001meeting. Uh oh, Bob, we will begin shortly. Let me wait a couple minutes for Bob to do that. All right. I'm going to call the meeting to order at 12:04. Uh opening ceremonies um by Lisa Pearson. Hand over your heart. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Now, moving on to roll call. Sam's welcome. Trusty Wagan here. Trustee here. Trusty Murphy. Trusty Pearson here. Trusty Anderson here. Trusty Crane here. Dr. Smith here. All right. Number four, adoption of the agenda. Do I have a motion? So moved. Second. Moved by Trusty Crane, seconded by Trusty Anderson. Roll call vote. Trusty Wagan. Yes. Trusty Soilu. Yes. Trusty Murphy. Trusty Pearson, yes.
002Trusty Anderson, yes. Trusty Crane, yes. Okay. The vote was 501 absent. Now, uh, community input on special agenda items. I have two and I want to make sure that you want to make your public comment now or before when we come back from closed now. Okay. Uh, first one is Charlene McCoy. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, board. Good afternoon, President Wagand and board, Dr. Smith and cabinet. I'm speaking to the budget impact of the upcoming special election. I am very disappointed that a political group that portrays itself as fiscally conservative and concerned about government overreach would waste close to $500,000 of our taxpayer dollars on an unnecessary election. A reasonable and qualified Area 5 citizen with children currently attending a Newport Mesa Unified School was selected by a reasonable and qualified board. Area 5 will now
003be unrepresented for about five months and notably during these budget discussions. Whoever is elected will only serve one year before they have to begin fundraising efforts for the next election in 2026. sour grapes will cost our Newport Mesa children close to half a million dollars. Those funds could have been used for the Newport Mesa soccer clocket soccer classic otherwise known as the Daily Pilot Cup and Battle of the Books program without causing a deficit which is shown on slide six of the funding overview which is coming up in your presentation. Those funds could have been used for the afterchool swim and safety program without causing a deficit. I am hoping this very large unbudgeted expense will be addressed and where the funds are coming from in this study session. Thank you very much and I
004know that you are responsible and excellent board members. Thank you. Next up uh Martha Floor, you want to speak now? Perfect. I'll be I'll be here for the long haul. Good afternoon, President Wagan, Vice President Osu, and uh Clerk Murphy, trustees, Dr. Smith, cabinet, and community members. My name is Martha Flor and I am the harbor council PTA uh president of the PTA across PTAs across the country have stood for by our mission of for over 125 years to positively impact the lives of all children and families. We take pride in our efforts which include initiatives such as Prop 28, the late start for secondary schools, class rice reduction, lunches at schools, and vaccines. The mission of the PTA is to make every child's potential a reality by engaging in empowering families and communities to
005advocate for all children. Collaboration, commitment, diversity, respect, and accountability are our core values. The Harbor Council would like to express our gratitude and urgently request that the discretionary funds used to support field trips, outdoor science camp for our kids, steam activities, and many, many more funds that you use discretion with discretion to support our children and families be maintained in this year's budget despite the unexpected ridiculous $500,000 expenses due to an election that was not um you guys did a great job on selecting the person. Thank you. All right. Now, let's see. We uh we are going to close and move into close session. Um the items are a public employee discipline dismissal release and we will return at 100 p.m. Hopefully we will try to make it as close to that as possible but
006you know sometimes Michael might go over. All right. Thank you for sticking by. All right. Well, we're coming back um from closed at 1:25. Um and we are heading into our uh 7A uh board budget study session at 1:25. So Jess, you have the floor. All right. Well, it's good to be here with you all. Let's go ahead and talk a little bit about the overarching u environment that we're in and some of the principles that we're going to be talking about. So, first of all, the state is has a structural fiscal problem. It's on the nonprop 98 side, but we know how that can worm into the Prop 98 side. And so, it's a structural issue that they're dealing with. They're still dealing with that. We also are looking at some property value uh
007issues where the markets are gyrating. There's a lot of uncertainty out there. We know that being community funded, our uh funding is largely uh based on property value. So we we want we want to be careful about that. And then the federal government, yeah, as you have heard that uh you know, they're talking about eliminating the uh department. And so there's some federal uncertainty out there. You know, we are uh we receive about $15 million in federal funding. That's about 3% of our budget. Uh granted it's not a a super large uh piece of our budget, but it's $15 million. And so uh but the the good news is is we are um fiscally stable. We could handle some uncertainty in that regard if we needed to. Um but hopefully we don't have to. And
008I would just add to that and we're also prepared to fight for some of the neediest students in our district for whom those resources are intended and promised. So, we're talking about IDA resources. We're talking about title one resources or school meals. These benefit some of our neediest student populations. And so, while we can and will because of our stability and your fiscal stewardship handle it, we're also ready to fight for those resources. And then, uh, with your leadership and Dr. Smith's encouragement, um, we're we always approach things from a a net zero FTE growth mindset. how can we do things differently? Um those kinds of things. And so that's part of our consideration when we're talking about budgets. And then um you all have been very uh supportive of maintaining uh reserves, a responsible
009reserve. Um right now it's about 21 a.5%. And then um our program uh we've built up a lot of program that meets the needs, the priorities that you've directed us on. And so we want to maintain maintain that program. And then um we have a focus on impact. We want to make sure that we're making an impact and uh it's the highest impact we can make. That chart on the side um that's the US economic policy uncertainty index and it's the highest it's been since over 100 basis points um on uh since February 22. So there's a lot of uncertainty out there and that just underscores the need for us to be cautious when we're developing a budget. And so let's talk about uh the board's uh priorities. And so for academic achievement um we've
010done a number of things for this priority. And to give you context, a lot of these things started out with COVID funding. That funding is now starting to roll off. And so the context there for that is is that as this funding rolls off, the general fund is picking up these kinds of programs. Um any comments on on the academic achievement side? Feel free to stop me if if you have comments and we'll we'll stop. And then of course on the on the whole child support, these are some of the things that we've instituted for whole child support. And then on the meaningful communication uh engagement constituents, you can see those things. And of course, we have the developing of our uh facility and master plans uh maintenance plans. Um, we've done a lot of
011work with security in terms of securing our sites, uh, you know, the lobby security, SRP, alerting systems, um, those kinds of things. So, um, and and it's been a big, uh, big lift and you'll see a lot of, uh, work going on this summer. And then, uh, other supports, we made a lot of progress on our competitive comp uh, being competitive in our compensation. um this year um you are supporting uh other post-employment benefits. Those are the the obligations that we have to our employees for early retirement for health and welfare. Um we you've been we've talked about a responsible reserve AB218. This is legislation that has moved um uh expectations in terms of claims associated with sexual molestation. And that's a a big ticket item for our insurance. And so we we've had to
012increase our expenditure profile to uh meet our insurance u uh obligations uh that we have. And then Junth and summer assistance. Um so discretionary budget uh going into uh this next year is is somewhat limited um more so than than it's been in the past. And so we want to be very intentional about uh what we do with uh our our budget. So when we look at this, this is the unrestricted general fund. This is kind of how how it it's it uh the components of the general fund. Unrestricted general fund. So this is personnel here. Largest piece of the pie personnel. And then we have some slice of supplies. We have some operations. We have reserves. And then there's this discretionary piece. Now let's talk about how we define that. Discretionary is the uh
013amount of the scope of money that that you could uh through reallocation doing things differently um impact in the short term without causing a whole lot of disruption. And that that scope is about 25 million. Now, of that 25 million, we we think there's about $550,000 that's really unencumbered that we could, you know, there's no commitments there that we could do something with. So, so we're we're when we're talking about uh moving forward, we're talking about that discretionary piece, both the the piece that's uncommitted and the piece there where we can do things differently. And that's where we need your guidance um on how we can do things differently, things that you would like us to look at or not look at and and to to do that uh uh in that manner. So, um
