Chico Unified School District Board of Education Meeting 3/12/2025

001Great to see all of you here. Welcome to the May 12, 2025, March 12, one of those M's, March 12, 2025 regular board meeting. We were recently in closed session where no action was taken. At this point, I think we are ready to stand for the flag salute. You'll join me. And with that, I will hand it right over to Superintendent Staley. Well, I know I might be guilty of saying this every month, but we are really in for a treat tonight, and it's going to be a colorful treat, and you can tell our community feels the same way because they are here in full force as well. So with that, I am proud to introduce Rosedale's principal, Maricel Lopez. Good evening. Thank you so much for having us here, having our school. I feel

002so lucky to work at Rosedale with such amazing students and such amazing families and staff. We are beyond excited to be here. I am Marisol Lopez. I am the principal at Rosedale Elementary. And I'm Gloria Godinez, the assistant principal. We are excited to present our baile flotlorico de Rosedale. Muchas gracias a la maestra Trenda por su gran trabajo. Thank you, maestra Trenda, for your great work. We invite maestra Trenda to share the outstanding work she and her students do each year. Buenas noches a todos. Good evening, everybody. First of all, thank you so much for having us back. It's been quite a few years since we are able to share and celebrate culture and diversity. Very proud of that. Thank you, Maestra Lopez, for the nice introduction. Our group has been... almost 11 years since

003we started it and it is based out of Rosdell Elementary School but this year we got an exciting step. We are becoming a non-profit and our official name is Rosas de Maria Seeds of Tradition which is Maria's roses and semillas de tradicion. We are working under North Valley Community Foundation currently while we get our non-profit final status. I just wanted to quickly share the goal of our group is to teach, preserve, enrich, share, promote, and celebrate Mexican culture through the performing arts of dance and music. That's a lot to say, but you know, that's what we're doing. This group is, we run classes from kindergarten through seventh grade. And again, most of our kiddos are Rosedale Elementary School based. Today we are delighting you with a couple of beautiful dance pieces. The first one is

004from the state of Jalisco. Anybody from Jalisco over here? Yes, yes. and so representative of Mexican culture. You're going to see the ribbon skirts and the amazing, fun, contagious celebration. And the second piece is from the state of Chiapas. You will be seeing the second piece. And it is really representing... Kind of like a new era, rebirthing, springtime, kind of a very important female dance, but also we have also part of the lead and follow dance pieces. Please put your hands together for a treat. Thank you. Because the street guards are scared, I come to warn you that your animals are living in the sand, some in the sand, others in the sea. Thank you so much, everybody. Awesome job. Have a beautiful night, and thank you for having us over again. Bye-bye. Thank you.

005And if everybody can hang on just a moment. Marisol Lopez is coming back up to the microphone. Awesome job, everyone. Boys and girls, you guys did amazing. Muy buen trabajo. Todos hicieron fabuloso. Me encantó. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for having us. I am super grateful that I get to stand up here now and present superintendent's awards. I love that we get the opportunity to award staff for everything that they do. I'm beyond blessed to work at Rosedale, and I am so grateful for these two staff members. I am honored to present Margie Terrish with the superintendent's award. Please join me, Margie. Margie is one of Rosedale's exceptional kindergarten teachers, and we are incredibly fortunate to have her as part of our school community. Her dedication, kindness, and compassion have left a lasting impact

006on the students, families, and staff at Rosedale. Margie truly cares about everyone. She is always willing to lend a hand, offer support, and go above and beyond to make a difference. Margie, thank you for all the positive difference you have made every day and for the countless hearts you have touched and supported. This recognition is well-deserved, and we are so grateful for all that you do. We have a list of all the fantastic things that staff members have shared about Margie, but because the list is so long, we will only be reading three. Margie is a phenomenal teacher that has had great impact on our Rosedale families for over 30 years. Her experience and passion for teaching has always been an example for me. I value learning and working with her. Margie is one of

007the most dedicated teachers I know. Her love and concern for her students is immeasurable. Thank you for all you do, Marie. Margie is an amazing teacher. She has so much patience, and you can tell she really loves her job. The kids and staff adore her, and we are lucky to have a teacher like her working at Rosedale. Congratulations, Margie! I love doing this. Thank you for this opportunity. I am honored to present Maria Veas with the Superintendent's Award. Please join me, Maria Veas. Rosedale is so fortunate to have Maria Veas at the front desk to welcome families into our school. She is the heart of Rosedale. Maria has been at Rosedale for many years, making her an essential... Sorry. Essential part of our school success. As a new administrator, I appreciate all her support. She

008is kind, hardworking, and outstanding at her job. She always goes above and beyond to support our Rosedale family. Again, we have a list of all the positive things that our staff has said about her, but we will only be reading three. Maria has guided me these last two years as a new administrator, and she's just been a big, huge support to both of us. Margie as well, and we are beyond, beyond grateful. Maria is the best. She is so hardworking and dedicated to her families and staff and she never hesitates to lend a helping hand. I appreciate her ambition and bubbly personality because she brightens my day and makes everything less stressful. She is amazing. Maria cares about students, especially when their families are in extra need. She welcomes others to our schools and is

009always dedicated to her work. I appreciate her so much. Maria helps and loves all of us, kids, parents, volunteers, aides, teachers, administrators. We have all come and gone, and she has trained us all and helped us all. She holds the stories and the history of all of our kiddos in her amazing memory and her generous heart. Thank you, Maria, for all you do. Thank you. Congratulations to these amazing staff members from Rosedale. Rosas de Maria, Seeds of Tradition, Ballet Folklorico, we're going to go through the back quietly. Parents, also, please. I'm pointing at the door over there. Thank you so much. Thank you, Rosedale. We're feeling the love in here. And it's not going to get any better than that, so I'm going to turn it back over to you. We'll wait a moment or

010two to see who sticks around. Thank you again, Rosedale. We appreciate all of you students and teachers. It's great to see you all. We are going to move on to item number six. Does anyone on the board have announcements? Take it away. I just wanted to say what a pleasure it was to go to the... Fairview WASC. On Sunday we were invited to go meet the WASC group and I had not been on the Fairview campus and I went in the exit but nobody caught me. But it was a really great meeting. I think there's a lot of great things going on at that campus and I really appreciated being invited. Awesome. And I just want to say thank you to the board. I know I was not here at the February regular meeting, and

011I really appreciate you, especially, Vice President Konkin, for running that meeting. And thank you for making the exception for my absence. I appreciate that. Moving on. We are now on to Section 7, which is items from the floor. And items from the floor, any speaker who wishes to address the board regarding a topic that is not on the agenda can speak. The board does not respond so as to avoid violating the Brown Act. Speakers who come up have three minutes to address the board. A bell will ring when you have 30 seconds remaining. There is a beautiful timer back there. And at this point, we have looks like three speakers for item from the floor. Is Kaylee Solano here? Come on up, please. Karina? Sure, absolutely, by all means. Is that microphone the right height

012for you? Is it going to work? Yeah. Sounds like it. Okay. Good evening. My name is Karina Stevens, and I'm a junior in high school and a student athlete. I'm coming here today to speak on the 2024 Chico High Girls Varsity Volleyball season. I and others have filed a formal complaint. This has nothing to do with wins or losses or complaints about playing time. Throughout the season, our head coach, Chaz Konopka, intimidated us, belittled us, and was only conditionally supportive, meaning we had to be winning to receive his version of coaching. We have had many in-person conversations with our vice principal, Gary Story, our AD, Jason Alvester. and our new principal, Erica Sheridan. Along with that, parents and players have been sending various emails and been having phone calls over the past five months. Because

