001call this public session to order board clerk Jackie Gaby is unable to attend today's board meeting we are we have a quorum this meeting is being webcast live and recorded the recording our webcast May capture images and sounds of those attending the meeting I will now identify closed topic sessions Public Employee assignment reassignment appointment Public Employee discipline dismissal release complaints conference with labor negotiator conference with legal counsel existing lit conference with Rio property negotiators and anticipated lit 1.5 public common and closed session topics general public comment on any closed session item will be heard at this time pursuant to board policy the board May limit individual comments to no more than three minutes and individual topics to 20 minutes it is recommended that you begin your comment by stating your name no public comment 1.6
002we will now adjourn to closed session I'd like to call uh reconvene to our regular session 3.2 introduction of interpreter Gus Mora will speak on Spanish interpreter for this meeting as the Spanish interpreter for this meeting meeting attendees who would like to listen to the Spanish interpretation in the meeting please pick up headphones from the table located in the back of this meeting room this announcement this announcement will now be shared in Spanish foreign thank you 3.3 meeting announcement this meeting is being webcast live and recorded the recording or webcast May capture images and sounds of those attending the meeting members of the public wanting to provide public comment on items listed on tonight's agenda we recommend you fill out the public comment form green form located on the table of the back of this
003room please hand the completed form to Delia Smart Board manager before the item comes up on the agenda we recommend you complete a separate form for each agenda item you'd like to comment on Miss smart is sitting at the table in the back of the meeting room members of the public providing public comment please use the microphone on the stand located in front of the room 3.4 I will now Lead You In The Pledge of Allegiance yes 3.5 there was no action taken in closed session 3.6 revision to item enclosures and Adoption of board meeting agenda there are revisions um item enclosures for agenda items number 5.11 and 5.12 may I have a motion to adopt the boredom meeting agenda board member case Spears saleno second by board member um Villegas all in favor that's
004six gays and one accent number four general public comment general public comment and any school related topic may be heard at this time the board asked that any public comment on an item listed on tonight's agenda be addressed at the time the item comes up for discussion by the board to comply with the brown act California's open public meeting law board discussion is limited to items on the agenda therefore when receiving public items for items not on the agenda the board's role is to limit to receiving such comments and the board may not engage in dialogue with the public the board thanks the public for its participation in public comment and understanding of the board's responsibility pursuant to board policy the board May limit individual comments to no more than three minutes and individual topics
005to 20 minutes it is recommended you to begin your comment by stating your name and we have public comment uh Crystal Reynolds good evening assistant superintendent Mark Thompson and board um I am here tonight to present a copy for all of our board members tonight of a public records request um I have been looking at some books that are within our libraries I know June 1st we had the governor that came in and kind of threatened our Librarians and superintendents with some legal action or fines if um we start pulling books but I have to tell you I have about 19 books and Counting right now that I am highly concerned about that are in our libraries right now for high school and Junior High not only that what I worry about too is a
006lot of these books the reading levels now even if they're not in junior high or high school they're reading levels most of them are fourth grade the youngest ones I saw was a 3.9 which is third grade ninth month the one younger than that was second grade fourth month and these are highly sexually explicit books the excerpts I I mean I'm gonna tell you I I couldn't read the entire books that would take a lot of time but the expert or excerpts that I found are highly disturbing um I would say pretty much pornographic in detail in the way that they're describing acts and it's it's everything I can't even tell you everything in detail right now but it's there's a lot in there and so tonight I'm asking for a little bit of information
007so I can do a little bit more research I want to let you know I'm not one for Banning books I think that we need to have different representations of culture but I'm going to tell you this is different you guys need to see these books for yourselves I have a listing here so you guys can see the ones I'm talking about right now so you can start your own research um the the next boarding meeting I actually plan to have copies that's why I couldn't get it all done tonight it's a lot of copies for each and every one of you but I plan to have copies for all of you guys at the next board meeting so you guys can see what I'm talking about um I personally went to a couple other
008friends and people just in the community just kind of get their input to make sure I'm not being a prude about this make sure I'm not overthinking this and they were highly disgusted it's it's pretty bad so I'm going to leave this with you guys tonight I'll leave it with Delia and again there's about 19 books in there there's actually more um that I'm finding that are in the libraries but I just don't have any more of the information like the I'm still researching um the excerpts and and all that so I'll leave this with you guys tonight thank you thank you item five consent agenda would any board member would any board member like to pull an item from the consent agenda okay may I have a motion to approve the items on the
