SMFCSD Regular Board Meeting - February 26, 2026

001Looks like we have students from Burough Island who are here to lead the flag salute. All right, go ahead and go to the microphone. >> Okay, please rise for the pledge of allegiance. >> Ready, begin. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. Thank you so much. Um, okay. Roll call. Trusty Brooks >> here. >> Trusty Kim >> here. >> Trusty Proctor >> here. >> Trusty Hope here. >> And I am here also. Um, approval of the agenda. Does anyone would anyone like to make a motion? >> I'll make a motion to approve tonight's agenda. >> Second. >> Okay. All in favor say I. >> I. >> And next we have approval of

002the minutes. Would anyone like to make a motion? >> I'll make a motion to approve the minutes. >> For December 11th >> and January 22nd. Um, I'd like to um uh make sure that there are some clerical errors that were corrected first in the January minutes before approving. >> Um, yes, they corrected. >> Um, all in favor say I. >> I. I. >> I. >> Okay. Uh, updates from employee groups. We have We'll start with SMFCA. >> Yeah, that's us. >> That's us. Okay, let me see how I do this again. Do that. >> Hold on you guys. I just want to share our I did this before. Hold on one second. Um, >> Jiannis, >> Chrome tab. Oh, here we go. >> We got it. >> Okay. >> Yeah, I'll move this. >> Yeah.

003Okay, we're ready now. Good evening, board of trustees, superintendent OOA, and community members. My name is Julie MacArthur, and I am the principal of Brewer Island Elementary School. It is my pleasure to provide you with an update this evening on our school. But before we begin, I want to take a moment and let you all know how these four gentlemen were chosen to present tonight. Earlier this year, um, well, these fifth graders exemplify the Brewer Island core values of being kind, safe, and responsible. Earlier this year, they witnessed on the playground a student being treated unkindly, and they not only stepped in to support him in that moment, but they followed up afterwards to make sure that he was doing okay. We are incredibly proud of the compassion and leadership they consistently consistently demonstrate on

004our campus. Tonight, I'm excited to share a small sampling of some of the wonderful things happening at Brewer Island. First, we are providing additional path phonics support for our select kindergarteners who would benefit from a little extra time building foundational reading skills. Our TOSA trained our pair professionals in path methodology and we are about to begin offering brief afterchool sessions for students who need that little extra nudge. Additionally, our staff, as a staff, we made the collective decision to bring the majority of our alpac assessments inhouse this year so that students would feel comfortable by being assessed with familiar faces. Our hope is that this added sense of comfort and familiarity will allow allow our students to perform at their best. We have also transformed our computer lab. Oopsie. Okay. It's all good. Um, we

005have also transformed our computer lab into a dynamic space called the think tank and launched weekly all community school meetings known as dolphin dives. At this time, I'd like to turn the presentation over to our fifth grade upstanders to tell you a little bit more about these two programs. >> Double tap. >> Oh, no. like you're tapping on the >> I think you're clicked on the screen. >> You clicked on those. >> Oh, there we go. >> They got it. Don't you worry. Don't you worry about me. They got it. Okay. >> Okay. So, what's new this year? I already shared with you that we are doing some extra path support for our kindergarteners and that we are doing site driven alpac assessments. I'm going to have our friends tell you about our think tank

006in dolphin dives. This year we turned our old computer lab into a think tank where students can explore both low tech and high-tech activities that allow us to use our imaginations. >> To do this, we partnered with teachers from SMEA, our PTA, and the Foster City Rotary Club to help with volunteers and funding. >> Stop motion animations. Students create stopotion animation videos by planning scenes, moving options scene by scene, and using the digital technology. Students use their ideas to create the animation videos. >> Third grade students come up with an idea to create an origami video. >> And fourth grade students use their ideas to create a science project showing a volcano eruption. >> This is the video of the stop motion. Oh, wait. It's not on. >> Oh, sure not. >> Oh, >> yeah.

007That's because it's still screen sharing that page. You don't have it screen sharing your whole screen. Sorry. >> Is the computer dude? >> Giannis is our computer dude. That's for sure. Okay. >> Okay. >> 3D pens. Using 3D pens, students experience engineering and design principles to design and build two-dimensional and threedimensional objects. Here are some student examples. >> Paper ball runways. Students challenged themselves to create a ball maze that would take a ball from the top of a structure to hit a target like a cup below. The materials that were used are construction paper, cardboard, scotch tape, the glue gun, and liquid glue. Here are some examples of the paper ball runway maze that students made. That's final paper ball runs. To create these mazes, students use STEM principles such as gravity, momentum, and structural

008stability. They also use architectural planning and spatial design to go outside the box literally which allowed them to not limit themselves to the constraints of the box. >> Students also personalized projects including signs saying you got this and so close to encourage the ball as it reaches the end. >> Coming soon >> sublimation printer purchased with the support of Susmeita grant submitted by two of our teachers. A 3D printer purchased with the support of the Foster City Rotary and student training being supported by two high school students who currently run the 3D printer at the Foster City Library. >> Dolphin dives are our all school community meetings where the entire school comes on Wednesday mornings at the start of the day. >> Okay. During these meetings, we say the pledge of allegiance and read our

009land acknowledgements. >> Talk about our life skill of the week. Do a math mindset routine with our math tossa or schoolwide yoga with our PE teacher. >> Or our student council makes announcements. >> We might solve a school problem like littering. >> And we always end by singing our school song together. >> Oh no. >> Here we come. learning, growing, having fun. We work hard and learn things every day with kindness and caring. We make new friends along the way when new challenges come our way. A growth mindset will save the day. Kind, safe, and responsible, too. Brewer Island, we love you. Oh, thank you to our multi-talented students here. >> Okay. Oh. Oh. Oh. Because >> I'm pretty sure that was >> Okay. What do we need? All right. So tell us what kind

010of What do we We need to share. We need to share this. >> Honestly, um I I do not use uh I do not use Canva ever, but I think that I can >> We just need you to get it to share up there. >> Okay. >> So, we need to maybe stop sharing this. >> I know you got this. >> Yeah. Yeah. Let's do that. >> Okay. >> And then Go back over here. >> Go to my go to this. Go to my email >> cuz I think we have to rejoin as a go here. Oh dear. Join webinar. >> Okay. join. >> Okay. Once I join again, you'll figure out how to Okay. >> Yes. >> We're We're on it. We're We're in it together now. Yiannis. >> Oh, look at that. >>

011Yep. >> Perfect. We can go sit down. >> I I think I know how to solve it. >> Yeah. >> Okay. I think you got it actually. >> Yeah, you got it. >> Beautiful. Awesome. Thank you for your help. Woohoo. All right. Come on over, friends. >> Okay. I'm going to miss my son. Okay. Okay. Good evening everyone. My name is Jessica Murphy and I'm the principal at Laurel Elementary School. I have the esteemed honor of hosting these five students with me tonight. One of them in which is a fifth grade student that is going to be talking us to talking to all of us about a leadership move that she has done on our campus and the other four are going to be talking us talking to us about their reclassification journey. Okay. Our

012first up is a fifth grade student. This is Charis. Charis um grew tired of hearing others on the yard say things, for example, as you do not belong. Um and she witnessed some classmates being teased because of their size. So, she decided to take a stand and educate her peers. Um instead of staying silent, she chose to use her voice to promote kindness, inclusion, and understanding. And we are incredibly proud pr proud of her leadership and her bravery as she's shown. and she's going to share her story with you. We don't have all of her slides here, but this slide presentation is being given to all of our students at the school as well. Are you ready? Would you like to introduce yourself to the board? >> Yeah. Um, my name is Jarus Cassetti and

013I really like want all the kids in my school to like like feel like how others feel so they can know what to say and what to do. Um, controlling your feelings. It's natural to be angry, sad, and frustrated. Sometimes you may not be able to control what you say, do what you say or do. These are ways to calm yourself. Take a deep breath. It helps to relax your heartbeat and nervousness. Two, use the 1 2 3 4 5 techniques. Is to identify items you can see, hear, feel, smell, and taste. Three, wash your face with cold water. It makes you more refreshed and ready. And these are some pictures that I like kept to help um the younger students to understand. >> Next. >> Okay. Yeah. So this presentation along with five other

014slides Charus has given to all of our teachers and the teachers are sharing it with our students and this is one of the ways that we like to uplift our student voices at our school. Thank you for sharing that with them. Next, joining us, I have four students that are going to talk to you about their reclassification journey. I'm going to first have them introduce themselves to you. >> Hello, my name is Mayaio Serrano. I'm in fourth grade in the Lower Elementary Lemonary School. >> Hi, my name is Amari Marga and I am also in elementary school, fourth grade. Hi, my name is Alas Cortez and I'm in fourth grade. >> Hi, my name is Julia and I'm in fourth grade. >> And they are here tonight to answer three very important questions that they

015too have gone through kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and third grade classrooms to share their journey to help uplift other students to be successful as they are. So, your first question is, what makes you most proud about being able to speak more than one language? So, when you're going to speak, you're going to come up to the mic. Okay. I really like speaking two languages so I could help my family and help them understand what people are saying and also try to help all the students in my school so I could be a more kind person. I am proud to speak more than one language because um I can like teach myself and my parents can teach me so that I can help other people understand my language and um English. I'm proud to speak

016two languages so I can teach other people my language. >> I'm proud to speak more than two languages so I can help my parents translate. >> Next question. What excites you most about reclassification? It excites me more that I could I'm finally one step um farther of my dream of becoming a kind, nice and hardworking person. >> I'm really happy that I don't have to take the alpaca test anymore. And um and um that now I can like uh focus on myself better. >> Um I'm proud of um like for my reclassification because um so my parents can be proud of me. >> I'm happy for reclassification cuz my parents will be happy at me. >> Here's your last question. What advice would you give to students who are on their journey as a multilingual

017learner? >> To to to never give up and to keep trying. >> I will tell them um don't give up and you can do this and you'll do such a good job on your alpaca. >> Keep trying. No matter if people call you names, keep going. Be kind, be respectful, listen in class, and also always focus on yourself and what you're doing towards your life. So, these four students have been speaking to our kinder through third grade classes. And for our fourth and fifth grade classes, we partnered with Abbott Middle School, and they have students coming down to speak to our fourth and fifth grade students about reclassification. So, we want to acknowledge the fact that these four have reclassified this year and we are extremely proud of all of our students and their leadership

018that we're doing at Laurel. Thank you. Exit this. Let's just stop sharing. >> This part I think is easy. We do this and we do that. Thank you very much to the students at both Brewer Island and Laurel. Um, next we have an update from CSEA. >> Do we have anyone in person or online? >> Let me unmute. >> Anyone online? Oh, there we go. >> I see Miss Bishop there. >> Hi guys. I don't know if you're able to hear me. see me. Um, >> we can hear you. >> Okay. Well, that's best best out of out of the uh situation. Uh, good evening trustees and superintendent ooa executive staff and guests. Uh, for any new guests here tonight, my name is Brienne Bishop and I'm here on behalf of the CSEA Chapter 411,

019uh, which is the union serving our classified uh, employees of the district. our chapter president felt the only thing uh we need to mention tonight is the same thing that comes up each year around this time. A bit further down the agenda for tonight is the classified layoff list. Uh while we are very grateful this list only includes one employee uh this time. Nonetheless, it's none uh no less disappointing that an employee who works directly with students making 22 to $23 an hour and only uh uh 0.75 FTE is being cut. Although we acknowledge that this is a parent funded position, it's no less crushing for the affected employee and the students they serve. Uh we do want to recognize uh and extend our heartfelt thanks to Aaron Bailey in HR for looking into other

020positions for this person and finding a few uh that this person can apply for. We wish the best outcome for everyone. Um as always, we thank you for the opportunity to shine a light on the happenings within the classified staff of our district. That's all I've got for you. Thank you. Thank you. Next, do we have a report from Smeita? >> Good evening. I'm here tonight on behalf of the educators of SMIDA as we move through February. This month, many teachers participated in listening sessions during their contracted workday as part of the district's strategic plan process. We appreciate the district's commitment to seeking meaning meaningful teacher input. These conversations are essential as we build a strategic plan that truly supports educators and students. Tonight, Sama shares its sunshine statement for reopener negotiations with the public.

021I'm grateful for the collaborative relationship between our union and the district. The needs of our educators are no different from those in our neighboring districts. San Francisco teachers recently concluded a strike. Oakland and Dublin Dublin educators appear to be headed for work stoppages as soon as next week. All of us are struggling to afford to teach in the Bay Area and raise a family. However, I'm comfortable knowing that the relationship of trust and creative problem solving that SMEA and the district have built together will allow us to reach a speedy agreement that addresses these real challenges. Thank you. >> Thank you. Do we have foundation report? Good evening. I'm here from the Santo Foster City Education Foundation. I wanted to report to everyone about our readathon. Um, this was our 10th annual readathon. It was

022our most successful readathon yet. So, thank you to everyone who supported it, our board, our principles, our staff, um, and our parents and kids who really participated in it. So, um, our students read more than 2.5 million minutes and previously they had read close to 2 million minutes. So, that's a five literally a 550,000 minute increase in reading. Um, we raised over at this point $140,000 including some matching that has come in recently. We had $4,525 readers, so kids tracking their reading minutes, which is almost half of the students in our district. And that's including preschool and middle school, which are kind of our growing populations of who we're trying to get on board with the readathon. And um the two winning schools were George Hall and Parkside. That means they got highest um average

023reading minutes and highest average um participation in fundraising. So they are getting author assemblies soon. And we also chose this year to recognize our most improved schools. So our two most improved schools were lead and park. So, they are getting a bundle of books from those authors to have in their school library because they improve the most in um participation in fundraising and average reading minutes. So, we wanted to um cheer all of them on. Um, not to skip a beat on going just to the next thing, but I wanted to also just note that we have our um, Harlem Wizards event coming on May 3rd. That is really one of the only full district community events that we run. It's a really fun basketball game. It's almost more of a performance than a game.

024But I will say, mark your calendars. Um, I will formally invite Superintendent OOA to be the coach of the staff team. And I don't know if David Shamblas is coming back as our assistant coach slashplayer holding two crucial roles. You are both formally invited and we hope that staff that have played in the past will come back and maybe some new staff will join the team. We'll be sending out an email next week to principles to fill out a form and have staff sign up to join the team. So it is happening on Sunday, May 3rd from 3 to 5:00 pm at Aragon High School's gym. And we hope you can all join us. Thank you. >> Okay. Do we have any other committee reports >> from the board? >> No. Um, do we have

025anyone from the PTA council? Okay. No. Um, moving on to public statements related to non-aggenda topics. I have four speaker slips. Um so I'll start with um Alicia Gilman. Good evening. Uh my name is Alicia Gilman and I'm a kindergarten teacher at George Hall. Go read Readathon. Um so um I have a few topics I wanted to talk about. I'll try and keep it short and sweet. Um, I wanted to bring it to the attention of everyone that we're losing funding um for music and art. And the plan right now is for school sites to use their own funding to sustain those programs. And it's not sustainable for us to keep doing what we have now. And what we have now is awesome. And it's giving our kids access to music and art that's going

026to benefit their future. So, um I think that I'm hoping that we can find another way to fully fund both programs. Um I also would like to talk about our class sizes. Um since I joined the district six and or five and a half years ago, our class sizes have just went up and up and up and it's I have 25 kindergarteners in the room. I would love for anybody to come and be a sub for the day and experience that. Um, we do our best always, but I think putting students first, the idea needs to go down, not up. Um, also the school board, I'm hoping we can be a little bit more transparent of where money is going. For example, um, the state of California gave our schools funding, um, our school district

027funding for our schools to train the staff on dibbles. Um we have been informed that our tossas are being trained directly and then we are going to get secondhand training on how to administer these tests. Um so I think that my hope is that there was enough money to have us be directly trained by the company. Um and I hope that that's something we can do in the future so that we can administer it to the best of our ability. Um, I also think that, you know, money is being spent on Lego labs and apps. And while those things are great, um, there's a lot that's been taken away in the five and a half years that I've been teaching. Our SDC classes have been condensed to three grade levels per class. Um, this has

028caused an increase in behaviors. It's an increase in curriculum load for the SDC teachers and it's a cut in Paris staff. Um and inclusion is our mission and it's hard to do those things when the supports aren't there. Um also in general education when we have a combo class we will teach two grade levels. So I'm wondering why we have a three grade level span in one of our most vulnerable populations in SDC. The district has also cut par support for RSP services. they don't have any RSP uh any PAR support anymore. So again, where's the money going? Cuts are happening at the bottom and I'm curious if they're happening at the top as well. Um because we're feeling it down below. Um I would like to thank everyone for their time listening now and

029consider these topics in future conversations that you have. Thank you. We have um Adisola Seligman. >> I just want to say uh I'm inspired by all the young people in the room and and you guys are all here. You're showing us why we're here and you guys are the reason why we are here. So, thank you and and I want to speak on behalf of the My name is Scholola Seligman. I'm a George Hall teacher. I've been there 15 years and I just want to echo a lot of what was already said. Uh I guess I'm I'm a little bit concerned about kind of the spending in the budget and and where the spending where the spending is being prioritized is kind of my fear. uh and apps, programs and and programs that have been

030kind of adopted by the district that have proven unsustainable. And so like the Lego Lab, I was the Lego lead at the school and I was excited about this and it all got implemented and the the program just kind of has gone to pieces. you know, we lost the contact here at the district office after year 1 and it was kind of put on us to maintain the the Lego lab and it just hasn't been sustainable. And so for a number of reasons, one uh or I would say the main reason is that a lot of the kits that you order parts from now, we don't have they're been discontinued. And so parents have thankfully taken the lead to get parts, do the inventory, which we were doing as teachers previously, and it was really

031difficult. Uh, and so that's one example along with some of the other apps that have been adopted with very little kind of teacher input or consideration. And so when we're thinking about spending, what I would love and what I would appreciate is if we really think about how is this best going to serve our students and and whether it's an assessment program, whether it's curriculum. I mean, I think the math adoption has gone particularly well and it was done kind of through the right channels and done in a very meaningful way and I really appreciate that. I think as we look at these other things and where spending is going, it's important that we consider what's going to serve our students best and also that we think about how we can allocate these funds and

032spend these things on things that are also sustainable. Because that's the fear is that you have something and then it kind of goes away and then you have something and then it goes away. instead of having real kind of sustainable things that speak to best practices in our classroom and things that really work well. So, uh, I appreciate your time and I appreciate you listening and I don't want to bring down the mood. I I mean, I I'm so happy to see these young people and I want that to be about them, but I just wanted to say that my part. So, thank you for your time. >> Thank you. >> Next, we have Laura Walters. Hi. Um, good evening, Superintendent OOA, um, assistant superintendent, uh, trustees, and welcome community. My name is Laura Walters.

