is you know fair market what we can charge for commercial groups really is a small percentage of our overall uh users in our in our school district. Um but again that's kind of the two big distinctions is direct cost and the fair rental value. We partnered with Facilitron to um do our cost study analysis. Um and the standard formula that that's been provided and is used throughout the state um provides a way for districts to better understand their direct costs and what to charge organizations for cost recovery. Um and so the calculation essentially allows for us to include our operating costs,

191our program costs, plus our capital costs. know what we pay to facilitate in a percentage for office staff at the school sites. So, we're really thoughtful about trying to recover as much as we can in the calculation. So, you take all those costs as part of your operating, divide it by the total square footage throughout the district, you get a cost per square foot, multiply that times the average square foot per facility. So classroom is 1,000 ft uh field is 50,000 square feet multi-purpose room is 35,000 square feet and so on and so forth and then divide that by the actual utilization hours uh for those different facilities based on how much it's used for the school site and how much it's used by the community and then we're able to come up with a

192an average cost per hour for the different facility types. So um it's a very process. It's it's pretty elaborate calculation, but it's a great tool that that most school districts in the state use and it's the process that we went through. Uh we have nine, we're proposing nine different user groups. Um and they're kind of broken into three different tiers. Tier one uh would be all school and San Marcos Unified School District related activities. Those groups would be exempt from any fees. Tier two is kind of that next tier that's closest to to the school district would be our civic and youth partners. Those groups would be responsible for operational direct costs. Tier three is the broader community, religious organizations and commercial rentals. Those folks would pay the full direct including capital direct costs and

193the fair rental value for fair rental value for commercial groups. So we've really developed a category for every user type. Currently our fee schedule is is broken down by nonprofit and for-profit. So by having these multiple tiers allows us to have some variability in our rates and and be fair to our our civic partners and those those folks providing direct services to our schools. Uh that is exhibit B in your packet is a breakdown of the different groups and I'll I'll go into a little bit further here. Tier one uh school sponsored u this is us. Um we do we do ask we do require that the schools put their uh events into the calendar. There is obviously no cost for school sponsored activities. These are events for ASB, athletics, visual performing arts and so

194on so forth. Group two, this is I'm sorry. Yes, when I say the calendar, it's they put their events and activities into facilia. Uh group two is school connected. These are PTO and booster organizations that are recognized by the board through board policy. um they continue to have free use of school facilities as they have had in the past. Group three, uh this is school related. This one's a new one that we've added. Um it's it's all the other school use that's that's essentially not group one and two. Uh for a number of years, the challenge is everything is school sponsored. And you may have heard me talk about that in June. Not everything is school sponsored. And as Aaron referenced and meeting with purchasing and management and school site users. There's a distinction between

195what the school and what the school district is responsible for versus some of these other school related type activities. One of the one of the uh cleanest examples may be uh you know offseason athletics, right? There's a there's a CIF calendar for in season and then there's a lot of stuff that happens the rest of the year that's always been school sponsored and and so we're creating a third group for those types of offseason athletics. Those uh they would continue to have free use of our facilities. Um but those those coaches may be working offseason camps or clinics or travel ball. Um they would be required to submit insurance for those for those uses and they would be responsible putting in their own facilities at no at no facilities use fee. >> Tier two, >>

196I have a question. I'm sorry. Um with group three, the offseason athletics. Does that include like the club teams that we're talking about? >> Are they >> if it's Yes. >> Even if they're pay club team, I just I have a hard time understand the difference between that and a youth sports. >> I might get into that a little bit later. It it really you have to follow the money. So if a walk-on coach is charging fair market rate for club and it's off season even though it's our kids and the money is going say into the coach's pocket as a profit that's no longer they would no longer be eligible for this for this rate. So there's some nuance there. Okay. And that's broken down further in the administrative regulations and the terms and