009consent agenda okay on a motion by board member belt second by oh oh wait did I skip something oh I'm sorry I didn't get a Green Sheet I'm sorry Greg oh well usually you don't but I usually have that that's a come I skipped over you I'm sorry we will go back Mr Price sorry about that laughs just more a question it may be a point of order because normally normally the cons this is Greg price for the Teachers Association normally things are done in consent item and we don't get a chance to talk about them so I have a question about 5.24 in the items and specifically one point to this before it's approved this is the dual enrollment agreement with cos so I have talked with superintendents in the past and our current
010superintendent and we have talked about how our teachers always have priority to teach classes um to be dot four says the high school district understands that some cos faculty have seniority therefore have priority to teach to be assigned to courses therefore cos faculty May utilize their seniority status and assigned to a course at the high school despite the high school having a qualified dual enrollment instructor this is in direct conflict with what I've been told over and over again so I'm going to ask the board that they pull this item and re-examine that that is not what I've been told in the past um and that that's an issue so that is the comment that I have for the board tonight thank you Mr Price I will say currently I have no understanding of us
011having that currently happening in our district as we have the teachers that are teaching these courses are teachers at the high school sites um but so that's what that's what our current practice is right now but I understand you're concerned with what's written there okay so do I have a motion to accept the consent agenda yes I'll I'll move the accepted consent agenda can I can I have price is talking about is it's going to substantially push push back just because it's the beginning of the school year or is it something that we should bring back at the next meeting or is it something that if we don't approve it tonight I'm gonna have Mrs Phillips administrator of teaching and learning you can address that with the school year starting very quickly we do need
012to have this move forward currently within our district um we don't we Fashion Design and Merchandising would be the only dual enrollment course that we don't have a credentialed teacher um on-site teaching and so we would have a COS teacher on campus um teaching that otherwise all courses are dual enrollment currently staffed by our cos teachers or I'm Sorry by our vusd teachers that do meet our requirements for CLS um so but as we build additional programs we are actually working towards um working on obtaining more teachers with the correct master's degrees in order to meet the qualifications to teach additional dual enrollment courses as we grow dual enrollment in busd yeah go ahead so just just to clarify we are the first priority is to our own teachers correct teach those do enrollment classes
013and if we don't have a teacher with the correct credential then we would go to cos for their teacher that would be the correct the mou however does state that it could supersede but vusd's intent is to offer courses that we have the teachers in order to teach those courses if I can chime in as uh someone in kind of these dual roles I understand the language and the contract as a COS Costa faculty member and Union member there um I can tell you that in all my experience in terms of you know professors who are there who have seniority pick their classes first their base load and then they go and order a seniority and then if folks want to do overload then they go like you know in that same order uh I've
014never heard of um and you know anyone can correct me if I'm wrong but I've never heard of a cus faculty member sort of superseding and choosing that High School course because typically a they they don't want to teach it because it may be far from where they live et cetera but more than likely be they know that a High School faculty member is there and is you know fully qualified to teach that course um so though the language there exists I haven't heard of any instances in which that has happened in which a COS Professor has taken a class sort of designated for a High School Duel enrollment teacher however I do understand that the concerns of Mr Price and I think you know that is something maybe uh we can you know partner
015with moving forward as we continue to look at expanding dual enrollment um course offerings throughout our district but yeah as of the the timeline and given I would you know fully support him back this because I wouldn't want any student not to have access to their course this fall semester I'd like to add just one edit our medical terminology class is also taught by a COS teacher as we don't have the correct credential teacher um or I'm sorry Master teacher for that position and then our fashion design is an online course okay and is that oh go ahead you go first yeah just real quick so it sounds like we don't have an issue right now and Mr Price there has been a past practice of making sure that the USD teachers are selected first
016it sounds like that's just the way it works because no cos teacher really wants to come out five days a week and work at a high school but well other than my esteemed peer to my left but I think it's worth um the board passing this tonight for efficiency's sake but going back to see if cos be willing to add language to this agreement to that effect because if that's what practice is and it works why don't we try to codify it to make sure that our teachers do get first crack formally yeah and that that's what I was going to say too let's um I think it's imperative that we approve this mou but let's re-look at the language in the contract so I have a motion by um and second by case beer
