2026-04-22 Board Meeting

001Thank you. Good evening. The April 22nd, 2026 meeting of the Sonteo County Board of Education will come to order. As is our practice, this meeting will be recorded. The board provides remote access for members of the public and welcomes community members joining in person and remotely. The board is following the requirements of Senate Bill SB77 which enables remote participation by board members only under specific circumstances. I note that board member Alvaro is attending remotely this evening on the basis of a disability accommodation. Uh board member Alvaro, could you please state for the record that there are no adults 18 or older present in the room with you? >> Sure. Thank you. There is no one at all present in the room with me. >> Thank you. Uh we use simultaneous interpretation in Spanish for those

002attending virtually through the end of public comment. Translation will continue further into the meeting if people are utilizing the channel. Thank you to our interpreters Anna Cruz and Kimberly Larios for joining us remotely. For meeting attendees wishing to access the Spanish translation channel on Zoom, please click on the interpretation button on the menu bar. We ask speakers to be mindful of the Spanish interpretation and speak slowly and clearly. Item 1B is the approval of the agenda. Is there a motion to approve the agenda? >> Is there a second? >> Second. Thank you. There is a motion to approve the agenda made by Trusty Gerard and a second by Trustee Adas. Is there any further discussion? >> Oh, we're going to do a roll call vote. May I please have a roll call vote? >> Miss

003Alvaro? Hi, >> Miss Aras. >> Hi, >> Miss Benini. >> I >> Mr. Arm. >> I Miss Love. >> I Mr. O'Neal. >> Um, I was not here so I abstained. >> Mr. Torres, >> I uh the motion passes with a vote of 6 and one abstaining. And the agenda for tonight's meeting has been approved. Item two is public comment. Guidelines for public comment are available on the SMCE website and in board docs and on the table outside the boardroom in English and in Spanish. For speakers who require Spanish interpretation, our interpreters, Miss Cruz and Miss Larios, will interpret following each speaker's comments. At this time, members of the public may provide comment for topics not included on the approved agenda. Please note that the County Board of Education does not act upon any matter

004that has not been agendaized except under limited circumstances as permitted by law. It is the policy of the county board to refer matters raised in this forum to the superintendent for investigation and or action where appropriate. Uh, Superintendent Chavez, do we have any comments submitted prior to the meeting for topics not on the approved agenda? >> No. >> Thank you. Uh, speakers are also invited to make live comment and will have 3 minutes to speak. Please make sure to keep within the time limits. To make a comment over Zoom, members of the public may use the raise hand feature. Instructions for using this feature are provided as an attachment in the board packet. Once the hand is raised, please wait to be acknowledged by Superintendent Chavez. Uh, Superintendent Chavez, are there any members of the

005public attending remotely who wish to make a comment at this time for topics not in the approved agenda? >> I do not see any raised hands. >> Thank you. Members of the public may also provide live comments in person. Uh, do we have any submitted cards for topics not on the approved agenda? >> No. >> Thank you. A public comment addressing a specific agenda item will be heard after the board's discussion on the item. If members of the public wish to speak to a specific agenda item, please use the raise hand feature when the item is announced or if in person submit a card in advance of the item. Cards can be found on the table outside the boardroom and given to a staff member when completed. Moving on to item 3A, we have the

006April 2026 employee of the month, Alma Sandaval, office assistant human resources office of the superintendent. Will Alma please join me in the middle of the room? Testing, testing. Uh, each month the board and the superintendent recognize an employee for providing outstanding service. For the month of April 2026, we recognize Alma Sandaval, office assistant, human resources, office of the superintendent. Alma joined the county office in September of 2002 and has served in the roles of receptionist and office assistant since that time. It takes a special kind of person to turn a standard greeting into a pleasurable experience. But according to staff, Alma does not does this effortlessly every single day. She isn't just the first guess when they enter the building. She is regarded as the culture carrier and check-in queen for the entire building. I

007love that Alma possesses a rare blend of genuine warmth and sharp professionalism that puts that puts guests at ease the moment they walk through our doors. Whether it's a family looking for support or a staff member having a morning struggle, Alma makes everyone feel like a VIP. When challenges arise, Alma remains calm, leads with empathy, and ensures that people feel heard and cared for. She ca can take a potential concern and address it by seeking out the appropriate staff and/or resources in the building. Alma goes the extra mile time and time again, from clipping and bringing in fresh flowers, personally providing directions, or walking someone to a location when guests need help. In the field, folks often refer to five-star hospitality and true hospitality is how a person makes you feel. Alma elevates the county

008office standards by guaranteeing every interaction is infused with genuine kindness and a yes and attitude. She does not just meet the standard of service. She defines what it should be. At times it may look like Alma's role simply manages the desk, but it's truly happening. What is truly happening is the managing of the atmosphere in the lobby. Her presence makes our environment warmer, kinder, and more professional. And both staff and guests are grateful for this each and every day. And I will say when I do come in and I get to see you, you always have a smile on your face and it just makes me even more excited to be here. Usually I come in late and she's already gone, but when I catch her, I love it. >> But we are proud of

009the county office staff and are pleased to recognize Alma for her outstanding work. Congratulations to to Alma for being named employee of the month for April of 2026. >> Would you like to say a few words? >> I just want to say thank you to whoever nominated me. Um, one of the joys working for the Sanatail County is the people that I work with. Every day I come in just like you're saying, I bring you I give joy. People give joy to me too. And one of the things that I value the most is the people that have really influenced me throughout these 20 24 years working for the county. Uh 12 years at the juvenile hall and 12 at the county office. And um I can speak about a lot of different stories, but

010um just to have a a a conversation with someone influenced me to go back to school and I went back to school to CSM and I graduated. But um everybody has really influenced me to for good things. Thank you. >> Yeah. So lucky to have you. >> This is for you. Moving on to item 4 A. Uh, is there a motion to approve the minutes of the April 8th, 2026 regular board meeting as presented? >> Second. >> Thank you. There's a motion to approve the minutes of the April 8th, 2026 regular board meeting made by Trustee Love and a second by Trustee Gerard. Is there any further discussion? >> May I please have a roll call vote? >> Miss Alvaro, >> I Miss Aras >> I. >> Miss Benini >> I, >> Miss Gerard, >>

011I. >> Miss Love, >> I. >> Mr. O'Neal, >> Mr. Torres, >> I. Uh, the motion passes with a vote of 6. and when abstaining and the minutes of the April 8th, 2026 regular board meeting have been approved. Item five is the consent agenda. The consent agenda is not debatable and requires a unanimous vote for passage. An item may be removed from the consent agenda and placed on the regular order of business for separate discussion and action if any member of the board, the superintendent, or the public so requests. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda? >> Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you. There's a motion to approve the consent agenda made by Trusty O'Neal and a second by Trusty Gerard. Is there any further discussion? May I please have

012a roll call vote? >> Miss Alvaro >> I. >> Miss Aras >> I. >> Miss Benini >> I. >> Miss Gerard >> I. >> Miss Love >> I. >> Mr. O'Neal. >> Mr. Torres >> I. The motion passes with a vote of 70 and the consent agenda has been approved for items 6A and 6B. The board will move to close session to hear two interd district attendance appeals. >> President, yes, >> we have a someone online who has their hand raised. Would you like to acknowledge it? >> Uh, yes, that's okay. >> Miss Blanco, you may speak. >> Hi everyone. I am so sorry. I thought I I raised my hand on to speak on Alma. I just wanted to say congratulations to Alma. I've known her for some years now and everything I I

013agree with everyone that everyone all the comments that you all made, but I just wanted to add that she is such a breath of sunshine and um I really enjoy coming to the county office of ed and first person we see is Alma. So I just want to say congratulations to her. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Gracias. Moving on to um item six. For items 6A and 6B, the board will move to close session to hear two interd district attendance appeals. The first is interd district attendance appeal 26-4 filed on behalf of a student currently residing in the Sano Foster City School District, but requesting to attend school in the Belmont Redwood Shore School District. The second is interd district attendance appeal 26-5 filed on behalf of a student currently residing in the Ravenswood

014City School District but requesting to attend school in the Sanonteo Foster City School District. Before we begin, are there any comments from the public? >> No comments from the public. >> Thank you. Upon the conclusion of both close session items, the board will return to open session to report on any actions taken in close session. I'll be in the other I'll be back in a second for a close session. All right, Miss Susan, can you hear us? >> I can. I can't see anything yet, but I can hear you. >> Thank you. >> Now I can see you. Thank you. >> We are returning from close session. For item seven, the board will report on actions taken in close session. For IAA26-4, the board voted to deny by a vote of 70. for IAA26-5. The

015board voted to approve by a vote of 70. Uh for item 88, Joanna Rasmusen, chair and commissioner, Sonteo County Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Commission, also known as JJDPC, will provide a presentation from the Sonteo County JJPC. Yes. Then uh they should and it should be up shortly and then you should have a remote up there to maneuver through. >> Is this on? Is this on? >> Yes. Okay, great. Okay, wonderful. Let me just get the lay of the land here. So, this is it. Uh oh, what did I do? Or did someone else do something? >> I think someone else. But give us one second. Mike M. >> Will she change those? >> Oh, okay. So, okay. I'm guessing it's this button that goes to the next slide. I mean, I'm sorry. I Okay,

016so just let me know when we're ready to go. Yeah, it's okay. Okay, perfect. Okay, thank you. Okay, well, thank you so much um for having me here this evening. If we could just go back one, please. Thank you so much. My name is Johanna Rasmusson. I'm the chair of the Sanonteo County Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Commission. And um I think you have a copy of the slide presentation in front of you. So as this is working out, I'll just go ahead and begin. Um so the mission of the Sanonteo County um juvenile justice and delinquency prevention commission is basically uh to ensure that our young people who are system impacted have their needs met are treated with respect and dignity and are receiving the services they need to thrive. Um, our commission, we're

017a joint commission, so we're two separate bodies. We can go to the next slide if if possible. Um, we can go to the next slide. So, we're two different um bodies. We're a state and federallymandated commission. The Juvenile Justice Commission was formed after the Federal Juvenile um justice I mean, excuse me, Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974. And under that body, which is governed by the board of supervisors, um we are tasked with delinquency prevention efforts throughout the county. Um and then we are also a juvenile justice commission which is uh falls under the Santo County Superior Court and Juvenile Court. We have completely separate mandates and responsibilities. And as the juvenile justice commission um we are actually written into the welfare and institutions code and one of our mandates is to inspect

018juvenile uh detention facilities, law enforcement holding facilities and to evaluate the educational programs and services that are being offered um to that population. So when someone wants to join the commission, they complete an application. They have to be approved by the full board of supervisors, by the presiding judge of the superior court and the presiding judge of the juvenile court. So it's quite a process um to go on. By law, we need at least two youth commissioners. We currently have five. Um we believe that um youth boys should be centered in everything we do. Um but we are also learning that having five youth commissioners means that we have to do a lot of work too. So um but we do um we we really like to encourage the youth uh to be at the

019table. They understand what their peers are experiencing and so um we welcome that. So we can have up to um 15 members uh two of which are mandated to be youth. Next. Okay. Um next slide please. Okay. Perfect. Um, so in the last 10 years, there's been major reforms. I'm just going to do an overview for the new um, members of the board since the last time we've been here. I think it's been almost two years since we've been here. So, there's been some major um, reforms in the juvenile justice space, mainly the closure of the California youth prisons. Some of us knew that as CIA or DJJ. Uh we no longer use uh we no longer send kids uh serious offenders to those facilities. We keep them here locally in what we call a

020secure youth treatment facility. In actuality, it's one unit inside the juvenile hall which is up on Tower Road um just above Gateway. Most of you have e been there or or know about. That's our Pine4 unit. And youth can actually stay there up until they're 25. So that's changed significantly in the past. Um youth came uh they were in and out. The average length of stay was 30 days. We have some youth now who've been there for up to five years. Um we've also had other changes. uh used to be years ago that the district attorney if they felt that a a juvenile crime merited transfer to adult court, they could make that decision unilaterally and send them uh over to be tried in superior court. That can no longer happen. Uh you have uh

021now a judge has to make that determination and the evidence standard is clear and convincing. And there's actually a bill right now pending in the legislation to change that to beyond a reasonable doubt. So we've been moving farther and farther away from these punitive practices that uh the scientific data and all the research even the Supreme Court has ruled um does not improve uh public safety. So that I just outlined some of the bills um that are there. Next slide please. So, one of the mandates of the Juvenile Justice Commission is to to inspect the facilities to ensure they're not only compliant, but that there's robust programs and services for youth. So, you can see here we have several facilities and we actually have uh less than we used to. We used to do Camp

