001call the meeting to order Tuesday December 5th 2023 of the SZ Valley Union High School District Board of Education roll call please Terry um note that uh Miss sheab is absent all the board members are present okay FL I to the flag of the United States of America indivis andice is there a motion to approve the agenda I move to um a motion to approve the agenda second second roll call please Harry Mr Johnson hi Mr abara hi Miss Grace Velasquez hi Miss Noble hi motion passes so now we'll move on to the superintendent's report thank you I'd like to invite Grace get up to the podium to present her report hi everybody um we haven't had that much movement through ASB this like past month we've all just kind of been preparing for finals
002but the um film for our anti-bulling campaign will be getting filmed tomorrow during our period And I think we're hoping to launch that like the first couple days of finals week to start off winter break and then second semester we'll have our campaign and we're looking into speakers currently and then I think we're also having a movie night sometime this month or in January I'm not too sure on the date and then we're just getting ideas for movies and then we've just been kind of talking about things through second semester with interal intermural Sports and starting to look into prom locations so that's kind of all we've had do you guys have any questions questions thank you Grace thank you there's audio um can we check the audio on thank you Grace testing testing testing
003test testing better testing better can you hear it now that's better okay well we have a busy agenda with a lot of items so I will uh comment as we get to the budget reports and uh public hearings so now we'll move on to the uh annual organizational meeting section Andrew okay item C on today's agenda is the annual organization meeting Education Code section 18383 and board bylaw 9100 require the board to hold an annual organization meeting to determine the board president and clerk for the upcoming calendar year at this meeting the board will also appoint the board secretary elect a representative and an alternate to the county committee on School District organization and set the schedule of regular board meetings for the year I will turn it over to the current board president President
004Johnson for discussion and decisions beginning with the election of the next board president and clerk thank you Andrew uh as superintendent Schwab noted the education code in board bylaw 9100 require the board to elect the president and clerk at our organizational meeting are there any nominations for the board president for 2024 calendar year um yeah I um this is something that I thought a lot about uh just over time and uh I'd actually like to put myself forward uh as a as a potential president for the board and I'd like to speak to as to why I think I am a strong candidate for that and that is um the contributions just over the last three years and I know that our district is going through um trying times around having hard conversations in terms
005of the direction of the school board and aligning our decision- making and resources with our mission and vision which was updated um and by the way didn't do this fir handedly uh I was a proponent to update the uh mission and vision and I would really love for us to stay uh aligned with that and I feel I have the uh I the agency and and the knowledge and the experience based to engage uh with folks from all constituents all constituencies and and have these hard conversations um it takes the lens of an educator as well and I have that and working with um just administrative teams of different mindsets and thinking and objectives and so looking at um this year and all the important work we have to do together uh I'd like to
006be able to be the president of the board with your support and I would like to make a motion to uh elect me as a next president of the school board is there a second for that motion or you make another motion that's you can make a motion on anything you'd like um I'd like to make a motion um to put another name forward as president of the board um for the for being mostly a new school board um our president Chris Johnson I feel has led us well I know that his leadership in the past year he's focused on the student students and what's really the important why we're all here I know that he's dug into governance he's taken classes to understand and then being a business owner and I know whatever generational
007Valley person you are student coach and whatnot you have a keen focus on what this the Pirates are and what the pirate Community is and so with that I feel also um that this year so far you've led us in the right direction and um I was going to say with the mission and vision statement that we all created your focus on that is truly what we need here at this time is there a second to that motion I second that motion to um with Chris Johnson for president can we move to a discussion absolutely so we we have a motion thank you for that um I doo agree that Chris you've done a really nice job uh on boarding as someone who came to the board without a lot of experience and I particularly
008appreciate your uh even killed um temperament I think that's been really helpful um and I think generally you've done a really nice job at setting a good tone uh with the board and I do have some concerns and I would like to hear from you before we go into a vote a little bit more my concerns are that while we've had a mission and vision aligned with uh front having students front and center um we continue to come up against things that are inconsistent to that and I'd like to point out three of them uh that have been uh serious they have created an environment in the community that gets in the way of us being productive as board members and the primary one is when we talk about student uh centered I think we
009mean every single student and our students come from different backgrounds different colors different identi ities different needs and we must keep them as a whole not in parts and so I would like to hear both there are three things one is the uh what shows up in the agenda is an expression of um what the board is moving forward and to have a transpar a um parental rights uh initiative even just for for discussion that's very ad adult centered it's very it's not aligned with students actually uh you know for us to foro in agreement with our student body on the no place for hate initiative which was driven by students and to forego the deadline and keeping the the bump the speed bumps painted as they were as if we agreed as a district
010but also now with having a fair as a as a consultant um to engage with our students faculty and staff I see it as a contradiction to uh our mission and I and I feel strongly about that so moving forward I'd like to hear how you are going to take us through all of this um and engage while holding student every student as a whole child and not just in parts well I can speak to that and I'll I'll speak briefly but I will be concise about it I believe actually all those decisions were student centered to be quite honest and I think the board was uh strong in that as well as a group and um going forward as far as the affair is concerned I believe that everybody should actually take a look
011at it and read into it for themselves and then wait and see what superintendent uh Schwab had had in uh intended it for and I think that's uh hasn't been something that everybody's had the uh uh they haven't had the ability to hear about that yet and I think that uh whether it's uh I believe that there's good and there's a lot of good that can come from that discussion and I think it can open up uh dialogue with everybody all students of all walks of life no matter where they are um so I don't think that we've uh done anything uh that would damage our mission and vision statement uh with with what's been going on so I don't know if I answered your qu question how you wanted it to be answered but
012that's my answer thank you I wasn't uh specifically asking for a prescribed answer I was just curious to see uh what your thought process is and taking us forward uh the unfortunate piece is that actually the whole initiative with Fair we had board members who didn't know about the organization uh for one and the organization itself eloquently eloquently lays out their objectives in a way that is very uh generic around color blindness and we are all human yes of course that's obvious and what it what it does not what it neglects to acknowledge is different and how important that is that we acknowledge that both uh in in in color gender life lived experience and so forth so I I I'm concerned that we would see it as is this part of the president yes
013because I would like for uh our president our current president to speak to how he's going to move us forward I have some real concerns about that and so thank you so so I'll um you want to go ahead y I just I would suggest caution in discussing an item that hasn't been agendized on the agenda for for discussion would be my caution um so that being said um there is a motion on the table or there and it has been seconded so a roll call please Terry can can I just add one more discussion I think we should end the discussion at this point because it is not agendized Mr Johnson hi Mr abara I M Grace Velasquez hi Miss Noble hi motion passes okay next we shall elect the clerk of the board
014for the 2024 calendar year per board bylaw 9100 is there a motion and a second for nominations for clerk for the board and I at this time would actually like to make a motion for Jose wanara to be our Clerk is there a second I second that motion roll call please Terry Mr Johnson hi Mr abara hi Miss Grace Velasquez hi Miss Noble hi motion passes according to bylaw uh 91222 the Govern Gover board shall appoint the superintendent to serve as secretary to the board is there a motion to uh in a second to appoint superintendent Schwab as the board secretary for the 2024 calendar year uh I motion to approve uh superintendent to the be the secretary of the board I second that motion roll call please Terry Mr Johnson hi Mr abara hi
015M Grace Velasquez I miss Noble I motion passes um let's see now we'll move on to the election of Representative and Alternate to elect members to the county committee on School District organization uh for the 2024 calendar year is there a motion and a second for nominations for a representative and an alternate to the county committee on School District organization I nominate Kathy Grace I can't say your last name Velasquez Vasquez oh I'm honored I will second that motion and an alternate well oh yeah uh actually Kathy did second that motion oh no oh okay so we do need yes we need an alternate as well I'll nominate Sher Noble as a second as alternate okay there we go I will second that thank you Jose Juan roll call please Terry Mr Johnson hi mrar
016hi M Grace Velasquez hi Miss noville hi we move on to the uh the dates board meeting dates yes so now um um have you all had a chance to review the board meeting dates I know Jose w had some uh discussion that we would just go ahead and approve the January 16th and then maybe give everybody a little more time to take a look at their calendars I do have a conflict though on November 19th um we can but that's but I'm with you I'm with uh Jose want as well to do the January 16th and then look at it by know the 19th is a conflict for me at this so I'm gonna make a note on that on my go ahead would you also note that that the meeting for October the
01715th uh does not fit in my calendar so we could have that the prior the Tuesday prior or the follow or or the following or the following well no it would have to be after the 22nd beginning or end of October so we'd have to probably go before so the October one has to be done before what date uh elisia okay so we're pretty open October and November as well yeah okay well then maybe we can move if we move it up the October move the November up to the 12th maybe would that work potentially do we want to do we want yeah this is probably a good place to discuss it take a look at your calendars I don't have my calendar available uh if we could go back to what we first agreed
018January we move forward with the January 16 and that gives us another more time to review our calendars and come back with a stronger absolutely s thank you can I suest wees as they as they stand and then we will revisit them I'm in agreement with that yes so let I I moved to accept the uh the meeting dates as they are currently is there a second I'll second that roll call Terry Please Mr Johnson hi Mr abara hi M Grace Velasquez hi Miss Noble hi motion passes thank you we'll bring those back in January okay so now is the time for comments and board comments and corresponden you guys have anything we' like to bring up I I could start with the csba conference and um I know you guys were there as well
019and it was a I thought it was very educational and uh uh I learned actually was able to bring home a few things and I I've learned from conferences that if you can bring home more than one item you've actually done very well and uh I brought home quite a few made some notes and uh it was very productive was a great time and I I will share those with you Jose Juan uh it it's uh it was it was nice so and I agree with um Chris Johnson too that you know being able to go to a conference to hear like the just some amazing speakers and to really be educated about a job that there is no training for your your forth into it and to um you know learn from other people
020in large districts small districts you know all around the whole state um was incredibly valuable um a lot more valuable than I hav't even expected so um I just appreciate that experience and I agree with uh both of you I thought it was wonderful um I enjoyed the new board member um Workshop in particular as well as meeting other board members from across R the state and how interesting the districts are so different when someone mentioned La unified and everybody was because it was such a large district and then compareed to some of the smaller districts um but the the it seemed like everybody that I spoke with their heart is all in the right place it's all about the kids everybody a lot of the districts have um a lot of noise coming at