017soleno all in favor uh motion carries um uh six eyes one absent them item six board member reports um Dr Villegas uh thank you president Gwen uh no report just reminding all of our students all of our student athletes I know band camp is right around the corner to stay hydrated in this weather and stay cool okay Dr Otto no report Mr belt uh enjoyed myself a couple of weeks of vacationing in the forest and found teachers all over the North Coast of California my wife and I had a lot of fun of actually sharing ideas and I and commiserating as well and looking for the future of Education becoming brighter and brighter in California foreign I just wanted to say that I won't be here at the next meeting for sure probably not the
018next two um my daughter is having surgery it's going to require me to be there for her so I don't want you know anyone to think that there's some other reason I'm not here I've tried to be at every meeting I could possibly be at uh unless you know there's an illness or something like this in the family but because they will be missing the next two meetings I just wanted to send good vibes to all of our teachers and staff and everyone returning at the beginning of the school year I hope you have a wonderful first day um and all the the good back to school shopping for parents that gets to happen in the next couple of weeks thank you um a board member Naylor no report um I was able to celebrate
019with our Communications team at the national school public relations uh conference and I just want to give them Kudos because they did win 15 national awards for their body of work that they've done in less than a year so I just wanted to say congratulations to them Mr Thompson yeah thank you um just a quick report first of all I just want to reiterate as well it's hot out there so stay safe um out there right now but also know that our staff is working diligently here at the district office teachers admin uh to prepare for our first day of school that will be here before we know it August 10th um that we have several trainings coming up next week when we have our next board meeting we'll be sharing our back to school
020getting ready getting prepped and preparing families for that so working hard on that also you'll notice up here we did have this room painted we don't have our logo up as of this time but we do have a new logo that will be coming up and so that's why that is not there at this time and you know students I just if you hear me um you got a few weeks before school comes I encourage you still at this time to engage in a good book engage with your parents visit talk interact go see things learn grow you don't just learn in school you learn everywhere that you're at so each and every day I encourage you to do that and be ready to come back to school on that first day uh we'll be
021ready for you thank you 8.1 publiccaring resolution adopting school facility need analysis alternative facility fees and um SQL exemption I will now open this public hearing presenters our chief business officer Nathan Hernandez and chief operation officer Eric care good evening president gamoyan members of the school board Mr Thompson tonight we have the resolution for adoption of the level 2 developer fees back in March the board authorized the school facility needs analysis the study that was performed by Mr Ken Reynolds and schoolworks and so he's going to share a little bit more about what that needs analysis details as well as the results and then we'll talk about some District needs as well as our process to get here and then we'll ask for the board to open the public hearing okay well good evening it's
022wonderful to be with you here in person tonight we do have a quick presentation to give you a quick high-level overview of the work that we've completed and so we always like to start off by talking about some developer fee Basics and of course developer fees are a fee charge to construction projects for to help with school facility projects due to their impacts and so many districts throughout the state do collect level one fees which you are currently collecting and that rate is 4.79 per square foot for new residential projects and 78 cents per square foot for any commercial or industrial projects and then some districts like yours are looking at charging level two fees so that is a higher level than the standard level one and it is based on what the cost is
023or fifty percent of the cost is to accommodate the impact of the new students being generated by new development and level two only applies to the residential there's no impact on the commercial projects so in order to charge level two fee since they are a larger amount than the level ones there are some prerequisites and so you're required to meet two of the four prerequisites uh the re the requirements are either to have twenty percent of your classrooms are Portables as compared to permanent construction and so we meet that with a 25.3 percent in our inventory the second bullet is a 30 of our elementary students in multi-track year-round programs I know we used to do that a long long time ago but that's not very common anymore uh the next item is you're looking
