001Good evening. Good evening. Thank you all so much for joining us for the June 4th meeting of the Berkeley Unified School District Board of Education. Tonight is a very, very exciting, really sad, but also exciting night um for the BUSD board as our student board director, Winter Clark, uh has her last board meeting. So, we're really sad because we're sad to see when to go, but we are excited tonight because tonight she will be uh presiding over this evening's meeting. It is uh our custom uh for the BUSD board of education to have our student board director preside at their last meeting. And so, we are excited to have uh Winter with us um and excited to be guided under her leadership tonight. So, Winter, whenever you are ready, honey, you can go ahead and
002take it away. We know that you are going to do a fabulous job. All right. Thank you so much, President Brown, for that amazing introduction. Um, good evening, everybody. Welcome to the June 4th meeting of the Berkeley School Board. Uh, if you want to follow along on their online agenda, the agenda is posted on the district website. I am now calling this meeting to order at 7:48. Before we move on, we need to call a vote to approve President Brown's remote participation. Um, is there a motion and a second? I'll move. A second. All right. All in favor say I. I. I. Um, Miss Tyres, can you please do a roll call vote? Yes. I'm going to do um President Brown. Yes, Director Shinowski. Yes, Director Clark. Yes, Director Korn. Yes. And Vice President Chang?
003Yes. All right. Thank you, Miss Chavez. Uh, we will now approve the agenda for this evening's meeting. Are there any requested changes? All right. Seeing as there are no requested changes, is there a motion and a second to approve the agenda as amended? I'll move. I'll second. Thank you. Um, all in favor say I. I. I. I. And then, Miss Chavez, can you please take the role again? President Brown, yes. Director Shinowski, yes. Director Clark, yes. Vice President Chang, yes. Director Coin. Yes. All right. We will now move on to a student presentation. Everybody, please welcome students from Miss Omania's fifth grade class who have been studying and monitoring the plastic footprint of breakfast at their school site. We are so excited to welcome them and learn from them this evening. Let's give them a
004round of applause. [Applause] Okay. Wait, when do I start? Okay. Where are they going? Okay. When do I start? Yeah. Okay. Do I do I start or Okay, go ahead. Good evening. My name is Tommy and I'm here tonight with my classmates Danny, Nico, Evelyn, Zoe, and Maya from Miss Omana's zero waste class. This year, by mindfully working together, we have reduced our waste to this half cup jar. As a class, we've been very pleased to see the reusable steel plates, cups, and utensils that began for lunch this year. We are here today to talk to you about school breakfast. First of all, as fifth graders, my class is hungry, and many of us enjoy breakfast to start off our day. Yet, ever since we were in kindergarten, the word the foods we are served
005have been wrapped in single-use plastic. There have been plastic wrappers for school muffins, plastic cereal bowls, plastic wrappers for our school scones, plastic cream cheese cups, and even plastic wrappers for fruit bars that have bioengineered ingredients. Why in the world would BSD use plastic when there are so many more sustainable materials such as bamboo, cornstarch, wheat, and mushrooms? We are only 11, but even at such a young age, we have opened our eyes about the plastic issue that is resounding through the nations that make up the earth. All this plastic is bad for the environment, our health, and even for the way we think. Many people have heard of the plastic problem, but not many people in positions of power are trying to fix this plastic problem. B USD is a pretty big part of
006the massive pile up of trash with all of our plastic utensils, plastic bowls, plastic fruit cups, and plastic coated milk cartons. Over the school year, we've collected all the plastic cereal bowls and plastic wrappers from our class's breakfast. There were 246 bowls and three gallons of rappers from our class alone. When we multiplied, we discovered Brookley elementary schools alone are producing an estimated 28,755 plastic breakfast bowls a year as waste. And that's just the bowls. 4 million students receive school meals in all of the US in singleuse plastic packaging just like ours. It could inspire other districts. Plastic has been plaguing our world since World War II. Ever since then, companies like General Mills and institutions like the USD have been hurting our generation's chance of having a fulfilling life. Plastic contributes to climate change,
007an effect where the climate and weather of a place changes unnaturally. The way plastic causes this is that to produce plastic, we need oil and we need to burn fossil fuels like coal and oil. When producing plastic, we also creates smog which is bad for our health and bad for the planet. In addition, plastic just lies in landfills and its chemicals seep into the air, causing the area to become warmer. And the warmer weather creates hurricanes and other natural disasters. To make matters even worse, oil needed in the production of plastic is transported across the ocean, which makes oil spills prone to happening. Clearly, single-use plastic harms the environment every day, including marine life. A horrible oil spill in the ocean in 1989 killed around 250,000 helpless birds. Oil spills oil especially harms birds when
008it gets stuck in their feathers. It is impossible for them to remove it. And then when they try to fly, they're also unable to because they're weighed down by oil. Microlastics are also a problem. Microlastics are made by plastic breaking down into tiny pieces 3 cm or smaller. But these plastics never break down completely. They're everywhere, trapped under ice in Antarctica, covering villages in China, and killing marine life everywhere. By 2050, every species of seabirds will have consumed plastic. As a personal experience, just in a small litter cleanup with 36 students, we found 497 pieces of plastic in the district's smallest school. And most of the litter we collected was plastic breakfast wrappers. When our class went to the Berkeley Waste Transfer Station, we saw a literal mountain of to plastic also has a huge
009impact on our health. Microplastics get into our bodies and carry harmful chemicals like bisphenol A BPA. When we eat meat from animals that have ingested plastic, we ingest that same plastic. Also, when we use plastic as a container, like the breakfast bowls, the plastic contaminates the food inside of it. So, when we eat out of the bowls, we're eating plastic chemicals. As a result of eating plastic, we can get things like early puberty, cancer, diabetes, and weight gain. You may you might be thinking, "Wait, I know the solution to getting rid of plastic. Burn it." Nope. By burning plastic, it releases bad substances into the air and then we breathe it in, creating another health problem. If we quit breakfast plastic, it can be so much better for our student health. A final reason why
010B USD should not serve single-use plastic packaging in breakfast is because using singleuse plastic packaging creates a throwaway mindset. While children learn important rules in schools like being responsible and respectful, they are also unfortunately learning to create a throwaway mindset and a plastic addiction. I started Oxford Elementary School in second grade. Since then, every day I've seen and experienced using plastic for breakfast packaging. After a while, it becomes a very familiar routine. Open, eat, and throw away. This creates a throwaway mindset that all of us are living and thinking every day, even if we don't realize it. We also have learned to rely on it and using breakfast plastic everyday enforces that plastic thought in our heads. I have a kindergarten buddy and currently she is starting to learn to rely on plastic and to
011always think plastic first before sustainable materials. I don't want that to happen. Let me tell you, it is not easy going from a throwaway mindset to a zero waste mindset. But if we do it together, we can push through. Recently, we met with Mr. Hannon from nutrition services, Sophia Peltz from the B USC sustainability, and Ben Schlifer from the Center of Environmental Health and discussed options for school breakfast. We were happy Mr. Hannon was open to new was open to new ideas and willing to start a pilot program at Oxford Elementary with perhaps oatmeal and granola, which are foods that can be ordered from the bulk section rather than coming in individual wrappers and can be served in metal bowls. The real question is planet or plastic. Even with all the horrible things that are
012happening around the world, Berkeley schools are at the forefront of the plastic revolution with implementing metal utensils, cups, and bowls at lunch. Now, what we need to do is to serve breakfast in metal containers. So for the health of BUD students and the planet, will you join the plastic revolution and lead the nation? We are Evelyn, Zoe, Maya, Daniel, Nico, and Tommy from Miss Omana's Zero Waste Classroom. And we thank you from and we thank you for listening. I just wanted to take a minute to thank the board too. So, thank you so much for offering this opportunity to my students. I know Miss Begoian from Thousand Oaks came last year and to talk about the same issue. So, I really look forward to working together to come to a solution and we're offering Oxford
013to try a pilot for something. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you so much to the students from Miss Omana's fifth grade class for your thoughtful, impactful presentation. I know it's really hard to give a presentation to such a big group of people, but you guys did such a good job. Um, so thank you once again. Um, Miss Chavez, can you please take role for the board? President Kada Brown, he's joining us remotely. Present. Vice President Mike Chang here. Director Jennifer Korn present. Um, director Anna Vasuv is excused this evening. Director Jennifer Shinoski here, director Winter Clark here, and directors Garcia and Evelyn Velasquez are excused this evening as well. Thank you. All right. Up next, we will have President Brown report out from the special meeting close session on May 27th and Vice
014President Chang's report out from this evening's close session. Uh thank you so much, acting chair clerk. Uh the board of education met on May 27th uh with one only one agenda item which was identified as 3.1. Um and so for 3.1 the board heard an update and provided direction. This ends the report from the May 27th special meeting close session of the board of education. Uh Vice President Chain, can you please report out from this evening's close session? Uh thank you, President Brown. Um, as Miss Chavez noted, um, Director Vasadev, uh, has been excused, um, including for, uh, close session. With regard to 3.1.1, council provided recommendation was moved by Director Korn, seconded by Director Schnowski. The board voted unanimously. With regard to 3.2.1, the district provided recommendation. Vice President Chang move. Director Korn seconded.
015The board voted unanimously. With regard to 3.2.2, Two, the district provided a recommendation. Director Shinoski moved. Director Korn seconded. The board voted unanimously. With regard to 3.2.3, the district provided recommendation. Director Shinowski moved. Director Korn seconded. The board voted unanimously. With regard to 3.2.4, the district provided recommendation. Director Shinowski moved. Director Korin seconded. And the board voted unanimously. Uh finally with the second to finally regard to 3.3 the district provided an update and the board provided input and with regard to 3.4 the board heard an update and provided direction. Thank you. All right. Thank you President Brown and Vice President Mike Chang. We will now move on to the public comment component of our agenda. There are two opportunities for public comments at each meeting. Now and at the end of the meeting. And if
016you do not get to speak at the beginning of the meeting, we encourage you to stay and speak at the end of the meeting. You may also email us your comments at boardofedbererkeley.net. The board does not directly respond the board does not respond directly to comments or questions made during public comment. Board members, the superintendent and staff do take notes during public comment and may follow up with the speaker that meeting after the meeting. This is a hybrid meeting, so we will have public commenters in the boardroom and online. We have designated 15 minutes to our in-person speakers to be followed by 15 minutes for any speakers online. Each public commenter will have up to two minutes to speak depending on the amount of speakers. Please note that the m the microphone will shut off
017at the end of each speaker's allotted time. So time your comments accordingly. And to keep things moving, I will call two names at a time so that the speaker who's next in line can come forward and wait near the mic. I apologize in advance if I mispronounced anyone's name. Um I have a number of people who are coming to speak about support for Miss Farca layoffs and of so you will all be called as a group to your respective topic and you will be giving f you will be given five minutes. So please organize accordingly. So, we're now going to begin with our public com with our public comments with those in person. And um given that there are no student commenters, I will invite everyone who was here to speak on Miss Felara first
018and you will um have five minutes of combined speaking time. Hello, good evening. My name is Jose and I am a member of equal opportunity by any means necessary. I'd like to encourage this board tonight to approve the 88 accommodation for Misset Felara. Misset Felara provides an invaluable online service for students in greatest needs. Miss Flara is currently dealing with medical issues that have drastically curtailed her quality of life and those around her and yet has managed to continue providing quality education for her students and families. Mr. Lark is an irreplaceable educator, a brave and inspirational civil rights leader who embodies the best of Berkeley's values. She has successfully through the years stood up against racist attacks on immigrants, minorities to defend women's rights, and public education. Now under Trump in the ever you have
019heard many for why it is necessary toator in the district. It is time this board does what is the only reasonable and sensible decision and approve Miss Falca's accommodation. Good evening. My name is Joan Metry Brownell and I am BSD's Heric Hospital teacher. I'm inspired by the potential of the teaching vocation and the priceless value to a community of a dedicated transformative teacher. As I believe you must all know from hearing in the past three schoolboard meetings from so many of IT FARC's students, students families and college and other reasons. Please granted from many many students, teachers, parents about how amazing Iet Fela is as a teacher and what she has been able to do for some of um Berkeley's most struggling and vulnerable um students through her online class offerings. Um she's applied for
020an accommodation. Obviously, you can give that accommodation because it's just what she has been doing for um the last several years. And there's been there was a comment made by one of the board members last time we were here that somehow this is outside of the board's purview or it's not your responsibility. It's up to HR. And that is just pretty ridiculous. Um when there's a lawsuit, this bodys and staff and so it is imperative offer this. It keeps one of your most That up. As I've said before, she is one of the finest teachers I've ever worked with and it would be a major loss to our students, our staff, our entire community, our school community to um have her go. Um the beauty of our alternative school setting is that options are provided
021and she offers the option that fits so many of our students which is an online option. Um and she has she has raised this to an art form online teaching. Her virtual classroom is an out students feel supported. They're challenged. They're cared for. They engage in meaningful academic discussion and and debates. And I bet utilizes virtual learning tools and digital resources to facilitate all of this. She cultivates positive and lasting relationships with families. She consistently goes above and beyond to support not only her students but her fellow educators. She is a highly qualified secondary. Oh, excuse me. I'm going to pass on to my colle Good evening board. My name is Steve Johnson. I was here seven years ago when Missa had her pay taken from her by the board for activism and she this
022needs to stop. So I hope that you will allow her to have her ADA her ADA accommodations. Thank you. [Applause] All right. Thank you guys for coming out to speak with us. Um, I would like to next invite everyone who's here to speak on layoffs. You guys will also be given five minutes of combined speaking time. Good evening, board members. My name is Javvanka Beckles and Oh, I didn't see anyone. It's like Oh, okay. Oh. Oh, okay. All right. Good. Good. Good evening. And my name is Jonathan Beckles and I came in person to respectfully ask you to rescend all layoffs. I I especially implore you to protect the Office of Family Engagement and Equity. You know with all position while all positions are are important I emphasize this one because uh of the negative
023effects we are seeing from America's racist fascist regime. We have to fight it at all levels and our most marginal marginalized students need all the protections we can provide them. Please do your elected duty to protect and defend students and please rescend the layoffs. Be creative. I know it's possible. Thank you. Good evening everyone. I want to say thank you to the students that were here. Our future, you seen what they about, right? Uh my name is Rodney Enis. I'm a ask member, executive board member as well. I'm I'm a son of a former mayor, San Pablo, the first black woman to be mayor. She served two terms as mayor and three as vice mayor, which is amazing. First one, but tonight I'm here representing ask me in support of the workers, right? We don't
024want any layoffs. We support our Berkeley educators. We can't give in when the same governor is underpaying UC workers also calling for layoffs and of our educ educators in education cuts. It's unacceptable. unacceptable. When you vote tonight, ask me, we'll remember. When you make your decision, 3299 will remember. We are here looking. Thanks for your time. My name is Nigin Msad and I'm the owner of Berkeley Community Physical Therapy. That's a community clinic for PT downtown and we accept a lot of different insuranceances including medical. The reason why I wanted to speak on the layoffs is that the same uh aspect of the population that I treat that have been traumatized uh due to income inequality due to being marginalized and left out of the equation are the the ones who have the most trauma
025and who need special connections with those people that make it possible for their children to have a successful education. When you cut those specific uh people from the service, it's like you take a lifeline away from someone who's already traumatized and needs help to enter the system and need support for their children. So this aspect of the population is actually very important. People who know how to work with uh the marginalized community and bring them into the fold should not be jeopardized. And also I want to also put a shout out for Miss Felarker. She was a teacher at my son's school and she's excellent and has helped a lot of people. I hope we can keep all the jobs and continue to help support students at all levels. Thank you. Hello board members. My
026name is Luca. I'm a member of the UAW and a a Berkeley resident. Uh while our governor is pushing uh through cuts to our state education budget, it's so important that we hold the line here. Uh we cannot let layoffs happen. I will say I voted for you, Jennifer Kin, and Anna Vasu on the basis of your union endorsements. And I am very disappointed to see you support layoffs of the same educators who got you elected. Don't balance the budgets on the backs of the employees we so desperately need. Let's not cut uh our essential uh district staff and lay off 18 hardworking district employees. Thank you. [Applause] testing. Hi, my name is Peter Toma. I'm a proud I'm a PhD student at Berkeley and a proud member of UAW. I again want to reiterate
027that the main cause of the budget issues facing the district has been from the use of independent contractors which have grossly overcharged the school district. If if you cut down on some of these independent contracts, I guarantee you you will have enough left over to save the jobs of all of the those who are now threatened. You can find a way. Thank you. Uh, hi, my name is Ashita. I'm a Berkeley student and a resident of Berkeley. And I just wanted to say that um the public school education system is so vital to the most marginalized students and families in our community. And we have to protect those especially now under this administration. And so please if you c as you can save these jobs for our important essential workers. All right. Thank you guys
028for your very insightful comments. Um I will now invite everyone who are speaking on OIE. You guys will also have five minutes of combined speaking time. Good afternoon board. My name is Rebecca Torres. I want to begin by expressing my deepest gratitude to the Longfellow staff, families, and community members who have taken the time out of their day to attend board meetings or write letters in support of the family engagement equity specialist OIE department. Your voices, your your presence, and your care have meant so much, not just for me, but to all of us working in this role. As many of you know, some OFI specialists, myself included, have not yet received letters officially rescending our layoffs. This uncertainty weighs heavily on us. But what keeps us going is knowing how deeply this work matters.
