001good afternoon everyone I would like to call to order the March meeting of the Santa Cruz County Board of Education regular meeting with a roll call please student trustee Hopkins student trustee Marcus here trusty aosta vice president Estrada here trusty Larson here Rusty Roth he's here truste Van Allen here truste Williams president Sanchez here do we get any requests for remote attendant approval we have not president Sanchez okay now I'm going to ask that uh we please rise to pledge allegiance and I'm going to ask our superintendent to lead us in that pledge if you're able to rise ready begin I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you I do
002want to uh make a comment and let the public let the uh trustees know as well that um I will have to I'll be stepping out a little bit earlier today around 6:15 for a family emergency but um 6:15 I'll time it around there based on where we are on the agenda next we have approval of the agenda this is the time for anybody in the public that would like to address the board on any items that are not on the agenda approval of the agenda I'll move approval um I would like to make an amendment before uh we do that we did receive a request to move up the uh resolution uh item 9.7 up on the agenda and to spe to specifically do it at 6:30 that's fine okay we have a motion
003do we have a second second first uh perfect uh second from Estrada uh first from Ben Allen all those in favor say I I I you opposed perfect okay now we have a public comments anybody in the public that would like to address the board on any matters that are not on the agenda this is your opportunity we ask that you please uh step forward provide your name and uh keep your comments to a limit of three minutes president Sanchez we have public comment from shellock on your hi that's way be quick you got along meeting tonight uh thank you for your service it's great to see you like so many of you volunteering for the stem fair and being there all day long or mock trial uh because of your involvement um I'd like
004to bring up some things that aren't as highly visible and that's um the bathroom as a resource uh at our alternative Ed sites all the bathrooms not only have menstration products for the students they also have you know um uh condoms and loop once you're over the age of 12 in the state of California you have access to healthcare we also have in all the bathrooms both in English and Spanish uh trafficking awareness information and cards so not only how to look out for trafficking but where you can go to get support and help our bathrooms for the most part are a great place to display things because they sort of got a you know audience that's going to stay in there for a second and that gives them the opportunity to read and grab
005resources that um necessarily they might not want other people to know that they're grabbing those resources so both in English in Spanish and in many different ways thank you guys so much for your service thank you any other comments hi I go now okay um hi I'm Dey Garcia I go to Harbor High School and I just recently found out that one of the art teachers at my school is being involuntarily transfer and um I'm here to discuss that um the students of Harbor High are really troubled with this because you know um movich is the teacher she's very important to all of us and she's really made a big change to our school and supports many of us through art but also emotionally educationally she's built up the golf program from basically nothing for
006the girls um and yeah so now there's an actual team um well I understand that you need to balance the budget it's also crucial to keep a thriving art department and program with teachers who are loved and involved um art is a subject in school that kids um really need because you know high school isn't really easy for anybody and Art's a you know safe place where we can express ourselves and get a break from day-to-day troubles in school and out of school um we want her as a full-time teacher at Harbor she has a true gift with high schoolers teenagers and we really need that at our school um yeah she's very committed and she's a positive influence and makes a big change to our school and it wouldn't be the same without her
007and here's a petition that bunch of kids at my school signed um just to show our support for her and how much we care about her staying at our school next year thank you thank you if yep yeah okay yeah I was going to say if you haven't done so already please share your contact with us so that we can keep you president Sanchez may may we make one brief comment which is to clarify to the public that Harbor High School is under the governance of Santa Cruz City Schools um and assuming this is the only copy of the petition um that that you may want to consider delivering that petition to the Santa Cruz City Schools governing board since we're the we're the County Office of Education however that is of course up to
008you we'd be happy to make copies of the petition and and so that you can keep the original so we could do that right now thank you so much any other comments from the public any comments online yes yes seeing one from Manny one moment while I make Manny can you hold can you hold on one second Miss Nichols thank you hello Danny can you unmute uh yeah me one moment while I start the timer [Music] hello yeah hold on now Sor we're going to start the timer uh okay sounds good and then we uh I'll inform you if you get close to it sounds good um I will not take the whole three minutes e okay go ahead Manny all right hello everybody um so mine were actually a series of questions so and
009one statement uh so the County Board of Supervisors for the county of Santa Cruz received a letter from the federal Administration from the Trump Administration basically saying that they were in non-compliance with their Dei executive orders and I'm pretty sure as you guys saw that half of the workforce for the Department of Education was laid off and fired and then today there was an executive order signed to begin the dismantling of the Department of Education so my question to you guys is how does Santa Cruz County Education plan on preparing for inevitable budget cuts without hurting students and without hurting the staff and with and by actually protecting what your guys what you guys are supposed to do which is to serve the students and teach them and help them fight back against what's going
010on and trying to and what's trying to keep them from learning okay thank you uh for your comments Manny unfortunately we can't uh respond in public comments but we do have staff St that is um paying attention is um keeping up with what's what's going on and I believe FIS wants to share a little bit more microphone I will be providing an update on uh the current impacts of uh the federal Administration and and steps that we're taking during my my superintendent report okay so yeah towards the end of the meeting thank you any other public comments Sandra welcome now to thank you all for being so kind to me as to send me a a card in the mail with comments about my my service I've been a trustee for 24 years that's a
011long time especially since I moved halfway through it so I was 12 years uh uh two 12 12 years on the pararo board and um I'm completing 12 your uh years here also I enjoy being a trustee because there are so many very fine trusty hardworking people and I like to work with you all beis you are you are a wonderful superintendent as was Michael Watkins it it's like how can you do all this stuff how can you get along with the Health Department officials and make a um uh strategy for how to deal with uh uh covid and uh being inoculated and Etc we all want to be healthy um FIS said thank you for your years of service and your commitment to our students your leadership has been exemplary and impactful with deep
012appreciation Baris and I appreciate the work that you do I couldn't have done it feris the work that you do I couldn't have done that you're you're a very smart person okay where is Nick Nick Nick has been so helpful in helping our committee uh our committee is the uh what's the name of our committee Bruce commity and legislative Outreach yeah so um you you did uh an incredible service to um make and find uh resolutions that we could approve of or change and uh I appreciate that thank you very much Nick pardon ber as well Reise we couldn't do it without reice um oh she has something here ranise says thank you for your Decades of service wishing you the best thank you Bruce for thanking me in the carard you did a lot
013of our work a lot of the committee work thank you and uh troyo no well Troy did it Troy does a a a good good uh job of welcoming people to the uh higher level positions okay who else ra ra where is you is that your last name or your first name okay the unknown writer it was so lovely getting to know you enjoy your time Mara wishing you all the best and thank you for your service when I got this I couldn't believe that so many people said such nice things about me yeah I got my 24 years in nice thank you Sandra and I just want to clarify that that we did good work sandre I think you your many years of service um is a big part of that as well so
014thank you any other public comments thank you thank you appreciate it thank you any other public comments if none let's move on to consider sense agenda questions comments from the board none we have a motion from Ben Allen second from Larsson okay all those in favor say I I and he opposed passes unanimously correspondence did we receive any correspondence the only correspondence that you've received since the agenda packet was created was from ACC be um and I have emailed those all to you um and then also jce and FYI they will be here in April thank you appreciate it all right next on our agenda is that student trustee reports uh student trustee Hopkins could not uh make it today she has a uh approved absence but we have here uh student trusty Marcus that
015will share his report along with uh student trusty Hopkins as well uh I have a brief report and then here a report that I'll read out loud but uh for my report so this is this better yeah so uh I went to the the steam Expo I was checking it out doing some volunteering and uh it it seems like a a pretty cool event there's just like so much going on there so many different things X Academy does stuff there's like a Julie Robinson math Festival science fair music it's it's really a cool event that I think showcases all the the good work County does sort of a a culmination of all of that and also just uh coming from students I know different students that uh participate in the science fair I think we're
016hearing more about that in this meeting the people that did well and then also uh people that uh they working with X academy uh people volunteering for the math Festival but it seems like a pretty popular event among students too so on behalf of students I I kind of wanted to say like good job to the county for putting that together and uh that's that's it for my report I think so I can thank you report is our Monteray Bay alternative education Athletic League just wrapped up the basketball season and and had a great year our uh our itinerant physical education teacher Bradley King wrote an article regarding our league and the positive impacts he highlights how Santa Cruz County integrat PE and competitive Athletics into alternative education through the Monterey Bay alternative Schools Athletic
017League and explains how the program improves Focus engagement and personal growth you thank you really encouraged and makes me happy to see you guys involved in your communities thanks for sharing and for doing what you do moving along now we have uh reports and we'll start with 8.1 uh Sunshine of the Santa Cruz County County Education Association chapter 0236 and their proposed changes we have Elizabeth here to present yes I'd like to uh welcome Elizabeth bernham Gro who is a our the president of our chapter here of our uh teachers union thank you so much for joining us and thank you for all the hard work that you do as one of our Educators and as as a leader of our teachers Union welcome thank you um yeah I'm Elizabeth bernham grow I am the
018current acting president of the Santa Cruz County Office of Education certificated unit I want to start just by saying thank you superintendent saah and president Sanchez and to all of the board members present today um thank you for allowing me to present via Zoom I deeply appreciate your dedication to equity and access and making it accessible to um attend these meetings it's an honor to work for and with all of you the secca chapter 236 chooses at this time to exercise its rights as expressed by law to Sunshine the following contract articles for a revised certificated employee successor agreement for July 1 2025 through July 30th 2026 cycle article six compensation and appendix one or I certificated salary schedule and that is it for me today I appreciate you making it so I could be
019here thank you uh next we have another Sunshine with the uh Santa Cruz County Education Association chapter 0236 with uh Leanne Reyes as a presenter thank you president Sanchez um this is to inform the Board of Education that the Santa Cruz County Office of Education intends to open negotiations with the Santa Cruz County Education Association uh California teachers associ associationnational Education Association regarding the collective bargaining agreement for fiscal year 2526 uh the r act requires requires parties negotiating a collective bargaining agreement to give public notice of their proposals which is what we are both doing at this time um by sun shining proposals in this fashion we are announcing our intent to negotiate our proposal was attached in your board packet and my screen just went blank one moment the Santa Cruz County Office of
020Education intends to open the following articles as well article six compensation article 7 hours of employment and article 10 leaves thank you next we have uh Sunshine from the California School Employees Association chapter 40 484 with their proposed changes and for this item we have Rory Bruce yes oh I was gonna do a quick introduction for I just want to thank uh the president of csca our local chapter here of our of classified bargaining unit Rory Bruce uh as as you know uh the the team of our both our certificate and class and classified staff um really are so much of the backbone of of of the services and the programs that we offer our students and just grateful for your leadership and for the great work of our of our classified employees welcome Mr
021Bruce Baris thank you so much and uh president Sanchez and all of our board members tonight thank you so much for allowing me here to present our sunshine for the 2025 2026 contract negotiation reopener this is definitely a right of our spring uh passage uh spring spring uh annual spring event uh this California School Employees Association and at Santa Cruz County Office of Education chapter 44 are submitting its initial proposals in accordance with Section 3547 of the government code for the upcoming 2025 2026 reopener negotiations we respectfully submit the following bargaining uh proposals um every year uh articles 11 paying allowances and article 12 Health and Welfare benefits are already open uh for negotiation on an annual basis uh under article 11 csca has an interest in a fair and Equitable wage increase for its