014let's look at our 2526 considerations. Now, these are things that we we believe we heard uh from you that you would like us to to take a look at. If we're missing something, please let us know and we'll we'll add that to our um to our list of things to consider. But first of all, let's um let's talk about universal transitional kindergarten. And so who would like to talk about that? Yeah. So just as far as universal transitional kindergarten looking out to next year, um the state is expanding the scope of the number of months that transitional kindergarten students would qualify. Currently, we are covering nine months of uh students at the TK level. June, July, and August for next year is the state's plan in regards to universal TK. And it truly will become
015more or less the 8th grade level at elementary, including TK, kindergarten, and first grade through 6th grade. So, that's the state plans. Another aspect to what the state is planning is to move from what currently is a 12:1 studentto adult ratio to a 10:1 studentto adult ratio. So, those are the plans that are currently underway and and being considered um by us as far as what it is that we would elect to do and make decisions on both the staffing and expanding to include TK as a entire year's worth of students who would qualify for the program. And as you're aware, this is completely unfunded by the state. We uh the board picks up the cost for this entire uh program, and it's significant. Um this year we'll spend just over $7 million just in
016staffing alone. I think it's important to understand too and um maybe you've read this some of the community funded districts which we are have decided to no longer do UTK. But because that's a priority for this board, we continue to do it and plan for it in outgoing years. Well, and we've already seen increase in reading scores because of it. So it works. It works. Yep. So then support services. We know this is an area where we want to always be intentional about and it's one that you've communicated to us to be intentional about. Um this uh this area kind of includes most it's mostly um facilities, maintenance, operations, purchasing, warehouse, information technology, fiscal risk, transportation. There's a small piece of of ed services that's in there, but it's a relatively small piece. It's about
01720% of our budget. And so although the growth rate for for this is about the same as the growth rate for the other piece of the budget over the past three years, um we're always looking for opportunities to to do things differently. For example, you know, we've we've looked at our overtime and and over the past three years, we've reduced overtime hours by 14%. Um we've looked at doing things to get more for um out of performance. And so for example, M they're now collecting data on on performance. And so we're hoping to see some some u uh good things that will come out from that. Um from a policy perspective, uh you know, these budget study sessions are have been helpful and helped us to come to you've supported uh higher effort in terms
018of routine restricted maintenance. And so we are doing a whole lot of work and that's been really helpful. You know, our roofing systems, pavement, uh you name it, all of these uh facility systems that that if not maintained will cause disruption. And so we've made a whole lot of progress in terms of our flooring, roofing. It it's just been um your support has been really helpful in that regard. So, thank you. And then um uh we've had uh a lot of work done for our safety uh in we're installing cameras. We hope to have that in all in by May. Uh window tinting uh by the end of this year uh this uh fiscal year. Uh fence screening and uh we're working on alerting systems that we hope to have in by the end of
019this school year too. So uh in addition to that, we've got some major projects going in. We have the N uh Newport Harbor Aquatics Complex, the Estansia High School uh performing arts theater. We're do uh doing NPR fans and audiovisisual for all of our NPRs. Um uh we put in some TK expansion uh facilities and play and shade and restroom renovations. So, a lot in terms of of support services. And then let's talk about uh some other things. We've heard uh you talk about Newport Mesa Classic, uh soccer classic, swim safety, and battle of the books. So, one of the board goals is that whole child in addition to academic achievement and excellence is also that whole child and we know many of these experiences outside of the school day help create all those um
020opportunities for other types of success beyond academics. And so things that are kind of growing in um opportunity across the district are the soccer classic and and all of these in this bubble are things talking about like how do we bring these to a greater scale. So the soccer classic for all of our schools um swim safety for particularly for title one schools. How can we create opportunities after schools to keep um students safe in one area we know it is one of the highest causes of death for little people is swimming and drowning. Uh what how can we contribute to that? And then things like battle of the books and other academic um experiences outside of the school day. Those are all things that we know students and families enjoy and they do come
021at many logistical costs in terms of supervision, in terms of materials for those actual experiences, many times including transportation for getting to what might be a culminating event or something that isn't offered on our campus. So those are experiences we've begun exploring because of the will of the board and just knowing how big or small these are all because they're after school. They're things we can grow or contract based on the amount of money and the priority that the board has. So we just want to have a sense of how far we want to be in fully implementing ideas like this. And then we've have have a summer school which is the same. So, we receive ELOP funds as a district and those expanded learning opportunities come from the state and are designated for unduplicated
022students. And those are students who either qualify for title one, homeless, uh, foster youth. And so, we get money for their afterchool and for summer school. And the money we get from ELOP is for a 9-hour summer school program. So it really is that entire extended day, a bit of learning in the morning, you know, we usually do till noon and then enrichment activities after that. A consideration we always have because of the makeup and demographics of our district is how big or small do we want summer school knowing that those state funds that's a grant that that those funds from the state have a limited target. how much do we want to contribute to allow the rest of our community to participate as well? And that again, we can grow or constrict based on
023how much money we have, but the money we're guaranteed right now. This could also in time be taken off the state's grant list. So, we do have to foresee a future where it's not always like this, but those ELOP funds right now do pay for um unduplicated students. Now, that's not schools, that's students. So no matter where that student is in the district, they have the rights and opportunity to that program. But that is a consideration for the board because if we want to expand outside of that grant funding from the state, we would need the funds to do that. So on this next slide that we're going to talk about, we're not uh we're not asking uh or suggesting that there's going to be any kind of cuts or reductions. Um but we are
024identifying um how much the expenditure profile on an ongoing basis is going to be raised and so we want to be thoughtful about how we fund that expenditure profile. So when we look at this here, we can see that we've got, you know, after school, uh, swim safety, the Newport Mesa Mesa Soccer Cup, a classic, excuse me, um, summer school and Battle of the Books, and then Universal Transitional Kindergarten. And we can kind of see the scope of of the expenditure profile that, what we're going to add to our expenditure profile, which is about $5 million. And so this is kind of what we we want to have a discussion about and get your guidance on in terms of of what um options we would have for staff to look at in terms of how
025to fund that uh and and get that done because we are going to get done. And so one of the options that we have is the uh Irvine company endowment. in the past uh where the the year company endowment can be used for things that are noncore anything that's above the core offering for the district and uh out of that you can spend up to 7% of all accumulated earnings every year in the past you have uh authorized staff to fund the audiovisisual upgrades for the MPRs so that includes uh what you're looking at here the numbers include already includes that. And so if you go down to the the row that says available 7% of all accumulated earnings, that's how much money you could spend every year on something that would be noncore. So
026uh for example in 2425 that would be $487,697. So that would be uh one option. Um let's talk then about uh and this is where we're going to be uh all the years and uh talk about uh some of the options that that we would have. So on the top hand or on the left hand side you see all of the the different programs that we're we're talking about and on the top end you see uh some of the funding uh options or solutions that we might have. So, the tick fund um savings, support services, uh phasins, fees, donations, service delivery models, and one-time money. So, for example, if we were to talk to find maybe throw some things out, uh the tick fund could be used for some of those things that are noncore.
