Special Board Meeting - November 4, 2025

001Good morning. I'd like to call this meeting to order at 9:02 a.m. Morning and welcome to the Elkrove Unified School District special board meeting. Live streaming of full in-person board meetings is available to the public by using the link located on the district's website. Today's meeting is being video recorded and will be available to the district um excuse me will be available on the district's YouTube channel. Some information about public comment. During special board meetings, the public may make public comment on items that are on the board agenda. Individuals with comments on general school district matters may address those at the next regularly scheduled board meeting. Requests to make public comment will be accepted for an item up until the board president introduces the item. Generally, members of the public will have three minutes to

002address the board. If there are 15 or more comments on a specific item, the board will reduce individual comment time to one minute each. If there are 30 or more comments on a specific item, the board will reduce individual comment times to one minute each. Individuals may not defer their time to another individual speaker to increase their total speaking time. Please be mindful that district students may be watching. You are encouraged to address the board and the public in a respectful manner such that all those observing from children to adults are made to feel welcome, safe, and valued. The board shall not permit any disturbance or willful interruption of board meetings. Persistent disruption by an individual or group shall be grounds for the board president to provide a warning and then to terminate the individual's

003privilege of addressing the board. And since I have not had the opportunity to do so in a while, I'm going to read the land acknowledgement. We acknowledge that the Elkrove Unified School District administrative facilities and schools occupy the unseated territory of the Miwok, the original people of the skies, land, and waters where we work and learn. The Miwok have cared for these lands since time immemorial. They continue to teach their traditional knowledge that comes from and responds to the needs of the land and the people who share it. May our daily lives and and work, teaching, learning, leadership, and community engagement support the evolving vision of the Miwok for their community and these lands. May we strive to acknowledge the past for the betterment of future generations. They will look to our tribal partners, the

004Wilton Rancheria, the descendants of the original peoples of this land, to assist with the successful education of our community. for the pledge. Miss Berini. >> All right, I'll do the pledge. Uh, everybody, please stand. Thank you very much. All right, with that I'll hand it off to the superintendent to provide an overview of the day. >> Thank you very much. Uh so, um big day. Uh we've been uh working on this one, I'd say five years, three years, uh for sure in the last u 18 months, um even more intently. So I'm looking forward to bringing you uh the recommendation with regards to uh board priority um recommendation and look forward to discussion uh with the board. So that will uh that will be our our main topic today. Uh we do have some consent

005agenda items um that we want to make sure we get taken care of so we can move forward with uh with business and then we will roll into um close session. But uh budget priorities will be the main deal. So look forward to it. >> Excellent. Thank you very much. And then uh back to you for our budget priority recommendations and discussion. going to apologize a little bit ahead of time in that my voice is a little raspy um because uh I've literally given this presentation I think nine times over the last last several days and um they've been 45 minutes to an hour and a half each time. So um depending on the audience so but we will uh we'll work our way through it. I I'm good to go. Thanks Mark. Okay, so

006here we are. And we did have a little bit of fun at the cabinet uh last week when I looked around the table and said, "Hey, who's going to give the presentation?" and everybody no one wanted. So, so I'm doing it. So, [snorts] I actually uh proud to do it. So, here we go. Turn it on. There we go. So, the first thing we want to do is we want to make sure we were clear about the u the large object objectives for the entire process that we've been uh working through um through the pandemic uh post pandemic and then uh moving forward. And um so I want to make sure we're very clear that we focused on student need. Um and you'll see that uh throughout the presentation. The second bullet uh we played

007we paid very close attention to program need in order to meet the needs of kids and really pay close attention to related staffing levels uh that were um with the idea that what you'll see in this presentation isn't necessarily there were five uh positions on the uh on the list originally and we're going to just put five on the new list. we actually thought through um how we could um thoughtfully move program forward uh based on staffing levels. I don't think this was necessarily um our goal going into this, but I think we've gotten to a place where this is uh become become possible. Uh we are um have a recommendation to one-time fund a set of prioritized positions through June of 28. Um, so it's not a um one-year answer, but we we do

008think this will uh prioritize um programming and give everybody an opportunity to take a breath um because the positions are funded uh through June of 28. Fourth bullet is is critical. Um I want to say this um with with utmost respect for um the people that have worked for us. We are making a recommendation for many positions to move forward. Uh we are also um not recommending some positions continue. Um and it is critical that we honor the people who have done u great work over the past several years with a recognition we can't um keep all of them moving forward. But by doing this uh presentation now u this will give us uh more time to be able to work with these individuals um in identifying uh potential other opportunities to work within the

009district uh moving forward. and it's uh it's just a very important part of the process. Fourth bullet is there or fifth bullet, there are um some related goods and services that go along with the priority positions that we have uh that we'll bring to you today. Um and we we do have funding set aside to take care of the goods and services through June of 27. So I want to make sure we make a a clear distinction between people. We've identified two years of funding and the goods and services we've identified a single year of funding. And the last piece I'll say is u this is a little bit of an odd odd duck as I'm getting ready to make a uh a transition and the the district's getting ready to make a transition. This

010is this is our best thinking um and our best recommendation um to the board with regards to we think these are the baseline services that we need in our schools and we need in our district moving forward. Um and so there was a great deal of thought u that went into the uh the positions that we are recommending u moving forward. So okay so uh something that uh seem too many there we go. So presentation for uh for today uh what I wanted to make sure is in this presentation is if somebody sat down for the first time today and just entered the um conversation that they would be able to logically follow where we've been uh where we are and where we're planning to go. And so that's why we set it up in

011this format. So we will go through a timeline of the last 18 months or so work we've done. We spend a lot of time on what we've learned. We spend we have spent a great deal of time um listening, asking questions um and and listening to feedback from students, staff, uh uh parents and uh stakeholders in general. So um a lot of work and we'll make sure we share that with you. We do have three sets of recommendations that we'll bring forward to you. U first set of recommendations are uh positions that have been built into existing department funding um andor specific grant or restricted funding sources. Uh the board has always given uh managers and leaders the um authority to use funding that has already been allocated to their area of the district. um

012that if they see they have an opening within a position or a set of services that they're doing u and they see a um more productive way to use those funds moving forward uh the board has given um our leaders the authority to make those decisions within their allocated budget sources. So in some cases um department leaders have been working for years in setting dollars aside uh to be ready for this day. And so there's not a lot of these positions, but there are several positions um that will be um folded into existing department budgets. We've also had some folks in entrepreneurial spirit that have gone out and identified grants that will help us uh do uh address a couple of the positions. Um and then there are some very specific restricted uh funding sources

013i.e. title one um that carryover that will allow us to um address some positions within those very restrictive boundaries of the use of those dollars. Um we are recommending a two-year continuation of the um of the positions through [clears throat] 2028. And so you'll see you'll see that list and then also as I said we'll go through the goods and services we're recommending continuing through 2027. Number three is probably the most challenging part of the presentation that I'll share today. Um, and these are the positions that uh we are not recommending um funding moving forward. In most cases, we have um identified an alternative service delivery model that we believe will um will serve us well moving forward. In many cases, what you'll see is some positions within a given department or program area being

014funded and some not with the idea that uh what we're going to have to do is uh some of the work we were doing was ramp up and we were during the and post pandemic we were ramping up a set of services and as we move forward we need to be more in a maintenance mode. Um and that's that's what you'll see with regards to uh how we've set up some alternative delivery models. We will go through the funding sources. So you will see we have the identified positions, the goods and services and the dollars needed to do that. And we've identified um a set of dollars uh onetime funded that will take care of all of these um recommendations. Number five, you've heard this from from our labor partners and from from other folks

015as well and uh we wanted to make sure that we acknowledge this and uh we're uh very lucky in Elkrove Unified to be a growing district that is different than uh most districts across the state. uh with growth um while everybody says it must be lucky to be growing and I would I would agree there there's a lot of work that goes along with being a growing district and besides building schools and everything that goes along with that um there's stress that is put on staffing positions across the district as we expand schools have more kids to serve have more staff to serve so we want to make sure um we uh acknowledge that uh we're we're aware of that I I said this to the LCAP collaborative group Thursday and to each member during

016our one-on ones. I don't have any money attached to number five yet. Um but I do want to make sure that we um acknowledge that it is a u it is a reality. Look forward to board feedback today and then we will run through um next steps. So these should look familiar. So these are the the agreements the five agreements that we've done um throughout building uh budgets um over the past I think 10 years. these these have been in place and I just want to highlight today we are really uh focused on bullet two maintaining evaluating what we've built over the past year past few years uh we've done a deep dive into the programming and it's uh it's central to what we are bringing forward as a recommendation today is a brief um

017overview of the timeline uh going back uh to spring of last year. We could actually take this timeline and probably have done five pages and go all the way back to the original lesser plan, the uh learning recovery block grant version of the plan. Uh but this is this is just the work we've done over the past several months and just making sure that we are clear about how people um could u provide feedback in the process and and how we've interacted with u many groups and also provided the board multiple opportunities to engage in this work. what we've learned. Uh first piece we'll we'll pay some attention to is the uh the perspective survey. Um and just a reminder um you know more than 40,000 nearly 50,000 uh people total um participate in these

018uh surveys. We get information from students uh parents and staff. and the things that they've identified over the years continue to be very very consistent. And so I have three slides. First one is um the uh the top 15 priorities according to our students and you can see the top 15 things or the top 15 things. Uh they you may see a slight movement um here and a nine becomes a 10 and eight becomes a nine or something along those lines, but for the most part the most important things are the most important things and we've paid very close attention to this. Same thing with our parents. The the most important things are the most important things and I think this again is is referenced in the recommendations that we'll be uh providing today and