033I'm a teacher at Bowich Middle School, a smid site rep, a former parent of Santo Foster City School District students, and a foster city community member. Tonight, I would like to share my appreciation for the new facilities at Bowage Middle School. 18 new classrooms opened as teachers and students returned from fall break. I am one of the fortunate teachers to be in a new classroom. After 11 years in a dark cave without windows, I am excited every day to work in a space that enjoys natural light. I actually have the best classroom located at located at the far southeast corner of campus. I enjoy view of the Belmont Hills, the open sky, the levy, and the comingings and goings of neighbors on the corner. This past month, our new media center and counseling offices opened.

034Students are excited to enjoy these new spaces with high ceilings, walls of windows, and flexible seating. Our counselors are now all housed together and are in the same space as the wellness center, providing more access and supports for students. In addition to new buildings, we are enjoying beautiful new outdoor spaces, covered walkways, open patios, outdoor seating, and the best is the artificial turf where groups of students can be seen lounging and rolling around between classes. Why does this matter? This matters because there is talk of a bond measure to raise additional funds to continue modernizing Samato Foster City School District. As wonderful as my new classroom is, and as much as I am experiencing a positive mood and mindset provided by my new space, we have 17 teachers who are teaching in old, dark, dank

035classrooms. Many of these spaces are without windows. And this is only what is happening at Bowitch. Many of our teachers across the district are still in subpar spaces. Schools have old roofs, leaky windows, outofdate bathroom facilities. The list goes on. Quite honestly, I was against the idea of another bond. However, since settling into my new classroom, I recognize the benefits and am experiencing I recognize the benefits I am experiencing and know that it is the same for my students. Every day I look out my window and say to myself, how lucky I am. And in the same breath, I recognize that all teachers and all students deserve the same. Every child across the district should have access to beautiful, modern, light-filled spaces. I hope you have the chance to see the changes at Bouch. I

036invite you to stop by room 8 anytime. I can be found on the corner of Beach Park Boulevard and Swordfish, quite literally. Um, and please remember, schools are an investment in our children, and the spaces we welcome them into should reflect the high value we hold for each of them. Thank you. Okay. Um, I think we just have one more speaker. Um, Jen Flores, do you I don't have a topic listed on here. >> Oh, I'm sorry. About the nutrition program. >> Okay. Um, yeah, go ahead. Good evening. >> Hi, my name is Jen Flores. I am a first grade teacher at Ottabon Elementary and I'm here with my colleagues. Um before we start, I want to add that um we also really love our music and art program and had a very um great

037discussion at dinner tonight about how much we love it and hope it can continue. Um, but I'm up here um to talk about the nutrition program. Uh, we first want to say how happy we are to see the kids have access to breakfast and lunch. However, we want to shed light on some of the food being served each day, particularly at morning recess. We have some concern over the nutritional concerns being offered each day. We see students eating cocoa puffs and chocolate milk or a double chocolate chip muffin, Lucky Charms, pastries, cake, and so on. Today actually the students were served a six-pack of powdered mini donuts. This disproportionately impacts socioeconomically disadvantaged students who are relying on this food for nutritional value. Additionally, students are coming back from recess on a sugar high which negatively

038impacts their learning. We recognize that cost is a factor, but we are sure there are healthier options. For example, changing from Honey Nut Cheerios to regular Cheerios. To know better is to do better. And we hope the district can do better for our students. Thank you very much. Thank you. >> Um I'll actually if we could just take a quick let's say two-minut break so that people can leave if they wish to. But um yeah, two minutes. child. >> And my parents are still here, so I still live. Okay. >> We visited yours. >> Yes, you came to me. >> Oh, yeah. >> I left her where back there. >> Who was the person that came when it was the bike ebike rodeo in a monsoon in November? because she's a biker. >> Exactly. >>

039I thought I'll be electrocuted and she brought her bike and she rode around and then the other one that they just had Yeah. >> That was very good. They learned a lot since then. >> Excellent. >> They recorded it. They're going to >> Okay. Um >> going to call I guess back into session. Um give me a second. I'm just gonna They're leaving. Okay, it's fine. They're leaving. >> Um, public statements >> related to agenda items. Persons will be called on the at the appropriate time. Do we have any announcements from anyone? >> Okay. Um, superintendent report. >> All right. Thank you so much. Um the first is a big thank you to every teacher and staff member who came to our listening sessions. We were um you know sitting together back in December talking

040about um how great it would be if we had a venue where we could sit and listen to our educators. Um just talk through things that are working for them, things that challenge them. um examples where they felt like collaboration resulted in solutions, examples where they felt like they elevated concerns that ended up not moving forward or or sort of points of frustration. Um a big thank you to Lisa Joseph who helped facilitate those meetings and to Ruie Bao from the Bayad Fund who who worked with us. um we were able to get substitutes um at multiple schools and then we had 2-hour time frames where teachers came and then the substitute would go into a different teacher's classroom and there was a little bit of sort of like you know taking a teacher's classroom

041for a few hours and then switching. Um it was also one of the rainier days in San Mo so it added a difficulty that I just want to thank our teachers who showed up because there was a lot of stress in actually getting there. Um but also just how special it is to um as an administrator to just listen, you know. So was 7 hours of listening, which that's probably more than the average administrator. >> You all over there. um you know because in in our jobs we're often in a position to explain things or present things or you know and and there's a there's a real um purposefulness to how we're building that into this new community strategic plan that I think is going to bear a lot of fruit for us. So big

042thank you to our teachers. Um, we had a big party earlier this week at Parkside and it was part of a school visitation um that we had all over the district and I started my day at Northshore View Monasuri. So, I wanted to um just celebrate that school and what we saw at Northshore View Monasuri and the new principal there, Lisa Holo, um who was a teacher at Parkside the year before and she's just doing a dynamite job um connecting with with the instructional staff there. and we walked into some TK kinder classrooms that were just amazing learning spaces. So, a big thank you to the team there. Um, and I also wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about the celebration that we held at Parkside for their new multi-purpose room. Um,

043that project took a a longer time than we wanted. Um, but it was worth the wait because the facility is truly beautiful. It's going to last a long time. It feels like it's part of the identity and the philosophy of the school. Um, our board president did a great job talking through the district's commitment to facilities and what that has to do with the experiences that kids have when they're at school and also previewing that there is more work to do as we heard tonight from uh Laura and from and we've heard from others um as well in the community. Um, if you haven't been to the Harlem Wizards to transition event, it's it's my favorite event of the year because it brings kids from every single school. The Harlem Wizards will go to your

044school and do assemblies and get kids excited. um you see kids there, they're just hovering around these basketball players because um while David and I and others really want to beat them when we're on the court, we have very little chance of achieving that. But you know, the they're performers. They're basketball players, but they're really incredible performers and they really bring joy to a community that, you know, May is it's a rough time for public education. been doing this for 9 months and we're tired. And the event just feels like a burst of energy. And they end every year with um they invite all the kids onto the basketball court and then the team leads them basically dancing to different songs that that kids like and they invite all the parents to stand behind them

045and just video with their phones what they're seeing, which is just like the world's biggest dance party for elementary schooled and middle school age kids. and it's just very wholesome and really fun and um and they do a great job. So, I wanted to put a plug for that. And then uh lastly was able to tour the new facilities at at Bowic um their new uh library space and their new counseling space and and um really get that sense of of um the students walking into a place that now feels like their home and it feels like where they belong. Um so a big thank you to the administrators who um work with these incredible teachers at Baich and who serve students and families that are so I mean Baich is really it has a

046really important place in the city of Foster City. Um and it it's part of the identity of the city and and so to see this big investment going in and to see um the teenagers and and the families um getting that sense of pride that you know Bowage it was rough you guys for a long long time. It's it's been it's it's needed in an investment and what a celebration to see an investment like this and in a place where the school plays such an important part in the community. Um just a big thank you to the voters who um helped us put this together and a big celebration for everybody involved. And that's my report for tonight. >> Thank you. Um, next we will move on to the proposed consent agenda. Would anyone like

047to pull items from the consent agenda? >> No. Um, if I will check for audience requests to pull any agenda items. Okay. >> Okay. Joe, can we check online please? >> Yes. Just checking. No. Raise hands online. President Tren. >> Okay. Thank you. Um I guess I will take a motion to approve the consent agenda. >> Uh motion to approve the uh consent agenda. >> I'll second. >> All in favor say I. >> I. >> President Trin, if I can u add something. We have done this multiple times and we haven't always had the timing just right. And I realize now I may have spoken like a half a second too fast, but one of our newest employees in the district is here. So I want to give her an opportunity to come and say

048hello to you all and just introduce herself. She's wearing the right sweatshirt. >> She's wearing the right sweatshirt. So she got that part of the assign. You can come up to the mic. That way you'll come out on television. You can tell your family, oh look, I'm on TV. >> We miss this sometimes. >> Um, sorry. Here we go. Um, good evening. I'm Angelina Santana, board president. Um, everybody else here present. I didn't expect this, but thank you very much. I'm very excited to join the team because that's the way I see it. I've had um the privilege of going to the school site and meeting the staff. So, I'm really excited to bring the whole uh bilingual education as we see with the students. Um, and also just committing myself to the community, a

049community that I've grown up in. I grew up in San Francisco, so I see myself in a lot of the kids. And so hopefully we can merge stories and just build and keep growing together. So I appreciate that I am hired. Thank you. Okay, great. Um let's see. Next we have uh oh that's the whole consent agenda. Um 5A report on SMFCSD longitudinal demographics analysis. >> Uh yes, good evening. Thank you so much. Um, tonight we're going to have Rob Murray from King Consulting who's done a really in-depth analysis for us on uh, longitudinal data and our enrollment, what it's looking like over the next several years. So, uh, we provide you with a very a copy of the very in-depth report that Rob did for you this evening, and he's just spent a few

050minutes, five or so minutes or so, just, uh, walking through a couple highle highlights of the analysis he's done. We're using this information for a whole variety of purposes. Um, so we're really grateful to the work that Rob's done. We're also appreciative of the fact that he's at a conference and he took some time out to come and talk to us tonight. So, thank you, Rob. >> Right. Thank you, Patrick, and thank you everyone on the board. Just wanted to confirm that I'm coming through loud and clear. >> Yes, thank you. >> Okay, so uh with that, uh yeah, as said, uh there's a lot of information in the full report. I won't necessarily touch on everything, but if anyone has read that and has questions on something that I don't bring up, absolutely feel

051free. Happy to talk about any of this. But with that, I'd like to just go into my summary. Is that uh do I need to bring up the uh presentation on my end or is it something that's already loaded up on uh you're in there? Either way is fine. >> You can go ahead and present, Rob. >> Okay, wonderful. So, let me go ahead and make sure I have that in presentation mode and then go ahead and get my screen shared. So, thank you for your patience here. And I've only done this a few hundred times, but let's struggle a little bit here in real time. But okay, so everybody's seeing the presentation now. Got >> wonderful. All right. So, the first thing I like to do is just spoil the end of the book

052as soon as I start talking about it. But the bottom line that we are seeing is a continuing decrease in total enrollment at San Mo Foster City School District. And this is what we call that cohort replacement principle, which is that you know who you have enrolled right now. And over the next few years, those students will metriculate out, move into the high school district, and you'll have new incoming kindergarten cohorts who come in and directly replace those students. And what we're really seeing is the engine that's driving decreasing enrollment. It's really twofold, but the big one is continued reduction in local births and smaller incoming kindergarten cohorts relative to the size of those cohorts that they're replacing at the time they started. The other part of it is once you get those kids in,

053those groups of kids, your kindergarteners now become your first graders next year and then your second graders the year after that. for the most part in reality you have a lot of students moving in and out and on net even factoring in that yes there's some residential development happening that's fairly significant we're still seeing most of the time those cohorts decrease in size as time goes on. So between those two things we're really seeing that decreasing enrollment and you can just see here a quick view of the last decade of the district's just bottom line total enrollment. This is about a 19% decrease over the last 10 years. You can see there had been some stabilization but a little bit more of a drop this year. However, keep in mind uh you have also had

054the expansion these light blue bars at the top of these uh graphs here of transitional kindergarten expanding from a few months of eligibility up to as of this year a full year of eligibility non-compulsory. But you have seen growth of a couple of hundred students in TK. So without that, you would have been seeing a more drastic overall decrease in that previous chart. And also just looking at around 1,400 uh kindergarten students coming in uh each year around the decade ago and really just barely topping a thousand students in the last few years and sometimes even below a thousand. So before I get into the projections, just a couple of points that are important to cover from the study. We do look at residential development and as part of the impact of that, we do

055what's called the student generation rates. Every bit as exciting as it sounds, we just look at addresses of things that have been built in your district over the last few years. We see how many students are actually enrolled, living in these new units, and we break that out into rates of student generation for different kinds of housing. And I don't like these three-digit decimal numbers. I really like to translate it more that market rate multif family housing, if you build a hundred units, you'll probably see between seven and eight students enroll. So that helps contextualize when you see sometimes these very big numbers of units in some projects. You're not necessarily seeing uh enough students that will be generated to cause just a huge move of the needle in terms of some of these broader

056demographic trends. if you do to the extent that you have dedicated below market rate or affordable housing that and almost every district I've worked in will generate the most students. Uh but in this case still looking at around 32 to 33 students per 100 units built and you have had a couple of those projects come in in recent years. So these are surveys again based on real projects in your district. So, what that means with what's coming up, again, lots crammed on this slide, but you can see a map of all of the development that we're tracking through the cities in your district. And, you know, some of these are under construction, some of these are just proposed ideas, but we're really looking at collectively uh projects that we would expect to generate around 500

057students that might enter your district over the next several years who absent this development wouldn't be coming in. and we account for that. But even with that, because remember, you've had development in the recent past too. Those are those units that we've been surveying. We've still seen these decreasing enrollment trends and this negative net growth among your existing groups of students as they move ahead in grade from year to year. So again, without the development, you would probably be seeing even more drastic decreases. So with the development factored in, uh, we bring that into what we'll be seeing. The other part, and I really just want to mention this, I don't want to dwell on this too much tonight, but in the report, we have a student address list. We mapped all of your students,

058and I have heard from other districts that this one table is maybe the single most useful piece of information as far as just how much you can pull from it. So, just want to walk people through that so you know how to use it. If you look down the columns on this, these are and this is just the elementary schools. There's another one in the full report for the middle schools, but these are the attendance boundaries. So for everyone who's enrolled in your district, who lives in a particular attendance boundary, you can see which schools they're actually enrolled in. You look across the rows, you see all of the enrollment at a particular school and what boundaries that school is pulling its enrollment from. You have students who come in from outside the district. you

059also have four schools that don't have an attendance boundary who enroll uh much more evenly from across various parts of the district. Uh and then there's all kinds of maps and cool things in the full report. But again, just wanted to give you some context for what we're looking at there because of course some of these trends can inform future enrollment if any of the reasons for these population shifts and transfers that we see should ever change. That said, our total enrollment here is really what we're looking at going forward. These are your recent local births. Just to head off one question that comes up a lot. These are births sourced from the California Department of Public Health. And these are births based on the zip code of residence for the person giving birth regardless

060of where that birth occurred. So that really tends to capture a pretty good apples to apples view over time of what births in your local communities are looking like. And the red box represents roughly the birth cohorts that are enrolled in your district right now. And uh you'll notice that you haven't had a huge drop off compared to some other areas in terms of who's enrolled yet, but you have this drop off coming up. And one reason I I don't have all the charts for this but that you'll see is that students from these birth years from kind of the 2016 through 2020 those were kids who were born precoid and kind of entered kindergarten postcoid. So i.e. that 2020 co 19 pandemic really really was a major mover and shaker in terms of populations.