027Um savings, that could be different delivery, uh service delivery models. Um for example, um UTK enrollment. Um, we could do some things there with that. We could do staffing uh ratios that would float. Um, we could look at ways to rely less on service providers um for uh summer programs or other kinds of enrichment programs. Uh for support services, uh we could look at the routine restricted maintenance funding target. We could look at facility project pacing. Um we could look at fleet replacement schedules um efficiencies and service priorities uh levels are you know could be explored in that regard. Um we could look at um uh other kinds of operational kinds of things that would produce uh savings. Um and then we've got phaseins. Uh we could phase in uh UTK staffing ratios or or
028different programs there. Phase are an option. We could look at fees and donations. Um for example, we we we charge fees for our facilities. We actually are really low in terms when you look at other districts, what other districts charge for facilities. We could um also look at uh developer fees. um you know we we have TK uh facility needs and those developer fees can be used for that uh TK program and then there's onetime money that we could look at that you could temporarily fund these things um for a period of time. So we're we're all ears in terms of what the uh your guidance in in in this regard and the list of items in the list of items. So if you want to open up for comments, questions from the public. I
029have quick um observation and actually for the interests in the interest of the public on slide number six which is the funding overview. When you use the word deficit, we just want to make sure that we're not deficit spending. This is a deficit for this particular graphic. Right. That's correct. Okay. We we um we have though uh projected a unrestricted general fund deficit for uh the 2526 year. That's in that's to be expected. We've had all this onetime money. Now it's starting to roll off and we have built up our our ending fund balance over the years to accom to to accommodate this. And so our ending plan balance will go down to the uh amount that it was at before the before CO. Okay. So on a percentage basis. So we're going to get
030achieve a soft landing there. But that's to be expected. That's not to be anything concerned about. It's just when you get all this onetime money, you know, you can't spend it all in the same year that you get it. So you have to it's being spent in a year uh later than what we've gotten it. So yeah, that's good to hear. And they're not budgeted current like they're not we're not in a deficit for 2425. So we didn't overextend ourselves. Correct. Yes. Thank you. Where the rent is. They weren't budgeted. They're not budgeted. That's right. So anyone want to have a comment? I know we all have our thoughts. Um I'll just reiterate again. I love TK since I said it at the wrong time, but I'll just say it again. There's no wrong time.
031I said it at the wrong time. Uh because it is doing such a it's already showing such great results for our readers and so I would hate to see that go away obviously. Um sort of on the fence on expanding TK if we can afford it. Um obviously it would be in support of it. Uh, but I, you know, um, I do know that we will probably keep getting more and more families who will want to use TK because there isn't as much preschool in daycare in the county as we would all like. And so a parent, you know, a family's option, best option is TK. And that's a good thing because we want to get them in our schools, you know, and get them, you know, used to being at school, working with teachers.
032you know, the earlier the better and they have better outcomes. So, um that's my thoughts on Yeah. Um plus they're so cute. It's a great way to see cute kids. Um I was looking at speaking back to TK as we're talking about TK right now. Um the um studenttoteer ratio, I know that the state is recommending going to 10 to one. Uh but since we don't get any state funding, we don't necessarily need to adhere to that recommendation. So I mean currently today it's 12 to1 and doing a great job. So I say if if it's doing great job today 12 to1 and we're adding three more months of um four-year-olds coming to our schools I think 12 to1 seems seems sufficient for where where we're at um and knowing that you know in some
033classes if they need extra help um voluntu you know parent volunteers and that's always wanted. Um, I like the idea of having universal TK because we have seen the results, but it also gets our our um students into our district and enjoying what Newport Mesa has to offer, which is a lot. Um, so I think that's that's wonderful. Um, as well as it teaches our students at a young age what we expect in our district as a student. And I think that's only going to help us and help our teachers for years to come as our kids metriculate through the system, you know. um 100% UTK also was socialization of course right as well but isn't there an effort in Sacramento meadow uh assembly woman Addis AB1391 is working uh to potentially fund UTK for
034the community funded schools and so we need to keep pushing on that end. I know when I was in Sacramento, I made sure and I've already contacted our uh legislators that are here, you know, our own legislators to make sure that this effort is successful. So, we may know in the next six to nine months if this bill passes. And so, whoever's out there, please make sure you contact your legislators. And you'll remember Kevin Gordon with Capital Adviserss that one of the contracts you have is for this type of awareness and advocacy. He shared this quite a while ago and mentioned that there was a vehicle moving. We have that now with Assembly Member Addis. Um we had a local Orange County Superintendent's advocacy day two weeks ago and this was one of the topics
035that we pushed forward is that we're going to say it's funded for all then fund it for all. So, we're hopeful and anyone listening, tell a friend uh that you know in our district, think about this. We have more title one students than any other community kind of district in the state of California. Half of our elementary schools are title one schools. Our students need these resources. They need the academics. They need the socialization just as much as any other district. Great. One other thing, too. I agree with everything that's been said and just wanted to add um perhaps a way to um increase our capacity for um universal TK and is to um enhance our early childhood pathways. We have one school currently that is doing that. I think it would be great to
036expand that to at least two others, but perhaps offer it across the district at our four comprehensive schools as a way for those students who serve directly in their community. because some of them are serving even younger family members at times. Um, but really creating a pathway too for teacher preparation going forward. Um, and having a really economic way for us to add supervision in the classroom but not necessarily increase master teacher salaries that would be needed to help with the 12 to1 ratio. Mhm. And I'd much rather open it up to those extra 3 months and keep the 12 to one, which we know is working right now. Any other comments on UTK? Yeah. Just to just to paint a global picture as far as how many TK students are currently in our district,
037we have 535 students currently and we're projecting 675. So, the growth potentially for next year is 140 students, which um with a population of 675 TKs potentially next year, we're looking at at that being about 13% of all of our students at the elementary level. Wow, that's huge. It'll make playground time so fun. Um, back to universal TK, I know that there are classroom expectations for CH children that are that age. Um, particularly like bathroom access. Um, so I kind of want to see or do want to see if we can make sure that all of our TK classrooms are in a held in a class that has a bathroom in it. Um, I know that there's at times, you know, maybe kindergarteners classrooms in those because that's what we offered and everyone loves their
038classroom and doesn't want to give it up. But as we get younger um students that might um have more potty training issues, um we probably need to make sure that all of our TKs are in those classrooms um with the bathrooms. Thank you for that. Yeah. Um okay, any other TK comments? it or we can always move on to another thing and come back. But I'm trying to I'll I'll take swim safety. Okay. For 100. Yes. Um I as uh I think we all know one of the bigger issues in Orange County is certainly our little guys um our little folks drowning unfortunately and not having access to swimming programs that'll um you know teach them how to swim. So, I feel like um it's a solid statement and such a great um it's a
039great thing for our district to be able to provide swim safety for our kids and to make sure that they um that nothing happens to them, especially once they um I think it's a great way to set them up too to be able to um to act to join sports. You know, they can you know there's water polo, swimming. I mean it start it kind of sets them up to really ex you know try that pathway if that's something that they you know end up liking. Um and we all know that joining our excellent sports programs is another great way to stay in school and stay committed to your education and um all the benefits of being involved on a team and you know all the social skills that that brings. So, I think there's
040a lot of uh reasons to love our swim safety program and um you know, eventually I think we um I think we a couple of us have talked that if it's at all possible, we would expand it. We'd like to see more swim safety programs in the district if we can because um you know, it's such a good it's such an asset to the district to be able to provide this for our kiddos. So, that's my thought on swimming. Not that I am a good swimmer, but me like me, you can save yourself. Uhuh. I I think swimming is very important, particularly with the amount of coastline we have here. Um I think it's behooves us in this community to make sure that our kids are safe. So when they're out using all of our
041community resources, you know, we're not providing an extra burden on that. And if we can do um we can provide them with ocean safety as well, that would be a huge benefit. But regardless of swim safety, it's kind of like reading. Wherever you're going to go in life, you're gonna encounter some kind of water and pool and things like that. So, it's I think definitely a skill that you should have as you leave um school. Um I think one of the things too, I know part of this is h is thinking through how we're going to fund some of these. Um and I think um we have the urban um company endowment for things that are one-year um allocation. To me, I think it could be helpful since we want to increase the swim item