022bargaining unit csca also has an interest in negotiating any impacts of the state minimum wage increases on the csca salary schedule additionally under article 12 Health and Welfare benefits CCA has an interest in a fair and Equitable Health and Welfare benefits plan for its bargaining unit members and reviewing the share of costs and responsibilities of each of the parties in addition to that this year we're opening two additional articles which we're entitled to do under our contract we're opening up Article 5 Association rights CS CA um has an interest in bargaining uh for the language surrounding our meeting schedules we also additionally would like to open up article 10 holidays and CCA has an interest in reviewing and bargaining dates for paid holidays and with that um if I is there any questions from any
023members from the board this evening that I can answer for you in regards to our contract negotiation openers thank you thank you so much much thanks for all the great work you do thank you and uh another Sunshine from the Santa Cruz County employee Association chapter 484 with Leanne Reyes you so the Santa Cruz County Office of Education intends to open negotiations with the California School Employees Association chapter 484 CSA regarding the collective bargaining agreement for the fiscal year 20252 26 the Santa Cruz County Office of Ved proposal is included in your packet but briefly the articles that we are hoping to discuss with our CA team who are all very lovely I love everyone on your team worry great people article 11 pay and allowances uh article 12 Health and Welfare and then we
024intend to open Article 13 vacation the proposal for vacation is to negotiate possible revisions to the language related to vacations and this would be done in order to help incorporate our current practice into the collective bargaining agreement and then lastly leaves the proposal to negotiate possible revisions to language related to leaves would be done in order to also incorporate current law into the collective bargaining agreement thank you we're at 8.5 now our dental assistant ing apprenticeship program presentation so we have our superintendent Dr sabat Who's going to do an introduction yes it's uh my pleasure uh to welcome uh uh Sony Sanson who's a GU sansen who is going to be uh presenting a really such an exciting uh evolution of our uh uh career and adult learning Services programs um one that really is
025taking our assistant uh program to the next level and so we thought it was really important for you to hear about this program um not only from its design but also from our students uh who are are participating and so I'd like to welcome Miss sansen and and and thank her for for uh sharing this information G to pass on the good afternoon trustee superintendent Sabah thank you for having us uh I'm Sony G sansen executive director for career and adult learning services wanted to ask my um colleague Stephanie and our student Mia to introduce themselves as well name is Mia Rodriguez I am one of the dental assistants working at Commercial Way thank you Mia and my name is Stephanie VI Lopez I am a project coordinator in career in adult learning Services here
026at the County Office of Education um so this evening I I want to start with gratitude for you all for your support of our student programs um to Ferris for supporting our our Innovation and um all along the way of everything that we do having your support to our partners at dethis um to and also to our business partners um for all the support that you H that you provide to help us get these programs going and especially to my colleague and friend Stephanie who just introduced herself um she works tirelessly to serve our students and the community uh across the county um clicker oh thank you okay so just a little bit about our department it's still fairly new I think 2022 is when um we branded it with this new name and you
027see our mission statement there really around opportunity for advancement in in career in the work work force gaining technical skills um and we also as you know part of our department is the career advancement Charter um both of those programs or schools really are was accredited we we're going through that process currently so you'll be hearing more about that very soon um but specifically our dental assisting program it's a longstanding program that's been here at the County office for over two decades um it's across the street at the 399 Annex and we provide a pathway into entrylevel employment as a dental assistant incl it includes classroom instruction and then also the Hands-On and what we did this past year is we launched our apprenticeship which we're going to tell you a little bit about um
028and part of launching any new program in in Cals or at CTE Focus has to be there has to be a demand for that specific specific uh position and dental assistance is absolutely part of an essential health care profession I'm going let Stephanie speak a little bit about that thank you Sony [Music] um perfect thank you uh so the role of dental assistance is often overlooked but without a doubt they are an essential essential part of the um the dental practices and at the heart of the the dental practices dental assistance ensur smooth operations enhancing both patient care and efficiency they work closely with dentists hygienists and other Dental staff to provide high quality Care oftentimes they are the first point of contact for patients welcoming folks to the practice they assist chide follow infection
029control and sterilization procedures take dental X-rays and provide patients with oral health education um the dental assisting career is a profession with ability advancing opportunities and the ability to make a meaningful impact on patients's lives our Dental Assisting apprenticeship program is committed to training the next generation of skilled confident and certified dental assistants through Hands-On learning and mentorship all um under the leadership of Debbie Martinez who is our program instructor um we are proud for over two decades to have offered the traditional program pathway of our dental assisting program that is a fee based program for individuals who prefer a part-time Career Training Program allowing them to balance their work life responsibilities with education um this past year as Sony was mentioning we launched an apprenticeship pathway for individuals in the community this pathway is
030a tuition-free program designed to bridge the gap between education training and employment to provide a seamless Pathway to the D industry upon beginning on the job training students are paid on a progressive wage schedule I think that image is hard for you to see um however it contains some very important data points around what occupations in the healthcare industry are available in the Tri County Area as well as in Santa Cruz County and as I said we use data to inform our decisions about what programs we're going to pursue what what programming we're going to offer for our adult students um our apprenticeship is the first of its kind in the region when we went to register our standards with the division of apprenticeship standards um we we are the only um dental assistant apprenticeship
031Competency Based program so we're brand new most people when they think apprenticeships they think trades um and that has really changed in the last few years and so like I said we looked at interest we knew we had the students because we've had this long-standing program we know the demand is there what's indicated on that chart um that I know is hard to see is that there's 191 annual job openings in the Tri County so at Santa Cruz um San banito and Monteray if you add Santa Clara it it doubles in Santa Cruz the number is 67 jobs locally every year so um currently we have 18 students going through our program um so to bridge the appap we we are we are supporting the healthc Care Community by offering this program one thing that
032is really special and different about an apprenticeship is our students are paid so they attend an a five-week intensive at the beginning of the school year and then they are on the job working 32 hours a week and being paid whereas in our traditional program those um internship or externship hours are they're not compensated um and so we think it's important to include that there have been some challenges along the way we did we were awarded both a planning Grant and imp implementation grph through the California apprenticeship initiative um just over a million dollars um that money cannot be used to pay the apprentices so uh securing industry Partners is crucial and that that has been difficult dethis is our primary partner and we're currently trying to find other dentists who will support this effort
033and as I said the process of registering standards with the with the state has been um it was difficult it was a difficult process and it took a long time but we did it a little bit more about an apprenticeship step um an apprenticeship um as Sony mentioned they've existed for decades in the Building Trades and and construction industry um we are a part of an amazing effort through the um Chancellor's office um to expand apprenticeships in the healthcare industry um an apprenticeship is an earn as you learn structured training program integrating paid on the job training with tuition-free classroom instruction um it embeds CL related and supplemental classroom instruction where apprentices such as Mia engage in um instruction provided by us the career and adult learning Services um and dental assisting it also em
034embeds paid on the job training where apprentices go into clinics and perform what what they learned in the classroom Hands-On but also theoretically um on the job they begin assisting a bit earlier on in their education alongside dentists hygienists and while they're doing that they are getting paid on a progressive wage schedule so as I said our primary partner is the enthis Community Dental Care um it has been awesome to work with them they are like-minded a like-minded organization who really works to serve patients who need the most care across the county um currently you can see our Clinic placements there we have apprentices at four dnth this locations and then we have one private office that um also is employing a dental assisting Apprentice um the benefits for the employer are huge because the
035employer gets to train The Apprentice exactly how they want them trained so it really is an opportunity for the dentist to work very closely with The Apprentice and teach them the way they want them to learn um and so you can see some of the benefits there including re recruitment costs um I would say retention and um also that support that we're able to give both to students and employees in this partnership employers sorry um and then Stephanie since the launch of the apprentiship program in August we've had a lot lot of amazing Milestones one of them being um getting officially registered with the state of California to offer an apprenticeship program so we were officially dos registered that's amazing aside from that we did launch our first cohort and we secured employer Partnerships primarily
036with yendis um we also were able to secure additional funding through the Workforce Development board to support us with this program and in The Apprentice realm they did complete their five-week intensive um mid-september and then transition to paid on the job training um and since then we've celebrated them through breakfast lunchin we were also able to take them to Cabrio College to um give them um a bit of a tour of the dental hygiene facility so in the future if they're interested in career advancement that's an opportunity for them local in the community and we're also very proud to share that um they're going to be able to get coronal polishing certification this year which is an additional certification in their portfolio um to advance as hopefully registered dental assistants in the future and now
037it is my pleasure to introduce once again Mia Rodriguez she is one of our eight apprentices in the program she currently is placed at the en's Commercial Way Clinic which is the 's largest Clinic um where they serve over 100 patients on a daily basis Mia are you thank you everyone um I'm working at the commercial weight location it is our largest Clinic um I was working at the anst for two years before this I was working as a front office coordinator it going into the dental assisting program and the apprenticeship really helped me by um being able to be paid on the job and go to school to build my career I hope to One Day become a hygienist and um going to the Cabrio hygiene program and seeing that just really opened my
038eyes and made me want to do more in life and thank you all for your ongoing support and thank you Mia for sharing a bit of your experience with us this evening and we're happy to take any questions if if there are any could I make a comment before we we turn it over questions I just I um so really feel so grateful and proud of this program um uh Stephanie was a key uh leader in in writing the grant that they secured to work with with the enes um and the this really is what what I we consider a triple win for for our community right our our um our community gets better Services by having well-trained and effective folks who are who are available to work at in our clinics and be able
039to provide these Services the clinics get a Workforce that um they're able to to have as part of their team and of course the participants are able to get paid while they're on the job training right so that triple win is is really this ideal combination and and the partnership with bithes as as Sony uh shared um uh is has been really really ideal having this like-minded partner in this and I just want to also thank Sony for her leadership because this area of creating these opportunities for adults who are in our community and who have such amazing talent skill and resources and social capital and to be able to create these opportunities for them to to show what they're able to do like Mia and the the lives she's going to impact and the
040the way she's going to help our community be healthy is just something that I think is is there are so many more opportunities like this that we that I hope we're going to be able to pursue with your support thank you questions comments from the board yes Ben Allen well thank you um this is really important um you might know some of the board members know I'm getting a whole mouth full of new teeth and um I have a great appreciation for dental assistance um from this process uh I wonder um I'm going to be seeing my dentist again for a whole series of uh adjustments um is there a flyer or a card or something that I could hand them because I don't think while they're working on me I can talk too much
041about the program but I'd love to see if that they are interested absolutely we have promotional materials that we can share with you and that that if this could serve as a call to action for any of y'all who have any of those connections anybody who's willing to even try one Apprentice the employer does have to pay they're committing they're hiring that apprentice and they have to agree with our pay scale um but that's our biggest challenge right now currently de enthus is committed for uh six apprentices next year and we're working on Salud par so um yeah we're looking and we'll definitely get some materials too yes uh yeah Rachel go ahead yes um I just wanted to say what an amazing program Bravo um for pursuing you know a a passion of yours
042and and Bravo to the organizers that are making it possible so just just wanted to say Bravo congratulations you trusty Williams Carson I just want to follow on both the comments great program um would certainly like to propose it to my family's dentist to see if they're interested I also attended the association of California County Boards of education training on Monday night and the principal speaker was from the state Apprentice labor or labor Apprentice standards she's new she was acting and now she's gotten the appointment appointment and it was just me not knowing except that it was on the agenda this night we were one of two counties mentioned as having a dental assistant theint to ship any other questions or comments yes Roth work here we go uh I would just like to comment