022Kemp, we used to have Camp Glenwood. So, our facility numbers have been dwindling, but we we do have quite a bit of work. Um, we do the court holding facilities at the sheriff's department. Any police department that brings a youngster in for detention, we go in to ensure uh, you know, that they have what they need and what the the children need when they're being detained. Um, part of our evaluation of these facilities includes an evaluation of Hillrest School, an evaluation of the education at Hillrest School, the evaluation of the educational offerings at our secure youth treatment facility. That would be for for um post high school graduates. Um, as well as Canyon Oaks Youth Center at the residential facility there. Um we also inspect a lesion uh and the receiving home which serves youth

023independency court. So CPS youth I listed some of the codes there um that we look for the educational code and and title 15. So next slide please. So going into our educational evaluation for 2025, just to give you a snapshot of who's there on any given day, we have between 30 and 35 youth in the entire facility, including youth uh secure youth treatment facility. So much smaller population than we had years ago when the maximum population was 180 and kids were cycling in and out. It's much smaller. 78% of our students of the the day we were there uh were returning students. So these are students who've been there before who've participated in educational programming um before. Uh 50% were in 11th grade, 12% in uh 12th grade, 10% uh 21% in 10th grade. We

024also have a large middle school population. It's not reflective on the day we were there, but just so you know, we have youth as young as seventh grade come in. Eighth grade, I know right now that that's um a bit of a challenge. How do we educate in the same space um a seventh grader with a 12th grader? So, that's a challenge. Um I I listed here the average length of stay. uh 95% of our students are students of color and 90% have individual education plans, 5% have 504 plans. So we see that we are um serving u very vulnerable youth, youth that are historically underserved. Next slide please. uh when we come in to do the uh evaluation of education, we always will issue a survey to the youth. We are not we pass

025it out. It's up to them if they want to fill it out and um they sometimes they'll have questions. So I included some of the key findings there um of this is so they have a voice in this so they can share what their experience is like there at school. So um about half of the youth report that they're not learning anything new. Um 100% reported that there was no technology in the classroom. 93% reported that the lack of uh teachers was negative negatively affecting their learning. 43% needed one-on-one support to learn. 64% are behind high school credits. um 36% felt they were prepared for college or vocational school and um 45% said they face challenges. The 79% population, 45% said that they face challenges when leaving Hillrest and trying to reenroll in school. And

026um I personally know that's an issue because when they run into those challenges, they call me and I bring them down to the district and we get them enrolled in school. Um, I can't even count the number of of uh students that I've helped enroll. Um, and some of you have may maybe even received a phone call from me asking for assistance on how we can get these youth in school. Um, so transition planning is key. Ensuring that all partners are communicating to ensure that our youth are back in school um is absolutely critical to their overall success. Next slide, please. some of our recommendations that we made um this year. On the day we were there, there was only one credentialed teacher. It was quite shocking quite frankly with this population with 90% of

027special education students that we would only have one credentialed teacher. Um math was being taught by a pareducator. Um um I'm just going to let that be. Um we also uh recommended that there was an increase in direct in-person instruction um and small individual groups to to replace packets. A lot of the a lot of the students explained, Mr. Hannah, when they don't explain it to me, I don't know what this means. I need someone to explain it to me. I don't know what to do. If I know what to do, I can finish the packet. But packet is really an education that's really outdated. I think we can do much better than than packet learning. Um and then we we made a recommendation to address the foundational gaps. Um sometimes our youth by the

028time they come to us at Hillrest, they may not have been in school for a while. They may have um missed out on that foundational learning. And we see that more now with COVID, right? Now that that period of COVID when kids were in elementary school, that foundational math, those really fundamentals that kind of got missed when everybody was online at home. And depending upon what your e socioeconomic status was, whether or not you had internet access, whether or not your parents were home to assist you in school during that time, all of that mattered and all of that shows up now uh when they're coming into school and we see these major gaps. Oftentimes in the classroom, when I see youth acting up, I I see that really it's not about their behavior so

029much. It's really about they don't want their peers to know that they have no idea what's going on. So, it's easier to be kicked out of the classroom and go back to the unit than to draw attention to the fact that they don't they're not up to speed what's happening. So, we requested a recommendation was to ensure that all special education um evaluations occur in private spaces. So to protect the confidentiality of students and their parents and to ensure compliance uh with IDEA ID IDA um to improve intake procedures. A lot of the you uh students reported that uh about half said when they got there there was no assessment so they just were put into class. So I think u the sooner we can identify uh what their needs are and where their levels

030are we have a much better opportunity to meet their needs. Um, in 2022, Superintendent McGee designated the Santa Cruz County Office of Education to uh be their design to do their formal title 15 educational evaluation. And so they've done that for 2023, 24, 25. And um one of the things we note is in our inspections always is the lack of transition planning and the educational code issues with education code 48647. And unfortunately they mark that as compliant every year that there is a transition plan that we are following it. They even add extra comments to make that even more robust about you know how we're in compliance when when we're not. So, I think that's an issue that if they continue to be your designate, we'd recommend that somebody talk to them about what the

031requirements are here and that we not embellish documents to suggest that we're doing things that we're not. Um, another recommendation was to define the roles and responsibilities. Who's responsible for IEP implementation? Who's responsible for CTE selection? Who's responsible um for graduation planning? Who's going to call Sequoia Union High School District and say, "Hey, we've had a kid here for eight months and now they're coming home." Um, because contrary to popular opinion, most kids have a release date well in advance and they're not just released sporadically where nobody knows about it. If I know about it, chances are the school should know about it, too. Um, we we would encourage more family participation. Uh oftentimes parents will call me, "Miss Johanna, I I want to know how my child is doing in school." They're very proud

032that they're attending school. They're getting good grades, right? They're they they want more participation. And while we were there during the inspection, they there was a situation with probation where they entered the room to take a composition book away from a youth and it really was disruptive. And I know we have anou in place to preserve the integrity of the school day. Um, so to ensure that we are following thatou and allowing the administrators at the school to really be in charge unless there's a situation that warrants probation to get involved, there's a safety risk. Um, really that classroom should really be a sacred place for them to learn with minimal um, disruptions. Um, I also want to highlight that I think this is the last three years we've started the school year with new

033administration. I don't think we've had uh consistent administration up there since Shelley Johnson left. And so um that's hard getting to know new people um you know get get putting things into place. So, it would be really nice to prioritize stabilizing the administration up there because when we're strong from the top, then we have really have an opportunity to strengthen, right? We really have an opportunity. So, okay, next slide, please. Okay, so that's going over the the Hillrest uh educational evaluation there. Um, but I want to tell you some other things that we do because we do like a lot of really cool things, too. They don't just go in and evaluate things. Uh I personally run a parent support group. So um I myself, as some of you may know, my own child went

034through the juvenile justice system all the way to the California Youth Authority. So this is very important to me. So I run a parent support group so they feel heard, so they can share their concerns and then we bring them to the appropriate agency or the department to empower them to sort of take control of what's happening in their own families. We run a suited for success program. Um, every youth who comes in uh to the juvenile hall who asks for a suit receives one. I go to Macy's, I buy the suit with my own money and I give them the suit. They can wear it to court. It builds their self-esteem, but they can also take it out with them when they leave. And now they have a suit to wear to homecoming. They

035have a suit to wear to a social event, to a scholarship uh interview, to a job interview. And many times it's the first suit that they've ever owned. And they're they're so excited. Mr. Look at my suit. Look at you know. Um we uh have a college laptop initiative. So we buy the students laptops. We started a voter education program in the hall to ensure that every youth uh can register to vote and actually vote irregardless of how long you're incarcerated there. Um we created a handbook for parents helping your child after arrest what to do. We're in the process of updating that. We started an NP3 music um program. We advocate we we go to school districts and give presentations. We we train law enforcement on legal changes. Uh we work with the district

036attorney. We even work with the local media. When the district attorney was releasing names of juveniles um and breaching confidentiality, we met with him. And then we also met with the media and said, "If you find out this information, let's keep it confidential. That's what this system is about." So we do all kinds of advocacy and policy reform work. We um ran our prevention and action conference, our very first historic conference. I have to say that was all Commissioner Blanco when she came onto the commission. She's like, "Where are our delinquency prevention efforts?" And she had this beautiful idea and uh we'll be showing you a video of that day um in just a moment. But our goal there was to bring to educate the educators on the obstacles and barriers our system impacted youth

037face. Um as well as we brought law enforcement and mental health and teachers. Remind me who I'm forgetting. We many members of the board were there. We had superintendent of schools. We we put out a a wide list of invitation schools resource officers. We had members of CASA there. probation was there. Um we had a youth panel. It was really um a beautiful day for we had workshops from National Center for Youth Law. I think um Trusty Love was there and and Der Yeah. And and Chelsea, but we and Esther was there too. So we had a very good turnout. Sadly, we did not have the kind of turnout we had hoped for from uh county office of ed staff, but I I did hear later that there was a conflicting conference, but we are

038hopeful that uh this will be an ongoing thing now. We're in partnership with the College of San Mateo and Project Change and so we're hopeful that um the uh county office bed will join us next year. Yes. Oh, okay. So, for those of you who aren't familiar with Project Change, so Project Change is a program for system impacted youth at our community colleges and um they offer basically wraparound student support services to um help youth succeed. So, I believe the program started at the College of Sono, but now it's throughout the state of California. And um they do amazing things. They have counselors and tutors. They provide technology. School is entirely free. Um they provide food stipens and transportation stipens. They remove all these barriers that that keep youth from um attending college. And and

039and they also provide emergency housing. And I had I had two uh foster youth who were at the conference who became homeless and they housed them in a hotel so they would be out of the rain this winter um until I could secure additional housing for them. So they are doing exceptional work um they are doing exceptional work there. So uh we do quite a bit of work. These kids are very important to us. we consider them our own children and um uh so I think uh oh yes oh I forgot okay state the stateway leader thank you Jen um so last year I founded the California juvenile justice commissioners collaborative so every month juvenile justice commissioners from all 58 counties in the state get together to talk about the issues that are impacting our

040system impacted kids and So, we're making um we're making big strides there. I sit on the um this uh Sacramento Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the the governor's uh committee on delinquency prevention. I was invited by the Office of Youth and Community Restoration to sit on their policy and legislative committee and Commissioner Blanco sits on the OICR educational advisory committee. So, um, we not only, um, uh, lift our youth up, but we're also trying to lift up commissioners throughout the state so they have the knowledge, information, and training they need to support their students and their counties as well. Okay. So, um, I'd like to play a video. This is just a snapshot of what that conference was like. Um, well, I think I want them to watch the video and then we can do

041some questions afterwards if that's okay. And you're ready. Thank I think some of the most I think one of the most powerful parts of the day was that youth panel and to protect their confidentiality we blur out their faces but you can see the power of having law enforcement listening to their stories right having that question and answer session and for those of you who were there you can speak to the power of that moment and I think the Redwood City Pulse captured it perfectly they had a quote that said the student said um for the first time I felt like I was really being heard. It really felt like people were listening and they were all there to support us. So, it was really powerful. Some of these um youth um have no trust

042at all in law enforcement. So, to see that fist bump at the end of the day was really really something. So, um questions. Does anyone have any questions? >> Comments or questions from the board? Trusty Love, could you turn your mic on, please? >> Sorry about that. Um, I just want to say I agreed with a lot of the things you just shared and I'm, you know, we don't have some of our staff here to kind of respond and talk about some of the things, but just key things on the need for direct instruction and not packets. Packets are supplemental. They're not the curriculum. Um, really key um kids getting pulled out of classrooms. That's all about adult schedules. Like those adults maybe have to work later at night or whatever they need to do

043to meet the needs of the kids so they're not pulled out of classrooms. again um not operating on their needs. Um a family directory said five years in the making. I don't know if that's still not out there. This guide book for families um in Spanish and English. I hope that gets addressed. In your report, you said there um the parent and family engagement policy handbook is >> Yeah, we've been waiting. Sarah tells me that that's under development, but it's been under development since I joined the commission. So, I'm just saying these are things that resonated with me and I, you know, we'll hear from our team sometime about where they are, but I want to highlight them because I think they're really important. I mean, we serve these students and these things should be

044taken care of. I know technology has been an issue from what I've heard. It's hurt kids who are trying to do college work and I hope I and some of these things are not the county office. A lot of it's probation. >> Sure. >> So, again, partnerships. I think that's really key. Um, I always thought there could be more done for prevention um by the commission. it seemed like it was really focused on the kids impacted right in the system as opposed to stopping kids from getting in it. So, I appreciate that this conference was done. I would just hope that next year um that when you're planning the conference, you're doing it right alongside with the county office staff. I was really surprised that and people commented there weren't county office people presenting, you

045know, they weren't there and then to be invited after a date was set and there's already a conference. So, I would just strongly say before you pick a date and the whole focus on that conference was really about um partnerships and not having the county office be a core partner. They you had a whole lo thing of logos. You didn't have the county office. I don't know if the county office said, you know, we're not doing it or what, but I think that if the ask wasn't made and it, you know, I'm not sure that that become a priority for next year. And I did enjoy the conference. So, thank you. >> Thank you and thank you for attending and thank you for your comments. So, I I I just want to um we were

046concerned too and we would have really liked to have county office of ed, but unfortunately over this last year, uh we've had some issues um where we've been instructed by legal counsel like to stay in our lane. So, we try to stay in our lane, but we would also like to build partnerships. So, I'm looking forward to next year and I hope we can have a partnership. I will just add that that was a conversation we just had just because there had been um reasons as to why that partnership wasn't happen happening and um Marco is very open to expanding that and I've been in the communications where we're rebuilding that partnership. So, I just wanted to add that >> if I could just that it has been so wonderful to be working with Marco.