042is to perhaps for this upcoming year use some or all of the endowment for that and then work on partnerships. I know Hogue is really invested in this. Um there are a lot of foundations and grants that are available and I think our city is also it would be really great to do. I mean there's community um block grants. There's all kinds of ways that we can partner with others to fund um and just kind of leaning into this a bit more. It's been it's been interesting to hear how many even Orange County foundations have been wanting to fund some of these programs and haven't seen them as even viable yet. And so for us to have this I think we wouldn't necessarily have to incur all of the costs particularly ongoing but for the
043you know grants sometimes take a little bit to ramp up to. So it could be helpful maybe just at least for one year to lean into that provide piece for it. And with the board support we were able to pilot our program this year. And so for those who don't know what it looks like is an afterchool program and what it's been so far. So when we have that figure about what it looks like as an additional cost, it has been in the afterchool program a bus going which is about 50 students a bus and families volunteer. So it is purely volunteer. It's like a field trip. They they do that for four weeks and then through a strong partnership with the YMCA and the city. Their pools are the pools we go to, the
044pools that are in the community and their instructors are giving the swim lessons. some of which is dry instruction and some of which is in the pool. And so right now our vision of scaling up um again because we are reliant on the pools of um Costa Mesa and the Y would be to co the city of Costa Mesa would be to have a bus from everyone title one school and we could do that if we did that annually. We imagine that would cost um the figure we have. We could maybe do five schools one year, five schools the next depending on how much money we have. But if we kept doing 50 students per school and this is sometimes families, so it's multiple grade levels. It's not a single grade level opened up um
045that a constant flow of that we would be able to get a majority of students by the time they leave elementary school and bring in families. one of the we've been meeting on a monthly basis with um many in the swim community who are interested in this or the water community. It keeps growing in a lovely uh organic fashion but there are so many swimming opportunities and water opportunities. We have students going from the Whittier program to the junior guard for example that we're really excited about the opportunity that opens for the family but also educating families about how families have access to these city resources. they are their resources to take advantage of and even in our preschool programs and the learning link that we do making sure that f we're bringing in these
046resources. So families are getting more water safe as well as the students. But right now going to scale looks like that across the 10 title one schools and again in the afterchool program and that is assuming that our partners can kind of keep up with us and offering that many sessions a year because they um are getting the swim instructors together and swim instruction of course is a much lower teacher. They're not sort of teacher to swimmer ratio. Yeah. What I like about this this graphic here on the page six graphic is that um you're showing us the maximum but with a lot of uh room for creativity or hybrid options because I you know I'm looking at all these numbers like oh my gosh but oh wait we can modify and do a hybrid
047which is what you just offered example. You said we can focus on five schools and then another five. And so it's good for us to know that, you know, staff is willing to do that and come up with uh creative options that will be more affordable, doable, sustainable, etc. And I think um in the spirit of today battle the books, um we just uh today was battle the books, which is an amazing program that has been on a volunteer basis for some of the schools in the area. um having that as a as a one of the options that we can spend our money on in order to meet the needs of our advanced students which has been a need for a long time. I know that parents have spoken from all over the district
048how we need to offer more um high well gate or high achieving programs for those who need to reach new levels which I know our students are capable of. Um there's a lot to that especially since it also correlates with our board priorities of academic achievement whole child support because battle the books not only teaches uh the love of learning and books but also sportsmanship team competition friendly competition so much. So I'm all in for Battle of the Books. Um while we're talking books I'm all in favor of Battle of the Books and going beyond. Um, I know you said you have been researching extra things that we can do besides Battle Open Books, but to be able to expand Battle Valley books so the entire district can do it and we can get more
049participation. Um, for those of you that don't know Battle of Books, these kids um have read 22 books this school year. I mean, that's for that for a h 100,000 for such a small amount of money to get that out there to our advanced students, get that opportunity out there to the advanced students. I mean, it would be silly for us not to invest the money um to have this districtwide. And I know we've all been speak, but I'd love to see this in geography. I'd love to see it in math. Um odyssey of the mind. Can you speak to that a little bit Carl about I think like other things um you know the direction of the board and certainly from the superintendent has really to be able to offer worldclass experiences for all
050of our students and how do we do that not only through athletics but also through academics and at the elementary level as we begin to prepare them for secondary there are things that we could do outside of the school day. We have been working very hard to have robust experiences during the school day from the science specialists that we have to the number of gate teachers that are being trained in gate and other experiences for the classroom. There are things after school and um like you were saying healthy academic competitions like Odyssey of the mind like the science decathlons like math decathlons spelling bees and other things that we could do and we have 22 elementary school districts 20 of them are all grade levels and and have upper grade students that we could host
051our own internal tournaments experiences end of kind of season activities activities that really could be powerful and enjoyable for families and students and everyone else. Those are a lot of logistics as we are learning um somewhat painfully from the Newport Classic. There are a lot that's a lot of supervision. That's you know so there are a lot of things involved in that. I I do know we would love to believe that we could host all of these through the help of volunteers and they do so much for our district. and I in no way want to um unell their importance in our community, but to be able to be consistent and and clear across the district at that level of supervision, there are a lot of uh logistics, there's the staffing, there's the materials involved
052and usually they're not that much. I we when we came up with that figure for the books, for example, like we're looking at always being efficient with money. We are public stewards of those dollars. We want to make sure that they're all reasonable, but how do we get students those books? All of those things. How do we get them to wherever we're going to have this event? What's the transportation cost? All of those things again across 20 schools. What seems like a small amount across 20 schools begins to add up. And then Jeff reminds me that I add up all the time. So, we just kind of want to be fair about what those are. But there are are several things we could do after school that I think would be that I think most
053people believe would be incredible experiences for students. And that's kind of probably just the tip of the iceberg. We could find even more. There are a lot of amazing academic things to do for elementary students. But Sro so like I can envision, you know, like College Park, Sonora, Polaro, you know, like being in their own little competition, right? And that driving up their reading levels as well. So like that wouldn't we could start out like that where it wouldn't necessarily be this big expensive you know districtwide competition necessarily. I think yes I mean well we can do anything right we're creating our future so we could do anything. However what we always want to do as well is remain parody in the district. So it would be great for the four zones to compete against
054each other cuz sure you know and but but we could do bracket I mean spark march madness right now so we all know about brackets and you know so everybody doesn't have to be traveling every day everywhere like so like it could be a smaller it doesn't have to be 20 because it doesn't have to be I'd rather be us be able to do a version of it than just not do it because districtwide it would just be too expensive right to limit ourselves to limit ourselves but certain have to lift it logistically anyway. So, believe me, it'll it's going to be we'll just model it after the pilot cup after the model it NCAA I think as we're talking about also the pilot cup and academic kind of competitions and ac and and pushing
055our academic you know we achievement and that's our one of our goals and big priorities. Um, while I think the soccer classic is so fun and you know, kids really enjoy it. Um, if we're funding things and we're an academic institution, I would want to focus on academic more competitions. Um, and that might be a controversial thing to say and I'm sorry for all my sports fans and I am one of them, but I from what I hear from parents is that they want more steam education. they want more. Um, how do how does I how does my kid get better on with the skills for today and and for tomorrow and I would love to be able to provide something for that. And we've got Project Lead the Way right now with um in