061You had a lot more of these kids who were born were less likely to still be living here by the time they reached school age a few years later. And you saw that and again this is all in the full report but that ratio of how many of these kids entered kindergarten dipped. That's really why you've seen some of the enrollment decrease in the smaller kindergarten cohorts. Now you're entering the period where you just have significantly fewer kids who were born. Uh you know postco is not all related to that. There's a lot of economic, a lot of political factors that are baked into some of this. But what we do know is that for the group of students who make up the foundation of your future enrollment, we know there are just a lot

062uh many fewer kids who were born. So what that all boils down to is uh decreasing enrollment at kind of the pace that you saw this year for a couple of more years and then leveling out some and staying though uh kind of stabilizing still above 9,000 total enrollment. And a big part of that is again wall of numbers. Not going to read them all to you, but the main things to keep in mind are uh every year eighth grade cohort goes out, new kinders come in. We're anticipating a change of around a net 100 student loss from the total column just based on who you have now, who you know is going to leave and who we anticipate based on births is going to come in. Also keeping in mind any of these you

063look down and to the right again your kinders from 2024 become first graders from 2025 in almost every instance you will see that number get smaller. Uh just a lot of demographics a lot of housing things. Uh this is not something that's unique to your district. A lot of other districts have are grappling with this sort of thing. But even what that means is in the future years once you get to the point where that cohort replacement gets more even that's when you still have that enrollment decrease but it's uh slows down a lot because then you're really just looking at the effects of that net negative gradetograde movement of just your you know sometimes just by a few students uh often between uh fifth and sixth grade you'll see it be a little bit

064more significant but that's really what we're seeing. Uh lots of things can change demographically. Uh you want to keep an eye on those birth totals, on the ratio of those kids now that we're getting into a couple of years postco who are coming into kindergarten. I think that's going to bounce back up higher than it's been, but you're taking a bigger piece of a smaller pie as it were in terms of how many kids were born. track that residential development as increases or decreases in the pace of that can certainly a swing this but it'll take a lot of those things all lining up to really change the trajectory of what we're seeing. So I know that was a lot of information very quickly presented but I'm happy to answer questions if you have them.

065>> Thank you. Do we have any questions from the board? >> Thank you President Tran. Um, thank you for this um detailed report. Um, I I have a question. I don't know if this question is for you or if it or if it would be for staff. Um, we've uh had a lot of concern raised regarding the class sizes that we have um in our schools >> and wondering if we have compared this uh report or numbers to the decline actually putting our classes in the range that is safe for our teachers to um consider how the quality of education or instruction that they can bring to the students they have in their class. No, just kind of uh in some of my meetings with staff, we uh that's kind of the next phase of

066I think what we'll follow up on these numbers with is bringing this into a comparison with kind of uh classroom availability and utilization and capacity. So that will be an ongoing conversation. Yeah, we definitely sorry we definitely utilize this information to look at what our staffing needs are and we look at what our contract language says as well in regards to class size. Uh from a planning perspective, facilities perspective, we absolutely utilize this information from a planning perspective moving forward. We talk about the upcoming modernization work, etc., etc. We we take this information in consideration. It's just one of the one of ways to utilize this information. >> Thank you. Um what I would like to see with this report is if um some of these discussions can be with the teachers who are in

067the classrooms with the students and um the amount of children that they are um I guess forced to serve um in in a unhealthy way. Um and how we can uh project with these numbers if our class sizes will then be in the range that is uh most effective for them to uh be able to uh teach in a quality way that they desire and that they um feel would be needed with the numbers decreasing. Not sure. I guess my question would be is if this report can um be a part of a bigger discussion with our educators to determine the numbers that they currently are serving that they're clear are over capacity and would the numbers that we're seeing here uh reflect the decrease that would allot them the opportunity to produce the quality

068education that they are looking to do with a decreased class size. Um, Superintendent Cho, I'm actually wondering if maybe you can speak briefly about um how class sizes are determined. Um, because you know, as you um it is like part of the bargaining and you know, so I think just like focusing on one classroom with one number as we heard earlier today, um, I think lack, you know, just lacks I think we could add some context around that. >> Definitely. Um, one thing to to put into the conversation with this report is that this is a report about longitudinal enrollment projections. So, it's not a a report about current class sizes. Um, and I think my recommendation to the board would be if the board has an interest in a presentation on class sizes, that's

069definitely something that we as a staff could put together a very detailed, thorough report um that we would bring back and be able to make a presentation about and and discuss um in the context of the 25 26 class sizes and then anticipated 26 27 class sizes. Um and so what we do as a school district um in using report data like what the the data that we just received um tonight is we use it as part of a of a mathematical calculus for anticipated classroom sizes across our schools. Um the report content tonight pointed out four unique situations with schools that we have and those are College Park, Northshore View, Parkside, and Fiesta Gardens. And if you're able to, Joe, and you have the document, would you be would you be so kind as

070to put back the um the array that shows where students come from in terms of uh the different schools that that land at at our magnet schools. So, what happens is our magnet school numbers are very predictable. College Park will start every year with 72 kinders. I I'd be willing to bet anybody that that's the number we're going to land at. >> What I don't know is where they live. So, if I have uh and if you look at there's a one crosswalk that he talked about the spatial analysis. There's one more. It's like a chart that shows enrollment by school. You can flip through and I'll let you know when when to stop. Um that's it right there. Yeah. So, if you look at the College Park number, there's a a number. I believe

071it was 24 for Ottabon. If you scroll down to where College Park is at, it's telling you how many kids You got to go back to it. That was it. Yep. It's telling you how many kids who are currently at College Park live in the Ottabon boundary. And then if you just scan across, there's other schools that have a lot less than that number. Some might have three, some might have eight. that calculus of the incoming new kindergarten class at College Park could actually put the kinders at that particular school in a class size that makes it impossible to have um anything less for example than three teachers. So like at Audabon for example, if you had uh three kinder classrooms and you had 74 kinder students and nine of them ended up at uh

072uh College Park, which it's somewhat surprising, but there are just little blips that happen like that could actually make a difference in terms of having three classes versus four or two classes versus three. Um and then one of the things that we have been uh paying a lot of attention to and and this wasn't part of the longitudinal uh report itself but is the actual multi-year mobility factor in our district. So we did a research project on uh interestingly it was Ottabon and Samonteo Park Elementary School and we had a big concern about the number of kids who in third grade at Samonteo Park didn't go to San Mato Park when they were in kindergarten. So we went four years in a rears and we wanted to know how many kids who are in third

073grade at Samato Park started at Samonte Park and it was half the third grade class. Half of the students who are in third grade at Samato Park uh started kindergarten somewhere else. So we thought that's, you know, we were surprised that the number was that high and then I used just my I thought about a city like Foster City and I made assumptions about Foster City and I was wrong about those assumptions. I believed that Audabon wouldn't have hardly any kids. So I thought to myself, oh, they're probably, you know, 95%. They actually onethird of the kids at Audabon in third grade didn't start at Audabon. They came from all over the world and different parts of the world than San Mato Park. And when they enroll, they give us information about the schools that

074they were at. And you know, there are other considerations in terms of family income and language and education. Um what that all has to do with class sizes and with this longitudinal report is we are factoring in this very real very statistical change in the number of people being born who live in this city in in both cities. And we also factor in the likelihood that we'll have new students who won't necessarily uh match yeartoyear the fact that the 12 kids that left Audabon weren't replaced by 12 new kids who got to Audabon. They might be replaced by 17 new kids who were at Ottabon. So Patrick and I as math enthusiasts, we basically use math formulas and we create potential um bands of growth and change and we try to stick to a moderate

075uh anticipated change. Some years we're wrong. You know, some years we think that the fifth grade cohort at a school is going to disperse in a certain way to the middle schools and we get it mostly right. Um, but sometimes we're off by just a couple of kids. And so it results in um in classrooms at school A or school B or school C that have not typical class sizes. And at the same school, you might have uh for example, you might have third grades averaging 19 and a half and fourth grades averaging 26 and 1/2 or 28. And so we we really work to try not to have those those um differences, but it's definitely something that we I would suggest to the board that we potentially agendaize and then bring back with a

076really thorough class sort of development uh presentation for the board. >> Thank you. >> That was a really long explanation. >> Thanks. Does anyone else on the board have any questions? >> Um I had a question on um the slide that shows I guess residential development and I'm wondering just thinking back to Foster City before Beach Park schools felt really overcrowded and that was like the common theme we would hear. I'm wondering as overall enrollment is like scheduled to decline, some of these schools look like they might have a potential um increase. So I'm wondering are we like proactively thinking about particular and I didn't do the math but it looks just jumping out at me Sunny Bray um maybe Laurel probably missing one but um that have like on the horizon some significant increases

077and I'm wondering how we're proactively planning for that. Yeah, we're definitely looking at the specific detail by site and looking at classrooms, classroom availability, the impact of preschool on those classrooms too on the sites, expansion of TK as well too. So, we're looking at as the superintendent saying too, we're taking a look at all those um trends and um the exact data and where we've seen there are some shifts. Some schools there is a slight increase at some schools and other schools are seeing this decrease. We're taking all that in consideration in terms of what classrooms are available and what the actual enrollment is going to be, what that staffing is going to be at that site as well too. >> I was thinking about it more like facilities, but thank you for >> sure

078>> that comprehensive answer. >> Okay, >> questions. Uh, first, Mr. Murray, thank you for the presentation. I did want to ask from your perspective given that I assume you've done similar analyses for other districts. We know we hear about the declining enrollment situation just across not just the Bay Area but across the state. How does our district compare I guess to some of our neighboring districts in terms of the rate of decline? Are you seeing a pretty even effect all across the Bay Area or is our slower faster than some of our neighboring districts? >> No. And and I'd be happy to provide staff uh a report from you know other districts I've worked in. Off the top of my head, I would say generally what you're seeing in your community is pretty typical for

079Bay Area districts. uh it's really only a you know some parts of central valley and inland empire high desert California are seeing some growth largely due to rampant development uh in communities where you have I mean again not saying that the thousands of units that we were just looking at in your community is insignificant uh but where you're still not just throwing up you know entire new neighborhoods uh it's the you know the birth pattern that we're seeing with you yours I would say their births are actually less of a decrease than I have seen in many areas. uh I would say say it's sort of the combination of that with the uh kind of persistent uh decrease across your existing students is maybe where your numbers are uh you know a little bit different

080and there's so much that gets baked into that number that just at the high level you know we can really split it out a lot of ways but your you bottom line trends I would say are right down the middle of what I would expect if you just said where your district was located and without even looking at the data what do I think I'm going to see it would be this basic sort of picture that you are in that situation where the number of students you have enrolled now is going to be almost impossible to replicate in the near future just based purely on how many students are being born that have yet to reach school age. >> Got it. Thank you for that. Um to our own team, I did want to ask,

081you know, since we've been having a long-term discussion about facility staffing, all these types of issues, was there anything from these projections or reports that deviated from what we had already assumed was happening, or was this largely in line with what we had been planning out for say the past 12 months? >> Yeah, I would say this is um um this actually shows a little bit of a more of a decline than we had um discussed previously. Um I'd say by a few hundred students. Um, so but in uh I think we're looking at trending down about 93 92 with this gone out to about 9,000. So um and then this is a much more in-depth analysis than we've done in the past. So I'm really grateful for all the work that Rob and his

082team have done. It's really going to help us um get really focused based on this and then we'll work with Rob again next year to see what the trend is relative to our projections. So it's been a great reset for us to have this much more in-depth data. But to the simple answer to your question is uh this shows a bit more of a decline than we had been discussing. Um but I think it's certainly qualified with all the information in depth analysis that he's done for us too. >> And then to follow up on Trusty Proctor's question, one thing that stood out to me or one question that I had just given all the discussion in some of our neighboring districts about difficult conversations around consolidations around certain schools not meeting population requirements based

083on at least these projections and I understand they're very much hypothetical. Um, do we anticipate that we are going to have issues down the line, let's say in the next 10 years, where we may need to think about consolidating school sites, again, not naming any sites by name, but based on the geographic patterns and some of the numbers that we're seeing here, are we on a trend where we still expect that we're going to be somewhat similar to what we are now or do we anticipate having these conversations within the next decade? >> So, I think this one, Patrick. >> Oh, please. I was thinking my old superintendent had on here. >> Shifted. >> You're off the hook. >> Um one uh when you have districts that have um entire schools that are vacant or

084entire um populations that just aren't uh attending the school anymore, there's often a very close relationship to the proliferation of charter schools. there's often a um very close nexus to the closure of a plant or the um disappearance of an industry. Our district doesn't really um isn't experiencing either of those things. And so closing any school, my strong recommendation to the board would be not to consider doing that. Uh because it's our our responsibility as as management to think about how to find efficiencies to anticipate opportunities to increase revenue, find uh ways to minimize exposure and and reduce expenses that have an impact on our general fund. Um and our our financial picture is really positive and it's really um strong in comparison to as you I mean if you just Google school district closure

085school district you know budget it's there's a lot going on throughout California and definitely in the Bay Area. Um, and I really think that the vision of the board and and the relationships that we have with our labor partners and and the quality of the work that Patrick and his team and Stephanie and her team do visav planning, staffing, budgeting, um, has us in a really good position. Now, having said that, if you and if you look over the course of this this 10 years that we're pushing out, um you do start to see some evidence that there there's growth down the road and maybe that growth is in 2033 and 2034 and 2035. Uh but we do see it actually starting to peak back in. um at which point in time we might really

086regret as a district having closed one school or two and thinking well maybe that wasn't a great idea to take. Um it also just has a really um souring impact on public support for the school district. And I think the reasons like those are reasons not to consider those um consolidations or closures. And also I think one of the strengths of the district is just the uniqueness of every school, the identity of every community. Um and and it would be for us something we can absolutely plan for to maintain fiscal stability while also just having really strong programs at our schools. And just to say given the very difficult conversations happening at Sequoia and some of our neighboring districts about these types of things I think to the extent that we can get ahead of

087it to the superintendent's point um plan ahead to prevent that kind of situation from happening to us or being stuck there. That is really my concern since we have these projections since we have the benefit of time and being a basic a district to really think about this long term. I am mindful of the fact that you know I know a lot of folks were affected by those decisions. it was an easy one for their district and ideally that's something that we don't end up in the same situation facing. And then lastly, this is slightly off topic, but something I did want to ask, we, you know, we have that anticipated drop we see from the fifth grade to sixth grade at for the jumping to the middle school level. I am curious to what