029Family engagement equity specialists are more than a job title. We are partners to families, advocates for students, and bridges between home and school. We help navigate challenges, celebrate success, and create speaces where every family feels seen, heard, and valued. Please save all OPI specialists. Thank you. Hi, I'm Christina Call. I have two students at Sylvia Mendes and I understand that our OFI specialist um will keep her job, but I just want to advocate for all of them in the district. It's such an incredible asset for all of our students. Um all of the previous comments really resonate, but it affects the entire school. It's the marginalized. It's everybody from the very small things they do to the very schoolwide effect that they have. So, just I urge you to help all 10 of them keep
030their jobs. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Alejandra Frias and I work for the Office of Family Engagements and Equity. I am speaking today to support in keeping all of the OF positions for this year and beyond. Um each one of us for the most part are split between two schools to serve our B USD families. On each site we each have about um 30 to 40 families that are in our high priority list, but the ones that we support year round are about 20 to 30. Not um to mention that another part of our job is to engage with the entire school and to do events and to collaborate with other staff members but to also do districtwide support and events. Um we also apply for grants um which better serve our communities
031which if those roles get cut will not serve to its full capacity. With two schools it is already difficult to fully immerse and be present um and to serve uh our families. And by eliminating the four remaining positions, six schools will be without an oathy staff member, which means that the other half of this team will be spread out thin, adding 30 to 40 more families to our case load. Now, I know we are not social workers by title or case managers or by description. However, the average case manager, worker, social worker um that serves people in general only has 20 to 30 cases in their case load they support that they support. We cannot do this work without the entire team. And let's face it, we cannot achieve equity, increase attendance rates, or academic
032engagement without helping our families with navigating resources to meet their basic needs. Sorry, one more thing. That means that if we do take three sites that we're going to have to be serving 90 to 120 families. And in general, we should only be serving 30 tops. [Applause] Hi guys. Um, you know how I st where I stand on this. I kind of feel like shame on us as a board, as a district. um because um some of the positions that you're cutting are bilingual. So that means that you're it's affecting two different sets of families. It's not equitable and we're not able to answer the question, how are the children? They're not well if the families are not and if there's not support. Thank you. [Applause] All right. Thank you guys again for speaking. Now
033I will move on to individual comments. So can Peter T come up and following him will be Ben Schlifer. Hello, my name is Ben Schlifer. I am a green and clean purchasing coordinator at the Center for Environmental Health. I've been helping out Miss Omania's class who did a great job in their presentation. I fact checked everything, too. So, if you need any peer reviews on what they were saying, I would be happy to get that for you. I just wanted to say that it is absolutely possible to move to reusable breakfasts. Um, Alama Unified and Albany Unified are both on bulk cereal that is organic that goes nicely with the organic milk that you are currently serving at BUD. I would like to commend the board because Oxford Elementary, Thousand Oaks, Malcolm X, and even
034Berkeley High School has explored uh reuse this school year, and that's amazing. And that's some first stuff in the country. You all are on track to be the first school district of your size to be completely on non-toxic reuse, but we absolutely have to get the breakfast stuff in uh order to make that uh a reality. Uh breakfast is not just a plastic problem. Although the you know the microplastics are going to be in about 5 years we're going to start hearing more and more about the health impacts of them. We are finding them all over the human body and that is alarming enough onto itself. But the breakfast cereals also represent the food dyes. California recently banned 10 food dyes from uh school meals. That's not nearly enough. There's a lot more dyes out
035there that are unregulated. And so, uh, moving away from the those Froot Loop, Cinnamon Toast Crunch type cereals to something a little bit more organic will be healthier for the students as well. Um, so yes, I just want to say we uh will completely support Rick and to moving into that transition to uh non-toxic reuse and I can yield the rest of my time. Thank you very much. [Applause] All right. Thank you so much for taking the time to share. We are now going to move on to our um online commenters. So there are six hands raised. Uh we will start with Allayia Thompson. Um and each commenter will have two minutes to speak. Good evening. My name is Allayia Thompson, a sophomore at Berkeley Independent Studies. I am once again advocating for Evet Falcoa.
036Yes, I am aware that you all may not have the authority to finalize decisions regarding employment in this district. However, this does not excuse excuse you from your responsibilities to uphold the mission of this district to enable and inspire our diverse student body to to achieve academic excellence and make positive contributions to our world. If a person of authority has attempted to remove a teacher who works tirelessly for her students and her ailing mother while battling matically herself that this not only prevents students from achieving academic excellence, but this would set a horrible president, would it not? While yes, I acknowledge that you all may not have full authority to dictate decisions. It would be in the best interests of your students, family, and the district mission to advocate for Miss Valarca along with us.
037If I am able to contact the superintendent and HR, you have more than enough authority and opportunity to support such an incredible teacher as Miss Fera. Please, please do so. We are many more people are counting on you. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Alicia, for speaking. Um, next we will have Maline Roberts, Rich. Following them will be Paula. Maline, you can unmute yourself, please. Hi. Pardon me. I thought I was speaking there. Um, my name is Maline Roberts Rich. I'm Berkeley High student, class of 2012. I'm calling the school board again, as you heard from me before, um, to ask you to please start to, um, look into and invest in a more comprehensive nutritional education program for Berkeley High students. I believe the health curriculum is taught in the ninth grade. I'm of
038the belief that um Berkeley High students are uniquely vulnerable if they're not adequately educated in nutritional literacy and nutritional choices because Berkeley High is off campus. Um as such, students are kind of unless they um use the cafeteria, but I believe most students don't are um are basically left to to their own devices to make choices about what they eat, whether they bring food to school or whether they buy it. And I remember when I was there, it was common for us because we didn't have any spending money to have, you know, an Arizona iced tea and like Frito Lays for lunch. Um, and that was largely because that's what we could afford and also because we were not, I think, adequately informed in how to make the best nutritional choices. And I'm talking about
039things like um you know having enough protein during the day. The fact that girls especially adolescent girls absolutely need to get calcium into their bodies to prevent really disastrous effects later in life. Um having sufficient iron, being sufficiently hydrated, um etc. Um, so I find it ironic that Berkeley's less than Berkeley has less than one mile away from the gourmet ghetto and BUD prize prized itself on being the home of the edible schoolyard project. Um, yet to my knowledge lacks any sort of comprehensive nutritional education. So I encourage you to keep your eye on this. I will keep coming back until something is done to make sure there's more comprehensive nutritional education. Thank you very much. Bye. [Applause] All right. Thank you, Maline. Uh, next we have Paula and then following after Paula we will
040have Lindsay Noel. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Okay, thank you. Uh, my name is Paula Phillips. I'm the classified PD coordinator for the district, former president of the Berkeley Council of Classified Employees. First, let me start by saying, Director Clark, in my 20 years with the district, you were the first African-American to serve as the BHS student board member. My heart and time with the district is now content to have lived this experience. Thank you for your awesome representation and I wish you the best in everything you do in the future. Next, I want to say that I attended the personnel commission's meeting where they approved its budget and made some corrections that I drew to their attention. I did research on on the PC budget and according to ED code
04145243 which states in part, the expenses of the commission shall be paid out of the general funds of all of the districts in proportion to the benefits derived there from as determined by the governing board. So I'm going to bring this back again. When the com when the commission's budget was increased with bare funds, it did so without the governing board approving it, which now has placed you all in a in a precarious situation to cut their to cut and reduce their budget when it should never have been increased from the bare funds. So, what I've learned in my former role as an union leader is that this district doesn't respond until staff or the union resort to litigation or take their concerns to an outside agency that has the authority to force the district
042to do what it's legally bound to do. And in doing so, I was forced as a union leader to file a written mandate to have the district follow the merit rules because we could not at the time sue or force the personnel commission into a legally bound agreement. All right. Thank you, Paula. Sorry we had to cut you off um at two minutes, but uh just want to say thank you for coming out to speak. Um, and while I may be the first African-American person in this role, best believe I will not be the last. So, thank you so much for speaking. Um, next we will have Lindsay Noelts. Following Lindsay will be Yevette Felara. Hi, my name is Lindseay Noelt and I'm speaking as a parent who has also served as co-chair of the
043pack. Uh the LCAP is an ambitious plan that seeks to unify many improvement initiatives in Berkeley Unified. It's really important to be ambitious and to have the same high expectations for BUSD leadership as we do for our students. Unfortunately, just one year into this plan cycle, some of the improvements, uh, three percentage points for most and five percentage points for focal groups per year are not being met in some of the most concerning categories. English. Uh, the K through two dibble score is down five percentage points. Star ELA for grades three through five are down two percentage points. Star math is down three through five by 14 percentage points. And middle school star math scores are down 13 percentage points. Our A throughG readiness scores are down 4.6 percentage points. I really hope that tonight
044we hear how the LCAP actions are being bolstered with evidence-based solutions to address this. Thank you. All right. Thank you. So next we have Yvet Falaraa and Howell. My name is Iet Fela. I'm a teacher at Berkeley Independent Studies. I'm also a part of the Equal Opportunity Now by any means necessary AON BAM caucus and my union. Last week, earlier this week, I met with Assistant Superintendent Samantha Tobias Espinosa about my accommodation to continue teaching in Berkeley as an in the online capacity, which essentially would mean that I would continue to teach the way I have been for the past four years. I love my job. I love my students. I love the people I work with. I love working for this community. And I really really want to say I really hope that Ms.
045Tobias Espinosa and the superintendent with the with the support of members of the board allow me to continue to do this and provide me this accommodation. I also stand with everyone who spoke tonight calling for rescending their layoffs. It's clear that these services are essential to our students and to our community. And finally, it may not be on the agenda now, and I hope it never is, but I have been appalled to see that one of the considerations that has come up by this board is to start charging for Berkeley's desegregation busing program. that would gut one of the most important and historic policies that sets Berkeley aside to desegregate and end the segregation in the schools. We've already seen too much resegregation happening in Berkeley schools and around the country, especially under Donald Trump's
046fascist attacks. Berkeley cannot give into that and start charging families for an essential and vital desegregation program that's at the center of the civil rights struggles in the movement. Don't charge. Thank you. Thank you for your comment, Evette. Um we will now have Lily Howell speak. Following Lily will be Felicia Hopkins. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Okay. My name is Lily Howell and I am an OPI specialist. Right now, we are in an unprecedented national climate full of xenophobia, racism, transphobia, abbleism, homophobia, and anti-quity hate. Our marginalized students and families are less safe than ever. The increase in policies and practices that target marginalized families have skyrocketed. This is not a time to reduce protection for these families. Right now, the Department of Homeland Security touts that under our current
047president, ICE arrests have increased 627%. The targeted targeting of these families is real and it's scary. Our families need our help now more than ever. Our families are being targeted now more than ever. So why now would we decrease our OPI staff by 33% when marginalization ti tactics are increasing? When the initiatives for equity are disappearing nationwide while the need for support to our families is increasing. Why do we choose now to negatively impact these families by reducing our OFI specialists by 4.0 FTEE? It has taken years for OPI to expand to have enough staff to be in every K through2 school and we are needed now more than ever. This year we have already had families contact their OFI specialists for for support because ICE andor homeland security have been have come looking for
048them. Those families have been so afraid they have kept their children at school but away from school. But who do they turn to for a lifeline, for support in an unimaginably terrifying moment? They turn to their OPI specialists for support. They turn to us because we build relationships. They turn to us because that we build trust and we have expertise and resources to support them. We reduce environmental barriers so that students and families can focus on increasing academic success. Ofi is an equity strategy and initiative. Now is not the time to reduce our initiatives. Now is the time to double down and quite literally put our money where our mouth is. Our superintendent has said that we will be holding vast to fast to our core values of equity and inclusion. Reducing the O of
049staff will invariably mean sites losing their specialists. Now is the time to hold back hold fast to equity. Now is not the time to give in to attacks. Keep OIE fully funded. Keep equity in the forefront when our families need our support. [Applause] All right. Thank you, Lily. Um, now for our last commenter, Felicia Hopkins. You have two minutes to speak. Hello. Um, my name is Don Thomas Williams and present and I was previously ninth grade at Berkeley Independent Study. Today I'll be talking about Miss Larka. She's an outstanding teacher and she should continue teaching online. In Miss Farca's class, you're not discouraged from getting work done and not overwhelmed by the amount of homework and making deadline in Miss Farc's class. The classes are welcoming and engaging, encouraging students to succeed. Usually, English classes
050are about what you read, but in Miss Walker's class, she makes class fun, mixes in various other topics like history and social studies in her lesson. An example of this was the final unit we went over in our class. Mexican immigrant children and Raina Grande is the distance between us and Miss Larka is passionate to go above and beyond with helping students with understanding classworkers and open and is open to help students after hours. Often told that the youth is the future instead of empowering us and accommodating us. Berkeley is set on removing one of our greatest teachers and so many other great programs benefiting Berkeley students making it harder for a generation to be successful in gaining education attain our goals and dreams. So I demand that you keep Miss Flora and these programs
051for Berkeley students. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much. Uh just a reminder that if you're a student, please put that in your name on Zoom so we can let you speak first. But once again, thank you for speaking. Um, this now concludes the public comment period. Thank you to everyone who came to speak. If you did not get to speak, please remember that there is an extended public comment period at the end of the meeting. Additionally, you can always email the board directly at boardofedberkley.net and or you can contact us individually. Our information is posted online on the district's website. Now, we will move on to committee comments. Each committee will have five minutes to address the board. Are there any committees here to speak? Yeah, you can. Okay. Hello dear superintendent, dear
052associate superintendent, dear members of the board of education. uh feel delighted and honored to be speaking on behalf of the district English language advisory council parents and I serve as a chair of DAC committee and I want to share uh some of the highlights of our meeting notes with us regarding the ALCAP items and with regards to the ALP items uh we have nine items and over the course of the three cons consecutive meetings in February, March and April, DAC members discussed the ALAP goals and items related related to multilingual learners. The and then we decided that we need time to connect and we need time to reflect on the these goals and we based on our recommendations through a series of meetings and then uh these are the highlights that we came into agreement.
053The first one is about ongoing professional developments for both the integrated and designated ELD and committee members. were particularly interested in how the district ensures the professional development and director Albeck he explained the ways in which Berkeley Unified School District provides professional development for site leaders equipping them to support teachers in implementing and constructing meaning and systematic EL approaches and the other commentary was focused on middle school instruction and middle school represent representative parents from middle schools on the deal act they reported that students are benefiting from participation in the aid excel program and they stress the importance of maintaining funding for this initiative so they are very grateful that that support is provided in the middle school context but they also highlighted the importance of the professional development opportunities for the teachers especially regarding
054the dy identified students because from time to time there are differences and variations with regards to school. High school representatives they stress the importance of the high quality teachers for creating supportive structures and to help sub sustain their commitments over time. Especially this is very important considering the number of the long-term English langu language learners who need specialized instruction and support beyond what is provided by constructing meaning alone. At this point again I want to remind and as an educator and as a mother as an former English language teacher in different parts of the world who are struggling in points engagement because diverse underrepresented backgrounds. And from time to time in our observations uh we have seen that some of the parents parents are reluctant to speak. They feel reluctant to speak especially in uh
055big gatherings. So we decided that we should add it as a recommendation regarding the district and we want district to give more support in terms of creating opportunities for families so that we can have this inclusive school context and they also want BSB USD to provide translation and interpretation services for these families. We are really grateful for your support for the multilingual program and we are committed to working with you together to ensure every child has equitable access for educational opportunities. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you. Um are there any other communities? Okay. There you are. Good evening. My name is Jesse Lebrandi and this is Sella Rios and we are this year's pack co-chairs. We are here to give a final report on the PAC committee's work this year. Before we begin,
056I'd like to start by thanking our district coordinators, Jill Hoganike, Jessica Monduras, and Lena Sweeney. I think all three of you are here tonight. Thank you all so much for your support and a huge thank you to each of our pack members who volunteered their time throughout the year. Over the past year, the pack has met 11 times. We consistently struggled to meet quorum at our meetings, but we did have a dedicated and thoughtful group of parents who came together and engaged with the district's LCAP. Our meetings included presentations on the office of family engagement and equity, restorative justice counseling, the McKini Vento supports for housing insecure students, AVID, bridge, and math and literacy intervention in the district. We also received multiple data presentations from Brea and reviewed the responses from the district's LCAP survey.