043that uh it's so nice that it will has already introduced them to the dental hygien hygienist program at Cabrio and it is well well known so that we now have this pathway in is fantastic thank you we trust you Ro Mr I think I'm just going to Echo what everyone else said that it's an amazing program uh I think that a big barrier in in you know entering a new career is you know making sure that you're properly compensated especially you know being you know uh low-income coming from a low-income family um you want to start making money as quickly as possible to support your family you know um as you know as soon as I could you know I was working through college and everything because uh it is so expensive over here I
044don't know know if you knew so I think I just think this is an amazing program it's fulfilling a community need while um you know I think you know providing a pathway for a lot of folks to uh build a really uh you know wonderful career for themselves uh starting off really strong and giving this you know this opportunity to people who probably would have said I'd rather go into a field where I can start making money right now rather than investing uh lots of time wasted opportunity you know wasted income so I think this is great I absolutely love this thank you trusty Estrada and I just want to uh thank uh Mia for coming here and talking to us about your own personal experience I think it uh speaks volumes the fact that
045there's this opportunity for people to grow within their current place of employment right you mentioned that there's see like there's interest in that in that job field and understanding knowing more and I'm glad to hear that we there's a program in this County you know that can help you out with that you and anybody else who is interested and potentially for exploring this this career field uh more so thank you for coming thank you for sharing it's uh very inspirational educational and motivating for for all of us thank you you okay moving along we have the uh 2025 steam Expo presentation recognition of finalists with Dr Russell and Dr wgon yes I'd like to uh welcome uh Dr Russell and Dr wan to uh share a little bit about the steam Expo uh but before
046they do I just I have to say how excited I am to see the evolution of this event uh you you our science fair has been well known for quite some time and and not only here but there has been it has been a challenge across this country for uh uh for to to bring interest in the science fair and in science in general because of some of the challenges that uh We've experienced uh even before the pandemic and one of these innovations that we have been able to implement this the the the last two years two years yes with Dr weant as our science coordinator has been really broadening the concept of of uh to include a steam Expo to include science technology engineering arts and math and and really having a celebration the
047many of you were a part of um trusty Larson was there I think how many of you uh got a chance to come by many of you were there uh volunteered in many cases thank you for that and so I'm just so grateful for uh all the hard work that uh went into this and and we'd love to share some highlights and introduce some of our of our students who uh were able to demonstrate some some amazing knowledge and talent welcome Dr Russell thank you so first we just wanted to share a little bit about the mission and vision behind this um Expo really some of the highlighted keywords there are are the F Focus for us so the mission is really about creating Equitable opportunities and access for all students to engage in Steam
048fair projects as well as Steam Expo science and engineering arts and Mathematics and then our vision is really to empower students to be Innovative creative Engineers determined makers in Steam and so those have been key Focus areas as we've evolved the steam Expo over time you heard a little bit earlier um in uh student trustee Marcus's report about some of these these various aspects of the steam Expo that we have but first was the science fair and so we had three different categories there of that competition these were students who uh typically qualified at their school level to come then to the county and it was Invention Convention qualifications it was State science fair qualifications and it was also the international science and engineering Fair qualifications also called ISF and you can see many of
049the projects here the second set of activities was the Fine Arts performances these are some of the groups that we had and you can see that was a really exciting opportunity event to see a wide variety y of Fine Arts performances included throughout the ex the full time of the steam Expo and then the third category was that interactive steam Expo and again we had a wide variety of activities some of the most popular ones from this list you see on the screen was the first picture in the bottom left was the uh instrument petting zoo and so you can see all ages uh demonstrated within these photos another of course very um popular one was the ex Academy and Coe robotics club with the underwater rovs so that was extremely popular I even saw
050an infant um being held by father and the infant was staring mesmerized at the robot in the pool um and then we also had as you can see the um Tech Plus Department of Coe did the Bots and the robotics activities for students again of all ages they had everything from three-year-olds up to high school school um many many more activities our farm and G partnership was there and you can see some of the connection between Arts uh and Science and Engineering in the photo that you see in the upper right and now I'm going to turn it over to Heather who's going to share with you some of the data and details from the steam Expo hello everybody um so yeah big thing um second year for the steam Expo it's actually the 37th
051science and engineering fair for Santa Cruz County just side note um we had more projects this year than last year so we are slowly growing again about 141 projects and almost 200 students just in the Science Fair competition and way more that were performing in the steam Expo um with their classes or clubs or showing off what they were doing just it was a great event um I do want to give a quick shout out to SoCal high school they were the first time that they've participated and one teacher brought 40 students and 15 senior projects which was prettyy amazing so definitely um boosted our high school participation rate just with one teacher at one school so tagging into those would be really beneficial in the future make sure I hit the right one oops
052and want to do a shout out to our top three senior project Hazel is not able to be here with us tonight but she was our top uh winner in our ISF qualifier but we do have uh Musa and aie one up um that I'd like to have um a brief moment to share about what their project was about and what they learned so Musa you want to go first sure hello everyone um my name is Musa shuy uh I'm a junior at Pacific Collegiate School and for my project I developed a low cost um adjustable below the knee prosthetic for kids um so I developed this device because unfortunately the process for developing the tradition process for developing Prosthetics is um both highly expensive and very lengthy um and so developing by developing this
053device I was able to offer uh patients an alternate solution um patients who are unable to afford or don't have access to traditional Prosthetics hello my name is AI Menan uh I'm at 10th grade I'm also at Pacific Collegiate School um my project project was about autonomous vehicles more specifically the artificial intelligence Behind These autonomous vehicles and in my project I compared two different image recognition models through um using traffic data and by doing this I was able to gather a lot of information and I was able to learn a lot about these autonomous vehicles how they function and these AI models more specifically and I learned a lot through this experience thank you to right this again um other fun things so steam Expo participation we had we did have record participation this year
054since covid so we had 28 schools represented said about almost 200 students 141 projects thank you thank you thank you to everybody that helped we had multiple people that are in this room we here volunteering ing showing their support talking to our um media and overall just having a great time I hope it looked like we were anyways so big shout out and thank you to everybody that supported um we did take some feed or feedback and evaluation from judges volunteers parents teachers um and such and then I also just want to do a quick highlight on our uh demographics we are getting tiny bit closer in meeting our goals of getting to that um demographics that represent our County so historically we've had very low latinx population we are definitely not where we want
055to be but we are slowly making progress so every little increment is in the right direction and then thank you can we're going to continue increasing School uh participation increasing uh uh working with students to increase our representation among all of our student groups in increase our discipline improving event operations and we will see you March 28th at the fairgrounds thank you thank you so much any questions or comments from the board it it's that it's a a simple statement I was just uh blown Blown Away uh by it and the last time I had been to a science fair was when my children were in school and this was uh far surpassed it and well I guess a little bit more I I was impressed with the uh rubric system rather than the first
056second third place I I really like that and next year I'm going to explore it a bit more I came as a volunteer I really needed to as well participant especially with all those handson things and um also to see how the judging where you're at roundtables in discussion that that's just super and uh last of all I think that the adults who came were as enchanted with the hands on as yes yes H as the students and I don't know if we have the capacity to do this but to encourage students that don't have a project to come because I do think it's a fertile field uh to for them to explore some things so thank you a lot of work and thank you thank you thank you anyone else um it was very
057much enjoyable to be able to volunteer and be there I too just wanted to um experience it so after my volunteering I went and toured around and was just so impressed um that there was just that wide variety um that would appeal to you know kids of all ages including adults and I'm much more of a um of the Arts part so I really enjoyed sort of the the uh the children's drawing of the monsters and the interpretation uh and I think um there was an area where there was poems that were written for some of the mon just so impressive and so thank you for the opportunity thank you for all the hard work I know you know it seems to go by really fast when it's happening and we know all the work
058that goes before it so thank you thank you thank you very much and I might just mention president Sanchez had to step out but he was a judge I guess again this year I saw him there and met his partner it was my first time there other than when I took my kids uh couple hundred years ago and it was incredible it was just so different than I remembered it didn't have any of the parenting stress involved it just had the the volunteer Joy involved of helping out and then touring this team Expo touring the Science Expo and being blown away by exhibits at both and then to culminate in the artistic presentations and the awards ceremony incredible I think I'll skip next year trying to drain the robotics pool because that that was that
059was clearly above my pay grade we appreciate all you did do and and all of the volunteers we do appreciate it so thank you about half of this room was volunteers so thank you and it looked like you were having a lot of fun back there draining that pool [Music] [Laughter] so thank you so again thank you all for being there we really appreciate it it is definitely a team effort it is not just me at all thank you thank you yeah thank you all for your really hard work yeah so up next we have uh 9.7 we're going to jump up in the agenda to 9.7 resolution 25-9 supporting the Santa Cruz Workforce housing affordability act uh we have presenter Greg Larson and I believe some special guests as well Bruce um I need
060to uh I'm involved in this campaign on a paid basis so I need to stand aside from it and I'll do sit in the audience while while we deliberate okay and as I start this is the first report from the uh community outreach and legislation committee that my predecessor chaired sandre and now I've I've taken over the role of chairing that and the first item we have for you that the president set as a Time certain is the uh resolution supporting the Santa Cruz Workforce housing affordability act and this subject was discussed at the first meeting of the community outreach and legislation committee that occurred in October for the audience and board members it's agenda packet page 205 with the resolution starting on page 206 and I just want to highlight from the beginning that
061the resolution before you lays out basically a series of reasons why the committee felt and is recommending to the board that we encourage placing this item on the ballot we're not bringing forward to the board at this time an endorsement of the ballot measure because there haven't been arguments submitted for and against as will occur in the electoral process the work that's before the community right now is placing the measure on the ballot for November and because of its benefit for Workforce housing more broadly and for educator Workforce housing specifically not only just in Santa Cruz but throughout the county we think it's worthy of board consideration and placing on the ballot and a few of the where houses I wanted to highlight in particular is that csba as the board is aware has adopt
062has sponsored two bills at the state level supporting educator Workforce housing as one of their top priorities for the year the city of Santa Cruz has already approved a city schools educator Workforce housing project at the policy level that will now go into plan review and ultimately construction we have Cabrio as well as a trustee from Pajaro Valley who has expressed interest in educator Workforce housing and given housing is a fungible product that people who live in Santa Cruz work in other districts and people who live in other districts work in Santa Cruz the boundaries aren't specific any benefit to Workforce housing Within the city of Santa Cruz will support Workforce housing in the region both in terms of actual new housing but also in terms of being a model that might work for other
063communities what we found over the last 15 20 years is the local source of funding for affordable housing has dissipated through the loss of Redevelopment and other State Tools what the city of Santa Cruz is looking at is to create a new local source of funding that would support future Workforce housing and I believe in the committee believed that if the board is willing to support putting this on the ballot we can ensure that educator Workforce housing is a central part of that discussion as we go forward to actually describe the measure and the background on it we do have two speakers so Mr Vice President may be appropriate after I introduced the item and now let our hear from the public comment um but the whereas is pretty much explain why the committee is