013the school is not required to relay this complaint to the school district board, this is the first you were hearing about it. We took it through all the channels and were left with the impression that our concerns weren't taken seriously or investigated thoroughly. The bottom line of it all, Chas Konopka's behaviors, words, and actions were unacceptable. He has made inappropriate comments and gestures, as well as spoken words that were more than just unkind. They were damaging to such an extent that now 10 out of 14 girls that would be returning players will not come back for the 2025 season if he remains in the program. We made this clear to the school administration, but are not sure if this information was... relate to Chaz as I feel his decision to continue coaching would be impacted

014if he was aware of this. With him remaining coach, this is detrimental. With saying all this, we wouldn't be pushing for this need for his removal and replacement as head girls varsity volleyball coach at Chico High if it wasn't necessary. We are asking for an investigation to our complaints. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. Kaylee Solano? Good evening members of the board. My name is Kaylee Solano and I'm a junior at Chico High School. I played varsity volleyball at Chico High during the 2023 and 2024 seasons. However, my experience with Chaz Kanopka as my coach has stretched over multiple years in a variety of sports. Unfortunately, this year Chaz Kanopka's coaching styles escalated to create an unsafe environment for his players mentally and failed to improve on our talents. Please note the

015comments I'm about to make are not easy as I have known Chaz Konopka and his family since I was three. To say that the head coach, Chaz Konopka, was immature, manipulative, and mentally abusive would be an understatement. I wish upon nobody what my teammates and I had to suffer through for three and a half months of the volleyball season. I could focus on the ineffective coaching styles over the course of this season during these three minutes, but you can review that in my formal complaint that I submitted this week and in my fall survey. I would like to focus on that I've never been described as an uncoachable or lazy player, and yet Chaz would spread lies about me to students in his class and those who told... Those he told would inform me. This

016is not a good example of a good coach, especially when they preach about being a good teammate and standing up for one another. At one point in the season, during a practice, he pulled me aside and yelled at me to admit that I hated him and his coaching. His intimidating tactics were not only used on me, but on other players. As varsity players, we understand... we understand and are used to coaches yelling. However, Chaz Konopka's screams were not constructive. Rather, they would tear his players down and make them play in fear. Not only does he belittle his own players, he would yell negative comments about opposing teams. At state playoffs, a ref confronted the parents in the stands out of concern of the comments, yelling, and belittling that Chaz was displaying. Is this how you

017would like Chico High School to be represented? Karina and I and other fellow varsity players have already talked to our athletic director, Jason Alvester, our vice principal, Gary Story, and principal, Erica Sheridan. The most recent meeting left us feeling... like our rumblings, were not something to take seriously. That, we are the problem. Their solution was to ensure us that a counselor would be able to talk to us during the season, either one-on-one or with Chaz in the room. No other sport team is in need of a counselor for the players to go talk to. If there's need for counselors, there's obviously something wrong that they're not willing to change. 70% of the juniors and sophomores that were on the varsity team last year have already stated that they're not coming back if there isn't a

018change in coach. Shouldn't that bring a little concern to the program? I have enough maturity and self-respect to never put myself through an experience like that again. Most people want to sweep it underneath the rug, but I will not let time make me forget what this man did to my mental health. Thank you. Thank you. We have one more speaker signed up for items from the floor. That is Beth Bradley. Beth Bradley? We do have a... little bit more time is there anyone else who would wish to make a public comment on a matter that is not on the agenda see none thank you very much in that case we are going to move on to item 8 the consent calendar before we do I do want to say thank you to the students who

019spoke I know that getting up in public is difficult and regardless of what happens at that situation I appreciate that you took the time and the effort to address us and let us know what's going on There is another time on the agenda for items from the floor, so I think we might just move on to the next part and make sure she gets in for items from the floor at the end of the meeting. That said, we are going to move on to the consent calendar. Do we have any items that need to be pulled from the consent calendar for further discussion or consideration? See any. Do we have a motion regarding the items on the consent calendar? Motion that we approve the consent calendar a second. All right. We have a motion by

020a member hasten a second by Vice president Konkin any discussion on the consent calendar seeing none all those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye aye I'm sorry. This is our first vote of the day. So we're gonna have to do a roll call vote by name We start with you. I'm gonna land oh I Hayes, aye. Robinson, aye. It is unanimous. I missed one month and I'm rusty. Sorry, guys. All right. Let's move on to item nine, section nine. Item 911 is a discussion action item regarding new high school course proposals designed to meet California Ethnic Studies graduation requirement, human cultural geography, United States history, and cultural and world history and cultures. Thank you. At this time, I'd like to invite Chico High and PBE teachers to please step on up, just

021in case there are any questions from our board. Good evening, board. Let me put on my glasses so I can read today. This is a follow-up to the February 19th Ethnic Studies presentation that we presented to the board. Three courses are coming for your approval. World History and Cultures, which is a year-long class for 10th graders. United States History and Cultures, which is an 11th grade class, and it's also a year long. And then we have a semester-long Human and Cultural Geography class, which is 9-12. This is part of the AB 101, the Ethnic Studies courses requirement, that must be offered during the 25-26 school year. And along with that, the students in the 2030... year will be the first expected to complete the course. And so we brought these courses before you and if

022any questions, well, we're here to answer them. Sorry, guys, I skipped a groove again. Oh my goodness. We do actually have a request for public comment on this item. Before we get there, are there any technical questions or questions of clarification from the board? No? I have a question. Just to refresh my memory, in the development of the curriculum, was there a subcommittee that was involved like the community or was it particularly staff and administration? We had staff, administration. Community involvement was coordinated through the university that the professional development of art that our teachers went through. Okay. I mean, forgive me for not mentioning this earlier, but I could see where, I mean, I know I was kind of reviewing just the concept of the ethnic studies, and there's a huge emphasis on making it

023personalized to the community at large just to be represented all the different ethnicities. So one thought I had in mind in just going through this was... Where it could have been we could have benefited from having you know some insider input from the community parents and Just community members just a thought Yes, please hi, I'm Christine Montgomery from PV and I really like that you're asking this question, and I think it is super important to have community input, and I just wanted to say we are When we did one particular training, it was organized through Glen County Office of Education, and they brought in community members. It was really neat. So we had curriculum design and community things that were initiated by different, these representative minority groups in our community, local people that were working

024together on this issue. And we learned a lot, and so we still have that tie with Glen County Office of Ed. But I do see as we go forward. that this certainly has more of an opportunity for community voice. So I think that's something that we're working on. But that one training in particular was just fabulous. That's great to hear. One more comment. And again, I had to kind of do some research on this just to get the background with the new law. One consideration just involved when it comes to... Like I love the concept and I support the concept of the ethnic studies. I just my main concern would just be the education and training of the instructors so that we're presenting this material in a non-biased way and that it's in no way,

025you know, and this applies to all things in education, but I could see the potential in this class to present biases and. So I would hope that would be an emphasis in the training, that we could allow the kids to use their critical thinking skills and develop their own mindset. Any other questions of clarification from the board? I guess one more. Please, by all means. When you developed this, did you follow the ethnic studies model curriculum guidelines? Is that the one that was used? Or did you use a different version? I'll just say again how pleased I was to, I mentioned this in February, but I do really appreciate the teachers getting together to really craft the class. And I love the, there being a choice of just doing a semester as a ninth grader

026and tying in with geography. And I think that's such a close. because of course our geography affects our culture. And so I thought that was a great way. And then the way that I understood Pedro to present it is that the world and the United States history will be, you could take... this as a lens for your requirements for US history and world history. I thought that was a great way of looking at it. And I just wanted to thank the teachers for putting that together. Just to clarify, though, ninth graders have the option this year to take one or the other, that class or the alternative, which is career planning or career development. No? Okay. Thinking of something else. I'm Sarah Pesillas, assistant principal at Chico High School. We're currently in registration, and so