021the schools but it's they kept reiterating that we have to remember that it's for the kids and their success moving forward so that was like my big takeaway I think from it besides many a multitude of other things as far as governance and budgeting and all of that that's great would would you mind Chris and Sher just sharing one or two takeaways that are just as it as it relates to your role here in our district um there's just so many um even in terms of the um well learning about the the the brown act you know and just in examples and they gave us some scenarios of like that were this was in the new board member training and so some that were really kind of tricky and we like even there were superintendents
022at our table as well and they everybody was split in the decision of is this a brown act issue or is it not and I thought that was that was kind of reassuring because I was I was I did not know the answer and so we had to discuss it and then kind of come up and we discussed it but you know some of those gray areas so we you know are you know following the rules you know of of these you know procedures and policies that we're supposed to follow and um so I really appreciated that in a real life instead of just always being talked to that there was all interaction and you know we all kind of came up with answers together and then could figure it out you know I I
023there's so many so many items and it could go deep this could go on all night I think I will Reserve this for a one-on-one discussion and uh fill you in on the many things that were that that I had learned that's great thank you I I do have one uh myself um I guess what I what I wanted what I want to do uh first is to thank everyone who's been uh engaged with our school district whether recent or just past few months uh and really want to um encourage everyone to stay uh attuned and so we can celebrate all of our WIS and and work together towards improving our craft and making sure that all of our students and faculty and and students and families have um have an excellent experience in as
024as as pirates and I I guess I I want to um because this so important to us uh this is kind of the stake on the ground for a district I'd like to read our mission Envision statement uh because I know there are folks probably online who may not have already accessed it uh and I believe that the more we say it the more we manifest it uh the closer we'll get uh running it in alignment uh so that our students feel it that it's real vision statement every student will graduate prepared for success in their future endeavors the mission it is the mission of the sers valley Union High School District to provide a rigorous and Broad academic experience that connects and engages a social emotional in physical needs of every student in a
025positive and supportive learning environment what I love about it is that it is student centered and that it explicitly says every student thank you could I thank youone oh can I just say it was interesting you brought that up because at one of the um workshops we went to and I had actually spoken with Andrew about it how to have um place mats or placards on our desktop here on the boardroom and also I think it' be kind of cool to have it on the wall the mission mission statement and the vision statement um to have it here to remind us as board members but also for the community to have access to and I thought that was a wonderful takeaway and it was just interesting that you brought that up because all the workshops
026went to a couple I went to a couple diversity ones some ethics ones uh at the workshops and they were all tremendous and again it went back to all students and so that was a wonderful opportunity for all of us thank you Kathy so we'll move on to public comment time period um we have uh let's see currently we have 17 um people that would like to speak during the public comment time period and the uh uh the policy states 20 minutes or and at three minute time uh but 17 times three obviously is longer than that so as uh discussion on um do we want to go to two minutes per person is that uh just just asking you we do have a lot of stuff to get through tonight in budget right and
027I want everybody to be able to speak obviously that's right so we're talking about 45 minutes well it end up being about an hour yeah yeah I think two minut minutes is fair for everybody um to come and make a public comment and we've done that before in the past um at other board me meetings when we've had a large um amount of people that have wanted to speak so I think that keeping consistent with what we've normally done would be important okay so they having a hard time hearing yeah um please remember to speak into the microphone a little bit better so that every so that everybody can hear okay it could be a technology thing are you are you having a Time hard time hearing Jose right now now you're okay now okay
028so so I I'd like to um support what Kathy just proposed is that there is a president here when we do have um a lot of cards that we uh it's really important to hear everyone who has taken the time from their day to address the board uh that's right thing to do so moving forward um to do two minutes so that everyone does have an opportunity to speak and perhaps maybe don't take any more cards moving forward well wait let me backt track I'm not sure we can do that think we can limit card so I want to strike that I of course want everybody who wants to speak or needs to speak to do so thank you yes so so two minutes okay so um Terry would you thank you okay so the
029our first would be uh D fainer is that correct yeah that's me [Music] okay thank you good evening y'all as a sophomore at s High and a member of the school's GSA and theater group I stand with the hundreds of students and staff members against the radical Fair program entering our school s's highest curriculum is fundamentally between the teachers and the administrators and a smooth talking non-political group that specifically targets Progressive schools to compromise their inclusivity has no place in our curriculum to show the harm and misinformation this program advocates for let's explicate a paragraph that fa proudly dis plays on its main website Fair claims that too often when children exhibit behaviors or preferences that don't match up with the stereotypes their biological sex they are told it's a sign that they're transgender maybe
030this sounds undeniable to you but any teacher working here would tell you that they would never ever tell a student that they seem transgender in addition the progressive teachers you fear are indoctrinator our students would not show up to this ridiculous training pronam so you might as well just burn that money Fair also asserts that in classrooms with open discuss question of of diversity and identity students are at risk with confusion personally I don't know how anyone could walk away from this meeting and see us marginalized students as confused about how we feel and what we want finally the organization maintains that the pro-human approach is to give children the the space to play Imagine and explore without forcing them into labels or rigid categories however in the very next paragraph they promote concerned teachers
031outing students to their parents when they express confusion or dysphoria around gender at school outing students who are exploring their gender or sexuality to their parents puts these poor kids at high risk of abuse pseudoscientific conversion therapy and being kicked out of the house all of which massively increase the likelihood that a student will attempt suicide because queer youths are already under immense pressure and stress from disrespectful classmates and oppressive authorities and systems now you tell me does that sound like giving children space without forcing them into labels or categories please consider cancelling your agreement with the fair program thank you thank you d uh next up Robert Cray thank you my name is Robert Cray and I'm not surprised that you signed a contract with fair for all we've all witnessed the awful bigotry
032and hate at the school over the last couple of years and you're not done yet you we've hired Fair who are against diversity inclusion and ethnic studies like I said I'm not surprised remember this is a public high school and our students are here to learn from teachers not to be poisoned with Hate by some board members and parents with a bigoted agenda this world is filled with that enough of that already and it's dis disrespectful to our students and this community our students have to learn to live their lives in this world after they graduate and most of them will leave this Valley and hopefully won't have to think too often about the negtive ne negativity that they have witnessed from some of you board members and some angry parents hopefully thank you [Applause]
033Robert please the Applause is not necessary the next up Charlie [Music] Roar my name is Charlie reor and I'm currently a senior at San NZ High School I've spent the past two years as the president of the campus's gender sexuality Alliance and have dealt with a lot of controversy during my years in this position I not only have worked to be a support system to students who feel uncomfortable on campus but have had to worry about my own safety and treatment as an openly queer student I am extremely disappointed to hear that the school board has approved Foundation against intolerance and racism or Fair training for our teachers the fair program is incredibly detrimental and even life-threatening to queer students the program curriculum says ident identifying as transgender is a confusion in teens and believes
034that quote Educators should inform families when a child is experiencing confusion or dysphoria around gender at school I personally know and I'm friends with many transgender and non-binary students on campus not only are these teens not confused about who they are but many of them are not supported at home and feel like they cannot truly be themselves outside of school with the fair program the school is taking away the only safe space that so many students have it's no secret that students learn better in an environment they're comfortable in meaning the fair program would be disrupting the education of so many queer students not to mention have a detrimental effect on their mental health according to studies done by the Trevor Project 45% of LGBT Q Plus youth have seriously considered suicide in the past
035year however those who found their school to be lgbtq plus affirming reported the presence of suicidal thoughts at a significantly lower rate by just allowing students to freely exist as who they are the school would be saving lives Schoolboard president Chris Johnson has stated that the board is quote focused on the education of all students in a safe and welcoming environment if the board is truly focused on all students then queer students deserve the right to a safe and welcoming educational environment which we are currently not receiving furthermore the fair program and the school's adoption of it violates Ed code 220 stating no student should be subject to discrimination on campus due to their gender identity expression or sexual orientation I strongly urge the Sanz School Board to realize the harm they are causing lgbtq
036plus students and terminate their contract with Fair immediately thank you Charlie please again the Applause uh next up would be Mrs k lupy uh Hernandez and she gets um some extra time yes okay okay good afternoon to everyone I'm here today this this year my student my daughter Jella is gonna graduate here to see if we could have and receive any type of support or help to help her she really wants to keep on stud and she wants to prepare herself nobody has informed us nobody has even called us to see if there was any type of scholarship even offered to her or any type of help thank you thank you Guadalupe uh next up would be Mr hernandz good afternoon my name is herandez and we're here also at this meeting to see also
037I'm listening to a lot of things that have been brought up to my attention when you began the meeting you did say that here at this High School there's a lot of people with a lot of of different races and a lot of colors but they also come with a lot of dreams and sometimes those dreams get stuck because they don't have the support and that's why we came here to receive that Assistance or help and that information I know everything's through email nowadays and we're very ignorant in regards to that and we want to see if you guys could support us so we don't get her dreams of my daughter stuck of the her dreams that she has gracias thank you thank you Amy Gra [Applause] uh next Gary Caris thank you President Johnson
038my name is Gary Carris a resident of svang um I live about a mile from here um and I I want to speak to the the board about the need to resend the fair contract um I don't want to get into a lot of the specifics that some of the other speakers are going to be addressing um I want to I want to leave you with a couple of key points first of all these are not Educators I looked at the the website there's 18 members of the board of advisors there's not a single educator on the board of advisers AFF fair this is an advocacy group with a political agenda and whether you agree with the political agenda or disagree with the political agenda it's inappropriate to have this political agenda foed on the
039students of this high school and they're very candid in the website they're seeking to advance their agenda in a variety of ways one is through this purported uh educational assistance but another very telling uh strategy is to advance their agenda through lawsuits throughout the United States um this is a political group and a political group does not belong at this school uh we should take political agendas out of the classroom and leave education to the Educators and I would close with this would the board seriously consider hiring the Southern Poverty Law Center or the American civil liberties Union to advance their agenda under the guise of of promo in critical race Theory or Free Speech or anything else the answer is obvious the board wouldn't do that because the board would say let's keep the
040politics out of the classroom let's keep the political agendas out of the classroom and I ask you to do the same with respect to fair and resin the contract thank you thank you [Applause] Gary um Mora Mora Mariah Mora Mora Gil sorry hi uh I have a clipboard here uh and I'm going to leave it with a pen on the back for anyone who wants to join me as a library volunteer core I talked to Mr Terina yesterday I'm a mom and um told him that I would say tonight that I understand the library is has no librarian so um he said the best thing to do is to volunteer and and and pitch in so um we we will do that so there's a 's a little thing here I have also that I
