June 9, 2026 Board Meeting

001I'd >> like to call the meeting to order of the San Valley Union High School District Board of Education on Tuesday, June 9th, 2026. This is a regular meeting. >> Roll call, please. Terry, >> please note that member Noble is absent. >> Thank you. Stand for the flag salute. To the flag of the United States of America and to the stands nation. >> Okay. So, we can move on to the approval of the agenda. Is there a motion for approval? >> So, move. >> Thank you. >> I'll second that. >> Roll call, please. >> Mr. Mr. Johnson. >> Hi, >> Miss Grace Velasquez. Hi, >> Mr. Leamini. >> Hi, >> Mr. Robinson. >> Hi. >> Agenda approved. Um, now superintendent reports and the presentations. >> Good evening. Welcome to summer. It's here. Um, I wanted

002to start off by just honoring Miss Jasmine Day. It's her last board meeting. She has been offered and accepted the um position of principal at Salvang's upper campus and she will be greatly missed here. She's done a phenomenal job with our student discipline, our school safety plan, just really um just a steady force in in um that office. and she's really going to be missed, but we're so excited for her and we're really thrilled for Solving that they're getting um a really incredible leader. So, she will be missed. So, I I I just wanted to make sure to to acknowledge her. Um I also wanted to thank all the parents and community members that were involved in the sober graduation. The kids had a great time. The prizes they gave away were again this year

003unbelievable. Um, so, um, that's always just such a fantastic event and the community coming together and the parents and even like tons of alumni parents that come back and help set up. And I also wanted to just one last time acknowledge the class of 2026 and everything they accomplished. I think we'll hear a little bit more about that tonight, but they they were a phenomenal group of students and they will be missed and their legacy is they've definitely left a lasting legacy here. like to thank the PTO for their food for finals. They um always do such a good job of motivating our kids and feeding our kids before and each of the finals um before school and then at nutrition in between. So that that's really fantastic. So thank you to to the PTO

004for that. Summer swim. I just want to make everybody aware that summer swim is starting. We are having summer swim in our pool. So, if any youngsters out there or any families are interested and they can sign up through the Buleton Rec Center and they'll be able to swim in our pool and um they have a robust swim program. So, that's great. We're really excited that the theater curtains have been installed and the sound is in and it sounds amazing. So, Fossam Dance is over there right now getting ready. you know, they um they rent it out for their facilities use in their big summer programs and now they don't have to have an additional expense of renting sound equipment. So, all the groups that rent our facilities this summer are just thrilled that um

005they're able to um tap into our sound and it's it's so pure and clear. It's really nice. So, we're excited about that. Summer is well underway here. Second week of summer school. Sports camps are going. Cleaning is happening. Facilities and maintenance is just doing a great job already cleaning up those rooms and doing all those honeydew lists that we we have for them. So, I really want to thank facilities and maintenance. And then the admin team is already planning for the 2026 school 2627 school year. Somebody stopped me today in El Rancho and said, "Oh, aren't you so glad it's summer?" And I said, 'Yeah, it's great that it's summer, but we're planning next year. Like, we have our academic calendars rolling, our master schedule. Um Tori's got the master schedule almost down and ready

006to go. We have some more um incoming freshmen to plug in, but it's ready. So, thank you to everyone and it thank you to the board for all their support for our student learning and everything our students accomplished this year. We appreciate you. And that's it. >> Thank you, Kim. That was a lot of people involved in the thank yous. There's takes a takes a community, that's for sure. Uh we'll move on to board comments and correspondence. Anybody have anything they'd like to share? I'm sure everybody's going to say the graduation was fantastic once again and just the kids just remind us of where we came from and to see that where they're going to go and it was just a tremendous experience again. >> Yeah, I'd say thank you to Miss Day for your

007service here at the school. Um, graduation was wonderful, especially for me with a graduate. Um, I I worked the safe and sober grad night or volunteered. Uh 2 am was good. I guess it we used to go to 6:00 a.m. 6:00 a.m. I couldn't imagine, but two a lot of the kids uh were done. A few kids left early, but it was good. And I also helped. Did you help with uh food for final? Uh food for finals? I didn't see it. We had different days, but yeah, that's fun. And yeah, thank you to the PTO and the the parents that volunteered. >> Yeah, great graduation. Refugeio graduation. It was great, too. I didn't bring enough tissues. It was a very emotional day, you know, I guess senior um students, but um yeah, I could

008go on about everything, but I just want to thank Jasmine, too. And go rock it over there. You'll be great. So, thank you for all you've done >> and I'll echo that, Jasmine. Thanks so much. And good luck. I know you'll do well. And uh again, I'll echo the graduations were spectacular. you um the whole show gets put on. I know Terry's a lot to do behind that as well. Thank you, Terry. And uh to all the students and parents. >> Yeah, Alexis and uh and Tori and just they they do a phenomenal job of honoring those students. So, >> absolutely. Okay. Um that's it. We'll move on to public comment. And I see we have one card. Denise Elamine. Hi, my name is Denise Elamine. Um, and for um, Miss Grace Valisquez. Um, I

009know you don't recognize color, so I want to let you know that I'm an AfricanAmerican woman and and I'm here to thank all of the people who voted me in back in May of 2023 as the first PTSA AfricanAmerican president of um, Sanz Valley High School. It only lasted four months, but I still made history and that can't be removed per AI. I don't know if somebody's working to remove it now, but I did make it four months. Um, I was removed um by the school district um by requesting that a form be signed by me. Um the first person to ever be requested to sign one and the last one. And I refused to sign over my civil rights. So they removed me as the first AfricanAmerican PTSA president and they removed the PTA

010the PTSA from this school also. But they kept uh all of our um merchandise. Um they kept uh the trailer and um we have 19,200 in the bank, US Bank across the street and um that's been taken also. But it appears that the board here um they don't care about that. I guess once they got rid of um me um nobody cares about where the money went or where anything went. But I understand I understand you don't want to see you don't see color be because you don't have any color in here. But I just wanted to let you guys know that I um appreciate what you did. I really do. I love it when people go after me and try to break me and I'm not broken and I won't be broken by anybody

011in this school. So, um I do know that you guys replaced us. Uh Mr. Mark Herthale, I've never met him until last night. Um uh he was the president and he started the PTO here. Um and nobody had to sign the paper that I was um demanded to sign. And Mr. Robinson is now um the president um of the PTO. Um Mr. Mr. Herthell has gone back to Losas as the president there. So, Mr. Robinson has a double do duty here. He's he's on the board and he's also the president of the PTO. Congratulations. I wish one day that maybe somebody like me could have those two positions. But let me hurry this up. I just want to know tell everybody this is a a voting year. Four positions are open and we need to

012change who we have in there. >> Okay, we can we can move on now to the consent agenda. >> Can I just make a clarification? I resigned from the PTO and I took this position. >> Oh, yes. Yes, that's understood. >> Yes. Uh consent agenda. We can uh Is there a motion for approval of consent? >> Yeah, I'll make a motion to approve the consent. >> Todd, >> I'll second that. >> Thank you, Kathy. Roll call, please. Terry. >> Mr. Johnson. >> I. >> Miss Grace Velasquez. >> I. >> Mr. Lamini. >> Hi. >> Mr. Robinson. >> Hi. >> Consent approved. Now, our uh action item currently is the science textbooks application. Good evening. Yes, adoption. >> Adoption. I'm sorry. >> We're adopting tonight. We are adopting. We do. We've had uh a number of

013textbooks for review uh between two meetings ago and last meeting into today um for public viewing. We did notice that those were available. Um both the biology and chemistry books have been chosen and vetted. Um honestly we had all great options. They were all aligned. Um departments really recommended and we trusted them with their recommendations for their two texts they chose and uh one is it's TRO but really it's under Pearson and then the other and that's for our chemistry book and then for biology or living earth uh depending on if it's agg or our traditional science pathway they are going with uh Savas they are going with that textbook too. So, those have been um chosen by them and we are in full support. Um again, all of our options were great. They just

014went with texts that best aligned with the needs of our students while still being standards aligned. Uh we did have a request at the last meeting to make sure that we brought forward with these requests. And we are doing a request for approval up to I believe it's $100,000 on the item. That's for both. Um, and that would involve physical text and digital text for some of the courses to have eetex available. Also, with biology, there's a number of supplemental materials that would be able they're not they're intended as consumables, but they'd be able to not be consumables, so they'd be able to be reused year-over-year. Um, but there are accessibility features within both that I did want to highlight uh before I ask for your approval. So for the biology um the Miller Levine

015biology which is a 2020 version some of the accessibility highlights it includes a comprehensive system of supports um with both the digital platform and the textbook and there are study guides and uh foundations reading materials which is nice. There's reading and vocabulary scaffolds helping students access those uh content vocabulary words that sometimes can be more difficult. lots of graphic organizers, diagram labeling activities, and chunk text support for diverse learning needs. So, we often have students that have accommodations related to chunking their materials into smaller pieces. Those books specifically did that already, which was really nice, and really integrated visuals along the way to make it a little less cumbersome. Um, science text can be heavy on the eyes, and so that's nice. Like I said, lots of visuals. Um there are with the supplemental materials

016something that's nice and it's really available in both in um in the digital version for chemistry and in the physical supplemental materials the ability to access those in other languages specifically Spanish. And so those are some materials that may be helpful as we're working with our English learners who often need to be in science classes that are supported, but it can help supplement some of those um content vocabulary that are often difficult at first and those are often terms that come later for students. So we'll be able to use those materials to help support along the way which is nice. And then lots of digital resources including interactive labs and videos, texttospech accessibility through our Chromebooks with the EEX. And so that's for the biology. Very similar with chemistry. A couple differences and there's um

017more languages that can be translated in the chemistry. We often right now currently the second language involves Spanish and different dialects of Spanish and so we are good to go on that for chemistry also um we have in the EEX adjustable size fonts which can be helpful for students with vision impairments customizable display settings so students who need to look at the materials differently that'll be available it'll work right with our canvas already and everything will integrate in nicely for students and compatible with screen readers and meeting really any accessibility accommodations that students may have for any reason. And then personalized supports too for um kind of targeted feedback sometimes too. There's the ability to really specify feedback for students within the chemistry text and lots of stepby-step worked examples which with chemistry is so

018important because chemistry is integrating not just the science but often those math pieces that come in that can be really difficult for students. So that's really nice. Lots of visuals. again. Um, again, they are definitely updated texts that are meeting the next generation science standards far better than what we currently have. Yeah. And so I'm here for any questions and we would ask that you would approve the expenditure and we're looking forward to moving forward with text hopefully with your approval. >> When you say a screen reader, you mean like for um hearing impaired and it reads >> Yeah. So the ability Yeah. both for visually and hearing, there's in general a myriad of accomod accessibility features. Some are just built into Chromebooks. So when you have the e text, it allows for it, but

019the text themselves have other iterations of that available. Yes. >> And I'm assuming that um for the most part, the textbooks will stay here because they'll have the digital version on their um computer or their Chromebooks. >> Yeah. So there's um some differences in there too, just the way the books look. So we will have class sets. There are some where we're asking for some take-home student versions. We're kind of working through the amount. That's why it's sitting a little higher right now because with the digital text, we're making sure that it provides everything the physical does. Sometimes it differs a little bit. So, we're going to make sure they have everything they need either way because it does allow us to have less of those because of that. Yes. >> Um, I don't have

020any questions. Did a great job discussing this previously and tonight. And so, I'm ready to make a motion to approve that there's no more discussion. >> Thank you, Brian. Is there a second? >> Yeah. Second. >> Roll call, please. Terry, >> Mr. Jones. >> Mr. Johnson. >> I >> Miss Gracequez. >> Hi, >> Mr. Leamini. Hi, >> Mr. Robinson. >> Hi. >> Science textbooks adoption is approved. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you, Tori. >> So, now we can move on to our discussion items for the evening. Uh, the first one would be team civic's presentation bond measure overview. and we're going to let um one of the presenters into a Zoom room and >> Got it. >> I can hear you. Yeah, sounds like he can hear me as well. >> Yes. >>

021Well, I think Tim Tim's going to share on his side. So, um Tim, I'll do a brief introduction, hand it off to you, and then you can uh run the show from your end. >> Okay, >> sounds good. >> All right. Uh good evening. I'm Charles Eith. I'm a partner with Team Civics. Um, we are strategy and communications consultants that work with a lot of school districts up and down California that are contemplating potential bond measures like uh I know you've been discussing for quite some time. Um, over the last few months, we've gone through a process to look at the potential size and structures of bond measures you might put on the ballot. We also conducted a statistically reliable survey of the voters here in your district to understand what they might be willing

022to support and how we can structure a measure to align with their priorities. So, what we're going to do tonight is uh Tim's going to start off. So, Tim McCclney from June North Research is a public opinion uh research professional. Uh I have the pleasure of partnering with Tim on dozens of projects every year and his uh re uh research is uh consistently reliable and help us guide us in making good decisions for the measures we put on the ballot. Uh Tim's going to uh walk us through the findings from the survey that he recently conducted and uh share some of his recommendations based on that data. and then Mark Frell, your financial adviser from Dale Scott and Company, will walk you through some of the financing options for how we might structure a bond.