057At each presentation, members were given the chance to ask questions and reflect on both bright spots and recommendations for each program. We were also informed in April by district staff that there is an LCAP funding gap and that the LCAP reserve would likely cover that. And we were made aware of the needs assessment for the learning recovery block grant that's happening in the district. Our full comments are attached to this year's LCAP in the agenda for tonight's meeting, but I do want to highlight some of our recommendations here. Our pack feedback focuses on programs and services that utilize LCFF supplemental dollars for our un LCFF unduplicated focal students, which are those students identified as English learners, eligible for free or reduced price meals, and foster youth. While we feel strongly that all available supports for
058these students are essential, we also recognize that the district is in a period of budget cuts and that we have an LCAP funding shortfall. With that in mind, we have prioritized our strongest recommendations in this order. Number one, maint maintain current funding and FTE for all RTI roles, including literacy, math, and EL coaches and interventionists. Number two, ensure there's a math interventionist at each elementary school for the 2526 school year and improve structural math intervention support. Number three, maintain or increase restorative justice counseling service availability at each site. Number four, consistently fund OPFI to support our dedicated team of liaison and allow OPI to continue to grow trust, enhance their visibility, and support the unique needs of each school site's community. And number five, to maintain our strong set of college readiness programs, including AVID,
059Avid Excel for our multilingual multilingual learners and bridge to uplift our focal students that need extra support in order to succeed. Thank you very much for your time. Great. Thank you guys. Um, are there any more committees here to speak? Okay. Um, seeing as there is not, we will move on to union comments. Uh, each union has five minutes to address the board on issues of its choosing. Are there any unions here to provide comments? All right, you guys can come up. Yeah. second. Okay. Hello, Berkeley school board directors and superintendent Ford Morell. It's hard to believe this year is already over. District so much has happened. Big construction projects are underway. We adopted a new literacy curriculum and our students continue to thrive even in these scary times. We are already planning for next
060year moving classrooms, learning new curriculum, and hiring new teachers. The board also has to make decisions guiding the district on important questions of revenue generation and expenditures. I'm sure you were just as surprised as I was to see employee salary cuts baked into the adopted budget. The only reason that this room is not packed with angry educators is because they have no idea that this is even being considered. That could not be their sendoff to summer break. Starting in October of last year, we have had 16 ESPback meetings. Uh, and up until May 14th, this has not been part of any discussion. The opposite was said many, many times. What was said that was that any furlow considerations would be for district office employees that make over $125,000. All of a sudden, the idea of
061salary cut for all employees has made it into the draft adopted budget. Employee salary cuts typically happen when there is an unexpected budget hole like a mid fiscal year cut from the state or a negative cola. There are only three professional development days and this budget proposes eliminating 30% of that time. Although members of ESPback weighed in on whether we support certain cuts, they have never been weighed against each other. We didn't receive some controversial ideas until the end of the process and knowing those might have changed our opinion on ones that we didn't support earlier. I have never seen salary cuts to be on the table in normal year-to-year budgeting. This is because there are so many other ways to reduce spending before putting some of our employees into debt. These are not things
062we wish to cut, but they would come before salary reductions. The superintendent spoke of evaluating expenditures earlier this year. She wanted to put expenditures in three buckets. What is core and legally mandated? What are the things that are important to us to do our work but are not mandated? And then level three, what are some of the things that are great that we love to do but is above and beyond our core mission? There are many expenditures in tier 2 and tier three that were never even brought to the ESPback meetings nor presented to the board for discussion. Why are we putting something that is mandatory and has huge impact on staff morale and the ability for the district to meet its hiring and professional development goals into the budget without conversation about tier 2
063and tier three expenditures. Salary cuts are a last resort and all stakeholders have to agree that there are no other options. Following the collective bargaining agreement, which includes working conditions and wages, is core and legally mandated. This adopted budget draft will cause a lot of relationship damage between employees, the district, and the board. It does not even solve a structural problem because it is a one-time savings. Even in the Great Recession, wage reductions and loss of professional development time were avoided. ESPback formed during the great recession to have these discussions in order to avoid wage reductions and was successful in doing so. That's why we have an ESPback. Another interesting question I have is about the budget process itself. The district says uh that they won't count TK funding or an incoming discretionary block grant
064as part of the adopted budget, but still count employee salary cuts that would have to be agreed on by all four unions as part of the adopted budget. This doesn't make any sense at all. It means that salary reductions on page four and seven of the adop adopted budget has been predetermined. There has been no discussion with any of the unions of this being in the budget or even a process of how we would negotiate this. Given my weekly meetings with the district, one would expect that this would have been brought up. There are so many things to be considered that would fall into previously mentioned tier 2 and three that would come before my members would agree their own salaries and reduce their professional development. It is our employees that need to be convinced,
065not even me. Anything that's signed would be voted on by them. Any So, it's I don't I communicated this with every I communicated with every certificated union president in Alama County, and zero of them are in discussions about furlows. Many are negotiating raises, again, putting our salaries further behind our neighbors. Many of these districts have a much higher student enrollment drop than BUSD. This brings us to a much harder question I've asked many times. If we have both parcel tax budget support for class size reduction and salary, why is it that our employees are still between below average to last in compensation? What is it that BUD is spending money on that other districts are not? Why are we the only district that intends to attempt to cut employee pay and professional development? On a
066side note, I also want to invite the community to one of the many no kings rallies happening June 14th. Education workers throughout California are joining millions across the country in the no kings protest to show that we will not stand by as the Trump administration threatens our communities and safety. As education workers and our wider communities, we need to oppose authoritarian excesses and corruption of the Trump administration. And I hope to see you in San Francisco on that Saturday. Thank you. All right. Thank you for your insightful comment. Um, okay. I guess you guys go up next. Hello. Good evening. I'm Alexander Hunt here representing the Union of Berkeley Administrators. Good evening to the board, superintendent, assistant superintendent, everyone. Um, this is an incredibly busy time of year for our union members as we're conducting
067promotions and graduation ceremonies and celebrating the accomplishments of our students, planning and preparing for next year. There's a lot going on. One of the things that I personally celebrate is that we've come a long way in be able in being able to rescend layoff notices and reassignment letters since the last time we were here in March. Um, and I think that is a significant accomplishment. I did want to recognize the work to prioritize and preserve essential services for our students that has been done on the superintendent's budget advisory committee, on the BET planning and oversight committee, and by this board. This is no easy task. Um, we're here tonight to talk about two key issues. The first of those issues is furlow days, which are included in the budget proposal before the board. And the
068furlow days are pay cuts for all unions and their inclusion in this budget proposal has skipped the careful process of the superintendent budget advisory committee and what we used when we were considering other cuts. A furlow cannot be taken as a given in our budget proposal since a furlow would need to be agreed upon in negotiations with all unions and these discussions have not yet begun. Furls represent a pay cut at a time that unions are negotiating for salary increases to attempt to keep pace with the increased cost of living. In order for us to compete with neighboring districts to attract and retain highly qualified, classified, and certificated employees, our district needs to offer competitive salaries. A furlow is a step in the wrong direction to be able to do that. The second reason we
069are coming here tonight is to update the board about the state of negotiations between the district and the union of Berkeley administrators. We continue to be without a contract after over a year of negotiations. The UBA bargaining team has a deep understanding of our current budget constraints and we have been willing to make considerable concessions to try and do our part to create a contract that is responsive to the needs of our district. Despite these concessions, we are still not being offered a fair and equitable proposal for compensation consistent with the contracts that were negotiated and settled for this year by our sister unions. Yuba members will not vote to approve a contract that reduces total compensation given the rise in cost of living. Yet, we continue to be offered proposals that do just that.
070I would urge the board to reach out to find out more about the current state of negotiations with our union and to authorize the district team to come to the table with a fair and equitable offer that our members could accept. We have been very patient with the process, but the district has not been bargaining in good faith and we are proceeding with taking our concerns about unfair labor practices to the public employee relation board. If the district will not offer a fair and equitable total compensation package at the bargaining table, YUBA members will have no option but to proceed to impass. Like our colleagues in BFT, BCCE and local 21 UBA administrators love our work in service of students and families here in Berkeley. It's what gets us up in the morning. We rely
071on the board to make decisions that recognize the role that each of us, each of those unions plays in making sure that students receive the education they deserve. Thank [Applause] you. All right. Um, next union comment. BCC BCC. I'm not usually the person who does this, but Frank, I talked to him on the phone. He couldn't make it and he gave me permission. Um where a decision he may come to regret, but uh one that's been made for now. Um these are my fellow BCCE members in the uh Office of Family Engagement and Equity. It's gravely disappointing that there are still so many on the layoff list from our union, 18 to be precise, despite all the progress made. As a last ditch effort, I have sub I am submitting a petition. Where'd Liz go?
072Um, I am submitting a petition from many of our members um to resend all the remaining layoff notices. The budget crisis was not of our making. Why should we be the ones to pay for it with our livelihoods? You have removed positions from the layoff list before, forcing readjustment to the budget. Our financial team is creative. I'm confident they can find another way. Despite whatever headaches that may cause, as they have been caused before, we can reach out to other districts for tips on savings. As Matt Meyer just pointed out that other districts have managed to balance their budgets without furloss and are even increasing pay. My job may be expendable. I'm just a file clerk. And to be honest, I request that my position be the last one on the layoff list, but other
073positions are much more front-facing for our students and families and must be preserved. who will do the work of the IAS after school. That amount of work is not going to decrease despite some enrollment dropped. We have more people applying for afterchool programs. And of course, OFI, as darkness gathers in this country, OFI is a bright light. The communities scapegoated by the fascist res regime currently in the White House. immigrant families, the unhoused, people of color more generally, LGBTQ folks. What are the communities that OPI serves? These very same communities and more. Of staff offer safe harbor in a raging storm for our most vulnerable students. They offer support and safety to our most marginalized families. They are the front line in the struggle against fascism, repression, and hate. We need them now more than
074we ever have before. Please, if you save nothing else, save our OI staff. Thank you. [Applause] All right, thank you to all the unions and committees who gave comments tonight. Um, we will now move on to the board member comments. So, would anyone like to go first? I'll go. Okay. Uh good evening everyone. Uh thank you all so much for coming out to the board meeting to speak to the board of education um regarding various topics and I especially want to thank those uh who spoke tonight regarding the budget which is an item that you'll see the board um discussing uh this evening and as well as taking action on some budget balancing um solutions there. um some information that has been new to the community as well as new to the board. Um and
075so I appreciate uh the highlight that was given uh tonight specifically from our union partners regarding um those things. Um, and I also want to thank those who've taken the time out this week to email the board of education um, regarding their concerns and their advocacy um, for positions uh, within our school district. Um, I want to say happy June to everyone. We've reached my favorite part of the year. And no, it's not because it's the end of the year, but more so uh because of the joy and pride that fills my heart when I have the opportunity to attend the end of the year celebrations, promotion, ceremonies, and graduations throughout the district. I along with my board colleagues have attended so many wonderful and moving celebrations in the last two weeks. And I must
076say that we as a district have so so so much to be proud of. Our scholars are moving onward and upward and it is an honor to watch their growth and development as they prepare for the next stages in their lives. Um, our graduations will continue, of course, this week, and I look forward to celebrating all of our graduates uh this Friday at Berkeley High and BTA's uh graduation ceremony, and definitely look forward to celebrating our student director, Winter Clark. Additionally, June is um the month where we celebrate Junth. Although slavery was abolished on December 6th, 1965, um official emancipation of enslaved people in Galveston, Texas actually didn't happen until June 19th, 1865. So today we commemorate that event and celebrate it as a day of freedom, a day of resilience, and an additional independence
077day for African-Ameans. This year, as I do every year, I will be spending Junth celebrating at the Berkeley Juneenth Festival, a tradition that was started by an amazing group of people, which includes my very own uncle, Mr. Gerald Baptiste Jr. This year, Berkeley Junth, will celebrate 35 successful years, and I hope to see everyone on the corner of Alcatraz and Adeline celebrating this wonderful holiday. um on June 15th from 11:00 a.m. to 700 p.m. I would also like to take this opportunity, excuse me, to wish everyone a happy pride month. Um and every um important month, I try to think of someone to honor and to celebrate. Um, and last year I celebrated um, one of my favorite black lesbian feminist um, who's also a mother, a poet, a writer, um, and made incredible contributions
078in the field field of uh, feminist history and critical race studies in uh, queer theory through her pedagogy and writing. And that person um, is none other than Audrey Lord. And I want to take the opportunity um to celebrate her again today um and share one of my favorite quotes of hers which is I write for those women who do not speak for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We've been taught that silence would save us but it won't. Um, and I think that that is such an important quote. Um, especially as we are living in the the day and age that we are living in under the um, tyrant presidency and leadership that we have in this country.
079It is important that we all must remember that silence will not save us. Um, and that it's important for us to stand up for what we believe is right. We have a couple more outside of our uh, graduations. We have a couple more exciting events that are coming up. uh throughout the district. And one of them is um the groundbreaking that will happen over the weekend for our workforce housing uh project. And so I'm really excited about uh all of the work that is going into that and really excited about the upcoming celebration that will happen this Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. And want to take this opportunity to thanks assistant super associate superintendent John Khif for all of his hard work and his team um for their hard work and in preparation
080to help get us there. So, if you have the um ability to join us at 1701 San Pablo Avenue this Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. as we break ground on workforce housing. Finally, um I do want to uh say a couple of words um about Miss Wentz. So, although um student board director Tiarra Brown was an African-American young lady who served on this board as a representative from BTA uh from 2022 to 2023, we do want to celebrate the amazingness and awesome black girl magic that continues through Winter Clark. Went, you have certainly been a powerhouse on this board. From your thoughtful questions to your impactful advocacy and support of not just Berkeley High students but all students, you have definitely been a light and I don't mean just um a light for
081young people, but I mean a light and an inspiration for us adults as well. And you presiding over this evening's meeting so eloquently, so wonderfully, so professionally is evidence of that. And I'm although I'm really sad that your time with the board has come to an end because you have just been absolutely amazing, I couldn't be happier to celebrate with you as you embark on this new journey as a Howard Bison. Howard will be so much better because of you. Um, and students and faculty and staff alike will feel your impact from the moment you step foot on the quad. So although you're going to go far far away and do amazing things, please remember your B USD values. Always hold them in your heart. Always carry them on your shoulders like a coat as
082I know you will do because you have already made us so proud and you will just continue to make us proud. Um but know that you have been fully prepared. You have been enabled. You have been inspired to achieve academic excellence and make positive contributions to our world. So, I'm excited about what you're going to do and can't wait to read about you in the news. Congratulations, Winter. We love you. We are going to miss you. Um, and at this time, Liz has um some a special little gift uh for you from us, from the board. Please all can you rise and give Wina a huge round of applause for her amazing work on the board of education. [Applause] Thank you so much, President Brown, for saying that. That was just so sweet and you
083were about to make me cry. Um, but I truly appreciate your words and I appreciate you so much as a person and honestly all of you guys on this board. I like words cannot describe how thankful I am for all of you. So, thank you for saying that. Um, I guess who else wants to go next? Okay, I'll keep it brief because we have a full agenda. Um, I want to first um just mention um some gratitude about being invited to speak at the adult school graduation last week. Um, supporting our non-traditional students in their work. um seeing, you know, 50-year-olds come back and speak about their experiences um getting their high school diplomas and seeing their families um you know, I'm just so proud of our adult school and the programs that we have
084there and thank you to all the staff um who supported all of those students. I also got to attend our Rise graduation which is always quite a privilege and I'm looking forward to attending graduation this Friday. Um, President Brown already mentioned the workforce housing groundbreaking this Saturday. There's also a groundbreaking for the Little Theater uh this Saturday at 1:00. And I just want to mention that because that project is really um an important project because it's going to bring additional um genderneutral bathrooms to our high school, which has been um a big point of advocacy for many years. So, um I'm hoping that um the students who have worked tirelessly to advocate for that will join us. Uh my last office hours of the school year are tomorrow, 3 to 5 at Kasa Latina and
085then I'm off for the summer. So, come and visit me and um I'd be happy to see you. And lastly, I want to add my voice to some praise for Wina Clark. Um, in addition to the comments already made um, about you, about your leadership and all of your hard work, I have always really been impressed with your gratitude, your humility, and your willingness to just pull other people into whatever issue they're working on or you're working on. Um, and personally, I've really enjoyed getting to know you as a student, as a colleague, and the one that I get to sit next to at every board meeting. So, we wish you the best. We hope you stay in touch. you keep us posted and um we'll come visit you. All right. Thank you, Director Shinoski.
086Um do Okay, you can go next. Thank Thank you, Director Clark. Um, first of all, I want to say thank you to Miss Omania's fifth grade students for their powerful presentation about single-use plastic waste produced by our school breakfasts. Um, I'm excited about the progress that we've made with waste reduction at lunch and the student leadership effort to continue to reduce plastic waste in our breakfast program. I want to echo President Brown's comments and and director Schnowski's comments about all the wonderful graduation celebrations. Um went to you might not know but I was in the audience this weekend for the black excellence celebration. I was a little late um but I got to see everyone stand up and make their speech and it was really was very moving. It was a delightful celebration. I also
087got to attend the multilingual student celebration. Um, it's just been great to to see all of these young people um heading out into the world. And I too am excited about graduation on Friday where not only will Winter be graduating, but so will my son, which is great, and Mike's son. Um, I also want to wish everyone a happy Junth, a happy pride month. Um, I am very proud to be a leader in Berkeley schools where we unapologetically welcome and celebrate all of our LGBTQ plus students and families. So after you attend the groundbreaking celebrations this weekend for workforce housing and the little theater and Junth, the weekend after that, on June 21st, I invite everyone to go to the city of Berkeley's Pride variety show that's going to be in downtown Berkeley um with
088drag queens and things and looks like it's going to be great fun. So let's all celebrate together as a community. Um, and finally, I too am looking forward to tonight's discussion of the budget. Um, I want to acknowledge the difficult and painful position that we are in in terms of layoffs and budget cuts. And as I have said many times, none of us want to lay off any employees. And I am deeply grateful for every person who works to serve our students in BUSD. Um, tonight we are going to be weighing a variety of different budget balancing solutions. considering really difficult trade-offs in front of us and I look forward to a thoughtful discussion that centers our students and our families. Um, finally, I too have office hours this week. My office hours are Friday
089from 3:00 to 5:00 at Sweet Bites on San Pablo Avenue. Come see me. Thank you so much. Thank you. I keep this really short myself. Um, of course, uh, congratulations to Wina and it has been a a great pleasure to serve on the board with her and, um, you'll be off to great things and excited to see you at graduation on Friday where my son will also be and director Kors. Uh, so it's a it's a um a time of gratitude. Um I I also would like to reflect um the same sentiments that director Korn noted that um with the challenging decision to make cuts. We we don't take these like light lightly. Uh we would rather not all um as today and thank you so much and I uh again I think we have
090one more meeting before recess couple weeks. So uh look forward looking forward to everyone to summer and I hope uh summer um brings some good spirits and some time off for everybody. Thanks. All right, thank you guys for all speaking. I guess I will go last. Um, so good evening everybody or good night cuz it's pretty dark out. Um, before I begin, I just wanted to say how much I appreciated hearing from our public commenters tonight. Uh, it's just a reminder of what makes this community so powerful, which is the willingness to speak up, to show up, and to advocate for what matters. And so, thank you to everyone who shared your voice. Uh, and as for milestone. Whether you're moving on from elementary to middle school, middle to high school, or high school to
091college, or something new, your growth, your resilience, and your journey really deserves to be celebrated. Um, and now as for me, this is my final meeting as the Berkeley High School student director. And in many ways, tonight feels like a full circle moment. I honestly remember walking into my very first board meeting, wideeyed, nervous, and unsure of how my voice would fit into this space. And now I sit here with a deeper sense of purpose, a stronger voice, and a profound gratitude for everything this role has taught me. And the setting may be the same, the boardroom, the name plate, the agenda, but I feel like I'm not the same person when I started. And that to me is the clearest sign of growth. And serving on this board has been one of the most
092meaningful experiences of my life. I've learned what it means to lead with empathy, to navigate disagreement, with respect, and to always center those most impacted. And I've had the privilege of sitting alongside people who are deeply committed to justice to students and to each other. And that itself has changed me a lot. And to my fellow board members and each and every person who serves this board, thank you. Thank you for your mentorship. Thank you for your authenticity and your faith in young people. Thank you guys for taking me seriously, for hearing me out, and for showing me what it means to be both principled and collaborative. And I'm so grateful to have built real connections here. Each of you have taught me something that I'll carry not just into college but throughout my life.