047It's it's so refreshing. He's so transparent. He's so responsive and um it's been wonderful. So, thank you. >> Yes. But I will say that there have been large efforts on their part for that partnership and we are now getting to a point where we can do that together. >> Yes. Uh Super Chavez, >> can I just add I I appreciate the report. I think uh as uh Trustee Love shared, there are some things that that um that resonate um and so definitely an opportunity for partnership and to work through some of these um and so I'm glad that we were planning to schedule a meeting. I'm wondering um a couple of things as it relates to the report. Was there I um in during your visit, was there um areas where you actually thought these

048are great things that we could highlight and grow um in in during your visit or that students may have shared with you? >> Again, I'm sorry. It was hard to hear. >> Oh, sorry. >> It's okay. It's my it's my hearing. I apologize. >> No, we do have a protocol to remove these. Sorry. In your visit to Hillrest, was there um a any um areas that you felt that they're important to highlight or to grow that are positive um and maybe that surface through student conversations or through your observations? >> I can tell you that um Beg I think his last name is Borigary. He's been there since my daughter was there. My daughter's now 39. He's been there a long time. He's certainly one of the thrusted uh teachers there for the kids. Um

049so that's something to highlight that stability when there isn't much stability elsewhere. I also want to point out that despite all of these challenges, the kids continue to thrive. They're resilient. If you look at their grades, they're they're performing. They're doing the very best we can. And so this report is basically let's meet them. Let's meet them where they're at because they really are excited, engaged. They want to do more. They tell me, "I want to do group projects, Miss Johan. I want to do groups." And I know we've brought some CTE in there, which is different. So, teaching them different ways to learn, especially when you have um special challenges. I have two children with special needs, and so they learn differently. So, being able to learn in different ways using different platforms would

050be helpful. So, um the kids are always something I want to uplift and highlight. I also want to uplift and highlight those para educators and that one teacher that was there. Can you imagine what that must be like to have one teacher and pareducators teaching math and you still show up for work every day to do your very best. So yes, I want to highlight them as well. uh we do thing do things well but we also uh do do things that can be uh we also cause harm and so we want to mitigate the harm and uh I know there's going to be some work done on the transition planning um I would love to be part of that process since I'm I'm out there with the kids I'm showing up at the district

051um I even had one uh Jarrett the student services remind me Jen su student services director ctor for Sequoia Union High School. >> Sequoa Sequoia. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, I I walked in with a student. They're like, "You're from the conference." I go, "Yes, I have a student who needs to be registered." So, we are we are making progress, but I would like to be there at the table. Why um we're drafting those plans to share my expertise, my experience with the use, and just what those obstacles are. Um even if it's just for one sitting, I'd like to be there. Thank you. >> Thank you. Other comments or questions from the board? Trust the AIAS. Um, sorry, I just I'm a little just that video. Um, you know, just seeing those children because I

052want to call them children when they're under 18, right? It it is up to us the adults, the institutions, as a society to yes, there has to be prevention, but how do we all put our part to support that effort? Um, as much as you want to do as a commission, I for the first time ever, I attended one of your meetings, there's there's no way that your commission can prevent and support and do everything for this youth. There's needs to be collaborations. So my understanding and again um April marks my 12 months in this board but you know my understanding is that collaboration between probation this commission and Satel County office of ed so it's a collaboration and then the districts of course when they go back but um again just help me understand

053through the years through the past I don't know five 10 years uh any information you can give me what has been like the biggest barriers challenges why this is not happening why is this collaboration that I see that needs to happen and that I'm very thankful when I met that this uh transition um planning is is is in the works but when I think back right I'm glad that those youth that are going to receive this are going to be benefiting from this but in the past who do we have we have adults in their 30s 40s who went through only they know what they did have to go through without all this in place. So I just want to see or understand just again just help me understand what were the barriers and the

054challenges why was that not happening because to me my understanding is we are governance board for K Hill Hillrest school right so as a governance board to me it feels that your commission and this board should be working alongside all the time >> yes >> and together with probation too right in the districts but but I think that should have happened many years ago but maybe I don't understand so if you can help me >> thank you for that thank you yes so I mean we are a group of citizens concerned citizens who have this big charge right so we we need partners we we have no budget right like we we need partners and collaboration so um you were at that meeting when we talked about this it depends on who you ask if

055you ask Sarah not she says it's in the works it's being updated if you ask John Keane He'll tell you, he'll point the finger right at this office right here and tell you, "Samo County Office of Ed is putting lawyers on me and says they don't stay in my lane." You were there. You heard him say it. Um, and if you talk to the school districts, they'll tell you, "We keep begging. We keep asking, we keep calling County Office of Ed, and we're begging for someone to just communicate this with us. Just communicate they're coming back." So, it depends on who you talk to. um who's at fault. But in order to fix it, we all have to stand up and say, "I own it. I own it." You know, and so any child in

056that facility who's there for 20 days or more will get a transition plan. We'll go back to school and we will ensure that we will ensure that will happen. And that's on all of us. No pointing fingers. Another question I have um you say for 20 in your in your slides uh you in 2025 uh students with IEPs were 90%. So we're talking about you had 30 to 35 youth average a year. So out of those 90% have IEPs. >> Yeah. My concern as a special education teacher, how is the compliance with the federal uh requirements uh for these students having the services that their IEP is requiring them to have to be supported? >> We have had an opportunity to really dive deep into that, but we are also concerned. We know that a

057lot of our uh students there um have ED um qualifications and yet we don't have behavioral supports in the classroom. We don't have the if they're at their home school, they might be able to leave and go for a walk. That's not an option at Hillrest. So I think it again requires collaboration. It requires educating probation as to what the rights are, the educational rights are of students, that they are entitled to this. And we have to make it work. We're the adults. We have to we have to ensure that their accommodations can be put into place. We cannot continue to say it can't be done. It's not acceptable because now we have kids graduating up there and going on to college. And if the college can put the accommodations into place, we certainly can.

058>> And this 30 to 35 uh youth that you're talking about, are they under 18? >> No. So on the day we went there for educational evaluation, we had 20 Hillrest students because remember we have the other population of long-term youth who are adults. >> 25. So, of the 20, we had 18 youth with an IEP, >> one with a 504, and one saying, "Miss Johanna, how do I get that? I need help." >> Okay. Um then my other um let's see I was making some um my other uh comment or question is about um the programs and resources. You talk about a parent support group um that you run. >> Yeah. So kind of like you know it's run by you but what about a Hillrest as a as a program as a school

059and probably I would ask like as a um we're the governing board right so so what is it provided for families um for engagement uh for these youth that are there >> and we have to be mindful in the current climate we're at that building up there is is not really welcoming for some families who uh may have uh may be undocumented. They're not wanting to come into a building that where there sheriffs and they're staying away. So, I think we have to really be mindful on how we do that. But we absolutely need that. That is so needed. Even if we just did parent education, even if we educated them on what IEPs are supposed to be, what the needs of their child is, there are so many areas that parents need support. And

060when we think about the prevent prevention part, where's uh and I know that you have recommendations here, but what would that look like prevention side from what Sato County Office of Vet is providing to the students at Hillrest Canyon Knox? >> So is a little bit different because uh prevent I mean prevention of course we want to prevent recidivism. >> Yeah. from the district >> recism is by enrolling them in school as much as possible and giving them as many educational opportunities as possible. >> But if we were to look at ideally where this starts, this starts the moment they get to school, kindergarten, preschool, we have to identify what the family needs are. >> Is there domestic violence in the house? Is there substance abuse? Is there poverty? Are they housing insecure? Are they

061living in their car? I mean, Commissioner Boenegger is online. He helped get a family an RV so they couldn't live in the street. Like we are doing everything they know how to do. But we have to identify these needs early on because a lot of the crimes that we see a lot of the offenses are related to resources. Right? If they had the resources, they may not necessarily be out doing retail theft, committing robberies and this escalates, right? But there are so many unmet needs. identifying youth earlier uh students earlier on uh for special education assessments um you know the teacher spends oftentimes I know my son's teacher spends more time with them each day than I do right so they're in a much better position to understand what's happening with that child every single

062day and maybe make that referral for mental health counseling maybe whatever that referral might be to lend that support so we can meet those needs and offset some of those challenges early on because by the time they've committed that crime, somebody's been harmed. Now there's the trauma of incarceration. So you're right, we have to start way early and that really happens in the schools because that's where the children are. >> Okay. So providing those services to the school districts through the county services >> even uh providing a resource book like you know in English and in Spanish and um even I think we're trying to do our book also in Tongan and Samoan like we need to let families know what is available and if they need help getting there maybe we need some more

063social workers. We did a lot many years ago to take out a lot of um folks in the schools uh that did that kind of work and now we have SRO's sort of in there doing what those folks used to do. So I think uh meeting those needs would go a long way. I certainly don't have all the answers but from what I see on the other side I I asked them you know another thing I asked them when did all this start? What happened? Well, I didn't have the money to enroll in sports. Tonight, I was at the Seoia uh incoming freshman night. My son's going to be going to high school, my baby. And the the sports director said, "We need a physical every year. Even if your insurance doesn't cover it, if

064you want to pay play sports, you need it every year." Well, that's a barrier. They can't play sports. Sports teaches discipline. It it's pro-social. It takes up their time. These are things that uh they can't do. They also tell me that Mr. Hannah, I was bullied. I was bullied so badly in school that I joined this gang. I I because they're going to protect me. Every one of those kids in that secure track facility up there are offender or serious offenders tells me they were bullied in school. We can certainly have a robust anti-bullying initiative. That's something. Okay. >> Um, another comment that I have is that you mentioned that uh those suits that they get are paid by you. So, I'm wondering how how is it possible that there's no budget from anywhere or

065how do this works? Just help me understand. I just Yeah. So because uh of the amount of money that was being spent, I mean I think at last count we were up to like $70,000 right that spent helping youth. And so Commissioner Boengra and I started a nonprofit >> and so now we're doing that work through there. We're collecting donations through there. >> But for the last four years that's we did have at one point we had a grant from CZI >> but all of that money has dried up now. uh they're not uh funding social justice issues. So that's how we're doing it now. So I I also want to share that one supervisor Horsley passed away. His wife Elaine called me and she said, "Johna, um Don has all these beautiful suits and

066shoes and ties. Please come pick them up and give them to the kids." So, you know, that helps us that way, too. But um we're talking about hundreds. I mean, I'm dropping, you know, 10 suits off a month. Um but anyway, so we've done that to sort of offset this because it can't continue. My husband is a retired policeman. I don't work. So >> yeah. >> Okay. And um maybe my last I mean I could go on and on all night but I just wanted to say that I was very um it was really humbling to attend the conference uh and to hear that uh you know the effort is is being done to form this collaborate like so everybody can hear and understand where the youth is right and I think the panel that