023And then I'll come back and kind of discuss what our process and timeline will look like from here uh if you do give us direction to uh bring back a bond measure for approval. So with that, Tim, the floor is yours. >> Wonderful. Thank you, Charles. And good evening, board. Um I just shared screen, so you should be able to hopefully see it on your end. They they screen. Okay. Wonderful. So this PowerPoint presentation covers the highlights of the recent bond feasibility survey that we conducted. Um as I go through this presentation I welcome questions from board along the way or at the end which whichever is your preference. Okay so before hold on there we go. So before we jump into the actual results it's helpful to uh hold on a second. It should

024be in slide mode. One second. Let me swap to interview. How's that? Better. Okay. So, uh before we talk about the actual results, helpful to take a moment to review the purpose of the study as well as the methodology. Um as a bond feasibility study, we're really trying to do is address three bullets that you see here on the slide. The first is to answer that basic question of is it feasible? What I mean by that is if you as a board were to choose to move forward and put a measure on the November ballot, does it have a reasonable chance of success? Um, when we do find feasibility, uh, that second bullet gear, which is to use the research to help us understand how you might go about structuring a measure in a way

025that it's consistent with the type of measure that your community is interested in supporting. There's a lot of sort of facets to a bond proposal. Uh there's the aggregate bond amount, the underlying tax rate. There's that list of projects that you would propose to fund if you're successful. There's accountability provisions that you can have as part of these measures. And so all these are kind of important decisions that ultimately you as a board would have to make before you place a measure on the ballot. The survey can help guide some of those decisions. And then lastly, this is uh survey is an opportunity for us to understand the role that information plays in shaping voters's opinions about your proposal, which in turn can help guide um some future communications and outreach efforts. Uh in terms

026of the methodology of how we went about conducting the study, uh we use the same methodology here that we always use when we're looking at the feasibility of the bond measure. The first question we always ask ourselves is what election are you considering this measure for? Different elections have different turnouts. Um, you know, the turnout we had last week for the primary much lower than the turnout that we can expect in this upcoming November general election. And as you expand or you shrink turnout, you will tend to get a somewhat different profile to the group of voters who were participating in casting ballots in that election. So, it's always important that we're choosing our sample from among that group of people, what we call likely voters. They're likely to cast ballots in the election. We're

027anticipating that your measure would be on. So in this case, what we did is we flagged every voter in the district as what we call a lightly November voter. We expect them to cast ballots as November. And then we use a process called stratified clustered random sampling to choose a sample of voters that's representative of that larger universe on all the dimensions that we know to drive how voters behave when it comes to bond issues. So the balance in our sample by gender, age, partisansship, household party type, where they live within the district. Balance in our sample matches the balance in that universe of likely. And that's really the first key to making sure that this research is reliable. Um once we pull our sample, we recruited using three different recruiting methods. Email, text, and

028telephone. Everything's pin protected so that only those individuals that we randomly sampled and invited to take the survey can do so. And they can do so one time only. um they have the option of participating either online or by telephone as well as in English or Spanish, whichever was their preference. Um as you probably know, there's been a lot going on in the world and domestically over the last few months. Um in particular, the war in Iran caused spike in fuel prices. Um consumer sentiment is nationally at an all-time low. The reason I bring this up is we have very recent data. So the results that I'm going to be talking about tonight, all of those sort of larger macroeconomic conditions are baked into these results, these things to the extent that they were on

029voters's minds. It would have parlayed into this these results. And so the good news about that is that, you know, we have data that's pretty much up to date in terms of where your voters are at on this proposal. Um, and then finally, um, we w up completing 405 interviews. uh for some reason that just shifted off me. Sorry. We wanted completing 405 interviews uh which with a sample of that size and and selected a random allows us to have a margin of error to sampling of plus or minus 4.8% at the 95% confidence level. So what that means is we can be 95% confident that the results I'll share with you here today are within 4.8% 8% of what we would have found had we spoken with all of your likely November builders. Okay,

030so on to the results. We like to open up our bond feasibility surveys with what I call the importance of issues question where for each of the issues on the left side of the slide there, we simply ask voters to tell us how important is this to you? Is it extremely important, very important, somewhat important and not at all important? It's a great warm-up question. just kind of gets folks into the groove of taking a survey and thinking about their local community. But it's also an opportunity for us to understand how the topic of education stacks up against some of these other issues that compete for tax dollars and in particular where does the issue of maintaining the quality of education local schools stack up against the issue of preventing local tax increases. It is

031a ruffle of thumb. It is surprisingly predictive that excuse me the higher up in this list that this issue of maintaining the quality of education in local schools ranks relative to the issue of preventing local tax increases the better position you are to move forward with some type of education related measure. We found in your community that uh the number one issue was in fact maintaining the quality of education local public schools. 94% of voters told us that was extremely very important. It's followed by maintaining local streets and roads and on down. If you look second up from the bottom, you see preventing local tax increases checking in at 61%. So you've got about a 33 point gap there between those two items. That is a good size gap. That's actually a little larger than

032what we normally see. Um and so that's promising. The other thing I will point out though is right above preventing local tax increases you see preparing and renovating aging school facilities. So it's slightly above preventing local tax increases well below this issue of maintaining the quality of education in the local schools. I point this out not because it's unusual. Um in fact we always see this pattern but it is a healthy reminder to us that although bonds are about your facilities right at the end of the day care so much about facilities as you care about what happens inside those facilities when it comes to education. And so as you move forward the bond, you're always wanting to be connected the dots between what it is you're building or fixing with your facilities, but how

033it ultimately shapes what they tell us is the most important issue to them, which is maintaining the quality of education in local schools. So how do your facilities shape the educational environment? So after that warm-up question, we get right down to business with what we call the initial ballot test. The idea is before we get any deeper into this discussion with a respondent um start talking about possible tax rates could be associated with this measure more detail about the types of projects that could be funded as well as presenting arguments to pro and con related to proposal. We want to present to them a mockup of what we think that 75word ballot statement could look like and get their reaction. The initial ballot test is a really good gauge of where your voters are at

034on the natural with respect to this proposal because they have not seen anything beyond the 75 words that you see here. So, as you can see here, we have this uh proposed bond measure that would raise about $79 million. It would have a tax rate of $29 for 100,000 assess valuation, which is right near the top of what you're allowed as a as a high school district 39 bond. We raise about $5 million annually to do the things that you see there in the bullets. So that is the language we tested and here are the results. So at that initial ballot test we had 55% of lightning voters tell they support this proposal. Uh yet 30% opposed with the rest unsure. So in the state of California for a prop 39 bond to be successful

035you need 55%. Uh so we are sitting right there at the same threshold that is required for passage. Not a little above not a little bit low. So um naturally voter support for a a pound revenue measure can depend on the price tag. Uh the higher the tax rate all the things may equal the lower the level of support you can expect. One of the goals of this survey was to make it really clear that bonds mean taxes, right? We're not playing high the ball with that. And but it's also to uh hit respondents with a couple of different tax rates as well as a couple different ways of talking about the tax implications of a bond so we understand kind of how price sensitive they are. So this slide here shows what is the

036more traditional way of talking about the tax implications of a bond which is um in terms of a rate per 100,000 assessed valuation. We tested two rates. We started at first at the high at $29 for 100,000 assessed valuation. We said if you knew that the property taxes on your home would increase by that amount, um if the bond passes, would you vote yes or no? If they were anything but a definitely yes at 29, we stopped we dropped them down to $19 per 100,000 to to see, you know, to what extent that impacts their support. As you can see here that the moment you kind of put the price tag out of a bond proposal, you set it aside, you kind of put the blinders on the respondent who focus their attention on it,

037you get a bit of a chilling effect on support for your bond. So at the initial ballot test, you get 55% support for that bond. When the $29 tax rate was built into that proposal, when we pull the $29 tax rate out, set it aside, focus voters attention on it, we see some slippage here. We dropped about uh seven points uh rated points the sorry seven points. Um when we drop the tax rate from 29 down to 19 we see a bit of a bump back up uh to 52% support overall. So what one of the things that we've learned through research is that this way of presenting the tax um rate for a bond tends to be a bit of a conservative read on voter support for proposal for a couple reasons. Number one,

038we are putting the blinders on the respondent. We're focusing their attention exclusively on the price tag, not the bond package overall. That tends to create a little bit of artificial importance on the price tag. Um, and that can create some diminishing support. The other reason why we know it tends to be a conservative read is because when you talk about the tax implications of a bond in terms of $29 for 100,000 assessed valuation, not everybody knows what you're talking about, right? You have to know what assessed valuation is. You have to have some estimate of the AD for your property. You got to be able to do math pretty quickly in the space of the survey to turn this rate of $29 per 100,000 assess valuation into a meaningful number. Not everybody's good at that

039understandably. And so what happens is there are some voters who will hedge at this question. They will say no or not sure rather than yes because they know you're talking price tag. They don't know about it what it adds up to. And so that's why we also come about a little differently on the next slide. We say, "All right, this is the left column." Let me put it another way. If you knew that this measure would cost a typical homeowner $222 per year, would you vote yes or no? The $222 per year is the $29 per 100,000 assessed valuation tax rate multiplied times the median assessed value for a residential property in your district. So it's what that middle property owner would pay. And as you can see that, you know, that when you do

040the math for folks, we tend to get a somewhat more positive reaction. Right? At the $29 per 100,000 assess valuation rate, we have 47% support. The moment you convert that to 20 $222 per year, support bounces up to 51%. Same exercise on the right here. We're testing the $19 per 100,000 of assessation rate for which we found 52% support on the prior slide. When you do the math for folks that tell them that's $145 per year, we've got support checking in at 58%. So all of this is information is just useful for kind of making what is often the most difficult decision as a board when it comes to bonds, which is where do you price them, right? The higher the tax rate, the more revenue you can generate, the more good you can do

041for your facilities, but also the more political risk you take on. Okay. So after the tax rate discussion, we jump into what we call the projects and improvement section of the poll. Here is where we are doing two things. We are now starting to educate this respondent more about what this measure will accomplish. Up until this point, they won't we've only had that 75word balance statement and less than half of those words were devoted to describing projects. Here we get to unpack your bond into a variety of potential uses and in the best way they are learning more about what this measurement would do. The other thing it allows us to do is to understand of all the ways you are thinking about spending the money. How do voters feel about each of those ways

042and which are their priorities? The the first thing that jumps out to me uh I get to do this for a lot of districts around the state is that you know everything we're testing here is is positive. Even the lowest rate item here, you know, had better than 60% of voters say that they would favor spending some of the funds on that money on behalf of that project. and all but that bottom one had more than threequarters of voters saying that they would favor spending on proceeds on this item. So everything's popular. That said, when you get to the top of the list, we tend to see some things here at the top that are consistent with what we see when we're working with other districts and high school districts. Um, and it's sort of

043a combination of CTE, STEM, and taking care of your older facilities. So the top one there CTE related to welding, automotive tech and skilled trades. Second one is STEM. Third one basic repairs, roofs, plumbing, gas lines, sewer lines, right? Heating ventilation systems. Uh third one there is more CTE related to agricultural science uh and agricultural mechanics. And then we're back into some more improvements to your older facilities. So um pretty consistent combination of things that we tend to see. um uh being at the top of the list when we're working with uh with other districts. So after the uh projects and improvements, we get into the argument section of the poll. And the idea here is if you as a board choose to place a measure on the November ballot, there's going to be an

044election cycle. During that election cycle, you'll have a lot of discussion and debate in the community about this proposal. You're going to have some folks that will get up and advocate on behalf of this measure to the community. Go out and talk to their neighbors and friends about why this is needed, why they should vote yes. You might also get some critics. People step up, say, "It's a terrible idea. We shouldn't be doing it." And here's why. For this survey to be a reliable gauge of the feasibility of bondage, we need to simulate that discussion debate in the space of the survey. So we have a good understanding not only where are the voters on the natural which was that initial balance test but what happens to their support for this proposal once they've heard

045positive arguments and they've heard negative arguments. So we start out testing a series of positive arguments. I've broken them into two tiers here uh just to make it easier to read if I put them all on one slide. Nobody can see it. Um and so there's nothing magical about the cutouts. That said, every one of the arguments we've tested here on this slide had uh seven out of 10 or more of your voters say that they find it to be at least a somewhat convincing reason to support the proposal. At the top of the list here is references to your portals, right? You've got 27 portable classrooms that are 25 years old, falling apart. Get to describe what an old portable looks like. And um that tends to be that's your number one positive argument.

046Number two, that all the money uh that is raised by this measure will stay local. It cannot be taken away by the state or use for other purposes and on down. You can see that's good and solid positive arguments. Second tier little less compelling, but still again more than six out of 10 voters find these to be at least a convincing reason to support the measure. Now, at this point in the survey, voters have heard more about your proposal than they did initially. On the one hand, we talked about tax rates and as we saw, that's a bit of a wet blanket on support for the proposal that cooled us down. However, we had chance to come back, talk in more detail about the projects that could be funded. We got to convey positive arguments

047much like they would encountered during election cycle. We've yet to get to the negatives and so we circle to what we call the interim ballot test. We presented that same 75word ballot statement. We say, now that you've heard a bit more, where do you stand? And you can see here that we've now ticked up. So we started at 55%, we're now at 58%. That's encouraging, right? That even after that tax rate discussion, if we do a really good job talking about projects and that are aligned with their priorities, we do a really good job getting out and talking to them about all the reasons an independent campaign could do this, all the reasons why they may want to consider voting yes, that we boost support to 58%. So, we're about three points north of the

048threshold that's required for passage at this point. And then we get to the negatives. And the idea behind the negatives is I want to pressure test voter support for this proposal. I want to know should you get critics? Should they be effective at getting their message out there? How damaging might that be to voter support for your proposal? So, the idea behind the negatives is I'm going to pressure test voter support by peppering them with a series of negative arguments. the kind of negative arguments you might expect to hear from a critic. So, the number one negative here in your community is the number one negative that I've had for virtually every single bond that I've tested this cycle for different districts and it's the argument now is not a good time, right? We and

049you always hear that argument, by the way, the reasonable vary cycle, but you always hear that now is not a good time argument. In this case, it's because we have inflation, high interest rates, high gas prices, right? um you know, cost of living concerns, people are struggling, now's not a good time. Uh we also reference your past bond. Um I'm pointing these negatives out because you can see here we're not pulling our punches, right? We are knives out trying to carve as much support off this as we can because we want to have, you know, a reasonable understanding of what should happen should you get local opposition. And the answer to that question is here. So after the negatives, one more time a round horn on the ballot test. And you can see that we

050check in at this point at 54%. So the negatives cool us down about four points from where we were at the interim ballot test. A four-point drop is not actually a large drop. Um that's the good side of this. Um I've worked with districts this cycle that are getting double digit drops in response to their magnets. Um and so a fourpoint drop is on the on the small side. That said, it happens to be enough to sort of take us right below that 55% threshold that's required for passage or on the ballot. Okay. So, what does all this mean? I got a couple wrap up slides here. So, um I'm going to circle back first to that overarching question I mentioned at the outset about what the main motivation is when you're doing this type

051of research, which is to answer that question. Is it feasible? If you as a board choose to place a measure on the November ballot, does it have a reasonable chance of success? I think what you have here is what's called a qualified yes. It's a yes but right yes I think that there's a potential path for a willable measure in November, but any time you're this close to the 55 number, these external factors start to play a bigger role, right, in the outcome because you're so close to that 55. So why the BS part? Well, that's everything we see there under the positive sides, right? It's really encouraging that maintaining the quality of education in local schools is is hands down the number one issue uh in your community. We saw that that translated sufficient

052support for a bond right out of the gates of the initial ballot test. We had 55% of that initial ballot test. All of the projects and improvements that you're thinking about funding with this measure are popular. We've got positive arguments that resonate and get traction with your voters. And importantly, at both the initial ballot test and the interim ballot test before we got to opposition arguments, we had support that met or exceeded the 55% threshold that's required to pass. So when you see that kind of pattern, it suggests yes, you know, it's feasible that you could have a limit measure in November. That said, there's also some challenges that come out of the poll that I think we need to be our eyes wide open about. Um, one is the tax rate sensitivity. we saw