064recommending that the board support uh placing this item on the ballot before the voters okay thank you trusty Larson uh so are we going to go to public comment um yes vice president Estrada the first public comment is from Andrew golden Cran to the podium okay of course um so public comment from elae Johnson good evening everyone thank you for the opportunity to be here this evening and thank you Greg for your support um my name is elae Johnson I'm the executive director of housing Santa Cruz County and we're the lead organization on the workforce Housing Solutions measure that uh we have been working tirelessly getting signatures to put it on a November ballot for the last two years my organization and many community members have come together and had several many discussions about putting
065something on the ballot because as we all know housing we have a housing crisis here in Santa Cruz County and so we also knew that the money in the workforce in the the portable Housing Trust Fund was diminishing and we needed to do needed to do to be able to fill that up so that we have funding for people to get homes we have funding for people to make sure they stay housed that we have funding for seniors and and a whole wealth of things which you you could you probably find an information there but um we stand here before you today um and we ask for your support because it is so critical as we now see what's happening with funding on a global level that um a lot of money when it comes
066to housing is being cut and so on a local level level we are doing whatever we can to to bring funding into this community and so um we like to ask for your support um we have a lot of volunteers that's been out there knocking on a lot of doors um getting the community um support and one of the things I do want to stress is you know in this process we've had the community support from the beginning which is absolutely critical it wasn't just my organization or just one other person the city of Santa Cruz has been instrumental um in supporting this measure and so um we we thank you for your support and I'll bring up my colleague and board member Andrew Gren who will talk some more about this thank you thank
067you and to clarify so we have uh is it three minutes okay three minutes uh thank you truste and superintendent it's good to be here um I want to speak for a minute about the impact on School staff and students and then I want to talk I don't really think I have to expand on the need for housing we all recognize housing is such a difficult challenge in our community but I want to give a little bit of particulars about why we think this is a solid solution that will benefit us um I'm I'm I'm finishing my 36th year in public education very proud to have uh taken this journey and I think we all know that you can't make great schools without great School staff whether it teachers and classified staff and administrators and
068you can't keep you can't recruit and retain School staff unless they got a place to live I think those of you who are on the ground in schools understand that the one of the main reasons why people leave is because they can't afford to they can't afford to live here or they'll go to other they'll go to other districts which is what I had to do I left Santa Cruz County and I work in Santa Clara County because I could because that's what I needed to be able to to pay for housing here um the second thing is I want to be a I want to speak to what happens to our students when when I see students in distress which we see virtually every day um the whatever the symptom is of the distress
069that they're feeling and experiencing when as we start interviewing them and talking to the families and talking to counselors and social workers housing challenges are always present we have over 50% of our students in this County who are experiencing housing stress what that means is they're paying more than half of their family income on housing so if I think if we can make an effort to support these kinds of solutions it's going to help us in our Core Business which is how we educate our our families our and our kids um here are a couple of reasons why I've chosen to get involved in this particular effort in the city of Santa Cruz um last four or five years the city's put in a little under $2 and a half million dollar uh into different
070kinds of below marker rate housing projects and mostly what that allows them to do is leverage other federal and state money and they've used that $2.5 million to leverage about $60 million so it's about a 30 to1 ratio this would if this initiative passes it would increase the investment by the City by 10 fold it'd be a minimum of $5 million a year coming from uh City taxpayers uh in order to support that so if you think about the magnitude of impact that we'll be able to have if we can continue to leverage that especially in this day and age of reduced confidence in what's happening at the federal and state level that if we can rely on local resources will be much better a second thing that's important we're all in the Govern in
071the good government business is that other cities that have enacted programs like this typically the city Administration takes 8 to 10% off the top for administrative charges we've gotten city clerk Bush to agree to 3% plus there's no new government structure this is uh putting money into the affordable housing trust fund uh so it's an ongoing thing so we think it's a lean and mean program uh that we think will be of substantial benefit I know my time is up so I appreciate that obviously Ela and I would be happy to answer any questions that you have thank you for your comments um now going discussion amongst the board sorry this is my first time being sharing the sharing the meeting and first item okay discussion comments I've made my comments I'll I think the
072speakers and myself can respond to questions and comments from the board thank you both Elaine Johnson and Andrew golden CR um uh appreciate the work that Elaine you're doing and housing and all the work that you've been doing in the community Andrew thank you so much um I don't have any questions and um I am in support and I would I don't know if there's going to be any other discussion but I would just a comment please uh thank you uh for coming and uh I feel better listening to what I have uh especially there was an news article today and I struggled to try to read the whole thing and could not get into the article and so I came kind of frazzled here uh and I'm glad that this is uh our ability
073to say that we support your going ahead with it rather than you know stamp of approval or whatever I realize there's a lot of work to be done um and I appreciate it because housing uh over the past I don't know maybe 10 years in me being here is uh it it's never left I hope that there is something that we can do so again I appreciate bringing this topic and that we we will hear more and and a thank you to Santa Cruz City Schools thank you and also because uh our student trustee will also vote on this I wanted to see if you had any comments I guess my question is just what does the ACT look like exactly yeah it should it is in our uh board agenda all the way down
074on page 208 it is summarized in the resolution and it's detailed in the attorney uh description that's attached yeah yeah that's what I'm uh referring to the attorney's um interpretation summarization of act for student uh trusted Marcus's education it's a two-prong tax measure one is a parcel tax which can be enacted by the voters and is often done in support of schools and special needs and services throughout the county broadly defined the other one that's a little more novel for Santa Cruz but has been used in many other counties throughout the state is a real estate transfer tax what's interesting about the proposal that's come from the community leadership which lead leads me to be intrigued with seeing this go before the bo is that it's been structured as what's called a progressive tax where
075it doesn't apply at all for a parel that's being sold for less than $1.8 million and then it rises over that up to a cap so it's not wide open but it's it creates a a progressive tax structure which I think um distributes the burden for affordable housing to those who can most afford thank you uh any any other comments or motions it comes from the committee I'd like to make the motion yeah I would like to make a a slight change to the motion um or to the resolution there is the last um recital that says supporting Workforce housing affordability act I feel like that is not necessarily in kind of inconsistent with what we Norm do with our resolutions because all resolutions are from the committee are being recommended so I would second
076it with that removal with the removal of the last recital sure okay uh so trusty Larson moved to as amended okay as amended to approve the resolution there a second second okay so this is a roll call vote got any say student trusty Marcus hi vice president Estrada yes trusty Larson yes truste Roth yes trustee Williams yes it passes unanimously thank Youk you thank you so much okay back to our breaket their Le scheduled program so it was 8.7 second interim financial report presented by Leanne my girl always love these I always look forward to them you make numbers fun yes I'd like to uh welcome our our Deputy superintendent uh lean Reyes thank you both for coming and um uh to talk to us about our second interim and of course uh we have
077an amazing team that has been working very very hard not only in support of our school districts but also in ensuring that uh we have the very best and up-to-date information uh to share with you today about our second interim and also to um you know to keep an eye on on how to protect the the kind of our the fiduciary responsibilities that you have which are which are some of the most fundamental fundamentally important UH responsibilities you have as as uh County Board of Education members so grateful to uh to uh Deputy Rays who's going to be uh giving us a presentation today good evening board so if we could go ahead and get started um second inter interim wouldn't happen without the help of many hands um so I always want to make
078sure that I acknowledge know and recognize the hard work of our internal Business Services team which is um Melissa Lopez Michelle Kennedy Tera Lee Brook Roso nitia ambrosie and Shay Placencia so Bravo job well done ladies you really want me to do my own clicking and talk like I can't chew gum and walk down the sidewalk but thank you for giving me the challenge but I called in a Lifeline right here so today we're going to be discussing the B the budget and Reporting processes an overview of the 2425 second interim report the key differences between the 2425 first interim and second interim our multi-year projections what's next and then recommendations I also wanted to let the board know that we were able to have our um board budget overview committee earlier this week and
079went through um questions and answers for them and they're nodding so I think we we have their approval of um what we're about to present to you this evening so as a reminder and an update this is where we are in the budgeting and Reporting process we are at second interim which is in noted by the yellow font up there that captures all of our activity through January 31st and we are required to bring it to you uh by March 17th give or take a little wiggle room for board meeting dates um second interim is an opportunity that we use to uh make any adjustments to our budget based on actual year-to-date spending um any Trends any any new information that might have come to light um it's also a way to project where we
080think we might be by the end of the fiscal year at June 30th so it's always important with our school budgets to keep in mind that this is only a snapshot in time and it's based on what we know as of today which is becoming a little bit more challenging with some of the federal actions that we're seeing right now so this is what we know as of like this moment in time hey there are are three certification classifications for each interim reporting period and these have to be certified by the county superintendent of schools and those classifications are a positive certification a qualified certific if ation and a negative certification uh positive means that we will be able to meet our financial obligations for the current and two subsequent fiscal years whereas a qualified
081certification means that an entity may not meet its Financial Obligations for the current or two subsequent fiscal years and then a negative certification which makes all of us really sad if that happens is assigned to an entity that would be unable to meet its financial obligation ations for the remainder of the current fiscal year or for the subsequent fiscal year so we are pleased to report that the co Coe will be filing our positive certification for the 2425 second interim and that signifies that we can meet our obligations for the current and two subsequent fiscal years that we will have a positive ending cash and fund balance in our County School service fund1 at the end of fiscal year 2627 as well as our 5% Reserve in the Special Reserve account which is fund 17
082and and there's more positive ending cash balances in all of our Coe funds and cash is really really the keying and the key indicator here when we're looking at what makes the difference between a positive or let's say a negative certification if you don't have cash game it's game over so thumbs up to the team we will be filing positive so a summary of some of our key updates um that you'll be looking at in a little more detail tonight um we had a unrestricted lcff increase of $1.3 million and this increase was driven primarily by our unduplicated pupil counts um from adopted budget by we had planned on 49.99% and when our census day rolled around later in October we found that our rate was just under 65% so that opens up a lot
083more funding opportunities for us for those of you that have been on the board for a minute you know that we always budget very conservatively at the adopted budget and we try to stay under that 50% Mark simply because by triggering that Mark it does open up more um funding for us and we would hate to overstate if the round of students we have in the current year aren't um the counts aren't as high as the prior year and I do want to say that I'm aware that the alternative education group had gone out and done a really good job of trying to collect um packets and information that gave us the ability to um reach that 65% in fact um Melissa Lopez was saying when I saw that number I thought it was wrong
084so I went back down and was like did you guys make a mistake are you sure this is right and they had all the documentation to back it up so that's a that did open up a lot more funding opportunities in addition we had updated allocations for our restricted programs um you can see the list up there um medical Lea billing we had the Golden State pathway Grant year one of year four also as you know many of our grants come in over a multi-year period we'll talk a little bit more about the impact of that in a few moments um outdoor Science school so this list represents nearly an increase of almost $2 million when you think about both sides of our budget know my husband saw this slide when I was reviewing last
085night and he was like uh too many numbers on the page and I was like I love this page anyway so some of you are feeling uh I apologize so this is a high level review at a glance um showing the combined and I want to make sure you hear that part combined unrestricted and restricted for all of our fund one if you like to follow along in your board packet we're on page 82 otherwise we'll just go ahead and continue on um the first interim budget amounts are shown shown above in the First Column so this is where we thought we were going to be the second interim amounts are found in the projected year totals which would be uh column D if you're looking at your sax Report with the difference between those