019staff. Yeah, same 15 things are the 15 things. Just a quick example. Uh this is one of the um formats in which we provided information to the board. We provided information to our labor partners and we provided information to our uh community members. So this is a two-page um tool that uh front and back uh for each of the set of positions that were included in the learning recovery block grant uh plan. And just a quick uh reference at the top of it, you'll see the the costs associated, the position itself, how many um FTE or full-time equivalent people are related to that. The left hand side, you see the relevant LCAP needs area. So the top 15 things are listed there and we made sure we highlighted which of those areas were associated with

020the particular position. uh the upper right hand corner you'll see that's the ranking um that the principles LCAP collaborative and the combined score of those groups. So again just a set of information that we've been using over the past uh past few years to make sure people um had information they needed and we use this information as we came to our final recommendation. And this is the second page that has a little more information. This is a snapshot of the work we did last spring uh with relate asking um our principles the LCAP collaborative to rank the um the items based on their um their relative importance. And so we spent a lot of time looking at this information. And we didn't stop there. We uh we went back out this fall and met with

021students, parents, the LCAP collaborative and principles again and said, "Let's make sure are the things that you've identified as most important um still most important." And our academic intervention teachers, campus supervisors, counselors, and social workers um came to remain near the top of the list um when we did this additional feedback. Okay, so that's the setup. Any questions with regards to process up to this point um and how we've come to making the recommendations. So the first set of recommendations um are positions that department budgets have uh and leaders have identified department budgets to be able to um build these positions into existing um funding and or um some restricted dollars um that we had available um that we we think uh the position lines up with very very clearly. Um, so I did go

022line by line with this um with with board members and I'm going to go ahead and do that again um this time just to make sure everybody's clear about our thought process um regarded regarding this work. So you'll see throughout this presentation um a number of um recommendations to continue u supports our homeless students. Um, as we've shared with the board, our homeless, uh, population is one of our faster growing populations, uh, within our district and the the needs of these kids, uh, regardless of any measure you use, um, the need is there. And so, you'll see several positions where we have, uh, prioritized them. You'll see the funding source, we use title one carryover. We do have some dollars that are available out of the 2425 budget available to do this. and our homeless

023population um is largely concentrated in uh in two areas of our district where um title one funding is is an appropriate use um of funding. And that's why we uh we decided to use um title one carryover there. And I'll show you on another the next slide a different tactic um with regards to how we would support foster youth, which is another important group. Um but how they're distributed across the district doesn't really allow us to use title one in that particular situation. Curriculum specialists, there are two of them. Um they're specific to visual and performing arts. Um Prop 28 is our dollars that are designed specifically to support um the arts. We've done a significant expansion of the arts through our elementary schools and also with Prop 28 that all of our secondary schools

024as well. And so these curriculum specialists we believe are critical to that work uh moving forward. We can also augment this with uh with title 4 which gives us some flexibility with regards to supporting um curricular areas of of need. So we think that's a good match. The equity program educator. This is one of the one of the positions within the equity um department. Um, Sky River, the uh the Wilton Rancheria um generously uh provides um support to the district on a annual basis and they want to focus on kids of need and this this we believe this position lines up with that very clearly. Um health assistance u I I appreciate the work of the um the health department um student support and health services of being able to build these positions into uh

025department budget. Part of this is possible um because of the work we've been doing um in reducing contracted services and hiring our own folks. The other reality is the services that these people provide um are built into health plans um of our students and we're required to do them. So if we did not find a funding source this way we we would have to find a funding source in another in another manner. uh the multilingual education coordination. Uh this one is a little more complicated um than most and the in the current plan we have 11 and a half of these positions. Um and they are sprinkled across all of our secondary schools in different variations of people mostly very small parts of people. Um and so one of the one of the conversations we

026had uh with Dr. Lily through Liz through our um multilingual department was um is there a more efficient and effective way to do this work? Um we challenged her with that and she came back um stepped up to the table and said if she had eight FTE instead of the 11 and a half and they were working for her department and she was able to train them um that they could provide this the eight people could provide the service that the 11 and a half are currently providing. So that's why you see eight here and you'll see 3.5 FT not funded um in a little later in the presentation. U multilingual education program specialist um the they've been working uh for a couple of years to clear out funding within their department to absorb this

027position and it is um it will be absorbed within the multilingual department program educator uh for equity. The jewels settlement is on dollars that were made available to school districts that participated in a lawsuit with the vaping company. Um and uh so we have dollars available over the next uh next couple of years and uh we think the program educator within equity is a um is a good match um for these funds. Uh program educator newcomer welcome centers as you know um are uh the refugee uh population um continues to grow within the district. It's a the the real focus of ours. The welcome centers have been um an amazing resource for our families and we have we've built into the face department budget these two positions program specialist face um and then said program

028in imple key um positions and uh and the focus of both of these positions are um uh students who are served with title one um funds. Um, and so that's why we're uh proposing title one funds for for those two positions. A few more that we have um in in department type uh work uh project implementers for youth development. There's three of these positions. Um, and these are actually um positions that are um associated with our uh alternative ed schools and the comprehensive school support or school improvement um uh dollars actually came at just the right time from the state. These schools have been identified um and the uh the support of these three positions matches up very um very nicely with the CSI u funding source and that will continue funding and uh services

029for alted um kids uh program specialist um within face. This one's a little bit of a interesting dynamic. Uh we are this position is scheduled to be laid off. It's it's within face but it's a focus with regards to attendance. So we are going to lay that position off. Um but the um the face department has been a little entrepreneurial and they found a grant that will focus on um improving attendance um specifically and um we're going to hire this person back and they're going to be a a major um component of making sure that grant gets carried out and we improve um student attendance across the district. uh regional 19 program texts um homeless again as you see um highlighting that we think the focus on our homeless um students is is critical and

030the jewel settlement fits within um that uh that set of services. So that's our that's our recommendation there. restorative practices program specialist. Again, this is the um the department has built this into their funding um existing funding source. As you know, we've done a tremendous um increase in restorative practices work across the entire district. We've actually trained last year we trained staff at every single school site and we're doing another round of training at every single school site this year. uh and this person has helped with a great deal of that along with some of the coaches that you'll see in the presentation uh later. Uh but we're going to have to scale back some of that work because we're not in the full rollout mode anymore. We're going to be in a more maintenance

031mode. Uh but this person we believe is critical to keeping that work uh moving forward. Here's a uh academic intervention teacher and FY stands for foster youth. So this is I made a nod to our homeless um students a couple of times. Our foster youth is another uh group of kids that you look at any measure and they need a great deal of support more than we're currently able to do. Uh but it is a um relatively it's a it's a group that's actually shrinking in numbers over the past few years. And it's not that there's fewer foster youth across the state. Um but within the specific boundaries of Elgrove Unified, there are fewer um homes um that uh that serve foster youth students. So that number has actually decreased over the years. So we

032are recommending um one of the academic intervention teachers continue but you will see on the future list there's one of them um that were not and that was that was done very thoughtfully uh with regards to the carry and bringing that forward. Uh teacher education and special assignment also known as coaches within the equity department. There are eight of those positions currently. Um here are three of those positions um that the department has identified um funding to be able to um incorporate them into their department budget. Um you'll see that we have a couple of more of them that we are recommending uh moving forward, but there are three of those positions that uh that will be on the not funded list. And that's part of the the reality of not being able to um

033do everything that we want to do, but also the idea that we have been in a ramp up mode in the in the past couple of years. And we're and moving forward, we believe that the five of the eight will help us um carry out the goals of the department um and make sure we're we're still still working in the right direction. And then the uh last one is a is a uh close to my heart and um I know um several board members have been connected with this as well but our our face department are we have a set of teachers two of them we're going to recommend one of them moving forward but these teachers are actually working u directly with teachers on title one campuses and they're doing uh parent education and

034it's actually the the definition of what family and community engagement is designed to the um the staff are working with the parents to make sure the parents clearly understand what the learning targets, what their students should learn this year. Um also understand clearly where their student their child currently um stands in relation to that learning. Um and then they also provide uh very clear um and doable um supports, games, engagement pieces that families can do uh with their child at home in support of those learning targets. So, if you haven't had the opportunity to to see this in action yet, um I strongly encourage you to do so, but it's a amazing work. Okay, I'm going to take one second here because this one's going to take a bit. So, get yourself ready. Here we

035go. All right. So, [snorts] this is going through the list. So, what you see here, um, these are positions that we have not built into department funding. Um, but you'll see we're recommending, um, using, uh, dollars we've squirreled away in the learning recovery block grant, title one carryover. Um, and a little creative, which I think is, uh, completely appropriate, is the use of expanded learning um, ELOP dollars for one of the positions. So, uh, we uh, knocked this down into three categories, three tiers. top tier mandated services. If we didn't have these services or we didn't fund them, uh we would have to find a way to fund them in another way or we'd have findings because these services are built into uh students IEPs or other um health plans and we need to have

036the that those positions in place. So that's the four nurses and the learning recovery block grant is our recommendation for here. we get a little creative when we move to the tier two, which are services that are actually occurring directly at school sites. So, academic intervention teachers were near the top of the list of everybody um throughout the uh process. Uh we currently have 42 of those positions um in place. It's one at every site. U we're scaling that back a bit um because we're trying to make sure to make this doable over the 2-year period. So our recommendation is 36 of those positions roll forward. The split will be um 22 of those positions will be funded with learning recovery block grant which would equate to half a FTE half a person at each

037of the school sites. So sites could match up another person with local sites or they could share a person between uh between two school sites. That's the the base um formula that we have in place. On top of that, we've identified 14 positions that we would use the title one carryover dollars to, and this would allow us to do an additional half person um at each of our title one sites, acknowledging that our title one sites have more students of need um of these services. Campus supervisors, school safety um was top of everybody's list. Campus supervisors at the elementary schools did not exist pre- pandemic. um and they have been there for for several years now and are a key component to um the safety and just the well-being of kids on campus in general.