053that you know to the extent that the conversation starts to turn on the tax rate we start um losing support. We do see that the opposition arguments get some traction not a lot, you know, we lost four points, but that was four points um in in this case in order uh to to have some clearance above that 55. And so we need to be thoughtful about that. The bigger issues are really the two ones at the bottom. You can't control either of these. It's just a a recognition that we're in a pretty challenging time at the moment from an economic perspective as well as a political perspective in you know in some ways um you know this is good to reference this because I'd rather poll when you think about the timing of this poll

054it was probably the worst time to poll in the last year and a half right at least just in terms of everything that was going on and people were really at this point those those high gas prices really hadn't come off at all we were sitting right in the middle of that. And so that's a good thing. It's like, okay, we pulled at a downtime, meaning if things get better, we can, you know, I think we can have some upward movement here. I'd much rather be that than, you know, the district that I pulled that got out of the field on February 27th and went to the board and I ran on February 28th and you're like, great, right? Your your poll results are one day out of the field and you're already stale. Uh

055so that's all that's all positive but it is you know nevertheless the reality that since we can't control those things at the bottom generally speaking um you know that means that any sort of headwinds that get created from these heading into November you know we're going to have to overcome that u or the independent campaign is going to have to overcome that in order to be successful moving forward. So, um, one more quick slide in terms of observations and recommendations. Um, the first is just to keep in mind that a poll like this is a snapshot of time. Like I just said, that snapshot in time was probably one of the more difficult times to be polling. I've even had a couple districts, frankly, that were that had to pause their polling because they didn't

056want to pull right then. They wanted to wait, right? I actually think it's a good idea to do it then because you get kind of that hard read. But the reality is whether it's 55% or 58% or 54% these ballot tests the poll was not a crystal ball telling you you're going to get that on election day. Poll tells us where we are today, right? Tells us how voters react to the types of information that are likely to be countered in the election cycle. But ultimately what dictates what happens on election day isn't what your poll says today. It's everything that happens from this point forward. And I mention that because it's really important that you make smart decisions about the measure you put in front of them first so that it's aligned with the

057type of measure that they've indicated they're going to support. And you got to put the work in in terms of communications. So um in terms of alignment I would say on the tax rate this is again the hardest decision that you're going to have to make as the board. Um but you know to the extent possible you're going to want to keep this as affordable as possible in terms of the project priorities. Um, they loved everything you were thinking about spending the money on, but clearly CTE STEM and take care of your older facilities arise to the top list. The bond should really feature those prominently. And then finally, communications. And there's sort of two paths of this. There's the types of communications that you as a public agency can do moving forward. Um, and

058then there's also the need for an independent campaign that is volunteer-led private dollars that can actually go out and advocate for this measure during the election cycle. I know Charles going to have more to say about the communication side. So, I'll I'll uh end my discussion there. So, I don't know if the the preferred uh approach here is to wait till the end for questions uh about polling or if you want to do those now, I I'm happy to follow whatever your belief is. >> You guys, whatever your thoughts are. >> I had a quick question. >> Okay. >> Um >> go ahead. Uh >> do you mind a question? Can you hear me? >> I can barely hear you. I'm sorry. maybe speak into the in your >> uh my question was on the

059random sample. Were they homeowners or was it just a random sample within the community? >> So it is homeowners and renters. What we do is we go to that likely go to the voter file. So every registered voter in the community, we subset to those voters that we think based on when they register to vote and what their voting behaviors didn't that point are actually cast ballots. That is a mix of homeowners and renters. And I can tell you that in our sample uh our split on that was about 61% homeowners, 39% renters. >> How does that usually affect the um the polling on this? Do you see it? Like >> Homeowners typically are a little renters tend to be a little more positive about these uh measures than homeowners because they don't necessarily pay

060directly, right? But it isn't so out of balance as you might think because a lot of renters can put two two together and go, "Okay, I'm renting this house and property taxes go up on this house. I'm probably going to see a rent increase, so I'm going to pay it indirectly." Right? The the strongest predictors of how people vote on these measures tend to be partisanship, right? So if you you know somebody's party ID um by in particular their household party type, not just what they what their partisan affiliation is, but what's the part of the partisan affiliation with the people they live with? that tends to be the strongest driver of of of how you see your community measures. >> Thank you. >> Just to follow up on that, um, real quick. So, unlike

061I think a lot of people are used to getting the survey where it says, "Hi, are you likely to vote in November? the folks that you're sampling from, you've IDed them as Brian Robinson and I'm the only one that can participate in the survey. Um, it's not an open-ended thing where my kid could answer the survey, right? >> Yeah. So, in other states that don't have as detailed uh voter file as California keeps, you know, when you get into some of these statewide polls or even the presidential polling, they literally will come and be like, oh, you know, how likely is it that you're going to actually vote this no matter, right? And you're relying on the person to tell you that. Well, we've all taken civics classes. We all know we're supposed to vote,

062right? And so, people will tend to say they're voting when they when they aren't. We never ask a respondent how they intend, you know, whether they're going to be voting in the upcoming election. The reason for that is because of that issue. I'd rather look back and know their behavior. So, I know when they register to vote. I know every election that they've had a chance to cast ballot in since that point. And I know whether they have actually cast ballots in those elections. With that information, it's a lot better predictor of whether someone's like it and cast it out in this November election, right, than asking them whether they're going to do it or not. And when I pull my sample, you're right, Brian, that that you know, if you, Brian Robinson, are selected

063into my sample for my survey, when I reach out, I am asking for you in particular. I'm not asking for, you know, anyone in the household. I I want to I'm linking it to you, Brian. Um, and that way I can also because I know something. I know a lot of things about you based on voter file. You're the one I selected. So I want to choose you. Now in the case that Brian decides not to participate, one of the neat things about doing the stratified cluster random sampling is I can replace Brian with someone who shares his same profile in terms of age, gender, where he lives in the district, what his partisanship is, what the partisansship is of people he lives with. And it's that multi-dimensional profile, those characteristics that are so predictive

064of how people tend to vote on revenue measures. That's why the sampling plan we use is so effective because even in an age when we're not going to reach everybody and not everybody's going to want to participate in the survey, we can still nevertheless control our sampling design in a way that the end result is representative of that larger November universe. >> Thank you. Yeah. My question, I don't know whether it comes here, but what if there's a competing bond or at a local college? I don't know if you or someone else is. >> Why don't we I'd like to probably pitch that one to Charles. That way you can get through the whole thing and then we handle that one. It's a little separate. >> Yeah. Why don't we come back to that at

065the end if you don't mind because uh what we want to do next is we're going to have Mark go through the kind of financial modeling and then I'll come back and we'll kind of talk about the process and some of those issues. >> Okay. I do I do have one uh question. Do you by chance have any comparison with similarsized districts that are potentially pulling for a bond currently as well? >> Well, we're let's see. I mean typically in a cycle we'll do anywhere from in a primary you know a handful of them in a gator like this we're doing probably 30 bonds in you know presidential generals it can get closer to 50 so we have done it all around it's it's less about size in my opinion as it is demographics right

066the neat thing about Sanz Valley that you have going for you is although you're more conservative than some other areas of the state and that usually, you know, is a little more of a challenge when it comes to bond metrics. You have a sense of place, right? You have an identity. And what I have found is that even if you're in communities that tend to lean conservative and that's again makes it a little more challenging, if there's a sense of place, right, and and an affinity for the place you live, that tends to go the other way, right, and help. So, uh, in that way, I think you're a little unique, right? At least on coastal California, right? There's not a lot of coastal California places like Sanz that, you know, that have your demographics,

067but also are, you know, for better or worse, sort of um, I mean, not for worse, but sort of isolated, right? You have, you know, you don't have a bunch of neighbor neighboring cities bordering right up on you. >> Very true. That's why we all feel so blessed to live here. Okay, that was it. >> Right. Uh, good evening trustees. Pleasure to be back in front of you talking about uh the bond measure and I have a very quick presentation but kind of walk through because as Charles mentioned, one of the the decisions you'll need to make tonight is coming up with a dollar amount for the bond authorization and ultimately what that tax rate is going to be. Um so if we move forward one slide. So one of the the key assumptions that

068we have to make going forward is what happens to your property tax base. So what happens to your assessed value growth or your assess total assessed value and that growth rate. So if we look back over the past 20 years your assessed value has grown about an average of 4% annually. So we have to make a decision about okay what what percentage do we use going forward? What do we assume going forward? Um, we are going to use or we have been using a 3 and a.5% growth rate. Try to be a little bit more conservative than that that 4% because you can see there's definitely been some periods of time in the past 20 years where we weren't growing at at over 4% here in the district. Next slide. One of the other assumptions

069we have to make in modeling out the bond program is what interest rates do we use uh going forward. So, uh, this looks at, uh, 30-year, uh, municipal bond rates going back the past two years. Uh, kind of the average is a little over 4%. We're right around four and a half% right now. Um, and so for, uh, the bond numbers we're putting together, we're assuming four and a half. So, kind of where rates are right this second, it doesn't give us a lot of cushion with rates go up. Um but as we've also seen and um you know even you know this is well after kind of the pandemic lows you know still still above kind of where we've been the average for the past two years. Okay next slide. So kind of listed

070a couple different ways we could structure the bond program. And here really the variables we're using are the number of series of bonds whether we issue bonds uh three series of bonds every three years or four series of bonds every three years. Why we use three years is there's a rule uh that you need to be able to expend those bond proceeds within about three years. 85% of the proceeds within three years of issuing. So we try to typically set up bond programs where the bonds are issued every two to three years uh based on the construction needs for the district. Then the other thing we can play around with is the tax rate. And so I've got kind of the average tax rate across the top. And then so if we look at the

071kind of top table with the three different bond issuances uh for a $70 million bond authorization where we're getting an average tax rate of just over $22 per 100,000. Uh if we kind of increase the the authorization out to 75 million we're at 23 and a half almost 23.6 and then again bumping it up to 80 million $2518 excuse me 16 tax rate if we spread out the bond issuances over a longer period of time. So if we go down to the bottom where we're pushing out the issuances to four. So we're getting a little bit less money every three years. So part of that is the question of okay, what projects do you have? How quickly do you need to get those projects done or how quickly can you get the projects done without

072disrupting too much of the the academic life on campus? So if we add that four series for that same $70 million, we can drop the tax rate down to 19, the average tax rate down to 19. uh again pushing it up to 75 million right at a $2040cent average tax rate and at an $80 excuse me $80 million bond at $21.73 average tax rate. So we can potentially kind of use that average uh or we can use that average tax rate in that 75word bond uh statement that every voter is going to see in their voter uh guide and on the actual ballot. the these numbers, the timing of these bond issuances, uh this is just what we expect and what the board expects at the time you place the bond on the ballot. You

073are not bound by this timing. So if something happens, regardless of the scenario and we issue, let's say, you know, the $70 million $19 uh average tax rate scenario, we issue the first bonds in 2027 for $18.5 million. if we get to 2030 and the district's like, well, you know, our projects are going a little bit slower, we can push that out to 2031. Or if things are going a little bit, you know, faster, we might be able to move that issuance up to 2029. Uh especially if things like assessed value keep growing at well over 4%. That might allow us to issue the bonds a little bit more quickly. So ultimately the district and the board are going to have to the ultimate say on how quickly these bonds are issued but we're going

074to be subject to kind of these constraints. You know the total authorization amount and kind of maintaining that tax rate that we're promising voters. C >> can I just ask clarification? Um it says assumes current interest bonds at three and a half percent and then the interest rate at four and a half at the bottom of your slide. um if those change or how does the if they change how does that affect I just need a little clarification on that. >> Sure. >> Um so let's say the assessed value growth that grows faster than three and a half%. We might be able to issue the bonds a little bit more quickly. So we might be able to increase the amount of bonds that we're issuing every series. Um the opposite holds true, right? If assessed

075value growth slows, we might have to delay some of the bond issuance or or lower the amount that we're issuing each each time. Same with interest rates. If interest rates go up, we might have to lower the the issuance amounts or if they go down, we can increase the issuance amounts or issue the bonds more quickly. Once the bonds are all issued, so we issue the bonds, they have a fixed interest rate uh for the life of the bonds. Uh we do have the ability to refinance them at some point. Typically 10 years after the bonds are issued, but once you issue the bonds, they have a fixed payment schedule. Then if assessed value keeps growing at that 4% or higher, what'll happen is the tax rate will decline because we'll have a bigger property

076tax base to pay that fixed set of bond payments. So that's why we also try to be a little bit more conservative with the assessed value growth. we can kind of keep that tax rate at what or below what we promised the voters and kind of have that tax rate decline over time. And we've seen that with the district's prior bond measure. >> Yes. >> Just real quick, and maybe this is for later discussion, but help me wrap my head around it. So really the tool that we have irrespective of the rate that we choose is is the issuance schedule. >> Yeah, we're looking kind of the issuance schedule and the tax rate. Those are kind of the two >> the two things we can play with. Um, you know, kind of keeping our assessed

077value and interest rate assumptions fixed. I wouldn't go any lower than four and a half% on the assessed value or excuse me on the interest rate. And three and a half I think is a pretty >> pretty healthy assessed value growth. >> And so just and this is probably for Dr. Sheen and Miss Lewis, but what's your preference on an issue schedule? Is that something you guys have discussed? My preference is the direction of the board. >> Well, I don't know. In terms of building projects and needing resources, is there one thing that more often gives the school more flexibility to to deliver these projects? >> So, I wouldn't call it a preference because, you know, we're we're willing to work within the confines of whatever it is that the board wishes. However, knowing that

078we have delays from DSA in the amount of at least 18 months, 12 to 18 months, it makes sense to have four issuances in the for that purpose. You know, it allows us to do more. >> Thank you. >> But there's flexibility with that like you said though as well as we go moving forward. >> Yeah. Yeah. What'll the the 75s will have the uh total authorization amount 70 75 80 million and a tax rate and then there's a tax rate statement that'll list the average tax rate the maximum tax rate how long the bonds are going to be outstanding uh and the total total payment amount >> and if they got refinanced then the tax rate would go down for the individuals as well right >> correct so whenever uh school districts refinance bonds