197conditions. >> Okay. And so when they sign up they basically fill out a questionnaire I'm assuming and it puts them in one of these groups. They don't just say I'm group three. >> Right. Okay. >> Part of the application process. Yeah, good question. Thank you. >> Uh groups four, five, and six. Um this would include the city of San Marcos, uh any activities that the city holds on our facilities, including parks and recreation. Um the city of San Marcos youth sports council. These are the folks that have at longstanding had free use of our athletic fields. Um and then Group six we're calling these are nonprofits that are school affiliated. So these are outside entities that are providing direct services to our to our students after school. So a couple examples would be we have

198fit kids. That's a third party business that that provides um recreational sports activities on a lot of our elementary schools for a fee uh to the parents. Uh students on stage who was here last June uh comment on the board policy is a group that provides visual performing arts classes after school to students. So those groups that are most directly connected providing access services to our students who fall into this group six uh all of these groups because of providing services to the youth and and to our own students would pay only the operational direct costs and they would not be subject to the capital direct cost. So we felt that was a fair compromise for those groups. Um and given the fact that we've had longstanding partnerships with a number of them that this

199would be a soft landing for a lot of those types of groups but also help us start to differentiate the different activities and different types of uses. These groups would be responsible for some service fees um and also custodial overtime as needed. The final tier uh is really the the the nonprofits not related to school or school district um uh any religious organizations and then any fair market commercial organizations. You may recall from my presentation in June, religious organizations do make up a good percentage of the uh the reimbursement that we do receive. Um so they will continue to pay direct costs. Uh we did add a margin of 5%. Statute does require religious organizations to pay at least direct cost. Um a number of school districts throughout the area and throughout the state will

200charge 10 15 20% above direct cost for religious organizations. We landed on a 5% increase over direct cost just to have a differentiation there between those types of groups uh and those in the other tiers. These groups would be responsible for all fees and all services as needed. When I mean services that would be again custodial services, uh groundskeeping services and so on so forth. I think the the biggest lion share of the work was really updating the terms and conditions um consolidating a lot of different documentation and best practices into one one large document. So that's exhibit A. Um we've updated the insurance requirements. Uh we we met back and forth and talked quite a bit about sexual molestation SAM coverage. We're going to be requiring SAM coverage going forward for those organizations. Um

201working with with youth. Um again this this program ensures you know efficient cost recovery. We've added a number of safety and security measures. Uh there really wasn't any guideline in the the about additional supervision or security um for events. That's now some language that we've added into the terms and conditions. Um we've added some weather uh closure language into the terms and conditions to help protect our our grass fields. We've also added language in for our synthetic turf uh football fields, soccer fields, and running tracks. As the board's well aware, we've made tremendous investment at the in those at the high schools and we continue to invest those high schools. And so there's some some basic language in there that prohibits certain types of activities. Again, continuing to utilize Facilitron as a partner to drive,

202you know, all of that uh traffic and transactions uh to really streamline the schedule, the calendars, the transparency, the visibility for the school sites, the coaches, and the community. Um, everyone's been doing a really tremendous job there, but there is more work to to be done to continue to utilize that that technology platform. Another new piece to all of this is um we have um we are proposing, excuse me, to add some administrative fees um and and and really to have some different methods to help manage the program more efficiently. uh such as payments must be laid must be made 72 hours prior to use or the permit will be cancelled. Application fees will be applied for certain categories to cover administrative processing. Uh we're proposing to add change and cancellation fees requests must be

203made 14 days in advance. Late changes cancellations these uh will be charged to offset scheduling and to prevent blocking of facilities that go unused. It's not common for groups to come in and block a field all week, all month and they'll either sublet or they'll come or they'll not go or they'll not use the facility. So, if we have some additional protections in place, we make sure that the facilities are are are used appropriately. The rationale here is again to prevent uh people monopolizing the facilities and also to cover any wasted administrative time. One more question. I'm sorry. Um, in regard to the the blocking of facilities, I love that. Um, I'm curious h are we putting anything in place to uh hinder the school teams or school events from blocking bulk activities like there's