067you provided at the end really broke my heart cuz hearing a 14-year-old telling his story and what he had to go through as a human being. I'm a I'm a mother. I have three children and many of you have children, right? So to hear him in the front explaining the life that he has inside, you know, and I look at the room and we're all adults, you know, we're letting this happen. I know it's a difficult system. I know it's many things are like set up to unfortunately fail, but what can we do from today on, right? Maybe it's hard to keep pointing fingers at anybody in the past, from yesterday and and before that, but what can we do today and moving forward? And um I really hope that you know um there's more

068opportunities as a trustee to support the work that you're doing because I I truly believe that the youth that you're supporting is the youth that we are governance board for. Therefore, it is under our also uh role to support the youth that's there and the youth that you're supporting. So again the conference was uh great and I I look forward to the next conference and I thank you for everything that uh the commission is doing. Thank you commissioner Blanco for being here and for your idea of the conference and I hope that uh from there a lot more collaboration can exist especially in Satel County. >> Thank you >> Trusty Benini. >> Thank you. Um well thank you for being here tonight both both of you as commissioners um and for presenting this to us

069as you know we should have these presentations I think regularly right um I will just say um probably most people know this already but um one of the reasons the whole reason that I'm here on this board is because of knowing that we're incarcerating our disabled youth Um, you know, I have I have my own my own uh experiences with um mental health with my own child. And as I was, you know, volunteering and doing work with the 17th district, which we still do, which I'll talk about later, we have a lunchon coming up, right? Um and talk being up, we used to do it at Hillrest and at Gateway and being up um setting up for the lunchons, right? and talking to the teachers and knowing how many IEPs they were working on, I

070I was horrified. Right? So that's why I ran for this board, I knew that this was the place to be to make a change for that system, for our school to prison pipeline. So the work of our board, the work that we're doing, um the work to to educate the rest of the community being the the school districts, that's what's important. um the literacy work um the fact that we're now this year having a pilot with OICR for literacy we've known sup um uh trustee Alvaro has been you know she's volunteered at you know in in our system for you know decades right um we know that that the literacy is not up to par there but it's you know we that we need to focus on it so there is so much work we

071can do and we have to be partners. You know, as I as I was working through my you know, knowing these things even before I ran for this board, right, I was um you know, on the Commission on Disabilities and the Behavioral Health Commission because we're trying trying to make change, right? Bring these silos together and um it's just, you know, I I was going to these meetings for a very very long time because that's where we need to be, right? So, so the partnership is essential and the fact that we have um uh Superintendent Chavez who understands this um it we're we're it's amazing. So, I mean I see so much opportunity. I think that um for the next conference that you do, which the first one was truly amazing. I was so happy

072to be there um to see I mean it was heartbreaking. Yes. But um I think there's so much room for further partnerships and learning throughout the community and it not just once a year, right? Just like more more constant. Um, the picture that was at the end of the video, um, the very end was one of the students standing up and hugging Johanna because she was crying because it was very emotional and that that I I lost, you know, >> seat and came to comfort me. >> Yeah. It came over to comfort her. So, it it means the work that they're doing that we could support in more ways. It means the world. It means everything to these students. If you heard the panel of students, they were just they were it was it was

073Johanna and and um Paul Bokeenegra who were you know um doing moderating and the students were just thanking them constantly. Thank you. Thank you for helping us. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being my person. But they need more people, right? They need us. >> Um so, you know, I I could also go on. Um, I know that our our I know that our staff works really hard um to serve the students and I also know that no system is ever perfect and we can always do more. So if we need more um space and more time to develop um more child find uh listening to the students, right? knowing if they need more things, if they need accommodations and working with probation to make that more real. I mean, they do need

074that, right? They might need behavioral and I don't know everything that's in every classroom in every day is a snapshot, right? But, um, if we need more partnership with BHRs and whatever that looks like, the systems are like this, right? and we have to pull them together and it's going to be a constant battle because the systems want to be independent and they want to do what they want to do and they don't necessarily gravitate toward you know um what do you think I should do but we have to work together and I think a good uh trial for that you know is is getting the transition plan in place and having the people in the room that make um you know that understand it and and we've already been talking about this right in

075our in our policy committee And we're excited about that and how we can um you know uh make sure that the voices or the the practical you know your your voice or um the I've asked questions right about um the um juvenile uh sorry the private defender. Oh yes >> and the the judge and and you know whoever is that the presiding judge that their voices are there too. So it's it's not like a a short process but it's important. So, um, yeah. So, I I don't >> Just real briefly. >> Oh, yeah, sure. >> So, I this has been an ongoing effort with this transition plan, and we were always under the impression that it was being updated. We didn't know it didn't exist. We We didn't know, but we would always mark it.

076We didn't pass it. We would always mark that we hadn't seen it, so we certainly couldn't mark it off. Um but uh we have um known for uh a long time that this was um an an a huge weakness. Um but no one no one would own it. And so I have to commend Marco for owning it. When I asked him for that information, he was honest and he owned it. And that's where we start with this is just being really honest and leave everybody's egos aside and and just work for these children. >> Yeah. And I feel like I feel like we're we're going to be able to do that and I'm excited for it. So I just want to thank you for the presentation. and thank you for taking your time um late

077because we it's a long meeting tonight but um thank you for you know being very um brief you know very you know giving us an outline of things we I I think that having the whole reports in our our agenda was wonderful so we can actually see that and those are all you know posted somewhere within the commission so that's helpful but um thank you for everything that you do and thanks for being Other comments or questions from the board? Uh, Trusty Alvaro, >> thank you. Uh, thank you for the presentation and I sat exactly where you're sitting for a long time. I was on the JJ DPC for 13 years until I turned out and I was chair chair for a few of those years. One of the things we did and so I

078have to say to you the work you're doing is really good work and it's cyclical and it feels like you don't get anywhere but you do get somewhere. I mean I see huge progress from when I started back in the mid 90s and then things turn over. When I first started, the reason I got on the JJBC was I was on this board and found out that no lie, probation and the county office did not speak to each other. Did not speak to each other. There were some other things going on. I'm not going to waste a bunch of time, but one of the things that we did was we made sure that we had sitting on the commission, they weren't commissioners, but they were sitting there with us at every meeting, the juvenile court

079judge, which was Marty Diaz most of the time. I was there. We had somebody from the board of supervisors. We had somebody from the private defenders program on the We We We brought all those people. We had things that don't exist anymore like HSA, right? So, it's BHRS, but we had we had those people coming to the meetings regularly so that we could talk to each other in the room regularly and go back to our own agencies and take back the work and say, "Here's what's going on. Here's what we need." And we so the dialogue was constant. And you know, we saw things break barriers break down. We got the new juvenile hall built because we pushed it. We we created that pressure to say that where the kids were incarcerated was completely inadequate.

080And so we did it. And so I just wanted to say to you first of all that there's that there's hope. You just keep pushing and things happen. But also I'm going to ask you about the board of supervisors. They really should be giving you some sort of budget. You're not talking a lot of money here. A little bit of a budget to work because you're partly appointed by them, right? To work on things like the buying the suits or printing uh a a pamphlet or a workbook or something like that. So, have you approached the board of supervisors and said, Who's your liaison to the board of supervisors right now? Who's the who's the person who's appointed on President Noel Corso? >> Noelia. >> Yes. >> Yeah. Sorry, I'm having a little bit of

081trouble here. And you >> Oh, I'm sorry. President Noelia Cororso is our current leazison. >> Okay. So, I would I would approach her and say, "Listen, we don't need a big chunk of money, but we need some money to be able to do some of the work we're doing." And it should it should be able to find that. I mean, I know we're all looking for money in our budgets, but they should be able to find something to help you with some of the stuff that you're doing. Um, and you know, and other than that, I just, you know, thank you for what you're doing and keep doing it. And I'm really grateful that our superintendent Chavez is working with you closely because you know honesty and openness are first of all two things Marco

082does really well but really critical to keeping the to keeping the dialogue going. um you know do talk to us and as I think Patricia Love said include us collectively in the planning for some of the some of the things that you do and and ask us to be part of it because we need to all be working together. >> Thank you so much for that. We will put in another request for some money and we do have all those system partners still at the table. Um, I understand we'll be getting a new representative from county office of ed, so that might also help us uh at that meeting. So, thank you so much for your comments. >> Madam Trusty Gerard, >> a lot's been said and I'm I don't have a whole lot. Uh,

083well, I do, but I won't. Um, I just want to say thank you and I really want to say thank you for your perseverance because I know that uh in the last few years um things have not um you have not received uh a welcome uh a welcome from the county board uh county office of education and um I've been on the board for a long time. I was visiting Hillrest when it was in the old building. Um, so that shows you how long and um there are a lot of improvements. I know how hard you work and um through Susan and Tom Moore and other people that I knew that were on the Juvenile Justice Commission, I I learned a lot. But I just really want to say thank you to you because you

084persevered and you did your job. And the thing I love the most is that you're talking to those students because that's really where we learn what they need, not what we think they need or somebody else. It's from them. So, thank you so much. And the conference was fabulous. I loved it. Thank you. Other comments or questions from the board? Okay, now it's my turn. I'll be quick. Just a huge thank you for the work that you do, the the care that you give to the kids. Um I see it. Um just I think last week Paul showed up uh to Samaritan House where I work uh with the youth that he picked up helping them get services, taking them to where he needed. we were able to place them for shelter until um the

085proper housing was put in place. Um and that's every day and that's every day multiple kits. So, thank you and um I'm really looking forward to this collaboration and this partnership under uh Superintendent Chavez. We love him. Uh and so thank you. >> Thank you. I think Commissioner Blanco So, just really quickly, uh, thank you so much for allowing us to present to you all here tonight. Um, just want to let you know I known Marco Chavez a long time. When he was a principal, I think was it at Bel Haven, was it? No, >> Green Oaks. >> Okay. >> In Ravensville. When I first met him, I was 17 district PTA membership chair and he called 17 district PTA and he said, "We need some training for parents on how to increase our membership."

086So, I was the one they called and that's how I first met this fine gentleman that you all have that we all have now as our superintendent for our county office of ed. I just wanted to just share with you, Patricia, um, Trusty Love that I'm I did attend the county office of ed. It was the the safe and schools communities conference that was here for two days. I came the second day. I wasn't able to come the first day and I I had the honor and the pleasure of meeting is it Mason Hris or Henrik's? >> Yeah. >> Okay. We spoke about the conference and he's on board to be part of the planning for next year. So just let you know want to provide that that um that update for you. And that's

087all I wanted to say and thank you so much for the support moving forward. >> Thank you. >> To great things in the future. Thank you for having us. >> Thank you. Uh do we have any comments from the public? >> Thank you. There is no action to take on this item. Um for item 8B, Kevin Bolta, Deputy Superintendent, Business Services. Oh, >> somebody did raise their hand. >> Yes. Oh. Yeah, but it went back down again. >> I think they Oh, there it is. >> Oh, it's Paul Bokenra. >> Mr. Bokeenegra, you may speak. >> Uh, good evening, uh, board of trustees. Uh thank you so much for uh taking this on to your bringing this onto your agenda and thank you for this fabulous presentation that our chair Joanna Rasmmanson just presented to

088you. Uh I think that uh that is why uh the commission is here tonight is to uh ask again uh for that collaboration and this is us just still pushing just like was mentioned uh a minute ago. This is us just pushing and still knocking on the door. And this is something that we have to continue to do. And uh it is it gives me great honor that we're finally before you and uh and we're still pushing and hopefully after this we can be pushing together. But I just wanted to thank you and thank you for all the great questions that were asked today. Uh and for the commitment uh of of a partnership and a collaboration that we know uh we can bring for the purpose of serving these youth. We're just trying to

089empower and strengthen the next generation so when we're gone, the next generation does not have to suffer with the shortfalls that we've afforded many of our youth that are striving for an educational experience that uh that we should be able to deliver at the highest quality. So, just thank you again uh to this board and to the commissioners who presented this evening and I look forward to collaborating with all you and it was great seeing you uh uh last week who go there uh again, you know, that's doing the work and we see each other in the field when we're doing that line of work right there. So, uh thank you. And we did get that youngster housing. Uh awesome work, awesome collaboration. Uh and that's what we get done when we work together. Thank