027it's offered to our students. It is offered 9 through 12, so a different grade level could potentially take it. But yes, you are right that freshmen are looking at either to flop with health, because health is also a semester class, and so they would take either the careers class or... the cultural geography class. And so we don't have those numbers yet. They're still gathering them, but that is the plan for this upcoming year. Once we do have those registration numbers, it would be very interesting for us to know how many students opted for that. Good? Okay, thank you so much. In that case, I would like to invite the parent who signed up to speak if they are here. Do we have any speakers on this topic? We have a card that was submitted for

028this topic with no name. It just says parents. Yeah, I thought so. So if you want to take your time now, by all means. Thank you. I am here tonight as a parent of four school-aged children who will be required to take these ethnic studies courses to graduate. While our state provides general guidelines, it is up to each district to develop its own curriculum, and with that comes opportunity and responsibility. As this curriculum is in its final stages, I ask the board and everyone involved to thoughtfully consider several challenges and concerns. First, there is the risk of division rather than unity. If ethnic studies focus slowly, no, solely, thank you, on oppression and conflict, it could deepen device instead of promoting understanding. Second, we must avoid political bias. Education should foster critical thinking by exposing

029students to a range of perspectives, not just a singular narrative. Another challenge is curriculum design. If not crafted carefully, these courses risk oversimplifying complex issues or overemphasizing struggle while neglecting stories of cultural pride, innovation, and progress. Some California districts have already faced lawsuits and controversy over discriminatory content on their ethnic studies and others have abandoned the programs altogether due to community concerns. We should also learn from Berkeley Unified School District, one of the first to require ethnic studies. Their program has been in place since 1990, yet only 30% of black students in the Berkeley Unified read at grade level today. This serves as a cautionary tale of what can happen when activism overshadows academics. The results concern of adding stress to our students. They already manage heavy course loads, so we need to be careful

030not to limit students' opportunities to explore other classes that broaden their learning and prepare them for future careers. We need to ensure this ethnic studies curriculum is assessed, evaluated, and shaped with consistent parent and community input to guarantee it's delivered to our students in a balanced, thoughtful and constructive way. Transparency and collaboration are essential so this program truly reflects the values and diversity of our community. Lastly, it is critical that any ethnic society programs complies with federal laws that protect against discrimination and uphold parental rights, including Title VI, Title IX, FERPA and PPRA. Failure to meet these legal standards could jeopardize vital federal funding under this administration. I believe ethnic studies can be incredibly valuable, but their success depends on carefully planning, balance, and a commitment to open and respectful dialogue. Thank you. That was

031the only speaker card submitted on this topic. Any other members from the community wish to address it? I do not see anyone. All right. Is there any further... Well, let's have a motion first. Are there any motions related to this item? I motion approval of the new high school course proposal design. I'll second that. Thank you. Can I do like a friendly amendment? Please. And I don't even know if this, maybe this already occurs, but could we have an approval with... like seeing that this is our first year doing this program with like revisiting it at the end and like reassessing and taking surveys to see how effective it's been and if we want to make any changes to the course. Can you consider that, Brenda? I'm sorry. I get bothered with how effective is

032it when we don't have the criteria for what would be effective. I love your idea that we do need to continually reassess, but if we don't have a criteria for what we're looking for to judge that something is successful, I have a hard time voting yes. Yeah, I'm not sure if it's a friendly amendment or not. I think it's substantially different than then what's there So I don't know I honestly don't know whether it's substantially different enough that it makes it a friendly It's up to you as the original as the original mover you can choose if it's friendly amendment if it's not Then you can ask her to make a substitute motion and we'll look for a second for that Yeah, that's what I think more appropriate. You're making so are you making a

033substitute motion? Let me see if I can, I'm not sure if I have the correct wording, but something along the lines of approving it for this year and just because it is a new program, reevaluating the curriculum at the end of the school year to determine if there's any constructive changes we want to make to the course. I think I need clarification on re-evaluating it. And who would be re-evaluating? And how would we re-evaluate? That ties into what you were saying, but then I'm curious, who would be involved in the re-evaluation process? For you, who? Possibly the same committee that developed the curriculum with community feedback and student feedback, looking at some of the numbers. Students this year had the option to choose one or another course. And so getting student feedback on what they

034thought of the course, yeah. And then from other community members? Faculty, community members. Just an evaluation process. Okay. Since it is a new adoption to the curriculum. So what I think I'm hearing is a motion to approve this for one year and to ask the same presenters to come back with data about enrollment and student feedback. Okay. Yeah. Okay. For the sake of discussion, I'll second that. Absolutely. Is there any discussion on the replacement motion? Well, I was hoping actually that somebody, that the people who put together the curriculum and will kind of be, you've given it their charge to be doing this again in another year. And I just want to say that if you, I've been a part of developing curriculum and it's no small task. And I would welcome feedback from. the

035folks out there. I would love to hear what your thoughts are about the amendment. Hi, I'm Gina Snyder. I teach at Chico High, and I've been on this committee for, I think it's been a couple years now that we've been working toward this, and I totally appreciate what you're saying. A couple little caveats to what you're looking for. First of all, this is a pilot year, so none of this is going into effect yet, so numbers might not be indicative of any kind of success or failure, just so you know. And then we as a committee are committed to and planning on coming back together throughout the year and after to see how things went, what, you know, what resonated, what didn't. Possibly getting community input on that, I think, would be a great idea

036in terms of here were the lessons we enacted, what could we have done better, did this represent what you think it should for your various communities. Those are great questions. I'm not sure how that's... super evaluative in terms of we're still in the process. It's not like a completed process. So having that as something to think about is valid and reflective, which is already in place. And I'm sure we're happy to give you feedback as to within our committee what we've found and the things that we've been talking about. once that year has been completed. It's a lot of work and it's a lot of doing and I'm sure we don't mind sharing how that process played out for this year is kind of my thoughts about this. But remember this is a pilot year

037so you know there's not gonna The eighth graders who are signing up for classes right now, it's super optional. And we're hoping, I'm excited to see what numbers we get too. Like we have no idea because this will affect staffing and all kinds of things. So it's an interesting prospect. We'll see what they sign up for. They also have the choices of signing up in their 10th and 11th grade years, but seeing that it's not required of those students yet. my gut is that it's not going to be a huge group, which will give us time to focus and narrow in on a smaller groups of students to pilot this and get their feedback and move forward. So the feedback part is embedded. Yeah, that was really helpful, actually. I mean, I didn't doubt that

038you would be constantly evaluating the program and I guess considering the pilot year, even. at that point. I mean, honestly, I agree with you. It would be useful to have feedback at the end of next year, even if it is just a quick presentation from you guys about how it went. So I agree. I think having feedback, having more information is always helpful. That being said, I'm hesitant to make it a condition of approving the, I mean, I think what I'm hearing and... What I'm hearing is that there is an intention and a willingness to give that feedback even without it being a matter of the motion. That's what I'm hearing. So I think... When you're approving, you know, new curriculum, I'm asking you because you guys are the ones that have experience on the

039board. Is this typical of, like, when approving curriculum, have you guys typically said, you know, we'll approve it, but only if you come and do these things? So two points. One, it's not atypical. We've had a huge discussion around the new science curriculum when that came up, including several rounds of feedback to the board. Secondly, I don't see this as an or else as much as an and. I think we're all in favor of approving it and we'd like to hear about how it went next year. All right? I agree with that. And I guess I'm just kind of reading up what other school districts are doing. I mean, there's a lot of... There's a fair amount of leniency with what is allowed in the curriculum. And I just want to make sure that we're