041I did take Don keyote out but I will return it I'm very good at returning books uh to the library um just before I I know I can't take too long I haven't timed this but a student gave my daughter this terrible thing and asked someone to read it so here I go and so this is from a student uh who who didn't feel comfortable reading it to you greetings board members everyone the letter I'm about to read is on behalf of an Anonymous non-binary student who didn't feel comfortable speaking tonight quote I'm rather upset to be hearing Fair agreements passing especially because we the GSA only found out about this recently and had very little time to speak as a group about it so I think they have a lot to say and that
042was me here back to them there have been many disturbances throughout the past few years that have been discussed notably changes in the board making towards lgbtq Community last year pain in the crosswalk was merely one of the major things that upset our community was outrageous and utterly saddening and stripped us of our right to self-expression as for Farah's website there's been talk about book Banning curriculum change attacks on gender identity the book Banning is just the start of how unreal this whole agreement to fair is they could be talking about any book especially like ones to Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee which describes racial Injustice there's many other books that we get taken from our library which is interesting I didn't know the kids were going to talk about the library but
043here I am um on the topic of gender Fair says that quote in case of minor children we support pronoun usage that's consistent with the fundamental due process rights of their parents um I'll read this out in the H to anyone who wants to hear it it was amazing um he talks about they talk about suicide thank you thank you Mora uh next up would be Aria view [Music] Dy hello my name is Ari viy and I wanted to reintroduce myself to the board as of last night I am now the acting president of the Sanz Valley High School PTSA I was elected by the executive board to fill a vacancy and ironically as you well as you may know I was the vice president previously I was elected last year and so now there's
044another vacancy in that spot and I shared this with a group of students today and there was some enthusiasm and and a few people that did volunteer so hopefully we're going to move forward and work with students and teachers and parents Al together and I really do look forward to our new Cooperative relationship and the work that we can do together as partnership going forward I also look forward to talking to you Mr Schwab tomorrow about this new partnership and more excitingly the paperwork that we're going to work on um thank you and on that note I am so thrilled to see a bunch of students here today I'm a massive advocate for students exercising their right to Civic engagement and I really do want to implore you to listen to what they have to
045say and take it to heart and think about how your decisions are going to impact them and how they're going to impact this whole Community because the message you're sending with this Fair program and with a lot of the other things that have occurred in the past few years is really detrimental and I think that if we all just listen more to the people that this is going to impact the most then everyone would be better off and we could probably have a more cooperative and more positive relationship as an entire Community thank you thank you [Applause] Arya uh next up Leslie is it uh com hes lesie hes I'm gonna try and speed talk dear board members my name is lesie mmes I've lived in the valley for 40 years I sent all of
046my kids to this school four of them and I've been asked by my friend Stephanie cook to read her public comment for her I was given permission this afternoon to do so now I will be speaking Miss Cook's written comments to the board though I'm unable to attend tonight's meeting due to a prior commitment I need to correct misinformation provided in statements made during public commentary at the October 24th board meeting by PTSA president Denise alamine before I do so however it's important to understand will L up to that meeting I Tred to contact the PTSA board via the only email address I could find online on two occasions I never received a response either email after 3 weeks even though I copied the second email to the membership's chair's a personal address my goal
047was to volunteer for the newly formed environmental committee but no contact information had been provided for any committee chairs concerned that I had the wrong contact information and because the school year uh was passing I emailed the school administration for assistance my email was then shared with my permission with the state's P PTSA prep rep Carol Nation Ms Nation must have then forwarded to uh Denise elamine I was not copied on that email nor contacted to answer my questions or ask questions of their own the ptsa's entire communication process seemed less than transparent after learning my name was publicly called out during the October 24th district meeting I watched it on you Youtube and was shocked to hear that I had been slandered Miss elamine held a copy of my email calling it hate mail
048I would not characterize anything I wrote as hateful she stated that I called her an idiot an outright lie I did not call anyone anything and never would as someone who only openly described disparaging remarks during um she has endured thank you Leslie you you can submit that to the board if you'd like thank you next up Sylvia ba good evening my name is Sylvia b and I would like to address the false and defamatory statements made about me by Denise alamine at the last school board meeting on October 24th Miss alamine claimed that I do not have a student at the high school which in fact I do my son is a junior I'm a parent of a current pirate a former pirate and a grandparent of two future Pirates Miss zamine claimed that
049I along with others sent her hate mail this is untrue and when it is directed at me I sent an email and venmo request to the PTSA requesting mine and my husband's due be returned I stated that I was deeply offended by the comments made by melamine during the first PTSA meeting of the school year on September 18th as she treated a teacher with complete disrespect in front of students as parents we teach our children to respect their teachers Miss Eline acted completely opposite of respectful and we should lead by by example she went on to claim that I Paid Dues in May of this year prior to her being elected president so that my dues were quote unquote used up this is also untrue I Paid Dues in April and then again in August
050both payments were made through venmo and can be verified since September 19th I have repeatedly requested mine and my husband's dues be refunded to which my request has been declined with no explanation thank you thank you Sylvia uh next Emy Stevens hi my name is Emmy Stevens and I'm going to be reading an anonymous statement hello I'm a transgender student at Sanz high school as I'm not in a safe and place to out myself to an entire Community I cannot speak here in person but I feel the need to speak out for those who can't I wish I could say I was angry when I found out about the fair staff training but the news filled me with genuine Terror both for myself and many other students bringing in an outside group to to push
051extremist views on our school is unfair and downright cruel encouraging teachers and staff to out queer and train students to their families is extremely dangerous and will undo all the work we've done to make the school a safe place for queer students as I'm sure you've been told several times to statistically over half of all lgbtq identifying people have experienced Suicidal Thoughts due to the lack of support from their families and communities and that number is even higher in trans individuals just because people like you decide don't deserve basic respect because of our identities I wish I could look every one of you in the eye every one of you board members in the eye when I say that I am one of those people who has experienced these thoughts during my time at this
052school and under this Administration I've known several other students who have gone through similar experiences and what you are doing will only make it worse I strongly urge you to reverse this decision and consider the physical and mental well-being of your students not the opinion of outside organizations thank you for your time thank you em next would be uh cash Whitney hi um I'm cash Whitney as you just said thank you um I am here to also talk about fair and I'm not going to call you all bigots I am not going to spew a bunch of facts at you not saying those facts weren't accurate all of those were accurate I've looked at them many a Time but I do want to just talk to you more about the personal level that this brings
053towards us because it's easy to look at a statistic and just see points on a board it's easy to see oh that's one suicide there that's one death there it's not as easy when it happens at your school especially when you're the people in charge of it so those of you who don't know in the audience I'm hoping you guys know because you're signing on to it uh Fair encourages the idea that you cannot that a teacher is encouraged and able to out a student to their parents uh this can be a level of uh TR being gay or particular being trans or not identifying to their given gender that they were assigned at Birth um they also say that they do not believe in the idea of political social um genders uh and I
054want to address that statement further who I am is not political who I like to kiss in the bathroom during school I didn't say that Miss day um is not political who I identify as is not political it shouldn't be anybody's problem except for mine also to address the idea that it's confusing kids um I'm going to be blunt because we're all adults here well I'm not but most of you are um when I found out that I was not a was did not feel comfortable in the body that I'm in I did not was not told by my mother oh maybe you're trans I just felt huh I don't like having a penis that was what was going through my head it wasn't a social idea so I see my time thank thank you
055[Applause] cash next up uh Dr Peter Wright thank you President Johnson members of the board superintendent Schwab councilor woman Lewis Mrs westall uh I appreciate getting to speak with you tonight pirate class of 2001 but I come to talk with you tonight as a colleague uh I am a trustee at College Elementary School Board and I used to be really proud to get to send our Bobcats here to get to be Pirates but frankly I have been shaken with the recent news um at College I'm proud of some of the awards we've won uh but the one I'm most proud of is being a school of kindness and what I'm hearing is that when we keeping students away from academic material that's not kind when we're barring the parent teacher Association an organization that supports
056our students our teachers and Embraces our community that's not kind and what particularly troubles me is has been talked about Fair a contract that you've entered into uh which mandates training for teachers and students that I don't think they want and in fact I think the organization Fair actually goes against the California law also called fair and that stands for fair accurate inclusive respectful so I really ask you to govern that way to govern fair fair accurate inclusive and respectful and I want to get back to getting really excited to Sender Bobcats uh to be Pirates appreciate the work you do and thanks for taking so much time to listen to the public thank you do right uh lee Rosenberg good evening Andrew Chris I think it's time to resign you've spoken against dividing the
057community and you've done just that last year a crosswalk was painted with pride colors Andrew you supported that along with a large group of students then of a sudden you didn't support it I ask why I think it was because you received a veiled threatening email from Chris you got scared and capitulated the email said and I quote I've been getting inundated with upset community members onward SE sexualization and politics have no place in the school the painted bumps are both can you imagine if the conservative group what group wanted to paint MOGA on them both symbols are divisive he goes on to say people helping people have been infiltrated oh my goodness by groups that aim to divide and push agendas the Anti-Defamation League and the program no place for help is what you're
058talking about that are not in line with the values what values that the majority what majority in this community stand for and he goes on we need to discuss the outside influence including the activist role of the PTSA and he goes on the health health and wellness program is what mainly brings on the outside influence fascinating so you pay $10,000 for a mandatory program for faculty and students that wraps destructive magga educational policy in sugary rhetoric that has divided the community resign and let go of your subversive Maga junk you've attacked the Anti-Defamation League and the health and wellness program and the PTSA and people helping people you've fired the Librarians so you can go into the library and remove books that don't align with your politics thank you Lee that sounds like the cancer
059in Florida has metastasized into your board enough Lee thank you very much for [Laughter] resigning appreciate no applause Hero please next up hello I'm Cairo I'm a transgender student here at the high school I'm a senior and I'm here to talk about Fair as many of the other people here have talked about you said quote in an email that the sexualization of politics have no place in a school but fair isn't political I am not political nor sexual neither there are any other the lgbtq plus students or trans students here in this school is a rainbow sexual to you I don't think so or is it political no it's a flag it's a rainbow and it is here to help and support every single trans student here like myself and the outing of trans students
060in this training is outright dangerous as a student that has had prior experiences with suicidal ideation this is dangerous this is not helping your students and I encourage you to help your students all of them just like you promised you would thank you thank you Kyo uh next Rebecca August hi I'm trying to shorten my comment because I don't think I'm going to fit this um I request that the discussion of fair be placed on the Hello be placed on the agenda for the next regular board meeting fair is not fair to our students or our community and it's not what we need right now um I'm Jewish my family's sense of safety and stress level more acutely at this moment in history but at any time during our lives is different than members of