024at your Capital facility debt if we need to have a ratio of our debt to your bonding capacity of 15 percent and your current number was at 32 percent so we meet that requirement and then the fourth item is having placed a local Bond on the ballot and had at least a 50 yes vote within the last four years and so measure a was in 2018 so we're just beyond that four year window for that Bond so we do meet the two of the four requirements so after that then we have to go through the process of calculating the what your level 2 fee amount is and of course there's a lot of legal requirements we look at a lot of data and so some of the major components that impact the level of that
025fee are what size homes are being built and that's broken down into both a new single-family homes along with the multi-family housing units and so we're just over 2 000 square feet on average in our single family units and just over a thousand square feet on the average multi-family unit that's been built in the last five years uh local land costs are a big factor on what you see for level two fee amounts so if you look at districts like on the coastal areas where land is more expensive they typically have higher level two fees and then the next item we look at the student yield rate districts with a higher student yield rate typically can justify a larger level two fee than those with smaller yield rates the yield rate is calculated by looking
026at the new housing units that have been built over the last five years and that analysis for your District comes out to 0.383 students per home on average of course that's a relatively low number back in the day we would anticipate when there's new developments coming around and we'd average 0.7 students per home on average for a unified school district so we can see yield rights have dropped and we've seen a strong correlation between housing prices as they've increased and yield rates dropping lately in our state the next line is looking at the space available and this is where we've had some interaction with the Bia are calculation of space available is done by comparing your current enrollment to your school's capacity and our analysis shows that there's actually 89 seats extra that you have
027in comparison to your current enrollment and so we are showing that a space available so out of all the students generated by the housing we subtract 89 before we calculate what are the cost impacts to your District their methodology they were saying there's actually plenty of seats available at your elementary schools so we shouldn't count any of the elementary students generated by development and so they're they're dissecting the data into more detailed levels and making the argument that the district should not be able to charge for existing deficiencies and that is part of the law right we can't charge the Developers for existing deficiencies in the district but that's taken on a more broad scale so for example if our capacity was less than our current enrollment right we'd have existing on how students and
028so no matter how many students we generate from development we can only use those students generated from development we can't add to that the existing uh unhoused students were asking them to pay for level two fees so again it's my belief along with the attorney is that there's a different interpretation of that point of law and then finally if there's any local funds available that's reduced from the calculations that we do on what's the cost impact and so the bottom line is we've calculated your level 2 fee to be five dollars and fifty cents per square foot again that's just slightly more than the current level one fees but it is a net increase so the next thing I like to do is really highlight what is the real impact of charging level two fees
029as I mentioned before it's only impacting residential projects not commercial or Industrial and so we I do a little bit of a calculation here um in in that second paragraph right the average new home that's again that's averaging both of single family and multi-family comes in at just around sixteen hundred square feet so we're charging 550 basically we're asking for a fee of about eighty eight hundred dollars uh you would only be collecting about 76.50 if you were only collecting the level one rate and so the impact's really about eleven hundred dollars per housing unit that is being built to help out with the true cost of housing students and all the facility needs it you'll be made very aware of both in the the end of our presentation and as you work on your
030facility master plan and so uh a quick calculation right we we show how many homes we expect how many of those are single family how many are multi-family how many students are being generated again those numbers can fluctuate we did look at a construction weight that's the same as the values we used in our demographic study which tries to do a very accurate look at what we truly believe will happen over the next five years and again based on those numbers you'd be able to collect just over 30 million in developer fees to help with your facility needs of course we'd have to come back here and do these studies every 12 months so every year and so you know showing what your income is over five years when you don't know what is going
031to be justified next year it is a little bit of a stretch but just gives you a estimation of you know if we were to continue at this rate what things would look at in in the future next I'd like to really cover the how can we use our developer fees in particular level two developer fees there are different rules that apply when you collect level two fees versus just a standard level one fees so level two is limited to basically new school projects and of course that includes all the different components of a new school so the you know the site the furniture the architectural fees site development playgrounds right the entire campus next item is least a purchased modulars or Portables right if you need some for interim housing until a new project