040representing our community well. And I think it's important to hear from them and make sure that we're representing them well. Since it is ethnic studies and we're representing. And I would very much love to hear later on how our local... Communities are represented in the curriculum. It's super interesting and valid. Absolutely Any more comments on the substitute motion? seeing as this Could you read? My Erica could somebody what do you have? Just in cases when this device did you mind if we do a another roll call vote? All right. I'm just gonna start with you again member Olson Olson I can't can I land away? Hey, Si Robinson I Motion carries and is unanimous. Thank you very much stuff. I appreciate that and With that we are gonna head on Because the steps, you know

041the substitute motion passed which makes the original motion null Absolutely, and if I'm getting any of the parliamentary procedure wrong I hope that the experts over there will correct me, but I think we're in I think we're clear that said we get to Move on to 9.1 to which is the Charter View committee recommendation regarding inspire Hi. Good evening, everybody. I'm Heather Sufuentes, director of elementary, and we are back tonight with Inspire School of Arts and Sciences had submitted their charter renewal petition for the 25 to 2030 school years on January 15th. And pursuant to the California Education Code, Chico Unified District Board of Directors held a public hearing on February 19th. And our Chico Unified Charter School Review Committee has since read, reviewed all of the charters and is in support of the renewal.

042So now it is up to you all to make your decision. Excellent. Thank you so much. Once again, are there any technical questions or questions of clarification from the board for staff or for the representative from Inspire? Hi. I don't see any. There is no public comment listed for this one. Does anyone like to speak regarding the Inspire renewal? In that case, do we have any motions associated with this item? I move approval of the Inspire charter removal with a wholeheartedly yes, yes, yes, please from a parent who I happened to have a chance to speak with last Friday. and they are thrilled with their student success in the program. I would like to second that with equal enthusiasm. Sorry, prerogative, I apologize. I wonder if it's going to pass. That said, we have a

043motion by Member Robinson, a second by Member Lando. Do we have any further discussion on this one? In that case, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any against? None? It is unanimous. Thank you very much. Yes, thank you, Becky. We are thrilled to continue to have you as part of our team and our community. Please give our best to everybody over there. All right, on to 9.1.3. This is the Charter Reviews Committee Recommendation regarding Nord Country School. All right, so Nord Country School is also here. They are also up for their renewal this year. They submitted their petition for the 2025-2030 school years on January 15th, and we had the public hearing for them on February 19th. Again, the Chico Unified Charter School Committee reviewed it and is in support of a renewal.

044Excellent. Thank you. Once again, do we have any board member questions of clarification? All right. Would any member of the public wish to speak on this item at this point? Seeing none, do we have a motion? Me. We have a motion by me. Do we have a second? I'll second that motion. Okay. As long as I get a free pie. Quid pro yes. And not or else. We have a motion by Vice President Konkin, seconded by Member Robinson. Any further discussion or debate on this one? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed? It is unanimous. Thank you very much. And again, congratulations to NORD. We look forward to working with you. Thanks. Oh yeah, we are all looking forward to the pie sale, it's true. Looking forward to next

045year's pie sale, apparently. We're on to item 9.14, which is an informational item about the Reading Pals program. Hello again. So our elementary schools have taken a deep dive into literacy over the last few years, and we have a ton of positive momentum moving forward with professional development and community relationships supporting this literacy movement across all 12 of our elementary schools. Tonight, I am super thrilled to introduce two of the... smartest people I think I know who are really leading the charge and supporting not only our staff but our students and just building this enthusiasm for reading. It's hard to pack it all in here. You'll see as they come up, we all have our shirts on ready. So I would like to introduce... Kristy Bengtson, our Multi-Tiered System of Supports Coordinator, and Michelle Curran,

046our Executive Director of Reading Pals. All right, I think this will work. Is there a clicker by chance? So part of the presentation tonight, we wanted to do a little bit of education, some knowledge about the reading science, because it's fascinating to learn how our brain actually learns to read text. As Heather said, I'm Christy Bangston. I am the Multi-Tiered Systems of Support Coordinator, and one of my roles is I work with all of our elementary reading teachers and intervention teachers in Chico. So, first off, why is reading difficult? And it can be very difficult for many of our students. One, our brains are not wired to read. Humans have only been reading for about 5,000 years, but we've been speaking for more than 50,000 years. Our brains are wired to receive language and understand

047language. Our brains are not wired to read print. English is both a meaning and sound based language. So if you think of the word washed, we hear the sounds washed. But when we spell it, we have to know, well, it's not going to be a T at the end. It's going to be that E-D because the E-D is what holds the meaning, meaning it happened in the past. And much of our language, English is a combination of many Greek, Latin, French, and Anglo-Saxon words. And then we have this thing called mere invariance, which is actually really helpful. So, for example, when our brains see, oh, did it turn off? There we go. So if you think of a, I don't think it got put in. So if you think of a house and then you

048flip it horizontally and then you flip it vertically, it's still a house. And our brains are primed to do that. But now think of the letter B and now flip it horizontally and it becomes the letter D. And then you flip it vertically and it becomes the letter P or Q because I'm very visual. I'd have to write it all down. And then it would also, you flip it another way and it could become a Q. So P, B, Q, and P, B, D. When our brains see that, we see a round circle and we see a stick. And it could be a B, it could be a P. So we have to actually undo that mirror invariance in order to process some of the letters. So this is a very, very quick overview of

049how our brains learn to read. As you know, we have four regions of our brain. In the frontal part of our brain is where we receive language and we hear all the sounds that are being spoken. Also, kind of in the middle part of our brain, that's where we are understanding and we're making meaning of all the sounds we're hearing that turn into the words and the sentences that we hear and speak to each other. In the back part of our brain, that's where our visual area is, and that is the part where our brains are not wired to read those little squiggles that form the letters of our alphabet. So what we have to do is literally build the path from hearing the sounds, understanding the sounds, and connecting them to that written form.

050So we're constantly working on building that bridge between those two areas because it's not something that we're born with. And then also with all those 26 letters we have in English. Those combinations of letters can make 44 different sounds. So it's an amazing thing to see when kids and teaching students how to read and seeing them become readers because we've literally built, helped them build that bridge between sounds and the print. So as an example, I'm going to say some sounds and you can tell me the word that I said. The sounds are p. What's the word? Park. You knew that. You heard the individual sounds. So what happens when we read is we see these individual letters. So I'm looking at a text and I see the letters P-A-R-K. So in my brain I'm

051thinking P-A-R-K. P-A-R-K. Okay, well, that's four letters. Oh, but I know that A-R can say R. P-R-K. P-R-K. Okay, well, that sounds like a word I've heard before. So if the word is park, now we are thinking we don't want to leave out the language comprehension piece of it. So we've heard the sounds. We've seen the letters. We've connected. The sounds we know to the letters, and we've got this word park. What are some things that you're thinking of when you hear the word park? Bidwell, like a national park, a place set aside. Any others? Parking my car. Parking your car. So it could be a park, just like an open area in town with grass and trees. It could be like a national park, Bidwell Park, an area set aside. It could be parking

052your car in a location for a period of time. Well, now let's look at that one word that we had the sounds, we connected to the letters, now we're thinking about what it is. Let's look at it inside of a sentence. The Reading Pals volunteers shifted their vehicle into park. before turning it off. There's a whole other meaning. So this park in this particular sentence in this context means to engage the park gear on your vehicle's transmission. So there's lots of things that we do every day in our classroom to support our students. Lots of segmenting, really the letter recognition and sounds, building that bridge between those two areas in our brain. Making meaning of words, always, always, always making meaning of the words that we're hearing, but also reading. And then writing. Writing is