093And to my community, thank you for trusting me to represent you. Your stories, your strength, and your belief in something better in something better grounded me every step of the way. And so, while this chapter may be closing, I don't want to treat this as a goodbye. Instead, I wanted to treat it as a moment of gratitude for the people who have shaped me, for the values I'll carry forward, and for the place I will always call home. And as I head to DC for college to study just steps away from the highest forms of government, I will not forget where I came from. I'll never lose sight of the roots I built in this tiny but mighty district. A district that showed me what equity can look like when we fight for it and
094what public service means when it's grounded in love. And so, thank you for the honor of being a part of this work, of this mission, of this family. And in reminder, I'll leave you guys with the four E that define Berkeley Unifi's vision. Excellence in everything we do, equity as our foundation, engagement as our practice, and enrichment as our purpose. And these are values that I will carry with me throughout my life. So, thank you guys all so much. Thank you. Thank you. We love you. Thank you. Oh my god. Okay. Thank you guys so much. Now I am going to pass it on to our amazing superintendent. Superintendent for Morell. Take it away. Thank you, Miss Wenta. Uh good evening B USD family. There are only about 12 of you in here, but I
095hope that you stay. Um, a lot of what I plan to say has already been said, but I too am looking forward to um conferring the entire BUSD class of 2025 as high school graduates um this Friday at two ceremonies at Jacket Stadium. We do invite you all to come. These young scholars have truly distinguished themselves through their academic excellence, their athletic prowess, their civic engagement, their dedication to community service, and their dedication to the arts and unwavering allyship and advocacy. They've completed the Berkeley Unified School District journey, but we know that they have much, many more positive contributions to make as they continue on in the next phase of their journey ahead. Of course, as you've just heard from all of our delegates, one of those graduates is our very own Went. Um, Wenta,
096I am so proud of your leadership and the powerful ways that you have contributed to the distinguished legacy of student delegates here in BUSD. It has been such a pleasure and my honor to work with you as a member of this governance team and to work for you in my role as superintendent and you as one of the babies that I have been charged to serve. Um, I thank you for being an example of excellence in BUSD, for advocating in your role as delegate, for leadership on the Berkeley BSU, for equity, and for the numerous ways that our high school and our district through your various engagement efforts um have been realized not just elevating your voice, but you do a really good job and are consistent about making sure to elevate the voice of
097other students and pulling them in to be engaged authentically and thoughtfully, be that by your leadership on the vote 16 initiative or the board candidate. town hall that you co-f facilitated wa you bring and you are the rich and re enrichment and we are all excited to follow you on your journey to continue to make positive contributions to the world and I personally and so happy that you are one of the few kids who actually listened to me across our many many conversations and you chose to join the mecca Howard University as a baby bison um now you know I'm forever young but the old folks sometimes say, "Give me my flowers while I'm living." And you literally were just given your flowers. I picked them each for you and grew them in my I
098didn't I don't have a yard. Um, but literally just wanted you to know that you got your flowers from us. And those flowers are an indication of the incredible impact that you have had on those of us who are on this day, but also every single person who had the honor and privilege of interacting with you throughout your journey in Brooklyn Unified School District. So, thank you. I love you and I'm so excited to see all the amazing things you're going to do um in the days, weeks, and years to come. So, that was my goodbye. Um I also need to say hello as we welcome Laura Clark as the new principal of Willard Middle School. Lori, sorry. Sorry, Laura. You know I know your name. Lori Clark, I'm tired already. Miss Clark has deep
099roots in school administration, having worked in the state of Washington as a vice principal and principal for the past 27 years. She comes to us now from Mount Diablo, where she is currently the principal of a middle school, and we are looking forward to the leadership that she will provide to our young people, our families, and all of the Willard community. So, welcome, welcome, welcome, Miss Clark. Also in attendance this evening, we have our new vice principal for Malcolm X, Mr. Yousef Alleta. You guys have seen Yousef before. Jessica Mood um is coming for us from San Leandro and Ruby Ortega will be joining us from Mount Diablo. I just want to send a warm welcome to all those folks. A big round of applause for all of our leaders who are coming to join
100an amazing school district. You've already heard about our workforce housing groundbreaking on June 7th, as well as our increment one for our Berkeley community theater modernization, which includes uh our seven student and seven staff genderneutral restrooms that is going to also be um celebrated um on this Saturday. On tonight's agenda, um we are going to talk budget. You have heard about our budget a lot over the past several months. Um and an important part of my role as superintendent is to be a responsible steward of the district's resources. And this is demonstrated in one way by each year my bringing a balanced budget to our board of education that's really grounded and rooted in our mission statement. Tonight's agenda has a number of budget items including an LCAP update which highlights the use of our
101LCFF funds and some of our progress towards our various actions and targets. We'll have a preview of a preliminary budget. I stressed it's the preliminary budget. It is not a final budget being discussed this evening. And we're going to have a detailed review of the numerous budget balancing proposals that I and staff um will consider when drafting that final budget that again will come to our board later um this month. Um inclusive of an important update from our governor's May revise which is a critical component of our budget. And in many ways I feel like this evening's presentations are um a culmination of a lot of collaboration many many many community meetings and committee meetings and rigorous and thoughtful conversations. So, I do hope that you are either want to stay with us here in
102person or join us online to hear um to hear where those conversations have led, but also to hear um where we still need to go as we think about and prepare to present a final budget to our board. Thank you, Madam I was going to say madam. Thank you, Madame Wenta. Thank you so much, Superintendent for Morell. Um I always love hearing you speak. Um, it is now the time in our agenda to approve our consent calendar. Can I have a motion and a second to approve the consent calendar? I'll move. Second. All right. Um, Miss Chavez, could you please call the role for the vote? Director Shinoski, yes. Director Korn, yes. Director Clark, yes. Vice President Chain, yes. President Brown, yes. All right. Um, our first item this evening is action item 14.1.1. We
103will be receiving a presentation on budget balancing solutions. I will now turn this meeting over to President Brown. Thank you so much. Uh, Chair Clark, what a phenomenal phenomenal job you did this evening. Girl, you are a rock star. I'm telling you, DC is not ready for all the amazingness that you are. Um, but you were amazing tonight. Wonderful. Great job. Um, and thank you for leading us um leading us in this evening's agenda. Um, as uh, Chair Clark shared, we are preparing for our first action item of the evening. Excuse me. We are preparing for our first action item of the evening, uh, which is item 14.1, our budget balancing solutions. Um, this will be about a 45minute presentation. And I'm happy to um invite both superintendent Ford Morell um as well as assistant
104superintendent Paulie Finsby um and executive director of B business services Emily Mayor who will uh give this evening's presentation. Whenever you all are ready you may begin. We are ready to receive your presentation. Thank you madame president. Um, and thank you for that introduction. I want to also add that we're also being joined this evening by um, our assistant superintendent of human resources, Samantha Tobias Espinosa, and our associate super of ed services, Miss Jill Hoganike. We're just letting the team get settled. But again, um, as was shared this evening, we're here to engage you all in our budget balancing proposals. um that will be helpful as we again continue to build and prepare to present to you all a final budget. We always ground ourselves in all the work that we do and our mission
105statement um to enable and inspire our diverse student body to achieve academic excellence and make positive contributions to the world and we hold that vision to be uh to be our our guarding star if you will um as we engage in some really rigorous um and critical conversations about resource allocation. Um this is not our first time providing a budget update, but what we hope to do in this afternoon, this evening's budget update, is to um provide you a reminder and a review of B USD's budget balancing target to review the process uh that we've been using to get us towards uh a balanced budget, to highlight key aspects of the governor's May revise, and to think about the implications of that revise uh or those highlights on BUSD's budget and our budget target. um
106and to think about how that those updates will impact uh our 45day revision which we um anticipate is when we will bring you all the the final or closer to final budget once we have more information about that May revise. Um we also are going to ask this evening as President Brown said for the board to take action on these budget balancing proposals. I want to be really clear what we mean by taking action. When we sit before you this evening um which is why it's going to be a 45minut presentation. We plan to review all of the proposals that were explored and advanced by ESPback. And when I say explored and advanced, there were a number of proposals that we discussed. Um, but some uh kind of stay at the course, if you will,
107and endure to the very end. Um, and some actually the ESBAC advanced as recommendations that they would be okay with us considering um as we move toward presenting you a final budget. This evening you will see all of those proposals um and you will be um informed which ones ESBAC recommended that we continue to move forth with and which ones um ESBAC didn't. You'll also get updates on where there were points of um more clarification needed or more information as well as some points of tension and if you will again some rigorous debate and conversation when we talk about you all giving us action. We are I'm sorry making uh taking action on this. What we're asking for the board to do is after hearing all of these proposals and and the the the additional
108information and nuances and important details of each um to give us some direction in terms of which ones you as a board have an appetite for. We've engaged our ESPback again in all of these proposals and we've heard from them how they would bucket um and which of these they would recommend. We want to hear from you as we again prepare to move from a preliminary budget to a final budget. Um we are asking that you provide guidance and direction for us around each of these proposals. Um and as you do so you think about um our bottom line and the district's viability. Um we'll also include in the presentation at the very end just a review of our next steps so that everyone not just you on the deis but those who are listening
109um in in the room or online could understand what comes next after today's action after tonight's action and also include ways for our community members to stay informed and engaged. Um, one of the things we we've been rooting ourselves in as we've engaged in these conversations, uh, you've seen this visual before of stormy weather ahead. We've, um, you know, since kind of changed course or at least our framing, we we know that there are stormy weathers ahead, but what we've uh, started to say is that weather on its own is not necessarily a bad thing. Not being prepared for the weather is where issue begins to arise. And so we were able to to have some idea even last year as we made a $7 something million dollars worth of reductions that we would likely
110need to make more reductions this year. And so started our um committee meetings early so that we can prepare for the weather that's ahead. I don't know that any of us could have foresaw uh or foreshadowed what was to come um in terms of our economic realities, but again, I think that our ESBAT committee and the folks in front of you um are have been as prepared as possible and are excited about the ways that we've been able to again make some have some hard conversations still rooted in our our mission and our four E. Um what we've also um kind of held to be true as we go about this process is that there are no solutions. There are only trade-offs. you see that the person who said that is now covered up because
111we received some very thoughtful feedback around who we were quoting um and and found that that person was not a person who necessarily is an advocate for public schools. But the idea that this person was really kind of pushing ahead is one that we've held throughout this process. Again, this idea of trade-offs. And so, um instead of giving that person credit, we hearken back to something that I said um two years ago again thinking about the weather ahead that we can do anything but we cannot do everything. And so, um, appreciate the thoughtful fe comments today from our board of, um, education as we prepare to engage in some really hard conversations that none of us want to have. That as we're engaging, it's about trade-offs and thinking about the fact that we can do
112a lot and we can do anything, but there is no way possible that we can continue to do everything um, with the resources that we have um, prepared for us in the years to come. And so with that, I want to remind um, everyone that BUSD set a budget balancing target of 7.6 6 million ongoing. Um that target was shared with the board um some months ago and this budget balancing target comes after again B USD had reduced and balanced the budget by about $7 million last year. And so um I recall saying even after last year's reductions um that it was going to be really hard for us to engage in another significant set of budget reductions um without feeling it. And so unfortunately as you've seen and heard over the course of several
113meetings, we are all feeling it. And so, um, what our role is to do is to make sure that what is felt, um, is is is minimized as much as possible and that what is felt does not distract us or deter us from what we've agreed, um, to be our mission statement and the four E. And so again, that 7.6 ongoing is the number that I ask that you hold in your head as we engage in these various proposals. The goal of each of these proposals was to move us closer uh to that 7.6 million ongoing. And then reminding you that when we did the budget balancing last year, we were able to do so with with the with the majority of the dollars being ongoing, but 0.2 uh million dollars was one time. And
114so we had to bring that $.2 million with us. And so what we've been saying is $7.8 million is our budget balancing target. Um really quickly, there's five of us in front of you this afternoon, but the things that are going to be shared with you were not um identified um in isolation. We work with a amazingly diverse community committee called the sorry superintendent budget advisory committee or ESPback. I think you've heard that term a lot not only this evening but across several meetings. Um the responsibility of ESPback is to make recommendations to uh me and staff as we prepare to create a balanced budget to present to you uh for final action and approval. The membership of ESBAC is about 20 people and they are again very diverse in lots of ways. the the
115ways that I want to highlight right now is that they are inclusive of both community members um and families as well as people who have been identified and nominated from um various B USD advisory committees to come and represent that committee's voice, ideas and perspectives um in our um budget decisions. We also have representation of uh labor union leadership um as well as staff and we have one student and we're really looking forward to increasing the student participation in the next year. um ESPback has been meeting as early as October because again we were able to anticipate that the road and weather ahead would not be um ideal. Um and so we've engaged in 16 meetings um and in the last month of May we've actually increased our meetings having four in May. And we
116just want to say thank you to our ESBAC membership who's volunteered over 26 hours since October um to to engage in what in conversations that most folks don't even want to touch or hear about. So, shout out to our ESPback committee. What this slide shows is just the process that the ESPback committee engaged in and the process that we engaged in as we develop our budget. Um, I'm not going to read each of those phases, but want to highlight the analysis and proposal of options. That's the phase that um, ESPback kind of stays in um, between December all the way up to now. And then at the end at our last meeting, they made recommendations. And so we're going to share with you some of their recommendations again this evening in hopes that it will
117help you um inform us as we build the balanced budget and ultimately get the board's decision on the budget for the 26 or the 2526 school year. Just another quick reminder that as ESPback engaged in these decisions and considered these proposals, we did not do so haphazardly. We were guided and informed by our core values of resource allocation to the left and we were uh following a set of reduction strategies if you will which you see to the right. And so again what this slide shows is that um we were trying to get to that $7.8 million um ongoing target and we presented uh various proposals to the ESPback in phases. And so you see here um we had five phases again from October all the way through May. Um the recommendations or proposals that
118came to ESBACK were not just those that came or were suggested by staff but were also those that came from ESBAC themselves. And so um we presented again proposals in different phases. Um the last phase being phase five. And there were a couple of times where we actually made revisions to our phases. And so this slide here shows you um some of the phases that um were revised and what the cost or the impacts of those revisions are. We'll talk about those revisions a little bit more as we go deeper into um tonight's presentation. Um before we go deeper, what we know is that uh a lot of our budget is dependent on um the governor's budget. And so I'm going to pause here um and allow Emily to share with you some critical highlights
119for um from the governor's May revise. Thank you, Superintendent. So going into the governor's may revise. So where we are is we are nearing the end of a very long process of finding out the annual budget each year. And so we initially had presented to you back in January of the governor's proposed budget. Uh we're now in May where there's been time for for feedback and reflection and the governor's put out an updated proposed budget. Unfortunately, this budget won't actually become the and the enacted budget until the month of July. And so we have an unfortunate timing challenge of being needing to use the May revise as sort of a predictor of what our budget will be. But it is not a guarantee because the legislature still needs to weigh in and we still need
120to have the actual budget adopted. And so what we'll be going through is what are the proposals that's in the budget and then what is the guidance in the sector around what we can be counting on and what are the areas in which we need to be careful. So given all of that, why pay attention at all to this state uh budget and the May revise? And that's because our TK12 funding is affected by larger forces and trends, including some of our federal funding unknowns, the volatility of stock markets and the national economy, um the state budgets supported by unpredictable revenue sources, and then there's also continuing uh declining enrollment and rising costs. And so given all of those uncertainties with state funding being one of the largest funding streams for us as a school
121district, this is one of our better leading indicators as to what our funding will look like. So there are four key takeaways from the 2025 uh governor's may revised budget. Uh the first is that TK12 education funding uh levels were maintained. So despite an overall projected deficit uh in the overall state budget, the governor is very committed to preserving educational funding. The complication there is that our costs are always rising and the uh level of projected co uh revenue increases that the governor had been indicating back in May are coming in less. So while we're excited that you know funding will be maintained, it's not quite as uh rosy a picture as it was just a couple months ago in January. Uh the next item is recognition of need for flexibility and extra funding in
122some areas. So potential for uh additional funding streams. The governor has a lot of ideas about areas where um they could be expanding um new proposals that focus uh in particular on literacy supports. And then there's also some important clarifications and amendments and omissions in the May revise. So clarifications around the failure to adopt an LCAP. You'll be hearing the LCAP presentation uh right after this uh and also some changes to some of the other signature programs like ELOP. Uh but overall uh overall there were a couple of additional um and changes to funding proposals in the May revise. Um one of them being the learning recovery emergency block grant. So this was a grant that had been um reduced several years ago. This would be potentially a restoration of part of that that would
123be aligned to uh our LCAP needs assessment. Um but overall the areas in which we're seeing uh potential changes that we did and did not incorporate into the budget that you'll be hearing later tonight are first as I alluded to the uh 2.3% cola. So that's the amount that the dollar per pupil will rise from one year to the next. This is less than what was projected back into in January. Uh and the guidance here is that we should be incorporating this cola because the governor indicates he will be fully funding the statutory cola. The learning recovery additional funding is still uncertain. There's potential for additional TK funding that would uh help fund the shift from a 12:1 student ratio to a 10:1 student ratio. But given that that funding amount has already been decreased
124in the proposal from January compared to the proposal now the guidance is again to not uh count on budgeting on those funds. And this is guidance coming from both school services of California which is an advisory um organization that's um well respected in the state as well as from the Alama County Office of Education who's the group that will be ultimately approving our budget. There's also the potential for a discretionary block grant, which would be one-time funding, but the method and the allowable uses are still um highly subject to debate. Uh there's potential for a teacher preparation develop teacher preparation and professional development, but those amounts have been reduced and repurposed since January. And then finally, some potential changes with the ELOP uh threshold um which uh would not affect uh Berkeley Unified um in
125terms of the the threshold moving. Uh we're below that threshold still. So we we didn't want to allude to uh several potential proposals for funding without going a little bit more in detail on them. Um, like I said, the guidance in the field and the guidance from our county office education is that if we include this in our budget, it should be designated. So would not have any impact on that budget target. So we could budget it in the revenue, but we would also need to designate it in the fund balance. So given that, you won't see this funding incorporated into the proposed budget that you'll see uh later in the evening. in terms of the potential magnitude of the budgets that were sorry I think the clicker is getting tired. Um the TK ratio
126LCFF additional add-on uh could be potentially as much as $2,397 per TK student. Um, if we saw the full impact of that given our projected ADA, that would be about $800,000 of ongoing revenue. So about if we were more conservative and assumed potentially a 50% increase, that would be about $400,000. In terms of the discretionary block grant, um, assuming that it does not have, uh, any stipulations attached, which was the original proposal, um, that could be potentially as much as $2.8 $8 million. However, it would definitely only be one time if it did materialize and there's been uh significant debate about whether it would be actually implemented and whether or not it would have an unduplicated pupil percentage component if it was in which case the number could be uh significantly less. Um and with
127that, I'll turn it back over um to discuss the target. Um, so as we prepare to move towards the budgeting target, you all might recall that earlier this year we talked about the analogy of the redwood tree um to really speak to um our collective strength and our resilience as a community. So this evening again we're we're bringing uh trees to try to ground ourselves and and some I guess shared visual. Um and so as we think about trees and our balance budget, I've been I I gave up my analogy about getting to work and different ways of getting to work. if you all remember that analogy. That wasn't that wasn't very clever. Um, so this one is rooted in science. Maybe director Shinoski will like this one. But we've been thinking about our district
128is like a great tree. Um, in good seasons when there's plenty of rain or funding, the tree grows many branches, programs, departments, and services. But when a drought comes, a budget shortfall, the tree can't support all those branches anymore. Trying to keep everything would actually weaken the whole tree, risking its survival. So, we often have to trim some branches, not because we want to, but because it's the only way to keep the core of our tree healthy and strong. That way, when the rain returns, and we do anticipate the rain will return, the tree can grow back even stronger and more resilient. Um, at our core, um, in BUSD is our mission that I've said every single convening, as well as our four E and our commitment to excellence, equity, enrichment, and engagement. As we
129prepare to share with you the proposals for budget balancing, please know that that core does not change, but that what we're presenting to you are um our best offerings for where we might need to make some reductions, but a lot more of where we might need to restructure and rethink how we realize those values and how we stay true to that core um again with tighter and different resources. I'm going to let that sit with y'all for a while. See what you think about it. I can go back to the get to work one if I need to. Um that said though what we have in the slides that um are ahead will show you again proposals and we tried to organize these several proposals in very in makes sense ways. We've bucketed them um
130by high priority proposals um things that are required or necessary um revenue generators as well as budget balancing or sorry budget reductions. As we go through each of those categories, we're we're happy to take questions by category or if the directors want to wait until the um the end of all all the proposals, we're happy to engage you in questions um that way as well. Um for each proposal, we've also tried to give visuals as to which budget balancing strategy uh that particular pro proposal is linked to. And just so you all know um again, we presented um five phases of proposals to ESPback between October and May. Um, and for each of those phases, we asked ESPback to do what we called a straw poll. And in the straw poll, they looked at the
131proposals and they um they let us know which ones they wanted us to consider as we prepared for the final budget. They might say, "Yes, I want you to consider this one." They might say, "No, don't consider or they might say we need more information." We did this for every single phase. I think end at our last meeting or the the second to last meeting um in May, we had them look at all of the proposals and then bucket or prioritize those proposals. And so even if there was one that they said we don't want you to advance it um because there was very few that everybody said don't advance it, we did ask them to prioritize those particular um proposals and that prioritization we'll talk a little bit about as we move to our
132next sections. But we do want you to know that there were opportunities for ESPback to not only let us know what they recommend, but to again consider all of the proposals um in totality and then prioritize or bucket them accordingly. So this first category is um high priority proposals. Again, these proposals are ones that are um necessary or required and I think you'll get a sense of why once we tell you what they are. And again, we'll be uh we'll we'll lead we'll follow your lead. If you want to stop and ask questions after each uh chunk, that's fine. Or we can wait till the end. And so, this particular category uh totaled $2.7 million. And this is uh one of the few categories where there's actually a mix of strategies that are being used.