038Uh so we're we have 44 of those positions um uh scheduled for next year and as we open up another elementary school we'll we'll make sure that that piece is in place but 44 right now. Uh and we're doing an interesting split with this one. So you notice the uh 35.2 two, a very exact number with regards to learning recovery block grant and 8.8 um expanded learning. What we're proposing here is an 8020 split of their day, their eight hour um positions and that um 80% of their time would be covering the regular school day, but that still allows them time to be able to uh provide support during um extended school u hours um after traditional school. And so that's why we're proposing ELOP dollars to cover 20% of those those services. Uh the

039counselors, I'm going to kind of uh straddle two lines here because there's there's a set of counselors in the elementary level and there's a set of counselors um at the secondary level. We were um very thoughtful um and I appreciate staff's work and in trying to get this to the right uh right position. And I do want to say just upfront that this this overall 23 that you see here is four and a half fewer um than we currently have in place in the in the learning recovery block grant. So we we there is a reduction to counselors overall. We currently have 15 counselors at the elementary level. Um and that's what we've been able to hire and they've been allocated based on need across the district. Um currently um not every site has counseling

040services um as it as it stands currently. Um I asked the elementary ed team um and Miss Haby to dive into so what would it take to come up with a what we think would be a viable service delivery model with regards to elementary counselors came back if they had 18 of those positions we could do a um a core um distribution of two days of counseling services at every elementary school across the district. two seemed to be the minimum by which we thought that those services would be a value if we if it was down to a single day. While any we take any day we can get two days um was something they thought would be more viable moving forward with the option for um schools that have more need than that whether

041based on size or based on student population that we would be able to um uh give those sites an additional third day of service. So, minimum of two days at every elementary school. Um, and some of our sites would be um would get a third day based on based on need. So, it's actually three more elementary counselors than we currently have um in place. The high school counselors you see on the next line, um we're recommending five and and five is fewer than we currently have in place um in these positions. We've worked with um EGA, our our partners on this work for several years and our target um student uh to counselor ratio is 375 to1 and that's a that's been a target we've worked on for several years and it's how we came

042to um the number that we have in place um in the in the current plan. So the five counselors that we have here gets us to the 375 to1 ratio across our secondary schools. So just to reiterate what we've done here is did an increase to elementary counselors in order to provide what we think is a viable model of providing providing the services and we've adjusted the um secondary counselors to hit the 375 to1 mark. I will note that there are sites who um who have hired additional counselors beyond that using site funds. So those numbers are actually below the 375 to1 number but we did not include um those um those positions in our calculation of the 375. So the the base the base um that we have here uh will meet the 375

043to1 social workers um and they came through as um as very important on many on many levels and they serve our secondary schools currently. Uh we are recommending 14 of those positions moving forward. Uh nine and a half of those would be u funded with learning recovery block grant which would mean each of our um high school regions the nine high school regions um would each get a um a social worker one one full-time social worker in the region and then there would be half of a um person that would be dedicated to our all dead um sites beyond that and rounding out is an additional 4 and a half FTE um which would be additional staffing that would be um in our four regions that are um that are title one um and an

044additional 0.5 for our alt rounding the alt out to a full FTE. The tier three items are um items that happen at the school sites um and uh but they're they're not directly in the classroom um work. They're their support. And so the first one is our school office assistants. Um and these folks, we added a third person to the front offices um during the pandemic and kept that going um post pandemic. Um because the the sheer number of phone calls as kids were um coming off of being positive for COVID, not all the work that was going on in the front offices. Uh we did um staff up those uh the front offices. Moving forward, um our recommendation is we move back to our traditional two S SOAs um in the front offices, but

045we also recognize that if we roll back to two, um if you have a long um long-term um absence of one of those folks, you really do um put the front office in a tight spot. So the idea was uh here is to have three of the S SOAs that are itinerant and then um the uh elementary ed department um will based on need um will fill in spots um at school sites to um as much as possible keep school sites from being um limited to one person in the front office. So that's the the thought process there. uh sitebased uh technology support. U if you haven't noticed, we have a lot of uh technology in the uh in the the school district and um in the hands of kids and staff. We ramped up

046these services over the past uh few years as we ramped up the onetoone um process with all of our uh with all of our schools. Uh that number was up to 18 was our was our high water mark um pre- pandemic. Um Mr. Barber's done a lot of work in diving into some of the the metrics associated with these um positions and uh and we believe with 15 um of those positions that he can distribute um those services across all of our schools in a way that will uh still provide a high level of quality service um to make sure our kids and staff have what they need to be able to engage with our technology effectively. And then the last on this list, um you do see there's two additional um uh teacher educators

047u within the the equity department. So there were three that the uh the department was able to fold into um their department funding and we're recommending an additional two um using learning recovery uh block grant. So that'd be a there'll be a total of five of the eight would uh would remain in place. you'll see on the uh the following list where there's there's been some reductions. But I did speak to goods and services for continuation again highlighting that we were able to um we're making a recommendation for the uh positions through June of 28 which is two years but the goods and services we're recommending for for a single year through June of 27. First one is can the AVID site coordination. So we currently have um AVID coordinators at each of the school

048sites [cough] [clears throat] and then these are the this is the fund that we need to um continue to fund those stipens. Uh we did a dramatic increase of um AVID during the pandemic um and post pandemic and now we have it established at our elementary school. So there was a very heavy lift to get all that work done and we're greatly appreciative of the folks that help um get that done. But we do have a plan I think that is viable for keeping AVID um in place and and moving forward effectively. The next two um ed equity and family community engagement these are the the funds that the departments had to do their core work. Uh both of these um numbers were $350,000 in previous years u based on reduction in staff and some

049of the services we're going to be able to provide. uh we have rolled those back um to $150,000 for red equity and $200,000 for family and community engagement. The family and community engagement dollars will almost exclusively um fund the teacher home visit project that we've been very successfully doing over several years and this will allow us to pay teachers to continue doing that work. Social emotional learning recess support. Um our principles would tell you and our staff would say that this has been phenomenal work over the past several years. This is a vendor that we use outside. It's not actually district staff um doing this work. Um we value it, but again, we're in in the mode of having to scale back. Um and so our recommendation is to use title one carryover and to

050fund these at the title one schools with the option that our non-title schools could build into their um local LCAPS um if they wanted to continue these services um at the school. I can't think of anything more important than K1 reading. And so we did a deep dive into this work and we had $1.2 million dedicated to this work over the past couple years of actually spent closer to a million. Um and so our recommendation with the uh new reading screener that we're now implementing this year. We think we're going to identify even more students that need this support. So recommendation is to use LCAP carrier to keep that in place the next next two years. I kept this one on the list, the special education, um, physical curriculum assessments, and you see zero dollars.

051And the reason there's zero dollars there is we actually have paid through a multi-year grant, um, through the AEN grant. Um, this is covered through June of 27 already. So, we don't need additional dollars there to cover it, but I didn't want it to fall off the list because as we get past June of 27, we're going to have to make a decision um, if we're going to find a way to fund this uh, moving forward. So, that's why I I kept it on the list. Then these student Chromebooks, uh, Chromebooks are a thing. Um, and you know, the the work that we've been doing to, uh, to roll this work out. Um, Mr. Barber is a little itchy over there because he'd say 4 million is, uh, is might is pretty close to maybe

052not enough, but we we we're doing a deep dive into um, how we roll out Chromebooks at the uh, the K first and second grade levels. And so, taking a look there to see if there's um, the work that we can be done. the funding sources that you see here. Um, this is this is for this presentation. I want to make sure that we had a worst case scenario covered. And so, this covers things in the worst case scenario. I will say I strongly believe the governor's budget in January, there's going to be additional onetime dollars available in that budget that the board ultimately could dedicate to this line. But in a worst case scenario, if there's no dollars available in the upcoming budget, uh there will be some remaining dollars in the Aean grant

053because we dedicated um dollars to u connectivity hotspots for students. Um and that that need for the hotspots has reduced dramatically. So there's some savings within a we can use and again um Mr. Barbara will get a little itchy here. Uh but we do have dollars within the within the department uh budget um designed u to the it's called the tech utility fund and in a worst case scenario using this year's tech utility dollars and next year's tech utility dollars we could cover this cost those those are designed to do other things too but we're talking about in a worst case scenario wanted to make sure we had that covered and I do believe there'll be other funding sources available um in January we can make some adjustments at that Okay. So, here's where it

054gets a little less comfortable. So, the next uh next two pages um have uh positions that we um were not recommending um funding um moving forward. And um I want to say out loud that uh the work that's been done by these folks over the past several years um is uh is amazing and we are a better district and our kids are um in a better place because of the work. Uh but the reality is we can't um keep everything uh moving forward. I will say just as a a bit of a note um I made this presentation to the uh the LCAP collaborative group last Thursday and prior to starting the uh presentation I actually I said okay before we jump into this they didn't get a preview of it um as you did

055they just got it cold I asked them to write down how many positions do you think we're going to be able to keep in place over the next two years um you know based on what you know about our funding sources and so I asked them to write that number down then we did then we did the presentation. I'm proud to say we have 173 positions [sighs] built into this plan. Um the guesses um that were that were shared, one was 45, one was 50, one was 75, one was 100. And I will say someone said 175, but she said it after the presentation. time. So, so you know, so that was a number, but but the the the expectations um um I think we we far exceeded my expectations of what this was going