053the hardest skill for us to do, because not only are we now connecting the letters, now we have to think. how do I make that letter with a pencil? It adds that physical element into it. So one example of something that we do in our classrooms is called an alphabet arc, and it looks like this. It's just a little placemat, and there's a ton of different activities that we can do with this, and so I'm just going to share a couple. But the very simplest is just can our students say A, B, C, and connect it to this is an A, this is a B, this is a C. And then we want to start connecting the sounds. And you'll notice that some of the letters have multiple stars underneath. Because some of those letters

054can have two or three sounds. And so a chant that we learned from Dr. Stacey Bain, who has helped us a lot with a lot of this information, goes a little something like this. So I would be the teacher, and then the students would respond. So the first one would be, it goes A-A, or A-A, A-A. B-B. Seek. Cease. And you would go on and you would do that every day to get a little bit quicker because we want that to be so automatic that when they hear the word cat, they're like, okay, I know. And then they can start to move past, okay, the sound, what letter does that make? They move past that. They free up brain space to be able to focus on writing the task or writing that letter, writing the

055word. You'll see there's three little lines in here because another activity we would do would be tell me the letter that represents M. So they could point to it. And then you could say here's how we write an M and you can model it down here. And then you can do the same thing. Tell me the letter that represents the sound A. And so then you can start, we can start to build short words with two and three phonemes, which is just the sounds we hear in words. Within our elementary, all of the supports that we have at our school sites, Reading Pals is one that we have as a tier two support. And I would love to introduce... Michelle Curran, our executive director of Reading Pals, so that she can share with you a

056little bit more information about Reading Pals. Christy came and did our training for our volunteers in December because she's much better at that than I am. I'm not an educator. Reading Pals is actually really an accident and a good one it turned out to be. We, 14 years ago, had some volunteers and we were hearing feedback that one of the ways we could lift the burden from educators is have kids come into the grade level reading at the appropriate grade level. Both my parents are educators, my husband was an educator, and I said I'd never go into education and so I'm education adjacent now with almost 300 volunteers that come in every day to Chico Unified Schools. And really what we've seen when we started, we weren't looking at data, we just thought, hey, one

057volunteer that provides support to one kid that's struggling, that's effective. And we were looking at resiliency research from Harvard and all these other studies before ACEs and PACEs became a thing. And we, really the mindset that we're helping kids shift is from this fixed mindset, because all our... This is quotes from our students who come into Reading Pals. They say, I'm just dumb. I just can't do it. I don't know how everyone else gets it, and I don't. And as a mom, I didn't have kids when I started Reading Pals. I do now. And watching my own kiddos struggle, who are raised in literacy-rich environments, recognizing it doesn't just come easy for some kids. There really is a need for, like, pointed support. And for a lot of the kids that come into Reading Pals,

058their classroom doesn't feel like a super safe space to make mistakes. Their classmates have made fun of them. They have already developed this mentality that doesn't let their brain actually make those physical connections that Christy was talking about. And specifically, there's like neuroscientists that can tell you that social cognitive development, like the literal brain connecting those four pieces, is socially activated. It's activated in a safe social environment. And so when the kids come into Reading Pals, they know their volunteer is here just for them. And they can fail. can make a mistake and they don't have anyone's repercussions, right? They know a classmate's not gonna make fun of them. That's what we hear all the time. Today, now we've had 3,600 kids have a volunteer one-on-one for over 77,000 hours here in Chico. And we

059continue to see that just last night, I was at my own kids' back-to-school night and a mom burst into tears and said, I just heard you brought reading pals to Hooker Oak. Nothing has changed our kids' mentality about school like a volunteer sitting with them. I'm going to cry now. And she just said, thank you. It's been why he gets out of bed in the morning. He no longer is afraid. He actually picks up a book. He asked to go to Barnes & Noble. Things that just weren't happening. It was a fight before. And we caught him. He's in second grade. And we caught him before that really important cusp of third grade. This is a fun story about a fifth grader at Rosedale. Actually, Maria Bias was the very first. office manager, attendance clerk

060that showed up or was there the first day we ever had a volunteer come on campus and Renee was a dear, dear, dear person to her. And we started with 13 Rotarians. They all came in and they read and worked with a student. Actually at that point we weren't even just focusing on reading and so Herberto was a fifth grader reading at a second grade reading level. In three months they sat together. Rene actually came in with a stack of American history books. And Herberto said, I'd rather read Diary of a Wimpy Kid. And so Rene was in his 70s, and they read Diary of a Wimpy Kid week in and week out. And Rene brought his dictionary, and he showed him all the tools. Like, Herberto was just convinced he was just born dumb,

061and he was never going to get it. And Rene showed him something else. And in three months, Herberto went from a second grade reading level to a fifth grade reading level. He got redesignated before he started junior high, which meant he got to have Thank you, Charlie. And that was a big deal. And honestly, we never heard from him until seven years later. Someone, one of Renee's friends had a friend on the Chico Community Scholarship Association committee. And he said, hey, somebody wrote an essay about you. And I immediately tracked Heriberto down via all my sources at Chico Unified. I said, Arreberto, will you write me something? Because a lot of volunteers are like, how is this possible? How does one hour a week make any difference for these kids that are struggling? Like, I

062just don't see it. I don't know. And Arreberto said, sure, let me, I'm finishing finals right now. Let me just finish and I'll write you, kind of like, I'll send you my essay in the meantime. And he wrote this essay. And essentially, he... the prompt for the essay was write about someone who changed your life. And he wrote about the three months Renee spent reading with him one-on-one for an hour a week. Last year, we celebrated right here our official 10th year anniversary and the Golden Bell Award from the California School Board Association. And Araberto was one of our keynote speakers. And Renee's whole family came. Renee volunteered with us for 12 years. He passed away in 2022. Renee's whole family came and got to meet Araberto. And Araberto is now a civics teacher in

063Las Plumas. Tisha was on the Kyrene Committee Forum. And what's really fun... Expecting twins. Yes, expecting twins, yes. He got married right after we showed our sentenced film. And what's really fun is Rene's son is also Rene. And a few weeks ago, I was subbing in for a site coordinator who was gone, and I was reading with a kid and started reading with this little boy who really loves World War II history. And so I texted Rene. Tisha's the other volunteer with him. I texted the son, Rene, and I said, I have a kid who really likes history. If you ever want to just come over. and meet him, come. And so he came, he showed him his pilot's license and his World War II plane. And then he's like, I can't not come back.