079100% of those savings go back to taxpayers and the former lower taxpayers So, for example, if if we did the four issuance $70,000 bond and your median tax rate is 19, is that correct? Is that what I'm saying? >> Yeah. Yeah. Average tax rate. >> Average tax rate. Um, so where would the max tax rate be and the lowest tax rate be? And that is there a formula for that? >> Sure. Well, I've got all of the detail on the the following slides, but if we Okay, >> getting ahead. didn't necessarily want to make you look through those details. Oops. So, for the the $19 average tax rate for a $70 million bond, the maximum tax rate is $20.96. >> Okay. >> So, and that kind of holds true for all of them. It's within,

080you know, a dollar to$2 dollars of the average. >> Okay. Thank you. >> And I just had another question. Um, and he he had mentioned earlier that the other the past bond that we're still paying off, how is that going that's going to go to communications, I'm assuming, on how to to pursue that with the um public with our community because they're paying on. So that will fall off eventually in the next several years and we'll pick up another increase. Is that correct? >> Yeah. So the so these tax rates would stack on top of uh the existing bond. Right now that tax rate is about $11 per 100,000 and the last year of payments should be 2033. So we've got eight years seven eight years left of payments. And so then yes after that

081so if we let's say had a you know 19 $20 tax rate with this bond measure. So the total tax rates around $30 per 100,000 seven years from now that would drop by $10. So we'd be down to the 20 $20 tax rate. Thank you. >> All righty. Tim, can you fast forward towards the end to uh my slides? That was all the detail Mark spared you from. Um, okay. We go one more. There we go. All right. So, as you've heard tonight, uh you know, we we've got a potentially viable bond measure, uh with the caveat that it's not going to be easy. We're going to have to work for it, right? Our numbers are kind of hovering right around that passage threshold, which frankly is a common finding in the current environment. These

082just aren't easy measures to pass right now. But the fact that you have fairly stable support across your measure, you know, even after we hit people with a simulated opposition campaign, you're only one point above the passage threshold, that gives us confidence that if we structure it in the right way and we do the right kind of communication effort, we can be be successful. Um, so the what the process looks like from here is that in this four-step process that you see here, we're here tonight to kind of conclude step one, that feasibility assessment, right? And um that's the the results of the polling and kind of our assessment of the landscape. Um you asked the question about what impact does competing measures have. One of the negatives that Tim tested was everyone's coming after

083us for taxes. You know, different school districts, community college district, you know, enough is enough. It's just too much taxes. So, we kind of simulated that in the poll that people heard that message. And again, even in the face of those opposition messages, we're still at um uh you know, right around that 55% mark. Um, I will say when most voters are evaluating, you know, a regional community college bond measure versus a local bond measure, they almost always prioritize the local measure. One, because they identify with the school more than they identify with, you know, a far-off community college, and um, two, they want their tax dollars to stay local where they can see the benefit, right? So, if I I would be more concerned about how your measure impacts them than how they're likely

084to impact you. So, that's that's kind of my assessment of the competing measure issue. So, where do we go from here? Um, if we want to have a measure on the November 2026 ballot, Santa Barbara County has some of the earliest deadlines in the state for qualifying for the ballot. Um, June 25th is the deadline to deliver a board adopted resolution to them to be on that ballot. So, where we go from here is kind of twofold. One, we haveformational messaging prepared that it basically builds on the findings from Tim's research kind of how we present this measure, how we focus on the right priority projects so that we're ready as soon as you say go to start rolling out that communication so that we're building awareness in the community of what your facility needs

085are. You know, how a bond measure might address those needs, the lack of potential alternate funding sources. I mean, the reality is you can't do work on the scale out of your existing budget. No school districts do that. they use bonds to to finance uh school facility repairs. So, we start that process. Then, we also take what we've learned here um from the polling. We build the actual resolution um that you would adopt to put the measure on the ballot. That includes a couple of key components. One is that ballot question that will everyone will read right before they check yes or no. Obviously, we have to get that right. For many voters, that's probably the most important information they'll read in the entire process. Um, but also that will contain the project list that

086will dictate how you can use bond proceeds for the life of this measure and that tax rate statement that Mark described that explains to voters what the uh financial impacts are. All of that information goes in the voter pamphlet that's mailed to all voters. So, we write that in a way that's uh optimized. Um, we've already started working with your bond council to get that prepared because that June 25th deadline is is coming up quickly. Our plan, if you give us the direction tonight, is to bring back uh that resolution at your meeting on June 16th for consideration. >> I think our goal was to possibly bring back the resolution at the next board meeting, which is just next Tuesday, >> June 16th. Right. >> Right. >> And then um for me to deliver that

087resolution if the board so chooses by the 20th. >> Yep. >> So, >> Yep. That's the game plan. So if if you know you vote on the 16th to adopt that resolution, we deliver that to Santa Barbara County Elections Office, we're officially on the ballot, that marks an important transition point in the process because school districts can use public resources to educate and inform the public about what your needs are and what this measure might do. What you can't do is advocate for the passage of the measure. So once the once we're officially on the ballot, we have to form an independent campaign committee that raises private resources and it's that group can that can go do the advocacy work. Um, one of the pieces that gives me confidence here is you only have about

08815,000 registered voters of which about 11 to 12,000 are likely to cast a ballot in November. Unlike measures we do in Los Angeles in the Bay Area where you're dealing with hundreds of thousands of voters, it's a very manageable population. And if we can mobilize parents, teachers, staff, board members, community members, you can go out and have conversations with those voters, right? And talk to them about why this is important, you know, what some of the needs are that we know are high priorities based on based on your polling. So, um, I would work with that advocacy group to put together a strategy to take all we've learned from our research and and run an effective campaign. So Tim, if you'll go to the the next slide here, this just kind of details our immediate

089next steps. So first step is, you know, use the district's ability to do that informational awareness building in the community. And as I mentioned, we're we're ready to go on that. Um I know that uh Dr. Sheen's already done a good job with engagement with your stakeholders here in the community. Um we can kind of, you know, complete that process, make sure everyone's heard about this and has had a chance to ask their questions and get good answers. um we would bring back that election resolution at the June 16th meeting for adoption and then make sure we get that over to the registar voters by June 25th and then we make that transition to the advocacy campaign. So that's what lies ahead. Um but I think tonight any direction you can provide us based on

090what you've heard from the polling kind of the the structure of the bonds that you want us to assume bond amounts tax rates that your priority that gives us the information we need to come back on the 16th with something ready for you to adopt. Thank you so much. That's great. Do you guys have any questions currently? >> Um on this district-led public information campaign, um I think it's important for the public and then for us as a board to understand. So we're the only organization that's has the ability to get this information out. That's just the facts, right? The pro campaign and anti- campaign, they can they're in persuasion. And so it seems to me that that's kind of a fundamental responsibility of of this district to be able to make sure that we

091can get the right information to the voters about this. And so um in terms of what you see here now, what does that kind of look like in terms of the level of effort because I know it's going to fall on staff. >> Yeah. Well, I mean, we'll we'll put together all the messaging, do all the graphic design and and whatnot. Obviously, we'll need your review and approval to get that out. Um, and we've already shared the the messaging with with staff, but um, and you know, the message is essentially here's how old our high school is. Here's some of the needs have been identified. We don't have resources to address these needs. That's why school districts use bond measures, right? Just kind of telling that backstory for why we're even considering this measure. So

092that when we when the advocacy campaign goes out there, they're not starting from scratch. People understand that background, right? So you usually the communication channels we use you know the district has well-developed communication channels social media email things like that but it largely reaches parents you know obviously we need to reach the broader electorate in the community so there's generally some direct mail you know that's an important component to getting that message in front of all voters not just parents um so that they're building awareness with them >> and then um just follow up uh but so board members staff on their own time we can go out in community and talk to rotaries and and be and advocate for this >> for the advocacy piece. Yes. So the the the rule fundamentally is we

093can never use a district resource for advocacy. But you know Dr. Sheen on her own time is an individual. That's not a district resource. She can be involved in the campaign. Same for principles, teachers, staff, board members, you have even more flexibility because you're not employees of the district. So you don't have to be worried about am I on the clock or off the clock. You know outside of a board meeting, your time is yours. Um, on that note, um, for the communication, can I've I've seen and heard, you know, gotten phone calls from staff members. So, they could sit could they sit in here and make the phone calls uh about it or do they have to be elsewhere to contact the potential voters? >> Sure. >> To discuss to communicate the the benefits,

094right? >> Yeah. Phone bank. >> Yeah. So, um, we when we get to that advocacy phase, we can't use district resources including facilities. So oftentimes if a campaign is going to do a phone bank and I will say phone banks have become a lot less productive for all the obvious reasons in recent years but yeah you you would just have a you know donated facility you know use somebody's office we even do phone banks out of people's homes from sometimes >> we do a lot of text messaging these days and there's applications we can use to blast text messages out. No >> I understand that. I can my thought is because it's such a tight-knit community here that sometimes a phone call from a teacher or someone that is a name that people may know

095may help with the communications unlike Los Angeles, you know, you're in a huge area and people may not know the different people. Um, so that's why I was thinking the phone. I understand it's a bit dated antiquated but y >> maybe persuasive here. So, >> yep. Will we do any kind of Zoom questioning or it would be just here at the board meetings like something where you could do a if people had questions about the bond where it could be like a a coffee, you know what I mean? But like via Yeah. kind of a Zoom forum of people that had questions where people could answer that of this this size will frequently have, you know, a few gatherings like that where people can come and get their questions answered. Um so yeah, we can

096talk about that as part of the campaign strategy. for the um the if this to move forward and to put it on the ballot. I I think it's essential and I had written it before Tim had mentioned like the modernization the the college and career the tech and how it's like it's not just a classroom but what's in the classroom that's going to benefit the kids and I see that being I mean obviously between people want the education to be high and then the maintenance is like here because that doesn't it doesn't seem to affect the children and so having that that line drawn is I think just going to be key within that ballot proposal. >> Yep. Yep. Yeah. We definitely write it to be alignment. The good news is is that when the

097what I know of your project list that's been shared with me, it is in close alignment with what the voters prioritize, especially all those portables that need to be replaced. There's just a lot of alignment there. Any other questions? Okay. Well, we do have one uh thank you for that information. We will have this on agenda next week and uh No, it's next week. Yeah. Yeah. And we do have one uh public comment uh for this Denise Elamine. >> Hi, my name is Denise Elamine. I live in Salane and strangely I I own my property so I know what bonds are and I also have a rental in LA so and I had that since I was 20 years old so I know what bonds are very very well and I know what taxes are

098very very well and um I never knew and I'm glad I came tonight that there are businesses that I don't know if you guys paying them. I would I would imagine somebody has to pay them that come and give um a presentation to the board to um explain to them whether or not they feel that they need to have a bond. Um I I I didn't know that and I'm so glad that I learned that today. Um bond you we're still in a bond. um it comes on my um tax bill even though I live in um Salane which you guys are deciding today will be appear on my taxes in October. There's already a bond there and um you said eight more years. So if you guys do a second bond then it'll be

099on top of that. Um, I don't think uh that you're going to get um anyone to vote for bond in this year that's coming up. This is a very it's going to be a very passionate voting year. There's a lot of stuff out there and we still don't know what's going to happen, good or bad, by November the 2nd when we have to vote on November the 3. So, um I'm just a little confused that there are really no um people here. Um why was it done? And um during vacation time and why did you wait till the end to where you have to have another board meeting next week in order to approve this when the public is not here? I think if the public knew that their tax bill was going to go

100up um three another $300 um that this room would be full of people. So um I would like to know and I know you can't answer it is how did you um alert the public about you're thinking about getting a bond? um the bond that's existing. You guys spent $5 million to upgrade um the locker rooms um for the athletes um and you still have money from those bonds. So, if you feel that the buildings need to be redone, then use that money and redo them. Um we're in a we're in a time after CO that a lot of kids are being homeschooled. My granddaughter is homeschooled, >> so we don't need buildings. >> So, one of the things we need to do prior to next week individually is research and so we can have

101discussion next week on what direction we wanted to go. And I know all this material is is we have access to all that material as does the public. Okay. Uh, now we'll move on to the public. Thank you, gentlemen. Really appreciate it. It was very informative. Thank you so much. Uh, we'll move on to the public hearing 2026 2027 local control accountability plan. Okay. I was like, we have to Yeah. Where is it? >> Oh, there we go. Uh there will be a public hearing held at S during the San Valley Union High School District Board of Education's meeting to be held at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, June 9th, 2026 in the Sanz Valley Union High School boardroom, 2975 Mission Drive, Salv regarding the updated local control accountability plan, LCAP, for the San Valley Union

102High School District. A draft copy of the local control accountability plan will be available for inspection on the district website syvuhsd.org on June 5th, 2026. Interested members of the public are invited to address the board of the educa of education on this item at the board meeting. >> Thank you. >> Okay. >> Yes. We will move on to u we'll close the uh public hearing. We'll move on to 2026 2027 local control accountability plan LCAP. >> Hey, >> now we're ready. >> We're here. >> This is the least exciting of the uh three-year cycle of LCAP. Um we are currently in the going this is the end of year two. Um next year will be year three which is one of those double years where we are wrapping up our current LCAP. So it'll be

103the last year of the three and then we will be doing the new LCAP. And so both those things will be taking place next year. It's that where you have to adjust your actions if you're not seeing progress. Um if you're not showing effective actions, um we make all those changes next year. This year is a year really of just tweaking and adjusting based off of our current road. We've done a lot of adjustment. Some of you who've been here for other presentations, we've done a lot of cleanup and alignment of plans. And so there is not a lot of new excitement in this plan. More um like I said, tweaks and staying the course in the ways that show to be working and really looking at what are things we can do going into

104this year three uh to make sure that we are in a good space for planning an overhaul next year. And so again, three-year plan. Uh the purpose of the LCAP is to really target specific actions for our English learners, socioeconomically disadvantaged students, and foster youth. Also, there is there are required mentions of special education and how we're supporting those students as students with higher needs. It's making sure that we are intentionally funding the things that we are supposed to fund and should be funding as a school. And everything in the LCAP is based off of data. Um the that's the great part of it. The hard part is is that about half the data is what they call lag data where it's data really from 2425 and half of it is 2526. Um, so in

105the plan that you all had in the board agenda and also is posted on the website, it notes kind of where the starting year was and so people can always be able to tell which year is this data coming from because some of it we have to pull straight from the dashboard which our new dashboard won't be out until October. It will be out sooner this year, but it won't be out until long past this LCAP has to be approved by the county and you all. Quick reminder, Lisio spends far more time on this and um but I do just want to point out that when we talk about OKCAP and the dollars in there when it does kind of that budget overview for families and for you all, the dollars discuss money that we're