088extent we track our own churn and kind of the motivations behind that um district-wide or whether it's, you know, not going to the assigned school or home school. I would just be curious to see that information. As I mentioned before, I know a lot of students that my daughters came up with in elementary school who left our district in middle school. And to the extent that we do keep track of where they're headed, why they decided not to stay with us, it does seem helpful for us also as we're projecting out our middle school enrollment. So, just wanted to flag that for our team. But thank you. Actually, something um I noticed was and I I spoke to uh superintendent show about this when you mentioned the um drop off in middle school is that

089it's actually been flat for quite a while. So, I was kind of surprised to see that given um some of the rhetoric around the drop off or like increases or whatever, but the data is showing us essentially that it hasn't really changed um kind of even despite the pandemic and despite demographic changes. And so, um, yeah, I guess I'm I'm kind I am kind of curious like, you know, what kind of exit interview type data or any information that we have around that because it does seem like it's not necessarily tied to what we're doing and maybe tied to like bigger, you know, broader concerns um or reasons. So, anyway, um, yeah, that's that's all I have. Um, thank you so much for your report and um, for being here to answer questions. Do we

090have any other questions from the board? Okay, then um, thank you so much and and we'll let you go. >> No, thank you very much. It was a pleasure to be here. I appreciate you having me and uh, have a good rest of your evening. Thank you. >> Bye. Okay. Um, next. >> Senator Tren, did we do uh public comment on that or >> Oh, I'm sorry. Uh, well, there wasn't Okay, we could I mean there's no We can do public comment, but there's no uh that's not a voting. >> Okay, we can is do we have any in person public comment? >> No. Joe, do can we check online for >> Yes, checking. There are no raised hands at the moment. >> Okay, thank you. Um so we will move on to the next

091item which is sorry um to hold the public hearing on Smito's initial proposal for contract reopener. Um, we will open a public hearing at 6:57 to receive comments regarding the initial proposal. Do we have any public comments? Okay. Um, Joe, can we check online, please? >> Yes. Checking. >> No. Raise hands. President Trin. >> Okay. Thank you. Uh I guess we will close the meeting uh at 6:57. Um next we will hold a public hearing on the contract. Sorry says okay we will hold the public hearing on the initial proposal for the contract reopener. Wait what is this? Is there are they both SMEA? So there's um Smeita's proposal to the district and then the district's proposal to SMEA. >> Got it. Okay. So we will um open a public hearing at 6:58 for the

092initial proposal for the contract reopener um with SMA. Any comments from the audience? >> No. Okay. Joe, can we check online please? >> Yes. Uh there are no raise hands present. >> Okay, great. We will now close the hearing at 658. Um next we will receive uh wait. Okay, guess we are just receiving the initial proposal uh for the contract reopener. It's it is an interesting process, but we publicly approve both openers and public hearings, which often we do this every year, but it is a little funny to open and close public hearings at last 30 seconds. And then by law, we receive the teachers proposal and then we ask that the board approve our proposal. So, it is kind of funny. We we do this dance every year. So, let's pass it over to

093Stephanie for many. >> All right. Good evening. Um, part of our governance is for the board to publicly receive the sunshine reopener. So, tonight we present the Sato uh elementary teachers association initial sunshine proposal to the board of trustees and this is for our 2026 negotiations. And the proposal is outlined in the attachment and it's on the screen there. and we recommend that the board of trustees receive SMETA's initial proposal for 2026 negotiations with the district. So with that, President Trent, I will pass it back to you. Uh thank you. Um, okay. So, the next item is approval of the initial proposal of uh for contract reopener. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> So, on this item, the district presents uh our sunshine proposal for the 2026 negotiations and we recommend that the board approve this

094initial proposal. And with that, I'll pass it back to you, President Tren. >> Okay. Thank you. Do we have any questions on this item? No. Any public comment? Uh Joe, can we check online? >> Yes. Checking. There are no raise hands. >> Okay. Thank you. Uh uh motion to approve the Sanato Fay School District's initial proposal for contract reopener 2627 negotiations with the Sonteo Elementary Teachers Association. >> Second. >> Uh thank you Trusty Ho and Trusty Kim. All in favor say I. >> I. >> Okay. Motion carries 5-0. We will move on to report on human resources hiring for the next school year. Okay, let me just share my screen here. All righty. So, good evening board of trustees, superintendent oo, and the community. I'm Stephanie Fermany, executive director of human resources. Tonight I'm presenting

095our human resources hiring update for the 2026 2027 school year. As we all know, hiring is one of the most powerful levers that we have to impact student outcomes. So this evening, I'm going to briefly discuss our projected hiring needs, our priority positions, student and staff demographic data, recruitment strategies, and our next steps. So as you know also that our work is grounded in our strategic plan and our commitment is ensuring every student receives a highquality education in a safe and supportive environment. Our strategic plan drives HR's recruitment and hiring efforts especially around diversifying our workforce. Every hire impacts classroom experience, student belonging, and academic success. For 2026, 2027, we're taking a proactive approach. We are determining staffing needs early to remain competitive. We are prioritizing high need areas such as special education, bilingual positions,

096Montasaurian community schools. We are strengthening pipelines through our university partnerships and student teaching. And on March 14th, human resources will be attending the Sanonteo County recruitment fair. That will be for classified and certificated positions. Some of our hiring managers are joining us and will be able to engage and meet classified and certificated prospective candidates, interview, and possibly hire some of them at this event. For next year, we anticipate approximately 20 to 30 certificated staff hires. Our needs fluctuate annually based on enrollment and programming, but our focus remains consistent. Hire early, especially in particularly hard to fill areas. If I can chime in, Stephanie, if you go back just one slide, I think >> very few examples present themselves where the district strategic plan can be summarized in a visual, but this is one of them.

097when you have coherence and when you have stability and when you have um a district that's really has a strong governance connection to program implementation. The fact that for you can only see 21 uh 22 and and beyond. But if we had added 10 more years, you would see that the number hovered around 90 every year. And that number had something to do with the timelines that we use to post positions and hire people. And we were doing a lot of that work in May and June. And people who are are excited to join a new district start getting hired in February. So we're doing that now this year. And at the same time, the employees that we recruit and we inspire to come work here and we invite um into our interviews and the

098panels we put together, they reflect the kids that we serve. And so our staff more and more is reflective of the community that's here in in Sonteo Foster City. So going from 88 and 110 down to 63 and 52, those were two like huge successes for us. And part of the reason why you're seeing this number so low this year has to do with what we realized in our surveys to staff who are staying is they are thinking about working in a district where something like workforce housing is possible and working in a district where they're seeing the physical walls around them match the posters that we have all over the district about how important uh the education that we provide our kids is and um and and it's a culmination of many you know

099many years of of strategy um and obviously huge uh celebration for all of our teachers who mentor their colleagues and all of our principles and assistant principles who help do these um interview panels and then for our HR department that I think more and more we work to try to create a sense of community and a sense of belonging um and Stephanie um and her team, you know, need to be celebrated for that as well. So, I just want to interrupt quickly. I'll hand it back over to you, but I didn't want to lose that that moment there. >> Thank you. >> I think uh this slide here is especially important. This reflects all students in our district, preschool through 8th grade. And our largest student groups are 40 42, excuse me, 42% Latinx and

10027% Asian-American and Pacific Islander. And all of the students preschool through 8 represent a richly diverse community. And when we see educators who reflect their identities, experiences, it strengthens belonging, engagement, and achievement. Diversifying our workforce is a key strategy in achieving that goal. And you're going to see in the next two slides that we are making progress in this area. But before I dave in, I want to remind us about our strategic plan. It calls out for our district to recruit, hire, and retain a highly qualified and diverse workforce that reflects the students and community we serve. It also calls for reducing inequitable outcomes and strengthening inclusion. So on this slide you can see that there's been an increase in Latinx and AAPI representation in our staffing numbers over the last 5 years. This progress

101demonstrates intentional recruitment aligned to strategic plan priorities and also that continued work is needed to close these repres representation gaps. On this slide here, you can see that Latinx certificated representation has grown um from 10% to 15% in recent years. We are seeing gradual increases in Latinx and AAPI representation across all categories, classified, certificated, and leadership roles. Our progress is measurable and it's ongoing. To support this work, we've strengthened equity training for our hiring panels and applied an equity lens through our hiring process. And our hiring directly supports culturally responsive teaching and closing achievement gaps throughout our district. So moving forward, we will finalize staffing projections this spring, continue targeted recruitment through summer if needed, and continue to collaborate closely with our hiring managers. We'll be providing an updated hiring hiring report next school year

102and our focus remains clear, recruit, retain, and develop exceptional educators who reflect and serve our community. That concludes the presentation for HR. And with that, I'll pass it back to the board. Thank you. >> Thank you. Um, do we have any questions? Um, Mr. Many, thank you so much for your presentation. Um, I think, you know, looking at some of this data, I was very encouraged like, oh, you know, we're only hiring, you know, looking to hire between 20 to 30 across the entire district. Um, kind of just echoing what Superintendent Choa said, like that's huge. Um, that's a really that's such a testament to our ability to retain teachers and then also I think it reflects, you know, just kind of seeing that overall shuffling like, you know, hey, we're going to prioritize our

103existing employees, making sure that they're getting jobs before going out and, you know, filling these vacancies. So, just wanted to just echo that and, you know, really appreciate um that aspect. Um I think I was reading somewhere um that you know there are some challenges um oh wait um I know there are some challenges this year in getting some of our newly hired international um employees to come like to the states. There were kind of like visa issues or whatever. Um and I think I read somewhere in one of these documents that I think there was a change in one of our like contracts to hire from was it the Philippines? And so, you know, knowing that, you know, we are primarily focusing on international recruitment to staff like hard to fill positions, um, what

104are some of the ways that we're getting ahead of these challenges that, you know, that we've already seen this year that we anticipate maybe going into next year? >> Thank you for that question. We actually today and yesterday met specifically about that. um we are no longer able to bring classified paraprofessionals internationally specifically from the Philippines um and so we are actually pulling all applicants in parah educator positions even if they haven't applied for special education and we're going to be contacting them to see if they're interested and setting up interviews starting next week with our special education team so that we can build more capacity um for our classified staff. Thank you so much. >> Any other board questions? >> Um, any in-person comments? Joe, can you check online, please? >> Yes, there are

105no raised hands. President Tren. >> Okay, thank you. Um, I think this one's just us. We don't have to vote on this one. So, um, thank you for the report. We will move on to approval of resolution 07/2526 for the reduction of classified services for the next school year. >> Yes. So this evening we're bringing forward a reduction of classified uh one classified staff position that's been fully funded through PTA contributions. This is a part-time position 75 FTE full-time equivalent. And in order to comply with the March 15th employee notice, we recommend approval of this item. So with that, I'll pass it back to the board. Okay. Um does do we have any questions? Did you say what school site this was or like is this a specific school? This is a specific person. >>

106It is a specific person. It's it's for College Park. >> Okay. >> I have a question um regarding this um um this pair educator who's being released. Um, and I heard you say that it was being funded by the PTA. Do you have a little bit of history on how long it's been funded by the PTA, this position? And do we plan on I guess we we've had some discussions regarding PTA funding our educators and you know I guess trying to understand how much um what is the percentage of our teacher population the PTA is funding um their salaries because this is you know I understand that the the PTA money should be allocated towards certain things and then they pick up you know obviously educators who um we feel is important to have. So

107this the district is cutting the salaries of these um staff members and then the PTA are picking them up. How long are we expecting the PTA to fund? So, this is an additional position that we typically wouldn't fund and um the organization at this school has decided it's a position they would like to fund and they are no longer able to fund it with the budget that they have for next school year. >> Okay. And so in terms of our payroll and the amount of PAR educators that we fund, is this outside of the amount or the um number of PAR educators that we fund as a district? >> I'm I'm not sure I understand your question. I guess I'm I'm concerned about the PTA being responsible for funding our staff and these educa these

108PAR educators are very important. The district should have a handle on the PAR educators that we are funding um and not relying on PTA to fund our PAR educators that are are absolutely necessary. So this is an additional support staff that the the PTA wanted to fund. It's not something that we would normally fund and so they made a decision to use their monies to fund an extra position. >> So this is an extra position. >> It is an extra position. >> Okay. Are there any current para educators in a required position that is being funded by the PTA? >> Not that I'm aware of. >> Okay. I know that the board has had several discussions regarding the PTA funding some of our staff members and that has become an issue that we brought to

109the um to staff to try and resolve because these um positions are very important and they are needed much need these are very important positions that are needed in our um staff and so if we're letting this PAR educator go there's going to be a gap of uh a need that's not being filled. So, I'm I would like for us to visit the issues around PTA funding necessary positions that benefit our students, especially around education. >> Okay. >> Um yeah, go ahead. Um, I just wanted to, you know, input a comment. You know, knowing that this pair of professionals coming from College Park kind of helps me have a little bit of perspective. You know, for example, at Northshore View, um, we have three um, that I'm aware of. Um, three PTA funded pair professionals.

110Um, and you know, the reason why is that, you know, we do receive, you know, district funded paras, district funded TOAs and so forth. One of the I guess values that we had at Northshoreview was to you know increase you know the amount of pair professionals we had on campus um beyond kind of what was allotted for us for our population and so it was something that we wanted and we valued and so as a result the families you know very aggressively push for money to to fill this because it's a value of our particular school. So, I would imagine with College Park, it's I, you know, don't want to speak for College Park, but I think it would probably be similar. You know, all the basic needs that are um, you know, created, you

111know, that we see that are based in data, those are positions that are all paid by the district. Um, these are kind of like the extras that we would want, you know, any school would want, you know, to be able to offer more services to families. um and and those individuals know that they are PTA funded and you know we splash their faces when we have fundraisers you know on the campus so it's not a surprise to anybody um and it actually drives a lot of fundraising um because everyone loves these pair of professionals and really wants to um wants to honor them and wants want to keep them on our campus um so just I wanted to kind of add that little bit of color um to this discussion you know I I I

112do think that you know I do I do know that everything that's required by you know our data and you know, those are being met by the district. These are kind of just the added bonuses that school communities sometimes want to have. >> Thank you for adding that context. I am speaking from a place of us having discussions about uh staff who were um uh that the PTA was forced to um fund their position in order not to um uh for them not to go away. This is an extra one that I'm glad that contacts have come in. I didn't realize this was an extra um pair of professional that we're letting go, but I know that we've had discussions about PTA being required to fund uh teachers who are a necessary part of the

113um structure of the staffing in our classrooms that the board have discussed. We would like the district to um get a better handle on funding and how it is dispersed among the the um the different groups that the PTA are funding. So those maybe it's not this one, but there are several that has been an issue in the past that we've discussed and I assumed that this was one of them, but there are some issues with PTA funding staff. >> I think Trusty Proctor, do you have something? I have a com just it's a comment though and it's just um reflecting on something that we are discussing here and what an equity issue this is with in general PTA funded staff. I mean um hearing that Northshore View just has some wants and they're able

114to fund raise for those wants doesn't sit well with me when I know there are schools that are not able to fundraise in that same fashion and also have needs and wants. And so, um, this kind of breaks my heart a little bit to just have this conversation and to say like one school, they have a need and a want and they're going to have to say goodbye to this person, which um, where other schools that can fund raise and splash their faces on a thing to make them look, you know, make it the need more and more um, prevalent just kind of hurts a little bit. And so I want to um just for I guess a future request, maybe we could look more again at PTA funded staff, who they are, what does

115it mean to each of these schools, um the value, monetary value, and just really think about this a little bit more from like everybody has needs and wants and a lot of our schools that can't do the fundraising, they have more needs and more wants that. And so I just would like to make sure that we're um if we're not providing it, what what are where are those gaps? Uh, Superintendent OA, do you have anything else to add? >> The district isn't requiring any PTA to pay for any required position. In 5 years, that has not happened even once. Having said that, schools with greater need receive more staff. There are more employees per pupil at our title one schools than any other school in the district, including College Park and Northshore View and other

116schools. We've talked around this issue a lot of times in the last 5 years and there are communities just next door San Carlos who pull all of their PTA money and then they divide the money amongst all the schools and that's a whole separate process that I'm not going to involve myself in as the superintendent of the district but it's a lengthy process too and it has other considerations. ations when you when you fund raise in a joint fashion for PTA, it requires a lot of communication and trust and engagement and meetings. Um we're 22 schools and some of the schools that have these pulled um monies. They're a lot smaller, three or four schools. Um, having said that, the history in our district is we encourage and allow our PTAs to offer to pay