090you so much and have a great night. >> Thank you. Any other comments? >> No other race tense. >> Great. Thank you. Good night. Uh moving on to item AB. Kevin Baltimore, deputy superintendent, business services division will provide a report and updates on the status of the Roland Rollins Road property. Deputy Superintendent Baltimore. >> Good evening, board president Torres, members of the board. Superintendent Chavez. Uh, my understanding is the board requested an agenda item to discuss the Rollins Road property. Currently, the property is being offered for rent uh through a broker as was the recommendation through the 7-Eleven committee. Currently, the property is not generating and has not been generating revenue since February of 2025. We did provide information regarding the building historically and provided some pictures on current status. So, at this time, it's

091open up to the board for discussion and use. Thank you. Uh comments or questions from the board? Uh Superintendent Chavez, >> can I can I just add to that? Um one objective for us this evening is um um in the discussion if we can leave with some recommendations from the board in terms of where we might want to go with this property so we can go and research. we don't have to land on this a decision tonight, but rather um surface some areas where where we can explore and then bring it back to the board as a suggestion >> because we won't be taking any action today. Um so it'd be great to kind of brainstorm and see where um everyone's head's at with with that. >> So thank you. Uh Trusty O'Neal. Um, yeah,

092the reason I asked for this to be put on the agenda was I figure if we're going to start a facilities master plan that if we did want to do something other than just trying to list it, this was an opportunity for us to, you know, look at it and put it into the action plan for in future use. And so that's why I requested this item. >> Thank you. Um, other comments or questions from the board? any ideas of how to utilize the property? Trusty Alvaro, >> thank you. So, we originally didn't own the building. Just a little history here. We originally leased the building for our RO and uh it was Superintendent Neil that made the decision to to buy the building and do all the upgrades that we then had to do

093because it was then our our building. um we used it for ROOP until the state changed the funding model so there was no more RO then we didn't have a use for it anymore we started having a lot of discussion about what to do with it and one of the things I asked at the time was why we didn't just simply sell it a school it's an industrial building it's near the freeway um and at the time uh we were having the discussion. I know that for instance Anne Campbell, Superintendent Campbell said she wanted to keep the option open for some programming that she thought she might want to put in, but for lots of good reasons that never happened. And then we we leased it to the uh Sanonteo High School District for a

094while because they were moving their district office. And then we leased it to the charter school for a while because they were building their charter school. And then we leased it after that to Meta and made some good money on it. But I I bring up the question again of why we're holding on to the building. And I'll just leave it at that. Superintendent Travis. Nope. Okay. That property is very valuable and although it is currently renting potentially could in future currently we have a long-term lease for uh both an Campbell Center um and the Gateway program and since we own this building we wouldn't have to get into a long-term lease where we didn't actually own the property in and of itself. Um but an option is certainly that we could sell it. We

095do get calls on a random basis showing interest in purchasing that building. We could also go back to the 7-Eleven committee and talk about a long-term land lease. So, there are other options there to generate revenue. And as a reminder, it was um maybe unique agreement, but we were generating almost $1.5 million a year in the lease we had with Meta. So, um, >> so the 7-Eleven committee, as I understand it, is they've already done their job. Their job was to declare it surplus property, meaning we could dispose of it, lease it, sell it, whatever we needed to do. That it wasn't their recommendation necessarily that it be leased. It was just a recommendation that it was declared surplus property, which is a a process we have to go through to say we're not going

096to use it for our own purposes for a while. We can do something else with it. So, I'm not sure we have to go back to the 71 committee to do anything. I think we that's work's already been done and yeah, Lisa Cho might have a different take on that, but that's my that's my understanding of of what happened there. So if we have some plans and I you know to to actually move a program into it and get out of you know a different lease then that's another story alto together but it just seems sitting on a vacant building for a long time is kind of silly. >> Thank you uh trusty Benini. Um, so, uh, I'm looking forward to hearing more ideas, right, about how we might use that property or what we

097would do with it. But one thing that um has been on my mind is a lot of the discussions that we've been having around um CTE programs that that we're running um the whole convening that happens quarterly something um here and just a lot of discussions that we've had even um I would say in different committees right and I think that um trusty O'Neal's raised some of them you know more Um, and I I wonder if um knowing that the the site is I think maybe code or whatever for students to be there, but maybe it has to have some upgrades that whether we might consider um starting to ask some questions around programs that are running in our county. I'll use something like um Fortitude Careers as a as an example. They are um

098helping students in our county. They're doing uh trades. Um they do not just as just one example, they don't have a place to be. Uh they are moving them all of their equipment uh constantly. They they use Sabra for some showcases. um they might, you know, be able to use that space or perhaps maybe some of our districts might have some CTE um programs that need infrastructure or that have infrastructure and maybe it's an opportunity for us to have a site where different districts could potentially use the site, collaborate, share equipment, um invest in different equipment. um because there are a lot of um different trades or different CTE focus right that might need space that they don't have or it might be a small district that just doesn't have that capacity. So I can

099think of a I won't keep going on that but I think there could be a lot of uses related to that and given that it was already used for RO it's very similar in a lot of ways maybe maybe we also you know have autoshop again or something I was looking at the map but um that's something I would like to explore more because I think we need something more robust in our county whether it's something around healthcare or different you know different trades or something um and that might be something that our districts are interested in. So, we might want to ask them. That's my idea. >> Trusty O'Neal, >> did you call me your >> O'Neal? >> Oh, okay. Because I thought your hand was too. Oh. Oh, okay. Um, yeah, since I

100asked to have this on the agenda, I have been kicking the tires with different agencies around the county. And I think I did send an article to or had Jennifer send an article to you about the challenges Gen Z is having, how a lot of the rungs on those bottom letters, ladders are disappearing. And so um I did reach out at progress seminar to one one college community college district and the thing I think that's unique about this property that we can offer is its location. Okay, it is three blocks from BART station, three blocks from Cal Train. It is right off the freeway. I haven't looked to see how many bus routes run down Rollins Road, but I would assume there's there's quite a few since the major thoroughare. And one of the challenges

101that people have with the community college district is they're all on a hill. And I just t I talked to a different college trustee and their satellite office they opened up in Halfoon Bay has two to three classes every single day for people that are there and this would be a prime location that that maybe the community college district might want to see about renting some rooms and putting colleges there. Okay. I did talk to the woman in charge who um Marco did meet her there also for the adult education consortium and they're desperately looking for a place to have a culinary class because the there's you know that's another job area they're trying to teach people. Um I did and Marco and I met I don't know can we talk about that Marco or

102do you want to talk about it? Okay. Marco and I did talk with the Silicon Valley Foundation and they seemed open to helping us actually build some sort of um I'll use the word cooperative consortium whatever job train can go there and have a facility to teach people. C you know CTE would certain although I did send an email to Kristen Sha and she was less than enthusiastic about CTE using it. Okay. But there's no reason we can't open it up to like a job train Nova Works. Okay. At the progress seminar, they said one of the biggest challenges that's going to be happening is 45 year old men being unemployed and not having a job. So maybe that's something we can open up to as you know a training area given its location. And

103it's certainly you know looking at I've not been in it. I drove by it just to see what I would be talking about. And I mean it is it looks like this is a slate that's now blank and we could customize it to whatever needs we would like. There's classrooms it looks like already there. Um and I would like to see if this board can authorize and I don't know what the structure would it would be a subcommittee of the board. Would it be Marco and his people Kevin or who to start contacting different job entities? I know the counties trying to start a job program and as as you've often heard me say, one of the biggest weaknesses we have in government is everybody operates as a silo and we need to work together

104with the challenges that we this district this peninsula is facing for people. And I heard a quote and I really like this quote is we can no longer just think outside the box. There cannot be a box. We just need to look at everything. Okay. There was the at the progress seminar Marco was there was the um the the biotech people remember that biotech consortium >> from Janentech. Well, there was a gentleman there from Jenn, but there was also an industry group that would, you know, we could approach them and see is could this be a biotech like the science garage South San Francisco High has that was funded by Jenn. So, I really I can't I have to admit I can honor I'm not Moses coming down from Montra Mountain with the Ten Commandments.

105Okay. But I think this is an oyster within a pearl that we can make into a pearl to really address the common needs this peninsula has for workers. And I hope we can move forward. How that, you know, process would be, I don't know. And I have to say it isn't going to be done in a month. We're looking at three, four, five months of getting people together, picking the right people that can work together, the right organizations to move forward, and that's what I was hoping to get direction for. >> Thank you, Trusty Love. >> Thank you. Uh, a lot of great ideas. I appreciate it here. And to Susan's question, um, why hold on to it? because it's a really uh great potential resource either for the county office with respect to funding

106or to serve as like a spot for collaborative use. It's a way that we can potentially serve our districts, the youth in the community. Um I would like maybe not so much on 45 year olds, but on programs that support youth. I like the idea of pulling together a group of partners. We've been talking a lot about partners here tonight um to think and kind of vision what this can be. Not like a 12 month process, but just what are sort of the key needs that the districts are seeing and how can we help address it. So we're not just coming up with the ideas, you know, we're hearing what the needs are and if it's workforce or whatever the key thing is that we can bring this to the table and that would be

107our contribution is bringing this this property. I think what's unique about this, this is 35,000 square feet. So, it's not all or nothing. You know what I mean? It's zone. I looked at the zoning. The zoning is for light manufacturing. I you know, I don't think there's going to be a lot of that in Satell County. This the vacancy rate for that is 7%. Commercial property, the rent, the vacancy in San County, last time I checked, was over 20%. So >> yeah, I mean as you know planning is planning departments and cities have rules and so >> prevention. Yeah, >> you know that's another issue that could be have to be explored but >> definitely address you can address it. Thanks >> Trusty Gerard. Yes, I um just wanted to um jump on the piggyback

108of using it as some kind of an educational facility in partnership with somebody. Um it was a shining star when we had RO in it. um and it can be a shining star again. And I am all for uh trying to find partners um that are interested in building programs um to educate students, adults. Uh that's what we did before and um I think we need to do it again. So, >> Trusty Aas, >> thank you, Trusty Gerard, because uh we both went to that ACV ACCB um conference and so I was going to like talk about it a little bit. So, I'm going to take this opportunity to just say that in San Diego County Office of Education, Dr. Matthew Tacier is he's the uh he leads the initiatives and ex and expands innovative

109innovative learning opportunities for within the county. So kind of like what trustee love said within the school districts in the county um they have this building. So in that building they uh provide opportunities for districts to come and work on uh different um uh future um there were STEM opportunities. There were um help me type. Um he also talked about how they bring uh schools for kind like a tour to participate in like um uh training I think it I I don't remember if it was high school for CTE right >> and then um but what I where I really one of my notes here is that um the question of board member is so we were there as board members of the county office of uh it's not whether CTE matters, it's whether your

110region is investing strategically on CTE, right? because um it it really means that it's not they were talking it's not an anti-ol like we're not that we're not promoting to go to college but the reality right of someone who graduates from high school and needs to find a job right in the moment and and the opportunity to be exposed to different options within CTE opportunities in that building I think it was three three floors right >> it it it was three floors >> three floors and they provide added different I um I wish I could remember it right now. My notes don't explain exactly what it was, but uh it was also a uh they had counselors that were mapping career opportunities with checklist so that they would like uh do that. um and the

111county office uh could become this was another presenter together with him from the Orange Orange County Office of Education and they had OC Pathways partnerships for college and career success. And so they talk again about how the county office can provide apprenticeships also opportunities and um and can be non-traditional for youth. So they had opportunities where there was 12 to 20 hour work uh positions. they were given some stipen I remember and um this also again supported the students to like try different paths and and possibilities because they were saying so many of the times our children might graduate without really knowing what their strengths or their you know the full potential that they might have if they're not exposed to the different careers. How would they know if within their their um you know

112um family or community they haven't seen that possibility right being a scientist or doing some kind of the STEM opportunities like uh I remember that robotics at uh at Hillrest. So what I did um so they they gave us this big huge like very big um OCT pathways gave us this big big um um booklet where you like turn pages and he put like from I think it was fourth grade or fifth grade elementary, middle school and high school and the the possibilities that could lead after graduating from 12th grade. Um and they had SK like very systematically organized in a way that you could see how the possibilities of someone graduating from um 12th grade could be in the future. And especially because they talked about um you know we talk about a lot

113of uh technology and how it's taking some of uh some of uh you know the jobs of uh um certain roles right but uh they purposely had situations where you know that they're going to be jobs in the future and are going to be needed. And so what I did is I didn't bring the whole thing but I I took picture I mean I took uh copies. So, I'm going to give them to Jennifer because they all have like uh QR codes and that booklet that I'm talking about is uh digitalized. So, you all can have uh if you want to take a look at it. But now, uh, you know, as we're talking about this possibility, I can see how this investment of this, uh, property stays within the Sato County Office of Ed.