106receiving separately from the state, it's all coming out of that same bucket because of how we're funded as a basic aid or community funded district. And so it's just something to keep in mind. We do not receive supplemental or concentration grants here. And so we really carve out of our unrestricted for the most part um to provide for the LCAP. There are some notations this year related to some restricted funding, but that's because but we couldn't count that towards how much we contribute towards these students, but there's some very specific language related to the learning recovery emergency block grant. um that money had to be named in this plan, but it basically reduces the amount that we say we are spending on these students even though it's money going towards students of higher need. In

107purpose of this annual update, we are just reviewing, we are analyzing, we're reflecting, and we're using that to inform what we do next. And I've discussed that previously. And our goals, they are the same goals they've been for the last couple years. Um, so student achievement, which starts on page 12, I just gave the page references, so anybody who's in there can kind of find those. So ensuring academic proficiency and college and career readiness through access to a rigorous and broad course of study. Our culture and climate focus goal is provide a physically, socially, and emotionally safe and inclusive school environment. And for goal three, educational partner engagement, increase parent, family, and community involvement and awareness of students support systems. So some areas of success, I really decided to focus on highlights rather than go

108through every nut and bolt of this year's. Again, you can review all of the data points, but some great areas for us to celebrate. And these are some things that have been brought up previously at meetings. So um in the 2425, it was a 96% graduation rate. That was an increase of 2%. Again, we bubble. We always because of our enrollment, one student, let's say not graduating one year, that could be half a percent, the next year it could be a full percent. And so that always will kind of fluctuate, but we still have a really high graduation rate here. It's something that we're very proud of. Our college and career readiness is a blue performance level. So 72.8% of students are showing that they were ticking that college and career readiness indicator, which is

109great. That's what we want to see. We want to see all the different ways students are being prepared, whether that's CTE pathway completion. That's A through G. There's a number of different ways students can achieve that. And we've discussed that before um to kind of tick that college and career readiness. And that was a blue performance, which is the highest on the colors. Yeah. Yeah. Green and then blue, which is a little odd, but yeah, blue is like, oo, we've blown green out of the water. Yes. Um 60.1 uh 60.51% we had ELA achievement. It was green performance level. That was an increase in performance level. Again, this was 2425. We do not have our 2526. We'll get kind of a preview this summer and dashboard preview will come in the fall. Um, but that

110was a jump up and it's what we wanted to see. And then, uh, CT pathway completion over the last two years, that completion on the dashboard is reporting over 25% higher, up to 36.6% of our students. Some of that is more students are finishing CT completion. Some of that is we fix the back end of things. that is really reflecting what our students are doing and that's great. Right at graduation we saw we were able to recognize our students for CT completion. We've prioritized making sure our data is reflecting what our students are accomplishing and then being able to celebrate them for those accomplishments. So that's something I'm really uh proud to see and also something that I give massive kudos to our data specialists. Selena has fixed so much in that system to make

111it show exactly what our students are doing and increasing our CTE courses and pathways and really cleaning up those offerings. So, that's a great data point that was really fun to look back at our year 1 LCAP and see that growth. And then CCAP courses, um, 41% of our students took at least one CCAP course. And connectedness, 15% increase of, uh, students feeling connected to their school and families really feeling connected to our community. That's our college career and career access pathways, which I relooked it up because I jumble the career in college all the time on that. And so Cap >> Oh, don't worry. I put that on here multiple places next because Yeah. Oh, there's so many. It's education. We have to add a few more that mean the exact same things. >>

112So, basically that means 41% of our students took a college level course. >> Yep. And wait until you see the data projected for next year. I'm real excited about that. Okay. Areas for growth for us. So our ELA and math performance both of increased but intentional uh intentionally targeting uh needs is something that we need to make sure we are doing. Um we are implementing interm assessments in both ELA and math and science next year even though our science started off really strong in kind of our first dashboard year. Um we have a need to just make sure our students really understand what they're going to be seeing when they see CAS junior year and also all those interm assessments. It's not doing a bunch of extra tests, but it's making sure they're exposed to

113the types of questions and the styles of those so that what they can do is reflected clearly in their performance. Um, there's a lot of research around just exposure to types of questions and the wording of questions can help students really show their knowledge better and uh more consistently. And so that's something we've really given uh departments the charge of. We know we need to give students more exposure so that when they assess it really shows our students abilities. However, how does it make sense within your department? I don't want to sit there and say you are doing these assessments every month at this exact time because it needs to make sense and the autonomy within classrooms is something so important. And so we've they worked on that in the spring and we've got a

114draft of a calendar that will give flexibility for that and something that will be able to happen for students to really look at standards aligned instruction and us kind of looking at that more consistently before just one time junior year and that data determining here's how you are performing. It's not an accurate reflection in that one shot and but it is something that we can intentionally target in a way that benefits student learning overall, not just prep for test because that doesn't work either. Um, English learner progress. So, we have 27.8% of students making progress towards English proficiency. We did have uh more students it looks like that are going to reclassify out of our current um we had I think five of our students which was exciting um because it's such a small number

115anyways and then that does not include students coming from our feeders who that because the timing of the data they will reclassify with us so we'll know those numbers in the fall but we need to continue to work on English learner progress chronic absenteeism there's a reason that data point does not report on the dashboard for high schools because it is always a problem. However, it's something that we've really decided is something that's important for us to target. And so, we kind of keep bubbling. We've we've ticked down a little bit, but it's not we haven't quite had the full impact we'd like. Um Jasmine, I was like, she's still here, right? She didn't skip out. Uh Jasmine did a lot of work on really recreating um a attendance review uh team and doing that.

116And actually a number of our feeder schools are interested in going in on that together. So in that having more layers of support at those higher levels of discipline uh situations or discipline, excuse me, attendance situations and problems for us to better be able to support families and kids getting into school. >> Yeah. >> How do you define chronic ads? >> So missing 10% or more of the school days. Yeah. And so and we use that 10% all along the way even though the state pulls it in like at one point to count it. Um we start counting that within 30 days of school so that we're trying to stay on top of that even though let's say in that first 30 days of school they only missed you know the three maybe they stop

117at that and we have that often students kind of start out rough and fall off of our chronic absenteeism kind of warning list. It just depends. So, we've started trying to do that sooner. Um, which is something I'm really thankful that again Jasmine's implemented so the next person can step into something that's far more of a system than we'd had. So, and our privilege points and just incentivizing students for being here. We want them here. And again, another thing we added to graduation attendance looking at you've come to school a lot and it was a wide variety of students which was really nice to see. Do you um see patterns within the students of what what is um causing some of this chronic aptentiism? It really varies. Again, I think um home can play a

118part. Just not necessarily loving school can play a part. Sometimes work, jobs, responsibilities. Um sometimes poor sleeping habits, poor eating habits. I mean, it really goes the gamut. I'm not I mean I it's like you could pick a reason out of a bag and each kid might be different and that's the intentionality of kind of administrator meetings happening before not just letters and then you meet with a big team of people really having smaller conversations and also looking at attendance as our at promise team which is a team that meets after every grading period and we look at not just grades but attendance and discipline and so being able to look at kind of the wise and do we need to have a prest and sit down with counselor possibly an administrator um and Claudia

119Pñena, our health and wellness coordinator and student and family and get down to the bottom of something. Sometimes it's just a meeting within Jasmine's office and often also involves Claudia Pena. We kind of weave in that social emotional piece within because it's I think too what they've done a really good job at is making those meetings individualized and really getting to the core of what that student's particular issue is because it's different for every student. For some kids, it may be they don't have clean clothes. Well, how do we ensure that they have access to that? We give them vouchers to get their clothes cleaned or we give them access to our washers and dryers. Some kids, it's transportation. We give them vouchers to take to to for the San Valley transit to get to

120school. Everybody has a different story and a different why. And what I love is that our administrators have done a good job of finding out what that particular student's why is and how can we support your need specifically. And so that's it's very laborious, right? But it makes a difference in every single one of those students lives when you're actually supporting what they're telling you they actually need. And the reason they tell you what they actually need is because they trust the people that they're telling. And that has been a huge win for us. Um, and I know she's going to get to the next section about highlighting. And I think what we've already seen and we've already started to turn the corner when we're talking about um um highlighting the needs for families to

121feel more engaged, especially in our under reppresented voices. That has often been our special education population because they didn't have advocates on our campus. There was a very big disconnect, right? The director of sped worked for Buen. Their teachers were hired through Bulein. Their aids were hired through Buenon. Now that we've brought all that special ed onto our campus, there is no longer going to be this disconnect of these aren't our employees or your support system is across town. No, your support system is going to be right here in our office and what can we do for each and every one of you to be successful and what do you actually need? and they're not going to need to pick up the phone and call somebody at Buleton. They're going to get that right here

122in our office. So, that's going to be huge for our for our kids. >> Yeah, I would completely agree and I would second the ability to individualize the supports. I was sitting in a meeting with people from the county for our um discussions of our English learner program. We did kind of a year one of professional development. Um it's in our LCAP having that. We plan on continuing into a year or two of support specifically from county uh staff and they it was great and one of the things that came up in that because they're like oh well some schools do this or do this and we said well these are what the conversations look like for us and this is what the individual plan looks like for us and really tailoring that to students

123and uh county uh Carlos Pagan who's wonderful and amazing he who runs English learner supports through the at the county level and very well respected in the field and he said, "It seems as though you're really leaning into the smaller school status and making a plan based off of being smaller." And he said, "Yes, like if we're going to be small and sometimes that means we have to get creative how we do things because we don't have 10 people to do it." On the other side of the people resources becomes it comes the ability to be intentional and not having to do a one-sizefits-all. And so that's something I'm really thankful for and it was nice to see other people see that. And I think that's a common theme across many of the supports we've

124been developing is how do we create a system or structure that gives guard rails and a process that's transferable and reproducible but able to meet the needs of the students right in front of you. not just students in general, like our kids. So, it's pretty great. Um the achievement gaps, those are achievement gaps that um I would say definitely exist across education in a lot of ways and those are it does not mean that we say, "Oh, just because that's a common theme. We ignore it. Um it deserves intentional targeting and and like Dr. sheen said special education is something that we plan on very intentionally targeting um through a data lens over the next few years as we onboard special education to our own districts. So, we're really looking forward to that shift. And

125then family engagement, we have lots of ways we engage families. We have lots of events. Our stu our participation and students attending events increased, but one of the metrics I had added on there is just getting responses from families to make sure we're getting perspectives that decrease this year. myriad of reasons could play into that. Um, we still hit a threshold of something that would be data that you can report. Typically in data they say 10% is if you have less than 10% don't talk about the data. So we hit it over a 10% but it's nowhere near what I'd like to have as feedback from families. Um, because some of those questions and I think some of you are parents took that things that are really important. Knowing if you feel connected to the

126school as a parent, knowing if um your student feels safe at school, do you feel like the school is safe? Knowing those things. So, we really do need to be even more intentional this year. Uh we had transition at the beginning of the year and I spent a lot of time thinking about what can that look like and that's something that I need to intentionally target next year is finding more um authentic and informal opportunities to get feedback. So also when we're at that point of needing formal feedback, people are like, "Okay, I knew this was coming because I can send it out eight zillion ways, have it at eight zillion places, but we're still not getting the responses." And I need that to know, and we need that to know really the finger on

127the pulse beyond just what we hear. Um, and again, that's what I kind of mentioned on the bottom. So families feel as though we seek input. The majority do, however, that's from responses from families. So, um, key refinements for 2627. So, family engagement opportunities, as I mentioned, family partnership enhanced through increased communication, uh, informal engagement opportunities such as coffee with the principal. We're going to kind of bring that back in the fall. So, um, we'll have a number of those scheduled throughout the year. I just want to have more opportunities to engage um because again, I love PE seeing everybody at sports events and open house, but people are doing 10 things at those. what's something where they can really just be able to talk and hear about kind of what's going on at school

128and ask questions and just get to know myself and other staff potentially too. So, we're working on that to launch pretty quickly into the year. Uh, college and career center model. So, college and career services, they been kind of restructured again into that full-time coordinator role. Heather Clement, um, as you saw a couple meetings ago, I think two meetings ago, three now. Uh so she'll be full-time in the college and career center which will be out of the library now as we've moved location which is great more centralized to campus and um this also includes the sunset of AVID which is not new information but that's formally documented on our uh plan so that we are able to take many of those things that were happening that are wonderful for students but we're only impacting

12950 to 70 students to try to impact more like 500 to 700 students. So, uh, it's a lift, but it's the right lift and the intentionality of it will benefit more students. So, we're really looking forward to that. The expansion of dual enrollment, again, this is the data point that I'm really excited about. I said I would say dual enrollment because that's what many of us know. Um, increasing those CCAP opportunities. We are adding a Spanish option and concurrent enrollment to try to get more students to be taking language with us with our amazing teachers. And so that will be paired with our Spanish 2 and beginning Spanish with Spanish speakers this year. And if all goes well, we would increase to another Spanish class for Spanish 3. And then also for advanced Spanish, Spanish

130for Spanish speakers with the increase of Spanish and other concurrent enrollment courses uh right now on the schedule. And I have about 95% of students scheduled like they are in their schedules and they're done. I will not show a student right now if they ask, but they are done. Um, with that being said, over 55% of our students have at least one CCAP or dual enrollment course on their schedule for next year, which means students taking classes that are preparing them for college and giving them college credit while they're here. So, over half our students. So, I'm really excited about that. And they vary from CTE career industry courses to English general education requirements to language that many students do need. It really is the gamut. So, That's really exciting. And then just something to

131note because the learning recovery emergency block grant, I mentioned this earlier, which is specific restricted funds, right? I'm saying that correct. Lisia is so proud of me. I use restricted correctly. Yep. Um that is funding that the state requires if you have any of those funds left, which last year we did not. And then they said, "Just kidding. We're giving you more money." So we they gave us money partway through the year. We saved our this year aotment and then we have next year's aotment. We believe well that's the plan. Again, budgets are all still in process. Um so we have to account for that within our LCAP and name where we're spending that. What made the most sense for us was to take that funding and put that towards Rafuho because those students are

132accessing summer school. They are accessing health and wellness supports. They are accessing all of these things. and Rafuho students are our undup unduplicated students. Almost every single student ticks one of those boxes at Rafuho for our unduplicated pupils. So that gave us um just kind of it made that funding make sense and shifting that there instead of spreading a little bit out in a bunch of places when we don't receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in LREBG funding. I even have the acronym now. um when we as a smaller school receive a smaller aotment, it made sense to put that towards Rafuho. So you'll see that noted. It decreases the amount that's contributing towards our unduplicated students, but it's not decreasing our services for students. It just gave us a place to put restricted funds

133that can only be used these ways, if that makes sense. And I'm open for questions. Again, it's not a super exciting year on the LCAP, but it's one that has a clear path and setting us up for a year three that should be good. >> So, I had a few just because I received >> emails from students regarding AVID earlier in the year and I had I don't remember any board items on it, but anyways. So, I had just had a few questions. The So, AVID is an elective. >> AVID's been an elective. Yes. >> And the new career is going to be >> that's it's for program again. So the elective I will say we >> on the books offer such a wide variety of electives we struggle to fill them. And so AVID

134itself as a program it's an elective but often it's a program and more often than not it can be a schoolwide program. In the 20 years or so we've had AVID it's struggled to become schoolwide for a myriad of reasons and not for lack of effort. Um, often it's our students are trying to take all the things they want to take and it's hard to fit them in. And so we've never been able to have AVID be a full-blown schoolwide program in the way in which it was very intended to be. That's something we've struggled with. >> And I think the website also says it's a club. Will that continue? >> So, um, that's up to students and adviser. If that were to continue, it has the ability for it. But the club was a

135way to help if there was fundraising or other things. um it gave them the ability to do um sometimes for trips or college trips or those things, but we also because there's different money not being spent on AVID, it doesn't mean we're trying to do less college visits. It's figuring out the ways they make sense and where students need to go. And because we have to the um >> another acronym the uh golden GSPP Golden State pathway program grant money that also gives the ability to give students access and we still have quite a few more years on that in this transition to help students really access many of those visits and things that >> so one of the things that a lot of the students that I talked to that they were concerned about

136was um the access to visiting colleges. So, um, we're going to continue to, um, access college trips through, um, our counseling office, through our college and career center. I know that, um, our, um, oh gosh, the club, the Spanish club, Ola, Ola, Ola takes several college field trips. And then we're also talking about um different ways where we can get students access to college and not just the small number of students that were in AVID make it more of a schoolwide access for everyone. >> Yeah, >> the AVID club is an ASB club that is independent of any programs that we do or do not offer. So, as long as the adviser and the students choose to continue with the club, the club's mission and all of the activities that they do can continue on.