032is built or you know you need something quickly and you decide to use modulars those types of projects can be used for the level two fees if you're adding to an existing school you don't always need a new school sometimes you just need to add a link to an existing school so whether you're building classrooms cafeterias gyms restrooms those additions to existing schools are a valid use of your level two fees and of course if you're acquiring land for a future School and finally cop payment sometimes you've already built the projects but you're still making payments and so that's another allowed use and then next I just had a couple of statistics and again the reason I put this in here is the data and the calculations that we do are based on all the
033government code and education code that we require to follow and so our our calculation shows your capacity at 28 982 whereas in other documents you may see different capacities and again there's just different methodologies used when you're calculating a capacity and so in the State method there were several portable classrooms that they did not include in their capacity however their capacity is based on the number of classrooms you had in 1998 when this current school facility program started plus all the projects that have occurred since then again it's an eligibility accounting type of methodology and so it doesn't always line up real well with your true capacity when you look at you know where your teachers are actually located in our demographic study we found that your capacity in reality on based on the way
034you use your facilities is about thirty three thousand and twenty four one of the reasons it's higher is because you're loading more students in each classroom than the state methodology uses and and plus of course you have all the Portables that you're using that the state program discounts and so if we had actually utilized the state loading standards right our capacities would have been almost identical so finally uh my last slide here talks about the process and so a level two study increases your residential rates immediately so basically starting tomorrow assuming you approve the resolution you can begin collecting the 550 per square foot uh when you implement it you have a 12-month window so after one year that fee goes away until a new study is performed and then the other component right is
035well how come this doesn't impact our commercial or industrial fees those are based on a level one study only and their next adjustment is slated for review and approval by the state allocation board in January of 2024. so about six months from now and so with your approval the fees would increase by 71 cents over your current level one rate so again a relatively small amount but over time it does help we with your overall facility needs thank you Ken uh just a couple things I wanted to add um so our current facility needs um we know that the major there's there's lots of development in the northwest uh portion of the district there's developments in the North and then the Carlton Acres 478 Acres of development that's just west of Ridgeview north of of
036uh Reagan between Shirk and Acres that is planned that is is going to start very soon we also know that in the Northwest we have outplacements in very very new schools Denton and Riverway are currently at capacity and both have Portables and we are closed at both of those schools for new enrollments and transfers so that means as new homes are built in those areas which is where they are being built those families who buy homes there because they see a dent Center they see a Riverway and they want to move there we'll very quickly find out that their kids will be outplaced to another school because we don't have capacity because of the development there so we're out placing we're outplacing families and displacing kids out of their homeschool where they could potentially go
037because that's why they bought their home there the second piece is Annie Mitchell although not in the Northwest is impacted in the Southeast in the very same way they are at capacity we are placing students there another place where we have development and we have a little bit of a moving Target in that we're not really sure is is the TK enrollment as as we go through the the universal TK rollout with the state of California every year we the kids get two months younger to be eligible for TK and so while we have and while Ken has done a great job with those projections we're not exactly sure we just know that those numbers will be will change the first day of school and we actually see the number of kids that enroll the
038interesting thing about TK just like our kindergarten classrooms those are purpose-built classrooms that is not a standard classroom it's larger it's 1350 square feet instead of 960 it also has bathrooms and other teacher work areas that a standard classroom doesn't have so it is a much larger lift to get those classrooms built and it takes more planning and so that is an impact as well in those areas where development is is peaking is increasing and then permanent classrooms needed to replace the lease Portables again we've got 102 leased Portables and that number is it could be slightly off because with with 42 sites they're they're literally all over the place you saw Ken's numbers about 25.3 and that's kind of including everything that's ever been there and so but looking at those two most impacted
039Northwest schools Denton and Riverway I mean we all know how new Denton is we remember in this room just a couple of years ago when it opened at only 50 some percent guess what there are no Portables at Denton because they're over capacity and so this is the reason for uh going to the level two fees because we need to be able to respond to the growth in those School in those areas where those schools are um and I think next Nathan thank you sir and just um to kind of close out um we've sharing here the process for bringing this to the board there's a 45-day noticing process to the city and to the county provided notices in 30 days and and again a notice in the newspaper about this sent out to some