061the dominant culture anti-Semitism did not unfortunately end with a holocaust not even in this school likewise racism did not end with slavery discrimination against lgbtq community did not end with Stonewall etc etc it's important for young people to understand the experience of minority groups all students in our community even if it's not ubiquitous for all students to feel safe and for the school to make appropriate accommodations as needed Fair sounds good but when you read beyond the careful language and look at the track record fa's position on racism and discrimination indifference is that though it may have existed in the past it's not relevant and does not exist today when only need to watch the news and on any given day to know that that is not at all true it's Gravely important for the
062Next Generation to learn about the hurdles and hate and discrimination that minority groups in our community face this needs to be acknowledged and addressed and be part of discussions in our classroom today Fair has no place in our school at this time thank you thank you Rebecca next up uh Larry Bishop good evening I'm Larry Bishop I'm a a member of the PTSA and my daughter is a millennial um 2000 class of 2000 sessi been a few years um my my concern with the fair contract is that it is seems to be in direct opposition to other um to other curriculum that you're uh that the school is required to teach not only the uh State Education Code but also the well part of that is the is the California safe uh uh healthy youth
063act which requires um open um aiding children um in in students in in uh who who have in in in sexual education in various ways but it also um it also you know encourages um open and honest and compassionate communication the the the fair program seem to be in opposition to these laws and and I and I I wonder uh you're spending what 11 ,000 something like that to bring folks out to speak uh or to to to train you folks how much of you spent how much has uh the school spent to train teachers and students on the requirements of the California safe excuse me California healthy youth youth act which is basically uh those those two those two uh curriculum seem to clim well thank you thank you Larry Mark Cel uh good
064evening board members and community members um I'm alumni and current parent of a student at the school um over the past month I've talked to a number of students uh to try to get ideas from them on things that this community can do to help with their student experience and their education um one of the top things they said is bringing inspirational speakers uh these kids want to be inspired they want to hear stories some people that have gone to school here have left this area have made their Mark in society and so that these kids know that they have a future bigger than their current and past and that's very important um our students are the most important people to be served on this campus more important than staff members board members politicians uh
065parents it's about the kids um it's a small school we've got a a stretched budget uh we live in a state with one of the worst public academic performances in the country uh we're ranked 50th that's dead last uh in in graduation rate 49th in student safety and 48th with bullying and somehow the fifth largest economy in the world is entering into a 58 billion doll budget shortfall which is going to affect all California schools this locally elected board has the prerogative to to do what they want uh but with respect to fair I looked in a little bit further it looks to be an alternative approach to critical race Theory that's what it is and it's an advocacy group and um uh I I I don't think that we need to experiment on our
066children with any curriculum critical race Theory or Fair because they have so much to do with just learning math science language having a good time being good humans that I would encourage us to let them focus on academics I would focus on how do we Inspire them um and this community needs to go easier on this school you guys keep getting barges with frivolous complaints police reports lawsuits unreasonable expectations from a com small group of community members you guys need to run this school you need to hire a full-time principal and we need to focus on the students thank you we're all adults we've lived Our Lives it's about them uh Jon Jones or Josh Jones I'm sorry I've been requested to continue reading the letter that was presented by Moira um I believe we're
067pick up from here with this mou being approved and enacted students will no longer have a safe space in their school causing them great physical mental and emotional harm including worst of all potential self harm outing the students for being comfortable with themselves can put those in danger of being hurt it takes away the rights of a person to come out to their o on their own terms it is the epitome of wrongdoing and takes away someone's rights to freedoms uh and to freedom of speech privacy and above all their own safety the national us suicide rates are shown here the yellow represents California rates and the gray represents National rates I can show you the graph if you'd like contemplate The Staggering rise in suicide rates that could result from the anticipated training for
068teachers orchestrated by the school board and fair should the sorrowful demise of a student occur I fervently demand the board's attendance at the child's funeral as they gaze upon the lifeless F figure within the the coffin let them acknowledge with raw honesty that This calamity could have been averted if the initial tragedy had never unfolded you call it confusion we call it self-expression thank you for listening that'll be all thank you Josh we got time for one more don't we Charlie hi I'm Charlie uh I'm a little sick right now pardon the voice I graduated last year and uh I came here with my friend Cairo and I wasn't planning on speaking tonight but I I read your little uh Fair pamphlet and are you guys serious like you're actually GNA Implement do you don't
069think trans kids and queer kids have it hard enough at the school like having you met high schoolers there a mean bunch of kids and having the the school itself not be there to support them is frankly absurd uh that's really all I have to say thank you thank you Charlie so that'll end our public comment time period we'll move on to the approval of the consent agenda is there a motion to approve uh I move to a motion to approve the consent agenda I second that motion to approve the consent agenda roll call please Terry Mr Johnson I Mr abara I Miss Grace Velasquez I miss Noble I motion passes uh now we'll move on to our action items number two uh let's see resolution 24-4 authorizing delegation of governing Powers duties and certification
070of signatures page um this is a standard annual item where we bring to the board um approval for those who can sign um agreements contracts bank accounts and those kind of things so we ask the board to approve I move to approve the resol the resolution authorizing delegation of government power duties and certification signature page is there a second I second that motion roll call Terry Please Mr Johnson hi Mr abara hi Miss Grace Velasquez hi Miss Noble hi motion passes now we'll move on to sanas Valley Union High School District measure K 2022 2023 annual audit report okay so this starts the night of hearing Alicia speak a lot so I'm GNA just apologize in advance and get right on with it so item number three is our annual measure K audit and this
071is an external audit from an external audit company they come in every year and they have to review you know revenue and expenditures and just make sure that it meets all the requirements for spending for that particular revenue or expenditure Source the cool thing about this year's measure K audit is it is the last measure K audit that you guys are going to have the pleasure of viewing as we have fully expended all of our funds the Auditors were able to audit transactions totaling % of the total expenditures for the fiscal year of 2223 which were a total amount of $844,000 there were no audit findings and no question costs for the 2223 fiscal year and the balance in that account is now zero I would recommend approval Thank you Lisa is there a motion
072for approval I motion to approve the audit a second I'll second that roll call please Mr Johnson hi Mr abara hi M Grace Velasquez hi M Noble I motion passes next the Sanz Valley Union High School District 2022 2023 annual audit report audit findings and corrective action plan so I'm trying to bring the corrective action plan back over here forgive me for my technical issues this evening I'm trying to do a different presentation tonight and it is not cooperating what is going on here so there we go I was trying to drag it but it wasn't letting me okay so what you're looking at now just like measure K was its own Financial audit you are looking at The District's annual Financial audit again it's an external auditing team that comes in and they go
073through the revenue and expenditures for the district and they make sure that everything is up to both accounting and um uh internal control type type standards um our district has several what are called single audits where if you get a certain uh if you meet a certain dollar threshold you have to have in-depth audits in each of those types of programs and in the past we have not met those thresholds because we have not received an abundance of federal state or Grant funds however since covid and the uh implementation of those one-time covid dollars and other grants we have met the threshold for those single Audits and in one of those such single audits which is uh federal funds there was an audit finding related to Federal compliance so what happened was the um it's
074not the Federal Trade Commission what the emergency the yeah the emergency connectivity funding Grant was offered to school districts to help uh reimburse the costs for uh devices to connect to the internet during the one-on-one and um the lockdown when students were at home so they covered laptops they they covered w Wi-Fi connecting devices and those types of things so we applied for the grant and we were successful in the grant which I think we spoke about at the last budget uh adopted budget I believe and we received a grant of $233,900 dollars that we spent in terms of getting laptops and Wi-Fi devices to students um as part of that Grant there was some recordkeeping that we were supposed to do and and the grant language was very ambiguous in terms of what the
075Auditors were going to request as backup for that recordkeeping so we kept certain items that we assumed would satisfy those requirements and those requests for Auditors however when the Auditors received their audit directions from the state it was a little bit U more intense than the school district expected so as a result there are s there's $75,400 so what this means is that the Auditors came in and they saw that we had the Grant and they saw that we spent it on the right things but we do not have the documentation for $75,000 worth of that Grant to prove that it went into the hands of students so because we lack the actual contract it's what's called a question cost and Andrew you want to add to that yeah just to clarify so these these
076devices and the purchases were made prior to even being aware of the grant correct the grant was applied for after the fact um because money was still available and we met the eligibility so I just want to clarify that we didn't um purchase the devices with grant money that then turned out not to be eligible we actually the district purchased the devices because we needed them for the emergency and then we found out the grant was available and we applied and then it turns out that we had some documentation and um issues around being able to provide the required documentation going back to when the devices were actually purchased correct so it's about two years ago when we're looking at the purchases um so as a result what this means is that it is a
077question cost the Auditors have had other question costs of this nature for this grant program in other districts and the uh Federal grant entity has not come back and recouped those funds from them but it is a possibility that they could do so and I believe they have up to 10 years to come back and do that so the recommendation of the Auditors is to keep this $ 75,4 184 as what is called an assigned ending fund balance meaning that we have it and it is not spendable or usable because we have it assigned for this purpose and once the 10 years have lapsed we can remove the 75,000 or we receive information from the state or federal government that that they will not be you know recouping those funds so there's several ways that
078can happen to release those funds um as part of the corrective action we list you know what the corrective action was there really isn't any because we applied for the grant after purchasing so there's not really much corrective action that we could do Auditors have taken that corrective action and applied it to the audit and other than that the audit was great so as long as we hold that 75,000 plus um in case for 10 years hopefully AC crewing in some interest we're okay then right yeah yeah and we actually we are not legally required to hold it it is just best practice the Auditors have suggested that we do so if you all don't want to that is definitely within your purview but I do recommend following their their recommendations although we may not
079have the exact documentation we do know that this money was spent on computers for students yeah so as part of the audit so this money was actually audited this year for two purposes one to make sure that it met internal controls and part of internal controls is did the money get spent for allowable educational purposes is both state and federal it it passed that no problem it's part of the single audit where they go more in depth so had we not received this amount of money this audit finding wouldn't exist because they wouldn't have gone in depth to the number of documents and the papers they went through every single individual contract signed by students and those types of things so the fact that the computers were purchased and went to students is completely fine