056our um in our elementary schools and I would like to go even beyond that because I think that's what we need more of. Um, and if that is sort of a, you know, afterchool robotics competition or whatever, those would be amazing. I know they have those things for elementary school and just you know uh Newport Harbor has their new robotics program or um after school club and they have been doing you know I guess road shows at different steam nights throughout the district and people get really the kids get really excited and even particularly I see a lot of more females getting involved in that which is is lacking in in science fields. So, I would love to maybe take some of our take the dollars that we are using currently for the soccer classic
057and see more um steam academic programs. I agree. I mean because it is our board priorities academic achievement and we are a um I mean education first and there's a lot of um there's a lot of focus on sports as a culture and a mindset you know um but our job is education first I think no I just want to agree with what was said about u I as a soccer fan and a sports fan um I'm just having a hard time um making the math work here. Like I would love to fund the soccer classic, but hearing all these other opportunities that aren't even on the table yet, like Odyssey of the Mind and Math Decathlons and all these things, I really think we need to open some space up in the budget for
058those things. Um like this Battle of the Books, which is great, and getting that expanded to everywhere. Um I would just venture that I and like my colleague um Trusty Murphy I think actually one of the most critical aspects of doing battle of the books or decathlons or oh the mind is that across the whole district interaction not just the title ones against the title ones because as a student that did Odyssey I didn't mean that I just want to start with the way we but but I think design it to the like then maybe it's just three schools in Costa Mesa three schools in Newport Beach you know expand it that way, but don't expand it zone by zone, but expand it with the whole vision in mind. I don't know how much they'd
059want to fight or compete against each other. That might be like a motivator. Yes. As someone that did Odyssey of the Mind from my low-inccome school that one of the best parts of that as a child was getting to see those higherend schools and being like, whoa, they built that. Like, that's even possible. We have like our, you know, cardboard car that we like pedal. And we were like, wow. Okay, there's a whole big world out there and part of the benefit to our title one schools is interacting with non-title one schools and I don't want that to get lost in some desire to do it piece by piece by piece. It should just be the whole system and whatever parts of the system you can get two schools from each zone. If that's all
060we can do then cool but but to keep the intent of access and kids meeting other kids from across the whole district. And you heard today Sonora was in the finals the second year in a row at Battle of the Books against district schools and private schools. Right. And so the new reading curriculum is working so well. Yeah. No, but the reading curriculum is working so well, the new one at Sonora. I mean that's part of it. But and the thing that this district does well and want to come back to and you did it years ago um so I take no credit for it was advanced students aren't advanced because someone told them they're advanced or they passed a test or a teacher said I like you and so you're advanced right we let
061advanced students be advanced and students in Battle of the Books in these programs can self- select and challenge themselves one of the parents to me and said you know my son has never read a book until they joined this club and I said you're not going to you can't do that because you don't read books' They read all 22 books. Now they're reading other series and they were competing up there. Kids advanced now. Parents a year ago didn't think the student was advanced, right? So access to all students, the opportunity to be advanced, challenging every student where they are to be advanced is a powerful thing this district started a long time ago when it said we're going to train all teachers with gate skills. Yeah. Right. And I I I want to make sure
062that you know, you got the mushy middle for a reason because it's majority of the the folks, but let's make those mushy middles advanced and be advanced. They might be mushy middle at our district, but everywhere else they're advanced and they are advanced. And so I get kind of I don't necessarily like always just talking about gate identified students because it's just one test and it's just one type of of um intelligence. we need to offer it for everyone because someone might not test well on the gate test but they're great at math but they not a good writer you know and vice versa so let's people that I mean all of our kids can be challenged in one way or another am I the only one that wants to keep the soccer tournament well
063I don't want to go away I wanted to ask about that actual like class breakdown cuz so I think cuz these are just kind of the overview number. So we were we were spending 21800,000. So is that what is that breakdown? Is that a certain amount by school? And then also my understanding was we were previously including any local private school that wanted to be involved. Do they pay what I think just seeing the 218 what is what is that covering and is there any way to have a lot more contri if we were to continue it a lot more contribution from local organizations to help sponsor yes as well as the private schools contributing what like I don't know a lot about it other than our PTAs or kids were paying for the t-shirts
064well I I would just say this As far as the private schools, there is the the tournament which isn't ours and we don't pay anything for for that. Um the local sports groups, they they do that and um what we do is our students on our campuses practice after school. So we have a legal and moral obligation to make sure that those kids are safe. Um, and in the past, um, we didn't have the same protections we have this year, but because safety is such an important value of this board, non-negotiable, this year, we ensured that, for example, all of our volunteers were fingerprinted and cleared, that they had a certain amount of folks on every campus that have required trainings, heat stroke, first aid, those kinds of things. And that hadn't happened in the
065past. Um, and so what our team did was figure out a way to have one uh manager at every school to ensure that every school had volunteers, not just those those who could get them, that every school had cleared volunteers, and that every school in our district had somebody who had that training. So, it's just really funding that one guaranteed protection at every school. they also stay with the students from when they leave school until when they're picked up and that wasn't happening. And so this really is a huge safety issue for us if the board didn't decide to fund that. We really couldn't in good conscious continue participating as a district because we would be liable for anything that happened to any one of our kids. To that point though, we can certainly look
066at I think you mentioned maybe one of you mentioned outside groups. Can can they contribute more? Can they do more? Could they take on the fingerprinting? And we we welcome that conversation. In fact, we've gone to uh like Coast United and said, you know, if you'd like to have this event, we can even, you know, help you do it, but this could could be yours. You could protect our kids, etc., etc. So, we'll continue to explore that. Our goal though with this would be to take all the things that you identify today and to figure out if we can with the um thoughts you have about other ways we spend our money to build a budget that includes it not excludes it. It is in our interest to exclude it because we know that how
067many thousands of kids participate? Close to 2,000 close to 2,000 kids participate in this throughout the district. Um, and so we'll look for a way to do it if we couldn't find a way to do it and do these other things that we now know are are really a priority in this academic competition. Then we would have to bring it back to you and say, "Okay, we've looked for we've looked for partners. We've looked for this. We can't find a way to do this and that." And we'd ask you to make a decision. Our goal will be to try to figure it out. Okay. The costs are one manager at all 20 schools and then the background checks. Well, yeah, we're absorbing that kind of like in kind because we are helping supporting all of
068that. They're coming through our existing resources. So, that's kind of like an inind another inind um contribution, but that cost is to cover the coaches at 20 schools. No, I'm sorry. We had to be clear on our language. So I apologize for saying that for the manager because the manager as Wes was saying that one position that has the depth of the training and the supervision responsibilities then oversees all the volunteer coaches. So every site still relies heavily on volunteer coaches for each of the small student teams and some schools have as many as 200 kids playing others have like 50 kids playing. So depending so it's one manager but it's like three months right it's not very it's not so I'm very I was not clear on the specifics of this at all that's
069why I don't know where that number is coming from the 218 so it was one person that we're that we would be paying for three months and not we are absorbing the cost it's not included in this you remember that we brought forward a couple of contracts for you with uh beyond athletics although we pulled that one um CJ CJ CJ I always get the initials and and now think Together has come in and they're helping us. So we have a contract with them to find and hire and supervise the managers and ensure that they get the training and all of that that make sure that we have coaches because what we also saw were some great inequities throughout the district in coaching. Some some have like almost professional coaches like literally coaches that have
070you know relations with colleges and things like that and others where we couldn't find coaches and so one you know coach was out there with three teams and we tried to address the inequities there but safety was the permanent one but really the number is two contracts to provide 20 20 managers was the contract and then they do all of that work. um we help them with the the fingerprinting, the clearing, but yeah, and the training and that was just this year. Again, we'll continue to look at that. We'll look for partnerships, grants, we'll look at ways to save money. Um and if we have to bring it back to you, we will try. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for the question. Um so, thank you for raising that. Yes, we love to include everything.