133And so, the first proposal we're sharing with you is um we had some changes to the 2526 teacher template transferring money to BEP uh to the tune of $1.3 million. and that was actually um generating revenue. We know that this is high priority because um we didn't anticipate that you would tell us to not do something that brought dollars to the district particularly for a fund that our taxpayers have already said they want to use to help us move towards our mission. The second one on this particular slide is that we um every year as you know we make projections for our enrollments um and they've been pretty uh pretty consistent. Uh so 2526 enrollment projections actually increased by about 138 students corresponding increase of 121 ADA. And so with that we would see an
134increase in funding of $1.5 million. So we called that one true and up cost because we were seeing what we're going to receive for the students that we have. Again we didn't think anyone would have an issue with that one. So we put that under high priority um necessary or required. Um, we also know that we have um some taxes uh with the city of Berkeley um that we have not been collecting, for lack of a better way to say it. And and Kis is here. He's not at the table, but he's here also to answer questions about that should they arise. Uh but the city of Berkeley um has a tax for three years retro. And if we were to recoup those tax dollars, we would get $150,000 ongoing and $300,000 one time. So
135again, um it's not counted as a revenue generator. kind that's chewing up cost, but it's still money coming into the district towards our $7.8 million target. Uh the next one in this category is um we know that we are going to have to increase the classroom teachers, the number of classroom teachers um in order to address the increase in enrollment. And so what you see here is we tred up cost by um removing uh or scoring negative $273,000 towards our target of 7.8. Let me pause right now to say that anytime you see a parenthesis, it means it's a cost to a to the district. Similarly, we understand that we're going to have to add some additional SDC class, sorry, some SDC staff um due to increased enrollment. So again, we score that at um
136negative or cost of $150,000. Again, both of those are coded as trueing up program costs. As we move to this slide, um what we know and this is the final slide for high priority proposals is that we are going to have to implement a new phone system. It's something that's required. So again, it's in this category and the cost of that system is $100,000. And then also, as you heard, um there's a reduction in the COLA and so the governors may revise um has a loss of LCFF funding of $143,000. I will put an asterk here um that as Emily said, there are some things that have been scored in our preliminary budgets and others that have not. This one is something from the May revise that we went ahead and scored because it's pretty
137much going to happen. And so those are all of the um items in the high priority proposals. Again, these proposals total $2.7 million towards our $7.8 million uh target. I will pause now to see if any directors would like to engage the team in questions about these particular proposals or if you like us like us to continue. I actually think it is really great to uh go ahead and pause um throughout the presentation. So, thank you superintendent for Morthell for doing that. Um board directors, do you all have questions? I don't have any questions about these proposals. Okay. Director Chang, Director Shinoski, any questions? Um, I I do have a question about the city of Berkeley tax. So, that's $150,000 uh that we will be able to recoup annually. Yes, we estimate the cost is
138$150,000 annually. It's a utility tax that the city of Berkeley charges through PG& that they're we identified on a bill that we're actually not supposed to be paying. So, we did work with legal. We can recoup up to two years. So, it'll be $300,000 of one-time money coming back, but then roughly $150,000 in savings off the utility bills each year every year. Oh, that's great. Wonderful news. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that. Um, are there any other questions from the board? If not, we're going to move on. Okay. Hearing none, let's continue. Thank you. to this next category um we're excited about because oftentimes you talk about budget balancing and this was the case even last year you spent a lot of time thinking about what you can uh reduce or remove
139um and this year's ESBAC was really um great about thinking about how we can actually bring and increase revenues to our district um really quickly what you see here um in the rectangles on either side of the screen are uh the categories by which ESPback prioritize revenue generators um if you see bucket one means that it's high priority And what that meant was um even if we get additional dollars from the state or you know hit the lottery or anything, they still want us to implement this revenue generator. They thought it was important enough and impactful enough to the district that we do it not dependent on how much dollars we have or need, but because they think it was actually a good way to bring revenue into the district. I'm going to bring you
140down to the to the very bottom category, bucket five in blue, and those were revenue generating solutions that the ESPback said, we don't want you to implement this at all. Even if we need additional dollars, we're not recommending this particular item to be used. So, um you're going to see these colors as we move into the slides to come. So, I wanted to make sure you you're oriented to what they mean. So, for revenue generators, um the the the total was $2.2 2 uh million and that total is inclusive of uh that teacher template transfer that I showed you in the high priority section um on slide 22. And so the ones that follow now in these slides total $599,780. And here we go. I'm actually going to pause and let Pauline speak to the
141revenue generators and I'll take a break and come back. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Superintendent Oh, wait. So, these proposals actually um refer to um looking at our transportation program and we came up with some um well, these were proposals to increase revenue. So, one of the ones that we looked at was increasing transportation field trip rates and these will be for field trips that are not um necessarily all our programs, our local programs. So, we thought we could get $60,000 from increasing the um the field trip rates to be competitive with other um other districts. Um we also looked at increasing um the reimbursement um from the ACOE grant. So, we have an opportunity to actually be reimbursed for some expenses um for um from Alama County based on this um grant proposal. and that
142would generate about $250,000. Um, another thing, thanks to um to assist Assistant Soup Kiss, we looked at our district um rental rates and this actually was a suggestion that came from um I think it was that said it. So, we had um staff actually making recommendations in our budget leadership team and um and other districts um use this proposal as well. We have estimated a very conservative $47,000 um for increasing our district rental rates. We're hoping that we can actually see a little bit more um as we are moving through the year. All right. This thing never works for me. We should also add that for uh the feebased reimbursement for the ACLE grant that is also a conservative number. The program is is relatively new and a little bit too good to be true
143to be honest after speaking to so many superintendents and other districts. Um, and we know that the because of it because it's new, the the actual process to get reimbursed has been kind of slow and a little bit wonky. And so we budgeted or scored 250,000. Um, but we we also understand that if it actually works the way it's supposed to work and our folks are able to um input the data to get the reimbursement, it actually could be more. So that 250 is a placeholder, if you will, until we better understand how the program works and the implications um to our staff. Okay. So um this is a a a proposal that we have floated around before. Um we had brought this to the board board probably six or seven years ago where we
144would actually have um generate some kind of revenue from our hometoschool transportation. So we explored charging a dollar a day for our non unduplicated students and we estimated that that would generate about $195,000. We also looked at um charging a dollar a day for nonbusd afterchool transportation and again we're estimating that at $96,000 and we need to um to add staffing for the additional administrative costs. So we had added um a 0.5 FTE to um to account for the additional um the additional administrative um work as a result of implementing these fees. Um next slide. So actually this is the last proposal for this revenue generating section and so similar to the last section if we can pause to see if directors have any questions, comments or feedback on um the five proposals pre presented
145in this section. board directors. Do you have any questions? Jennifer has Go ahead, Jennifer. I'm sorry, Director Shinoski. Excuse me. Jennifer's fine. Um, I am sorry that I didn't like think of this earlier, but I'm wondering if we have thought about something like a sliding scale for the buses um that doesn't just um eliminate our unduplicated students from the costs, but maybe thinks about something similar to our learn structure. Um, I agree that the system that we have in Berkeley with busing is really vital to the integration of our schools and it's really part of the beauty of our schools. Um, and that busing is an important piece of that. But I'm wondering if a sliding scale may help with that just as something to explore as a possibility. So, we could look we could
146look into that. Um the recommendation from the committee was just a dollar a day. We also looked at what would it mean if it was $2 a day. So it was this is just a bit a starting point and we had shared this with the board. Yeah, I understand. And I I just these flat rate fees are regressive, right? And so I'm thinking, is there a way to make the fee structure something that is more progressive and not a hindrance to um lower income families utilizing the bus system that we have? Can I ask for an example? So when we when we talked about these fees um we were really intentional in a lot of conversations with ESPback from the very beginning that our um unduplicated students um would not be charged a fee. And
147so, um, Jill, can you remind us who all our unduplicated students is our student experiencing? Sorry. Go ahead. So, I can So, it's our free and reduced or free and reduced eligible or um foster youth and our English language learners. Right. So, my point is sort of that free and reduced lunch that threshold is actually quite low, right? And so a dollar a day could be cost prohibitive for some families who don't qualify for the free and reduced lunch while other families it may be that $2 a day is nothing. Right? So I I'm thinking of some kind of fee structure that looks more like the learn structure where we have sort of bracket income brackets and that the uh bus transportation fee is associated with those income brackets because charging everyone the same amount
148is is regressive, right? It $175 for me may be different than $175 for you. Yes. Thank you. We have a number of our ESBAC members who are listening to this uh meeting. So, I just wanted to ask you to clarify, we are going to continue to not charge those who are who qualify for free and reduced lunch, our foster our students and um foster programs and our ELS and then anyone who's outside of that group. What you're asking is for us to think about income to think about how to might perhaps charge them differently. Precisely. Thank you. Thank you for that recommendation. Um, Director Shinoski, um, I think it would be great if during these times when we make any recommendations or provide direction, we can hear from the entire board, um, on said recommendation
149from uh, each director just to ensure that we're all on the same page. And so, um, Director Shinoski, I support that recommendation. Um, dire Vice President Chang, Director Corm, what is your pleasure? Sure. I don't know if you can see us um, President Brown. Um but uh yes I I support a similar question as well and I do like to learn type of pattern. I do understand the ESPback has provided input. Um this is in the spirit of that original input right and I I am also concerned about um the assertions that have made by members of the public that a free public transportation system is grounded in integration and there certainly is that history in Berkeley. So, we want to be mindful of that even as we put in place potentially a sliding scale
150non-regressive um fee system. Thank you, Director Kum. Thank you. Um I agree with the spirit of your idea. I am concerned about the implementation of it. Um to implement that, we would have to collect income verification from every family in order to determine which um which tier they are in. And I'm just concerned about the the amount of work that will take and whether that's feasible within this.5 FTE that we're already talking about creating in order to charge people and collect the fees. It's it's a I know that for the learns program it's a complicated process to collect all that paperwork annually to determine families incomes. Um, and my additional thought about this proposal, I I share some I I I think it's an interesting idea and I am excited also about the idea of
151generating revenue instead of just cutting everywhere and I think there are unintended consequences of this proposal. It and it does it is sort of a disincentive to families to ride the bus. Um, so one thing I have thought about is that I might be willing to sort of like reluctantly approve this for next year with with a commitment to really collecting good data on the consequences for next year and does it dramatically reduce bus ridership, for example. um and being being willing to change course if it's having impacts that that are negative. So your recommendation is to to do this um as a trial trial year. Yes, that's a concise way of saying it. Okay, I hear that. any other feedback from the board uh regarding this specific item around transportation or any of the
152other items that are under our revenue generators um uh portion. Can I can I just add one other thought, President Brown? I also am wondering um Miss Finsby, what's your title? Associate Superintendent Finsby. Assistant Assistant Superintendent, sorry. trying to be all official here. Um I I have wondered if if all of the funding comes through and we don't need to charge people to ride the bus to and from school, but we do choose to charge people to ride the bus to their nonBUSD after school program. I wonder if we would still need that.5 FTE admin person. It it will be less but um it's going to be difficult to fill a less than a 0.5. It's difficult to do it anyway but I mean I think we that would also be a you know let's
153see how that would be impacted. Okay. Um, can I also ask Director Shinowski, are you um open to considering uh the same idea for afterchool uh transportation uh in terms of a sliding scale or are you just um thinking about the hometoschool transportation? Yeah, and thank you for that, President Brown. Yeah, I was actually just thinking about the hometoschool transportation, but I did um mention earlier today um but not in open session to the superintendent that I would like to see us explore the possibility of um charging for nonBUSD afterchool transportation, but specifically forprofit nonBUSD afterchool transportation um which tends to be a higher cost alternative. uh many of our city of Berkeley programs are um very low cost and so many families avail themselves of that because of the low cost. So um that
154was one idea and also might help us to free up some of those transportation needs so that we can prioritize uh transportation to our city of Berkeley partners after school partners. Does that answer it? It does. Thank you. Thanks. Um staff and before we continue on, um are you clear on the recommendations uh provided by the board or do you have any clarification questions? No, we're clear. Thank you. Okay, we're ready to move on. I mean, I spoke for you all, but yeah, we're good. Well, you're the superintendent. That's your job. Speak for the people. We are collaborative. Berkeley hash Berkeley together. Okay, so we're going to our our next section. Uh and this is the kind of the media section and um the probably the section where ESBAC engaged in the most uh ongoing
155kind of conversations. So uh these are our reductions and cost savings proposals. Um again to the left what you'll see is uh the categories by which ESPback bucketed or prioritized uh these reductions and cost savings um when they saw them at the end in their entirety. Um so bucket one is high priority and in this instance what that means is that they want us to restore that particular thing first and so if we get additional revenues and we can um to remove that item or that proposal from the budget balancing consideration altogether. So that's an important distinction um from what the uh buckets meant for the revenue generators. Um there's also bucket two which means that you know it is a priority and they want us to restore it next but it wasn't necessarily the
156immediate thing uh to restore should we get additional fundings or more clarity around funding. And then again to contrast that to the blue at the bottom bucket two um when you when they ranked a prior a proposal as bucket two it meant that that item was not a priority to them and they would actually say that we don't restore that particular item even if funding allowed us to do so. Sorry, bucket five. Sorry, the blue bucket, bucket five, uh means do not restore even if um dollars came our way. So again, keep that in mind as we go into this section. So this section um in partnership with ESPback was able to identify $3.3 million towards our $7.8 million budget balancing target. Um and again, these are organized by the budget balancing strategy. And so
157this first set um is one slide and on this slide you will see uh the strategy to close and remove vacancies and all of these positions were vacancies and so I'll go through the first three and then speak to you a little bit more about that last one on the right bottom right. Uh so we are um proposing to reduce a 1.0 HR tech uh $48,000 and again this is a vacancy. Um, we also uh wanted to eliminate a response to intervention or RTI TSA vacancy uh to the tune of 114,000. Eliminating the equity and belonging director position. Um, that's a position that's been vacant for the excuse me for the past year. It was a position that was um we paused on it last year as we moved towards last year's target and that's
158$27,000. Um and then the last proposal was to eliminate the personnel commission supervisor and we had discussed that being $169,000811. What I want to pause and say to you all is that the proposals that you see are as they were when they were brought to ESBACK and if there were any revisions um you'll see that on the slide as well, but there were instances where there were not revisions made. Um and so in this case we proposed that we remove what we believed was a vacancy and we said that would score 169,000 but as you might know and as ESBAC knows um the personnel commission budget is an independent budget and so that is not something we can just decide and so we we were engaged in conversations and members of ESBAC and members of
159staff went to the personnel commission meeting and the personnel commission came to our ESPback meetings um and they were not able to identify $169,000 worth of savings. they actually did not agree that that is a vacancy that they would be willing to to remove or close. Um, however, they were able to identify $61,000 worth of savings. Remember, we we create or contribute to the PC budget. And so, want to note that distinction of the 169, which you'll see in our preliminary budget, is actually $61,000 because that's where we're able to uh Okay, let me stop. So, no. So, um just a point of clarification, they did in fact um eliminate that position, but then they replaced it. Thank you. With a um with a I think an analyst or Yeah. Thank you for that. See
160hashtag Brookley together. Um so this is this slide has uh the entire I'm sorry to interrupt you. Could you make that last statement a little bit clearer? I know. Um, assistant superintendent fallins, you you started and then got cut off. So, they eliminated the personnel uh commission supervisor position and then what um so they they eliminated um the position that is on this list um which would have been the 169. What they um suggested in their budget and that went forward was that they would create instead an analyst position. um that would meet their needs and that would still give us a savings of 61,000. So instead of saving the whole 169,000, it would save us the 61. Can I and I know we're not yet ready for for questions for this entire group, but
161I do want to ask a question about that. So my understanding was that our recommendation to eliminate the supervisor is because um there wasn't I I guess enough work for the supervisor and the director to be to be doing um that there was no need for the supervisor uh position. And I know this is a conversation that we've had over the last two or three years I believe. Um and so replacing um although it would be a $61,000 cost savings to the district, I think that's great, but the idea was to eliminate the position altogether. And so how did we walk out with an additional position even though the cost of that position is even lower, but how did how did we walk out with another position? Um so it wasn't um that there's a
162lack of work. it was looking at um what was vacant and it was actually suggested by a community member um to look at this position. Um and so we did um consider it an ESPback. We did propose it to the personnel commission. And what the personnel commission said is okay, we understand we don't need to have a supervisor, but we do need to have a position to hold some of this work. And so that is why they proposed um and it put in their budget this other position that they want to create. Okay, excuse me for misspeaking when I said a lack of work. I think what I meant to say is that the work proved to continue to be done without this position is is what I probably should have said and currently somebody
163is doing the work um as a and getting paid out of class which was their argument against cutting the position. Okay, thank you for that clarification. So again, these are the only four proposals for closing remove vacancies. So if directors have any other questions about these, it's okay to ask them now. I have a comment if that's okay. President Brown. Yes, please go right ahead. I just want to thank the personnel commission, folks on the personnel commission that did fight for this reduction. Um it was I don't even think this reduction was easy and we are required to approve the personnel commission budget. So we really relied on them to um make some hard decisions as well. So I do want to acknowledge that um because I did speak up requesting to eliminate this supervisor