086two periods showing up in column e so column D represents where at again emphasis on the current time we think that the Coe might end in June so you can see that overall um we projected when we were at opted budget which isn't on this particular page but it will be in your Sachs packet that we were going to have a $3.6 million deficit um in our budgeting and at first interim that deficit was reduced significant significantly down to $640,000 and now at second interim there will be a estimated Surplus on both sides of the budget of approximately 2.2 million of which we just talked about a really large chunk of that and where it came from so um the change in that 2.2 million really is being driven primarily by that lcff change and
087also by about $800,000 that came in new on the restricted side of the budget so if you look at your uh board packet page 83 um on form one you will see a listing of all the assignments um that we have in conjunction with these fund balances so moving on to the next slide we are looking now at just the unrestricted side of the budget I sometimes refer to this side as our meat and potatoes side of our budget this is the budget that comes with much more greater amount of flexibility um it doesn't have any strings attached for the most part I say for the most part because we do receive some funds that the uh you know State decided to call um targeted instead of calling them restricted so those targeted funds kind
088of act like restricted funds inside the unrestricted side so we always have to be really careful to make sure we separate out those monies if you um now want to know where we are in your board packet I'm on your page 65 and that's form 01 so the uh first interim amounts again are shown on column uh in your board packet on in column C I think it is D sorry um and then the difference between our two periods are again in column e so the adopted budget which you will see in your saxs but not necessarily on this slide again it projected about $2 million in deficit spending and at first interim that number had softened also down to about 837 million sorry yes thousand and, million um and now at second in R
089we actually are showing a small surplus of about $466,000 so included in your uh total expenditures and transfers out for unrestricted it's approximately $2.5 million do of contributions REM remembering that these dollars primarily go to our routine and stricted maintenance program we also do help support our new teacher project we have our um special education program alter Ed special education program our tier 2 admin credentialing program so there's a lot of things that we help support um alt that Sports League that's tiny but so important tiny and mighty I love sports programs I think that helps keep kids really busy so always happy to see that um and numerous other small um contributions again you can see our uh assignments for these fund balances on on page 66 of your board packet uh oh we
090had a little bump on that one this is our uh restricted budget um at least you can see the numbers the headings off but that's okay H um restricted is also uh as you are well aware a little bit more directed it's quite a bit more directed the money comes in the money has strings attached there's rules about when to spend it how long you have to spend it and what you can spend it on so um you can see on this slide that our total revenue coming in at first interim was around 43 million and that's grown to about 43.9 million or an increase of $600,000 um our expenses have also gone from 43 down to 42 million or a change of 928 million again trying to remember the nuances of your restricted budget
091you may have lots of money that's coming in but you may also be needing to preserve or save that over a two or threee period in accordance with the terms of your Grant so at times you will see um that ending fund balance change as we can here we go from 9.5 million to an estimated 11 million at second interim or an increase of about $1.5 million when we get to our multi-year projections you'll see that fund balance dropping dramatically Fe not that's a plan so I know sometimes it's like oh my gosh we're you know this number is going down so dramatically but that's because we're finally spending out year two and year three of dollars we received back in year one talking about the multi-year projection let's talk really quick about the assumptions
092that we use to build out our multi-year projection we uh have negotiations that were already settled of course for 2425 and so the cost of all those Agreements are already included in our Budget prior to Second interim we always plan for step and colum for step and column for certificated and classified staff at the rates of 1.3 and 1.2% respectively our stirs rate is 19.1% for the current and two subsequent years and that number remains relatively flat and because it's only subject to change um when the legislature gets together and decides to vote on that or is on the other hand is a mind of its own uh Pur rates can increase every year and they are currently at 27.5% 27.4% and then 27.5% and those are the amounts that we used for a multi-year
093we estimated an increased in cost for the health and weal Ware at 85% per year and then the um art of trying to manage all of these onetime funds we've adjusted and removed out any one-time revenues and expenditures for the subsequent years and then there's a little brief list there of what some of those funds are and then our cost of living adjustment for both 2526 and 2627 we also try to be very conservative on our Cola adjustments um especially considering ing the volatility and looking at the volatility we're seeing in our overall economic Outlook and so we actually use a 1% which also helps contribute to that number we just talked about earlier on our lcff we had used a very conservative number to begin with but now that the dust has really settled
094in on what the current year amount was then we were able to fold that into um our projections I love this guy from SpongeBob because that's kind of how I feel sometimes like yeah I don't know what's going to happen this is a great slide to help demonstrate that um I know you're used to seeing it but I just can't get rid of it because I like it so much um because it really helps demonstrate the volatility of what people think's going to happen and then where we are as of today so um I always like to say check out that 2324 year you know in TW fiscal year 2223 they thought the cola was going to come at 3.6 and by the time 23 24 actually rolled around it was at whopping and I
095mean whopping 8.22% 22 years in the business I've never seen a cola that large very unusual and then if you look which is kind of what I'm used to seeing as the trend for fiscal year 2526 back in 1922 23 they said oh your col is going to be 3.62% and here we are projecting for next year a cola of 2.43 so it's slowly it's degrading and so if you look at most of these numbers you're going to see um the more mature the data gets you can see that that colos some does have a lot of movement in it and so that's why it's also super important to remember that these are just projections based on what we know as of as of today luckily though on here we don't have anything um going
096back as far as 0708 or 0910 for those of you who are around then Ruben I don't know if you were born yet but for those the rest of us who are around then um I'm kidding I'm just giving you a hard time um we had what we called the seven up years we actually had negative Cola and the state was not paying any Cola they were giving us IUS so the chart would be too long for me to go back then but we were all very traumatized back in back in those years all right so funded Ada and I want to make sure you heard that emphasis I just made on the word funded which is different from our Ada so a funded Ada can be based on one of three meth methods it
097can be based on the grer of your current your prior year or relatively new back in 23 24 we were allowed to use the three prior years average to use those um amounts to calculate our LC FF I am also if you want to make a quick note um I'm on page 151 of your board packet so what we like to show you is just kind of what our fiveyear trend has been this was really really hard to do coming out of the covid years because the way we calculated Ada it was super funky there's no other way to say it and it was not based on the traditional method of current or prior year and we had never had anything as dramatic as covid that really disrupted our attendance Factor so we've been kind
098of tracking um you know like what happened pre-co to be honest up and upstairs in my office we track how are students or districts doing pre-co how are we doing pre-co let's throw out these years in the middle and now let's kind of start looking forward to see if we can establish L some kind of a new trending pattern and so our Coe alt dead programs were starting to show some um increases postco um right now what we're estimating for our second interim our Al alt Ed division is coming in at around 905 98 uh unlike a Traditional School District if any of you listen and go to those board meetings usually there are 88 declines between second and first interim in our case our Ada generally almost always probably bet on it in Vegas
099if you wanted to goes up and it's also um we have a lot of kids that come in a lot during that second semester time frame where maybe the academic program that they're experiencing just isn't a good fit for them and they come to our programs and then when we get funded we get funded based on our year end Ada so like uh we don't even know we're going to make this year until the year's over which always is kind of challenging and fun too our special education funding is 91.8 6 our Charter School Sony's other program is at 225. one8 look where they were a couple years ago they're at 137 they've really been growing that program with amazing success and it's just um we really applaud their efforts they've been doing a great
100job for our students and then our countywide Ada is at 33,099 and that's the number that we use when we're trying to calculate our County operations Grant okay so knowing all of that and thinking about the assumptions that we had talked about a few slides ago our multi-year projection for our unrestricted budget is what's being displayed now this is on your sax form that says mypi in the upper right hand corner and it's Pages 153 and 154 of your board packet so the second interim amounts shown in our projected year totals which is on colum is column a um the 2526 is column C and the 2627 is column e so again these projections I also want to talk to you um about is it does not include any of the unrealized gains or losses
101impacts you know that um you know at the end of the year when we close the books there's always this crazy swing of lately it's been around a million dollars that we have to book based on our unrealized gains or losses in the county um treasurer's office but it's not you know we book it on June 30th and we reverse it on July 1st it's an accounting thing that we need to do and I always caution everyone in my districts and especially my own board about right now we've been having to book what's called an unrealized loss which means it drives down what our ending fund balance could be however if we're in an environment where things start turning around and we start having unrealized gains that's where I'm really cautioning my cbos in the
102county because it could overly inflate what you think your ending fund balances and that's really a difficult thing to try to explain to your union like yes I know I'm showing plus two million but it's so these numbers are what I call Pure I always ask Melissa and Becky right these are the pure numbers right there's no sashing around with that silly fair market value adjustment so this current year we are projecting in our unrestricted uh an ending fund balance of 27.6 million um showing that 466,000 Surplus for the current year and then our outy years as always are showing rather large deficits 2.4 million and 3.3 million but we always budget for all of our vacancies we always budget for worst case scenario because we want to be prepared I know one of the
103questions that came in earlier um that we weren't able to respond to is how do you prepare right for things you see that preparation when you see a big deficit like this that's probably not going to really happen but that's more of us preparing in the event that we experience something extraordinary and then we're prepared for it financially the next slide shows our restricted multi-year projections right now as we talked about earlier we're ending the current year with 11 million and then you're going to see large deficit spending in 2526 of about $2 million spending down those grants spending down that onetime money spending down year two out of a three-year Grant and then in the third year out we dropped down to about 9 million4 so this is a very normal pattern I know
104that you've all been around long enough to recognize that me looks scary but it's not really that scary it's planned deficit spending and and not all deficit spending is bad so uh combined we just take those last two slides we put them together and here's what our overall position is then as of second end interim um again our ending fund balance is for the current year projected to be at $ 38.7 million just remember that not all of that's money we can use for whatever we want we have to take out at least 11 million from that number to know what our true kind of our operating for anything the anything bucket is worth uh going out to 2526 we're down to about a 34.2 million and then a 30.8 million in the third year
105again remembering all those assumptions that we talked about the this the spending down of onetime monies the conservative Cola the conservative Ada we we keep it very close very conservative so that we have room to make decisions in the future if we need to so um criteria and standards review in the past I had about four or five slides that really detailed out all the detail and I thought you know I have an intelligent board that can read the really long descriptions in the board packet so we decided to go with this new grid um I hope you like it if not just email me and say no I like the long way better but um we just highlighted the ones that if you were a Community member trying to figure out what does this
106mean is this good or a bad thing why didn't they meet this um those were the ones I decided to put in the grid so that you would know it's not a bad thing for example ada8 for current or subsequent year Changed by more than 2% that's true because we just updated based on all those up and all of our changes that we saw for our Ada lcff Revenue Changed by more than 2% that's right it changed to the positive again for the same reasons we just spoke about other revenues or expenditures changed more than 5% that's right lcff went up so it's not a bad thing we're we're good we're so good deficit spending budgeted in subsequent years we always use conservative revenue and expenditure uh projections in order to try to predict worst
107case scenarios so that's again don't be scared it's not a bad thing it's good uh contributions changed since first interim by more than $20,000 that's a really low bar it's always going to have a not met I think on that one so contributions have decreased a little bit since first interim for uh current and both the two subsequent years uh A3 County operations Grant 88 is decreasing in the current and subsequent years yes that's because we try to predict out what our declining enrollment would be knowing that a big chunk our countywide grant is based on countywide attendance and enrollment right so of course that numberers we are seeing severe declining enrollment and then lastly salary increases exceed state funded cost of living adjustment Cola and it was yes the all of our units in