114And just either, you know, what Trustee, uh, Love said, whether is for uh, youth all the way up to 12th grade or whether, like, you know, uh, Trusty O'Neal said, you know, for older maybe graduating graduating from the districts. But I think uh it's an opportunity to really invest in those possibilities of uh the Sato County office providing um this for the districts. And again um I don't have the all the information because the book doesn't say it but uh the I know that we had all the slides that we could also share because we save them. Um but it's just very innovative thinking outside the box uh idea that S um San Diego County Office of Ed did with that uh building. So >> and uh we were invited uh the board uh we

115were invited to visit this facility in September. So we will be going down in September to visit the facility I hope in San Diego. >> Um Trusty Iani, did you have your hand raised? Okay. Um, yes, lots of ideas that I heard that kind of got me going. Um, so I think there's different ways that this could be approached. One would definitely be reaching out to the community colleges and seeing what their needs are. Um, another would be reaching out to local nonprofits to see I know they're always struggling with space. Um I would I'm also interested in so I started off in after school programs and I know that there there's always a wait list and there's a capacity. So if there are the local school districts or the districts in that area um

116what their needs are for after school programs and what we can do to support there. Um I know Roblox is near here and if there's something that they could partner with us to do STEM labs or something and then just going I'm going to go out there a little bit of like I know this might be costly to redo the space but um if we make it a green space to have green space available and add like a community garden that would be an option and we can enhance like our environmental programs that we do here. Um and there's no active like kitchen there right now, right? So like maybe incorporating that because then that would allow us to do like culinary pieces. Um so I think there's a lot of ideas and a lot

117of potential and um other trustees named other amazing potentials. what I'm thinking. Yes. >> Um getting back to our conversation with the um Silicon Valley Foundation. Um they they were they've identified um um health um health what what was the term he used? There was a term he used in terms of the silver tsunami. Okay. That's coming. and the the health care needs and that they were even looking for trying to find a place to start treating teaching for labbotomy or whatever you know and they were they actually h have started a one of their goals in their programming is for um um work workforce development and economic mobility that they want to look at. and they're willing to help us. So, I don't know if like we should contact him again and tell them

118that the board now I'm reading that the board's would like to move forward to explore options and we'll see what maybe they're willing to help us with or what Marco >> Superintendent Chavis. >> Yes. No, these are great ideas and what I'm taking away is kind of an educational facility based that meets the needs of our um school districts that meets the needs of our community and community college. Um so and then there's models that we can maybe uh tap into. Um, and so what what I propose is that we take this back and we kind of draft out a road map of what it would look like. We also what it might look like in terms of um actions that we need to take because they I'm also thinking it might have a budget

119impact. Uh, and so bringing maybe some of that um, and connecting to resources like the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Now that we have a a picture of what that could be, I can talk to Moses um, and say this is what we're envisioning. Um, because one of the things that he offered or the Silicon Valley Community Foundation offers is to be able to facilitate some of these processes to get us uh, to develop a plan of action. So, uh, a lot partner with funding, um, to to help us do that. So, um, I'm happy to do that if if that's the the pleasure of the board. >> Yeah. And I was going to say another idea that I had is um we love subcommittees, but uh if we were because I also am thinking of

120not putting too much work on the county office team and if there's work that the board can do as a subcommittee in terms of reaching out to those partners or reaching out to folks and identifying who those groups and organizations are to kind of get that information um just to offset like the workload on the county office is why I would propose potenti potentially a temporary subcommittee um to figure out how to utilize this space. Just a thought, not a commitment. Um any other comments or questions? Trusty Love, >> just sometimes I think our subcommittees become more work for staff, right? >> Maybe you just call on us when there's assignments. I think we will um discuss that possibility of having a subcommittee but um and bring it back and see if that if that's

121if that works or it could be that um and again this is a brainstorming session. Do we go back to uh the facilities master's plan facilitators um because I know I believe that was part of the the plan to to look at that property um and see where that process might be and then bringing that as an option to the board to explore it further to explore the that facility further with those facilitators. >> Yeah, whatever is easier on the county office I think would be >> just two comments. One, one, we want the program to dictate the use of the facility. So, the program needs to kind of be decided first and then we engage the facility master planners. >> And two, based on this conversation, I'm probably going to be calling our broker

122and just let them know. The conversations are happening about us potentially using this facility. If they find something uh somebody comes forward and wants to rent it, we'll have to bring that to you and have that conversation. I'll alert that this conversation. >> Great. Thank you, Trusty Benini. Oh. Um I was I second that. Um just that we should you know have more direction before we do something like that in my opinion like in terms of like I think we we have a structure of what the building is and I think we can talk to it from that perspective. Um what was the other thing I was going to say? It's so late. Um uh oh uh I heard different things from everyone you know in terms of a focus um of you know not

123that we couldn't do more than one thing at the facility. I um Trusty O'Neal's point is taken. Um but I just want to emphasize my perspective is um not that we don't serve adults and other things if we but I my my preference is that we focus first on our own students next on sort of the countywide student population and then next on out of our our our jurisdiction if you will with K through That's just my p perspective. >> Thank you, Trusty Adios. >> Um yeah, I think I also would um really appreciate like I think Trusty O'Neal said about like um what is it called like and I don't know anything about this but what you can what is legally able to use in that building? What code zoning? Yes. uh because then

124that can give us a better idea of where to right because right now we're just brainstorming but maybe that can also define what according to the laws what can be there students school like you know after school what exactly could that provide um and I I was just thinking as you were talking um trusty Bonini it's like maybe in the day could be for younger and then at night could be for older and then community college, right? Like because how great would it be this uh that I'm going to provide is is called exactly pathway and it's course pathway sequences. So it meant that you start when they're younger, but right like you continue as they graduate from 12th grade and you know um we're hearing just right now our youth right are youth that

125are going to need um uh opportunities once they're maybe out and it's like maybe that's where if they're older than 18 that's another opportunity where in the evenings they have this place where they can be trained to economic mobility right so um and that will be provided by the Samato County Office of >> Thank you. Other comments or questions. Are there any from the public? >> No raised hands. >> Great. There is no action to take on this item. Um, for item 8C, Kevin Bolta, deputy superintendent, business services division, and Tammy Moore, associate superintendent, human resources, will present the public disclosure of the classification and compensation study negotiations agreement between the Sanato County Superintendent of Schools and the under reppresented group management employees at Deputy Superintendent Baltimore and Associate Superintendent Moore. >> So, this is

126an AB2756 disclosure. It'sformational only. This estimates and communicates the cost of implementing the class and comp study for certificate and classified management. Um important to point out not all um employees are receiving a pay increase. Some are related to the study, others are not and others were identified as actually being paid a premium for their services. The outcome of this agreement though does not um reduce anyone's pay and actually creates multiple salary schedules based on date of hire so that those employees who per the study um may not be increasing currently but in the future if we had negotiated increases they would get to benefit from those. So, um the total cost for the remainder of 2526 because this is um a go forward agreement with an effective date of April 1st is 126,288 and

127then for the remainder of that cost increase into next year another $378,864. So, no other changes just implementation of the class and comp study. The only remaining group is the teachers group. Uh and we have been negotiating the class and comp implementation with them as well. Hope to get that done very soon. >> Thank you. Um are there any comments or questions from the board? >> I am seeing none. Any from the public? >> None from the public. >> Thank you. There is no action to take on this item. Um for item 8D, we have superintendent's comments. Uh Superintendent Chavez, do you have any comments to share? >> Yes, I'll make them very brief. Um, I would like to take this moment to express sincere appreciation to our admin our administrative professionals across our county

128office of education. Their dedication, professionalism, and attention to detail are essential to the success of our organization. Uh, they provide outstanding support to our students, our families, staff, district partners, um, the county board of education, um, and our broader community. So very simply, they are the backbone of our organization and we really appreciate them and so happy administrative professionals day to them today. Um also I wanted to invite um the board. We're going to have a ribbon cutting celebration for our solar panel project now that it's complete. It'll be on Wednesday, April 29th at 1 p.m. Um, this accomplishment reflects our commitment to sustainability and responsible stewardship of resources. So, we're very happy and proud of that project and you all um were participants in that. So, you're welcome to join us if you're available.

129And then finally, um, extend our warm birthday wishes to, uh, President Torres, who will be celebrating his birthday on April 25th, Felis Complenos, and Deputy Attorney Lisa Cho, who will be celebrating on April 30th, Felis Complenos. Thank you. Thank you. Um for item 9A, the board will discuss and act on workforce housing priority and rental of units in public benefit agreement between the housing endowment and regional trust HART and the Sonteo County Board of Education, Sanonteo County Office of Education and the Sonteo County Superintendent of Schools, collectively SMCEE. Uh Superintendent Chavez. Thank you, President Torres. Um, so the Sanato County Office of Education has been working with housing with the Housing Endowment and Regional Trust Hart in partnership to provide workforce housing options to um to our employees um and education educators in SatO County.

130Um a public benefit agreement between SMCE and HART would document the relationship between these parties. Uh and the agreement the agreement gives uh SMCE certain rights uh tied to the financial contribution um and to the project's future public benefit use. So I'll turn it over to Deputy Superintendent Baltimore. >> I'll just introduce Armando Sanchez, the executive director of HART, the housing endowment and regional trust. He can provide a summary of the agreement itself and answer any questions of the board. >> Thank you. Um, are there Oh, I'll let you go first. >> Appreciate the opportunity to bring this before you again. Um, I will not go into great detail on the agreement. I just want to point out some of the most important highlights for you to understand. >> Could you speak into the microphone

131for Trusty Alvaro, please? >> Uh, there we go. >> That sounds much better. >> Thank you. >> Okay. So, I will uh point out the main parts of the screening that are really important for you to understand and hear and then u answer any questions you have. So uh I want to focus on section two and you know I will cover very briefly each of these points. Section A is the tiein with the indenture. The indenture being the bond covenants of when we acquire the property and issue the bonds. It has two very important provisions in there that must be met before educator units can become available. One is the minimum redemption standard and what this does is a it is a schedule of bond redemptions each year. We have set it up so that

132it is achievable with rent growths in the project at 2.5% and this will allow for the conversion of units all of the units becoming available to educators by year 11. So as long as we can meet that schedule all those units will become uh available by year 11. And just to show you the magnitude that oops okay and just to show you the magnitude of rent increases we'll have if we set the schedule at 2.5 okay% if rents increase 2.7% the market rates we could achieve full occupancy by educators by year six. So the margins are very small. This sets a a base that makes it very achievable to get all the units within 12 years, but we expect to outperform that and get them delivered to you a lot faster. The second criteria that

133is requires is that we maintain a debt service coverage ratio of 1.25. The reason both are included is that, you know, we may have a bunch of great years where, you know, we're bringing in a lot of units and all of a sudden there's a dip or a recession and the debt service coverage ratio might dip. unlikely but it could happen. So these are the two standards set by the uh the underwriting bank to ensure that we can m meet the minimum payments on the bonds. Um the second uh item B talks about a 10% minimum discount. Um this honestly is a relic of the past. It is a requirement that you know RBC the bank put on us for the in order to sell the the um the bonds. In the past when these

134projects were done the discounts were so bad that they wouldn't even reach 10%. And the advocacy group said in order for these to be of any value to the public there must be a minimum of 10% discounts. So we have to include that in the uh in the agreement. But the reality is we're shooting for much better than that. We're we're shooting for at least 25%. So you can honestly ignore that. That's just a relic of the past. That is a requirement. Now uh se section C um it says that one-third of the units must be occupied by uh households at uh that are low income that is at 80% of AMI. This is a requirement in order for the bonds to be um taxexempt. If one-third of the units were not specifically set aside

135for low-income people, we could not issue tax exempt bonds. Thus, it would raise the cost of getting them. Again, I believe that you want to have 100% at 80% low income or even much lower. And so again, our targets are much better and more responsive than the the minimum requirements set forth. And then lastly, it references a preference agreement which we do not have yet. Um, you know, from the committee from uh trustee um from from the trustee committee, I received what um the Jefferson Union High School District has done and I will use that as a starting model and present it to you and then you know I don't know how you want to go about it but you can provide feedback and then we can craft that out. We could do that. My