056to uh what we were going to be able to do um in the the long run. And I and I I believe we um outpaced the expectations um of our partners as well. So, but I don't want to with that said um I'll go through each of these um as well. So the academic intervention teachers um in the previous slides I we showed that we currently have 42 of those and we're recommending 36 of those continue but there are six of those positions that would be uh that would go away. The AVID coordinator and the AVID coaches. I know this is a um a really important um topic for for many folks. uh AVID is an amazing program um and in our secondary schools it's been very very strong for years and years and years

057and there's really nothing within the secondary model that's that's changing. Uh we did a immense um expansion of AVID into our elementary schools over the past few years um and it has um it has bloomed. It is it's an amazing thing to see um in our classrooms. Uh we believe that the AVID co coordinator we we used to have those duties um as part of the uh district's counselor head counselor position when we went to this big expansion at the elementary level uh we saw a need to uh dedicate additional resources to that over that short period of time u because there was such a huge ramp up um as we're moving back into um our normal um a more normal um set of staffing allocations. We believe building in the AVID coordination into the

058district head counselor position um is what we've done in the past and and it makes sense. Uh we do still have the coordinators at all of the schools which didn't exist pre- pandemic. Um so those those resources are still there um and in place. And so for the AVID coaches um same thing done an amazing job in getting things up up and running and ramped up. Uh but we believe between the head counselor support that we will get from Skoey um Sacramento County Office of Education um who have um said that they will be supportive of us in this endeavor um and the coordination at the school sites. We think we have a viable model for AVID uh moving forward. Counselors um here's the four and a half counselors. Um we have came up with

059a new model with regards to elementary um and secondary. elementary two days per um school at minimum. Some will get three and a 375 to1 ratio um has reached at the secondary level um even with this reduction in place. Family community leaison um very important positions um but the reality is we just could not um enroll them in other against other positions. Uh we made the decision not to recommend them moving forward. This is a position that traditionally um schools have gotten together and um and had a person shared among u multiple school sites through their local funding um and nothing would um stop people from doing that moving forward, but we're not making a recommendation to fund those moving forward. Uh and then what you'll see through here is just some u we think

060are important positions and important uh departments, but we couldn't keep them all going. So, department leaders made uh made made decisions about um some of the positions that would um that would need to slide away. And so, one of those at the face department is the uh uh mental health therapist. Um important work, but we're going to have to uh assume that work um within other folks still within the department. Multilingual education coordination, if you remember, um Dr. Lily Lily said that with eight positions, she could do that work. So this is the three and a half um that we think we can do without um and still get the work done. And and as a reminder, these are parts of people across many schools. They're not really um full-time people. Um but we think

061we have a model that will allow us to do that work. Next page. Um again this you'll see this uh program educator and program specialist within equity important work but we are um going to capture those responsibilities and have to rethink all this all the services we're going to be able to provide. So we are recommending a reduction of those two positions within equity. Um this is the second of the foster youth academic intervention teachers. So, we did recommend funding one of those positions, but because it's a u a smaller group of pe group of students than in the past, we think one uh can help us do the work. The school office assistance, this is originally was 42 positions. Um we have three of them that were recommending hiring that would be itinerant to

062help fill in where needed, but these would be the the 13 positions that we would be um removing. Uh there's the three um coaches, teachers on special assignment within the equity department. Same thing. We appreciate all the work that they've done. Uh but we are recommending a reduction from um 8 to five um to be able to still make sure the work is moving forward and still a priority. Uh but we we we just can't fund every position. This is the second um of the teacher and special assignment. Um the fats as we come. Um, we may have asked for a second one of these because we do think it's really critical work. Uh, we do have a retirement in this particular, so we're we're going to take advantage of that opportunity. Um, keep the

063other position in place and it may be something um the board will be able to grow um down the road, but we we didn't want to lose uh that service completely. Um the multilingual learner support here, this is um not whole people. Um it's actually um sections within master schedules in our secondary schools. Um we've done a great deal of work um within the secondary ed department and our uh the work with our multilingual department. Uh we believe that there is funding um within um and staffing available within existing master schedules that with the rep prioritization these services um can still be um done without um without funding them um through this uh through this process. And the last one um near and dear to my heart um as a former principal for many years

064the vice principles are key um to being able to run an effective safe um school. Um but the elementary ed department has done a um a really phenomenal job of absorbing these positions as we've hired vice principles into principal positions. We haven't backfilled principal uh the vice principal positions and so we have staffing at the uh at the elementary schools currently. We're backed in some cases to uh to sharing vice principles which is not our ideal u model. Um but this does um keep us from laying off um anybody um in the the admin ranks and still providing um services um to our school. So it's the the best we could do in the in the current situation funding you know can't can't do any of this if we're not paying attention um to funding.

065So, if you if you do the addition and uh uh folks around the uh the LCAP collaborative table, they did they did the they did the addition. They came up with about $42 million over a two-year period to keep all these positions and goods and services um in place. And that's a good number. That that is that is the number. And what you see here is $42 million um worth of funding in a one-time way to be able to um cover the positions. learning recovery block grant. We have been squirreling away money in this um in this account um as as soon as we received it. And so whenever we didn't fill a vacancy, those dollars dropped to the bottom line. So a little more than $9 million um we've been able to uh to

066identify there. And then we have the educator effectiveness dollars um which were uh which we actually used to do our um DEI work across the entire district. We've completely completed that work. Um, everyone who participated um has been paid and so we have a little over $4 million available there that we can use for learning recovery u block grant positions which will free up dollars um here. So that's how we get to the 14.1. Uh the governor um true to his word they uh they originally cut um a little over $10 million out of our learning recovery block grant uh when the economic times were were bad. as things got a little better and onetime dollars were available, um they built into last year's budget a repayment of those dollars. So, we got the first

067installment of that and the $3.4 million, again, part of what you see in the 14.1. Um and then the 6.8 are the two payments we expect next year in the following year, $3.4 million uh to make that whole again. Federal funds is overwhelmingly title one carryover. more than nine million of that is title one carryover that we've shown you how we expect to use that and then there's half a million in title four um than the federal funds that we we identified as well the state allocations um that's a it's a compilation of a a number of resources and includes using the ELOP money for the campus supervisors it's the new grant that we're using um with regards to uh our e our face department and attendance Um it's our CSI dollars to support the

068positions that are all dead. Um and it's the uh the LCAP carryover. So those dollars are all there in hand and we we have them. Um the local grants, the Jewel um settlement and the uh the Sky River. Again, thank you to the Wilton Rancheria for their um support. They're allowing us to uh to save a couple of positions and we greatly appreciate that. And the 4.5 is are the dollars that the um site leaders have identified within their existing budgets uh to keep positions in place. And the last couple slides, um this is really important as well and we wanted to um make sure that our labor partners um heard us and we want to make sure the board um hears this as well. um a focus on we're in a um a growth

069district. Um and again um a lot of positives that go along with being the growth district. Certainly much better than being um in a um in a district where you're you're losing enrollment, but with that comes stress on um goods and services and things that we're able to do and the work that people have to do to keep our schools up and running and working effectively. So this is a nod to uh to our partners um that we are uh I I say this out loud um I do not have a single dollar that I can dedicate to this at this point. Um but what I can say is it's a priority. Uh we will dig into this um and it was not lost um in the conversation. And this slide just kind of just

070this if you're if someone's not on this list, please know we still care if we but this was just a a summary list of many of the non-traditional positions that we need to make sure we're paying attention to as we grow, needing to serve more students and also needing to support more employees. So, that's just a short list of all the things that we're we're thinking about that are on our minds. I will say from the LCAP collaborative uh group um these two slides as as much as people appreciated the the work and thought that went into the recommendation around positions um I think the um the OKAP collaborative folks spoke to uh their appreciation for the recognition um of this work and making sure that it was included um in the presentation. Um they

071were they were thankful that that was done. All right. So, this has been a uh a crazy um long stretch um to get to this point today. You know, Mark highlighted in cabinet um on Monday. Uh we set this date on the calendar several months ago that this is when we were going to bring this work to the board. Um and uh and we met we met expectations. Um I also think um through the work um of listening to our um I don't know stakeholders I'm an old guy educational partners I knew I know the new language um that um listening to our educational partners um and looking at what folks wanted prioritized. I think this is um the absolute best recommendation that we could uh we could bring forward um at this time. Um,

072I think it focuses on services our kids need. And I will say I do think this is a starting point for um the work moving forward of this should be a definition of the service we provide to um to our students across the district. So just a idea what uh where we are. U so today we've provided the uh the recommendations. I look forward to uh listening to um board member feedback and any comments that we have. Um we will bring this back to the board on the 18th, November 18th, based on any of the feedback we get from the board today. I will say what we're going to ask for on the 18th is to confirm that the board is supportive of the direction. um the actual banging of the gavvel and the the

073approval of the positions will actually happen through the budget process. but by the board giving us direction with regards to support for uh the recommendation. What it really allows us to do is focus on those that are not um included in the recommendation so we can um start to work with them um to make sure we can find uh land soft landing places um ideally positions within the district um that they will be able to um to move into. But there's a lot of work that the human resources team needs to do in conjunction with our labor leaders. And the earlier we start on that, the earlier people know they have a spot next year, the less stress on them, less stress on families. So, we want to be able to get started with that

074work as soon as possible. With that, I'm going to shut up for a while. >> All right. Thank you very much, Mr. Yang. Do we have any blue cards on this item? >> Mr. of August. We do have a couple blue cards. Good morning, Colin Brent Lou to the podium, followed by Diane Campbell. I just got a third blue card on this item. So, um, good morning. Uh my name is Bin Lim and I'm standing before you again because while I'm grateful that the recommendation includes continued funding for five um equity coaches, I'm greatly concerned about the impact this reduction will have on the services that we are able to provide. So my colleague Robert um has said that we're doing more with less. Um this year we have eight attempting to support all nine