064So I'll be there every Tuesday. So he's Tisha's volunteer partner every day, every week at Citrus, which is really fun. And that's just one story. I could tell you 3,600 of them. But in the process of all of this, I can't keep up with the demand from schools that have requested reading files. I literally am. Creating all the little name tags to ship off to Washington, D.C. that's going to start the same and use the same model that we're doing. We're at 20 other school sites. Shasta County just started last week. Doing math pals. We're trying to figure that out. And then reading pals juniors for kinder and first grade that we're working with and considering the partnership with first five to work on it with families. So thanks for your time and attention and

065your partnership. I feel like Chico Unified was willing to take a risk as a guinea pig program. And here we are with a lot of successful stories and now not being able to keep up. So thanks for being a part of it. Thank you. And I can't stress enough how valuable this program is and how good it is for our community. If there are any community members out there who are worried about what's going on in our schools or who want to get involved, please, please, all the information is up on the screen here. Get in contact with Reading Pals and find out how volunteering is incredibly rewarding both for the students and the volunteers. And with that, unless anyone else wants to talk about Reading Pals, and I think we could probably sing their

066praises for hours at a time, we're going to move on to item 9.15. which is an informational update on the community school's grant implementation. This item is listed under Chase Chevalier. Chase is unfortunately under the weather and has been for a couple of days. He is very sorry he's not able to be here, but the Ed Services team will be here to share the presentation with you. Yeah, Chase works very closely with many of us, if not all of us in Ed Services, as well as other folks around the district office. So we'll try to do his work justice tonight. So we're here to talk about the California Community Schools Partnership Program Implementation Grant. And CCSPP is not an acronym that rattles off my tongue, so I'm going to not use that, even though it's

067in parentheses there. So a quick overview of the community schools. Essentially what we're doing is focusing on the whole child. We are focusing on, with this grant in particular, the social, emotional, and physical well-being of our students, and really with the end goal of positively impacting their academics in the end. Students come to school to us from all different situations and backgrounds, and we're trying to really deal with the whole child with this initiative. So the the grant is administered by the state and the state has laid forward four pillars for the community schools to focus on integrated student supports and that may be social emotional behavioral or academic Expanded learning time and opportunities including enrichment opportunities active family and community engagement which we just heard a little bit about community engagement before I came

068up, and collaborative leadership and practices. And the family and community engagement and the collaborative leadership really came into play during the planning year. Chase went out and along with site principals met with the school communities. to basically identify needs specific for those sites. And it was very, very collaborative, and we had a lot of interest at the site level. So this is a five-year grant. This is the first year of it, and we're going through the 28-29 school year with this grant. And so one area of focus for us is to... create and sustain a system of support for school social workers at the community school sites. And school social worker is a new position for us. We do have folks in our district that are credentialed to be a social worker, but they're not

069working, they haven't been working in that role previous. Developing a comprehensive needs and assets or gap analysis protocol is another goal. And that kind of goes back to the school community involvement that I mentioned on the previous slide. The community schools advisory teams at each school site, again, will provide ongoing feedback on how things are going. Eileen. Mr. Karas, going back to bullet number three, comprehensive needs and assessment gap analysis. Who's doing that and what are you basing your criteria on? So that would be done at the site level in conjunction with Chase. What the criteria is, I'm not sure. I'm going to... Refer that to any Ed Services members that, no? I think going back to some of the pillars that were in the previous slide, those are parts of it. But the families

070and this advisory committee that has formed have really become quite collaborative. And it's really been fun to hear and watch them get together, talk about what their school specifically would like, where they need some support, maybe some places they don't need some support that they're doing fine with. So those are all what we consider needs and assets. And they may continue to change and morph over time. So, Kent, I didn't see it. I don't believe or maybe I missed it. Which schools right now are considered community schools? We're about to get that on the next slide, but I'll give you a spoiler. McManus, Chapman, Citrus, and then our alternative ed schools. One of the things that when the planning portion of the grant was going on last year that became very, very apparent to all

071of us in Ed Services was that we had a huge head start compared to many districts in the state due to our focus on the multi-tiered systems of support in Chico Unified. Christy Bankson, Chase, and I attended a Northern California meeting of folks in the same boat putting up the grant. It became very clear, very fast that we had a huge head start. We've been very fortunate. with grant money and personnel, the right people to have a good head start on that. So really, like, how we see this is just another set of resources that we can pour into the multi-tiered systems of support. So one of the things that we're focused on, and this is really the work of the social workers, is creating a robust list of community resources. It's been eye-opening for

072me to hear the conversations about what is available out there. We hope to do a good job connecting families with those resources. We want to, again, support student academic achievement by supporting their other needs, their social, emotional, behavior. Getting them to school is extremely important and a big area of focus for all these sites going back as long as I can remember. Parent education comes into play and that's again the work of the social workers. developing and fostering strong family engagement events at community school sites. So events that bring in the school community. A little side story about one of our brand new social workers who they just came on right after winter break, but there was a student who had missed, I think, 77 days of school leading up to Christmas. Like basically it

073was... not coming to school, and she's missed four days since Christmas, and that's because the social worker reached out and was working with the family and continues to work with the family. So that's a great example of exactly what we're after with this grant. This may sound like an odd question, but on that last slide where it says develop and foster strong family engagement events. Is food one of the items that you can purchase with grant monies? Like having community dinners? I think you don't think so? I don't know for certain. My inkling is that most grants don't allow food. They want other things going toward that, which is a tricky one because food does bring people together. We know that, but we look for other avenues to do that. Well, I hope you do

074because I think one of the, and I would also encourage you to reach out to CTA. CTA has an IFT grant that is amazing, and we have had. great community participation and CTA money can be used for food. And so it's really nice to be able to have a social event like the Ballet Folklorico, for example, we did that. And then a local provider brought food in and it was free to anybody who showed up. And that's always a great engagement for community. All right, so the current grantees, like I mentioned earlier, Chapman, Citrus, McManus, and all of the schools on the Alternative Education Campus, Academy for Change, Center for Alternative Learning, Fairview, and Oakdale. There has been social workers added in year one as I mentioned earlier and then we are bringing on elementary

075intervention specialists at the three elementary sites and those are 0.8 full-time equivalent positions. So those teachers will have a 0.2 supplemented from another funding source. Alternative Ed has purchased and is currently using a van to go pick kids up and get them to school and address it. They have, you know, like all these schools have been working on attendance forever, and this has been a wish of theirs for a while now. So now they have a van. So very nice. Okay, so the school social worker role is central to this initiative. Some things that they will do is specialized counseling, group one-on-one counseling, group counseling, social emotional learning, outside referrals to agencies in the community, and then family-focused needs and support. We hope to continue to develop parent education programs. Mr. Karras, going back to

076outside referrals on your bullet number one, is our supply of outside referral resources working for us? I have a problem with, well, recently, a student... got back into school after being out a bit. And in my mind, I'm thinking, oh, yay, you know, get that family supported because talk about a gap. And the frustration was nowhere to send them. How are we doing in that area? I can't speak to the details of that. But what I would say is like in the context of community schools, we're at the very, very beginning stages of having social workers on our campus. We have three right now. It's a new position. They bring a lot of knowledge, a lot of training with them. They're very, very well connected to outside agencies. So that's something we hope to, like

077I said, develop as we go. Yes, please. Okay, there's family engagement, wellness events again. You know, building school community is very important. De-escalation, student crisis management, and trauma-informed practices. So that would look potentially like training for staff, having a highly trained person to help out the elementary counselors with... crisis management. However, the social workers are more geared to deal with families as well. We are, you know, as social workers are a new position for us, we're working to create a system of support for them as we hopefully build up beyond, you know, three or four social workers that we have this year. Okay, so... From the data piece, our first glimpse at the social workers really show us that they are focusing their efforts on our students with the highest needs. So what you're looking

078at here is a chart that tells you what percentage of each student group has received a contact from a social worker. Okay, so this is the breadth of what they're doing. They've contacted 14.5% of the students at those three elementary schools, and that's since January. You can see Foster, our Foster students, are the second, the light blue line. You can see we have, I think that's... Over 65% of foster students have a contact. 40%, about 40% of our homeless students have received a contact. And that's really, you know, it says a lot about our multi-tiered system of supports that kids that need it are getting the contacts. And this chart shows a similar story. This is the depth of what they're doing with each student group. So on average, what this is showing us is

079that a foster student in one of these three schools has had an average of almost two contacts from a social worker. So that might be working with parents. That might be working with a student. And so again, it just shows us that they're focusing where we would expect them to focus on. And that's all we have. Any questions? Thank you. One thing to mention quickly is we have a grant application in currently for the next round there are some schools that would Qualify according to some of the data pieces of course we won't know if they will be fully funded or chosen Until we hear back from the state we anticipate that in April sometime Before mr. Harris goes I'm wondering I think it's awesome seeing especially outreach to foster youth and our homeless population.