137It is not contingent on whether or not that program exists in the curriculum side of things. >> Yeah. >> But basic AVID students would also be part of the club or that may not necessarily >> that would be up to the students. >> Anybody could be part of the AVID club because yeah, anybody just like anybody can be part of any club and like Alicia said, it's unattached to the program. um they would likely change the name, but it could have the same intentions and goals. >> Um and so then how are I guess how are we closing the achievement gap from AVID to the new career center? >> So the majority of students who are in AVID were not unduplicated pupils. So I would say again and not and sometimes it's just the small

138school scheduling problems. Um for students who were so one thing that Heather Clement did right before the end of the year was survey all students. Um she'll work on that again in the fall to capture ones we haven't but to find out again what are you interested right now as a student as last year freshman sophomore juniors um are you looking at two-year schools four-year schools what kind of jobs are you thinking about um what are you interested in exploring so that and then also met with elective and CTE teachers too to talk about our pirate pathways and trying to make sure that we are scheduling out ideally every month or at the very minimum every other month pirate pathways to give students exposure to industry sector um experts and being able to have those

139opportunities to do that. Um many of you have attended or been a part of those over the last couple years and looking at that and then also for us to really be targeting schools that have majors or programs of interest to students too to be bringing them in and then doing intentional invites too. Such a hard thing whether it's counseling or AVID or anyone else. AVID gave an audience of students in those classes. Um, I so wish more students were in those classes and they hadn't been. >> But something that is so hard, we'll often bring colleges on campus and we tell students 27 ways they're here. But students don't show up to the visit sometimes because they don't realize, oh, this school has the major I actually want or this school doesn't have anything

140I want and we're not going to target that student necessarily for that school, but this one we can say this school has these three majors you said were interesting to you and here's a direct invite to come to their lunchtime, whatever it is, or come for the last 20 minutes of this class period. So trying to again use data to intentionally target students and those students who are within those gaps. How do we look at that? We can cross reference those students, those populations of students with those types of surveys and us really pull that um data to be able to capture that for more students and be able to sort it and organize it and make sure we're really bringing in what our students are wanting to explore or maybe what they don't even

141know exists because that comes up too. And we've had a number of people come in that students didn't even realize those were careers and it's really important for them to know what's out there. >> Okay. Sorry, my notes got swiped on diligent >> so I lost everything. I don't know what happened, but um I guess yeah, my concern was just as a board member to make sure or how do we check because I know one of your comments or part of the LCAP was um I'll turn it or you're just looking at the data since you didn't really it was kind of mid-year decision so we're still looking at it was >> so the way the L Yeah, the way the LCAP is structured is that actually the state of California requires us to use

142data from our California school dashboard. So requires us to use lag data. So a lot of it is similar data to the midyear because at midyear I had the 2425 dashboard and but I'm not actually allowed to update that data for anything that was required from the state to be last year's data. So we try to get the most recent for things um where we can. >> But is your question >> No, my question is you're um I can't find it. Is your question whether or not the the ending of AVID was a mid-year decision >> that it was a split position? Oh, as a result, the full scope of the intended work was not realized. >> Yeah. >> So, I just want to make sure that we're tracking I guess the success >> of

143our college and career >> that we're making sure that AVID is we're serving Yeah. no kids are lost and that we're exceeding what AVID was hoping. I guess. >> Yeah, it's there again. And I think >> I it won't again I think >> I think one of our goals was what AVID was doing for 50 kids, we would like to replicate for all of our students. And so by having the Golden State um grant, the Golden State Pathways Grant, that grant funds a specific person and that person is Heather Clement. This year that grant was split between Heather Clement and um Jen Rasmmanson. Heather Clement's going to be the full-time person and she's going to specifically target a lot of those career and college decisions that were made in AVID. And then some of the

144other skills that were taught in AVID will be picked up in focus on success or will be picked up in our English language arts classes. and those a lot of those pieces were already existing there. And again, you're saying >> all the dual enrollment, so we're already bringing kids into college level courses. So, >> correct. So now if we like if if Miss Clement's um survey shows that 10 kids are wanting to explore a career in plumbing, then one of the things Miss Clement's going to do is find the local plumbers, bring them into the school, hook them up with specifically those 10 students, and those 10 students can explore that career pathway with the industry professionals that are in the valley because the industry professionals in the valley are also reaching out to us

145saying we need specific things and we want to partner with you. So now we have a vehicle schoolwide to be able to partner specific kids with their needs and interests. HVAC health careers with the new cottage hospital going in is specifically target with each and every student what they need and align them with somebody in our own community that can mentor them and give them pro possible career pathways and what they're act and then maybe you hate plumbing right and you decide I want to try to be an electrician or I want to you know go to cosmetology school or I want to work in health careers. That's what this is all about is getting them that those experiences and that exploration out there in a wider for a wider group of students. And then

146to your point about how do we know if our plan is working right >> um to that that means I need to add questions in and what I'm asking students how many and us looking to uh everything related attendance set our pirate pathways what were attended and what's their feedback um from those specifically and then also end of the year capturing did you attend a pathway did you um get help on certain services and things did you visit a college did you all of those things so in general the kind of plan we make for college and career for this next year, really looking at did students access, how do they access, and did they benefit from that? And so us looking at are they are we doing what we intended to do? And then

147cross referencing those responses with groups of students who we know often aren't accessing some of those supports and being able to see how's that going and do we need to tweak, adjust, change, move based off of that. And specifically, the AVID decision wasn't a midyear decision. It's just that it wasn't put on the students um course selection form midyear. So that's when a a certain population of them started to say, "Well, where's AVID?" The discussion of AVID and making the skills and what AVID offers more of a schoolwide decision has been going on for at least three years at the school >> and far longer. >> Far longer. I mean, I've only been here two, but I know that before I even started there was that was a discussion. >> Yeah, >> that's it. Sorry,

148I >> do not. This is exactly why this is here. There's a reason there's a question slide. >> I have my notes. I have my highlights, but I think I got Go ahead. Um, I will say go ahead. >> I was just going to say Todd, if there's other questions that come up, again, this comes back next week for action. I will be here next week. I have to present local indicators. Just a fun fact, that has to be at the other meeting, not at this meeting. And so, I will be here. And so, if you come up with other questions too that you want to ask them, um, you know where to find me too. But, yeah, absolutely. So, don't feel like you lost your opportunity. We have a whole other one next week

149if something else comes up that you see. It's a dense document. Doesn't matter how much time you have for it, you'll find different things each time. Um, there's also the opportunity if we need to tweak or adjust something that's in there because I misspoke on something. I have opportunity to do that. That's why it goes to you for kind of a discussion before we approve, too. >> Yeah. I want to I agree with Todd because there's that small population of children in AVID and they I feel that they feel that that's the only um maybe recourse to getting information and having it more global in this career in tech with Mr. Clemens broadens it to where they may have thought I only can access college and career with my AVID class and may not have

150realized that they've been missing a whole um better opportunity or larger scope of something. So I think the ones that they think they're missing out here are just going to be shifted over to here and have actually a more larger global opportunities I think is what because I agree with you don't want to lose those children. >> Yeah. I just want to make sure we were able to track and focus in and again I know after was an elective and >> and kind of learning about >> Yeah. And I would >> I think I wish my daughter would have done it. I think she would have done because I went non-traditional college so I couldn't answer a lot of questions >> that she had >> and I think we need to be able to answer

151more questions for more students and I think counseling tries to do that in a myriad of ways but we have to expand our reach and be proactive with students um because counselors can't go find 250 students out every day out there they push out they do that they bring students in but us figuring out better systems for that um will benefit far more students So, we're looking forward to it and we're going to have to make adjustments along the way because it's piloting. Other questions? Okay, thank you so much. >> Thank you, Tori. Okay. So now we can move on uh to the public hearing on 2026 2027 original adopted budget and 2026 2720 through 2829 multi-year projections. There will be a public hearing held during Sis Valley Union High School District Board of Education's

152meeting to be held at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, June 9th, 2026 in the Sis Valley Union High School Boardroom 2975 East Highway 246 as California regarding the public disclosure of the district's 2026 2027 adopted budget as well as the 2026 27 through 2028 29 multi-year projections. Copy of the budget and multi-year projections are available uh will be available May 13th. Interest members of the public are invited to address the board of education on this item of the board meeting. We will open this up at uh 7:28 and is this >> here's her she wants to make >> chief >> adopted budget which we just finished that one's done. Open it and close it. We should probably let her >> uh then she can have we'll start with this one. >> Okay. >> So, um Denise

153Elamine, you wanted to comment on four and five. >> I'll have you do this one first, Denise. This will be number number five. you'll do this one first if you have something to talk about on the budget and then I'll let you comment on >> we have the public hearing listed before either or if you're more comfortable until after >> then she can do >> that's fine come on up and do that Um I looked on my phone um because I didn't know what Abbott was. I had never heard of Abbott. Um but um it appears that um we're talking about um English as a second um language um students that go here and um the under privileged and um the pe the students that are different than what's in this boardroom today. Um, and

154I guess that the L the LCAP that you guys are saying now that you want to assist them a little further. Um, but to me it sounded like you're offering um stereotype jobs. You're like saying that um you're not going to make it in college, so you need to learn how to do plumbing. You're not going to make it in college. You need to learn how to be a farmer. Um this is what I got out of the take of these programs that you have for the um English as a second language um students. Um, this school has a reputation um of not being very um fair and nice to the um English as a second language students and their parents. And um I just wanted to say um I will be um attending meetings.

155I wish there was more public here, but I will start um advertising and talking to people and tell them they need to come in because I really have never seen um an agenda with so many important things on it going to be decided with no public interest and it'll be decided um next week. Um thank you. Okay. So, we'll we're open. >> So, >> now I'm technically supposed to close it, but >> I would say let's leave it open. I'll do my presentation during the public hearing so that it is still public hearing when we get the public commentary and then I won't have to present when you pull up the item. I think that way we can >> perfect >> suffice both. >> Okay. Sorry guys. I know it's a long meeting and I

156know that these two meetings in June that are required to separate everything really make it a marathon tonight. So I apologize in advance. I will try not to be too boring. Okay. So tonight we're talking about the original adopted budget for the 2627 fiscal year. We're going to review our budget reporting documents. We're going to review the assumptions and the changes related to the foundational budget. We'll review revenue expenditures, contributions, our ending fund balance and reserves, our multi-year projections, and future planning considerations. The first thing we like to review is our changes. This is kind of your cheat sheet to all of the budget iterations. What this document does is it takes the last budget iteration on the left and compares it with the most current budget iteration on the right and it labels each

157of the items as you can see down the left ABCDE EFG and so on with their respected explanations ABCDEFG on the bottom. And then to the far right of the bud budget document changes form, you see changes both in dollar figure amounts as well as percentages. And for the revenue, green denotes increased revenue, red denotes decreased revenue. And that is, you know, obviously switched for expenditures. More expenditures generally bad, so they're red. Less expenditures generally good, so they are green. Um, you will notice I've made a little bit of a tweak to this document for this year and moving forward. I've added items MN and O on this. They are the transfers in, the transfers out, and the contributions. And we'll explain why that's important later, but it all has to do with the new

158um structure of special education budgeting for us. And I just want to be able to point those out. and absent these items being on this document, you wouldn't have it on the cheat sheet. So, they've been added for this year. Okay. So, starting with assumptions and changes, when we create the budget, all of the data that we are using to formulate our original budget is projection. We are projecting where we're going to end for 2526. We are projecting where we're going to spend for 2627. We're projecting where our revenues are going to come in for 2526. They haven't even told us where they're going to land. We have a pretty solid idea, but we don't get that until the year is already over. So, we are now projecting revenues for next year based on not

159just historical trends, but economic trends as well. So, I say this every time we go over an original budget, but I will continue to say it just so that it is always fresh in your mind. The original budget is our academic best guess. We use all of the, you know, averages and this and trends and that, but it is the least accurate budget I will ever bring to you in a fiscal year is our adopted original budget because so much of the budget is based on projections, not just in that current year, but starting and ending the previous fiscal year. So, with that said, our estimated ending balances and our estimated beginning balances are just estimates. We are not there yet. We have a whole month before, you know, this month is over until we

160get there. In our 26 27 budget, we have our property tax projection increased at 3.5%. We know this is less than we actually expect to receive, but we purposely budget slightly lower for revenue and we budget buffers and such and expenditure so they're slightly higher because it is always always always better to end the year saying we got more revenue than we thought and spend spent less than we thought rather than start and say I think we're going to get the moon and we're not going to need to spend and we get to the end of the year and we go oh no because all of these dollar figures are used for decisions throughout the year. So being more conservative, especially as we start out the year with the most inaccurate budget I'm going to