075regions and alt ed um not just with restorative practices, which is what we've talked about a lot over the last couple of years. um but with a variety of other site requests over the last four years. Um we've worked really hard to build trust and relationships with staff and administrators planting seeds along the way and these seeds are now germinating, growing, and in many cases bearing fruit. So what does this mean? Um we are fielding more requests for support from individual teachers, grade level teams, subject matter groups and administrators. Um, our e collaborative efforts with coaches from other departments are also increasing our workload. And this increase in equity coaching requests is a testament to the trust and relationships that we have built as well as a shift in mindset around how the adults in

076our system can prioritize uplifting joy and working toward eliminating suffering and oppression for our students, families, and for each other. As adults, we have um done our best to do more with less. Uh dropping down to five coaches will dramatically decrease our ability to provide support to sites and staff beyond just restorative practice. So, I urge you to consider how these recommendations will impact the work to uh toward our district's strategic goals of not only targeted program supports um but also wellness. Um I also want to urge you to reconsider the recommendation um of unfunding our family community liaison um in the face department. Uh they the support that they provide um our most vulnerable families by connecting them to resources and supporting increased attendance is necessary. uh optimal conditions for learning cannot be achieved

077when students and families in need do not have access or awareness of the supports that are available and the family community liaison are truly vital. So thank you for your time and consideration. >> Thank you. Up next Diane Campbell followed by Crystal Mie. >> Uh good morning. Um, hello President Vargas, school board members, Superintendent Hoffman and cabinet and other uh guests in the room and labor leadership. Thank you so much. Uh, I just wanted to say thank you uh for the hard work of the LCAP collaborative as well as cabinet level and uh each of the departments for their work on this project. It was not a fun task for any of us. It was hard work but it was also excellent conversation. So I appreciate the collaboration with the bargaining units um and cabinet

078in the district. So I just wanted to reiterate what Superintendent Hoffman said is that there is a lot of thanks for the work of the of the district as well as the uh collaborative working together. Um, I also really appreciate being able to think outside of the box and find some one-time funding for the campus supervisors, which is a ask me position, but is also one of the priorities through the surveys for the safety on campus. Um, also I appreciate the, you know, also once again trying to think out of the box of how we're going to fund the school office assistance when all the elementary schools were uh getting used to the idea of working with three front office staff. a school office assistance um versus two in most of the cases. Uh and

079then trying to assign three itinerant S SOAS to help cover different regions when people are going to be out for different times. I'm going to be a little greedy and say we have nine regions, nine SOAs that are itinerant might not be a bad idea to consider. Um again and also just thinking for the mental health for our staff, our front office staff with everything that they endure, the workload that they they have that increasing the customer service that they are providing uh to our our families and students and being that first interaction for the district. It might be helpful to um if you know if there was more itinerate SOAs then maybe there would be more chance for them to take vacations um and then but the school site would still have coverage because

080they are not short-handed. Also, maybe this could possibly help with the unfunded li unfunded liabilities that we have with some of our ASME members as well as um reduce the the vacation payouts that we have annually for some of the members as well. So, I just wanted to put that thought in in everybody's mind. Um but again, I do really appreciate the hard work. It was not a fun conversations along the way. Uh, thank you, Superintendent Hoffman, because I was the one that said 45 for the position, so I was the low one of the group. Um, but I'm pleasantly surprised and again, I thank everybody for the hard work and the collaboration. Um, and really thank Superintendent Hoffman and Cabinet for hearing me also of putting that placeholder for the growth that we're having

081in the district and for maintenance and operations. Um, I work in facilities, so I wasn't really going to push on facilities, but thank you for that and for like CPL and all those other classes that asked me. So, thank you. >> Thank you. Appreciate that. Calling Crystal to the podium. >> Good morning, board chair, Superintendent Hoffman. Ladies and gentlemen of the board, ATU. Um, as leaders, we we get to see rewarding. I I saw Superintendent Hoffman choke up when he was speaking of the the process that we had to do and then you said baseline and it's difficult. It's difficult. Um, but ATU came before you as a board with concerns and and we're a willing partner and we strive for excellence, but with the district saying transportation is the backbone and funding but funding

082continues to be directed towards new roles and short-term initiatives that we will be likely reduced again within two years. rather than strengthening the essential programs and positions that we have supported our students and community. Superintendent Hoffman said 15 things. 15 things the past few years. The top 15 things, but those 15 things didn't include our bus operators, our mechanics, our attendant schedulers. So that's why we came before you and we've been advocating about this. So we did go and we did go to the LCAP and we participated as willing partners. We participated but I abstained ATU abstained because none of those positions had ATU people in it. So it would be disingenuous of ATU to say who to cut and who not to cut because these are people and these are real lives. With that

083being said, it feels disingenuous sometimes for ATU to be in the room with my other labor leaders and we have to pick and choose which people to keep. You keep yours, I keep mine. That's why we came before the board. As leaders, we do have to make difficult decisions and this is a difficult decision. But I also as a leader have to see that you said we're the backbone. Transportation is the backbone. Well, we shall see if we're the backbone. I don't envy any of us. I did not envy any of us in that room because those people are people. Your people, my people. But at the end of the day, we do have to make decisions. [clears throat] So, I appreciate the work that Superintendent Hoffman did. I really did. We He took me

084aside and we spoke. So, I I appreciate that. Thank you. I also appreciate my other labor leaders and brothers and sisters in the room. As quiet as this cat, we're being pitted against each other. With that being said, as a leader, I have to stand with my ATU sisters and brothers and I come before you and say we don't we don't want you to uh see this through this recommendation without seeing the backbone as you say of transportation. 15 things. 15 things. Did we ask those principles or those teachers or those parents about the bus drivers who pick their kids up? >> Thank you for letting me speak. >> Thank you. That ends our blue car on this item. >> Very well. Then we will move to board discussion. Um let's start on this end

085with Miss Baldwin. Any questions, comments? Uh thank you for the presentation. Um at this time I don't have any specific questions. Um the only thing I do want to acknowledge is the hard work that went into uh figuring out how we would come to this day and have to make um some pretty hard decisions here. Uh I just want to reiterate that this is the best ideas that we've come the cabinet has come to us with and I thank you and acknowledge you for doing the best you can. Um and it is going to be hard. There's things on here that it's you know it's painful to see that we're going to have to find another way forward. Um we can't we can do it all. We just can't do it all at once. And

086so, um, with that, you know, I'd want to just express my full, um, you know, just that my heart goes out to everybody that this is going to impact. Uh, I know what that's like to not have your contract renewed. Um, it is hard on a family. It's hard. People are people. And at the end of the day, we want to do what's best um to keep us moving forward as a successful district and also making sure that we can take care of those that we can by um starting early and allowing people the opportunity to see where we can find ways to absorb in other capacities um or support in ways um that will help them move forward for this. So, thank you, superintendent. Thank you, cabinet. Um, and I have no questions. >>

087Thank you very much, Miss Moore. >> Uh, I would like to thank the all of the individuals who have um participated in giving the board feedback uh via public comment and emails over the last several weeks. And I I do value all of the input uh from staff and community members and I I really appreciate that. And uh and I I know this is a difficult process um but necessary um so that we can be fiscally responsible and uh prioritize what we need uh what is it is a priority for us to move forward and be successful and um ultimately support our students. Um I do have some questions and comments um in many public comments uh and emails. It's been mentioned that um the AVID positions that we are completely removing have um prior

088to having the site or the district coordinator and the two um AVID uh coaches. How many when we initially uh had implemented s uh had our er funds how many how many AVID positions did we have because it's been mentioned that we've already cut back significantly. >> Yeah, I'm I'm not aware of other positions we've cut back significantly. There were there were other avid coaches that haven't been that haven't been backfield. I think there were six of them when we when we started and that's and now there's there's two of them. Um but those were those were not prepandemic positions. Those were those were part of the ESRE positions that rolled forward and part of the roll out of AVID into the elementary schools. That was the idea of having those positions in place. The

089other thing that we did not have in place prior to the pandemic was the coordinator stipens for people at each of the school sites. And as you saw in the presentation, we're recommending moving those forward um in the plan. >> Okay. So, that's that's what I just wanted to clarify is that at one point we did have additional uh AVID coaches, >> one time funded. Yes. >> Uhhuh. Okay. And and so we are we not currently paying stipens to the site coordinators? >> We are. We want to continue that. >> Okay. Just wanted to clarify that. We weren't we weren't doing that prior to this plan when when when the plan the the the stipens going to our elementary school coordinators that didn't exist prior to the plan that we have in place. >> Okay.