108this current fiscal year received a 2% increase the Cola was only 1.07 so I do want to just zero in a little bit now on A5 again for those of you who are following along like what your local districts are doing in your various trustee areas item A5 speaks to salary increases that are greater than the state Cola and I want to make sure that you're aware that's what the state declares the cola should be okay um but what's interesting is that so many of our districts because of declining enrollment they don't even receive the full monetary value of what the state has actually set aside to fund for Cola okay so the emphasis is that you may have states that rather districts that are saying well we're going to give the cola to our
109unions and we're going to do this or that but they don't actually receive that much money or that much Cola and also Cola is also intended to be used for all your other expenses that go up like utilities insurance and things as well but um it can end up being much significantly less for example um this year we uh we reviewed a public disclosure document and our state funded Cola was 1.07% but this particular District due to their declining roll uh enrollment was actually at ative -2% when you calculate back out and that's something that Rebecca and I do on on the normal we are always like okay how we know what the coal is supposed to be but how much did they really get and in many instances with due to declining enrollment people
110are getting less so it makes for um tricky calculations for them I guess something just to be aware of so what's next so next in our cycle is the governor's proposed budget um that was we released in January and we're going to use this proposal to help formulate our initial assumptions for the preparation of the 2526 Cee budgets um once the May Revis is released which will be soon May 14th I've believe um we any major impacts then get incorporated as a final refinement for the 2526 budgets so basically we're pretty much done with all of our budget prep um and then the May revise comes on and we do a little bit a last minute smoothing or massaging or whatever um to get us as close as possible to where we think the actual
111assigned budget's going to be and then we continue our ongoing monitoring of revenues and expenditures as we develop the budget but also take one more look and comb through our 2425 actuals to come up with what we think our estimates will be as of the end of the year which are Super critical at this period because that's what informs our beginning balance for our adopted budget so thank you thank you so much lean was there any comments questions from the board uh thank you uh to the business department for our committee meeting uh I always learn something and I want to report that we are blessed uh with someone who has done a lot uh with City budgets Etc and so he's very comfortable and some of the questions he asked I Le so yeah
112yeah thank you thank you good work okay thank you so much so this was just a report so we are now moving on to item 9.1 uh approving the 2526 Coe and student program calendar uh Dr saah yes thank you um so uh as always we uh bring forth the uh calendar part of our process is to work with our partner districts to look at uh What uh programs they have as as you may well know our special education program uh the students actually follow the calendar of the um of the schools where physically located and so if if we have a program at at in a Scott Valley elementary school or at soal high school or something that we actually those special education program so part of when when we start the school year
113does have an effect on that and uh so this is covers the students who are in our programs mostly are alternative education students it doesn't have a it doesn't impact so much um those of us that work in this building for example because you know when if students May may not have that uh day they they may not be going to school that day but but we're still working here and so um uh we wanted to review this I did want to point out uh some uh important points when the school year starts we'll notice that um the first day of the uh of the uh semester for students is going to be August 7th and so we'll have some preparation that's a early start and that's where most of the county is going to
114be starting uh that week um we had tried unfortunately unsuccessfully to get as close as possible to unified calendar and our however uh because the calendar uh goes through a negotiations for many of our districts first and so they negotiate with their bargaining units and then um as we do we we also take this to our bargaining units and in many cases there isn't as much an interest in trying to have a unified calendar as there is honoring the constituents who are part of the of of the bargaining units and so we have not been successful in getting there uh I did want to also point out that in February you'll notice that there is a week um for students uh uh this is something that San Lorenzo Valley does that that students have a
115week off in the in February and also you'll notice that in November um we the students will have a full week of uh for Thanksgiving so those are two things that are different uh than maybe what you've seen uh and uh we do um also um have two weeks of winter break and our school year our semester will end on May 29th and so and that's um most of our school districts are ending either there or by June 5th and so that's which is hasn't really changed so our graduations are probably going to be that week of May 25th um so any questions about spring breaks are standardized though yes we generally uh match all of our Spring Breaks yeah and then the board holiday designation what is that well your approval of these dates
116makes them board holidays because when you identify them as days that students don't have to go to school then they're not official holidays uh they're board holidays so if we don't approve this then thanksgiving's gone that's day after Christmas is gone there are move approval it' be a very unpopular thing to do trust you Larsson but uh but yes so the board holidays are the ones that are approved by by uh by the board that aren't necessarily the official national holidays that are approved by it well I appreciate that you all make the effort to try to unify um I have my last child graduating this year so I won't have to worry about it but I know that there are many parents who have students in different districts and it becomes very challenging when
117they are not aligned so thank you for the effort at least um of course we understand that it's not always um possible um if you had to guess what um District does this most align with just for the sake of well the the February day week off that's San Loreno Valley is the one that does that one um I believe that Santa Cruz City Schools also has a week off foring yes so that those two are probably the and the earlier I think pvsc is the one that usually ends a little bit later like on June 5th but most of the other ones are are now ending well I would move to approve the 2025 26 Coe and student program calendar hey uh motion by Williams second by Van Allen uh this is a voice
118vote okay all those in favor say I I I any opposed it passes okay this is so weird for me doing this okay moving on to item 9.2 first reading of board policies in the 1000 1000s series uh presented by uh policy committee chair Van Allen uh and so we have the uh option of uh you know it's a first and second reading by the board but we may also uh wave a second reading and or uh move to take another action or order changes or things like that just clarifying that but yes Tres this thank you this is a um two policies that essentially are dictated almost down to the word by state law and state Ed code regulations and so we don't have a lot of choice in this but fortunately they address
119complaint procedures which is a big part of how we interface with the public when something is not as good as it could be and um so it's important that we have these procedures and that we adopt them and and update them according to the state rules so um I don't think it's necessary to like dig into the specifics of these I think probably people have had a chance to read them and again it's pretty much set for us by um state law and Ed code so I would recommend approval and um we have the option to wave the second reading and that would be the recommendation of our of the committee that we adopted and wave the second reading okay is there any discussion or a motion microphone there we go um this kind of
120goes along with the speaker that we had uh under public speaking which comes first the state or the Federal that's first question so if there's federal law and state law then federal law would would would consider to uh supersede the authority of the state law uh I'll be talking a little bit about um State law versus administ regulations coming from because there's that's a little bit different but but if if there is a contradiction or a conflict between state law and federal law then federal law will and so like in what we're looking at that we're talk there's a section or instructional materials in curriculum divver diversity and migrant education and so if there is a federal change uh then are we covered until the state adopts whatever if the federal government does adopt it
121in a correct manner that doesn't end up in the courts um are are we covered well I think you you bring out exactly the the point which is that if they if federal law were to be enacted through the proper process and it would be most likely challenged in the courts before it were it it would be able to take effect and impact uh and require us to change state law so if that were to happen if if a federal law were to pass and the uh challenges in the courts are resolved then state law would have to comply would have to be modified to be able to comply under federal law um however that process we would anticipate that in many cases um if the federal law violates the Constitution or you know it
122will be challenged probably all the way up to the Supreme Court um then uh it would it would not go into effect if if the the court system were to find it to be um outside of of uh you know outside of the Constitution or or in violation of their aspects of the law and the protections I'm just concerned about lawsuits I mean we've just done the budget and we're good at it we don't have access funding to and and most of I would say that we wouldn't be taking on the lawsuits ourselves locally the if we're talking about federal law when it comes to educational law we would be it is the state uh California Department of Education and um the state of California that would be taking that on and they've made a
123commitment to do so so would never drop down to our level it's it's less likely spot it's like it's less likely that we would be directly involved in in in uh litigation against the federal government because most of it goes through the state educational agency um you know when it comes to funding and so so really we we would be partnering with our our our leaders at the state level for this uh two comments one as much as I love doing budget and finance with trusting North I love that trustees Van Allen and Williams are going through this and and looking at it one question for the future given that we're an Uncharted Turf and maybe scary Turf whatever we get as the source of the new language you know that if we could ask
124them just to highlight what are the big changes year to year because I think every word here assuming has been vetted really might weigh me more especially a lot of times policy changes come to us via csba and their work to interpret new legislation and they often have given us marked up this one had a slightly different route to us um so wouldn't be to go over there um I'm not sure if Dr Isen Gonzalez is looks like you are wanting to say something about this if it's okay I can thank you for hearing me I um I wondered if that might be a question for this for these particular policies the one change that happened since the last time we adopted it 3 years ago was the for for uniform complaint procedures the appeal
125process went from 15 days to 30 days and I honestly could not find one single change in the Williams one except that the California Department of Education which gave us these policies and said you have to do this said you have to do this but I looked because I thought maybe someone would be curious but in the future because I might have some more policies coming I will be sure to present um relevant changes but these are just like um then now said it's not much thank you any other comments or motion well I'll move the resolution is from the committee I'll second if I could ask for a clarification is this a to wave the second Reading part the resoltion move the resolution and wave the second reading yes what move the poliy okay
126so there is a motion to uh accept the following proposed policy as submitted and wave a second reading seconded by trusty Roth and this is a voice vote so all those in favor say I I all those opposed it passes okay thank you thank you uh moving on to item 9.3 resolution 25-6 recognizing April as National bilingual multilingual learner advocacy month uh presented by uh trusty Larsson thank you vice president Estrada um following on the great work of of my predecessor we have four resolutions before you tonight that were adopted by the board a year ago um with some minor changes staff through their work work with the committee for some of the resolutions has updated dates or events or sources of of involved parties then for several of the resolutions we added a new
127whereas that just acknowledg that with um Federal changes in policy Staffing and funding there may be additional impacts on either Environmental Protection for our Arab American Community or others we added those warehouses just to reflect the current reality we face so with that umbrella introduction thanks to former trustee Nichols and to Van Allen for their work these have been reviewed by the committee and they're back to you again again with thanks to Nick and vetan and they are all carry forwards I do want to highlight for the Santa Cruz County family engagement collaborative that's before us tonight recognizing both Coe staff I believe it's nce Pitman rosos and Barbara hubner and the multilingual program well supported by this resolution for you thank you trusty Larson uh is there any discussion motion oh and it's for
128the next uh what three the use of the word national where does that come from there's actually multiple sources online including the state California Department of Education that provides a summary of various resolutions that and many of these have National prevalence other State national and now County some districts could even I just had a clar question uh clarifying question um there's a percentage in there's it says in the summary it says 42% of the students but in the resolution it says 40% I just wanted to see which one that is and then make sure we have that the correct percentage and it's minor but i' as my question I didn't catch that and I'll defer to staff which number is correct um the correct one would be 40% so that is my error my apologize