164position um and was disappointed that that didn't happen. Thank you, Director Shinoski. Okay. So, um our next couple slides are um strategy truing up program cost. And so, this first one here is a shift um a funding source. So, um our district service assistant uh the part of that position for $25,000. We've shifted that funding from the general fund to another source. Um also, you all might recall that we um have our two-way immersion uh curriculum and program. And so we have ongoing costs for that particular program to the tune of $16,000. Again, note the parenthesis to note that it is a cost. Um, if we go on to the next slide, another example of chewing up program costs. Um, I'm going to start with the bottom is the additional 0.5 transportation admin staff. Again,
165remember that re those revenue generators would require or need someone to help collect those monies um and documentation. And so that's that 0.5 that you saw in that other category. But want to pause now to um go to the one on the top which is reduce investment in college readiness and support uh to the tune of $300,000. You'll notice a couple things on this slide. You'll notice an asterisk over um by the box. Um, you will also notice a big old X and what you'll know is that when you see those X's, that means that that is a that is a proposal that ESBACK did not recommend that staff consider as we create um a a balanced budget or present the final budget to you all. Again, this evening, we're presenting to you all the
166budget balancing proposals explored um whether or not ESBACK said to advance them or not, but we're going to be really transparent with the ones that ESBACK said they didn't agree with, as well as why. Um what you'll see is when you look at this particular one is that um our ESBAC committee really felt like these college readiness programs are important and valuable and we actually agreed. Um and 87% of them said that if we were to get additional dollars that we would restore these first. Um the other 13% said that again they are a priority so restore those next. Um this particular proposal came earlier in in our phases and apologies I don't recall which phase it came in. Um but towards the end of our um time together on ESPback I actually made a
167statement to ESPback that I um I also felt very uncomfortable um making reductions in this particular area or this particular category. Um that said it was not brought to ESPback um um like some of the other revisions were because of the time. So, it was a it was a in the- moment. I said it, but we didn't have time to prepare a slide to the ESBback and said, "Here's the here's the here's the revision." Um, I want to be really clear that though there was a lot of agreement um amongst ESBAC members and and members of of my team with regard to the value of these programs and really not wanting to have to make reductions. There's also some pretty hard conversations about the fact that these are programs that come up or seem to
168come up every year and these are programs that serve um our most high potential and and otherwise historically underserved babies. There was um some some conversations that happened that don't that are not reflected on this slide that I want to make sure the board is privy to as you prepare to give us direction on this particular proposal. So the feedback was consistent um with regard to the bridge and rise program. And so that 87% and that 13% that you see there on the um right hand side of the screen are really probably more accurately reflective of how ESBAC felt about bridge and rise and that they wanted us to not u make any reductions to those programs. However, throughout ESPback conversations and in the ESBAC prioritization survey itself uh there was a different opinion in
169terms of collegebound the collegebound program. There were many members who saw the value in the program but thought that there was an um opportunity for us to uh make some reductions in that particular program and the cost of that contract. What you'll notice is that this particular proposal um it was given as a bucket, right? So we we said reduce investments in college readiness support and then we talked about what programs fall under college readiness support. And so um that's why you see a little bit of a tension where they were like yes we don't want you to do that and we still want you to explore um perhaps making some additional reductions in collegebound. Our initial proposal was to true up um these programs and and what we meant by that is we were
170not planning to cut um any of these programs. Again we all agree they're valuable. We we saw opportunities to address some some inefficiencies. Um and specifically to Collegebound, what we talked about was we've had this amazing programs for a number of years and wanted to get a sense of what the enrollment and attendance trends were to see if there was any space where we can again true true up that contract to be more um aligned or consistent with uh the enrollment because that was one of the feedbacks and one of the constant comments of ESPback was oh these other programs have a weight list and this one hasn't yet served the number of students that it was intended to and so wanting to keep the collegebound program but see if we might make some adjustments
171to reflect uh the enrollment. And so I want to be really clear that big X is there. ESBAC did not want this one to be advanced as a recommendation. We agreed, but ESBAC did want us to look at making additional reductions to the collegebound program. And so as you engage with this proposal as a board, we wanted you to know um that little nuance um to this particular proposal. More though, thank you for sharing the nuance. Um, I'm both I both have so many questions and I'm also uh kind of speechless uh based off of what you just shared um specifically given the feedback from ESBAC regarding um the collegebound program. Um I I maybe I'll start first with a clarifying question to better understand. Um was the only recommendation from ESPback in regards to
172um uh cutting or not uh giving as much advocacy to the collegebound program as bridge and rise? Was that only because of uh what you just mentioned around enrollment or were there other other concerns? And the reason I'm asking is because um I haven't really seen any ESPback members um at any of the collegebound program um offerings or collegebound Saturdays. Um, and it is such a phenomenal phenomenal program and I don't see how anyone um wouldn't hold it at the same regard um as bridge and rise. And so other than enrollment, were there any other concerns that were addressed in ESPback? Yes. So the other cons the the other big concern that was expressed with this particular proposal uh President Brown was the fact that collegebound um we use the term partners but members of
173ESPback and others name it as a contract. And so um there was there was this ongoing conversation um that you've actually heard here in the boardroom um about contractors versus having our own B USD staff uh do some of the work. So there's there's been on and I just to be transparent it was conversations that even happened and started last year. There's ongoing conversations um with ESPback and some of them are new members about um you know the fact that we have a bridge and a rise for example um and both of those programs um are on the campus of our schools. That was another point of just a point that they made. Um the bridge program and the rise program um also serve um a number of students and families. So they were you
174know there was always questions about how many students are served. Bridge, as you heard um at a recent board presentation, has a weight has a weight list. Um and so the the the push and the ask was actually to increase the investment in Bridge and Rise and to decrease in Collegebound both because of the number of students served in Collegebound and because the the the program isn't on site, but also because the the program is seen as being something that is is a contract. Um and that's just, you know, the very direct way to say it. So, um I think that you know I and staff definitely tried to and shared data with ESPback and um you've heard me even at this board meeting speak to the value of all of these programs and we
175also had folks come out to ESPback to make public comment. So ESPback was able to hear um from families and students directly about the impacts of rise and bridge as well as of collegebound. Um I I would say that the the feedback from ESPback um though there was some question about the African-American success framework which as you all know collegebound is a part of that we'll speak to later the feedback wasn't necessarily to to you know eliminate collegebound but there was definitely a push to um reduce the contract and thank you for for sharing all of that. Um it's, you know, definitely a hard pill to swallow um to to hear that information about um a program that is so wonderful. And it also although um you know, we're grouping these as college readiness support
176um it's it's really difficult and a bit unfair um to um think about these programs in the same um in the same realm or the same idea. Um because although you know the overall goal of these programs is to is for our students to achieve academic excellence um and be prepared to go to and through college. Um they are all very different and unique in their own way. And what I've seen happen in this district uh for many many years, especially with Bridge and Rise and now uh it's also happening with Collegebound um is that we sometimes pit these programs against each other as if they all do um the same thing and they are all unique in their own way um and need to be supported and invested in um as such. And so
177I'm going to step off my soap box because I'm sure other board members have have comments, but I do um have questions. I have another question in regards to the specifics around the reduction of investments. Um so I know that is a total of $300,000. Um but are you prepared tonight to share um what specifically that looks like for each program? So, I want to clarify, President Brown, that again later in ESPback uh phases, I came back and I said that I was we were not proposing. We were not going to move forward with this proposal. We did not bring it back as a revi revision. Um and so this 300,000 is actually not scored. And that's why I'm pointing out to you all. It's not scored in the preliminary budget. Um again, we're showing
178you everything. But that is why I'm pointing out to you all that level of nuance because I don't want to misrepresent what ESBACK's feedback was. And so I said I didn't want to cut any of them for some of the reasons that you said. Um we know these programs do different things, but they all do amazing things for the babies that they serve. So I didn't want to trip off of how you know what's your number, what's your number. They're all important and we we wanted to squash that kind of competition that you just spoke about. But I do want to honor that ESBACK um was was not satisfied with with with that and really did put in the comments that they want us to consider reducing the collegebound um program, but it is not
179scored in tonight's preliminary budget. Thank you, Director Shinoski. I think I saw your hand. Thank you. Um so, a couple of things. I appreciate that these have been removed from the cuts. Um, I do have concerns about paying contractors when we are laying off our employees here within the district and I agree with you, President Brown, that collegebound is an amazing program. We've heard from so many participants of the program about how impactful it is. Uh, at the same time, we also have heard from so many families about how impactful OFI is. And so I I do personally um question the D the expenditures for contractors um for programs that we have said we were building capacity for inhouse and that may we may be able to pull in with some of the resources we
180have um inhouse. I also want to just raise up again um we have talked in the past about data about students that participate in multiple programs and I don't believe I know educ is sort of new and so we've been building that data set but I would still love to understand a little bit more about uh which programs students are accessing you know multiple how often students are accessing mult multiple programs and so how we could you know get some organizational clarity and efficiency there as well. I don't have those numbers in front of me but that is something that we've been tracking and what I will say is that there is not as much overlap as we originally in anticipated that has been through some intentional work and coordination of the managers of these
181various programs to make sure um that they're not doubly enrolled. Um that said um most of the programs are after school on Saturday. So a student in rise would not necessarily would not also be enrolled in bridge because they take place at the same time. The overlap um that's happening is with pointe um and so that is something that we're taking a look at. Poente is a different program but still has a lot of the case management um intended to serve specific student populations and etc. Um, so that is something that we're keeping our eye on, but um, it's a small I'm looking back at Lena, it's a pretty small percentage of those, like we're talking about a handful of students. Thank you. Um, Director Shinoski, if I can just um, uh, respond to to
182what you said, I definitely hear you. um as it relates to to contracts um and as it relates to um supporting our uh district staff and um you know in the season that we're in especially with cuts um how difficult it is um to cut to cut our district staff and also um to to support outside contractors. But I I just want to remind us specifically um with this with the collegebound program um there are places and areas of need within the district um that we have not yet shown um the ability to have not yet shown the growth or have not yet shown um the capacity to um to be able to support our students. uh which is why we brought the collegebound program in. Um specifically um when I first joined the board
183um and and still today, but when I first joined the board, we talked all the time about the achievement gap um that and the opportunity gap that persists among um our students and how it impacts our African-American students. And we talked for a very long time about um the number of our African-American students who are not meeting um the A throughg requirements or not graduating A throughG um eligible. And so one of the reasons, you know, to bring in um a program of this nature, which you already know, I know I'm preaching to the choir, um but to bring in a program of of this nature is because in fact, we weren't serving um our students who needed it well or we weren't serving our students well who needed it um or there wasn't enough
184space um because of weight list that allowed for specifically our African-American students to get the services and support that they need to help them um metriculate through high school and to be prepared to go to and through college. And so um I hear you. I hear what you're saying as it relates to to contracts. Um and I just wanted to specifically call out the part about us being prepared to to do the work on our own and one day we will be. But the truth of the matter is that we're not quite there yet. Um which is why we have programs of this nature. And I'm not just saying this to you. I'm more so speaking um to the entire district, but you um your uh comments sparked a a response in me. So, thank
185you for allowing me to speak. Can I respond? Is that okay? Please. Well, I was going to bring this up later, but I'll just bring it up now. I actually um President Brown think that it is really problematic that these cuts are the things that are brought to us again and again. you know that these are always the things that are on the table for us to discuss when we're doing cuts. I've said it before and I you know I've I'll say it again in a slightly different way as I learn more about why particular things are brought to us and why other things are not brought to us. Um, and one of the things we don't see in this budget proposal are the sitebased budgets, you know, and those the way that we do
186budgeting here, the things that the district really looks at with our general funds is pretty narrow. And so I would really like to see us really engage in those more complicated conversations so that we understand exactly how all you know holistically how our general fund dollars are being spread across the district because you know these are all programs that help um you know the our most vulnerable students as you said uh President Brown and I'm concerned that we continue to put more and more dollars towards our most privileged students through our sitebased funding models um at the expense of our most vulnerable students. So, I was speaking about the contractor in terms of like I I have reservations about laying off BSD employees, especially those like OPI staff who are serving our most vulnerable population,
187right, in order to keep contractors. But I also have a larger concern that we're not looking at the bigger p picture about how our dollars go toward, you know, are allocated across the board. Absolutely agree. Um are there any other comments um from board directors in regards to the section around trueing up program costs? Okay. Hearing none, let's continue. want to pause and remind the directors about the time in case that matters to you. We are ready to keep going. Um let's go ahead and keep going and let's just pause at 11 p.m. to see where we are and we'll make whatever adjustments to the agenda that we'll need to make at that time. Okay. All right. Here we go. So, our next category of budget balancing uh is eliminating expenses. What you see here
188are a number of expenses that we've eliminated. Um there was a uh a platform my path high school platform for $15,000 um that we uh proposed to eliminate. Uh there was als going down there was also um a proposal to eliminate hourly pay to ret to a retired budget analyst for 30,000. Um going bottom right uh there was also a proposal is also a proposal to eliminate um a contract with our um our our our friend who supports us with LCAP. uh and that 65,000 um that person has been a really great resource and um with our LCAP being uh adopted for the next uh few years, we believe that we're able to do that work um without that particular role or support though we appreciate it. And then if you go to the top
189right hand side, um you all know that we have a uh a partnership uh that's Berkeley Unified School District, Berkeley Public School Funds and Warhammer STEM related uh programs. And so this reduction that you see here was a reduction in the investment in the CTE program that we were able to make in partnership with Berkeley public school funds that would not decrease the number of students we served or the program quality. So this is again a an example of a a group of folks getting together to rethink how a service can be provided and um they were pretty sure and we we're with them that we can still provide that particular program for $35,000 less. So, those are the four um proposals for this slide, and if there's no questions, I'm going to go to
190the next slide, which I'm sure there'll be questions about. Um, and that takes us to another strategy. I'm sorry, the same strategy eliminating expenses. Um, but specifically to the two proposals around furlows that you've heard so much about this evening. And so, starting um with first of all, I want to note an X for both of these proposals. And again, that X signifies that ESPback did not recommend that we advance these proposals to be considered in our final budget. Um, you also see um an asterk and you see a nice box that says collective bargaining because we were really transparent with ESPback and we are aware that neither of these can happen particularly um for the bottom proposal without um bargaining with our labor partners. And so we were never disingenuous about that. And we
191also understand and wanted to first engage with you all and get direction before we started to engage in any conversations or negotiations about uh furlows. So that's there because we know we have to talk about it. Um so really quickly um looking at that top proposal you might recall that around phase three the district staff came to uh ESPback with the proposal of district-wide furlow days. And really true to our core value of equity, a number of members of ESPback said, "No, let's not do that yet. Um, how about we look because it's going to impact, you know, our our staff who we love. How about we look at um staff that only make um a particular salary and above?" And so that threshold was set for 125. And so we did come back to
192ESBAC with what it would mean to um have furlow days of up to 10 days for employees that have a salary of 125 or above. You'll see here that that total was not as significant as folks might have wanted or thought. Um $188,000 one time. The reason why collective bargaining is still required here is because some of the members who make 125,000 or more are actually still represented in our various labor unions. Um as we got closer to this day and having to uh get closer to our target um we did come back with to ESPback with the proposal to do that district five furlow day that we had brought again up in phase three. Um again that was done in phase five and we still even then stressed that we know we have to
193engage in collective bargaining. Um and we also allowed ESPback to do a straw poll on this one and again they did not recommend as well as uh bucket and prioritize. If you look at the pie chart here, you'll see that 40% of ESBACK said this was a high priority. So if we got dollars to restore this first or to don't do this first, you'll also see that another 33% of the ESPback said that it was a priority so to restore it. And so again, overwhelmingly ESPback not only did they not support this idea, but they said that if we get dollars um and we they understood we were in some tight budget decisions um to attribute those dollars to this particular proposal. Um, first a couple of things to also note is that along the
194way we've also tried to be transparent with ESPback not just on the fact that we have to bargain for this um but also the ways in which these days would impact um potentially the work of the district. So if you look at the top proposal even with those folks who make $125,000 um a year or more, what you all hopefully know at this point is that every single person who works in our district has a role to play and is important and valuable. Um and so if we were to furlow those folks um for up to 10 days, there would definitely have some impacts on both summer planning. Um a lot of the district's work happens in the summer to prepare for the year to come. Um as well as the opening of school efforts.