080And I know that that was something that you reported out on in our dashboard. And I realize the dashboard covers the entire district. But what would be interesting for me to see or I would be interested in seeing. Do these the community schools do their foster youth and their homeless youth? I'm wondering how that that will show like maybe academic progression or reduction in absenteeism to see whether there's a real differentiation between our our community schools and then our schools that are not eligible to be a community school. So I just think that would be interesting information to look at when we have it. Right. Absolutely, we'll be looking at information like that. Okay, thank you. Thank you. All right, in that case, we're going to move on to Section 9.2, Business Services. Our first

081item is 921, the Charter Schools Measure K Project Requests. Good evening. Thank you for having me here this evening. Tonight I bring forward results of another Measure K Charter School of Facilities Committee meeting. The charter schools got together. They brought two projects forward. One is for Forest Ranch Charter School, and they want to do a front doorbell with a camera. And that project will cost $19,128.17. And Sherwood Montessori School would like some assistance from a consultant to help them apply for Proposition 2 facilities funds through the state of California. There's a proposal in here from King Consulting, who you met last month, who does those same services for the district as well as the demographic analysis. And that project is $5,125. we recommend the approval of those projects and open up for any questions if

082there are any thank you remember robinson thank you um yes miss kissel excuse me for not knowing this um what is this i'm looking at sherwood help with completion of csfs application what i believe that is california School facilities funding? Charter school facility funding. I'm not sure. I don't know what their acronym is for that. This would be something outside of what might be available to them through other funding sources. They can't tax. They have a limited way of getting... funds for themselves. So is this one of those little places where they can go? It is. Proposition 2 did allocate a certain amount of dollars to go toward charter schools, facilities, projects. So the round will be opening, I believe, this August, and they would like to get in line to apply for assistance with

083school facility improvements through the state. Got it. Thank you. Am I remembering correctly that Proposition 2 was in addition to our Measure C? And so Measure C offers funding, but Proposition 2 offers... additional funding and that they're just wanting to know how to write a successful grant. That's what they're asking for help with. Yes. Charter schools often lack the resources to be able to write the grant proposal. It is different than what public school district like Chico Unified has to do. We have had a couple of really successful projects though. Chico Country Day requested Proposition 1D funds years ago and they were able to make large improvements to their campus and Inspire School of Arts and Sciences also applied for charter school funding through the state and were successful on receiving funds granted to them

084as well. Thank you. Are there any other questions for Miss Kissel? Are there any members of the public who wish to speak on this topic? All right. Do we have a motion for this item? Mr. President, thank you. I'll move approval of both of the requests for Forest Ranch and Sherwood. Do we have a second? I'll second. Here we go. All right. We have a motion by Member Robinson, a second by Vice President Konkin. Are there any further discussion or debate on this one from the board? No, I'm good. Okay, excellent. In that case, let's go ahead and vote. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed? It is unanimous. Thank you very much, Julie. Appreciate you. Thank you. But stick around because we're going to talk about the 9.22, the Corporation

085Yard Paving Project. Thank you. My partner's in crime. So tonight we bring to the board a request to contract with North Star Engineering to investigate and develop plans to pave the corporation yard. Some of it is currently paved and some of it is gravel. Our transportation supervisor, Bob Ontiveros, has been successful in applying for and being granted $250,000 from the Butte County Air Quality Management District. So we would propose to pay for these engineering services with a portion of that grant. And with me tonight are Joe Morris and Vincent Serro, and they're going to just give a brief explanation of... Why we feel it's needed. Let's get down here. Thank you for the opportunity. We've been dealing with it ever since I've been here. This is my 15th year. Most equipment that goes with the

086restaurant pieces of things, air conditionings and refrigeration cooling units, should last 20 years. I'm on my third set out there, and we're probably up of $125,000 on this third set of replacing that. The wear and tear that it just takes on people walking around out there, the amount of equipment that has to be... that has to cross through these things from one building to the next via a forklift or whether it's on a cart is there's lots of spills. There's lots of opportunities. I have to say for just workers comp things to happen out there. And it's, we have a great opportunity with this to get a great start at it. And I think it's about, it will help out, help out tremendously in all departments. Yeah, absolutely. So Joe Morse. And yes, on the

087transportation side, what we're running into is the upkeep of the buses. We're constantly putting them through countless cleaning times. It's hard on all of the inside of the bus, outside of the bus. It's very unsafe for all the bus drivers. We've had a few people trip. They've slipped in some of the mud. So really, it's unsafe. portion for all of our staff. It also is very hard on the air conditioning units. We're constantly changing out the air filters just so we can keep air flowing through them. And again, I think it would be a very big plus for not only us, but for people that come into the yard, other truck drivers. Vince has a lot of his trucks that come in there for delivery, have them to turn around. It's becoming a problem, so

088we're really hoping that this could turn into something that we could get that rectified. Thank you. And I mean, anybody who's been out there, it's done in pretty coarse gravel, and this has needed to happen for some time. So I'm very excited that you guys found a source to pay with. That's awesome. Thank you so much for putting this on top of your priority list. Well, no, I want to ask questions of clarification from any of us. Do you have one? Okay, take it away, please. Thank you. Could the attachments be put on the screen, please? And I was looking at the, nope, go back to the, I think it's the tools one. Yes, this one. So I was just curious, could you walk us through what the different colors were? Obviously, it looks like

089there's some black top that's there. And then could you talk to us about what each? color meant here yes so when we met with the engineer luckily it was pouring down rain so he got a really good idea of what it's like we designated the red area the most important area to get completed on the project and the yellow as if we can afford it we would like to also do that. So when he develops the plans to go out for bidding, it will have those two separated so that if we can't afford the yellow portion, we can just move forward with the red portion. I want to make sure you understand that the... the monies that we would be paying to North Star Engineering is for their surveying, their development of plans for drainage,

090rock, compaction, all of the engineering, and then those plans would go out for bid. So we'll be coming back to you at that point to ask for your approval to move forward. Thank you. Yes, thank you very much. Any other questions of clarification? Don Cini, do we have any public input on this one? Anybody really excited about paving out there? Excellent. Right on. Hi, my name is Holly Ponciano. I actually didn't even come here for this, but this is great because my husband actually works for the nutrition department as a nutrition delivery driver, and I get to hear from him all the time about pushing these huge food carts across the gravel from the bakery and the new freezer areas to his truck and back and forth. But I've been out there to visit him

091from every indication I've ever seen that is dangerous I don't know how I don't know how they do it. Honestly They're pretty tough guys And I think that any paving you could give them any help you could give them they're out there in the range having these huge carts back and forth and if they didn't have to do it through The gravel and the mud holes and all that kind of stuff out that would that would be wonderful. So I hope you say yes Thank you so much any other members of the public And that's why we always check. Seeing none, do we have a motion associated with this item? I motion approval. I'll second that motion. Very good. Motion by Member Hayes, second by Member Robinson. Oh, quick clarification. Oh, timeline, Ms. Kissel. Do