080and pass the audit no problem it's just we don't have the documentation that is part of the more in-depth version so I have a question um what budget would that 75,000 be from and what would the impact be by holding um so good questions it comes out of general fund because the money went into general fund so it stays in the general fund just as sort of like a a note that we just can't spend it's part of our ending fund balance so when you look at our ending fund balance if we have say $5 million it's part of that $5 million those types of things so it shows in there and and the um you ask the consequences of assigning that is just that your ending fund balance looks a little bit higher it
081looks $75,000 higher but it is broken out when you look at the ending fund balance it'll say3 million but then it'll say assignments and then the remaining balance so it is broken out but it does inflate your ending fund balance because it's essentially money that is there but that you shouldn't be spending and know so the other way to think about that is We could decide to spend it realizing that in 10 sometime in 10 years we may get a $75,000 bill that would come in so it's right now we've designated it as nonspendable essentially um I think we will seek some clarification from the FCC um and we'll see if other districts are doing the same to see if we can get something that says they will not come after that money in the
082future with the oh so is that is that the benefit to keeping it in the fund or is there I mean just to hold the money just in case they might relase it at some point correct so that it's not a hit if we say get seven years down the road any of us aren't here and they say hey by the way we're billing you for 75 grand and we don't have it in the budget and nobody can remember why they would be charging for that 75 it's a good way of both keeping it at the Forefront and making sure that we aren't caught without the funds to deliver So So currently we don't have a bill it's just money sitting in the account okay okay correct got it so um I would recommend approval
083is there I'd like to move um that we approve the annual audit report as explained and the findings of Correction action plan is there a second I'll second that roll call please Mr Johnson hi Mr abara hi M Grace Vasquez I miss noville I motion passes uh next next will be the 2023 2024 first interim budget report in 2023 2024 through 2025 2026 multi-year projections okay so all the awes back to PowerPoint but I got bored of PowerPoint and decided to try to do something a little bit more exciting graphically and I may pay for it but let's hope that that is not the case okay all right so far so good okay so just a reminder when we talk about budget reporting periods that there are several budget reporting documents that are important to
084know and helpful to review in your process of reviewing the budget oh and also important to note where you can find those documents if you are not looking at the board agenda you can also find Historical references as well as current budget documents at our syv hsd.org website on the budget page make sure you have that second slash after budget or it will not take you to the correct place so the first document that you'll want to take a look at is What's called the Sachs forms and these are the standard accounting forms that we send to the state of California and I won't go through all of the different items here but basically if you go through the budget presentation this will tell you what fund you're looking at what budget reporting period it
085is and all the different projections so it's just a nice graphic visual of how to read the sax forms when you look at them because there's hundreds of them and sometimes it's difficult when you're taking a look at them to know what you're actually reviewing okay the other document that's really helpful is kind of like a cheat sheet we call it the analysis of changes and what it does is it takes your previous budget model and it Compares it to the current projected budget model and the first you know graphic there shows the previous budget the current budget and then the right hand hand side with the red and green shows the comparison between unrestricted restricted and then the combined differences and then if you look all the way to the left you'll see ABCD
086EFG that corresponds with on the bottom the ABCD EFG so it explains the notes at the bottom and it's very high level just to sort of give you an idea of what's changed so that those saxs documents make a little bit more sense when you're reviewing them okay so review is over we will jump right into the budget and we'll talk about assumptions so as you know all of the budget models are based on assumptions they are you know best guesses with the exception of the actuals that we're using for whatever reporting period that we're in right now we are using actuals for beginning balances and for expenditures through October 31st so everything that you're looking at in terms of actuals ends October 31st we don't include anything after that the projections include both actuals
087and what we project out through the remainder of the fiscal year our property tax projections are based on the P1 j29 report from the county assessor office we received ours um like beginning of October so that's the very first report that the county assessor sends to the school districts so it's not likely to change too much but it is something based on the county and no longer just our projection based off of last year's numbers and just important to note that our collective bargaining Association the CBA that you see up there is our negotiations and our negotiations are settled for the 23 24 fiscal year and all of those costs related to those previous settlements are included in the 2324 first interim budget and we meet our $3 million Reserve at the end of the
0882324 fiscal year so we were able to keep all of those in our assumptions okay so we'll start with Revenue overall our Revenue increased 4.1 1% and the graph you see here generally shows the difference between the original budget and the first interim budget numbers so you just kind of see visually graphically what the change was in those dollar amounts and we have lcff funds federal funds state funds and local funds jumping into those we'll look at unrestricted Revenue first so we had an overall increase in our unrestricted revenue of about 421,000 which equates to about 2.7% our property tax increase was 3.5% higher than we projected so that's awesome to hear I think that's the last of those covid real estate transactions um coming through we also had an increase in local Revenue because
089we added an IT person who was not in original budget ultimately in that position but also it is a position that is being funded through a Cooperative agreement with our elementary school districts so they are paying for this this person so you will see both in the revenue section and the expenditure section an increase related to this position so it is a wash when you compare the two but it does inflate Revenue because they're paying us and it does inflate expenditures because we are paying her so wash to the budget but increases in the numbers these increases in overall unrestricted Revenue are mitigated by a decrease in the reimbursement of the home to school transportation due to the lcff calculation decreases so because we are a basic Aid they take our property tax dollars and
090they do their calculations as to what it would equate to in the lcff calculation and then they remove portions of that as Transportation dollars so because they reduced the amount that they're giving for transportation and then recalculated our reduction based on our property taxes we received less than we projected in transportation for home to school reimbursement from the state I'm going to try to say that in less C ter that make me make sense for me um because our property taxes went up they're giving us less money for transportation the state is giving us less money for transportation cor because they're pretending that we have more for transportation based on their calculations of what we should be using in that way so it's a bummer and it's one of those ways where the state is
091not really taking into account how the basic Aid school districts function within this new formula yeah so moving on to the restricted side of the house we had a restricted Revenue increase due mostly to an increase in our title dollars so our Title One and title $2 increased dramatically I think we got $70,000 more in title one which is awesome um we also received 6 $65,000 in mental health funds that were added uh that we didn't have in the original budget those mental health dollars though while they come in and they hit our Revenue they're a wash because they immediately getss transferred over to the special education Consortium and it goes into the pooled resources for the Consortium so ultimately it is going towards our costs for special ed and it is ultimately helping us
092pay less but the mechanism of that funding is that it goes from us to the Consortium because this year's a the first year where they changed the state process whereby These funds never used to come to leas they used to go straight to the Consortium and we never saw them so that's why they weren't in our budget previously because we've never had to deal with them but now the state has changed it to where it's going to the leas first and then the leas transfer it where they need it to go yeah and just so as a as a Cooperative the special ed Consortium all the districts um decided that we would continue with the pass through for our mental health dollars so all the districts in the Consortium are now that we're getting those
093mental health dollars direct we're we're putting them back into the Consortium which is how it was prior to the state making this change because the Consortium is the one who is um providing those Services correct does that affect us in any way I know it just numbers in and out on a spreadsheet but with like the transportation like does it look like we have more money so then there could be somewhere down the line money taken out when actually it was it's just a so yes and no so it does affect us in terms of in and outs what it does is it protects us there's a number of um um triggers so to speak for extra reporting and stuff like that that if we were to receive these funds and then spend them ourselves
094we would have to code them to a special education goal and in doing that because we have not had special education funding in the last up years it would trigger some issues with the state because there's things like maintenance of effort that we would need to meet that we would automatically not meet by having expenditures in this goal that we've never had before because they all go to the Consortium so on that end of your question it is protecting us from these triggers by keeping it the same and not changing the fun funding model in that way in regards to your question as to whether it will hurt us because it looks like it's more Revenue the nice thing about these revenues is that they are in the restricted resources so as a general rule
095restricted resources and restricted dollars come with rules and laws and cannot be just spent on anything they can't go towards you know raises generally and those types of things so your restricted resources can have a lot of money that isn't accessible like we had for instance $14 million in our bond fund that would be great to be able to spend it on whatever we want but we were restricted to just Bond projects so this is the same idea even though it's in our general fund it cannot be used for anything else so nobody would point to this and say well you have these you know extra $100,000 in your budget so no not in that in that way but very good question we also received um aund well we knew that that the prop 28
096funds were going to come but we did not put them in our original budget because the state had done two things one they had not yet allocated the funds so we had no idea whether we were going to be getting $30,000 or $300,000 and we didn't want to guess you know you make Staffing decisions and stuff on on our numbers so we didn't want to guess the other part of that is the state giveth and the state taketh away so they had given us big grants for you know the Arts and materials block grant and the learning recovery block grant and then literally the next fiscal year they said oops sorry just kidding you get less we were concerned that they might go that route with prop 28 which was another reason that we didn't
097put it in the original budget they have since made the allocations and posted them to the CDE so we feel fairly certain that they're going to be good for the year but you never know they their uh most recent projections are very dismal and Bleak so I am very concerned when it comes to their allocations hopefully this one is good though yes Andrew I was going to ask did you get the most most recent because we were sitting in a meeting at the uh csba conference that was pretty dismal yeah so when I say yes I mean most most recent as of like three weeks ago when I was creating the presentation and the numbers in terms of what the numbers are right this moment today I don't know because I haven't compared them they're
098they're maybe not the same but as of the date of the forms and the documents and the compiling of all these numbers yes did you want to add something I was just going to say um so I think Friday the state Lao or um yeah I think it was the lao's office released a revised budget estimate um showing a 58 billion shortfall and a cola that went for next year projected it I think three and a half% and 1% or less so the economic conditions are definitely changing and the projection for next year um is not looking good for that's a bigger impact for lcff funded districts um because we are primarily funded by our property tax um Revenue however that's driven by economic conditions around real estate and home values and property values so
099right and funds like these like you saw with the Arts and Music and the learning recovery if they get in a bind and that's the way they go we don't really have a recourse so we just want to be mindful in in that uh we also had an increase that was mitigated a little bit by a decrease in the nonrenewal of the K12 strong Workforce Grant so it is a uh it's a grant that you have to apply for each round and we were not successful in the most recent round the reason for that being that they have certain um uh Pathways or career Pathways that they focus on and this most recent round was not a pathway that we are strong in or that we have so that's why we we didn't renew it