136hope is that would you know definitely before your next meeting we could have that agreement also in place. But the main key takeaway here then is that you know you are u m making a commitment to provide the 7.5 million which set uh which will be secured through a promisary note and deed of trust subordinate to the bonds. Uh just to make sure you understand it'll it'll carry at 3% interest that is not payable until the end until the all the bonds are paid off. We do not structure it as a cap equity contribution because that would cause all kinds of problems for the uh tax uh tax exempt bond. So it has to be structured as a loan. Uh you know but essentially it is also secured against the property as well. So you

137have that security there. And I think um those are the main elements of it. If you have questions I'd be happy to answer them. >> Yes. Before I dive into those, just want to make sure that we focus on the topic which is theou and if there are other questions related to the work um to be directed to the um subcommittee and superintendent chavez especially for sake of time. Um so comments or questions from the board. Trusty love >> just had a wanted to clarify something. So in the future if there's not enough revenue coming in to cover the bonds what happens? >> Um well there there's several safety measures involved in that. Uh you know the first provision is that um you know the the the um the units will trans um transfer over

138to educator units at a slower pace. So let's say there's not enough money. So we would slow down the conversion of the units. So that's one safety valve. Second, the bonds themselves required substantial reserves uh be set aside in case there's shortfalls in cash. So that's another opportunity to do that as well. So those are two uh very u very powerful um tools we have in case rents were ever in a situation where um they could not be paid. Uh trust I know in all the scenarios that we've seen in the Excel spreadsheets you brought um you've always had a discount of$1 to $2,000 a month. Okay. And that that and then that would get there. And I I emailed Kevin and he very kindly sent me the information and I was concerned about even

139if it's $5,000 a month and we have a a discount of $2,000, that's still $3,000. Okay. Customarily, if you want to buy a house, they look for 40% debt to income ratio. For apartments, they usually look for 30%. So, what I was concerned about was can the employees of the Sanio County Office of Education afford to live in these units even if even with a subsidy and Kevin sent me a sheet um a sheet with and I asked him for the mean incomes or median income so that and he disregarded the directors and principles etc. And so he gave me the median's incomes, you know, were for the exact center, which means half the employees are below this median. And looking at the CSEA 158, which are the pair of professionals, their mean income is

14047,890, which would mean that the subsidy would have to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,000 to 3500 a month if you know a paraprofessional was to rent the building. Okay. Now, that's based just on their salary. And I'm assuming you're going to want to have this based on family income, household income. >> That that would be correct. It would be b based on the income of the entire household. >> Okay. But if we have a single employee, depending on the policies and procedures we decide as the board to to implement that that a $3,000 a month subsidy would really lengthen the time until it becomes entirely of, you know, our employees. >> Yeah. Um, so again, you know, the the 20% 20% discount is across the board on average. So, as I've indicated um

141before, you know, you you can rent it to some that are a little bit higher, which would be very easy to slot in that you rent it to the ones where it's right at that level. And if you want to rent it to those that are extremely low, way below, they would essentially um, you know, take the subsidy of two or three others units. So in other words, you know, we if we have five units available and you want to make them available to some one person who's ex at that extreme level of low income, that means we probably have to keep two of the other units at market rates for a longer period of time. So you could definitely house um employees at any income level you want. It would just mean retaining more

142market rate units for a longer period of time. >> Okay. I just wanted to be sure the board set those expectations that you know you you said six years that depending on the population and how we write our policies in terms of who moves in there that could make it seven to eight years because of that. >> Trusty Benini. Um, I just wanted to thank you for asking the question because I was also looking at that and what's a lowincome household and I remember the conversations when I was on the committee about what you just said Arando um that you that we would have the ability to um adjust the amount we're subsidizing based upon the income level. And I guess yes it would impact the maybe impact the time frame but um where does

143that is that in the the the later documents that we create that that >> that's correct that that is where that would be. >> Okay. >> And ju just to share you know our board had very similar questions about it and one of the examples that I I provided them was that >> uh for those of you that tour the the uh facility you you know how impressive it is. I went to the inspection where we went into every single unit and some of those units I was like wow I I was just unbelievably impressed by them. But um you know one of the things that we ca came up at hearts board meeting was that you could have an employee that uh could rent a unit there for you know $3,000 let's say or

144they can go out into the general community and rent one for 2600 or something like that. Once they see the unit and what they could live for a few extra, you know, not a few, you know, it is a significant amount, but if they could stretch themselves to get into one of these units and then have their rent only increased a fixed amount each year, uh, once they see the units, it would be very hard for somebody to not make every effort in the world to live at this this apartment building. It is extremely attractive. >> Other comments or questions? Uh, Trustee Lev, >> this is just a question since I'm not familiar with these. Um, so if you give an employee $2,000 discount, is that um taxed then as part of their salary? Does

145that get put into their paycheck and get taxed? non- paycheck, but you know, how does that >> you know, my understanding is that educators have a a greater flexibility in employee related housing than other general employees of public agencies. And I think maybe u trustee um my I'm sorry I forgot your last name O'Neal trustee O'Neal can can uh share a little about bit about that because you do have uh your experience at Jeff Jefferson Union High School District. Could I just add to that then the difference being um so when we were I was on one of these housing committees a long time ago for the county if it's on district property is different than having a building that's in the middle of a downtown city. Is that >> No, I'm referencing some some

146information I got years ago and you know markets move so this might be not accurate. Le Lisa, you're the lawyer. is at one point when they at Crest um at Crestmore they were considering building staff housing for for the Santale High School district as well as the feeder districts. And my understanding was one of the things that was an impediment for that was when it was a um Santo High School district employees it would be fine but like a Berling game employee it could be considered taxable income. Now, that I don't know if that's accurate there, but I do know at Jefferson it is not to my knowledge it is not taxable income, but it is owned by the Jefferson High School District. >> So, that's my understanding. If it's if it's a school district

147doing it for its employees, that's different than another building somewhere else. But that was old information as well. >> Yeah. But for our purposes, this would be owned. you're basically holding it as a trustee almost for us and it's our benefici we're the beneficiaries of the trust. So I would imagine my guess is that this would be non-t taxable but possibly to to dis employee the discount might be taxable >> because the land would be the county office land >> county office that land. >> Yeah. Let me research that and get back to you trustees because I do not practice income tax um law and I'm not an accountant so I I'd have to look into the specifics of that. So let me come back to the workforce committee perfectly willing to be corrected. Um

148um yeah and and then Lisa I was also wanted to be sure being you know we could have employee A get a $2,000 discount employee B get 1,000 employee C actually gets 3,000. The leases are private documents. They're not a public document. Correct. So unless they're all in the recck room t, you know, doing iron and saying, "Hey, I got 3,000." You know, nobody needs to know, which they might do is it disclose private leases with individuals around housing, >> but it's isn't it considered income and salaries are public information for public employees. >> Yeah. So again around like how this gets counted towards an employes's income and whether or not that's taxable and then whether or not that's disclosable under public records because then salaries are taxable. Let me research those specifics. Yeah, I

149I don't know off the top of my head. I wish I did, but I don't know. >> I looked it up in Covered California and the employees there's not a the Jefferson High School District. There's no column there for like rental and rental discount >> and um you know I I will work with your attorney on this to look into it further. But um as you indicated this is privately owned essentially by heart. it it is not owned by the district itself. So um you know the rents it's it's a whole different now realm. Um, I would like one of, you know, for the agreement you have, you know, the for the for the I forgot what it was called, but the agreement, could you put in there Santo County Office of Education or its

150successors? Because in my experience with city council, the state will change the laws and there might not be a Sanonteo County Office of Ed because it might be the Bay Area office of education or something, you know, for its successors. >> Yeah, >> in 50 years, who knows? >> Uh, Trusty Alvaro, >> thank you. So, I have um just a clarification, please. Um, on item 2 C where it says the owner will use best efforts to lease one-third of the residential units in the project to low-income households. First of all, best efforts doesn't say shall. It says you're going to try. So, there's no penalty behind that. But the low-income households, and I know I I I asked you this sort of before, Amanda, but I'm really unclear about it. Is this the general public

151who happen to qualify as low income, or is this the lowincome people that we're talking about being our own employees? >> Um, okay. Uh, you know, let let me explain why it says best efforts and not Shawl. um if it's at Shawl it would require that one-third of the units be immediately occupied and as we all know that's an impossibility immediately and there's also the it is one of the escape valves in case there is any uh you know a recession or any u downturn in terms of the economy it means you know you make the best efforts to do it and you will provide those but if there are circumstances like you just bought the building and you can't fill them up immediately with one third because it's not vacant. That is that is

152one of the that is the reason why it it it says best efforts and not shawl. It's protection not only for the the bond buyers but it's also for SMCE's protection that we would never default on the building and put the whole project in jeopardy and you know uh jeopardize the the SMCE's investment in the property. Um that is actually you know a a good thing to have in this situation. And in terms of who it means, we, you know, we refer to it low income because that's again part of the terminology that's needed for the tax exempt bond issuance, but we, you know, it is understood here that we're talking about your employees. Uh, with the exception of the six units that exist already that are BMR units. >> And will those six units

153always be six units? >> It will always be six units. Uh, they are set for 55 years. So, we're about five years into it. uh assuming we pay then didn't pay the bonds off until the regular schedule, those units would become free uh of that those restrictions at year 30 >> and we can't say we've got a low-income employee. We want to get them into >> I think the city of Santo might frown upon that because those are supposed to be available to the general public. >> Okay. Okay. That I thought so, but I just wanted to clarify it with you. Thank you. Other comments or questions from the board? >> Trusty Benini. >> Oh, um I was just wondering um as we're talking about this and I think we had an update around conversations

154that were happening with districts or cities or whatever if there are any updates around that. >> Sure. update. I reached out to um the chief business officials of both Sanato Union High, Santo Foster City. Gave them um kind of a heads up. Um I think Superintendent Chavez reached out to the superintendent recently. Um you may hear from one this evening. Um and that is the one downside of this deal is that um property this this this property would come off the tax rules and the dollars that would typically go to some of our taxing entities and including our school districts and those boundaries would lose property tax dollars. So they're informed they may have some response to >> um just trusty superintendent. >> Yes. Um, for the record, um, we did or the board did

155receive, uh, a letter from Superintendent, uh, Randall Booker from the Semato Union High School District. Uh, we have Associate Superintendent, Chief Business Officer, Yansancy Hawkins, who wants to speak on this, uh, on this uh, topic and highlight the items of the letter. Um, he did submit a card, so we can wait or if you want to have him >> uh, we can wait once we get to public comment. Um, I will just have a request if we can do an analysis of um estimated cost of the loss because I know in the letter that we received there was the district had their own and I wanted to see if it matched what we projected or what we will project. >> Yes, you can double check my numbers on this and we just did a rough

156estimate but um probably 130,000 to $160,000 depending on whether you're Sano Union High or Santo Foster City. Yeah, that's what I calculated. Thank you. Um, Trusty Love, >> um, so and this is probably more for Mando. The, um, county, right, in its efforts to, um, help with folks who are unhoused has purchased, you know, hotels and things. Did you run into these same kinds of problems when you've done those types of things that push back be not the residents but from the the governments of the cities where you're taking the quality in off the books or something? >> Yeah. Uh, you know, I I I think the problem in that situation was that it was housing of former h homeless families. Um, you know, that that some people are concerned about that. Um, educators are

157and firemen, you know, they're our community heroes. No, but I was meaning the issue that you're they were taking those hotels and all the um not only the property tax, but you have like 14 18% on a hotel occupancy tax. All of that was getting taken away from the cities. And I was curious, did you get push back from the cities andor school districts on that? >> Well, the school district I I left it up to u superintendent Marcos and to to discuss it with him. I did go to the uh I contacted both the county of Sanonteo and the city of Sonteo. The city of Sanonteo was like, "Oh, we hate to lose the money." Um but they understand the public purpose and they were saying, you know, they they're not going to object

158to it. Uh but they did say, "Please don't do another one in our city." Um but you know, they they were amendable to it. um they less they were less amendable to the transfer tax and so we are including half of the transfer tax in in baking it into the deal. Uh they thought it'd be fair if they at least got half of it. We were claiming exemption for the full amount but um you know again we work in partnership with all of our communities and the project could absorb it. We had to change a couple of remove a couple of reserves that we're kind of planning on but we we comply we will comply and provide half the transfer tax to them >> and but I was wondering in previous examples where you guys