117for positions that they prioritize. But I don't want it to be lost on anybody watching the meeting or any of our staff that as a district, we intentionally fund schools with greater needs with far more services. So there it is not comparable when you look at the staff of George Hall and compare it to the staff at any one of our title one schools or I'm just picking two schools but it could be any school. Um it's it's different and it's different because students with greater need as a result of their home language or their income or um their uh status as newcomers or other considerations um they need more support and we provide that to them. So in this case, you know, I I definitely understand the sentiment and and agree with many of

118the remarks that trustees have made about, you know, it hurts to think about schools that are losing somebody who is a valuable uh contributor and also it hurts to think about schools that don't even get to have that conversation because both um you know situations um have have a part to play in this in this process. Thank you. Um, do we have any, if there are no other kind of questions, um, are there any in-person comments? No. Uh, Joe, can you check online, please? >> Yes, there are no raise hands. >> Okay, thank you. Um, are there any additional comments by the board? Just for point of clarification, the individual we're speaking of is the one that was funded by the friends of mandarin scholars program previously. Um >> that is correct. >> Without saying

119any specific names, just want to thank that individual for their service. I am former College Park parent. The friends of mandarin scholars program has been funding this individual I know for many years now. Um partly as Trusty Ho said because that individual's impact on our students and our desire to keep that person as part of our community. Um, I understand that that's not become sustainable, but at the same time, I just know that person had a very strong impact on a lot of generations of students who went through that school. And so, just really want to thank that person for their service. Um, and as someone who's contributed to the Friends of Management Scholars program and the other work that we've done, I understand why we've come to this point mutually. Um, but just want

120to thank them for all that they've done and the impact that they've had. >> Okay. Thanks. Um, do we have a motion? on this one. >> I'll make a motion. Well, I don't remember what item this was. >> Uh, it's 7D. >> Okay. Uh, make a motion to approve the approve the resolution 0725 is 26. >> I'll second. >> Thank you, trustees Proctor and Kim. Um, all in favor say I. >> I. I. >> Motion passes. Thank you. we will move on to a review of the LCAP midyear monitoring report. >> Okay. Thank you, President Tren. Um I'm bringing tonight for your uh review and discussion. Um a midyear review of our 2526 LCAP. Um the California ed code requires that um each year by the end of February we bring you an update um

121on our LCAP which includes um sort of an analysis of where we are in implementation of the various actions in our LCAP as well as um the expenditures to date. So what I'm going to do is share my screen with that report which is attached. All right. Okay. So, um the uh format is is probably familiar to you at this point. Um we have three goal areas in our LCAP focused on academic achievement, equity, and uh wellness. And uh much like the the LCAP itself, um the update or midyear review is divided into those three goals. And it begins with um uh an you know the presentation of the data on our um expected annual measurable objectives. Um I'll draw your attention to the column that's shaded slightly there. And basically um this is in

122some cases we can provide you with the actual year end year two outcome data which for example here with the CASP data uh we can provide you because the year 2 data is how did we perform last spring um I will scroll quickly to a few other places where we don't provide you actually the year 2 outcome data but we uh provide you with where we are at this moment. So for example, if you look at metric 1.4, our path interim assessment, you'll see that our actual LC cap outcome is related to the third interim performance, uh, which obviously we have not gotten to yet. So that's TBD. Um, but we've provided you with how we're doing at the midyear point, so you at least get a sense from a performance outcomes point of view

123of what kind of progress we're making. And so there are um again kind of the usual suspects when it comes to the LCAP with respect to our CASP assessment data, our English learner progress data, our various interim assessment data, um as well as algebra 1 enrollment, um some reclassification rates, LTE enrollment, etc. These are um are part of the uh the the 202526 LCAP. And then there's the section where we uh we speak to each action under each of the goal areas. And again the slightly shaded portion is you know what we would draw your attention to. You see the first column describes the implementation level. You know basically are we completely implementing it? Are we only partially are we not implementing it? And and perhaps why. Um the next column speaks to the mid-year

124outcome data and basically just refers you to the table above where we discussed that quantitative data. And then the next column is sort of our chance to talk about other kinds of either quantitative or qualitative um outcome data as well as just you know just to provide some additional context as to where we are at. And then finally the far right column gives you a sense of uh how much we have spent at this point in the year uh as compared to the column right left to it where of what we planned to spend. So um so you know in some ways you know the the most time could be spent on the column that describes the other data and evidence. And so I'll just pick this one example to say that um in the

125case of our path data we are fully implemented across all the K2 classes. We talk about how the funds have been applied. Um, we note that the midyear expenditures are, you know, relatively low at this point in the year, but that's because the allocation is really meant to get us ready for next year's purchases. So, um, um, yeah. So, um, I'm going to at this point having kind of just oriented you, I hope hope you've had a chance to look through it. Um but just to say here's the section related to our academic um our academic achievement goal uh actions um and there's many of those up to 1.27 27 um the visual and performing arts programming and then it moves to goal two >> which is our equity goal. Um and again you know

126it leads with the various kinds of outcome data. Uh much of this this goal area just to say that the targets are rooted in survey data that we pay attention to. So the chicks data um and other kinds of surveys that we do uh chicks surveying is just literally being completed this week. So, uh, we can't really follow up on that at at this required February due date. Um, but it will be, of course, in the in the, um, in the next 2026 27 LCAP. But again, you can kind of scan through there and see what data is available at this point in the year. And then we get to um, the various um, actions. And you'll see in this case 2.1 is fully implemented with some description there. Um, I do want to call

127your attention to um, action, let me just scroll to it real quick here, action 2.7 and action 2.8. Um, and just make a note that um, you'll see that there is some a funding note here. And one of the things that um, happened this year is at the end of last year, we expected that we had um, uh we had spent all of our learning recovery um block grants. Um but this was the first year this year where the state said you need to report on that as part of your LCAP. Well, we actually got additional money from the state. So where we were at the end of the uh with the LCAP approval in July is a different place than where we are now. We've got this additional funding. So there's a couple of

128actions here that we had moved to other funding sources but are now bringing back to the learning recovery block grant. And so that's why that's noted there. And I just it's an important point that when we did not include it in the LCAP originally, we need to call it out in this midyear report and make sure that you all are aware that that's what what has occurred. And then David, um, you'll start a process in the next few weeks that will go through the beginning of June to elicit more feedback, show more data, invite more stakeholders to participate in LCAP development meetings. And as you know, the governor recently produced his proposed January budget the next four months for all of our political science um fanatics are a lot of um I don't know, Jean,

129do you want to give us a description? But there's just a lot of conversation happening. And what happens in these things is especially it's going to be an interesting year because he's on his way out. The governor's on his way out. So, it'll sort of tell a story of how he sort of ends his tenure as the governor and the way he defines and describes money. So, right now it's called learning recovery block grant, but he might and what we're hearing is that there's an idea to sort of change the phrasing on it. So, in the next LCAP, if they haven't landed on that exact language, 12 months from now, there'll be a note with the new description with the with the new amounts. Um and there's a little bit of um concern about the

130delay, if you want to call it, of some funding that we're supposed to be receiving that in the January budget, there's about $6 billion that are sort of being um put um in escrow, if you want to call it, that that haven't really been included in the budget just yet. Um and if I don't think the legislature will let that amount stand, so it might come down somewhere between 6 billion and 2.5 billion. Um, either way, this kind of language I want to make clear, it it stems from the way that Sacramento will have different timelines to finalize budgets and trailer bill language that doesn't meet our timelines to adopt uh, you know, the very things that they ask us then to report on. So, it's make creates a funny situation where it's sort of

131like, well, why didn't you use that? Well, you had made up your mind yet. So, >> yeah, just funny timing. >> Yeah. So then just just to quickly finish, there's the third goal area and the um set of data there and you'll see um a lot of the California Healthy Kids Survey outcomes are identified here and then um and then the many actions that we've been taking under under wellness. So I'm going to stop there really to um you know pass it back to you, President Trin, and take any questions or comments that you may have. >> Thank you. Um, are there any board questions on the report? Um, Assistant Superintendent Chamblas, thank you so much for the presentation. Um, I had a question on page or I don't know, slide page seven. >> Um,

132the CASP science test. Um, I was, you know, just looking at the data, you know, just kind of skimming through and kind of, you know, just reading for understanding and I was kind of surprised to see our long-term English language learners, 0% of them met or exceeded um, standard for the CASP science. Um, you know, I thought was interesting because, you know, we're looking at English learners and they're 2%. I mean, both of those numbers are not what we want. Um, but can you give me a little bit of understanding or color like why the the long the el uh long-term English learners are at zero? Yeah, thank you for asking about that. Yeah, this is uh this is obviously a huge growth point for us and it's a place where um our focus on

133English learners in middle school and particularly long-term English learners. Um the the science exam as you as you may know is um is a very language um dependent literacy dependent um assessment. um it it it attempts to engage students in in rather authentic tasks on the assessment that that are are languagerich and so um uh our students who are still developing their English I think struggle for those reasons and um and it's not acceptable that we're seeing u that we're seeing 0%. Um, we also see, you know, some fluctuations in those numbers because remember that it's only in fifth and seventh grade that the California science test is taken. So, uh, when you start talking about different groups within that set of of of seventh graders, particularly because that's where most of our long-term English

134learners are, you'll get some some pretty dramatic fluctuations sometimes because the numbers are low. Um but nonetheless um you know it is a place where we have to we have to make some rapid improvements. >> Thank you for that context. >> Are there any other questions? >> I just had one question on some of the items where the midyear expenditures are much higher. um some cases. I think there was one item that I'm look trying to look for now. There was 100,000 higher than what we had anticipated. Um there was one item that seemed to have been zeroed out, but that still incurred expenses. I'm trying to pull the numbers right now, but >> you can help me find it. I I can speak. >> Yeah. So, item 1.21 >> 1 point uh 21. Okay.

135Let me >> That one is budgeted for zero. It says that the action was dropped for this school year, but then it says we incurred 62,000. >> 21 um >> on page 18. >> Oh, on page 18. Apologies, I was looking at 2.1. Um >> 1.21. >> Oh, 1.21. Okay, give me a second. Yeah. Okay. So this is um this was another example where um so we had one school lead that was in the this uh comprehensive support and improvement program um as of um last year. Um at the end of the year we had expected that all of that funding was spent >> and so the LCAP reflected the fact that for this year lead is no longer um um CSI school. Um but in fact by the time we closed the books in

136July it turned out there was actually some some aloc some money allocated or some money unspent. And so um you have the opportunity with this funding to spend the funds by the end of September. So there was expenditure that occurred after the LCAP was adopted when we said there shouldn't be any but when we discovered there was um you know there was basically carryover we went ahead and it was allocated. If I can add a context for um in this case it's the comprehensive support improvement uh block grant was directed to schools all throughout the state and in our district lead was one of the few that received significant funding. It was about correct me if I'm wrong $150,000 per year >> actually closer to two. >> Yeah. And it changed it sort of scaled

137up and then they decided to take the money away. So, we budget, let's say, 70,000 for teacher collaboration and teacher training, and we sign a contract to um provide professional development for 26,000. And then we factor in the amount for substitutes. We factor in the amount for extra duty pay, summer days, >> and we're pretty good, but we're human. So what happens is a $70,000 planned expenditure ends up being 43,000. Because of what our accounting procedures are, it takes time to reconcile the the forms from staff, all the actual expenses that are different from the planned expenses. And the same thing goes for the anticipated purchase of materials and supplies. like we're going to outfit these classrooms with STEM kits and we budget 35,000 but we spend 28,000 and that's ultimately what uh Patrick and

138his team that's why they their faces are scrunched up between May and August because they're just they're basically taking thousands and thousands of receipts and trying to reconcile them and make sure that they're all assigned to the correct uh expense and then ultimately we get reports back and nine times out of 10 we spent a little less than we anticipated and it's very unusual for us to overspend amounts. What that has to do with the LCAP is the ALCAP has to talk about what you did last year and what you're going to do this year. So that's the reason why 1.21 is even in the plan because we have to publicly be transparent about what happened to our our prior year's expenditure. So it's it's like a good transparency thing. But then when we get

139the extra money and then we report at the middle of the year, hey, we didn't budget for this, but we spent 62,000. >> But there's no way to go backwards to July and say make that budget 62,000. So essentially we expended our funds. >> Yeah. >> That we weren't going to know about until >> the receipts were reconciled. Um, and then ultimately, um, it's it's a net positive for Lead Elementary. And it's not a, um, if you want to call an uncontrolled expense or sort of a surprise expense. It was something that we saw an opportunity to spend $62,000 for kids at LEAD. >> That explanation is very helpful. And I think that was my kind of global question is whether or not there were any. Um, I'm looking at 1.12, for example, where it

140looks like our spend was 360,000. we budget about 90,000 less than that it says in the explanation some of it had to do with additional print um obviously understand our projection was never going to sync up perfectly and so to the extent I think some of the professional learning professional development some were high some were low um is our sense that we are largely on course or was there anything on here that popped out as being wildly off the kind of projected numbers that we put forward earlier >> um no I think I mean I think in terms of you know obviously your fidiciary responsibility is let's make sure we're balanced or in the positive and and certainly particularly with uh the LCAP is very much about our supplemental allocation and we're we're we're in

141great shape as far as the supplemental allocation goes. Um and uh in fact there are areas where um for example where sites intended to spend money on professional development and allocated supplemental dollars toward that and then because as a district we have such a robust PD program, they didn't end up spending those dollars. So there's always places where you know the intention is is X but the execution is Y and we have a balance that that carries us very neatly into the positive. Um so uh and you can't do that too much because there's also some scrutiny on it's a problem when you report that you have under spent what you were supposed to. So, um I you know, each year we've we've come in fine and have been able to um kind of hit

142that sweet spot between not overspending and not underpending. >> Great. Thank you for that. >> Um I actually had a follow-up question. Um you know, kind of piggybacking off of um Vice President Kim. Um you know, and I look at this document and it's I I imagine it takes like weeks to update this singular document with so much detail. Um, and I don't know if there's a required um, LCAP format that you have to follow, but I would love if we could in kind of future LCAP updates see like very quickly like um, could we do like totals at the bottom, you know, like okay, how much total funds budgeted total, the midyear expenditures total just so we could do a quick glance and see like are we generally on track. Um, additionally, you know,

143just kind of when I look at these individual ones, like I have to use my math brain a little bit, be like, "Okay, which one's higher? Which one's lower?" If we could just even color code it slightly just so that we can more quickly identify it, um, that would be really helpful in kind of just being able to get through this document in a little bit more um, efficient way for for me. Um, and I also really appreciate um, kind of, you know, in some of these areas where you provided that explanation, you know, when we have exceeded. So, um, just wanted to thank you for that. You know, I know it's probably really timeconsuming to do it for each and everyone, but the where the places where you do, it's really appreciated. >> You're

144welcome. >> All right. Uh, any other questions or comments? No. Uh, any inperson comments? Okay, Joe, can we check online, please? >> Sure. There are no raise hands at the moment. >> Okay. Any additional comments on this? >> I have a quick one that I made before, but every time we do this review, I am always struck by the fact that our interim assessments, for example, with math deviate so much from the scores that we see on CASP. I know we talked about this last board meeting, and I know we're doing our best to sync that a little bit closer so it's a little bit more predictive. And again, I don't consider CASP a single source of truth, but when our numbers internally show 85% and then only 50% are at level on CASP, I

145think that's a very hard difference to defend. Um, and so I appreciate that our staff is already on that, has already talked about the work that we're doing to try to come up with more reliable assessments and also to try to get those numbers to better reflect each other. Um, but just want to point that out as something every time we go through this document, I think it's something that I've called out, others have called out, actually parents have called out to me is that why is there such a steep difference and deviation between what we're tracking internally where we think our students are, and then when they're measured by an objective outside entity, again, an imperfect one, um, we end up with such a different place. Um, anything else? Okay. Um, we thank you

146so much for the report and we will we can take a quick five minute break before we move on to the next item. coming. >> When you said it, I'm like, >> "All right, everyone, we are back. Um, >> we will we will now move to item 9A. All right. And this is an uh we have a guest speaker for this item. So, I want to ask Joe if you can queue up our um representative who's going to take us through um there she is. Hi, Jackie. >> Hi. Good evening, everybody. >> I'm gonna pass it to you, Jackie. >> Okay, great. Um good evening, uh trustees and um Superintendent Ooa. I'm happy to be here with you all again. Um, again, my name is Jackie Hang, legal counsel for the district and um, I've