100does not mean that we can't go out for that in the future and I am sure that our CTE teachers will but for this round this fiscal year we removed it because we were not successful L what was the the um career path that was not strong medical technology and and uh healthc care okay all right so we will move over to the expenditure side of the house and again you'll see the graph there just representing the original budget expenditures in cont contrast to the first interim expenditures and the table of contents or the key so to speak is is below there so you can take a look at that if you have time later and we will jump into the unrestricted expenditures unrestricted expenditures increased 412,000 or about 2.7% again $100,000 or so of
101this is related to the it position being added in and again those $100,000 in expenditures are are being paid for by the elementary schools so while it inflates revenue and it inflates expenditures it is a wash to the budget so it's just upping the numbers but it's not detrimental to the to the bottom line we also had an additional increase in sub costs that were unexpected at the time of the original budget a $200,000 increase in special ed projections and based off our meeting today that may be even a little bit higher so we we need to wait for um the Consortium to finish their first inter we are still basing our numbers off of their original budget numbers because they're in the same time crunch that we are so we didn't get numbers even
102preliminary numbers until this evening and that was too late for our board meeting so we're operating on their original budget so I expect some changes in the sped numbers when we come back for second interim uh we also have $118,000 more than we projected at original budget for our SRD contract just because we didn't have a contract at the time of original budget we were still negotiating so we weren't sure where we were going to land and we also have $50,000 give or take for onetime uh replacements for equipment such as our pool reel and cover costs theater sound system repairs and new gym sound system repairs any questions on unrestricted expenditures I don't know if this is um unrestricted or restricted but um it's on particular on some expenditures on it was line um
103item five um I noticed the service and other operating expenditures is excessively high so I was wondering about that if you could uh maybe give us some historical information on this and what does that Encompass and what's going on there again yeah so that's a very astute observation um our services encompasses a lot of different things all the way from utilities water electric gas to Consultants to repairmen who come and you know replace a window or you know all of those types of things but also included in there are consultants and legal fees and one of the biggest drivers of our services increase is legal fees in 22 23 so when we do the budget we take the previous year's actuals and we add CPI we take out one-time expenditures if we know they are
104one time and not ongoing uh CP Consumer Price Index sorry yeah so we add whatever we spent last year you know take away anything that we know is one time and then we multiply it by that Consumer Price Index amount and that is how we budget for these larger areas like services in 2223 our actual expenditure for legal fees was $373,500 correct and our adopted budget last year was only 125,000 because it was in line with previous year's spending so we more than doubled that so for this year we took a more conservative approach we knew that we didn't have the same level of complaints and investigations on our plate as of original budget that we did in the previous year so we did reduce the budgeted amount to $200,000 instead of building off of
105the almost $400,000 we tried to bring it back down to a more reasonable amount based on previous year history so prior to 23 22 23 we were spending 139,000 and then the previous year 133 year before that was a slight anomaly at 168 year before that 148 year before that 60 year before that 63 year before that 50 8 so there is a small element where costs go up and legal fees are you know they're not insulated from that so they do increase as well but the majority of this is something that was alluded to in a in a public comment earlier we are being bombarded with PR requests complaints just things that are making it very costly and time consuming on the district's time so that's the majority of the 5,000 increase is the
106legal fees and where are we at this point in halfway through the school year so halfway through the school year our actuals and this isn't even all the way to December but our actuals as of October 31st was $13,300 it is likely that we will meet and exceed that budget okay so this is like two or three stem teachers or VOC or academic um teachers I mean as of now it is already exceeding the cost of one FTE of a full-time more senior teacher okay and then what part of what is there a portion of our deficit that this would encumber um if we look at last year last year would be maybe a quarter of our deficit I don't want to speak to this year because it's still not done but if we go
107off of last year's numbers that is a a quarter or so or more of our overall deficit just spent on legal fees can I ask um where's the cost come in I mean I know Terry's you're worth a million dollars but 300,000 I don't know yeah well I let me try to so I can break that down in a couple of different um areas um the first one being uh complaints and then related investigations particularly out bringing in outside investigators um who are generally they are attorneys as well um um and so we had a number of um complaints with outside investigations last year um which definitely contributed to that cost um the other piece of that is uh responding to public records acts requests so whenever we receive a public records act request we're
108required to um find and identify any existing records that we have related to those requests um we don't have to create records but we do have to go search and find any records that we may have that are um so um that meet the criteria and then we have to have all those records reviewed by legal council to make sure that we're not releasing anything we should not be releasing and so that's where the the time consuming part can come in depending on the scope of the records request I think we had one that was 9,000 records were were identified in the search and then a um legal has to go through and review each one of those records to make sure we're not releasing something we we that is protected or um has privacy
109around it so those can get really consuming really fast and we've had um I don't know we have at least three active ones right now so are these um complaints I don't know if you can answer this or not um have they the ones in the past anyway have they I mean did they have Merit or are they unsubstantiated so we went through this whole process to have it you know not necessarily come of anything but we're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars well I mean as a district have an obligation to treat every um complaint we receive seriously and so we we do take them seriously and we investigate um we have not had um complaints substantiated the complaints that we've had since I've been there substantiated um through that investigation process but we
110still we still are obligated to um investigate when we do receive complaints um yeah is there a um and I don't know if you can answer this or not um I know that in a previous board meeting someone had mentioned I know we can't say names or whatever I would imagine because I don't think that's right but is there a trend or something or I I guess and when I say that like a type of complaint or PR that people are looking for is there a certain person or group of people looking for certain things I'm just wondering if there's some kind of trend going on that is again takes away the focus of students and what's best for us and just kind of maybe potentially um and I do think everybody has a right
111to voice their thoughts and concerns but that may be somewhat you know in a time of deficit this just seems like an outrageous amount of money yeah well first I just want to say we we we do our best to mitigate the costs and and to try to save costs where we can um as we're responding to these um I would say the trend is um it's it's primarily directed by a few individuals um at least in the past uh year um and the topics um I mean they vary but um my preference would be for people to come in and ask questions and have a meeting and have a conversation um but the uh the p is specifically do seem to be very um pointed in what they're looking for and that also um
112makes it more difficult because when we're if somebody asked for a large General search we can produce a lot of records and go through them when people are asking for very specific things it takes more time for us to go through and make sure that we've we don't have any or we do and and that we make those responsive so um one last question uh of the you know PR requests alone are they topics that they could a person how do I say this that could come in and have a conversation with you first before taking it to that legal level and then if they feel that their answers um their questions are not answered then take it that next step rather than going straight from A to Z potentially I would say many of
113them are yes and they could be they maybe because there just misunderstanding or some sort of something I mean unfortunately when we get a a PR unfortunately public has the right to make a p request it's just once a p request comes in we have to treat it like a p request and so that's that's the way we have to handle those but yeah I would encourage anybody who has a question about any information to um either talk directly with uh my office the principal's office it's depending on what they're looking for um because obviously we'd rather rather go that route than have to engage with lawyers and um take up Terry's time and IT staff time to go looking for records yeah it'd be nice to um be able to focus on instruction and
114learning at the school and um programming and finding a principal than having to spend a whole lot of Terry's beautiful time searching I agree thank you if there are no other questions on unrestricted resources we will zoom over to restricted resources um restricted resources have increased 8% or $122,700 um onetime spending plans have changed resulting in fewer positions being paid for with restricted dollars to offset general fund expenditures so we reassess needs and changes in allocations of onetime resources and changed expenditures so where we had large expenditures coming from the general fund into restricted in those areas where you know the state took money away or did whatever we had to adjust and and change the expenditures so the expenditures in in that side decreased however we did have a $231,000 increase in capital outlay
115because we received a grant uh it's called the kit Grant and it's a kitchen infrastructure and training Grant in the amount of 231,000 so we have to put that in as being spent so we add the expenditures in the amount of 231,000 so it increases our expenditures and that increas is mitigated by those decreases in the other plans so um every resource in restricted resource is its own little pot of money but for reporting we put them all together so it does this weird tabulation where it overall increases and decreases in different pots of money um our other outgo increase resulting um as a result of having to transfer money from the general fund to the cafeteria fund to cover cash flow so in the beginning of the year the state had some issues getting
116their payments out for the reduced lunch free reduced lunch program so we had about two months where those payments weren't coming in and those payments vary anywhere from $30,000 to $100,000 monthly and they weren't coming in so the general fund had to cover the cash flow for um salaries benefits and and materials until until those checks started coming in regularly again so you'll see that okay any questions on restricted expenditures okay then we will jump over to our ending fund balance so right here you will see the combined ending fund balance you'll see unrestricted and restricted they each have their own ending fund balance and we really need to review them separately because like we explained before our restricted resources one in general en you want to use all of your restricted resources so your
117goal is to not really have an ending fund balance in restricted resources whether that means it's over a couple of years because you have spending plans and the dollars come in over a certain number of years or uh in our case like we have the routine restricted maintenance where we have to put into that for 30 years because we got prop 51 funds you know so those types of things basically you want in and out so for restricted the ending fund balance is not as important for us in our conversations as it is when we look at our unrestricted ending fund balance and it's important to note when you're looking at your ending fund balance that it's not just where the number Falls at the end of the year that is your ending fund balance
118so you start with your beginning fund balance you take out any deficits or add in any excesses at the end of your fiscal year but you also have to remove transfers out and contributions so for us we transfer it out to the jpa for the Consortium and we transfer out for debt services and we transfer out for cafeteria cash flow we we transfer out things that are annual and recurring every year like we have to pay our debt Services it's just not allowed to come from General one General fund1 so we transfer that out but that is an expense that needs to be structural in nature because it is ongoing same thing with the uh contribution to the routine restricted maintenance fund we have to put 3% of our general fund balance towards routine restrict
119red maintenance as a result of getting prop 51 so the way that we do that without negatively impacting our budget is we take all of our maintenance costs that we had every year anyway and we put them in the restricted routine restricted maintenance account and then we contribute to that account what we would have been spending out of the general fund every year anyway so it kills two birds with one stone we still keep our expenditures and keep no new expenditures to meet that requirement so it's not hurting our ending fund balance but we meet the requirement for the state in terms of having those funds earmarked in that way so those things are important to take out when you're looking at your ending fund balance so then you get to the third line up