129so it's correct in the resolution that's before you and I move to approve resolution I'll second it okay the committee uh motion by trusty Williams second by Larson this is a roll call vote that any say student trustee Marcus hi vice president estada yes trusty Larson hi trusty Roth yes trusty Van Allen truste Williams yes it passes unanimously thank you all moving on to 9.4 resolution 25-7 in recognition of national Child Abuse Prevention month trusty Larson this again comes from the committee as we've discussed uh no particular citing of involved staff or Partners but really A recognition that all of this work is done with a wide array of Partners from nonprofit governmental and even private sector with the call to individual action and recognition that we all have a role to play in Child
130Abuse Prevention with that I'll recommend move approval okay was there anyone wanted to make any other comments discussion okay uh so was that a a motion uh trusty Larson to okay is there a second second by Van Allen roll call vote that any say student trustee Marcus hi vice president estada yes trust Larson yes trusty Roth yes trusty Van Allen trusty Williams pass is unanimously thank you all item 9.5 resolution 25-8 recognizing April as National Arab American Heritage Month trusty Larson only one more after this so uh again it's a carry forward resolution from prior years it uh specific the res resolution specifically cites the challenges faced by our Arab American community and there is an additional where as provided that's available on page 199 of the packet which has whereas recent changes in federal
131policy funding and Staffing are creating new concerns and uncertainties for immigrant communities including Arab Americans it's uh of infusing the current discourse in in many of the resolutions and with that uh I'll move approval based on the committee consideration he there is a motion but any any other comments okay or a second second okay second by Roth oh yeah any one I find the actions of the federal Administration to be abhorent unamerican and a rejection of our country's attempt to create good and just and equal Society they are directly in opposite of that treatment of American Arab Americans or people of Arabic Legacy Our Heritage are just inexcusable racist discriminatory based on free speech and um unacceptable so I just want to say that to me I don't I don't have any sanction for this
132federal government right thank you for your comment uh so there is a motion by Larson second by Roth uh this is a roll call vote student trustee Marcus hi vice president asada yes trusty Larsson yes trusty Roth yes trusty Van Allen trusty Williams passes unanimously uh on to item 9.6 first reading of board bylaws in the 9000s series uh Ed by Van Allen Tres these two board policies are pretty much came out of our recent experience with um our orientation and training and um adopted with some changes in that have come down from on High um and again they're fairly routine and I recommend approval and uh waiver of the second reading I would like to um move to approve but not with these this as a first and second reading just as first reading
133to give umit more time to riew how we maybe okay more opportunity for us to expand upon it okay a second reading would be of the same text though so not necessarily Well we'd have to do it with amendments at the time then okay if that's I'm AC I will accept that then this would just be for the first reading okay so there is a motion for approving this as the first reading and is that was that a second by you or I don't know did he make a motion yeah yeah he amended it to what you yes okay but uh yeah comment just one comment while the orientation policy didn't exist when I was being oriented um I just want to commend staff Yes again for their support and onboarding for me as I
134parted this okay so there is a motion and second to uh uh accept as the first reading is that the right verbiage accept this as the first reading yes yes okay uh this is a voice vote okay I was looking for R you say but I don't need to all those in favor say I any opposed passes unanimously okay on to item 9.8 resolution 25-10 recognizing Earth Day and Environmental Education week trusty Larson thank you very much this is the last of the resolutions we're bringing back from last year and it's recognizing Earth Day and Environmental Education week it's in the packet as page 210 uh we do have that new whereas Clause included here that I've mentioned a couple times before um I do want to just highlight that this is to support the
135work of Coe staff the environmental literacy coordinator and it also highlights several things in particular the youth environmental action Summit that will be coming up on April 21st the Earth Day the 55th anniversary of Earth Day on April 22nd and then it's also are calling out the celebration of the green classroom initiative of the Coe that will be celebrated at se more long at the end of National Environmental Education week on April 27th all encompassed in the resolution I'll move approval as it has come thank you trusty Larson uh any uh discussion comments uh second second okay seconded by trustee Williams uh this is a roll call vote my apologies who was the motion oh motion by Larson student trusty Marcus hi vice president Estrada yes trusty Larson yes trusty Roth trusty Van Allen trusty
136Williams okay passes unanimously thank you all and thank you for having me lead you through all of those resolutions lots of talking uh okay on to the superintendent report thank you so much uh thank you for the opportunity to provide an update uh uh I wanted to spend most of my time speaking to you about uh some of the up the the kind of the most what's front and center for us which is the steps that that the Administration have taken uh in the in the realm of education and how it's impacting us and so I was going to dive a little bit more in depth into what uh you may have heard today that um that the uh the that President Trump signed an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education um and
137as we since the Department of Education was created by an act of Congress it is our understanding that would to actually dismantle Al uh the Department of Education would require an act of Congress as well however the many of the steps that have been taken are are are are having an impact on our schools here locally and I see part of my role is to make sure that you and our staff our our and our community are as aware as possible of of these impacts and uh and to help strategize ways that we can either mitigate those impacts and and continue to work uh to make sure that we are offering the very best resources services and advocacy for our students uh so I wanted to share this that I I like we've been kind
138of organizing our understanding of the different ways that the that the uh Administration is is um the steps that they're taking that are impacting Us in in different ways and and then I'll I'll get speak specifically about uh the US Department of Education and so uh really looking at uh policy uh steps that they've taken funding Cuts uh other actions and then of course what I believe is is one of the most uh impactful detrimental aspects of of these steps is really the fear that is being instilled in our community and um uh when it comes especially for our immigrant Community our lgbtq plus especially our trans Community the very targeted focused effort um by the administration to uh is cre creating a a a culture of fear and um that is um you know
139and whether it's rhetoric or action you know these the impact is very real so let's start uh talking about policies so some of the steps that they've taken um is the elimination of protections for our lgbtq plus uh specifically our trans Community uh executive orders asking schools to out students that notify parents if their children want to use a different pronoun in schools uh Banning trans students from using preferred bathrooms or joining sports teams um and uh eliminating all references to diversity equity and inclusion and framing Equity as as racist and um and if and also promoting school choice for parents and all of these these that are administrative um coming from administrative orders um are will not we do not believe that they will have an impact on um on very real protections that
140exists in California because our laws are so strong protecting our lgbtq plus communities um and um and our commitment uh for uh when it comes to equity and so uh so these policies that are being established um uh you know really attempting to to erase um the uh the our our the identities of our community and and instilling fear in our community we have we are part of our role is really to to assure our communities that that we that the laws of California are going to continue to protect other actions of course that we've talked to you about is is identifying schools as potential locations for immigration enforcement um we've been hearing of course about detainment of protesters as terrorists sympathizers and um and if if they're and uh uh investigating schools and universities
141because of uh diversity Equity or inclusion um uh programs and services uh or investigating schools and universities for claims of anti-Semitism of how they responded to protests um in the past pro pro Palestinian or or um or protest against the um the uh the Israel Palestinian more um Al allowing trans athletes to participate in sports um and so there's been over 50 universities that have been identified for investigation with threats of cuts to federal funds um as well as um steps being taken against individuals who were participating in in protests and and um and also uh programs being being uh threatened with with cuts uh you may have heard that they've launched a portal to collect complaints about uh agencies K12 agencies and higher educational institutions where where attacks against where the the claims of
142of U discrimination um uh and a kind of a reversal of how we would have defined discrimination in the past um and being and that being a launching pad for uh investigations at least at least asserting that that's what the launching pad for investigations is um and then let's talk about funding Cuts so uh there's really three ways that we see that uh funding Cuts could impact us one is the termination of existing agreements or grants that we were in the process of of acquiring or were already acquiring uh and that includes uh we recently were learned that the local food purchase assistance program which is a program that allows schools to uh purchase uh mostly fresh fruits and vegetables from local Growers um has been cut which is about $200,000 for all our all
143the the in Santa Cruz County we've heard about programs like the csumb teacher quality partnership Grant being cut grants for to do educational research and services for FAFSA which is our finan the financial aid system have been cut and so um at this point the the the dollar amounts are that are impacting us directly um uh are are not huge but they are impactful and we will continue to to track those but we anticipate to grow another way that we anticipate that cuts of funding could take place is looking at next year's budget the next federal fiscal year and and so um the unlike the state fiscal year the federal fiscal year starts a little B later um and so we were hearing that the plans are to make reductions in certain programs for that
144fiscal for the next state fiscal year the elementary and secondary education act uh is which has been around since 1965 is what has authorizes programs like Title One and uh and um and those programs are are at risk if um when Congress which controls a p pings of of uh of the government they could influence how much funding we actually get and then the other way that that I think is important to note is that funding Cuts could happen as a result of of these Staffing reductions because when with programs like like the US Department of Education that helps manage helps set formulas when those folks are not in place then we would anticipate disruptions if if the person if we were to lose some of our amazing staff in our business services department the
145services that they offer could would be impacted or delayed right and so we anticipate that there's going to be disruptions as a result of so So speaking specifically about the US Department of Education um uh we we one of the one of the areas actually I'm going to skip over to here I think it's important to note that many of the federal programs that have are in existence and have been around for quite some time especially those been created in in 1965 and after um are for lowincome students or students who come from vulnerable commun why they they those programs were created students with disabilities uh family students who need uh you know school lunches and so on and so um the concern about as I said about the US Department of Education being dismantled
146that we are risking um you know cuts and and uh uh and not having support from from the federal government to you know uh to be able to provide support for these programs um cuts to Title One funds to individuals with disabilities Education Act funds um you know special education uh funding are also at risk and and are our programs that are um are important they we rep they represent about 12% our federal funds represent about 12% of all the funding that we get in Santa Cruz County but um the the um the different districts that have higher numbers of students who are who qualify for a free and reduced lunch like Bahar Valley and school district have a higher percentage of federal closer to 16% of their and so they would be their impact
147would be outsized if there were disruptions to those Services another important role that the the the um the Department of Education plays is in um and also managing there's an office of civil rights um they also manage complaints to ensure that students um that they that they um free and public education rights uh that their services for special education are being protected that they're being offered the least restrictive environment um and there are and if civil rights have been violated then they investigate those civil rights and ensure that that kind of the restoration of those rights and these programs are the ones that are being um are being staffed the staffing has been cut last week uh about uh seven of the 12 um offices of civil rights were closed um uh here in California
148there's over 700 cases pending with the office of civil rights that are have been they've been directed to put those on hold and so those kinds of disruptions are going to be are affecting the rights of the people that are that are that that whose cases are are being processed and so um you know those are those are uh ways that we see um that that uh the dismantling of the um so i' like so what are we doing about it uh so you know that as a caller asked earlier and you know I think that it's it's important to know that if we were you know we don't anticipate that you know all that money is going to be cut I think that that you know that that the federal government is is is
149going to to um you know cut 12% of of the funding that we're going to get but we we recognize that there's going to be disruption there's going to be so we've organized the kinds of things that we're working on into different areas one is to reassure our community the fear that is being instilled in our community of parents being afraid to take their children to school or going to the the clinic to get services or accessing resources I think it's really important to demonstrate our allyship with our community to demonstrate that we are our values are with them that we want to continue to ensure that our schools are safe spaces um and also to focus on those local Services make sure that they understand that that that they can go to the clinic