204no football fields available all fall. >> It's a great question. Um, I think by adding that school related component, right, that offseason stuff, >> um, that will help us monitor that a little more closely. >> Um, again, not everything is a school sponsored activity. So, if we follow a calendar, the CIF calendar, we'll be able to know what those offseason activities are. And then through increased dialogue with our with our athletics and our high school principles and assistant principles, which we've had a number of those conversations and there's support there for that, we can help prevent it. Um, there they know that there's an opportunity community on and in the past I think um admittedly because the program wasn't ran real well the the revenue side of it schools weren't seeing a benefit they're seeing

205a benefit now we're reinvesting um we're we're paying for custodians they want staff there when they have activities we're offsetting district costs by by splitting custodial time with community events so there's a real benefit to the school sites to have these activities on their campus and to have staff there. It's been a big challenge. Um it's my third year in the district. It's been a challenge and so with with some cleaned up process and procedures, I think we'll see a huge improvement. Folks will see the benefit. >> Great. Thank you. Tier three group Michael Jordan for example show up I rented this facility let's say they break And then our athletics basketball court is not in use now for that repaired. How are we vetting these folks that rent these facilities neighboring school districts issue

206ago? >> Yeah. >> In order to prevent that >> that's the concern that I would have with facilit. >> Yeah, that's that's a great question. So as a provider they have a huge database, right? They're doing this up and down the state. They're doing it throughout the nation. And so we actually get alerts on the permit if there's a if there's a problem renter and we can refer to their customer service department to see what what the issue was. And to your to your point, you know, sometimes people break stuff and they don't pay or they don't pay the bill or they don't provide insurance the last minute. So um that's uh on uh that information is available to us on on those permits. you're always going to have run the risk of something breaking.

207Uh the policy, the terms and conditions allow for us to recoup that cost. You know, it means more work for the maintenance team than to figure out how we're going to fix the basketball hoop before the Friday night game. Um whether it's a for-profit group or not. Um but to your point about problem renters, uh they flag that for us in the system. Um we do have an application process. They are required to submit the permit 14 days before the event. They're required to pay uh 72 hours before the event. They have to have the insurance uh meet our insurance requirement. So, I think there's a lot of layers um in there. I thought what you're going to ask is why not charge some of those groups more? Uh if if Michael Jordan wants to

208do a Nike commercial, you know, Mission Hills High School, I'll let I'll let Aaron negotiate that. Well, he was he did show up here at San Marco at the old gym back in 19 something. >> Well, yeah, we'll bring that to the board and we can negotiate that together. >> Um to actually piggy back off of something Andre was I think what he was referencing was is if we take his side accidental damages and put that on the side, are the renters um are we asking them what their intentions are for the use of the space? >> Do we know Is there a code of um cond conduct that needs to be aligned with the school's >> values like could anybody that wants to do anything go in and rent the gymnasium? >> Um it's

209a good question. Uh it's it's in the it's in the board policy. It's in the ministry regulations, excuse me. It's in the terms and conditions. So there are times when groups that want to use school facilities could create challenges for the for the for the the school community. Uh we do have the right to to deny access based on a certain number of criteria. So it's it's not a doors wide open type of situation and that's built into the policy and that's part of the civic center act. It's built into the statute to help protect the school district if that answers your question. Second question, um I don't know if this is coming in March, but what are the projected um revenues that you're anticipating with these changes? >> A little too early to tell,

210but in our maintenance operations scorecard, we're looking for a modest 10% increase on facilities use revenue year-over-year. Um at this point, uh in the fiscal year, we've got last month's check, we're at 190,000. We were at 330 for the fiscal year last year. So, yeah, we'll continue to grow. Um, and again, I think as we start to reinvest in some of these schools, in particular, high schools, if you remember my my uh charts from from June, the high schools are generating next to nothing. If we start to bring in some revenue at the high schools and we reinvest in those high schools, we're gonna we're going to continue to see, I think, some opportunity there. So, I don't have a good cost projection for you right now, but 337 10% increase year-over-year. Think we'll be

211able to hit that. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Uh organizational matters. The next regular board meeting will take place on Thursday, March 12th, 2026 at 6:30 p.m. in the media center of the North County Regional Education Center. 55 Avenue, San Marcos, California 92069. This meeting is adjourned.