195That was not to dissuade ESBAC. It was just to be real. In fact, I think some ESPback members told us they said, "Well, who's going to do X, Y, and Z if you all go on unpaid vacation?" Um something else to note is that a furlow day is a mandatory unpaid day. And so to the point that you may have heard some of our uh labor partners discuss today, it it the effect of it is a reduction in pay because you are taking a a vacation without getting pay. Um when you look down again at that second proposal of district-wide furlow day, the proposal again was for everyone in the district to take a day. Um that cannot happen during an instructional day. And so when we talked about the considerations or implications with this
196particular proposal, um we know that district holidays and breaks are not an option for some folks in the various bargaining units. And we also know, you know, that we've been working for the past three years to really align and bring coherence specifically with our literacy instruction and we're super excited and are excited about our curriculum adoption and PD is our thing. Um so we wanted to be really clear with ESPback that there will be some implications then on those PD days that we have and I think you heard that in some of the comments. So, I'm going to pause there because I anticipate that there'll be some questions or feedback around this one and we are here to respond. All right. Who would like to go first? Director K. Sure. Thanks. Um, my first question
197is the the X means this was not put forward by ESBACK. So, is it in the preliminary budget or both of these proposals are in these are both in the in the um preliminary budget. Remember that ESPback is a recom you know there's an advisory body so we made it clear that some of the things that they advise might not be I was just just checking um so I will offer that I find both of these proposals to be really problematic. Um it would be very hard for me to support either of them. um particularly the district-wide furlow day which um not only is a pay cut for every employee in the district but also the impact on our literacy adoption breaks my heart. We to adopt a new literacy to do all this work
198to adopt new literacy curriculum and then eliminate a critical professional development day that people need in order to be well trained to be able to implement that program. seems like a disastrous decision. Um, if we have to approve one of these proposals, I would be more willing to consider a proposal to um, furlow our highest paid employees, others, um, staff, would you like to respond to that before we move on to other director comments? No. Is there something specific, director? No. No. No response, President Brown. Okay. Uh, Director Shinowski. Yeah, I' I'd like to echo the concerns about eliminating PD. I mean, we get we get request after request for more and more PD and more training for our staff. So, that is um to me highly problematic. Uh, also I don't see it in
199this presentation, but I saw it in my audit committee meeting where we have set aside in the budget um $500,000 in funds for sort of extra expenses. And so I understand why that is fiscally prudent to do, but to me it it is more important that we keep our staff. And if we have these extra expenses that come to us at some point during the year um because we have additional costs for any number of things or less revenue from the state then then we have a conversation like this. But at this point it seems problematic that we're going to set aside sort of extra savings or extra reserve for um non-budgeted expenses and talk about furlows. I also don't understand, as was mentioned in the union comments by uh BFT President Matt Meyer, why
200we would not include the block grant funding and TK um addition and but yet include this in our budget and think that this wouldn't get us qualified but the other would when this is much more tenuous. I mean, I I've never seen something included in an adopted budget that is dependent upon negotiations in this way. Um, so I I just have real concerns about this and there is there are resources that would make up for this money um in other places with the understanding that if there is a catastrophe with our budget later on that's when we come and talk about um furlows. Thank you director Shasnoski can I respond director I'll tell you. Okay. So, I want to want to stress this is not the adopted budget. This is what you're going to see
201this evening as a preliminary budget. And so, we're showing you all these proposals so that we can do exactly what we're doing now, which is to hear and get your feedback to inform the the budget that we're going to come to you in hopes that you will adopt. And so, this is an exercise that's critical, though it is in some ways kind of tedious um because this is the best way for me to do this to build the budget so that we will not bring you a budget later in June that you then say no to. Um, in terms of the preliminary budget as to the why, you heard Emily say some slides up in the highlights from the May revise that there is still a lot of uncertainty and in fact that block grant
202as well as the TK were were uh two of the ones where we were actually advised not to score. So the preliminary budget that you're going to see this evening shortly after this presentation um is inclusive of these proposals because we're still moving as if that $7.8 million target is our target. We know we will get some dollars from the may the mayor from the governor. We don't know how much those are. And so, um, we we are being really cautious and and some could argue too cautious, really believing or leaning on the fact that we have the opportunity to do that 45day revise to then bring you back a budget that's both reflective of what we do actually get from the governor as well as reflective of any budget balancing solutions that we then
203implement based on the feedback that you give us tonight. Um, I I would be remiss if I don't say that I'm not doing cartwheels either. I mean, this is my whole this is three years y'all. have been trying to get this literacy thing off the ground as you know. Um and so and actually worked really closely with our labor partners to to figure out when the PD would happen. So we're not excited about the possibility of of having to reduce our PD day by one. It would be situation that we are forced to rethink and there are different and other ways to do PD besides a one day PD. So just want to name that that we're again staying true to what we say we value and honor but in tight circumstances might have to
204rethink and the word is still might. We're bringing you a proposal to get your feedback and still looking for and digging to find other ways that we could address or move towards our target. Similarly um I we we also don't want to do the 10day furloss for our district-wide employees. We know that we I'm sorry for our central office employees are those who are 125 or above given that we know that we have a big transition and structural change underway. As you think about things like our PE uh requirement that we now have to figure out that everyone's saying let's start early for us starting early means doing the work over the summer and though it's oftentimes work that is thankless there's a small but mighty group of folks who come together um who work
205throughout the summer to figure out things so that the district doesn't have to figure out those things in real time and so that our educators can actually come and do the work that we are um wanting them to do. So, I just want to name that it's these are proposals and we we appreciate the feedback, but neither of these um are we super excited about is again one of those trade-off uh decisions uh conversations and we are still looking for and hoping for either additional revenues or additional opportunities for for cost savings and reductions and really open to your feedback around if it's not this 459 or 188, what else might we do? So, can I re that was actually my my next question to the board. um when we are um you know sharing
206h our concerns around proposals, can we also uh make sure that we're adopting the practice of what we what guidance we do want to give to staff and what we think they should do um instead. So, Director Schnowski, I think you're about to share 500. Yeah. So, it was sort of embedded in there, but obviously not clear. So that $500,000, I would like that removed and I would like the district-wide furlow days to be removed from the budget. That's my direction. Can you clarify the $500,000 that you're talking about that you learned about at the audit committee? It it's a $500,000 budget line that was described as um sort of uh reserve a well, but it's not a reserve in the in the specific way that we use the language reserve. So it's in case
207of additional costs to other budget areas. No, actually it's mo more most likely there will be an increase. We already are exploring a request that we got for $2.3 million that's not in the budget. That $500,000 is a very small part of the increasing program costs that we're now exploring. So that um I think in the audit committee that was shared with you as well by other members that that's a very conservative it's not it's not even appropriate for what needs to be set aside. We really may be looking at $2 million and um and what I would like to get from the board is anything that's removed from these proposals something has to replace it because we will be certifying negative. Um and as we get more information um we would get more information
208about increasing costs. We'll get more information from the governor's budget. But right now based on the recommendation from the organization that evaluates and and approves our budget, we cannot put anything in the um in the budget from the block grant or the TK at this point. So, assistant Superintendent Baldenby, it's sounding like the $500,000 that was mentioned earlier um is actually not even enough to set aside um for us to meet what we need to meet. Um so, so I'm hearing that that may may or may not be an option. Director Shinoski, so th this is really confusing to me because yesterday at the at the it was yesterday, right? at the audit committee meeting. It's a brand new line item. It was a brand new line item. Those costs are not embedded in any
209of our budget lines. So, I understand that costs may increase. And what I'm saying is if costs do increase in the way that you're exploring or that may happen, then then that's the point where we talk about the a district-wide furlow. But right now, you've anticipated the costs within the budget with all those line items and then there's this additional line item that was put in for this 500,000. So from my perspective, that 500,000 can be removed and this district-wide furlow day can be removed and that's costneutral. And if if right I understand the uncertainty and so if in the future those costs balloon to 2.3 million or something like that then then we will have this needs to come back to us and we'll have to consider additional difficult cuts. That's my position on
210it. Assistant Superintendent Valinsby, do you care to respond? Um, I've I've shared that we have um increasing costs. It's not a maybe. We're facing increasing costs. In fact, we shared at ESPback that um when we looked at our sped costs um we were asked to find an additional $2.3 million which is not in the budget. that 500,000 that we're setting aside is nowhere near the $2.3 million that we've been asked to look at. Um that would be an impact to this year's budget 2425. And because it's because it's not baked into the budget, we're setting it aside below the line. And as I mentioned, the $500,000 is nowhere near the increase in costs that we're asked that we're possibly will be facing. So, so just to follow up on that, so so this can be
211confusing to folks and when I was on the audit committee briefly. Um, I was trying to understand it as well and you you you you did a good job explaining at the time, but it's easy to hear it and then for forget what it means. Um, in particular, you referenced descertification uh with a certain amount of set aside that would be necessary to avoid descertification. So um firstly can you remind all of us including the public um how much would be necessary from whether that be a compliance or statutory um requirement to uh set aside to avoid descertification. So in terms of um the district having a positive certification, what we would be saying is that we are be we're able to meet the 3% reserve and have a positive ending fund balance for the
212current year which will be 2526 which is the year that we're talking about adopting and the two subsequent years. So while the budget that we'll be presenting um after the LCAP presentation does show that we do in fact have a positive um balance um at the end and we are able to meet our 3%. What are what is another unknown? Um in addition to the governor's budget, in addition to a budget balancing solutions, we are also um fiscally auditing a request for increasing costs to land on a number. So, we're hoping by the 45day revise, we'll have all of this information. But the $500,000 that um that u director Shinoske is referring to was an amount that we had set aside as an obligation with the fact that we know that we're going to have
213increasing costs for a special ed program and that's not going to be enough. what you're what you mean in that context of the 3% and a positive fund balance in order to stay certified which if you were descertified it would bring in state oversight. Is that my understanding? Yeah, it would is that the uh well but we're not predicting that. So I think we're going way too far ahead. So so there is definitely um you know not getting a positive certification and there's definitely always for districts the looming risk of what we we call stake takeover. That's not what we're we're trying to to bring to you this evening. What we're saying is that the reason why you have a preliminary budget is because we're not only still in the midst of trying to get
214a better understanding of our revenues from the state and otherwise, but also get a better understanding of our expenditures and our expenses, right? And so because we are still we we anticipate and we actually know that there's been a there's been a request for additional funding for some of our programs. Pauline is being very much what Pauline is supposed to be. It keeps our district in good fiscal standing. Um really vigilant to make sure that we were to have a little bit to put towards that increased expense should it actually materialize. What we understand that expense to be is to the tune of about $2 million. And so that's why she's saying that $500,000 is not sufficient. This is not about the 3% reserve. This is not about certification immediately. It's really about in response
215to director Shinosk's request though it is duly noted um that director Shinoski was suggesting that that 500 that looked like it was just kind of there uh be applied here. And what Pauline is clarifying is it is not kind of there. It's in us anticipating um something that we um were told would likely come in terms of an increased program expense. Okay. So it's it's not actually Excuse me, Vice President Chang. Let's go ahead and pause here really quickly um because we actually need to extend the meeting um and then we'll pick it up from um your question if you don't mind holding that for a second. Is there a motion to extend the meeting to 11:30? I move to do so. Moved by Vice President Chang. Is there a second? I'll second. Miss Travis,
216can you please call the role? I'm sorry. Um President Brown, there's kind of a question amongst the panelists. So, I just want to stress, President Brown, that we definitely have to do the LCAP public hearing. Um, and we're pretty fast, but and I don't know the latest which you can extend, but we have the LCAP and the preliminary budget. So, I want the board to be aware of that as you take this vote. The latest that we can extend is to 11:30, which is why I made that recommendation knowing that we have to handle those items. Okay. So, we got to move. Um we c we can the thing is um and this is a perfect space for discussion. We can extend the LCAP. Uh we can we can do the hearing tonight for both
217the LCAP and the budget. However, um we if poss if if we have to if necessary um we can receive the presentations for them um at the next meeting if we if we have to if we don't get there but we can only extend to 11:30. So with 28 minutes left was the pleasure of the board. Miss Charge, can you please call the RO? 4:130 p.m. Um, Director Shinowski, yes. Vice President Chain, yes. Director Korn, yes. President Brown, yes. Let's go ahead and continue. So, with that being said, um I know that there's so much more that we want to discuss regarding these items, but just to keep in mind, we're on uh slide 37 of 44 for just this presentation and we have to move on to other things. But, Director Chang, I'll pass
218it back over to you. Yeah, just for the sake of time, just I I think I my understanding is that um from uh assistant superintendent's perspective for fiscal prudence to avoid descertification. I'm not saying that this 500,000 will lead directly to descertification. That's not what I'm trying to say. But she's warning us that that's put in place as a safety valve and it's less than what is actually necessary. So from a fiscal perspective, the suggestion is that that 500,000 is not there in a way that we could use to replace the furlow. Yes. Yeah. And that $500,000 aside, directors, what I what I've heard from both director Shinoski and director Korn is um not happiness with the districtwide fur day. So I don't want to get us I don't want to get stuck on that
219500,000 recommendation, though I I did hear it. Um, but what I hear maybe more more importantly is that you are not in support of the you were actually not in support of of either, but if you if you had to do one, it would be the 125 or above. And I hear you specifically saying you're not in support of the district-wide fur. I'm not in support of either. I think that they're both conditional upon bargaining. And so there it's problematic to include this in the budget at all to me. Um, but there are is $500,000 in anticipated expenses that are budgeted for. So, we were asked to provide direction if we're taking something off to to put something on. Also, put something on and that is my direction. Thank you, President Brown. It's it's helpful
220for staff to hear from you and director Chain. I feel like again I've summarized Director Kin and Director Shinoskis. Is there additional comments particularly on furls? No. No. Go ahead. Director Jen said no. Not at this point. Um, you know, I don't want to be long-winded, but the unfortunate thing is that, you know, furlow days are not something that anyone wants to do. We don't want to hear that at all. Um, but we're in the fiscal position that we are in. And so um it is hard for me to say no, I don't want to do a furlow day when I also don't have a recommendation um to to um save money in other places. And so um this is something that will come back to us um when we when we see our budget
221again. Um, and I don't know what the capacity is for staff to rethink um this option, but it it it doesn't feel great. Um, but I know that even regardless of even if I gave my support for this tonight, that it still has to go through um go through bargaining, which it has not yet gone through that process. And so, it's almost kind of like shooting in the dark um for me. And I just want to be honest about about that. Okay. So, we're going to keep going in the interest of time. And again, none of these are guaranteed to be in the final adopted budget. We're just again getting the board's appetite to help us as we build that budget. So, the next category of uh proposals I think the clicker is done. Can
222you click please, Liz? I'm sorry. The next category of proposals um are two, evaluate annual unexpended funds, u monitor and track unspent balances, and we were able to identify $225,000 in um uh supply balances that we contributed to the 7.8 target and then the next one is um an inefficiency. We wanted to um you know identify um some inefficiencies and save monies there and so what we have for this particular category is a proposal to look more closely at um what we called this group was targeted groups. There's a number of programs in our targeted groups. However, the two that are general fund funded are RT Fiser and Young Gifted and Black. So, what you see here is staff's original proposal, which was to um reduce these two contracts um by $60,000. The reason why
223we labeled it as inefficiency is not at all because these partnerships are inefficient, but because again, as I think was mentioned here on the day is that the intent of for sure the framework and some of our work directly with RT Fischer was to build capacity um the I do, we do, you do framework. And so looking at these contracts as they exist and working closely with our partners to identify what are those things that we can now um bring in house because w with their partnership we've built the capacity. Um so again you're going to see an X here from ESPback because ESBAC did not advance this one. ESPback though did not not advance it because they were in disagreement. ESBAC actually did not advance this one because again they wanted uh to ask
224staff to reduce these contracts by more than the $60,000 proposed. And so if you look again at the visual um you have 27% of ESPback members saying do not restore this particular uh cluster um regardless of if we get funds or not. Um what you also see for this particular one is in again 27% said it's high priority restored first and another 13% said it's priority restored next. Um so presenting this one to you all the same way that we presented the college readiness uh bucket um with transparency saying that ESBAC did not move it because ASPback wanted um a more significant reduction um in these partnerships. I will pause there to see if there's any questions or feedback around let's continue please. Okay. So, we're moving now to uh transferring expenses. This is the
225budget uh strategy here for this slide. Um and so these are expenses that will stay district expenses that will move from general funds to a different uh funding source. Um maybe go one back. There we go. Sorry. Um, and so again, transferring funding for an executive assistant too for $70,000 from general fund to another source, transferring funding for our school service assistance, uh, those are, uh, people who work at our sites and we took those off of general funds and those sites that have school service assistance then took on those costs if their school site council and PTA agreed. Um, and then shifting student system analysts for 2526 only and then shifting a 0.25 tech director. Again, this entire slide is not about eliminating anything. It's about taking these um funds from the general fund