120from the bottom which is the actual ending fund balance after you take into account all those things that you need to and then in the unrestricted side of the house you'll see the board required Reserve or the root or the restricted ending fund balance so in a restricted on the restricted side of the house the entire ending fund balance of restricted is restricted so really you have zero ending fund balance because there is no excess because it's all restricted so that's why you see a zero in the middle column at the very bottom for restricted for unrestricted you see the excess as a result of all of those things taken out and our $3 million minimum Reserve so jumping into the restricted like I explained it's always unsp spendable it should always be zero because
121anything that you have left over is restricted and earmarked for specific programs for us this is a good ending fund balance it is not indicative of the district's Financial uh position it is just one-time dollars and restricted dollars that need to be spent and are being planned in multi-year spending plans for us what is indicative of the district's Financial Health or the district's Financial picture is our unrestricted ending fund balance and if you look at our ending fund balance we have 3.9 million left over but when you remove the $3 million minimum fund balance balance that leaves us with a little less than a million dollars left over so what's important to understand about the ending fund balance is not just the District Health like how much money do you have obviously at the end
122of every year the more money that you have left over the better your financial health because you can weather more storms for us as a district that is basic Aid we get paid from this from the property taxes only twice in in the year we don't get paid until December and then the rest of it comes in like May June so we have two times in the year that we actually get Revenue the large amounts of Revenue coming to us we get other things but not enough that we could float pay roll or all those things so in addition to our ending fund balance being important for fiscal health and you know all of those unknown emergencies you know those types of things it's also important because that's our cash flow so we want to
123be mindful that what's left over is what we use to get us through the year to those points where we do get paid um the other thing to note about our ending fund balance is all of that excess ending fund balance is what is really on the table when you're talking negotiations so it's just important to know what your ending fund balance is and how to calculate it are there any questions because this is the first interim then is that um excess the 978 um like a portion of the whole annual budget or uh and because that wouldn't there certainly cover salaries even let alone maintenance and all these other costs no so how we do our ending fund balance is we take the beginning fund balance that we have just like a checkbook we
124take out all the things that we have to pay which is our our deficit if we have one or you know if we didn't spend everything or our transfers out and our contributions we take all of that out and then what's left is the ending fund balance which is that 3.9 million so technically at the end of the year our checkbook says we have almost $4 million excess but we know that in our savings account we keep 3 million that we don't touch it is only for emergencies so at the end of the year we have a million dollars of unallocated excess money but we also have the added bonus so to speak when we're looking at that 978,000 it's really closer to nine because we have to allocate the audit finding so just be
125mindful of that that's coming out of our our savings account Mr Johnson yeah so the so the structural deficit appears to still be increasing though is that correct I would not characterize it as increasing I was I would characterize it as remaining flat from from original budget okay because if you add we had an um an excess just in ins and outs but then you have about 500,000 in transfers out and 500,000 in contributions that's about a million we've been talking about a deficit that's about a million dollars and that's where we're at okay yeah thank you but then sorry last thing on negotiations though because then it looks like we have 4 million in excess funds we don't because we have to really keep the three million off on the site for emergency correct
126so you guys have a board resolution that that $3 million has to exist in the budget so when you go to negotiations it's not even a conversation as to whether you actually have $4 million Because unless you guys do a a chang or a new board resolution changing that $3 million WEA up or down it's not on the table for discussion because of that board resolution so what they would say is excess that is there and available is that 1 million but we need to remember that one million is one time it's not growing so just also keep that in mind okay so taking into account ending fund balances we'll take a look at our multi-year projections so just as a reminder for everybody you know board and audience when we do every budget not
127only do we have to do the budget for this fiscal year but we have to plan out ahead or forecast for the next two years so each budget has a really a three-year budget look in it so to speak it's called the multi-year projections so looking at assumptions for the multi-year projections we have all the one-time revenue and expenditures removed so you know all those grants that we get one time we don't carry them over the expenditures may continue for you know until the grant is expended but we take them out as they're expended we are keeping our property tax increases at 2.5 so I told you earlier in Revenue that our property taxes were three or 3.5% higher than what we originally projected and that is true and I would say that a lot
128of people's gut instinct would be like well it's higher so we should in our multi-year projections make our Revenue projections higher but I don't think that that is a very wise decision or direction to move in simply because the state is moving towards a budget trend that is negative and deficit in the billions of dollars while our area tends to be an insulated pocket that insulated pocket means that we stay stagnant not that we lose so in general it is unlikely that our area will reduce property taxes received so that is good because we are tend we do tend to be insulated but we won't increase so every year our costs increase even if we do nothing the cost of me you I cost you guys more every single year because purs is different every
129year um my steping column those types of things is different every year the workers comp is different every year so even if you change nothing about my position and my pay I cost you more every year so those types of things we need to be mindful of so while our expenditures will continue to increase if we don't see a good Financial Outlook and we don't even meet the 2.5 our expenditures are increasing while our revenue is not and and just for the record not just the leis it costs us more year every employee right I'm just using myself as an example thank you sir you know not not just me everybody but with that so you know I like that keeping the property tax you know Baseline but then the costs our expenditures are just
130increasing at an exorbitant rate so um how do we mitigate that or like balance it out so that is we take a look at our structural deficit and then we look at ways to mitigate that deficit so it's more of a future planning type discussion because we don't have a lot of levers as an lcff a small lcff district from which to pull to change things so it's going to be a discussion for future planning that we probably need to have um we also have in our oute Consumer Price Index used for the materials and supplies and services like we discussed earlier those uh CPI numbers are given to us by school Services of California the the budget gurus so those numbers are there for you to see per stirs and other statutory increases are
131included in the out years as well as step- and column increases so we are able to tell you that you know like I said we're all more expensive so we are able to project that out and tell you how much more expensive we are every year and that is included in the two out years in the multi-year projections but there are no collectively bargained increases so we have not elected to just put a random per percentage in there you know because we don't know what it's going to be we really have no idea so we've left that out um we've also maintained our staffing and class siiz ratios static at what they are now in the out years so basically what you're looking at is if everything stays the same and program people Staffing for
132the next three years that third year that's where we'll be so that's important to note so looking at the myp Revenue um the miips are a PDF in the board documents but you can see that the revenue that's way lower the revenue the top line is our lcff and it's at the 2.5% and then you see the various other Revenue sources they just change depending on you know if it's one time and what's coming in and that kind of stuff so the revenue is basically set it's you know barring some new Grant or something that we don't know about this is what it's going to look like and then moving over to the expenditures again these expenditures are only I should have mentioned that for Revenue only unrestricted we're just looking at unrestricted things because
133the restricted basically they're their own little insulated programs so um again myp includes step and column 1% each year staying static is the is the step and column movement for certificated in general it's about 1% every year and for classified every year they're about two to 3% more um more expensive and then we have all the one-time expenditures removed and in this projection we have like I said our sped projections or our special education projections based on the consortium's original budget numbers and increased by only 1 Point 1.5% each year but that's very much a wild card for us as we you know work with the Consortium to get their first interim numbers and any changes in placement and students and that kind of thing um so looking at where we will be at the
134end of 3 years it's very hard for me to see because it's really small on here but we we have our $3 million Reserve in the 2425 fiscal year because our ending balance is 3 million 62 are they making these contacts work five something but if you thank you but if you take out the $755,000 for the audit finding as assigned we don't meet our $ million minimum fund balance Reserve in 2425 so that's a discussion that we will probably need to have in terms of how important that $3 million number is for our unding fund balance and and how the board feels about keeping at $3 million and then in 2526 we are about $500,000 short of our $3 million Reserve as it stands and again this is keeping everything static so this is
135no future plan decisions made it just lets you know that if we change nothing this is where we'll end up I do have a question do you find that I mean I know the state of California's um off their budget but um that each year there are is some additional Revenue coming in because to see this just continue going down without you know any much change so the previous governor was really good at onetime dollars we got a lot of one-time dollars the new governor the one that we currently have was not a proponent of onetime dollars when he first started his goal was to get everything sort of into the lcff and have everything you know within that compact within that you know fast forward covid came and all a sudden it was back
136to what we call categorical where we were just getting a ton of onetime dollars here and there so to be quite honest it's really hard to read him because his stance when he first came into office was we don't do one time everything should be in lcff and we need to focus on increasing School budgets and that kind of stuff through lcff but then we sort of flipped the switch out of necessity with covid and moved to one-time dollars um the state hears that schools are struggling and the state understands that their deficit at least what they say their deficit can't come on the backs of school districts but we've we've heard that before so I am a little concerned what I will say is while historically the 30-year average is about 2.5% for our
137property taxes we have been very blessed in our district that we normally see a little bit higher I just don't think it's wise to budget higher um but I would say if you're looking for a little bit of a Hail Mary the place where I would expect it to come from would be property taxes here and there did you have something to add Andrew just go for it um well I was just going to reiterate it's a multi-year projection so we're we're we're taking guesses out in to year two and year three um we do continue to have a structural deficit we know we need to address that um we are staffed um where we were when we had 950 kids we have the same Staffing levels same number of programs and we maintain that
138as coming out of covid because we know it's been important to have that support for our kids but that will be a discussion that we have between now and second interm and then original budget adoption as well as looking at where we can utilize the restricted dollars that we have to offset potentially um things that we have and are unrestricted um but anything we do there yet we have to remember that that's onetime dollars that we're using to continue to fund ongoing things so that can help with the ending fund balance but doesn't necessarily address the structural deficit um and then there's um other things to consider as we go into negotiations and um making sure that we're aware that anything right now that we spend above and beyond what we're projecting to spend adds
139to the structural deficit doesn't take away from and so those are just things to just be reminded of as we move into the next phase of developing a second inter room an evolution is that correct then too correct correct so what second interim is is we take first inter room numbers and we move the actuals from October 31st to December 31st and then we project out from January through June so it's sort of like the last ditch effort to get a projection for the end of the year before un audited actuals but it is it is a um evolution of this everchanging budget and at second interim that's our opportunity to adjust the out years with any plans that we may come up with between now and then any other questions so a foundation would