147been working with district staff on in this ongoing process to update the district's um, board policies and administrative administrative regulations. So, um, we're continuing to do this work to make sure that these revisions are consistent with changes in the law as well as guidance by CSBA. Um, I won't talk about all of these policies. I'll try to give you a summary um about some of the ones that I think are important and of course open it up to all of you afterwards for any questions or comments. Um the majority of the policies and regulations that you have before you today were identified for revisions as part of the district's work in updating its policies related to discrimination and harassment. Um you may recall that the board updated or adopted updates um to several sexual harassment

148policies and regulations last fall. And so the remaining policies and regulations pertaining to prohibitions against discrimination and harassment and sexual harassment as well as the complaint procedures for reporting those allegations are before you here today. Um, as was the case last time, we reviewed for consistencies with um, CSBA's proposed updates in the law and inclusion of language around confidentiality were appropriate um, that I believe Trusty Hoe was specifically concerned with when we were discussing the sexual harassment policies um, in the fall. Um, next, the district's policy and regulation regarding the district's response to immigration enforcement efforts have also been updated to be consistent with the latest guidance um, from the California Attorney General's Office. Um, for obvious reasons, this policy is being updated to ensure the district staff have clear guidance um to respond appropriately

149to immigration enforcement efforts on campuses um and to ensure that the district maintains its commitment to serving all of its students um particularly the vulnerable students and families in your immigrant um communities. Um and lastly, there are a few board bylaws that um are being updated. These were updated to be consistent with CSBA's kind of routine updating of board bylaws, not because of any um substantive changes in the law, but really just to be more precise and consistent and accurate in its language. Um that's kind of this that's a brief summary of what I wanted to share with all of you today, but I'm happy to take any questions and comments um at this time. Do we have any questions? Go ahead. >> No questions. Okay. >> Thank you so much, Miss Hang. Um, I

150have a lot of questions. Um, so maybe what we can Should we just go like document by document and then we we tackle questions for each document or should I just lay them all out? I think maybe going by each um policy it might might be a little bit clearer for everybody. >> Okay, perfect. Um could we start off with um AR 5145.13.13 that's the um response to immigration enforcement. Correct. >> Correct. Um you know and I really appreciate um you know given everything that's going on that you know we're looking at this now. Um and you know this is kind of a general question before I get to the more detailed ones. Um, you know, I was reading kind of, you know, the board policy like, you know, we have to, you know, allow

151it to go through multiple rounds and looking at it, um, you know, revisions and so forth, but, you know, given what's going on, you know, is there any ability to push this out sooner? Um, you know, and I don't know if this is a wish of the fellow board members, but um, just wanted to ask like what would be Yeah. What would that look like? I think one of the risks of going faster in this um process is I the over the long course of community engagement and transparent board governance there is a a pretty big um benefit to the board itself capital B in that it indicates a willingness to um deliver over multiple months before changes happen which just sends a message to the community that these things are up for discussion and

152debate and we invite you to sit sit with it, read it, analyze it and give us feedback. Um I would want to open a conversation about what parts of the policy really speak to you and and might we might find more of an administrative approach and then in the interim that we could consider. Um, but I would just advise the board to to really commit to the multiple meeting uh sort of cadence because in the long run it really it's just something you can always share with the community. Hey, we're going to update a policy, but as you know, we bring it first, then we bring it a second time. And it actually gives the board an opportunity to give direction to staff and to legal counsel to make tweaks which you all did in

153the last round of um of uh you know board policy updates that is harder to do if and when we accelerate or don't use the multiple meeting um cadence to do it. >> All right. Thank you so much. Um the you know now kind of going into a little bit more kind of detailed questions. Um, you know, I don't speak or read lawyeres, so I had to look up what would constitute an exigent circumstance. Um, and so when I was reading about it, it looks like most of them wouldn't apply to a situation involving ICE, except one of them. Um, you know, which was preventing escape situations where a suspect is likely to escape if not immediately apprehended. You know, I was wondering like, you know, I fear that ICE may use something like that

154kind of loophole to gain entries into our school gain entry into our schools. Um, you know, what could we do, you know, in terms of, you know, revising this perhaps to mitigate any possibility? It's a good question and I'm thinking um I think you know the built into this policy are well and a lot of the other district's policies related to kind of visitor check-ins um directing all of these types of immigration enforcement requests to appoint person um within the district office to um really kind of control um what information is being uh provided, what students are being uh provided access um to I think that that really is meant to mitigate those types of situations where there could be misrepresentations or um abuse of purposes on on campus. Um I know that the attorney

155general's guidance has kind of contemplated those types of scenarios. Um, so really this this policy guided by the AG's office is is trying to kind of walk a balance between respecting law enforcement um, you know, discretion, but also trying to mitigate some of any potential abuses by directing all of this to a centralized uh, you know, point person so that we could really review um, the reasons that may they they may present, right? or documentation that they may present um and and involving legal counsel if necessary in those instances. >> Thank you so much. Um I just I guess I'll keep on going. um you know um reading further down this document right there's a section that says you know responding to the detention or deportation of students parents or guardian you know and something

156that we see kind of all over the United States but I think you know for me was especially highlighted by Liam Kjo Ramos in Minnesota is that detention is not limited to adults um and you know the way that I've been seeing you know kind of reading here it's kind of more more focused on adults would you know is Is there any kind of additions or revisions that could be made to, you know, to to, you know, either the AR or the board policy to also include students? >> Can can you point me to um the the paragraph that you're looking at, Trusty Ho, just so I can kind of see the language updated? >> It's on page six. >> Oh, thank you. >> About halfway down. >> Okay. Okay. I'm not uh I'm not

157finding the the the specific place, but to answer your question, um yes, I I think that the policy can be reworked to ensure more protections for students if the focus appears to be um more related towards towards the adults. Um I think that we can um certainly add language to add more protections um where we can for for students specifically. Um, I'm just also noticing a quick uh typo there at the on the last paragraph of that page affidavit. >> Thank you. >> That will be corrected in the um next round when we review this again. >> Thank you. I also saw a small clerical error on page five. I think it was meant to be staff and it says stall. Thank you. >> Any other questions about the revisions? >> I I have a

158few uh global questions or comments. I think related to kind of the clerical I understand this is just a first pass. Um one thing I wanted to flag I think this was in 1312.3 if I remember correctly. Let me double check that >> the uniform complaint procedure. Yes. >> Yes. So for example, I think in this one um CDE is used on page two but it's defined on page four. >> And so just for things like defined term checks some of the clerical issues again with all these red lines I know things will get lost in the mix but just want to flag that more as a clerical issue. Um my broader global question though and it occurs actually at the top of um this same policy is the contact that we use >> and

159so it occurs to me that the contact that we had for this specific policy um left the district a while ago and I'm noticing for several of these we're listing specific individuals by their title um like whoever is in HR positions at the time, whoever's in different roles. Are we permitted to go with something more general like HR at our district? Are we required? I know we're required to identify an individual, but are we required to list specific emails like that? Because under our own policy, unless we choose to wave it, we would need to do board approvals each time to update the specific contacts. It makes it a lot harder to be evergreen. Um, and in many cases, we may be directing individuals who need help or need to assert their rights towards a

160staff person who's no longer with the district. And so I'm just wondering what our best practices in terms of not having to update these, you know, every time someone changes roles. Um, is there a way to make it more evergreen within the constraints of what we're required to provide for these board policies? >> Yes, that's a really great comment, um, Trustee Kim. And, um, I I actually was talking about this with, um, the the district's, um, HR, uh, department, uh, specifically about who who should we name as the compliance officer. And so I think to avoid having to do these routine kind of updates um because of staff departures, um it's probably best to just list the district's front office phone number as kind of um the the local line to call and so they

161can then be directed to the to the specific person. Um, we do need to list um the department and the title of the person who will be handling primarily these types of requests, but as far as specific contact information, we can certainly just list um a more general number to perhaps a district office. Um, and I'm certainly open to talking with um, the district staff about whether or not there are I I don't know if this exists, but if there are um, kind of more general emails as well to list like for example, I've seen in other districts where they'll have, you know, emails directed to a title n office or, you know, an HR department office. I don't know if that exists here, but um, we can certainly talk about that and explore those

162options to be a little bit more generalized. That would be my strong recommendation. Um, and also just for internally to our own team. I don't know how often when we do have a departure that there is a global search done of our policies to make sure that we're not again directing folks especially for some of the types of sensitive issues we're talking about here towards a staff person who's no longer with the district. Um, but I would be open to either approach just to make sure that these are up to date. And again, I don't know if also under our other board policy that I provided comments to, I know we have some flexibility to wave the requirement to prove every change at a board meeting. I would be open again to also entertaining a

163change in policy or if we already have this policy that that type of information wouldn't necessarily require board action or could be on the consent agenda. Uh but again defer to our council in terms of what would be appropriate or what the best practices are for some of our neighboring districts. >> Yes, I will definitely um follow up on that with with district staff to see if there's a more streamlined kind of um option that we could pursue if if this um were to happen. >> Great. Thank you. And just following up on on the idea and the suggestion, um the district currently uses um global email addresses to source um uh responses from the community. And so with a little bit of coordination between IT and human resources and the business department, we can

164think through some options of how to establish um email accounts that um aren't tied to an individual name. And then here in the district every summer we can update the list of individuals who would receive the email for the purpose of having it's really nice to have a duplication or maybe even three people who um just as an example um myself the assistant superintendent of student services and the director of student services just as an example to ensure that in the event that one of us is on a leave or no longer with the district that there's a way to um be more confident that that email is going to land in somebody's inbox who's going to reach out to somebody. >> Agreed. Thank you for that. >> Thank you. Any other questions? >> Um

165I also have a question on board policy 4030. Um, well, first, you know, want to say as a working mom, I really appreciate all these updates to like the nuances beyond pregnancy, you know, including, you know, well, so that was I I really appreciate all those updates. Um, I wanted to ask and, you know, perhaps I missed it somewhere else. Um, can you explain to me why um military and veteran status was removed in the updates? >> I'm taking a look at um 4030 Yeah. Um, so I believe that um I I it may have been previously added a as a in a discretionary manner. Um I I don't believe that um CSBA has indicated in its policies that it's including that as a protected class necessarily. And so that may have been a previous

166addition um from a discretionary standpoint, but um I can certainly review um all those employment related laws to see if if if it should apply and be readded for for our next round. >> Great. Thank you. >> Anything else? Yeah, go ahead. >> I have more. I was just trying to give space to other people. Um, board policy 4033. >> Um, you know, it was, you know, one of the the lines was, you know, for at least a year after the birth of a child, the district shall provide a reasonable amount of break time. da da da you know and I'm not sure if this is you know me being too technical um but you know American Academy of Pediatrics who um you know support breastfeeding for 2 years or longer and so when I

167read this language of like for at least a year after the birth of a child, it makes me think that like you know perhaps for moms who are trying to follow you know you know these kind of recommendations by these agencies that maybe these protections won't be necessarily honored after that year's time. I don't know if I'm reading too much detail into this. >> I think it's a perfectly valid point. Um, and again, um, it's it's it's language that, you know, CSBA is proposing, right? And so, um, if if the district prefers to adopt different language or other time frames, then we can certainly look at whether or not this is a specific time frame that has been set forth by law um as a limitation of some kind or if there's um room to

168um to to change that um to change that time period. So, um, again, something for me to follow up on and I can certainly incorporate, um, those changes if applicable, um, at the next round that we look at these policies. >> Thank you so much. And one last question. Um, AR 5145.71. >> Yes. Um could you explain to me a little bit why you know or maybe you know it it might just have come down from someone else but why the time was extended from 60 to 120 days. Um you know I think I'm kind of usually in the camp of you know wanting sooner responses versus later. So I just didn't I wanted to get a little bit of clarity on that one. >> I am really glad that you brought this up. Um

169first of all this is a kind of a companion policy or regulation I would say. Um the 5145.71 is the title 9 complaint procedure for students when they are reporting sexual harassment allegations. Um last fall the board had already adopted a similar version for the employees. Um and so in that uh policy the district had adopted the 120 days slashreasonably reasonably prompt period of time. Um, and so I think that we're trying to be consistent between the employees policies as well as the student policy so that there's really no major difference in how we're treating these types of of allegations. Um, I will say that the 60 the 60-day time um period in the proposed policy by CSBA, I don't know where they got that number from to be honest with you. Um because in

170the title 9 regulations, there is no specific timeline for completing these types of complaint investigations. Um this is unlike how we treat other types of discrimination or harassment complaints that are processed under the uniform complaint procedures. Um in those types of complaints, we do have a 60-day timeline. So my my guess is that when CSBA was initially kind of preparing these Title 9 procedures, they were trying to mirror the 60 days in the UCP. However, I will say from from experience in investigating those types of allegations, um really the Title 9 process is is so rigorous that it is really not feasible to complete those investigations within 60 days. Um I don't take any pleasure in saying that and I know that we always try to aim for a more expedited um and timely resolution

171process. However, because the regulations require so many steps in the process, including giving the parties multiple opportunities to review all of the evidence gathered in the investigation um just simply by means of of the processes built in. Um it takes much longer than 60 days. So my recommendation was, you know, um to consider some other timeline, whether it be 75 days, 90 days, 120 days, however you want. Um what whatever you want. As long as whatever the timeline is, there is still the onus is upon the the onus is upon the district to process these complaints, resolve these complaints in a quote unquote reasonably prompt manner. And that is the language actually in the title n the federal regulations that we cannot um be deliberately indifferent. We have to respond to these allegations in a

172reasonably prompt manner whatever that means right depending on the circumstances. There may be situations where it is a one incident sexual harassment um in uh complaint and we can resolve that pretty quickly. There are other times when I'm dealing with um multiple allegations, multiple parties involved, and that simply just requires so much more time to process those types of complaints. Um so I think that, you know, in working with district staff, um we we kind of compromised on a 120 days. Um, I think that the commitment will always be to resolve it earlier than 120 days, but I think 120 days gives you some discretion as to how you are processing those types of complaints um, and those investigations. >> Thank you so much. >> That's it for my questions. >> Well, I appreciate your

173your very thorough review, Trusty Hoe. Um and and the next time we meet I I I I'm hoping that I can give you um some more concrete answers to some of those questions. >> Thanks. >> Exchange contact. >> The board requests I text you directly. >> Okay. Well, um, if we don't have any further questions, um, do we have any public comment on these? >> No. Joe, can we check for online comments? >> Uh, no. No public comment online. >> Thank you. Um, okay. Well, this one is, I think, just for initial review, right? So, um, we can move on to the next. Oh, sorry. Any additional comments? Comments. Okay. >> Okay. Just waving. >> This is just an invit. >> All right. Well, thank you so much. >> Um Okay. Sorry. Let me pull

174up the again. I appreciate your thorough review, Stacy. Um okay, next one. Um Superintendent Noah. >> All right. Um, this is a a very uh important consequential um item that uh really exemplifies what we're trying to uh bring to the Sato Foster City community through open public transparent governance. And so in working with our bond council and in working with our business uh team and with our facilities and construction team, we're bringing forth item 9B to allow the board an opportunity to publicly announce an intention um and to direct staff to take an action at a future school board meeting. Um after our last presentation at the district's uh regular January board meeting, you heard that the district had some discretion on when to uh bring forth a proposed uh uh bond um election. And

175ultimately what we're bringing to the board tonight is an item in which members of the board will have an opportunity to just discuss your perspectives on on potentially ordering an election um specifically um in November, but uh also it will just invite more community discussion and more community uh input and that's really good. It's really healthy. Um, so we've provided a draft resolution. Um, as you know, it's February 26, so we really have close to four months to fine-tune the resolution. And I would suggest that we actually do that at our March and April meeting. um and allow the current draft to sit and allow the public to read it and allow the board to make copious notes that we bring back to a a subsequent meeting so that that our deliberation on the details

176of the language in the resolution um are part of a of a process that's very public. Um, but this item is brought forth with transparency and with an eye towards the future of the district. as you all know, includes some really, really important plans to update campuses and provide students with opportunities to pursue um learning experiences in settings where our staff feels inspired and respected and capable of of meeting student needs in in classrooms that uh our students deserve to learn in. Um so, with that, I'll pass it back over to the board for any questions. Patrick and I are happy to answer uh questions that you might have and then uh to take direction from the board. >> I have one question just um and it's just a random one, but on I guess