071I think to Trusty Pearson's point, like am I the only one that wants soccer? Of course not. We all want soccer. I want all of these things, but what I'm looking at is reality. And the reality is this list costs $5 million. We have this Irvine fund of half a million. We now have this election we have to pay for for another half a million dollars. So we're at least looking for 4 million to cover these things. And now all the odyssey of the mind, the math, the hathlons, all those things that we've just expressed that we want, that's going to bring us a way more above the $4 million. So, I'm just more concerned with, okay, if we have a magical $4 million hidden, yes, I love all these things, but if we have
072to get realistic and, you know, something's got to go somewhere, I think the staffing ratio of the TK, that will save us 800 um 800,000, that's great. Soccer classic, if that's 200, that's a million we've saved right there. Um, the sliding scale of summer school, we haven't talked about summer school um in depth yet, but um some things sort of are a need to have and some are a nice to have. And I mean, I'm just kind of fiscally conservative like that. If we don't have money, we can't do it. Um, so I I'm trying to figure out where are those pots that this magical other money could come from because it looks like now we need at least like another four million to appear. Y just trying to figure out where that comes from.
073And I would point the board to, and thank you for that, this solutions matrix because that's there is no hidden money. Um, you don't and you wouldn't support Jeff hiding money. Of course, I'll say it after the public. That was tongue and cheek. We don't hide money. There is no hidden money and there's no magic pot of money, right? There there isn't. But what what there are opportunities for us to do things like find savings in some of the things we're doing? Um as we look at support services, do we have the right support services? Um should we be doing something else in that regard? And there's a savings therein. And I think phaseins, you know, the the rate at which we're doing some of these projects, maybe the board would say, "Look, we're a
074pretty good place with that. Now, let's back off of that so we can do something else." The fees and donations, I mean, again, if we're the lowest in the county in two areas with regard to fees, isn't that a disservice to our students? And we could say, well, that's a great benefit to the community. What about our kids? So that that's an area where we we'll investigate that with with with your support. And then delivery models is huge. There's a lot of not hidden money, but there's a lot of opportunity in that matrix right there to say we can do things differently. So that's what we'll do is we'll work hard to see if we can figure out a model where we're not sacrificing. But if we do have to sacrifice, I think staff hears
075you loud and clear. Right. I would rather charge more for our facilities and still see 2,000 kids enjoy a community event because I mean sure we could ask kids to read 22 books but they also need to be out there on the soccer field and I've been to the I mean I've been to 15 of them and I mean my kids were I it was such an amazing experience. They still talk about it today but it's the one time that the kids get to play with their classmates. I mean most of our kids now are in club sports traveling all over the place with all different kids. It's the one time that they get to be on a team with their own schools and competing here in Newport Mesa. It's just it's an amazing event.
076It's, you know, getting our kids out on the field, keeping them healthy. Um, I would hate to see it. I also I hate to see it go away. I also think that our board has been kind of is innovative in the sense that for example, we are offering SER. How's that going to turn out and how's that going to give us some, you know, some revenue? Um, we are looking into savings. Not revenue, savings. No, like revenue. Well, savings. Yeah, you're right. Good point. Um, you know, are we we have um we we we're a lesser. We we lease to to private entities. Well, how are we doing on market value? Are we are we looking at those contracts? You know, there's ways to try to increase our revenue and savings. And then we also
077have, for example, there's a the governor's uh student support blog grant that's coming up. I know it's it's a onetime grant, but you know, how can we use that to our advantage as well um fill in some other program in order to sustain this one? There are ways to to also bring in from that side, that creative side in order to be able to um meet these needs that we we know are important for our community. If the Addis bill passes, that's $7 million a year on way. Does that come back to us like retro? No, we don't get retro. just be funding but but still funding ongoing. Think about that. And now you've solved there's your magic pot of money. It's called the addis pot of money. Yeah. I think I think for me
078we we've gotten this kind of narrow scope um for very specific things that I think we've all discussed at a variety of points that we we prioritize. I think one of the reasons we added student achievement as an item on our agenda for every we used to only celebrate sports in our district. Um and so for us, I think we've we've talked about how all of these at various times are of value. And so I don't I I'm really cognizant of not cutting any of these. I think it's important to include all of them and figure out different ways to pay for them. I think we haven't spent as much time discussing how we could fund these um and a variety of I think options. I think you know maybe the first year we do
079some like battle on the books maybe we lean on donations in some way or we seek out partners like I think so we haven't talked as much about kind of the partnership side I think one of the things I continue to hear from different community groups and organizations is they have their own grants and are often knocking on our door sometimes incessantly saying they want to partner with us and we don't respond to their emails. Um, I can think of the Literacy Project Foundation that's been wanting to partner with us again for 10 years. There's a lot of opportunities for us that we don't have to fund with people in our community who have their own funding and or want to donate funds like money, time, support, organizational staff, and we're not leaning into those
080as best as we could. So, um I would really like to see before we talk about cutting something that I think is a huge unifier like the soccer classic a maybe the city of Costa Mesa helps with live scans. Maybe we've like I just similarly to what we've been doing with swim and getting people who are passionate about it all in the same room and I know that's happened a bit with the soccer classic but you know saying this need this is how much money we need how are we going to cover it you know rather than us saying no before that we've really gotten to those stages. Yeah. Um I think out of the books I I think it's great. I think there's a variety of things that we need and similarly to what
081was saying there's a lot of academic um kind of pieces that we can lean into and I don't I don't know that we've had even those conversations and I think again it's I remember when I first heard about Battle of the Books I was like why isn't this happening everywhere? So I think it's great to have those across the board. I think the other big to me like elephant in the room is we have almost a $450 million budget. These are things that directly impact students. So to me, I don't think they're necessarily negotiables. I would rather see um what I've said I think from the dice a few times when we've talked about the budget are very small cuts to departments that are still spending at the same level as they were during co.