159have t no you but like the city or the county has purchased hotels like in Redwood Shores and in and those >> Half Moon Bay and so those are no longer getting any property tax for schools or or the um hotel tax for the cities which is pretty significant. So how did you address >> we were not involved in any of those transactions. >> Okay. Okay. Thanks. >> But I also think the cities got a benefit because that helped them with their arena numbers for affordable housing. So it did get to count towards that for both the county and the um project home key is what you're refer referring to. The only one that had the biggest issue was Milbury >> that has been but but they have been removed from other um and you

160know it's generally been accepted >> by school districts >> by by school districts and cities >> and and just a comment regarding the property taxes to for us to pay. I looked it up and the property taxes for that particular property existing are $500,000 and then you know there is that pie chart that says how much goes to the city, how much to school district, county, etc. And so um but for every dollar we pay in property taxes, that's less dollars we have for our employees for a subsidy, you know, of $1,000 a month, $2,000 a month or whatever. So, and the school districts, they get get roughly 50% of the property tax. So, you're talking 250 and I don't know what the division is between the two district separate districts. >> Are you talking

161about the transfer tax? >> I'm talking about the ongoing property tax. >> I mean, I'm sure we would still have to pay the bonded indebtedness for like sewer fees and because we're using the water and stuff like that. I assume we would have to pay. >> That's correct. >> Yeah. Trusty Benini. >> Um I just I wanted to um speak just a little bit more to the impact on the districts and our initial conversations as a committee. We we the first property we even looked at we had this conversation and we we said, "Oh, they definitely we definitely have to make them aware and have um a conversation." And then um I would encourage us maybe to start thinking about um what that conversation looks like other than we're taking your money, right? That maybe

162it's something else. Maybe we try to soften that a little bit um by thinking of some other ways that we could benefit the districts or maybe make them whole in some other way. But I'm not suggesting that outright. I'm just saying that um those are also our our kids in our county and it that's a you know it's not everything but it's a substantive amount and we had that conversation. We didn't fully discuss it but there were was some discussion around what that could look like and maybe we have ideas around it that we should start thinking about a little bit more. >> Um and I just want to point out you may not have seen districts coming forward on other property tax issues. This has been pointed out by from some superintendents and CBOS.

163They're not getting great information from assessor's office and controllers's office about what's happening across the entire county as properties are changing. They've reached out and um are pushing for us to improve our relationship the assessor's office controllers's office. So often they wouldn't know. In this case, we're close to the districts. Um we want to be transparent about it. Appreciate the timeline is a concern here because we're moving fast. So you may hear, you know, we would have liked to known earlier. Um, but anyway, our intent is to be open about this. You may not have again have heard districts coming forward on other properties because they probably weren't as aware maybe we would like. >> And I will, if I may, I will add to Trusty Benini's uh point. The request from Sato Union is

164just that that open dialogue. Um and um and also really communicating a comprehensive fiscal impact analysis of what this means to their district. Um and uh to explore mitigation uh strategies to offset the property tax. Um so that's asked from uh Superintendent Booker. There's also a difference at least in Half Moon Bay and um Milbury and I think the other city is they were LCCF funded so the property taxes really didn't make too much of a difference to them. So that's the difference in how the the funding mechanism. >> Uh any other comments or questions from the board? Any from the public? We do have a card submitted by um Associate Superintendent Chief Business Officer Yansy Hawkins. All right. Can you hear me? All right. Well, thank you to the board of education uh and

165Superintendent Chavez for this opportunity. My name is Yansancy Hawkins. I have the pleasure of serving as the associate superintendent, chief business officer for the Sanonteo Union High School District. Uh tonight I'm here uh to read into the record uh a letter from Randall Booker uh representing the board of trustees for the Sonteo Union High School District. Uh and I thank you in advance. Uh, dear members of the SMCEE Board of Trustees, I am writing on behalf of the Sanonteo Union High School District to formally express our significant concerns regarding the San Monteo County Office of Education's proposed acquisition of the property located at 1650 South Delaware Street in San Monteo in partnership with Heart of San Mateo. We recognize and appreciate the importance of addressing workforce housing challenges in Sonteo County and acknowledge the intent

166behind this proposal. However, the district has serious concerns about both the financial implications of this acquisition and the process by which it has been communicated to impacted public agencies. First, the financial impact to our district is substantial and long-term. as a public a agency acquisition, our this property would be removed from the local property tax roles upon transfer of ownership. Based on our current estimates, uh the Sato Union High School District anticipates a reduction in property tax totaling approximately $4 million uh over the next 30 years. At a time where school districts are facing increasing fiscal pressures, the loss of locally generated revenue is especially concerning given the rising costs that districts continue to face. The permanent loss of these funds raises serious concerns about our ability to sustain programs and services for students. Equally

167concerning is the lack of early and meaningful communication with the affected with affected agencies. SMUHSD was only recently notified of SMCOE's intent to proceed with this acquisition despite the clear and direct fiscal implications for our district. Decisions of this magnitude, particularly those involving the removal of significant property tax revenue from local school systems, necessitate a more transparent, collaborative, and inclusive process. Early engagement would have allowed for a more thorough understanding of the impacts, exploration of potential mitigations, and alignment with public agencies serving the same communities. While we understand the proposed model involves a phased implementation with current ten tenants remaining at market rates and workforce housing introduced gradually over time, the financial impact to school districts would occur immediately upon transfer of ownership. This disconnect between the timing of the fiscal impact and problematic benefit

168further underscores the need for careful consideration and inter agency coordination. Given these concern, we respectfully request that M that SMCE engage in direct and ongoing dialogue with SM UHSD prior to finalization of any acquisition. provide a comprehensive fiscal impact analysis, including long-term projections and potential mitigation strategies and consider mechanisms to offset or minimize the loss of critical property tax to local school districts. We remain committed to working collaboratively with SMCE and our regional partners to address shared challenges, including workforce housing in a manner that also protects the financial stability of our public schools. Thank you for your consideration of these concerns. We look forward to continued dialogue in this important matter. So, thank you very much. I appreciate your time. >> Thank you. Do we have other comments from the public? >> No other comments.

169>> Thank you. And may I please have a motion from the board. the motion to approve or deny the uhou. >> Move to approve theou. >> Is there a second? >> Yeah, I'll second it. >> Thank you. Um there is a motion to approve theou um made by trustee O'Neal and a second by trustee Alvaro. Is there any further discussion? May I please have a roll call vote? >> Miss Alvaro? >> I. Miss Aras. >> Hi, >> Miss Benini. >> Hi, >> Miss Gerard. >> Hi, >> Miss Love. >> Mr. O'Neal, >> I. >> Mr. Torres, >> I uh the motion passes with the vote of 70 and the board has voted to approve theou. Moving on to item nine. Um item 9B, the board will have second readings and take action on updated board

170policy 0460, local control and accountability plan. Board policy 3100, budget adoption and revision. Board bylaw 9224, oath of or affirmation, board bylaw 9260, legal protection, and board bylaw 9270, conflict of interest. Superintendent Chavez. >> Yes. Thank you, uh, President Torres. Um, the board policy subcommittee convened on March 16th to review new, revised, and mandated policies issued by CSBA or the California School Boards Association. Um those uh policies that you listed were brought forth on April 8th for the first reading. Uh in the packet you have there was no suggested revisions at that point. Um so in the packet there's the the red line or the highlighted uh policies with the changes and also the clean copies. Thank you. Um are there any comments or questions from the board? Any from the public? None from the

171public. >> Thank you. Is there a motion to approve updated board policy 0460, board policy 3100, board bylaw 9224, board bylaw 9260, and board bylaw 9270? >> So moved. >> Is there a second? >> Second. >> I heard a lot. Okay. Um, there is a motion to approve updated board policy 0460, board policy 3100, board bylaw 9224, board bylaw 9260, and board bylaw 9270 made by Trusty Benini, and a second by trustee Adas. Is there any further discussion? >> I don't think she did. I did. >> Oh, that's who I heard. Sorry. A second by Trusty Gerard. Is there any further discussion? May I please have a roll call vote? Miss Salvaro >> I >> Miss Aras >> I >> Miss Banini >> I >> Miss Jerard >> I >> Miss Love >> I. >>

172Mr. O'Neal Mr. Torres >> I uh the motion passes with a vote of 70 and the board has voted to approve updated board policy 0460, board policy 3100, board bylaw 9224, board bylaw 9260 and board bylaw 9270. Hopefully I said all those numbers correctly. Um, for item 9 C, after being reviewed at the April 8th, 2026 board meeting, the 2026 through 2027 board meeting calendar is before the board for approval. Are there any additional comments or questions? I do have a request to change the July 15th to a week after to July 22nd um after uh convening with um Jennifer Pera and Marco Chavez about moving that 15th date. Um that week um Trusty Adios and I will be at the NELO conference. So we would not be able to be present for that meeting.

173Um, so my request would be to change that to a week after. Um, if it were a week before, there'd be conflicts with um staff schedules and uh that Fourth of July holiday. Okay. So, moving cancelling the July 15th and moving it to July 22nd. Yes. Um, are there any other comments or questions from the board? Are there any from the public? >> None from the public. >> Thank you. Is there a motion to approve the 2026 2027 board meeting calendar with the amendment change? >> Approve. >> Second. >> Thank you. There's a motion to approve the 2026 2027 board meeting calendar uh with the amendment changes made by Trusty Benini and a second by trustee Adas. Is there any further discussion? >> May I please have a roll call vote? >> Miss Alvaro >>

174I. >> Miss Aras >> I. >> Miss Panini >> I. >> Miss Gerard >> I. >> Miss Love. >> Mr. O'Neal. >> Mr. Torres >> I. The motion passes with the vote of 70 and the 2026 through 2027 board meeting calendar with the amendment changes have been approved. Um for item 9D, when an ad hoc subcommittee meets or a representative attends a meeting related to their given assignment, board members may choose to bring a report to the board at this time. Would any board members like to report out? Thank you. Are there any comments or questions from the board? I'm seeing none. Any from the public? Thank you. There is no action to take on this item. We are moving on to board member comments. Being mindful of time and that I have a full-time

175job. Um, please limit it to at least a minute. Trusty Love, >> no comments. >> Thank you. Trusty O'Neal. >> Trusty Alvaro. >> No, no comments. >> Trusty Adas, >> it's not fair. Um, I do have quick comment. I just want to say again, you all heard April 10 to 11 ACCBE uh regional conference. It was great. I'm going to share again. I just want to remind QR codes and then April 13 family engagement conference at Riverside County of of um April 20 SMCSBA quarterly meeting. So I attended and I'm grateful for the SIS to solution curriculum. Thank you. >> Thank you, Trusty Benini. Okay, I'll be quick, but please remember to register for the Kent Awards. The act the link is active. It's on um May 8th. Please register. Um and I I guess

176I can report on things later, but I just wanted to acknowledge that there were a lot of items on our consent agenda that are it's a very active month. And I just wanted to acknowledge the items. Earth Day today, right? administrative professionals day that's already been noted, AAPI Heritage Month, mental health awareness month, Jewish American Heritage Month, and Foster Youth um awareness month. Those are all things that are on top pri you know top of our list of work. So um I just wanted to call them out because we don't talk about them individually. Thank you. >> Thank you, Trusty Gerard. >> Um very briefly, I did attend the ACCBE conference. It was excellent. And I do want to just say one thing that every single person there almost that spoke said and that is

177we need to listen and talk to our students. Um that was a great message. Also um attending the Sonteo County School Boards Association dinner Monday night. It was an excellent presentation. Um and uh uh I'm looking forward to the Ken Awards. have been doing those visits this week and they're great programs. >> Thank you, Trusty Benini. >> Uh I just want to say one more thing um before we have our our next meeting is May 6th, right? So that day is our next um Corton Community School teacher appreciation lunch for the 17th district. So it's in the middle that's lunch on Wednesday the 6th. So if you can attend um please do. I just want to make sure to say >> thank you. uh my comments. Just a shout out to Jennifer Pererna for admin

178professionals day. Thank you for all you do. Thank you for uh to Kevin Boltzma and Marco Chavez for all the work behind the scenes. Truly appreciate all of you. Um that's all I have. Item 10 is the adjournment. So our next regular meeting will be our study session on Friday, April 24th, 2026 at noon. And this meeting is now adjourned. >> Okay. Good night everybody.