177page eight, how come just certain things are bolded like certain bullet points? What does that mean? Anybody know? Or I can ask them. I'm going to PG. >> Yeah. >> And and we have th this has been through multiple legal reviews. So, >> yeah, I know. And I could have asked this last time, I'm sure, but it just dawned on me. Anyways, just something to ponder. >> Uh, you know, Allison, I see like that second bullet there, for example, replace leaky roo. I'm not sure why that's bolded. That's a good question. >> Okay, the next the next group two has one that's also >> the second one. >> Yeah, number two every time. >> Yeah. No, I'll ask I'll send an email now. Thanks. >> Any other questions? Um, sorry. >> Sure. Um, yeah. Any

178or any comments I guess you want to add? Um I just have a few comments. I know this is a preliminary draft and I appreciate what superintendent said about building in enough time to really get public feedback um to socialize this and have other reviews. There were some highle kind of global comments or the pieces I did want to flag. One is the fact and Patrick and I have already discussed this offline that the date that's listed is the 25th day of June, which I understand is the day that we plan to officially approve the resolution. But in the certification on the next page, um it still lists the 26th day of February, which is today's meeting, which I believe is the meeting that we anticipated approving the resolution had we gone for the June

179ballot. I'll also stay on the certification. This resolution is referred to as 6- or 6/2526 in the header. minor note, but it's 06. Um, just to have some consistency there. And then scrolling down further into the actual text, and I understand a lot of hands touch this. Um, there are a lot of different pieces coming together, but for example, in the massive block of text on page nine that lists out all different types of projects. Again, I know this is kind of meant to be very inclusive. Um, the sentence, I think near the end, there's two different times where we mentioned building parking lots. um word for word the same. I think it says upgrade parking lots one time mentioned solar one time doesn't. See if I can just search that. >> Oh yeah, I

180see it. >> Where's though? >> Yeah, it says add or upgrade parking lots including solar systems, electric vehicle charging stations and then two two lines later it says add upgrade parking lots. Period. Um so little pieces like that. I think also on page seven if you scroll through the text in quotes or sorry the project list itself we talk about highquality instruction in science engineering technology engineering um those types of nits if we can catch that where it says engineering twice in the forwards if we can try to clear those before this goes wider and we start pushing this out for public comment I would just ask um again I understand this is probably peacemeal from a lot of different precedents and from different stakeholders. But if we can just clean up those types of

181clerical issues before, I think it'll definitely help in terms of uh soliciting more substance feedback. And similar to what trustee Proctor raised about the seemingly arbitrary formatting issues um to whatever extent we can streamline this to make the comments much more substantive and on the issue itself, I think that'll help from our end to get this to a good final spot. I'm >> send a message right now. additional comments? No. Um well, thanks for bringing this um you know, as we heard a bit earlier today and then just um you know, in our visits to the new facilities that we've seen um just open um really I think emphasizes underlines the importance of the physical space to you know the experience of um the students and educators and just feeling you know, more at ease

182in the space and um just having the facilities available for people to have community events or um you know just having that beautiful and functional and inclusive space for um for our community use is I think really important. And I think sometimes people do need to see it to understand its importance or see it to um to understand why we need to ask the community for their support. Um because it's true that we you know people have a lot of demands on their limited resources and we need to kind of show the community that this is worth it and um is also a part of the reason why I've been pushing for community access so that the broader community can see what we're doing with their dollars and feel that they are part of it

183too. And so, um, I just also want to highlight that, um, our students are planning a Parkside like playd date, uh, actually on Saturday from 11 to 1:00. So, I really encourage any community members to go out and see what um, the Parkside campus looks like now. And yeah, I just I just want to um say that, you know, in my time on the board, I've seen so much transformation on so many campuses and uh but there's still work to be done. So, um that's it. Thank you. Um I guess do we do we I call for comments on this one already, but just make sure are there any impersonal comments on this? No. Okay, Joe, can we check online? >> There are no comments online. >> Okay, thank you. So, if everyone's good, we'll

184move on to the next one. Um 9C. >> All right, another um really great item. We have our chief of staff, Lisa Joseph, here with us tonight. She's uh queued up. Um Lisa, I'm going to talk for just a minute if I can. Um, as the board and public are aware, the district for over a year has been working very closely with our partners at the Bay Fund to facilitate a new community strategic plan process. For me, the headline is a plan that is rooted from the voices of um the kids and the families and the educators and a real commitment to um uplift their perspectives and to not have an administrative orchestration to the entire process. Um, and it's a little, you know, as an administrator, it's a little um, a little scary to

185think about, man, where are we going to end up? But it's also, um, comes with a lot of trust of the people that work here and the people who send their kids to school here. Um, this room is actually the location of a lot of the, um, planning work that goes into it. And so, um, in just a couple of days, we'll have close to 50 people in here talking about our our community vision and and Lisa is going to go into a lot more detail in just a minute. Um, but I want to I want to just be very clear with the public and with the board that what you're going to hear from Lisa and and which is this is the seventh update we've done at a schoolboard meeting. I really want to

186emphasize it is truly a plan being developed by the stakeholders and that includes parents, students, and all staff. Um, and with that, I'll pass it over to you, Lisa. >> Thank you, Superintendent OOA, and good evening, board of trustees. My name is Lisa Joseph, chief of staff to the superintendent. Um and uh as he kind of previewed, we've had a very busy month working on the community vision that will guide our community strategic plan. Um so I'm just going to pull up one quick slide. I don't want to sit on this for too long. Um just to kind of ground where we are in the journey. Um so in we we kicked off this um process in the fall and September. Um throughout the fall and winter we were gathering a lot of community input.

187Um and then over that time the vision design team was formed which is about 50 people mostly um parents and we have about 10 students on the team as well as about 10 educators and um a few administrators. Um but now that they've gotten all this input and gone on these shared learning experiences, they've finally started drafting the vision. And so that's what we spent uh our time doing this month. Um starting to draft the vision for the learner experience. So we are here in this focus phase where the vision design team is really focused on writing and that first draft of the vision for learner experience is going to be shared at our next community vision meeting which will be on March 18th um at Bayside Academy. Um hope to see you all there.

188Um, and that's going to be an opportunity for the community to pro provide feedback on this vision. And we're really pushing to have students, parents, educators participate in that meeting and can and have a say in whether or not they believe that this vision that is meant to reflect all the input that we've gotten is truly reflective of the work that we're doing. Um, and as I mentioned, the vision design team is very focused on the vision and we've gotten a lot of input throughout the year. But central to this process is that we continue getting input and inspiration for the vision so that it's a vision that is truly reflective of our very large community. Um, and the more people that we hear from, the more ideas we get for how to realize that

189vision um, to help inform the community strategic plan. Um, so while here we're I'm kind of walking through the development of the vision, there's a several more things that we've been doing this month to help support this process. Um, one of them was early this month we went to Sacramento. We took about 20 educators um to observe student centered learning at a couple of schools in Sacramento that have um kind of come up on the map uh for doing this work through project-based learning um through really innovative um structures for high school students to get real world experiences. And from the educators that were on this trip, the big themes that I heard, the big takeaways for them were that they got to see the power of student voice, student leadership, real world learning, um,

190and community. Um, one of the we we've spoken a lot in this meeting about the new facilities that have come up and how powerful that is for students and teachers. The spaces that we saw were very beautiful spaces that represented student identities. And I think um educators really valued that as well. It was a really inspiring um trip and um some of the reflections from that trip are shared um in the agenda attachments. Um so that was one bit of inspiration um and certainly input for the strategic plan. Um but uh as superintendent mentioned getting family input in this vision is very important. So we are hosting family input sessions and we had the first two this month one at Beach Park and one at Sunny Bray Elementary. And the purpose of these meetings is

191just to learn about the parent experience um at different grade levels. And we're planning to host these sessions at all school sites um over the course of the next several months over the 2026 school year or excuse me calendar year um to inform the community strategic plan. Um and at this meeting we also introduced concepts of student centered learning to our parents um and were able to field questions or concerns they had about student centered learning or or otherwise. Um, so that's our uh student- centered learning, family input sessions. And then I think the thing that we did this month that uh was uh where I learned a lot was the teacher listening sessions that we hosted. This was for prek through fifth grade teachers from across the district. Um so we held three sessions.

192It was actually all on the same day as the Sunny Bray uh family input session as well. Um and this was these sessions were actually facilitated by educators who were on the vision design team. So, uh, Superintendent Oo and I stayed largely quiet through these sessions and we were just there to listen. And we learned a lot about moments when teachers have felt really supported to implement change that they believed would benefit their students and their teaching craft. Um, and also times when they haven't felt supported and what the and the impact of um, that lack of support. And so we got a lot of ideas for the community vision and strategic plan from those sessions. And we're going to continue doing more of them to hit up the K8s and the middle schools um

193as well so we can hear from more teachers and hopefully do more sessions with um with teachers across the district so we can continue getting their input because it is so so valuable and I I certainly gained a lot of insight. Um so those are um all the events I think that we did um throughout the month of February and we have so much more planned um for March. Um again would invite you all to come to the community vision meeting on March 18th. It's going to be at 5:45 p.m. Bayside Academy. We'll have dinner child care. Um and it's honestly going to be a lot of fun. I think it's a great opportunity for people in our community to come together and really get excited about this direction that we're heading in as a

194district. I'll pass it back to you. Thank you. >> I was going to say at our last big community convening, we had a taker and it was a big hit and I don't know what the food plans are yet, but it's got to raise the level somehow. It's got to stay at the that ghetto level or higher. >> I'm cuisines, but >> to see somebody cooking right there and feeding you right there, it's very cool. you know, it just adds a lot of of of meaning and excitement. The other um thing to talk about, I'm going to just share. I was with President Trin at the Sunny Bay uh Sunny Bray parent meeting is she's talked about before her children go to Sunny Bra. So, she was there as a parent and um we had

195an activity where there was a breakout um by grade level and at at our group I ended up in the same group as President Tren. Um at our group there was a parent who spoke about her experience having her kids in our school and uh came here um just a year ago in fourth grade. So like the example I gave earlier tonight, a student who didn't go to Sunny Bray and kinder but um uh came uh afterward and the parent talked about their experience actually moving to Los Angeles initially and spending 3 years in Los Angeles before they moved up here and um you know great conversation really you know strong input from the parent but afterward as we were getting ready to close out the evening she said you know I'm really like honored

196that you invited me to attend um because I I have a lot to say. And you know, that felt really good to have the parent express that. And then she told me why. She said, "It felt really good because it makes me think that you you care about what I know and you care about what I think because I have degrees in education from El Salvador and they don't I don't work in education here, but I'm highly educated in my field and this is my field." And it was like I have thought about that a lot in the weeks since because it's just another reminder that we can't think we know every parent based on how long they've been here, what language they speak, what school their kids go to, how they show up to

197a meeting. She's like she's an expert and her feedback was so good. but she's an expert in her field and I just think we're gonna get somewhere really fantastic in 18 months. But it's little moments like that that I hold on to that go that's really special and and now she's going to be a lot more involved cuz she's sort of caught the bug and she's going to be there on the 18th with us and and attending some of our our future meetings as well. So I just wanted to share that tidbit with the board. >> Thank you. Um, do we have any questions from the board? Um, any public comment? Uh, Joe, can we check for online comment? >> Yes, there are no public comments online. >> Uh, any board comments? >> I I

198guess this might be a question. Um, you know, Trusty Hoer and I were at an event earlier this week with some parents and they started asking questions about our facilities master plan and that's you know a process that was a year long that we met with all the sites but they were only looking at it now or it popped up more recently in group chat. they had questions or concerns. You know, we approved that at the last board meeting and so it occurred to me that now we're thinking about this process here and we've done such great work in terms of our outreach and building out our committees, our groups, um having all these on-site events, providing child care, having food available, but I we all know there's still a lot of voices that are

199absent from this discussion. So as we get to the phase of writing our learnings down and validating them and getting broader buyin, how are we shifting our strategy to include voices, perspectives, um folks we know were never able to make it to the inerson meetings or the trips or some of the other amazing work that we've done. I guess how do we make sure that those groups whether it's the PTA council folks whether it's you know other teachers who didn't have a chance to weigh in what is our approach to kind of now that we've gone deep to go broad before we roll something out that we are going to say is with the input of a lot of the key stakeholders that we want to include as part of our process. >> Yep. So

200I'll answer your question in a couple of parts. um specifically for educators on the upcoming March professional development day, we've designated one hour of that day um for educators to give to weigh in on the elements of the vision that will be um drafted by then. um a very the vi draft vision for the learner experience and then a very early draft of the vision for instruction because we know that educator um input on that in particular is very important and we're I'm working with um some teachers to facilitate that as well as um school leaders to do the same. Um and but I think something that's unique about this community strategic planning process is because we are having community members drive the work. They are more excited to talk to other people about it.

201They are the ones that are crafting the vision themselves. We had a meeting with um a subsect of the vision design team last night or this vision leadership team and they are they are all so energetic to write and to work on this vision and I think because we are having educators, students, parents all contributing to this vision, they are talking to other people about it. I joined um I I popped into the empowering student voices meeting just last week to get student ideas on how to get more students to part to come to the March 18th meeting and to um fill out a survey to share their input on the on the vision draft and they started like they start listing out all these ideas how they're going to engage on social media. We're

202going to get our advisories to do it. We're going to talk to clubs. we're going to do with this video and that video and because it is something that they feel some ownership of where they see that like oh people want to hear what I have to say about this and this is a this is a different process where we are where our our voices are are truly being heard because there were students on the vision design team in that room last week with the empowering student voices um I think that there's a bit more of a grassroots effort that's starting kind of right now when we are I mean I I hope it started earlier, but I'm starting to feel it now. Um, where as we're in the process of drafting the vision. So,

203I don't have uh I can't say I have metrics for that at the moment, but I think I I have a lot of confidence and um optimism around the the work that we're doing to get more input on on the vision as we go through this process. >> And just as I've said every week, I think the work that we've done or that your team has done in particular is phenomenal. I think I don't know that we've ever done not just anything in this district. I don't think I've ever seen anything in education that puts the amount of effort we have to engage as many diverse perspectives, voices, and being very thoughtful about being truly inclusive. Um, and so I definitely do respect and appreciate that work. I am thinking kind of at that final

204stage how we avoid the folks who feel like they weren't tapped. And we know that's inevitable. We're not going to invite, you know, 15,000 people to our next meeting. Um, but as as long as that's part of the thought process, as long as we're trying to be mindful of that, um, the same way we have throughout this process, I think that will help alleviate a lot of those concerns so that we do know that we have a very representative sample of folks from all across the board, all across our district, um, weighing in on the final product that we put together. So, thank you for all you guys are doing. >> I appreciate the push. >> Thank you so much for the presentation. I found the site visit reflection really powerful to read about what

205um people took away from these um environments that are different from ours that we could take um you know elements of um what other people are doing and and bring them into our community. And you know, one of some of the things that really stood out to me are how students are empowered and have agency to lead and to um you know to show that they are really they're not just there to like receive information but also they're there to be part of the like the fabric of how a school runs. like it, you know, it talked about fifth graders running a library or sixth graders teaching yoga and and you know, I don't I'm not trying to downplay the expertise that our staff bring, but you know, there's I think there's a lot of

206opportunity for students to get more engaged and and more involved on campus. So, I just really loved reading about all of these takeaways, and I'm really excited to see um what the vision design team is is coming up with. And I'm excited to hear more um community input, especially from parents who, as Superintendent OA referenced, have never wanted to or maybe never felt like an inclination to um participate in this kind of process. and there's so much that they bring to the table. So, thank you so much for creating um these spaces and and providing the support that that make it possible. Um I think that's it for me. Um so, thank you so much. >> Thank you all. >> Okay. Thank you. All right. Uh we will move on to board member requests for

207future agenda items if there are any. I have a couple. Um, one is actually related to an agenda item that we already have, but tonight's update um, from Brew Island in Laurel felt different than what it's been in the past. And I really did enjoy hearing um like not so much about what's going on at the school but about the students and learning about upstanders um Laurel learning about the how students um feel about the imp like the impact of the of the programs that are going on in our schools. And so, um, I would encourage more of that where, um, like like it's great to hear what's going on at schools, but hearing directly from students about the the impact of the decisions that we make, the impact of the work that our our

208district is doing is really powerful. And so, um, I would like to just say that was great and I would encourage more of that. Um, and the other item, this was related to some of the public comment at the beginning. I'm wondering if we can do um have some sort of agenda item about a little bit more transparency about uh funding and spending and looking at some of the programs and whether it's time to sunset some of them if they're not um like the LEGO program in particular if there's challenges around that and whether it's something that should continue if there's some more support that needs to be um given to that program or like is it time to replace it with something else but just kind of looking at those those things. Thank you.