140be excellent with potentially some of these extra money too that might be a little bonus out there potentially it would be great we'll take money from pretty much any legal Source if they want to give it to us just thought I'd put that out there I'm glad Alisa said legal Source see I'm very I'm covering my bases all right thank you guys so um and you all done Elis you right yes thank you just recommend approval appreciate that uh is there a motion for approval of the 2023 2024 first interim budget report in 2023 24 through 2025 26 multi-year projections do I have to repeat all of that um I you say I make a motion I make a motion number five number five is there I second that roll call please ter Mr Johnson
141hi Mr abara hi M Grace Velasquez hi M Noble hi motion passes uh now we'll move to the public hearing on excess reserves for 2023 2024 through 2024 2025 so because I love hearing myself speak tonight this is another one of my agenda items so as part of each budget reporting period we have the duty to report out any excess fund balances we have and when we all collectively at the district discuss excess fund balance we mean anything over and above our $3 million Reserve however when the state talks about excess fund balance they mean anything over and above the state mandated 4% so we are um we are in a class of districts that is basic Aid that is not required to spend down their excess fund balance or we not um subjected to
142a trigger to spend down our excess fund balances but we are subjected to the annual reporting requirement so each budget iteration I have to have a form that says this is what we have in excess of what the state says that we you know the the state deems necessary that's just what that is it's all found in first in oh whoops yeah that's the public hearing should have saved that for the second one yeah so um so we do have a public hearing to open um regarding the excess reserves and if you open that's that's what we're doing they actually did open that up I believe so then we're open we're open to public hearing yes on the uh excess reserves 2023 2024 through 20242 hi everyone how are you so um I keep coming
143back to Eric Wood's comment as a teacher who talked about he had seen the administration positions get larger and larger and the teachers wages get smaller and smaller so we need our teachers to have a living wage they need a living wage so I want to know why do we have two VPS I don't understand why we have two Vice principles um I would love to know that I know there's a lot of parents would like to know that so I would love to see why the teachers feel that the administration jobs have got larger and larger and their wages of dwindle that they can't live here so as far as where we live we see the lights of the athletic field on a lot which is wonderful we see all you know where my
144husband and I live I don't understand why the school hasn't looked into some sort of solar because there are companies that will come to the school and they will put in solar and it won't cost the school anything they do that in residential areas but you know we're in California we have 35 Acres on this property but there's no solar it doesn't make any sense to me so um your reserve we really need to look into computer science our I've said this before all our students have phones but there is no coding here you do not have have stem you have you're getting rid of engineering Mr Woodle is retiring so there's no form of engineering at the school so I think you know we really what we did learn tonight is that we need
145to listen to our students and our students have come here tonight to talk to you and say what they need so we need to listen to them and um I hope that you will moving forward and I hope that you're look to getting solar I think it's really important thank you uh I think we'll any more public comment I think we'll close the public comment time period at 7:38 thank you now we'll move forward to the 2023 2024 through 2025 26 excess reserves report just copy what I said five minutes ago thank you thank you oh and I recommend approval is there a uh motion for approval yeah I move to approve the ex as Reserve report as Sean I'll second that roll call please Mr Johnson hi Mr abara hi Miss Grace Vasquez I
146miss Noble I motion passes now we'll move on to the m Municipal advisory Services agreement with Dale Scott and Company I'll give Elicia a break here for a second um so last meeting we had um mark from um Dale Scott and Company come and did a presentation on measure K and the bond campaign that was run um very successfully which allowed us to um do much needed infrastructure in the campus as well as access to prop $51 that allowed us to do some of the major modernization Pro projects um subsequently we had a study session to learn more about what a uh what a bond campaign or bond process looks like to support the school and the facilities needs of a school just as a reminder um bond funds generally can't pay for things like
147teacher salaries or administrator salaries very very restricted in um what people those bond funds can be used for and so we bring forward a proposal from uh Dale Scott tonight um this is a all aart proposal but we're proposing to move forward um with the voter survey research um Step which is the next step in determining if there is um interest in the community to potentially support a bond for the high school um we would have to go out and do surveys in the next few months to potentially make a decision for the November 2024 ballot um which is uh being a um presidential election has the most turnout of Elections and um the highest um success rate of bonds traditionally through the state so any questions I just had a question um so it
148can't go towards teacher salary and I know that measure K was the um for building could it be used for because I agree I mean I would like to see some vocational and like other programs Could It Go for programming or would that not I mean is that a way to no generally generally bond funds are facilities related so it could go to support a uh like for example I'll just use the industrial Arts Building um modernizing that space to support the industrial arts program or as we saw in our facilities master plan plan presentation the expansion of a and that building The Outdoor Learning spaces um remodern our classrooms which haven't been modernized in I would say nearly 60 years um so it can go towards those kinds of things to support programs but
149not to pay specifically for um people or programs related to education um there is a way to structure some bonds so that they can pay for things like technology and Furniture um but they are primarily gear geared towards facilities well like we you were mentioned in the um the long-term you know uh building planning like maybe because a library is probably a cavernous hole right now but putting that into because I agree with the stem and the coding and all of that some of that technology for the kids but then if you were to do some kind of bond infrastructure on that you need staff to help unless you let the kids um you know what I'm saying so would it be a would that be a feasible or realistic um well Outlook yeah I
150think anytime we're looking at a program we look at facilities space facilities needs um Personnel equipment right and then we figure out if that's sustainable what's that's what's that look like um you know in the facilities master plan we had talked about transforming the library into more of a an Active Learning Hub or um a a space where we could have activities like um a maker space or something maker space or um coding classes or have it more set up to be more um student friendly um and so the ability to do that really is a facilities challenge right because we have to um address the the physical space and then on top of that it's what program do we put in there and do we have the people for that or not what does
151that look like but the bond would not be paying for people potentially a foundation could you know um support having a um a position or um you know a teacher dedicated to a certain program um but those are all really conversations about what does it look like with our general fund and our staffing and our uh and our teachers side I wonder if the Staffing uh would have some because I still go back to my salon idea of like not Hobbies but that they're like you know like the um Santa Barbara has the mini home type thing you know that uh those type of programs that they're they have abilities to teach that within I know it's hard with their um the number of classes they teach but just forward thinking that the bond wouldn't
152just be for a roof or I mean which we need or those type of things but it's also something that is student driven well that's a perfect kind of segue so so the whole we developed the facilities master plan to kind of guide the whole process of looking at how we would phase in um different modernization projects to support different programs but the other component of that is um and why we're looking for approval to move forward with this is to put those um ideas out to the voters and see what resonates with them if though will'll support them um based on the facilities master plan and the needs that we've identified through that process as well as some of the things that have been brought up in the community around computer science and other
153programs so that's as as I think was shared at the study session that we were in the questions that we ask can be tailored to kind of what our community may be looking as we conduct that survey if I'm not mistaken I believe solar project was in part in that master plan as well solar is in the Master Plan and there's a couple ways that you can look at solar there's there are there is there's different funding available right now that would come in and essentially you you purchase the equipment the solar panels using a loan or some instrument and the savings from the energy goes to pay that loan right so yes it's it's environmentally friendly it's economically um beneficial to the programs that are running it however if we had a bond we
154could actually purchase the solar with bond funds and then the savings and the electricity would go straight would stay in our general fund and be available for things like teacher salaries and so there's there's a couple different ways to do that but the the benefit that I see to school districts is when they have bond funds available to purchase solar that is when you actually see the the Savings in the general fund as opposed to accessing all these um loans that are out there that you end up looking at the payoff cycle and you know if you have a 12 or 15 year payoff cycle you're not getting any money from those solar panels until they're paid off and then you got to think about the life of replacing the panels and also if we
155can generate enough you can sell it back right to PG make even money on top of it there's net metering programs and I know that the states I think the those requirements have changed in the last couple years but that is also a possibility um yeah so so one of the other added benefits of a bond potentially would be to bring solar in and then have Savings in the general fund that could pay for a program or teacher salaries or other things that that we would pay for with general fund dollars and just uh so that folks who haven't had access to the uh to the item in the agenda with the specifics of what's being proposed tonight uh tonight the proposal is to move forward with a survey just the first tier the survey
156to identify whether or not this uh proposed Bond uh could fly or not and I believe that's a cost of $122,000 correct is um so that's what before us tonight yes thank you Jose Wan for clarifying that so I'm I'm asking for approval um to move forward with the voter survey research um Step I am feeling better about it now that we can tailor it to actually meet our needs not just put a a roof on with that I will motion to um approve the municipal advisory Services agreement with Dale Scott and Company and is there a second I second that motion roll call ter Mr Johnson hi Mr abara I M Grace Velasquez I miss Noble I motion passes so yeah so we'll move to the board discussion time period and review of the
157go we going to do that review of the board governance handbook yeah so part of the annual meeting is to go through and review um board bylaws and we've encapsulated um several of those in the governance handbook um so I am open to feedback suggestions are the things that we would like to see added to this as a board to help with um board governance um I would be happy to uh look at adding those in um the the goal would be to update this and well the positions the same so I think we're okay there but um yeah the the goal would be to update this um with any suggestions or changes and bring it back at a future meeting for approval um we will be updating with the new mission and vision to
158make sure that's reflected in there um but what else might we want to see um included I'll just throw it open to the board and this will come back for approval at another yeah we can bring it back for um either discussion another time or bring it back for approval with modifications or changes suggested now um it's really up to you it's it's a it's your government's document as the board to help um identify how the board's going to operate and what the Norms are that you have as a board together well on us as a governance team I saw a couple things that I'd like to address but at this time I want to research it a little bit more going forward so I agree that I need some more time to process this
159likewise do you have a timeline you have in mind um this one's really we're we're talking about it now so we met the timeline um for that um if the board is okay um uh we can bring it back in the January meeting for discussion again with if the board would like to bring their board members would like to bring individual ideas and comments to have a discussion around that um and then we could have that discussion and then potentially bring it back in February for approval I think that might might make sense so everybody in favor of moving forward to uh moving it to January for further discussion and and then uh we'll go for approval from there I think that would be great thank you okay all right so next we'll move up
160to uh upcoming board meeting dates which I believe we already addressed uh earlier so um and do we need to revisit that at this point yeah we were going to have our January 16th date and then we'll revise at that point if we need to okay uh we'll move to uh we'll probably take a little recess but we'll move to Clos session uh at is it 8:50 no 7:50 all right wait for the camera e