082And so when I look at a department that's spending $60,000 a year on postage, but I don't know why they would be mailing anyone. Those are the things that I would like to see us have more increased accountability um around. I would like to see where we can have actual not recommended minor cuts for some consultants that we have. We have some that it's just a line item that every year you you have a million dollars for consultant. Why? That's not needed every year. Um, so I would just like to cut I would like us to have greater accountability and discretion around some of the operational pieces rather than having discussions around minimizing things that are essentials to to students and really beneficial for their social and academic development. Yeah. No, I I appreciate you
083saying that because when you said it last time, uh kudos to Jeff and the team, they listened and last year we call it sharpening the pencil cuz it sounds nice, right? Um and we sharpening the pencil this year saved $5 million. $5 million to your point. That pays for the stuff we're talking about. Jeff's going to go back and work with all the teams to sharpen the pencil yet again. He thinks we can do more of that. So, so that's five million now plus whatever else we're able to. So, we're we're with you 100%. And that's why, and I want to make sure that the public hears, well, what I said a minute ago, I'll double down on. It's not our interest to bring you cuts right now. Our interest is to figure out the
084priorities of the district and you represent the priorities of our community, right? You're elected to do that. So, what are the priorities of Newport Mesa? And then look at all these great ideas folks give us uh and others to fund those priorities. And then if we couldn't, then of course we'd bring it back. But we're confident that with your support, with your good ideas, we can do this and so much more. you know, a year from now, we want to have a conversation where we're bragging about the savings from sharpening the pencil, how great these academic competitions have been, and then the next round of ideas that are going to take us to the next level every year, right? Those same kinds of conversations. So, thank you. To follow up on that then, okay, so
085if the pencil has already been sharpened and you have this 5 million, then yes, we want everything on the list. But that was not my understanding that we had identified where this 5 million comes from. So, if you That's not what I meant to say. I'm sorry. We we bought we saved this year, but that was encumbered in other things for this budget, but we want to go back cuz and and Jeff can speak to this. We believe we can even sharpen it more and have the department sharpen it more. And so that's unrealized, but that's what we'll look for. If it's 2% then it's that becomes what? 800,000. 7 million 8 million. Okay. Right. Okay. So that's already possible. To your point, right? I want everything on the list and honestly the mind and
086master think but that's that's good to to help clarify that and make sure that we all understand that um because now I do I did not perform. So if it is there cool and my other question then is about this sheet that you've made of like um phasing in support services fee donations. Who is like the equivalent and maybe I'm naive for not knowing this. Who's like our development director? Who's the one in the district staff who's going to go and procure these grants and talk to Costa Mesa United? Hey, we want to do the soccer classic. It's 218. Can you give us 50 or 75? Or what's your going to chip in? You know, going to be or swimming, you know, some swim funders. Hey, can you give us 100? We have this 450.
087Like, who's our fund development person that does that? Yeah, I I would say they all do in their own area, but so many of these come from it seems like Sakoro's area that that they do a lot of that community facing, you know, work. Um, but I think the answer is it depends on the grant, but each of them looks for things in their space where their teams could apply for these. I mean, you know, think about the grants we've received recently that they did that are funding programs and we'll continue to do that. I mean, some of us that work in that field, it's like there's some natural funders that we can already think of for Battle of the Books, for the soccer classic, for the swimming. Um, so like just trying to figure
088out like who, you know, that's a conversation that we can have of like, okay, these are things um if you're going to find outside um donations, these are the kinds of projects that you know could likely get those kind of donations. Community engagement is one of our priorities. Here we go. Let's engage. Yeah. Any of those, give those to me. And then what I do is go to the appropriate staff and say, "Hey, look, here here's a resource. Let's get after it." Sure. Um uh so just to be cognizant of of cutting and how that affects people. Um Jeeoff, how did you feel those cuts went over? were were I mean, you know, with the sharpening of the pencil last year. So So when you're looking at our budget, which has over 10,000 lines, right?
089And people are like, "Oh, you know, I'm going to spend maybe uh $5,000 on this, they're rounding up, right, to the nearest 10,000 or or whatever." You know what I mean? And so there's a lot of work in precision and making sure we're really precise on our budget. And so it's it's like picking up a billion pennies. That's the effort that we're that we're involved in. And so and and we we shot for the moon last year. We missed it. Um but it was better than aiming for the gutter and nailing it. Um so we're we're we're get we we're getting better at it. And so this year we're taking another another shot at it. and the direction has been want to see really detailed rationale and we want to see it to the round
090it up to the nearest dollar not to the nearest thousand and so that's that's kind of where I guess from my and that's fantastic because somebody who does budgets too I know how that can go um but you know because I I do hear from you know certainly from our teachers and our staff you know sometimes making sure I just want to make sure that they have everything that they need to do to do and be their best. Um, so yeah, for cutting, you know, you thought you were going to spend, you know, two grand on photography and you only spent 500 bucks. I mean, like, yeah, go for it. Go for all of those, um, those changes and those, um, modifications when you're like coming up with all of the real numbers. But um
091I just want to make sure, you know, just make sure that our our teachers and our support staff and our, you know, and our department heads who do a lot of work um the unsung heroes in our district, you know, don't have to feel the effects of that. Thank you for that support. Does anyone want to start talking about summer school? We haven't done that. We love summer school though. We clearly love it because we're talking about it. Yeah. And I I think you know we can sharpen the tent. We would love to have summer school the way it is uh today. But um Sakur, do you want to tell us a little bit about or summer school and what we could and you know some of the ideas and it would be for the
092next year or this year. Okay. This year's rolling. So and this is particularly elementary summer school. Elementary summer school for from again from the state grant is paid for uh for nine hours a day for unduplicated students and those are elementary students who are title one foster youth or homeless McKini Vento. So those students we receive a grant from the state to offer summer school. Our question is how what else do we have to offer? And that's a 9-hour summer school. So that's the AM portion of instruction generally till around lunchtime and then after lunchtime we do enrichment activities of of various types. The question is then be as Wes said while we're one of the um most diverse community funded districts we also then have a large portion who are not part of that
093unduplicated student count. So for those students what do we want to offer? We want to continue to offer something that looks like ELOP and the cost of per that. And generally what we find ourselves spending right now is about $1,200 per student for the four weeks of summer. We are looking for ways to bring that down a little bit. And that would be really where we have play is the enrichment activities after school because our our employee costs are fixed costs. But the types of enrichment activities we offer after school is where we could constrict a little bit and just do things a little, you know, more like a forward model than maybe a bit. So that's what we would be looking to do. Um, but even then imagine the lowest we could probably get
094is probably a,000 or,00. And so that you can kind of then cost out. So depending on how many students and what we've done typically in summer school is around 2,000 students and again in the past although it's looking a little different this year in the past it's been generally 2/3 one-third 2/3 unduplicated one-third um non-title one schools non-title one students because it's by student. Uh so we've been able to offset that, but the desire for parents across the district does seem to be growing uh for many families and they're not all unduplicated. And so now ELOP funds can't pay for that. That does have to become a district cost. And how big or small we make that again our commitment is to the 180 days of school. That's where our biggest investment lies. That's where
095the force of the district is. the summer school program much smaller excluding ESY which is part of their base services. But for us that is a choice we make and so we summer school is something where we can build as big as we want or constrict as much as we want. We can have you know it on 10 sites except this summer because we have so much work going on. We could have it on multiple sites but that's a cost. So those are all choices about how big we want the program. We have uh always well always three years offered summer school in the across the district in places we thought were um geographically best for many families to participate. We could be more selective in where they're offered because we know location matters for
096many families even with transportation costs. We do offer transportation for summer school. Uh those are all different things that we can again scale back or grow, but it really is based on the number we're given where we can bend and move to fit that budget outside of the ELOP budget. And again, I do just want to plant a seed that there could be a day, probably not in the next couple of years, but in the future where even elop is scaled back at the state level. And so even what we've grown to be our normal base offering right now, that could change as that money could stretch. So we always have that in mind and kind of build accordingly. And thus far we have built pretty parallel. If we're doing this for ELP, we're doing
097this across the district. But it moving into the future, we could look at different options um for nonlp funded summer school programs. Yeah, I mean I I could I could see it being for so the non-titled one students and families doing like a hybrid where it's not full days, not nine hours. Um and then possibly an option with like a fee base that's affordable, you know, that's that's all I mean again the creativity and what we can do. you're giving us this number that is the max and then we and staff under the direction of the board um can kind of be creative in that and I I think the important part is that we do offer it for all of our families because I I I'm not it's about all kids and all families.