150they can get those resources that they that they deserve and are available to them and part of that is communication and um and also demonstrating in different ways continue to support them in every way that we can some of the actions that we're looking at of course when it came to we've already spoken to you about uh how schools have established new protocols in case immigration officials were to come to the um to our to our schools we don't think that that's a likely scenario however we're we have we have protocols in place to respond appropriately for that um anticipating tracking funding cuts and services really looking at what we anticipate to be and and figuring out what would happen to those programs is there something is it the state has has talked about stepping
151in in certain situations to be able to provide continuity we we feel that that can't happen realistically for very long for example services that would have a huge effect on on our services and so but really wanting to anticipate what kinds of programs we we we're curing we think that are going to be impacted and then I think that part of our action also is really embracing our our our value of of values of of equity and diversity and inclusion um continue to to state that we believe um affirmatively that we need to that our responsibility is one believe that families that are most uh need of more vulnerable families or marginalized communities that are that we have a responsibility to continue to support them and that we believe that that schools have that import
152support communities that are are and that does mean also thinking about how we have to be shifting our resources if we were to lose funding for for food services for example L some what you know how would we ensure that we're going to continue to offer that we recognize that that's students get one of those important pieces of we also are working to inform and prepare a community you'll you're you're seeing information going out in the community both sharing our concern and our and our commitment to support them um we've been partnering with with lots of folks who provide rights trainings launch website with resources really um helping our community helping families with um safety plans so working with our our our partners um to get the word out to our community and if there
153are steps that they can take and then that takes us to the last one which is really about linking to uh the support network we have amazing organizations here and local uh who are working um to uh on behalf of our community we're partnering with our federal leadership the firstman Panetta's office talk about what can be done with our state leaders looking at what kind of litigation they're looking at if steps are taken because we feel like an important aspect of this is going to be the pts will to help protect us protect our communities from that we're going to be um even if it's maybe not directly involved in that in those steps but definitely also putting a a face to those you heard from uh Eric Rose maybe in the newspapers about what
154what cuts to those to those Food Services what it could programs I think it's important for those local stories be able to share the the real impact and as I said a huge wonderful uh network of kind of ecosystem of Community Based organizations Place meet with them on a weekly basis we talk about strategy we talk about things we can do how we can get the word out um what kind of what what kind of information does our community get them to utilize the resources um I hope to provide an update for you every time on during this time so that you as things uh continue to evolve you know we we feel like as difficult as this is for our community it is also necessary for us to assert our commitment we are going
155to continue to think about how we can we must adapt figure out all the different ways that steps we can take thank you for allowing me to share that I I wanted to talk a little bit about some exciting things that are happening as part of uh you know as we we learned during the pandemic it's also important to look deeply at all the amazing things like to celebrate our students about uh uh see Marcus on the uh playing uh on the keyboard at at uh multiple events as a musician or seeing our students uh winning uh you know the science engineering Fair um these uh those students are our students are really what it's all about for us and and we have lots of events that are taking place um I did want to
156share a um that we uh were elected as or specifically our youth Le leadership Alliance Andre or this is the second award he gets in the same in 20242 so awardwinning uh where his his new title will be awardwinning andrees Ortiz uh and so uh so this really exciting just uh and has been building some amazing Partnerships with the United Way collaborating both on the research side of it as well great Partnerships and opportunities students so congratulations to uh to Nick and and and especially to students with whom uh gets to work and we get toing our student just there's some exciting uh events that are taking place tomorrow we have a lgbtq symposium the first of its kind um we have um uh Rob um my gosh Rob Rob Darrow thank you rob Darrow
157is uh somebody who works with us as a consultant and he's been uh helping to to prepare and facilitate this event we're going to have um some some great speakers and and panel and it'll be tomorrow at Cabrio College we'd love it if you could um the event will be starting at building 405 um and then the breakout sessions will be in buildings adjacent start in room 405 right so building 400 first and then we'll you'll see a lot of rainbows so Follow The Rainbow L Follow The Rainbow so we have a fashion teens event which is happening this is our busiest time of the year so lots to happen that happens this is kind of like before graduations we have all of these amazing things I think starting probably with the steam Expo loud
158yeah and then we just back to back so um everybody involved in this from our from our ed services team to our youth leadership folks our um and of course the superintendent's office which plays a really important role in in all of these activities we're very busy time for for everybody so fashion teens uh at the Rio theer on April 18th uh will be exhibiting our students uh artwork before it comes here at uh at the Santa Cruz uh government center and our our youth for environmental action Summit is occurring on April 21st in the campia and um we also received a uh um actually no the green classroom celebration is something else I did want to share that we received um we've been honored as a uh with with the the green ribbon program
159for environmental sustainability we received uh the award as a gold organization the first County Office of Education received that award and this uh is thanks to AMD uh sanage and also all the uh our uh maintenance and operations team our business services team and all the folks who've made a commitment to um improve [Music] our uh our kind of I guess behaviors sounds a little weird but um but the way we we do business every day and and so we're we're now gold certified as a under the green ribbons program so we actually are getting an award for that um but the green classroom celebration which is also with Amity is really uh an exciting opportunity for you to see what teachers are doing for environmental assist it's a really fun uh you'll get to
160see all the Puda projects and there it's just a wonderful event if you can make it and um and then we're hosting the Central Coast Foster Youth and homeless education it rotates through different through San Bonito montere and and Santa Cruz so we're this year we're hosting a Cabrio College uh we talk about uh supporting Foster Youth and homeless students who are experiencing homelessness and and um and it's really a brings together a network of folks who are both school-based and Community Based organizations that support those students so question yes pleas before you move on from the slide so I have inside education tomorrow so I can't do the Symposium yes but one of the speakers tomorrow had a great Ally logo that I converted into my Facebook portrait um and so so I just
161expressed how great this program was and one of my friends said well why isn't a TK to 14 does everything else is TK to 14 and they said it's just a question it's next year it's a good question it's a good question we we will we will fix that uh uh at least on the digital versions of this you're absolutely right everything is TK and you're absolutely right so thank you for that but having the speaker PowerPoints already available was fantastic so I could live it vicariously wonderful if if I may add superintendent sa I don't believe that there was any particular thought behind that that was an oversight on the part of uh the organizers and we'll be sure to to raise that in the debrief all the person they made a change for
162the future there you go and I appreciate your your your eye on the on the details that it helps us so thank you for that uh so again lots of positive things happening and and um and I think again when we think about that that reassurance we need to continue uh to create these opportunities for our students to to be able to to show how amazing they are and to remind us about why we do the work that we do you do your work as a any questions for so really Co was a rehearsal for what we're coming into now and overall our organization did pretty well for our people given the conditions in and I think we were recognized for that and rise to a bigger challeng and I think it is it is
163uh kind of maybe some symbolic or or maybe evidence that schools really play such a huge important role in our community they're really in many ways the heart of our community and why and that puts you know great deal of expectation and responsibility on our shoulders As Leaders to uh to continue to stand up for so I think that I think it's a opportunity to lead for us as as as as educational institutions and really make sure that that schools continue to play that both as creating those protective factors as well as as creating those wonderful opportunities for okay uh that is it for my uh for my report thank you thank you Dr Sabah on to trustee reports and I guess I will start by saying thank you once again Dr Sabah for presenting
164to the Santa Cruz County um csba uh things have changed just from then like a lot I mean just today uh with the Department of Education uh executive order uh which I was working all day I didn't even get to read it I heard it on the news and having to look at that is going to be interesting um so yeah we got a great presentation from Dr saah to all of the uh attendees at the Santa Cruz County csba meeting uh you know everything that we just saw uh about the federal actions that are being taken and the eye that we need to keep towards uh Federal actions that might be impacting us even though it is a smaller percentage of the budget is a significant portion of money uh especially for districts like
165pararo so very very interesting times we're in and I don't have much else to report so I'll go on to trusty Williams well good evening everyone um so aside from attending some um School District board meetings virtually um there's lot going on in our count that um affect our students and I'm sure most of us are aware of those things so I'm just trying to keep informed but also um um heavily involved and still staying involved with the CSP which is the children's safety plan through uh the Santa Cruz County immigration Coalition so that's one of the things that Dr Spa was talking about I'm working with um sharid Cassidy to help streamline volunteers who are um doing train the trainers on um know your rights but also assisting with um parents creating their child
166care plan um throughout our County it's um it's a program that I it's not spread out through our Tri Counties so a lot of other organizations and counties are um coming to the committee to go up to selenis and Marina and san viita county to give these trainings so I'm trying to help out where I can and um just working with her to help streamline um the volunteers and sort of like the the operations aspect of it um and enjoyed fully the steam Expo um I like most of our trustees have not been to a science fa in quite a long time and it was again impressive I mean um it was truly impressive and I enjoyed myself um and um attended uh the edes last night and got to see student trustee Marcus um
167play the the keyboard and that was that was a lot of fun and um got to celebrate a lot of great work from our Educators throughout the county rep thank you I have not much to report I'm pretty caught up in that uh ballot measure initiative and trying to pay attention to other things too but um and it certainly has implications as I've talked about before about educator Workforce housing that so I feel it's consistent with my commitment thank youen Rusty Larson I submitted my activity in writing I did have one correction I uh have a good friend Nam bar Mary Beth Rob the city schools trustee is Mary an Rob and I put her name wrong in my report the only things I wanted to highlight again were the steam the Eddy last night
168for Santa Cruz City schools and then also the her story celebration that Coe sponsored the week before as well as the Second Harvest Food Bank event those and just seeing CO's physical leadership with Ferris as the chair but also sponsorship of those community- based events is important and then the other thing I'm just loving the most is actually seeing stuff being done visiting School sites and events visiting Coe activities and events so there's ever a need for a volunteer at anything uh stickers or whatever you want thanks thank you trusty Larson um I um did the ledge action week uh training and then um met with actually it wasn't Senator Le but Quincy Styers is ledge at a and uh with assembly member Dale Pelin and her Aid ranan Mulligan uh love steam I'll be
169back I'm gonna see if I can bring my Portland grandkids maybe for that weekend so they can play uh and be inspired uh I attended uh a uh alumni event up at UC see not alumni uh alumni uh up at UC uh given by Gary Griggs professor of Earth and planetary Sciences on the history uh of Santa Cruz County natural natural catastrophes and I know that that isn't the focus of our youth environmental but I believe he is very available to fascinating I mean I I like the guy but uh I think our youth uh many were not alive during the different processes that we have been through in the county but good person to speak and then of course thank you trusty Roth and I was so sad that I couldn't attend the budget
170meeting you know but uh I'm sure you guys had a lot of good discussions trusty Larson with all your experience as well um yeah wonderful questions uh I I really do wish I was there um I was I was actually up in Portland for a conference so that's why I couldn't make it uh okay uh next our next meeting is scheduled for April 17th at 5:30 uh oh the ad hoc standing committee reports or actions were there any any anything that anyone wanted okay well I'll I'll say for the agenda committee uh it was stated earlier the acbe will present in April um is oh yeah I was just going to uh share about the charter committee uh so just a timeline for the career advancement Charter we we we're going to be working on
171a renewal and so we're going to um uh be bringing a report and public hearing to the May meeting and so the charter uh committee will be involved in in the process viewing the renewal and you'll be making your decision in J for it's it's renewal thank you to the trustees that completed the doodle poll from the charter committee um oh and for the accb is that uh scheduled to be an action or is it just a presentation I don't remember at this moment it's just a presentation um but the agenda committee can choose to we make it an action item obviously 72 hours ahead in advance yes okay sounds good okay our next meeting is going to be April 17th right here 5:30 p.m. uh and other upcoming events uh do I just go
172this meeting is adjourned okay this meeting is adjourned thank you all for coming