226and identifying other funding sources. And other funding sources have been identified for um all of the ones here on this slide. Our last category is our last strategy, the one that we worked really hard to avoid. And again, appreciate folks um recognizing that we had a really uh large list of potential layoffs and reduce that really large uh list of hundreds of people to about 18. Um that said, we still have some positions that we are proposing to consolidate or remove. um the equity um e the equity and belonging director was again a vacancy that we closed. And so with that proposing to eliminate the equity and belonging assistant for $170,000 towards our target. Also eliminating an executive assistant for 121,000 towards our target. Bottom right eliminating a clerical assistant three for $90,000. And then
227going to um so all of those ESBAC um approved for us to advance as recommendations. But then if you go to the bottom left you'll see the reduction in OFI staff um and those are OFI staff funded by general funds. Remember that OPI is funded by different funding sources. And you'll hear a little bit about that in our LCAP presentation. But for general funds we proposed to um reduce OFI by three. Again keeping our core but rethinking how we deliver services uh for $330,000. And again, ESBAC did not agree um with that particular proposal. For the final set of strategies, uh you see them here. Uh there was a proposal to reduce secondary level counselors. Sorry, reduce two secondary level counselors for 320. Again, what you're seeing is the original proposal. ESBAC did not approve
228this proposal, but we were able to do some work and actually transfer the expense of um at least one of these counselors to another funding source. There was also a recommendation to eliminate a sped program specialist and that came from our sped department um and and and various staff input from $198,000. And then finally at the bottom you see that we had a proposal to restructure the administrator administration at uh Berkeley High School uh for $150,000. Um so it's not always true that these things don't touch the sites. A lot of them actually do. Um but this is a very specific example of one. But I want to be clear that it's consistent with, you know, the ask that we made of the personnel commission to eliminate the vacancy. What we're looking for is the
229is the movement towards the target and we definitely allow collaboration to figure out how to get there. And so um Berkeley High School was challenged with this 150,000 but was able to identify um movement towards it that may not be the a restructure of their admin team. And so those are all of the proposals that are in front of you this evening um and the rationale for each and we're moving on to additional board discussion and action um should the board be ready. Um really quickly next slide just talks about the next steps and I want to just highlight that for the public um before the board engages in their discussion. Okay you I'll just leave the slide up. People can read it. It just highlights this is a preliminary budget. We're going to listen
230to you now create our final budget bring that to you. But again, really relying on that 45day revise to really incorporate both what we better understand about our revenues and our expenditures to um to the B USD budget. Okay. Thank you very much. Um all right, board. Do you have any additional questions, comments, concerns before we begin um to vote? I don't. I have one additional comment I want to sort of circle back to the earlier conversation about contracts and collegebound um and kind of echo the concerns that I heard you um mentioned from ESPback about RT Fiser to the extent that I have said I'm not going to support furloss and you have said where else would you find the money um those would be places I would be interested in looking for further
231reductions in those programs in those places where we are funding contractors to to provide those services and I'm interested and and there is the opportunity to bring those services inhouse and still provide I I I don't want to I want to continue to provide robust services to those focal populations. I'm concerned about the amount of money that we're spending on contractors to do it despite the discussion that we just had a a little bit earlier. When I say we mostly director Shinoski and I or are or or is it that you're saying that you would like to explore other places where um we are looking at contractors or you can you can you be specific just I want to make sure that I'm not making any assumptions and I fully understand your recommendation direct director
232Korn. Yeah, I'm not then I'll go to you, director asking. I mean, so there there are a number of contracts that were discussed tonight that ESPback had questions about um including RT Fiser and Collegebound. Um, I am dedicated to the work of serving those children and providing services that support our focal populations and that provide college readiness supports. And I'm concerned about the costs of those services and the costs of those contracts. I would, you know, this we're we're talking about difficult budget decisions. This is not my first choice to eliminate any of these contracts, but if it's a choice between a furlow day for every employee or reducing or eliminating those contracts, I would choose to reduce or eliminate those contracts. Um the reason I'm asking is because it isn't a choice between um
233those two other than the choice that you are recommending. Um, and so I just want us to be be very very careful about that because we do have lots and lots and lots of choices and there's so many ways that we can get creative. Um, and I don't I don't think that that is the best way to do it. So I just want to want to understand and I know that staff is not making um that recommendation to us that that this recommendation is coming directly from from you director Korn. Um, so I want us to be careful about, you know, our language like furlow days or cutting these uh programs because that's not what staff is recommending to us um at all. But it it I I do hear that as your recommendation and
234I just want to make sure I fully understand. Director Shinowski. Wow. So I have a recommendation. I mean the things that are being put in front of us as possibilities are things that went through ESBACK. So I don't think it's fair to say that like these are the things that we are putting on the table. These are the things that have been presented to us. And so what I mean I'm happy to say don't cut anything if if others have ideas of where to find those resources. My I'm not quite sure what we're voting on. Um but what I would like to see in consideration of um the recommendation by Director Korn and and sort of pulling it all together is that the $500,000 in anticipated costs, just as we are not budgeting for anticipated
235revenue, we don't put in a budget for anticipated costs. We know that those things will come to us and we know that we have possibilities for adjustments to our budget in the future. that we remove the $500,000 and we make adjustments to any contracts that ESPback voted to consider to make up for the rest of those furlow days. So, it would just be a reduction in the contracts and not elimination in the contracts. That would be my recommendation so that we can get to uh a a recommended budget that we can all feel better about. I think and um Superintendent Ford, correct me if I'm wrong. Um there is there hasn't been any language um tonight about any elimination of of any of these programs or contracts. It's all been about um reductions altogether. Um
236and and so there may have been in ESBAC a certain uh number that they wanted to reach in reductions um that we as a district decided but there haven't been any conversations about eliminations of uh programs at all. Correct. Great. The theme from ESPback was definitely reduction. Okay. I just want to make sure I understand that. Um I appreciate that distinction, President Brown. No, no problem. Um, director Shinoski, is that clear? Yes, it's clear. Okay. Um, so here's what we here's my recommendation. Superintendent Volinsby has her hand up. I don't Oh, I'm sorry. It's so hard to see. Thank you. So, what I think I think Oh, sorry. I think we it would be helpful if we got a board vote on every proposal and if the proposal from assistant sinoski is to remove the
237500 the entire board should you know and replace it with whatever so that's a proposal that would need a vote as well so so um thank you associ assistant superintendentby my recommendation would be to handle uh the vote in this way. So the first thing the first uh presentate first part of the presentation was in regards to the high priority um true up costs. So so those are the true-up costs the city of Berkeley tax ongoing cost for additional teachers cost for SDC staff new phone system reduction in cola all of those things we pretty much agreed on. And so I think we do we want to vote in the way in in do we want to vote in this way by the things that we agree on and then the things that we maybe
238still need to have some discussion around. Um do we do we then want to take the time to discuss them or or to take action? I think it makes sense. We have 10 minutes. Go ahead. So I I think there's agreement here that that would make sense. said I think that's a really good idea on the high priority items that you just listed if you if you want to list it again and to have a motion and then move to the second one which uh director Shinowski just raised. Okay. So they're the high priority items um and I'm just grouping them how they were grouped in our presentation. So we have the high priority items and then we have the uh revenue generators um which includes the the busing part or we can pull that
239out to have conversations about that um if there's still conversations that need to be had. Um and then we have the reduction and cost savings uh portion. So let's first start with the first part of the presentation which were the high priority items including city of Berkeley tax cost for additional teachers cost for SGC staff new phone system reduction in cola. Is there a motion to approve? I move on those. Okay. Moved by director Chang. Is there a second? A second. Okay. Seconded by director Shinoski. Miss Charis, can you call the role? President Brown. Yes. Director Shinowski. Yes. Vice President Chang. Yes. Director Korn. Yes. Okay. The motion passes. All right. So then we move on to the revenue generators. This included the transportation field trip rates, the reimbursement for the acco grant, um the
240district rentals. It also includes um the busing for the dollar a day um to and from to school and then the $1 a day for nonBUSD after school transportation. Now there are some recommendations that came from the board um and so maybe when and those recommendations were to direct staff to go back. So maybe when we talk about these when we vote on these revenue generators, we don't necessarily include the busing because there's still work that needs to be done. Uh but we can think about the district rentals reimbursement of the ACOE grant um as well as uh the increase for transportation for field trip rates. Does that sound good? Yes, that makes sense to me. Okay. Is there a motion to approve? I move to do so. I'll second. Okay, it has been moved
241and seconded. Miss Tres, can you please call the role? Director Shinowski, yes. Vice President Chang, yes. Director Korn, yes. President Brown, yes. All right, let's Yes. That vote was to approve the revenue generators removing except for the charge one day to and fro for transportation. Correct. Yes, that's that's correct. Well, I had a recommend I had a recommendation about the afterchool transportation. So when I I thought you were pulling both transportation items. I I I did I said the busing to school um for that would would have been a cost savings of $195,000 and then the busing to after school um which was a cost savings being $96,000 because they were there were two recommendations one for you from you one from director Korn or actually I think they were both from you director Schnowski
242about how we can make those better based off of a sliding scale or um have our higher cost uh after school programs pay more for after school transportation to be able to support our city of Berkeley programs. Is that correct? Yeah, I agree with that. Okay. Okay. We voted. So, thank you for the clarification. All right. Let's move on to reductions and cost savings specifically around um the reducing the vacancies. So remember that's the RH tech position, the RTISA's uh position, the equity and belonging um position, and the personnel uh commission supervisor position that will now uh come to us as an a savings, but uh an additional cost around an analyst position, but ultimately a $61,000 cost for s $61,000 savings for the district. Is there a recommendation to approve? I'll move. I'll second.
243Moved by Director Shinoski, seconded by Director Chang. All those in favor, please signify with a sign of I. I. I. I. Oh, I'm sorry, Miss Chavez. You have to call the role. Excuse me, everyone. President Brown. Yes. Director Shinowski. Yes. President Chen, yes. Director Korn, thank you. So then we move on to the trueing up cost uh portion of the presentation. Um and excuse me one second you all. Okay. So that's the shifting the funding to the district services assistant. Um that's the TWWI ongoing cost. Um as well um we actually you were specific um superintendent for that the uh reduction of investments in college readiness programs were was not coming to us on the budget. Is that correct? That is not include. Yes. Correct. Yes. Okay. So then that means that the trueing up
244cost portion really just includes the shift funding to the district service assistant and then the TWWI ongoing cost as well as the.5 transportation um administrative staff. Is there a motion to approve? Assistant is shaking her head. Okay. Assistant, I can't hear you. the um the transportation is um is if we were implementing the fees because it's to manage the administrative cost. So that kind of would go with the trans the dollar a day transportation proposal. So okay. So maybe we hold off on that one until we come back with the with the uh until we come back or the board shows readiness to take action on the the busing. So we'll hold off on that one. And what we will include in this specific vote is the TWWI as well as the district assistance, district
245service assistant. Okay. Is there a motion to approve? I move to do so. Okay. Moved by Director Chang. Is there a second? I'll second. Okay. Seconded by Director Shinowski. Um, can we please call the role? President Brown, yes. Director Shinowski, yes. Vice President Chang, yes. President, Director Corn. Yes. Almost. We're almost there. Not quite yet, though. Uh, Miss Charis, we're not quite there yet. Um, all right. Let's go ahead and move on to the elimination of the expenses. So this includes my path high school port uh platform, the CTE partnerships, um the elimination of the hourly um pay to the retired budget al analysis as well as the um reduction in LCAP. So let's deal with those first. Do we all agree on those? If so, is there a motion to approve? I move to
246do so. Okay. Moved by Director Chang. Is there a second? A second. Seconded by Director Shinowski. Miss Travers, can you please call the role? President Brown, yes. Director Shinowski, yes. Vice President Chang, yes. Director Korn, yes. Okay, so that uh we approve all of those. Um I I'm I'm going to come back to the furlow days if if that's okay with everyone. And I want to keep going with the um uh evaluating annual unexpected funds. So that's the monitor and tracking of unspent balances. Um as well as So let's deal with that one first and then we'll come back to the transfer expenses. Um is there a motion to approve? I move to do so. Is there a second? Second. Miss Char, can you call the role? Yes. Can you clarify what what is this
247action for? What category? Um, this falls under the evaluate annual unexpected funds. It's a $225,000 supply budget. Okay. President Brown. Yes. Director Shinowski. Yes. Vice President Chang. Yes. Director K. Yes. Okay. Um, I'm going to go back up to the inefficiency one, but right now let's go ahead and deal with the transfer expenses. So that includes the executive assistant 2 at $70,000. It also includes the school services assistance, the school sites, and it includes the 25 FTE tech director uh permanently. Is there a motion to approve? I do so. Okay. Is there a second? I'll second. Miss Charles, can you call the role? President Brown, yes. Director Shinoski, yes. Vice President Chang, yes. Director Korn. Yes. Okay. All right. Um let's move on to the consolidation and removal and position removal portion. So that includes
248the assistant for the equity and belonging, the executive assistant at 131,000. um the reduction of O of staff, the elimination of the clerical assistant three, the reduction of the secondary uh level counselors, reduction of the sped program specialist, and then the reduction of um the administrative structure at the high school level at $150,000. Is there a motion to approve? I do. Okay. Is there a second? I'll second. Okay. Miss Charles, can you call the role? Brown. Yes. Director Shinowski. Yes. Vice President Chang. Yes. Director Korn. Yes. All right. Perfect. So, what le what this leaves us with? There are three things that are kind of outstanding. The busing. I think we've given pretty enough conversation to um and we all seem to be on the same page with that. Um it also leaves us with
249the conversation for um the furlow days as well as um the inefficiency regarding targeted groups. Um superintendent form though can I just ask you um for the inefficiency regarding the targeted group um that's a reduction of $60,000 correct? That actually was a reduction of $150,000. Sorry, that was actually a reduction of 150,000 after taking ESPback's feedback. And apologies that I did not clarify that with that asterk on that uh slide. Okay. Because on the slide it says 60,000. So it it's not the 60,000, it's 150,000. Yes. So 60,000 was the original proposal and then with ESBC's feedback across many meetings, we increased it to 150. Okay. So for the inefficiency, we are at $150,000. Um, and we need to take action on that. Um, are there any questions, comments, concerns, or is there a motion
250to approve? I'd like to ask for just a tiny bit of clarity. So, it has a big X on it. So, that was removed from the budget. No, the X means that ESBAC did not recommend that we consider it when we made the budget. When we sent you all the budget, we did consider this one though. And the reduction is 150,000 and that's what's already in the budget. Yes. Okay. I'll move to approve that. Okay. Moved by Director Schnowski. Is there a second? A second. Seconded by Director K. Um, Miss Chavez, can you please call the role? President Brown, yes. Director Shinowski, yes. Vice President Chain, yes. Director Korn, yes. All right. Um so the only thing that is left is the the furlow day. So um we can deal with the furlow day in
251the same way that we dealt with the um dealt with the bus which is to direct staff to go back if that's the pleasure of the board or we can vote and take action now. I just need to hear from someone. Director Schnowski, I move to remove the furloss from the budget balancing solutions. I second it. It's been moved and seconded. Um, Miss M. Chavez, can you call the role? President Brown. Yes. Director Shinowski, yes. Vice President Chain, yes. Director Korn, yes. All right. Uh, we have taken action on every single item that has been presented tonight uh for the budget and the budget balancing um solution. Uh thank you all so much for a thoughtful presentation. I understand though um that this leaves you all with with way more work to do. And so
252um I think in your 101 superintendent former um I would really like to encourage our um board directors to try our best to get creative about recommendations that we can give um to staff that will help us to be able to have a balanced budget. um in a qualified budget because um for the first time in 17 years we're a little um a little unsure and it's it's it's getting tight and it's getting close. So um we've got a lot more work to do after we leave the table today. Um but thank you everyone for your thoughtfulness. Thank you for your questions. Um and staff, thank you for your presentation. All right, we need to move on to um our we have to move on to our public hearings. Um so we're we're just going
253to have to continue. Um, is there anyone here uh who is interested in speaking on um the public hearing item regarding um the local control accountability plan? There's 5 minutes uh for that. I'll now open up the LCAP hearing. Is there anyone who is present to provide comments? Board directors, if you can help me out. I can't see what's happening in the board. Thank you very much. If seeing that there is no one present, we will now close the LCAP hearing. Um we will now move on to the public hearing on the 2025 2026 preliminary budget. Um I now open the hearing. Is there anyone present for public comment? There's no one present. Thank you very much. Seeing that there isn't anyone present for this item as well, we will now close this public hearing.
254All right. So, we do have two other discussion items. Um, 16.1 and 16.2. Um, and I know that these are are pretty timely. And so, because we we are out of time and don't have any more time to discuss them tonight, the most important thing that we did was to open the public hearing. um and we may have to either uh receive these items at the next meeting or call for a special meeting um to be able to receive them. And so um board, please be on the lookout for communication uh regarding that. In addition to that, uh we will now move on to the second opportunity for public comments. Is there anyone here for public comment? Doesn't appear to be so in Thank you very much. We'll move on to extended board member comments.
255Are there any comments from board members? No. Okay. Hearing none, we will now move to adjournment. Thank you all so much and have a really great night.