098Yeah. It doesn't matter where you live, what your zip code is. It's a service that we need to offer. It's just we can we can again because Newform is really good at um coming up with local solutions whether it's zones or sites. We can do the same for summer school and we appreciate that you have done it. Yeah. across district. Oh, I mean we hear so much so many positive things coming out from the summer school program like you guys um created after co I mean it was really something that every parent has come to us and has mentioned how wonderful it was getting those kids back socializing and and including including everybody um to attend. It's amazing. I would hate to see again I would hate to see it go away. I don't know
099if we ne ne ne ne ne ne ne ne ne ne ne ne ne ne ne ne ne ne ne ne ne ne ne ne ne ne ne necessarily need to grow it because I feel like just like the 12 to1, you know, I feel like it it's wonderful the way it is. I mean, parents are happy. Um I don't know if we necessarily need to grow it. It would be great to be able to offer it to our students. And Jeff mentioned those one-time funds we had. So the learning recovery funds and other things like that are things we could add with the LOP to offset costs in the past. And now with those falling off the table, I mean granted sometimes you never know what's coming down from Sacramento. So could there be,
100you know, who knows what would come next, but that is one of the ways we were able to offset it is because there m was money set aside from the state for learning recovery for everybody. And I do I think there is an option potentially to offer that really great academic core instruction that we have offered and then um you know have for a nominal fee provide some of the extra um you know enrichment programs because I think there is a deficit of um affordable summer solutions for stu for kids um and parents are looking for that and that's why our summer school has been so um popular Um so you know even if it is for a nominal view for those that you maybe don't um you know aren't unduplicated count pupils um it
101would be it would be something to provide because I think that there is a there is a need and I would love to be able to provide that for and keep and it's another reason to keep people excited about Newport Mesa in our district. So thank you. There's a question about so what was offered um what will be offered this year is the 5 million 300 whatever then the additional cost projected of the 1.5 million what does that additional cost do because it sounds like we're providing summer school for everybody all day right now with this possibility well remember this is ensuring that it going into future years we're going to continue to want to do that so again where we've been able to kind of backfill the cost of summer school that money is
102going to drop off and will now be something we have to find other funds to fill it. So, it'll still be the 5.3 million, but we need to find that 1.5 million somewhere new. Is that correct? Cool. And then you're also saying because of the makeup of the the students doing summer school, we'll get less funding because if the funding stream is is mostly unduplicated for the more non-title one students we have in summer school, the more it will cost the district and not we will not be able to apply at least ELOP grant dollars there. Again, Sacramento creates crazy things all the time. So there could be another stream somewhere that could be used for something like this, but it could not be ELP funds. That is a very targeted grant. I think it
103could be helpful to see other districts that do a sliding scale. I mean, there's got to be others that do that. And just how I mean, I think to Trusty Wagon's point, I think it's something a majority of the families in our neighborhood housing costs are so expensive. I mean it yes it is child care for some people but yeah it's also about learning loss that we're still combating which is the whole reason why we started summer school so and that happens to everyone regardless you know you're not doing anything for 3 months you could lose it you know and so I think it's really important to keep that in mind but also make it inclusive while not necessarily putting us in the red we will definitely begin exploring options about what that looks like
104what that looks like locally, you know, with contiguous school districts and other places that look like us. We'll begin exploring immediately. And again, priority whole child support as one of our priority. um every minute during summer school, you're not at home unattended or possibly with attended, you know, with a sibling um playing video games, staring at screens, and you're at school in a safe, risk-free environment, socializing, and growing. That's just full support, whole screens. Many screens, limited screens with limited limit. No screens. So it's like I I don't see a downside book just create we need to be creative because we are we are limited and of course um ELP who knows how long that's going to go right so could be a couple of years could be who knows what y so maybe starting
105to think of hybrid models could help long term extend it I don't think many people at the state level believe it'll exist beyond two years now. We've always had aces and things like that always, but for years we've had something. So, I think the exercise of of your direction, us going through and looking at what are other ways to do this will help us get ready for even bigger changes down the road. Awesome. Okay. I mean, any other I mean, we've kind of gone through the the list here. What else do you guys need from us? Speaking to you guys. Um, did we did we give you enough? Did we give you enough info? Do you want more? We're all opinions. Got a lot of direction. Well, I think that's I think it's really really
106helpful. And I think the um I think the focus on um academics, advanced coursework for all students, not just labeled students, is something that I hear in our community is as really important and throughout our community. And I think when you look at the national debate, there are those who are saying, "Look, we need to lean into rigor." Well, that's what you're saying. We need to raise the bar and make sure every kid gets there. that's what you're saying. So, I think it resonates nationally. It resonates in our district and I think we all agree with that. So, well, you know, we know that we still need to bring up our reading and mask scores. I mean, we know that we all know that it's a priority for all of us. Um, but we also
107all know that there are other elements that go into that for a student to make that happen. So um so certainly we're all cognizant of that and you know and support that as well. But for, you know, for me truly, I, you know, I really want our reading scores to go up. And I realize that testing isn't always the best way to determine that, and I understand that, but um, I just know we have the capacity and the skill sets and the knowledge um, and and certainly the will in our, you know, in our community to make that happen. So yeah, thank you for for everything you're trying to do to get us there. That's right. The PLT work that you supported and kudos to our our teammates in the field that are leaning into
108dine with data. Dine with data is next Monday. We have our student achievement leadership think tank where we fill a room full of um you know our teammates who are doing the work saying this is how we're going to use this data to get better and the site leaders leaning into those same kinds of things and we're seeing the successes Adams Elementary you know being a California distinguished school for the first time in the history of that school right and you think about those of you that have lived in this community and know what that school has gone through and the different things you have tried And the focus at that school is exactly what we are focusing on districtwide. And so it's in alignment. It's proof that it works. But you know, Kaiser as
109well, they haven't been a distinguished school in 20 years. And they're doing this kind of focus. So it is it is working. We're on the right path. The things you've added today, I think, will really enrich and enhance those efforts. They help students get 25 years. I kind of 25 years. Wow. 2000 was the last time they years. Wow. So, um, speaking of data, I do have a I do have a a burning question. Can you quantify the uh what the cost of this election is going to cost our our district in programs? Can you give us like an idea like $49,000 of our special election? Like what would we be losing as an example? So, I'm looking at this list here. I see a couple. Yeah. So the question is uh how many teachers
110would does a half a million buy? Not necessarily teacher programs. Well, like the equivalent like for example just a weird way to line number six. That would be you know it would be the battle of the book. It could be the whole school safety program. It could be uh the soccer classic and then the battle of the books. Um, it could be I mean what what is it like a field trip is $8,000 because of transportation. So that's is that kind of Yeah, I guess a long list of science campus field trips. What do we spend for each of those right now? Yeah. So field trip course about 600,000 science almost pays for that. Okay. Can't lose science camp. Oh, we love that. But we'll be able to somehow finally should close at 250. Oh,
111any other questions? Oh, yeah. Thanks, Jeff. Thanks for all this hard work and appreciate everyone putting all their time and effort into today. It really helps us and it was a really good discussion. So, thank you. All right, we'll close at 250.