161present, we start with the most conservative numbers just to ensure that the decisions that you guys are making are based on safe numbers, not pie in the sky. This is where we think we'll be numbers. All our one-time revenue and expenditures have been removed. And what I mean by that is if we got a grant and that grant revenue all of it $100,000 was received last year you'll see the expenditures maybe in a ne the next year and the next year if we haven't spent it all but you won't see that recurring revenue because it was a one-time receipt. So consequently if all the expenditures were spent as well you would see those removed as well. So we remove the expenditures as we expend all of the funds and we remove revenues if one they're

162not going to continue to occur or two we don't know for sure they're going to occur. So there are several things that rely on signedus or the hiring of let's say a music teacher so that we get the revenue from the other districts because we're sharing we don't put those things in unless there are concreteus signed. So I may know that that's the goal, but I'm not putting it into the budget until I have something signed, something concrete to go on. So that's why our budget iterations tend to change the most between original budget and first interim because we're still shoring up agreements and hiring and placement and all of that. Our minimum fund balance has been updated um at our was it our last board meeting or the one? Yeah, at our last board

163meeting we um adopted or you all adopted a new minimum fund balance resolution so that we are incrementally increasing our minimum fund balance or our reserve to a more um respectable conservative safe number. We didn't want to do that all in one lump sum. So, it's incremental and that's included both in our current 2627 original budget as well as in the multi-year projections for the two years out. It's extremely important to note our original budget for 2627 does not have the impact of any negotiations included in the budget. This is intentional. We do not want to put anything in here because we do not want to project what the units may or may not feel is important and where they want those funds to go. So, we leave those out. We also leave those out

164because negotiations and settling negotiations are based on projections for revenue, which we didn't have at the time that we created the original budget. So, we didn't want to put even less accurate things in here. So, we leave it out. And that's generally how we do it in the district until negotiations are settled. They aren't reflected in a budget. Some districts will put a base 3% or base 1% or base 2% just so that there's something in there, but I feel like that makes it much more difficult when you go to compare budget models to see actual changes. So, we don't include any of that. What that also means is that our original budgets tend to look better because they aren't including negotiations that we know for a fact with 100% certainty will occur. But we

165don't want to do the whole sky is falling thing by putting numbers in for negotiations that we haven't reached yet. So we leave them out because it's more accurate. But even that being said, we still know that they're coming. So, we can't look at the bottom line and say, "Oh my gosh, we have $100 left at the end of the year. That's great. Let's go spend 90." We need to be careful knowing that we still have another bill coming in. Um, we also, this is one of the most nerve-wracking budgets for me to present to you because this is the first budget that we own special education. And it sounds crazy, but it's even crazier on the back end because special education is both unrestricted and restricted. The revenue streams come from like five different

166places. Some come from SUPPA, some come from the state, some come from property taxes, some come from grants, some come from the federal government. We're trying to wrap our brain around getting all of those accounts in, getting all of those projections in and understanding not just the amount that will come in, when's it coming in. Does it come in all in January? Does it come in all in December? Does it come in monthly? How does that work for our cash flow? So, on that end, special ed is is very um tentative right now and it's also very nerve-wracking. We also had to hire I think it was uh what is it 11? So, like 18 new people just No, I didn't count. So, like 20some new people with all the teachers, the aids and the

167service providers. So, that adds immediately a huge increase on our one through 3s, our salaries and benefits. So all of that is in there and all of that is the biggest unknown we've ever had on our budget in the last 15 years. So that being said, let's jump into it. Looking at our revenue, we are we are comparing our 2526 second interim with our 2627 original budget. If you look on the left, you'll see the restricted revenue and the restricted revenue for 2627 is slightly higher and the unrestricted revenue is fairly similar, holding steady a little bit lower. Overall revenue is increased 3.5% or 676,000. And we will explore why that is. Oops, clicked too many times. um by each category. In our restricted revenue, we have LCFF, also synonymous with property taxes. We have

168our federal revenue, state, and our local. Our LCFF revenue, this historically for us has always been zero. Zero compared to zero because we do not get any LCFF funds on the restricted side of the house. That has changed with special education. There are property taxes specifically earmarked for special education that come through the property tax codes that are on the restricted side of the house. So you see that increase of $285,18 because we are adding a new revenue stream related to special education. Same goes for the federal funds here. We are adding the idea revenue for the special education services. That is the increase in the federal funds. The decrease in the restricted state funds, excuse me, the increase in the restricted state funds is a result of removing one-time grants received in previous years.

169So, generally when we get grants like the Golden State or uh CTEIG, those types of things, they are restricted for those programs and you they show up here on the state side of the restricted revenue. We received several large grants uh what GSP was two years ago now, right? something like that. >> She started getting money to >> Yeah. So you'll see those drop as we are still you'll still see the expenditures but the revenue has been removed because we are not going to continue to receive in the local this is also special education $500,000 will be coming in through the SULPA special education funds. So we get some property taxes direct to the district and then there are some like property taxes and and revenue streams that flow through the SULPA and then get

170dispersed by the SULPA. So those come in through our local revenue codes. So $500,000 of that is SULPA special education revenue and $106,000 is SULPA wrap program reimbursement. And I don't remember if I brought this up at second interim. feel like I did. But just quickly, as a result of bringing special education in-house, it opens doors for us to be more of a community partner with the special education department and with SULPA. Selpa has asked that we be the employer of record for their WAP team. Yes. Okay. So, we we are the employer of record. We bring them on. We we pay all the things. We do all the fingerprinting and they reimburse for every single dime that we pay. So, it is net zero for us. However, it isn't net zero on the lines.

171The lines will show the revenue coming in and the lines will show the expenditures coming out. But when you put those two together, it is not costing the district anything. If anything, we are making money as we get indirect costs for the workload added to our employees. And we get a per employee uh bonus or payout for each employee that we onboard of $2,500. So, it is not costing us anything. We are building bridges by being good community partners. And we do make a little bit of revenue. Um, while we are doing that, looking at the unrestricted revenue, I broke it up into two charts because if I put property taxes next to the others, the amount of property taxes make the others look like little lines and you can't see the differences. So on

172the left, you see the property taxes. Property taxes look like they've decreased a little bit. This is because we've one, we've kept our property tax projections at 3.5% which is conservative. We expect them to be slightly higher, but the inloo property taxes that we have to transfer to Olive Grove jumped a significant amount at second interim. And I know we discussed it, but that jump is a permanent jump according to their projections. So that jump decreases our property taxes because we have to funnel our property taxes for our district students that they serve to them on a per ADA basis. So our property taxes would be slightly higher if not for the takeaway being funneled to the Olive Grove charter school. Um on the right side is everything else. If you look at federal, pretty

173much everything else is staying fairly um yeah, status quo. Good good uh analogy. Federal is staying the same. State is pretty much staying the same. Our local revenue is increasing just a bit because I've added in a guesstimate for our stirs excess contribution estimated returns. So every October, so like our teachers get stipens for being the robotics lead teacher, for being an adviser, for FFA, for um doing coaching, a number of things. And when we report those to retirement, retirement has different percentages based on what type of a member they are. Are you classic? Are you praa? Is it overtime? Is it not? So based on that, like our stipens are coded in the system just as compensable compensation. and we send let's say the $10 that it would be to be a retirement. But

174some people it's really only the cost for them for their retirement is only $8. So we've overpaid by $2 and they'll mail that back to us and they mail that back to us and it goes back to the employee in October. But every second interim I come back and I'm like, "Hey, we had this change. Here's what's doing." So I'm trying to add it now so that we don't have to discuss that change at second interim that we just we know it's coming. It's going to be there. We just don't know how much it is. It happens every year. So we've added that in and that's a change from um our normal I usually exclude it. So now we jump to expenditures. Expenditures overall as expected because we are bringing on the special education and

175because we are bringing on all those additional staff has increased. Uh overall it's a 2.3% increase or a $440,000 increase. Most of it, as you can see, is well, I mean, not most of it. It's pretty even split between restricted and unrestricted, but we'll look at both of those. Looking at the restricted side of the house, as you could expect, the restricted side had 125.9% increase in expenditures or a $2.5 million increase. This is expected. All of our special education costs and expenditures were in the unrestricted side of the house for us in previous years because we transferred them over to the consortium for all the services. And at the consortium, they were coded properly as restricted expenses. But for us, they were not restricted expenses. And having them in the restricted would have triggered

176a bunch of reporting we wouldn't have been able to uh accommodate because we weren't running the program. So they stayed on the unrestricted side of the house. They have been brought over to restricted which is why you see this this increase here. The certificated and classified salaries and benefits are the sped department hires. This includes our teachers, our classified aids, our speech pathologists, our psychologists, our nurses, sped director, assistant to the sped director, everybody needed to run the department properly. Our materials have decreased as one-time expenditures on the restricted side of the house associated with those one-time grants that have been spent down have been removed. The services has increased. The new way of having the special education department in our budget is not only do we have this the salaries and benefits for the

177people we've hired and we've hired as many as make sense financially to do but there are still some services that are for instance like three hours a month for um DHO audio services that it wouldn't make sense for us to hire a full-time person that's going to cost us well over $100,000 because we need three hours a month. So on that on those instances, we are contracting with the Santa Barbara County Ed Office or SULPA to receive those services and those services are then coded under the services. So that's why you see the increase in the services line there. Those are special education services to students that we will be paying other entities. The same goes for other outgo. It's the same thing versus how we code it. One to the Selba versus one to

178the county, how it has to be coded. Both of those things are related to the special education department. Looking at the unrestricted unrestricted expenditures, we actually see some green here, which is a positive. The unrestricted expenditures have decreased 12.3% or 2.14%. Again, this is a little bit masked because in here it looks like we've decreased over 2 million. We really haven't. It's moved from unrestricted to restricted because of how it's coded. So, it looks awesome. I would love to be able to take credit for, you know, saving $2 million, but I cannot say I've done such a thing. >> It's just exactly it's on the other page, but I, you know, I can pretend while I look at the numbers. The So, the salaries and benefits, you'll notice specifically for the certificated salaries, we know

179we're going to have some extended substitutes this year. We have some maternity leaves, some things coming up. So, we've added those in. It's about an additional $12,000 in subs. Uh we have an additional a teacher due to the need in sections and the the u demand from students. We also have an additional PE teacher and a strategic budgeting move that we've done. So, I won't get into the weeds, but basically when we have a special education department, there's such a thing called a maintenance of effort. And that means that in year one if you spent $100, in year two you have to spend at least $100. So, and that means in year three if you spend 101 it needs to be 101. You can't go down. You can stay the same or go up. So

180things change, right? You get one student in the district for four years that needs a one-on-one aid that costs, let's just say, $70,000 for their one aid. that student graduates, we no longer need that one-on-one aid because no student has come in with that same need. That means we don't need that $70,000. Not likely to happen, but let's just say it did. If that happened and we laid off that one aid, we're now down $70,000 in our budget. That's a problem. The state and federal government say for special education, the costs are not decreasing. It's not possible. They must go up. You cannot go down or you will have penalties. So what we have done to ensure that we have enough padding in the budget for those types of natural changes. The budget is going

181to go up and down no matter what. There's going to be years we need 10 aids. There's going to be years we need 20 aids. There's going to be years where we have five kids on, you know, doortodoor busing. And there's going to be a year where we have 20 kids. It's going to change and fluctuate as the students needs change. So in order to protect us, we have done some strategic budgeting in that our home to school transportation, we have elected not to budget the special ed portion routes into the special ed department. We're keeping them in the unodudited, I mean unrestricted so that if we need to, we can move them in and still show that we have the the requisite expenditures on that same vein or in that same you know strategy.

182Our psychologists will be providing services to some gen ed and our nurse does provide services to any student that walks in and some of them are gen ed. So a portion of their salaries are also coded to the general ed unrestricted and not to special ed so that if we need to move things around and make sure that we meet those things, we can be proactive and meet those things because that could be a big headache. And again, as someone who hasn't had to do it, I like to be conservative and make sure that I cover my basis because I don't want to be up here and be like, "Okay, so I messed up. I would really like to not be there." So, um, okay. So, that is with all of the salaries. Oh, and

183in the salaries, the increase is mitigated by the reduction of the one-time bonus payments being removed. They were a onetime expense last year, so they aren't continuing. So, they were removed from the expenditures in the materials. The materials only had one-time expenditures removed and they're fairly stable. Same goes with services uh with capital outlay. You notice it's almost half of what it was last year. That's because on a fluke, so we have scheduled to buy or replace one uh student fleet vehicle per year. And on a fluke, the dealer was like, "Hey, I actually have access to two. They're very hard to find these vans in this configuration. So, we jumped on it and bought both of them. And that's why last year's budget was almost double. We have reduced it back down to our

184our planned expenditure of one vehicle per year. And then the last line here is the other outgo. And right here is that 2 something million savings. This is where our special education costs were coded previously and now are not. But you will notice it is not zero on the right. There is a reason for that. That $200,000 is a budget savings or buffer on the in the event that there are legal settlements or other things that come from the consortium that we are required to pay based on the current consortium cooperative agreement. So as part of the dissolution for the consortium, there are still going to be pending liabilities and expenditures that come down the pike even next year and the year after. So there are a number of years where you will see a

185buffer, a budget buffer there, even if we don't spend it. So, what I'm saying is if I have $200,000 this year and we get through the year scot-free and there is no expenditure on that line, you will still see it next year because we have three years of liability on the dissolution of the consortium. And hopefully we never have to use it. Hopefully all the money that's sitting there that currently exists that should be ours is used for those purposes. But if it's not, I don't want to get hit with a hundred,000 or $200,000 bill and not have some plan. So that's what our plan is. We hope not to use it but there is no guarantee. Okay. Are there any questions on expenditures or revenues before we talk bottom line? Okay. So our unrestricted

186ending fund balance and reserves. And remember we do care about restricted and moving forward we will likely care a little bit more just because that's where our special education costs are coming from. But ultimately, let's say our special education costs overrun the revenue that we get from all of the different revenue sources, which we know they will like we we expect it. That's what the calculations are. That money comes as a contribution from the unrestricted. So, it is already encompassed in this ending fund balance of unrestricted. So for us to make informed budget decisions, the only ending fund balance that really matters to us is the unrestricted side because the unrestricted side is covering any deficit on the restricted side anyway. So when we're looking at fiscal health, what kinds of, you know, negotiations, decisions,