040specific agencies and as we shared with the board we did receive a response from building industry Association as Mr Reynolds shared provided a response to them coordination with working with Lozano Smith and and meets all of the requirements of the government code to bring this resolution forward to you today and so adopting the level two of the fee of 550 per square foot provides the district with what is needed to provide facilities and classrooms for the growth in the areas that it's occurring and where those schools are impacted and again this would be implemented as of uh July 21st so with that we please willing to answer any questions is there any about there is one public comment um Dolores Taylor stand here not there all right good evening Vice Unified School District board members
041my name is Dolores Taylor and I am a member of the whether referring to the Bia which is the Builders Association of Tulare and Kings County the only organization in the area that supports Builders and their mission to build housing for the residents of the city of Visalia but most importantly I'm a citizen of Visalia and a very proud mother of four children I'm also an active member of my community as you some of you may see me serving in many boards over the past year and a half we Wim have been in contact with your staff over the proposed change in the impact fees from level one to level two or three this is a very complex process we decided to hire an expert consultant to verify all the findings presented to the visalignify
042school district upon review of the report our consultant believes that there's no legal justification for for switching from level one to level two we actually we are quite shocked to see that as the only representative of the home builders in this area there are two letters that are submitted to the staff um providing that this change could be legal and open the school district for potential litigation was never presented to you I know each and every one of you believe in an open and transparent government process so the fact that these letters were never presented to you it is extremely worrying to me just as a resin as a mom of a vusd students I would like to add these letters to the public record with their objection to this change and all what is
043joining us that you read the letters from our consultant who believes this is an illegal interpretation of the Leroy F green Act and the mitigation fee Act we have not been able to sit down in a meeting in a roughly over a year to discuss the issue and we would ask that you continue this item to allow both sides to revisit the finding in the study presented by our Consulting presented by your consultant too I really want to thank you for your time and your service and nobody takes to serving the board late at night I also had to give my little ones to be able to be here um and at the end we all agree that the ultimate goal is what's best for our children and I want that I want what's best
044for our children I understand anything thank you Mrs Taylor okay one more thing and as you know homelessness is a huge issue in our community that affects our youth right attending illegal increasing rates makes the problem worse by artificially increasing housing costs thank you I'm going to close the public hearing is there any board discussion or board questions I just want to say I think this is a necessary step moving forward to support our students to support our community when I look at students at Riverway when I get students attend but when I look at students at all of our elementary and I look at the projected you know 30.6 million dollars over the next few years I think about how beneficial that could be to our district right in all these various projects we're
045talking not just about those schools that are over impacted but those monies that can be used to help students in Ivanhoe those abilities that can be used to help students all across our district and so I think this is a very necessary action and I want to thank Mr Reynolds Eric and all of our staff for working hard on this over the last year thank you thank you any other board comment or board questions this is Naylor I just want to reiterate that also you know when we visit schools our schools some of them need a lot of a lot of tender loving care and it's obvious that we don't collect the amount of fees that we need to keep our some of our schools up and I look at Ivanhoe and some of those
046surround outlying areas and we owe it to our community for every student to attend a school that has all the facilities and up to date as a school that was recently built and I just would think it would be a shame if we would neglect that any other board comments yes Mr phelp president good morning I'd like to also add that to uh we have the glaring need even though it's not like our enrollment is exploding but it's not declining as much of the state is and also that we're not trying to be on par with this school district but I'm very aware that club was Unified their rates are much higher so they are they are and perhaps that's reason why homes May cost more and cut in clothes as well but this is
047a this is a medium increase compared to other schools that are also districts that are trying to just meet the needs of our students any other board comment or questions may I have a motion to approve resolution number 23-24-02 adopting the school facilities need analysis alternative school facility fees and approval of the California Environmental Quality act exemption I'll make a motion second on a motion by board member Villegas second by board member um Odo on favor motion carries six years one absent I would like to adjourn this meeting thank you