090So, will that be an additional cost? I think it was $130,000. >> No, that that 130 covers that. >> Okay. Um Okay. Okay. So, just to clarify though, you're saying that covers that, but is that a new cost or is that an ongoing cost? >> It was part of the ESER plan. It was part of the learning recovery block grant and it's part of the recommendation moving forward. >> Okay. Thank you. I just wanted to understand that. Um, okay. And on page 22, I had um questions emailed from a site coordinator that I think are really important to um to ask. Um so on page 22, we point out that um we don't have a plan of action for AVID, but rather we are evidence gathering. And then um so the examples are um we

091say that we are reviewing alternative job descriptions to determine if AVID oversight can be incorporated but uh what if it what if it can't? >> It has [snorts] been in the past in the in the previous version of the position the head counselor position um did oversee AVID at the district level. uh when we went to uh the model of expanding AVID into the elementary schools, uh we we had an opportunity to add additional resources to help support that because we literally trained hundreds of teachers at the elementary level uh to be able to do that work and so we didn't want that to land completely on the um on a existing position. So that's why we added the resource during this time. Moving forward um that type of ramp up won't be necessary. So

092we believe we can return to the prepandemic process in which our um head counselor also supports AVID. >> Okay. Uh we also say um that we um are defining are defining for our leaders a scope of AVID but um shouldn't we know that before we're cutting it? You say >> we've already trained those people that they have that capacity. We did in the in the ramp up site administrators, site teachers, um the coordinators, those folks have all been trained. That was the ramp up. And just because this plan um doesn't uh isn't including that the coaches moving forward, all the people still have that capacity. That's why that's why in one-time situations, training people um with skills uh that they can carry forward even after the money runs out is a an effective use of

093the fund. So that the capacity at the elementary level has never been higher to be able to support the AVID work. >> Okay. Um, so much of the feedback that I've received in in emails is from site coordinators saying that they that they believe that we need to continue um with the district support for AVID. Um, and then we also talk about um potentially outsourcing to Skoey and in parentheses it says include costs. Um, and that's something I asked you yesterday in our meeting. Have we explored what the costs would be if >> Yes, Mr. Ser can speak to that for you. >> Thank you. Yeah, the um the short answer is uh I met previously twice um with representative assistant superintendent and then um Miss Polo who is has overseen and worked in uh

094county office with AVID for well it goes back to when I was a principal in foreign high school. um and they're very aware of the circumstances of our school and all schools with with the AVID program. Um and if I could take just a quick step, the reason that we implemented AVID, all of this came out of COVID and AVID at the elementary school has some features to it that we felt were going to enable us to assist kids in that transition. Um but the question regarding coordination, district level coordination, we will have coordination. Um are we confirming exactly the person that it is? Not right now. Um we have a number of options that we can look at. Dr. Collier, um Mr. Schwitzer, Miss Ay and myself, we've worked through this and looking at

095options because AVID at the elementary level in particular, they refer to it as instructional strategy. I actually think it's the wrong word, instructional strategies, whether it's um direct instruction or experiential learning or thematic instruction or project-based learning. Those are instructional strategies. Avid, which is effective. Um, they really, a lot of what they're doing is they're referring to wicker. And so you're talking about writing, inquiry, collaboration, organization, and reading. A lot of that is done by instructional coaches through curriculum and professional learning. I don't want our CPL coaches out there saying, "Oh my gosh, are we all doing this now?" um those folks th all of our coaches meet regularly um and coordinate how they're providing these services. So there is a tremendous amount of crossover and I've worked directly with in fact her office was

096literally when my office door was open um Miss Hubard was right outside and those coaches are right outside my office and there was direct coordination between we're not going to lose that. Um there is benefits to that program. I was trained in Avid back as a teacher in and so um there's good that's coming from the program and uh we believe we have the resources and we'll have the district level coordination the site level coordination we'll be able to continue the work with the assistance of Skoey direct assistance of Skoey our last meeting um and then most recently I've connected Dr. Travis um with Miss Poe as well. So we feel very good about the transition. We also understand why folks may be um concerned about it because they saw benefit to it. We'll be

097able to continue it. >> Okay. So just to clarify there go do you know the cost associated with >> There won't be a cost. Okay. I think that is important to know because um it does say include costs here and if we haven't calculated that or taken that into account then um we you know we need to do that before we cut these positions if there's going to be an additional cost there anyway. Um and then we, you know, it was also mentioned by many individuals that um we're we're completely cutting all of the AVID district positions, but um but other departments will are maybe, you know, not completely affected. Um so just for reference, how many total employees will we have in the equity department even after these cuts? Morning, Miss Moore. So, if

098we were fully funded, we would have had 32 in the equity department. Currently, right now, we have 26. And with these recommendations going forward, there'd be 18. >> 18. Okay. So, would it be possible for us to uh keep our AVID coordinator and eliminate possibly uh an another equity position? Could those responsibilities be absorbed within the department or I mean or are there other positions? I just think that it's worth looking at. Can we at least keep our AVID our district avid coordinator? >> Yeah, we we looked at that um on a very deep level. Um we believe the recommendation with regards to um the positions we're recommending in um our equity department um is is the right um structure. um and we believe the work of the AVID coordinator um will be covered uh

099through another source. So we this is our recommendation. >> Okay. Okay. And then the last thing I'll say um on this topic is that it was mentioned within the within the presentation that we're in maintenance mode with restorative practices. And then I believe um either today or yesterday you mentioned that that the same or AVID that we're in maintenance mode and that's why we're making these uh changes but with restorative practices we still have a coordinator and with AVID we're completely eliminating the district supports. So >> but we have the coordinators at each of the school sites >> but not the district coordinator. >> We have coordinators at each of the sites. Um, and we'll have district coordination as well. >> Okay. I just want But we are eliminating the title of district aid coordination.

100>> That is true. >> That's what I'm trying to say. But we're not doing so for restorative practices. I just wanted to point that out. Um, and then the last thing I wanted to mention is that it was mentioned multiple times by social workers and other individuals um during public comment and emails that um social workers have begun to explore billing insurance and other uh other sources when for their services and that could offset the costs for our social workers. Um that wasn't mentioned in the presentation. Is that something that we are um exploring more so that we can offset these costs and fund um not only our social workers but um have that alternative funding for other positions as needed in the future? >> Absolutely. Anytime there's a funding source opportunity um that we

101can take advantage of, we will. And the social worker billing is um is one of those opportunities. uh lot to explore, a lot to see about um the actual access to those funds, but they are actively engaged in that process. >> Okay. Well, I think that's a great thing to look into. Um and I appreciate the social workers who uh and any individuals who've been involved with looking into that because I think that is a very positive thing. Um, I I do think overall that we are keeping um more positions than I thought we would be able to keep and I do appreciate the creativity with finding funding. Um, I think it's clear that I am in support of trying to find a way to at least keep our AVID district coordinator. Um, because I

102do think AVID is a really important program. Uh but again I thank everyone um all stakeholders for their input and uh that's all. >> Thank you Miss Balerini. >> Uh good morning. Um I guess 200 positions built into the plan. So I was on the other side of of everything when we started this. >> That was that was because you read the plan first. [laughter] >> That's right. I did read it ahead of time. You're right. But but I didn't add it up. I was just guessing. Um, I do have a couple of questions about funding sources and maybe Miss Watkins is the right person. I'm not sure. McKenna Vento funds. Do we still get those with the district for the homeless help? And what are we using those for at this current time? Do

103we know >> without diving in? And I know they're um tied to positions and support services, but I don't have those off the top of my head. So I can I can come back to you with that information. >> We do still but as far as what they're used for. >> Yes. >> Yeah. So those are the the positions that I can't name the positions off the top of my head but we have we have ongoing positions that are built into the McKenna using the McKenney Vento funding and then during ESSER and then the learning recovery block grant we augmented with these additional positions and that so that's what we're recommending um be the new staffing norm uh within the support for our homeless students and that and at the you know pre- pandemic to

104today um the the number of kids um in our homeless program have have increased dramatically. So that's why we that's why we've augmented with these positions. >> That's why I wanted to make sure we were still getting those and how they were being used, etc. So perfect. Um, and do we know how much the jewel settlement was? >> 1.2 million. >> There we go. I I thought you'd said it the other day, but I didn't write it down, so that's my fault. Okay. Um, I really like the itinerate S SOA2 idea. Um, I think that's going to be a big help in the offices, but I do have a quick question and Susan's going to hit me because I'm probably asking something she's got on her list, but that's okay. Um there's there used to

105be um sort of a if if you were going to have an S SOA2 out of the front office for a certain length of time at that point they would allow you to have a sub. I believe it's a 23-day rule. Um is that still going to happen or if we if we don't have the three people assigned somewhere are we going to look for some other place that may need them at that point? We're not we're not changing any of our existing policy. This this is an additional three people to help fill in where we where we need to. >> So if if there's if nobody needs them before that, what do we do with them? >> Uh they can help make phone calls with regards to uh making sure we get our up

106there. There's lots and idea with uh with 42 43 44 um elementary schools um there will be room for the three of them to be used on a regular basis. >> And I'm just gonna throw this out there too. Um, this is an idea the itinerate S SOA2s I had had thought of a couple of years back for us to use in custodial. Diane's shaking her head. Yes. Um, I I think that's something that's not part of this budget plan, but I think that's something that um may be a good idea to look at in the future for other departments. All right. So, um, and I don't know, it's one of you two. I'm not sure which. The vice principles, since we are losing five FTE, if if this plan goes into play, does this

107change the number to qualify for an additional VP at a school site? >> Does not. Okay. So, we we still will have enough hopefully to cover all that. Okay. We're back to sharing in some cases like we it's not it's not again not ideal but our regular staffing ratios are in place and as um schools get larger they may qualify for additional VP but that's built into the regular budget. >> Perfect. All right. Let's see. Um campus supervisors at the elementary schools. I think it's wonderful. I'm definitely in favor of us having them at all of the [snorts] schools. I think it does show that we care about the security of all of our students. It's great and I think it was very smart to include them in the expanded learning uh part of it

108so that we have them after school as well. We need to keep the campuses safe whenever the students are there. So that's great. I however would like to see I understand currently they're being supervised and I'll just you that's quotes again um in elementary education I would love to see them be moved to the safety and security department as well as their funding moved over there so that they um so it's more of a a bigger team to work within and it kind of shows a ladder of you know you can start at elementary and move up etc. And it um I just think the training across the board would be better. All of those kind of things. You guys probably have a lot on your hands as elementary ed as it is and just

109the I just think the campus supervisors should be put into the safety and security department. That's that. Um ah now the elementary counselors and the high school counselors I've looked it up and I understand they have the same job description even though anybody that's worked in an elementary school versus a high school middle school know their total different job jobs to do. Um, and since we are cutting some of the high school ones, I understand there would be the option for them to go I'm not going to say down to elementary, but to an elementary school instead. Um, is that I know we had troubles finding enough elementary counselors as it was. I've seen many people coming to the deis and telling us that they don't have them at our school. All of these different