209>> I have a future meeting request that I should piggy back on what Trusty Proctor just talked about. I did want to ask and to the extent that we can within this calendar year which may be tough um want to request a much more detailed breakdown of the budget and not to the extent that we cover um or that Patrick always goes through um but something that we can present in a high level because we have not just the comments we got today but in public we'll get comments about you have money for Legos, we don't have money for this, you have money for quinoa in the cafeteria, we don't have money for that. you're funding these types of apps that you know my child doesn't use but then you're saying that you can't have

210an extra parent in the classroom and so we know there are things restricted funds unrestricted funds examples we talked about earlier there are funds that are set aside for specific purposes whether it's art whether it's temporary funding from the state um there are charitable grants that we receive from community partners that are set aside for specific work the ed foundation helps fund some of the things that we do to the extent that we can get a very high level breakdown of those different buckets and why we do the things we do um the question that I had earlier clear about why as a budget zero and you know 60k was spent that wasn't spent out from the ether it was money that we had to spend down. We can't get into that level of granular

211detail with everyone, but especially as we think about going out for this bond measure, having these conversations, not just with our educators next few months, with all voters, uh, leading up to November, I do think it would help to have that kind of some kind of broad level of detail, whether it's visual, whether it's just a breakdown, because I do hear a lot of these conversations, and again, Tristy Ho and I were just sat with a group of parents earlier this week where we got those types of comments where my priority is not being funded, but you have money for XYZ And again, there's almost always an explanation for why we have money for ex for different issues. Um, but just getting that kind of broader breakdown. I think when we had the school lunch

212conversation, that was part of it. I think with, you know, everything we're doing with the bond and construction specifically, that's part of it to the extent that we can provide that high level breakdown. It might be hopefully something lives on our website or somewhere that's accessible. I do think that helps to then address a lot of these questions up front. So that's my first request is something as trustee proctor said that provides more clarity on the budget that provides more transparency and heads off a lot of the types of comments that we're going to get when we go out to voters ask them um to help fund our next round of buildings. The second piece also comes from parents I spoke with. Um this is that season where folks are asking how does you know

213kindergarten work? How did we end up in the school that we ended up? Um why wasn't my child accepted to the Montasuri program? My child got a near perfect score on the GATE exam. Why weren't they accepted into that? Um, how long is the wait list for college Park Fiesta Gardens? And why aren't you expanding that? Or in our case, why are we expanding our Spanish immersion program but not our Mandarin immersion program? We, as TR, as president Tren said earlier, we don't make decisions based on anecdotes. We don't make decisions based on volume of complaints. We want to make it based on data. And so my request to staff is what data do we have available in terms of, for example, how many people applied for different magnet programs? How many people would have

214been eligible for the gay program? How many students met that threshold or wanted to get in or wanted to get into a specific program transition into TKRK um that weren't able to because when we had that early discussion about schools and even the broad discussion about facilities, I feel like that should be a factor in our determination that it shouldn't be necessarily maintaining the status quo. But if we found out that there was tremendous interest in Fiesta Gardens and that we would actually be drawing in students from some of the other Spanish immersion programs in the peninsula, that would be something that we should consider as we're building out that campus and as a future proofing for whatever we think enrollment might look like down the line. Um, I would love to see numbers on

215that just so that we can then again not go off anecdotes, not go off individual stories, but really have data that we can point to in terms of where the demand is, where the interest is, um, and what parents in our community would like to see. Thank you for raising that. Um, and I I guess where I would request that we begin is is understanding what the process is to request for certain um budgetary information. Um, how we're able to request for it and how does it become available to us as trustees and as the public? uh request certain information or even staff uh regarding certain budgets related to all of the um things that you just named um here. What's the process? because there are I mean there are clear processes but if they're

216not being um adhered to when the request is made how do we then direct a clear pathway of obtaining that information? Any board member statements? >> Um, first want to take a moment to thank the principles, faculty, and staff at George Hall, Northshore View, Parkside, Beach Park, Fiesta Gardens, and Foster City for hosting schoolboard partner visits this week. Um, I know, you know, being an educator that these visits can sometimes be very disruptive to the day and to classrooms. Um, so I really appreciate um these schools opening their doors to our many stakeholders and who all, you know, we all work together to contribute to our student success. So, thank you to those um school sites. Um, we've mentioned it a couple times during the evening today, but I just wanted to, you know, just

217shout out our, you know, recent board visits to Bowage's new counseling suite library and Parkside's new NPR. Um, you know, when walking around the Bowitch counseling suite, I was like, uh, maybe it's time for me to quit the board and like work at Bowish as a middle school counselor cuz this this facility is gorgeous. It's like nicer than any school, any office I've ever had anywhere. Um, just wanted to say, you know, in that kind of same vein, you know, thank you to Miss Rufo, our facilities department, our building partners, and especially our voters, um, who've created spaces that our students and staff are really proud of. Um, also wanted to give a, um, shout out to Assistant Superintendent David Chamblas, um, executive directors Kinetta Cook, Pam Bartfield, and math coordinator Annie Burke, uh, for

218their work on the middle school math pathways, um, and the conversations and committee that's been going on around that. Um, I know there are a lot of people who have big thoughts about, you know, what middle school math should look like in our district. Um, and I welcome you all to come to their last and final listening session, Tuesday, March 17th from 6:00 to 7:30 at Fiesta Gardens. Um, last but not least, um, on one of the very last days of February, I wanted to recognize Black History Month. Um, and the incredible educators and leaders across our district who have championed access, equity, and opportunity for our students, often while overcoming barriers. Um, thank you for making the Sato Foster City School District better with your contributions, vision, and expertise. I would like to um

219thank Bayside Academy. They were amazing today. They had a um an assembly uh for Black History Month, an educational uh assembly, and it was incredible. Um the kids, you can see the joy and the loud screams and the participation and the dancing and the I mean, it was incredible. I just want to say um thank you to the staff who showed up and um was intentional about um delivering um a space where kids can learn um about history um that exist in America. This is um a very profound um advancement in this district because in past times we haven't had anything near this scale of education as it relates to black history. Um so um kudos to all of the uh staff and the uh performers who brought the assembly to our district and thank

220you Mr. O Choa, Superintendent Ooa for allowing this to be part of our school district's history. Thank you. >> Um I wanted to thank um well, first of all, I went to Parkside as uh for my school site visit this week and um had a listen to a great presentation from Nema about um the monastery program, where we were, where we are, and where we're headed. and it was really um it was a just a great um way to kind of get a great overview of Parkside. Um unfortunately it's my busy time at work so I got a work call and so I had to leave. I didn't get to visit all the classrooms and I didn't get to see the ribbon cutting but I'll definitely make my way back there. Um I did also

221want to thank everyone at Bowage for um welcoming us to see the new campus or new portion of the campus um as I'm getting closer and closer to the end of my term. Um, thinking back to when I was running for election, uh, everybody in Foster City said, "You better do something about Bowage." And so getting a chance to see, um, basically what it was and what it is and and also being able to kind of visualize what it can be, um, with this next bond measure is, um, it's just really rewarding to see, but also to say at the same time, there's so many schools that that need work done. And um and I I hope that everybody can come to Bowage and see um the the huge improvement that's happened there and also

222um you know see that this is something that we can do at other schools and and make a huge change for our students. I think um it's so important to to educators and students to have pride in where they go every day. Um I know it's it's really important for their learning experience and and work experience, but I think to be able to say this is my school and look at it. It's so cool. and we're seeing students that are that have been there um through the construction and now getting to be in new classrooms, be in the counseling space, be in the library. Um it's just really it's really rewarding to see and um you know makes my time on the board feel like just really um really precious. So thank you. >> I

223I want to begin by thanking the Foster City Elementary team for um hosting us for our site visit. It was really great to be able to go around. My daughter, my youngest daughter, goes to Foster City. So, being able to visit the classrooms, see all the work that we do. I say this every time I do classroom visits, but I always have a tremendous amount of respect for the work that teachers do for their ability to control classrooms. We went to two different kindergarten classrooms, and I had trouble controlling two of my children. I don't know how they can get, you know, 20 of them to pay attention. The soft redirects, little subtle cues on the type of training and experience that's really reflecting the way they're able to elevate our students and really bring

224them together and get them to focus. I just every time it's such a humbling amazing thing to see what's happening in our classrooms and a great reminder of the work that we do and I think the public comments that we had earlier from our students from Brewer um and from Laurel was another reminder of just the amazing work happening at the ground level um with each of our students individually and thanks to all the amazing work of our teachers, staff and administrators. I think as my other trustees have said, the ribbon cutting at Parkside was a very special ceremony and being able to see the new buildings about it. And to all of our students, teachers, administrators, neighbors who were patient about the dust and the noise and all the work that it took to

225get this up and to all the voters who allowed who made this possible. It is just really amazing. I appreciated the public comment earlier about the new classrooms about it because it is a very transformative thing to go from outdated buildings with no windows and limited HVAC to a brand new looking building with a beautiful view with natural light um it makes it so much easier to engage in learning um and development when you have those things set up for you. And I think as we go out for this bond measure we know it's a difficult climate. We know that any tax measure in this time of insecurity and all the other different competing measures on the ballot is going to be difficult. I'm confident that all of us are ready to go full strength

226for the types of work that we're doing because we know how much of a different it makes. We've seen it. Um and as folks attested to earlier, those of us who've experienced it, who've seen the transformation, who've seen what it does our students know that this is a very worthwhile thing that we're doing and we're going to go all in to make sure that we're able to continue on that work. Separately, I did want to talk about another experience I had this week. I had a chance to meet um Jacqueline Corin, the executive director of March for Our Lives. She was a Parkland survivor leading a national youth movement to address gun violence in schools. And in a meeting convened by Berling game uh city council member Donna Coulson, several other members of city council

227with uh president of Santo County Board of Education, Hugo Torres, um we had a chance to have a long fireside chat with her about the work that she was doing and just to hear the level of passion, the fact that they passed more than 250 laws around this country to address this issue and this all happened when she was in her early teens and 20s um reminded me of the energy that we saw in our own community with the student led walkouts. I think the youth have had to step up in a way because of what's happening in our society currently and it's just amazing to kind of see not just our middle schoolers who participated but all the local high schoolers. Um I know many folks in our board and administrators and teachers were

228there in a personal capacity to ensure the safety of those students. It's unfortunate that they felt the need to step forward in that way, but also it was a very inspiring moment that I think gave us a lot of hope. Um, that our students were not afraid to face this moment with the same kind of passion that's helped propel this country forward to so much progress in the past. I also want to thank College Park. Um, they had an amazing panda fest. Every year seems to get better and better. I especially wanted to thank um Jimmy, Steven, Phil, uh the PTA program leads, all the folks on the PTA, um the Friends of Mandarin Scholars, Dad's Club, and all the folks involved. As a former College Park parent, it was great to go back, see

229so many friends, and see how much PandaFest has grown over the years. Um I also want to specifically call out one of our administrators, Pam Bartfield. Um, some of you folks may know I also serve on the San County School Board Association and Pam was a guest speaker um at our last meeting which unfortunately I wasn't able to go to but immediately after that meeting I got no exaggeration like 18 text messages saying the work that you guys are doing in your district is truly amazing. um folks wanted tips, folks wanted to come to our next study session and I was like that's a testament to the incredible work that we're doing and sometimes because and again thank you to superintendent for the incredible team he's built for all of our administrators who are able

230to do this but to hear that from my fellow trustees all throughout the Bay Area the kind of praise that we receive the kind of empathy um the fact that we're so thoughtful about what we're building here I think you know specifically want to recognize Pam but I think you know Diego spoke at our meeting before that um there's so much that we're proud to hold up in our district and I think the fact that we can then go to our neighbors and share those best practices, share those learnings with them is just a again testament to the work that we're doing and just makes me incredibly proud to serve on this board. Um and then calling out another partner and a former trustee. I really want to thank Santo County Board President Noelia Cororso.

231She convened a very difficult meeting that President Tre and I attended um on this vehicle licensing fee issue on the kinds of shortages we're facing in the county. Um, I want to thank that group for also taking the feedback that Patrick, Diego, and our trustees have put forward and concerns we had on terms of school boards and school districts and how they may be impacted and incorporating that feedback into their process moving forward. There's still an incredible amount of work to do, but being in a room full of school district leaders, city council members, uh, county leaders, all trying to work together to row in the same direction to solve this problem again was a great example of everything that's going right in our county. Um, and then lastly, the last public comment that we

232received, I want to thank everyone who makes public comments because so often the board only has limited visibility. And to have had a board meeting last month talking about the healthy food that we're putting in cafeterias to kind of focus on that and then to hear from our own teachers that they were concerned about powdered donuts and other snacks. Again, it's not a binary. I understand we're trying, you know, both products maybe being offered. But it's always helpful for us to get that perspective and to balance out what we're hearing and to figure out how we can be doing better. And so the fact that they came out here um just to highlight the fact that they were concerned about some of the nutritional offerings, I really appreciate that kind of input. And for all

233the folks who send us emails or flag these types of incidents, um it helps us to be better as a board to get that kind of visibility and to be able to do a deeper dive into some of these issues. And I understand that there's always work to be done. But again, I'm very proud to work in a district where I have so much confidence in our staff, in our teachers, in our administrators, and our leadership that we are trying to move in the right direction. We're doing it for the right reasons, and we're doing it together. Thank you. >> Well, I guess you didn't really leave me anything else to discuss, but go first. >> I'll talk about my visit to North Shore Monastery earlier this week. Um, but yeah, sure. I mean, share

234a lot of the the same sentiments as Trusty Kim, who um we've attended several of those um gatherings and meetings together. So, um, the visit to North Shore View was was great. I always enjoy visiting that campus. I know I I feel like I always know someone in one of the classrooms. So, it's it's kind of fun to see um the kids and um what they're doing and just the you know there was one um in the kindergarten I think it was TKK classroom I was honestly blown away at one of um actually two two students were writing and the level of writing and the detail and the spelling um was really incredible and really shows how supported and you know just like giving them the runway that they want to to go as deep

235as they want into writing and there are you know there are fifth graders who couldn't write at that level. I was just really um so impressed and just you know I I want to see more of that right. I want to see um an ability for kids to go deeper, to not have that fear of failure. Um it really demonstrated a confidence and um an interest in learning and a joy in learning that I want to see more of. And you know also the way that the Monasuri pro um programs are run in terms of giving students more um autonomy having them kind of you know really having focus and cultivating the ability to focus as an important life skill. I think that's something that we um could bring into the into other campuses too.

236So, uh, I'm sure that, um, you know, principal Tahai probably talked a little bit about this, um, with Parkside, too, but I think it's really valuable and especially in an environment in which our attention is so fractured by social media, by all of these different um, different demands on our time and our energy and intention. So um bringing it you know intentionally designing an educational experience that um encourages children to go deeper and to immerse themselves I think is really powerful. So um just hats off to all of our educators who um support the students and uh it's always always great to see our our programs in action. Thank you. Um so if anyone if no one else has any statements um we'll move on to future meeting dates. The dates for the next month

237are March 12th study session for uh math and literacy adoption and then our regular board meeting on the March 26th. Um and then we'll move on to public comments on closed session items. Are there any in person? Joe, can we check online, please? >> Yes, checking. No public comments online. >> Okay, thank you. Uh we will now recess to close session. Okay. Uh we are back from close session. I think the first item was which one was this one? Oh, okay. The first item was the release of temporary certificated employees. Um, and where's the There's no read out. Um, the board took action by majority vote. Oh, sorry. Uh the board took action in close session by unanimous vote of all trustees present to accept sorry to approve the release of temporary certificated employees um

238at the end of the 2025 2026 school year. Okay. And then the next item, uh, public employee discipline dismissal and release pursuant to government code 54957. Um, the board took action in close session by unanimous vote of all trustees present to accept and approve the resignation agreement of one management employee for a separation date of February 27th, 2026. Okay, that's it. Um, wait. Uh, can I get a motion to adjurnn? >> Motion to adjurnn. >> Second. >> Thank you. Um, all all in favor say I. >> I. Okay. We are adjourned at 9:54 p.m. Thank you.