187what can we look at, what can we do? The unrestricted ending fund balance and the reserves are what are important to us. And if you'll notice between the 25 26 second interim projection and the 26 27 adopted budget, the deficit stays fairly fairly the same. Not a lot is changing in our core programs and in our core staffing absent the special education program. So that's why there isn't a huge swing there. The numbers change obviously as you know we expect them to. I don't expect this beginning balance that we have here for original adopted to actually be the beginning balance when we get to first interim, but that's our best guess at the at the moment that we made our budget. Right now, if you notice also under the required reserve, the 25 26 second

188interim shows the 3 million. Since we've updated that, we've updated that to the 18% reserve required by board resolution. And just a reminder for anybody listening at home, that 18% is taken by adding your expenditures, any contributions out to like special education because those are actual expenditures that are ongoing and transfers out like debt services and those types of things. You add those all up and 18% of those three figures is your is your reserve amount. And our reserve, we'll talk about it, but our reserve is uh slowly increasing, but you'll notice the original adopted does take into account the 18% required for 2627. That being said, after our 18% reserve, we have $3.2 million left over. Those would be considered our excess reserves. Okay, jumping back to our minimum fund balance just as a

189reminder 2526 based on that resolution was set at 16%. We are not allowed unless you guys change the resolution or future you guys change that resolution. We are not allowed I am not allowed to present a budget to the board that does not have these minimum reserve percentages at the end. So, if I come to you and I have the let's say 20% in 2728 and not a penny more, that's fine. But if I come to you in 2728 and I only have an 18% reserve, we are required, the superintendent and I are required to make cuts to make that 20%. It is not an option for us unless we bring it to you and say we really can't do this or don't want to do this. It forces those types of things. So because

190of that mechanism that comes into play with a reserve resolution like that, we chose to gradually implement the reserve. We have enough reserve currently to implement it all right away. But that would have left nothing for negotiations, no slow buildup. It it seemed extreme and it seemed punitive in terms of Oh, shoot. Can you pull that off? Sorry, it's my alarm. So again 25 26 16 and by 2930 we have a 25% reserve which is where we will end. Okay. So as part of all of our budget iterations required by law we have to have multi-year projections. And sometimes those things are really obnoxious to read. So I just like to put them up here to let you know that we are meeting all of our requirements in the multi-year projections. All of our budget

191projections meet all state requirement minimums as well as the board resolution minimums. If you look at the top portion of our multi-year projection, you'll see that we keep our 3.5% increase in property taxes each year. And then on the bottom highlighted in pink, this is where you'll notice the special education contribution. And that is where the unrestricted ending fund balance is paying for any overage to special education. And if you remember, we were paying this same amount to the consortium just in a different place. So I'm highlighting where it is now. And hopefully those numbers will be smaller, but this is our best guess currently. And then moving down the form for the multi-year projection, you'll go to expenditures. And I pointed out here on the left where it says step column adjustment and uh

192cost of living which would be where the raise would go. We have our base salaries and we have our step in column and the stein column is as part of your your salary schedule every year you get a raise based on your salary schedule. So like teachers on column 9, they get an increase in salary each year until 25 years and it varies for all the other columns and classified only have eight steps. So they eight years of going up. But those are the ingrained increases within the salary schedule that are already there. They are not negotiated increases. They are previously negotiated increases. You'll notice on the cost of living line there are zeros because again we do not budget those until we have something to budget. And then you'll look to I guess that

193would be peach or orange. These are the consortium related expenditure buffers. And you see that I am phasing them out over the three-year period. That's you know contingent on everything going amicably and well and not receiving random wild bills which I'd like to think we won't but I have I have reservations. So I have Yes. Go ahead. So on that >> sorry on that line is let's say it does you do have to spend the 200 does that end up coming out of the special ed restricted funds because it did go to special ed for the consortium. >> It could it depends on how we choose to code it. We really have um autonomy on how we choose to code it and I think that it would depend on what it is we're paying for.

194>> Okay. I would >> because otherwise it has to stay in there uh for the next year as well. >> Exactly. Okay. Exactly. >> All right. >> So it it it's a costbenefit analysis on what are we paying, how much is it, and do we want to continue? >> Understood. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. >> Uhhuh. And then in the blue, this is our debt services payment. And this is something super exciting. Um Oh, no, not the blue. Where is it? Um, >> oh, it is a transfer out. Sorry, I'm blind. I'm just a little bit blind. Yes, our debt services payment drops off in the blue. And you'll notice that's like $280,000 every year. And that was the refinance of the stadium eons ago. That has been on the books the whole time I've

195been here. So, the idea of this being the last year that we have to pay it is awesome. And that drops down to the $50,000 that we have to transfer in for um uh what is the IT go what's it called? The IT infrastructure savings plan that we have. So we're saving $50,000 every year and transferring that into I believe it is our fund oh my gosh I can't remember the number now. Not 17 41 I believe it is. I could be lying on the fund number here, but we are taking that money and putting it into a savings account for IT infrastructure. So, we know we're going to need that sum of money in 2030. And by saving this amount every year, we'll have it. And that will be our IT infrastructure upgrade. This

196is also where you would or will see any uh bus savings that we may have to implement in future. Um, oh yeah, and I do write not real at the bottom that the numbers are real based on what's here, but our whole budget is less than real. So, I just want you to be very careful. It looks great because if you look at this year, it looks like we are spending $350,000 more than we're going to bring in, but next year we're gaining half a million and the year after that we're gaining like a million. That's not true. That's inaccurate. I can tell you that right now. negotiations hasn't hit. Other things haven't hit. We have to talk about buses, but for best guess what we know right now, those are the numbers. The numbers

197reflect what we have, but they are definitely not real. So, don't bet on having that much extra money every year. Okay. So, the last thing I want to point out on our multi-year projections is the uh minimum fund balance. just showing that it is reflected both in the notations and the amount for each year and that that amount is in there for each year according to the new board resolution. Okay, so future considerations. This is probably one of the most important slides that we just need to keep in mind when we're talking about a budget that is so uh tenuous or I don't want to say inaccurate because that's not entirely right but just very it's all based on projections. So we need to remember that negotiations are unsettled not just for 26 27 but

198for all outy years. So if we if we negotiate for one year that's fine but if we do a multi-year negotiations we need to be careful because things um with special education we really don't know how that's going to hit our budget. So, a multi-year, sorry, I'm still getting over sick. A multi-year uh agreement would be difficult for us. And I know that they are generally what the district prefers because it's easier to budget. It's it's easier to know that things are settled, but until we know how the special education budget is going to work and and fit, I don't think a multi-year plan is in our best interest. We just there's too many unknowns to bet on any sort of number or increase moving forward. So >> how long do you think it'll take

199to have special ed numbers like >> two years this year and next? Because the first year you're like, "Okay, cool. This is where we landed." And the next year you see where you landed and you can compare like is the swing gargantuan? Is it couple hundred dollars? You'll see you start seeing patterns. So that second year will will be really telling. Um okay, additionally we need five new buses, guys. Um no, I thought it was three and then I met with our bus uh driver or sorry, our home to school transportation service provider and it's actually five that we need. We have three that are like desperately needed and then we have those that are backups for field trip and stuff. And if we replace those three, then those push, you know, push back and

200the desperate ones go. We had one die, I think he said, four months ago, and they had been looking for I I'm not a car guru. I want to say like a radiator, a transmission, something big and important and expensive, and they don't make those bus models anymore. And they they are unable to find it. They have gone through junkyards, parts, old, used vehicles. They can't. So they asked for permission to just put it out of commission and we're going to have to junk it because it can't be replaced. So yeah, right. Exactly. Hopefully we won't buy that model again. They seem to have been a little bit of a of a problem. So, we need to implement a savings plan and I think Kim's started having those discussions and we'll probably come back with

201like a recommended maybe one bus a year just so that we're not completely decimating the budget and trying to do two, three buses at a time because they are quite expensive. We already have our IT infrastructure upgrade in the budget. We're already saving. Go ahead. >> I thought I saw that in the um for the bond. Is that something else that had to do with it? >> Uh no. So, when we were talking originally about the bond, they said, "Throw everything you possibly need and let us know." And I threw that on there. I don't believe it's something that we are planning on including in the bond just because once we got numbers and such, it was considerably more than we thought. And it's not probably something that is going to it wouldn't maximize our

202our bond funds in the right way. >> But technology and um IT infrastructure becomes obsolete by time you blink. So by 2030, the amount that you're planning on saving for it, is that going to be a fake number, too? Do you know what I'm saying? >> I do see what you're saying with escalation and such, but we have included escalation in our projection. We have, you know, the best guess at this time. Hopefully, if there was some sort of difference, it would be minimal. Um, but also that being said, that the cycle of replacement is probably going to still need to continue. So likely that $50,000 wouldn't go away unless it needed to be less because the life of the new equipment was maybe longer, but I wouldn't expect that savings to need to go

203away indefinitely. We also do utilize a bunch of -ate dollars. When we get -ate funds, we use them for things. So, we try very hard not to hit the general fund with infrastructure and it if at all possible and we've done a bunch of cabling and wiring through that didn't have to hit um the general fund. Again, we've talked ad nauseium about the special education program. So, we just need to be able to calibrate that. Property taxes are unknown until November. So, we don't get our first actual guesstimate from the county until November. So that makes it difficult for us to really uh properly project anything. The county is warning of smaller increases. So we'll discuss this probably closer to you know negotiations, presentations in open session and such, but we've seen some really good

204years over the last years kind of started with COVID when the buying frenzy started here and all the homes were selling and everybody was moving here and we saw increases of six, seven, and eight. So that's really skewing our 10 and three-year average projections and the county is warning of decreases. Not we are not going to see less money. So when I say decrease I don't mean less money. I mean the amount that is increasing will be smaller. So yes correct the curve is is flattening. Um so we will still see an increase. It's still a generous increase, but it is not going to be in the sixes and sevens most likely as that's tapering off. Um, one of the biggest hits that is really causing a ruckus for our employees and for the district,

205you know, as we look at negotiations is the health insurance premium increase for 26 27. It came in over 12%. Um, that is a hardship for at least half of our employees. What that equates to is an employee that was paying $200 is now going to be asked to be paid $500. That is a direct net decrease to them of like $300 every month to their paycheck. So, it is a significant um lever when we go into negotiations as to how do we properly address this issue. Uh, another large issue for us that we are hoping we have somewhat of a solution to, but I am hesitant to say that we have a solution. We have no reserve for special education cash flow. Our entire special education department cash flow. It looks like it's on

206the restricted side of the house. And there are some restricted dollars that are coming in from property taxes. I think it was uh what was it? Three or $500,000 and then SULPA money. Some of that is monthly. None of that is going to be enough monthly to cover the costs that we will be paying monthly. What that means is our cash flow is actually going to start to matter because we need to be able to make payroll and accounts payable every single month for all of these people providing services. But we do not get our money until December and January. Some in November, maybe a little in November. entirety of ours minus maybe $300,000 or so comes in those two chunks. We are required to front the cash flow for every other month until then.

207Um even without the special education department the last couple of years we've been getting close to where we're like let's hold off and not pay for that until January. It's only a month we'll be fine. You know that type of thing with AP, not our employees obviously. Um, but that's going to be a bigger concern because now we are paying salaries and benefits and supplies for 20 more people and our cash flow has to cover that until we get we get funds in. So that's one of those things that until I see how all those mechanisms of the funding work, I'm very concerned about just because yes, I know we'll have money at the end of the year. I'm I'm not concerned that there won't be money left. I'm concerned to have the money in

208hand when the bills are due. That's the concern. Not that we won't have it because we will. Um, so with that being said, we do need to think about having some sort of, for lack of a better word, a reserve for cash flow for special education. And there are funds sitting in a reserve with the consortium that are earmarked for the Sanz High School District because those are our funds that we provided to them as part of the agreement to sit in a cash flow reserve for consortium expenses. The issue in the dissolution is and rightfully so, you you don't want to knock the fact that that district still has liabilities that are going to come in and they are concerned about those liabilities hitting their cash flow and they need to make sure that

209they have the funds in the account to pay those things as they come in. But there are two reserves. There's the reserve in their general checking account for special ed and there's a reserve in a savings account for special ed. We are hopefully working towards a resolution and a dissolution that states that savings account that you have you are going to disperse back to all the districts and then that will come and that will start seating our reserve for special education. Um if that doesn't happen, we need to seriously look after a year of what our cash flows look like and if we need to be purposely setting aside funds for that issue. It's not going to be popular because really we're saying we can do less because we have to save it and you're

210going to see it sitting there but we must have it and it doesn't doesn't go over well. Are there any questions? >> Okay. All right. Thank you guys. >> Thank you Alicia. >> Of course. >> Uh we have uh Denise Elamine wanted to make comment. Um, one comment I had on one of her slides, slide number um, 14, you had the arrow over um, a word um, and I didn't know what it says services and something operating expenditures. Um, what what is that word that's between services and operating on um, the 14 >> other Thank you. And in the budget, I'm I'm understanding I guess that um the bond the bond revenue is not included in the budget. Is it allocated separately to something else? Um where where is the money that's coming from the

211bond for the for these years? So, the purpose of um of the public hearing is to hear the public commentary. It is not to get into a back and forth. Um I can let the board know that the Measure K bond funds have all been fully expended and they are therefore not reflected in the budget. They were fully expended I believe two years ago. So all bond funds related with Measure K are fully expended and therefore not included in our budget. So, I can put in a CP and get the information. Is that what you're saying? >> It will be available. >> Okay. Um I tried to find it online. Um but um you said that you need um and I won't ask any more questions. Um that five new um buses are going to

212be um needed um for this um year. Um, are we going to need another um sheriff and another sheriff car this year? Don't answer. Just that's just a question I'm throwing out there. I'll put in um a request, but um that's something that I would like to know. Um are you guys planning on doing that? Because I think the last time um I think it was 2023 is when you bought that car. So, I don't know how long you the cars last. Another thing is is that um we have more um Spanish >> just so you know we did not buy that car. >> Okay. Thank you. um we have more um English as a second language um and Spanish speaking um people that go here to the school that attend the school and I've

213noticed that we don't have um an interpreter or um this um YouTube doesn't go out in Spanish. Um, and I was wondering um why why and that should be something that should be in the budget because I just listened to 30 minutes of you telling me that you're going to have a LCAP and you're working with um these people >> and I'll tell you our interpreter was is is here at every meeting was not here at this meeting. He was gone somewhere else. And the YouTube does have a Spanish. >> So they they it's changing it's it's uh >> they can they can they can choose to do that. Yes. >> Um would you guys like to take a little break? I could use one five minutes. >> We could No. Oh well yes. I'm

214sorry. Close public comment at uh public hearing at 819 and we'll take a fivem minute break.