110things. What what is what do you think is going to be different so that maybe we can get as many as we need in there now? Is there anything different? Are we changing anything to help get them on board? >> I think the model is the um is what we're doing differently. So before we were looking to try the idea of being able to hire 18, it's only three more. Um it's an additional we have additional at least two years of funding um to cover them. Um, so and the idea that people know that they're what the model looks like before we were like we were hoping to get um enough. We're going to we were shooting for 21 so we could have half of one at every at every school. That proved not doable

111at the time. Um, so this is our next best um plan. Whether it's going to work out perfectly, I can't tell you. But I but I do think um we have a better shot at fulfilling this plan than than we did previously. >> Okay. And from talking to a few of those counselors, um they've said that there was a matrix that was involved for deciding who which schools are the most needy to get the counselors. Um and I would I would love to see that matrix at some point in time because um I I just I just want to know are we sending them to the most high need schools? the all of those things that that come into play when you decide who gets staffing at those levels. I would love to see the

112matrix when we I'm assuming we'll probably have to make a new one since we're changing the the delivery model on that. Okay. Um that's that. All right. I had to print it out so I could follow through with all of this. Um, oh, I do have a question. Um, the goods and services on on it's on page 20, but it's the level foundational reading skills support. You mentioned the reading screener. Is this for the dyslexia and all of those screening? >> Well, the screeners, that's what the screener is designed to do, but because we're doing that, we think we're going to identify more kids that this service would be helpful with. >> Got it. Okay, that makes sense. Oh, and I just wanted to clarify the $4 million for Chromebooks and connectivity. I I know

113I know that's not enough, but we'll do what we can. Um, and when we' spoken before, I mentioned that there was another school district that was um teaching the kids how to do repairs of the Chromebooks. And I did look it up. It is the Rockland Institute of Technology is what they're calling it. A program at the Rockland High School that repairs the Chromebooks and it saves their district 100 to $200,000 a year. They do it as as part of their their programming there. And I think that might be something that we could look into. And I don't know if that's tech services or secondary ed or both of you together or CTE, whatever. [laughter] All of the all of those above. We'll see. All right, let's see if there's anything else. Um, social worker,

114she covered that. Um, I believe that is it. Thank you for putting up with my questions all over the place. >> Thank you very much, Mr. Yang. >> Good morning again to everyone. Thank you Chris for the presentation for the second time. I wanted to say this is a full circle. I remember when we were talking back at the unprecedented crisis that we all uh know too well, COVID 19. And there were many many conversations in the boardroom and also through virtual. And we all knew as far as the board members and the folks that attended the board meetings knew that we were built many many position to help our students through the crisis that we didn't know was going to hit us because that was the reality then. And we also knew that uh

115there were even though there were a lot of funding coming in, there's going to hit a point where we have to re-evaluate and to elimmit eliminate some positions. And unfortunately um that time has come. Seems like forever, but uh it is here now. And uh I just wanted to say that the con of it is the fact that there are people that have helped our students and other people in our school district wholeheartedly um through this pandemic situation. Uh I I know that losing a job it's um it's very tough and no one will know what those individuals will go through um other than themsel but I just want to acknowledge that uh it is difficult. On the flip side, um the pros of it is the fact that uh we we were able to

116use the fund that we receive to train those individuals and those are hundreds of people, individuals to uh have skill sets that they may not have it before. And if they already have those skill sets, it's a uh refreshing or addition to what they already had. So that is a pro um aspect of it. And the fact that they have worked uh during these years in the position that they were in, that's also built a stronger profile for their resume. So I think there's a lot of uh positive to look into. Um so I am not completely bummed out um hearing uh the position that we are eliminate uh eliminating um because of that pro or pros that uh involved with that. So with that said, um I just wanted to take this opportunity to

117uh encourage my board members who eventually will make the final decision in terms of recommendation. Um we are getting this information now and we do have two weeks to uh do deep dive on some of these information that's provided to us and that is to talk to superintendent and the leadership cabinets and constituents whoever that you feel is necessary to uh talk to to really gather the information that you feel strongly that hey even though the recommendation is this um for removing this position but I I think otherwise and I think this is the time that we have to really do our homework deep dive it um even though it's only two weeks but we still have two weeks so I myself would do the same um but I just want to say thank you

118to Chris first and foremost for being the leader for our staff of 6,500 um plus staff that serve serve um nearly 64,000 students. It's not an easy task and um you know you were a little bit emotional there and I know why because there was so hard so much heart and soul hustling and grinding through these years of really put people in place and uh you you're um you say you're exceeding some expectation and that's great. That's great leadership and I want to commend you for that great job that you let uh this whole school district and always been a super um uh adviser to the board members as well. So thank you for all the hard work that you've done and the efficiency that um we have saw and seen throughout this uh unprecedented

119crisis that we face. Um so it come to a kind of like a um unfold but it's full in some chapters but I just want to say thank you Chris and everyone that been part of the team. I appreciate you very much. Thank you. >> Thank you Miss Alani. >> Well I think I feel like Sean in the fact that um I was sitting in Michael's seat when we were doing this um building these positions. It was never um never ignored that we were building a dream. Um we were given something we never expected to have. We were given something horrific in a co in the co time, but we were also given the money to really do things that we thought would make a difference for kids in an amount that we had not

120even been able to fathom getting before. I can recall, I believe, three meetings, two meetings before we shut down, them telling us what they'd like to do for summer school and sitting right here and thinking that sounds so cool. We're never going to be able to do that. We can't afford that. And we did it for the two summers afterwards. And we have changed our summer school programs to this day for the better because we got that chance. So, um, we we have gotten to do restorative justice across our whole district. We have gotten to do DEI across our whole district. We have gotten to do AVID across our whole district. And that's just deposits that have paid forward. That's changing our culture. That's changing our skill sets of our teachers, as Sean said. And

121um, and that that investment, one-time investment. We've always known it's a one-time investment and it's hard to spend that money and it's easy to just save and and not spend it and we spent it on the things that we felt were the most important and I'd like to acknowledge we asked our community and our staff and our people and and did the things followed what they recommended for us and we agreed were the most important things. So, um, our teachers learned computer skills. They had never had they had to. Um, some of it was, um, but they became just incredible teachers on computers. Um, we went to onetoone, which would we have ever spent that money? I don't know. And now there's a law that requires we always keep one to one. So, we're ready

122for an emergency. Um, so people who might question, why are we still spending money to keep Chromebooks for all every kid? It is a requirement. so we're ready to turn in an emergency and not have a gap in education. Um those were all things that came out of it um that I think are positives and made us better. Uh I went to all my schools prior to having to come to this meeting because I needed to know what in my region they felt was the most important thing and they um and I really pushed people to give me their top three. And I'm smiling at people in this room as well that I did the same thing to. and I pulled a lot of strings with friendships and old relationships and I feel um we

123hit the mark. It's really exciting. The top things that people shared with me they needed we are going to be able to continue and I'm just thrilled for that. um nurses, health assistants, counselors, campus supervisors, um just they've made a huge difference in our school campuses and and they also are a wide we're supporting the people that need support and we're supporting by supporting those students, I believe we're supporting our teachers because if we then we we put less on our teachers plates. If we can have the help and the aids to teach these students to self-regulate, to take care of themselves, they're ready to learn. So, that's very exciting to me. Um, I'm very excited. We've we've been able to save as much as we have in the face department. Um, that's been in

124my tenure, we've started the face department. We've grown the face department. We've seen the changes there. Um, if you've been to an FTA and watched a principal carry around someone else's child for 30 minutes so they can sit down and concentrate on the child that's there. It's heartwarming. It's exactly what we want. It is building a community of support for everybody. There are translators there. They are going home with with everything they need to help their kids succeed. They're just huge wins. So, and that's not just one piece of what FACE does. Um, home visits. Oh my gosh, go to a home visit, get trained as a home visit person. These are these are things that make a difference and we've built them and I'm so excited we're going to be able to keep them.

125Um, I agree with Miss Moore. Um, I hope we continue to look into if we can um find social workers or a way to help keep them and and grow them through um some funding, additional funding. Um, and I think um I hear the concerns of AVID. I really believe AVID is a way of and fits so well into our high quality instruction. And we are so strong in our high quality instruction and I believe our professional development will continue to teach that complete picture. I I really feel that's there and having someone on site that's your expert is is amazing. Um I'm very excited about the continuation of AITS and the continued training they're getting and what they're bringing back to their school sites. It's just an amazing thing to share. Um I would

126love an AIT at every school if not two. I would love you know you would love all this stuff to happen but we've known from the beginning this was we were in the dream and so um a number of people have written to me and I just wrote them back that we will continue to evaluate and build on the things that are working. And some of them had to take a bigger cut than we would like but I'll be honest we kept more than I thought we could. I we we really did a good job and I love that we went out of the box to find ways to keep things. I love that people felt comfortable enough to tell us what was really important and that we respected that. So, thank you very much

127for all the hard work. We've been doing this and we can look at this paper and it talks about April 2024, but we started looking at what was working and what was happening from the day we started hiring them. We we've never taken our eye off the ball of we have to figure out what's the best and what we need to save and and I think we became laser focused. I love the LCAP collaborative. I feel like it's a great place for people to put their input and um the systems we've developed and the growth we've had over this year. I just thank the people that have been part of it. you are invaluable and um even if your job does not continue, I think you should take immense pride in what you've done to

128help our district and our community through a horrible time and uh we appreciate you. >> Thank you, Miss Davis. >> Well, I do want to um tell everyone I appreciate all the hard work just knowing and watching how you pull from different budgets, different um places. that's hard to do and you went so far out of the box and were able to help us keep as many people as possible. Um, I think one thing that we need to keep in mind up here that all these positions were covered by ESTRA funds originally and they're not interchangeable with people who are funded in other budgets. Um it'd be easier if we could just change and move them around, but we have to stay within that these were ESRE funds that are um ending. I agree with

129Jennifer that uh campus supervisors should be under safety and security. I think that's where they should be so they could be a part of that. Um she already touched on the 23-day rule. I hope that we would keep in mind of looking at that because that really is a hardship on the school sites when someone has to be gone three weeks before you can get a substitute in that office. Um so I think the three itinerant ones are great but they need to be usable. um Chromebooks on page 20 that what we need to budget for that. I I think we should look at what we could charge for intentional damage. It would I think most people would be surprised at how many come into the school sites damaged. It fell off a car. It

130got ran over. We dropped it. Um we charge for textbooks. I don't understand why we're not charging for Chromebooks in the same manner. Um I I've seen several families that go through three and four per child in their house just because they're not that important to them to keep them um working. But I think that might be a way we could recover some of those extra funds that Todd says we're short on. Um other than that, I think we've done a great job here. When I was told we were going to start this process, um gave me a sick feeling in my stomach. I remember the last time this district had to do huge layoffs and did not want to do that and this is much more bearable I think in the fact that some

131can be absorbed back into our workforce maybe in different roles that the actual layoff numbers will be less um than what we're seeing right here. So, I really appreciate Chris, your hard work, cabinet's hard work. I working in the budgets. I know how difficult this was. So, thank you. >> Thank you very much. Um, and then I want to [clears throat] echo what my what many of my colleagues have said in appreciating the incredible amount of work that went into this. Um, obviously I I don't think I can even imagine um having spent the past four days, you know, digging through everything that you all have provided for us. Um, the amount of work that went into creating all of that and talking to our uh community members and our educational partners and um, you

132know, thinking through these positions, it cannot be an easy task. Um and I rec I want to recognize how much effort and time that took. Um and especially uh in getting to a place where we are keeping a lot of really important positions um not no longer tied to one-time dollars or no longer tied to these one-time dollars, right? finding places in uh you know district existing dis district district budgets going out finding grants finding other ways to support these positions. Um and what I think is really incredible and and one thing that I really appreciate is how many of those positions uh in that early part of the presentation were positions specific to support some of our most in need students. Um the fact that we put that level of effort into supporting those

133students is incredible. Um and I I don't want that to go unremarked upon. Um I have uh oh and I also along with that I think that is a testament to the to to how valuable it has been um you know to have the face department and the equity department and see the growth in those departments. Um and even though obviously there has been some we blew up those departments and now there's some drawback naturally. Um but I think over the long term um I I'm excited to see those departments continue to grow uh and thrive. So um so in terms of just my thoughts on uh you know I think most of I wasn't terribly surprised with anything um you know like some of my colleagues when I was visiting campuses I specifically asked

134you know what are your thoughts you know do you have priorities what are the things that are valuable to you um what are the positions that you found most valuable and um I think you know across the board it's the positions that we are recommending are the ones that were there um the one variation uh that I noted was that vice principles were a high priority um particularly for their principles. No surprise there. Um obviously we you know we're not we're not in a bad position there because we didn't backfill. Um but I think that that doesn't mean the need goes away. So um one thing that I would love to see uh it it may not happen in this process. Um but I think that is something we need to keep an eye on

135and remember in the future as we start to think about um you know the next time we get onetime dollars as our budget continues to grow because we are a growing district. Um I think that that need is not going to go away. Um and there's a lot of other you know obviously there's a lot of other things and I I'll talk about that in a second. um where we have need and it would be great to have things, but we should be keeping we should be keeping that list in our head. Um because there is going to be a point now is a time where we are shrinking a little bit to to make everything fit in our budget. Um but as a growing district, there is going to be a point again where

136we have some money and we need to think about what to do with it. Um and I think we need to keep these positions in mind. Um, the other one that uh jumped out to to me was the the AVID positions. Um, obviously I think these are incredibly important. The the amount of work that has gone into growing those positions uh over the past um you know few years has been absolutely incredible. Um and I think that I appreciate what m Mr. Sir Rudy was saying around ma the fact that we will make sure that we have some coordination uh you know for these positions. Um I I I don't know that you fully convinced me that there isn't necessarily a value to having one person who will do that um like a person where

137that is their dedicated value. Um and I would suggest uh since you are asking for our feedback um I think finding if we can find some place for one person um you know some money for one person uh I think that would there would be a value to that. Um I I don't want to try we one of the challenges of being up here is that we tend to see things in terms of FTE uh and not in terms of uh people or um the the needs of your departments. And so I I don't want to suggest to you where that's going to come from. um merely saying that I think it would be helpful um and leaving it I trust your judgment in you know in the recommendations coming forward and if that's not

138something that we can do understand and it's part of I I think that goes to that you know the next thing I want to say is that recognizing that we are growing district that means we have growing needs and that's not just these positions um I think that as As we move forward, it's going to be important to pay attention to the areas where we are pulling back. So, our office assistants, vice principles, our FTA um coordination, uh our um family community liaison, um you know, AVID, all of those we need to pay attention to where we are pulling back and what impact is that pullback having. Um if we that we are able to cover all of these things. If we don't see a decline in AVID um because we lost the coordinators and

139the coaches, um then that's one thing, right? That's great. Um but if we start to see backsliding in any of these areas, I think it's important that we then re-evaluate and think about how we can adjust these priorities in the future. Um and as we get, you know, more funding, I hope we will consider areas where we can when we can build these back up. Um, you know, and I but I don't want us to forget also that we have growing needs outside of these positions. Um, and you know, I our labor partners, uh, you know, come up and remind us of that regularly. And I think that that's valuable because, you know, we do have, uh, you know, our maintenance and ground staff, transportation, library tech, all of these are, uh, positions where people

140have come up and said, "Hey, please don't forget." Um so as we are moving forward in this process as we are moving past this I don't want this conversation around the either these positions or our growing needs in other areas to move to the rearview mirror. Um it is we are pushing those conversations forward two years or a year or however long. Um but we need to continue to have those conversations every time. Um and so the last thing last thing I wanted to say is um I hope that in this process as we move forward with these process with this process um and as we implement these recommendations um I hope that as we pull back an FTE that doesn't necessarily mean that we are losing those people. Um, I think to the extent

141we can keep those people in some capacity, um, I think one of the things that makes us a great district is that we value people. Um, and so as we are losing FTE, I hope we will keep the people in some way, shape, or form that we can. Um, or if they have a specialized skill or whatever, we're doing everything we can to help them find a position um, and land in a good place for them. So, um, that's it for me. Uh, Mr. Superintendent, do we have anything else uh on the recommendations? Do you there any specific feedback you'd like or >> And I took notes. I'm I'm in a good place. I appreciate it very much. >> Okay. Sweet. All right. Next up, we have our consent agenda. Um, Mr. Yang, are there

142any blue cards on the consent agenda? >> There is a one blue card in this item. >> Yes. Calling Kim Hootman. Yes. Come on up. Intervention teacher at Eliza Donner. Thank you all for the hard work that you have put into today. I know the decisions have been difficult. I know the priorities are all important. Um, I just appreciate the opportunity to come and speak on behalf of my students. As an academic intervention teacher, I can't overstate the value of what we are able to provide not only to our students directly, but to the school at large. I've been a teacher for almost 30 years. I've been in the district for over 20, taught in general education and in special education. And in each position, I thought something is missing in our tiered system of

143support. And that tier is academic intervention. We have been hired to provide highquality research-based instruction to our most vulnerable needy students and we are doing that with great success. We see small groups of students throughout the day, uh, upwards of 50 every single day. The connections that we make with these children, with their families, with the teachers in our classrooms are invaluable to their success. Not only are they growing academically, but the the bonds that we are able to build in these small groups sometimes create an environment in my classroom where it may be the only really safe place where these kids can feel successful for a portion of their day because we are able to give them that instruction right at the level that they need it. We are able to work with our

144classroom teachers every day in helping to develop supports for those students within the general setting. Um teachers come to us throughout the day to say, "Hey, you know, so and so is really having a hard day. Can you come and sit in your second grade group and participate for a little while because he's really blowing out in the classroom?" And we do that. You know, SEAL has become rightfully so a focus of our district. Thank goodness because the needs of our kids of our families are increasing every year. And while we are hired primarily and our focus is primarily academic growth of our students, we also are serving that SEAL piece every single day. Not only for the students but for their families. We get to know those kids on such a deep level that

145we can sit in the student study team meetings when a student is being referred possibly for special education and give really invaluable information that helps the team to determine what is the appropriate next step. We are able to prevent many children from ever needing to be referred for special education. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it and I appreciate you going forward with funding. um at whatever level you can do that for AITS in the future. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you. Dian's a blue corner on this item. >> Thank you very much. Would any board members like to pull uh pull an item from the consent agenda? All right. Seeing none, then I will entertain a motion to approve items one through four on the consent agenda. >> So move. >>

146Moved by Mr. Yang. >> Seconded by Miss Alani. All those in favor, please say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? >> Motion carries unanimously. Uh, with that, we will take a lunch break and the board will meet in close session to address items one and two on the close session portion of the agenda. Uh, Mr. Yang or Mr. Superintendent, are there any blue cards on this item? Okay. Uh then I will close public comments and we will recess into close session at 11:06 a.m. All right. I'd like to call us back to order at 11:44 a.m. uh and announce that the board met in close session and no action was taken. I will adjourn this meeting at 11:44.