092you know about how long it'll take to get this stuff drawn up so we can put it out to bid and begin work? I would imagine we're probably... 60 days. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you so much. Any more discussion on this one? In that case, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? It's unanimous. Thanks, guys. We're going to move on to 9.23, an informational-only item about our general obligation bond program. Yes, good evening board this evening in kind of a Acknowledgement of measure C being passed in November and moving forward with issuing funds We want to give a overview of our bond program here at Chico Unified The voters of Chico Unified have been very gracious and having passed our third bond since 2012 so we've been

093You can see some of the improvements here in this facility that we've gotten from that. So this evening we have Makiko Sato from ISM Advisors here to speak regarding our general obligation bond program. Hi, Makiko. Hi, Sato. So good to see you again. Great. I think that works, but I'm a little short. Well, Board President Lando, Board members, Superintendent Staley, Cabinet, and Chico community, thank you so much for your time this evening. Sorry. Oh, perfect. You have a number of bond-related resolutions on the agenda tonight, so I thought I'd come and give a quick overview presentation. There are a lot of slides in this presentation, but I'm going to run through it relatively quickly. But don't hesitate to ask me any questions as we go along. So history of bond authorizations, the district voters have

094been very supportive of the district's bond program for bond authorization since 1998 and very high passage levels. The district currently has 33 million in remaining authorization from the 2012 Measure E bond program and all of the Measure C bond authorization still remaining to be issued. So just to Quick background on the 2012 Measure E bond program. So the Measure E bond program was designed as a tax rate extension, meaning that the district intended to keep combined tax rates for Measure E and all prior bond authorizations to $45.50 per $100,000 in assessed value. Because of that tax rate target, the district... needed to spread out the issuance of the Measure E bonds. And so when Measure K was passed, we developed this issuance schedule to alternate between Measure E and Measure K. And I'm very excited

095because we're finally at the very bottom row to issue the final series of bonds from Measure E. So in terms of the Series C structure, it's going to layer on top of the existing 1998 Measure A and 2012 Measure E bonds that have already been issued. And you can see that on a combined basis, we are projecting with reasonable assessed valuation growth that the district would be able to keep those tax rates below that $45.50 per $100,000 in assessed value tax rate target. So the resolution that the board is being asked to consider it would authorize the sale of those measure e bonds the series C bonds it also stipulates a few parameters a not to exceed parama of 33 million which is the remaining authorization the structure of the bonds will be traditional current

096interest bonds maximum term of 30 years although from the prior graph you can see we're intending that term to be around 16 years and not to exceed underwriters discount of three dollars per bond which is consistent with the prior bond issuances. We're also required to show was quick. Some good faith estimates in connection with the Series C bonds, and so those are listed here. One thing I do want to point out is the true interest cost is 3.75%. I'm sure you've been hearing a lot about interest rates being very, very high if you're going out for mortgages or car loans. In the municipal space for tax-exempt bonds, interest rates are relatively... low still. So I did want to highlight that 3.75% estimate for these Series C bonds. The 2024 Measure C bond program. That's a

097new authorization, and it had a separate tax rate target of $60 per $100,000 in assessed value, so we have a lot of capacity here. The structure of the Series A bonds are shown in that dark gray color, and we're leaving capacity for future Series B and future Series C issuances. So the resolution... would authorize the issuance of Measure C bonds, the Series A bonds. The not-to-exceed par amount would be $80 million. The structure, again, would be traditional current interest bonds with a maximum term of 30 years. The resolution specifies the maximum term to be 30 years, but we're structuring them as 25-year bonds. And then, again, a not-to-exceed underwriter's discount of $3 per bond. Good faith estimates in connection with the Series A bonds. The two interest costs here, 4.42%, a little bit higher than

098those 2012 Series C bonds because of a slightly longer term, but still very attractive. And in conjunction with the new money bonds, what we want to do is we want to look at some of the existing outstanding bonds to see if there are any opportunities to essentially refinance some of those bonds to generate taxpayer savings. So this is a graph that shows the municipal market data rates, the 10-year rates specifically. And you can see here the interest rates are definitely higher than they were back in that 2021 period, which we saw historic lows, but we're still in line with historical averages. And we're still significantly below those taxable rates. So in terms of a refunding opportunity, the 2012 Series B bonds are going to be currently callable in August of 2025, which means that we

099can refund them on a tax-exempt basis as early as May under tax law. So based on the current market environment, we are estimating that we can generate taxpayer savings of about $1.5 million over time. which translates to PV savings a little over 3% as a percentage of the refunded bond par amount. And we like doing these refundings whenever possible in conjunction with the new money because there's some economies of scale, especially in terms of disclosure and rating fees. So the bond resolution for the 2025 refunding bonds establishes a not to exceed par amount of $30 million. Again, the structure is traditional current interest bonds with the same underwriter's discount. And the maximum term under Ed Code, we're not able to extend the maturity of the prior bonds. And so the repayment term would be the

100same or shorter. There is a note at the bottom. If the market shifts away from us, and there aren't significant taxpayer savings. There is no obligation just because you approve this authorization to move forward. Really what the board will be doing is delegating that decision to Superintendent Staley and to Ms. Krueger. And so they can make a judgment closer to pricing whether or not to move forward with this refunding. Again, the good faith estimates, the true interest cost is estimated to be 3.66% on this one. All right, so in terms of timeline, the district board approval, that should be March 12th tonight. We are scheduled to meet with the rating analysts, the rating agencies during the week of March 24th. County board of supervisors approval later in March. And we are planning to price in

101mid-April with a closing in early May. And that's it for the presentation. There are some additional slides in the back with some additional data points if you're interested, but I won't go over them now. Yes, thank you very much. And I love that we are continually looking for those refinancing options to save our community some money. That's good to hear and a good thing to remind the community about. As I know, it's always a little painful to agree to tax ourselves. That said, are there any questions? For Makiko or for the rest of the staff. Do we have any public comment on this one? Seeing none, this is not, this first part is only informational as we're just kind of getting the lay of the land so we can head into 924 which is a

102discussion action item for resolution 1681-25. This would authorize the issuance and sale of general obligation bonds election of 2012 series C not to exceed 33 million dollars and approving related documents and actions. So this resolution before you, 1681.25, is the last remaining dollars, should the board approve it, for Measure E, which was the election in 2012. It is the third issuance, which is why it's called Series C. It would be the remaining dollars left to be able to continue our projects in our facility master plan. And for this one, are we aiming to have it, I think I saw it in here, aiming to have it fully paid off by 40, 41? We genuinely try to do around 25 to 30 years, but it could be less. Thank you. This is the one with the

10316-year repayment term. The 16, okay. So we should be looking at 16 from 2012 or 16 years from the final issuance? The final maturity we are projecting will be in 2041. That's what I thought, 41. Okay, thank you. Appreciate that. Any other questions? Can you remind us what sites are going to be targeted with these monies mostly? Yeah, so the remaining $33 million here is going to the Citrus Modernization Project, which is currently in scope and hopefully going to design soon, as well as the district-wide restroom renovation project that Julie Kissel has spoken about. Thank you. It was a good reminder. Any other questions of clarification? Are there any members of the public who wish to speak on this one? All right, seeing none, do we have a motion regarding this resolution? I move approval.

104I'll second. All right, we have a motion by Member Robinson and a second by Member Olson. Any discussion or debate on this one from the board? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? It is unanimous. Thanks guys. On to 9.2.5, a similar resolution. This one is 1682-25, authorizing issuance and sale of general obligation bonds in the election of 2024 Series A, an aggregate principal not to exceed $80 million, and related documents and actions. Yes, Resolution 1682.25 is the newly approved Measure C Series A, the first issuance. We are going out for $80 million in this initial cash run, and this is going to be allocated towards the complete rebuild of Rosedale Elementary. So the board did decide when they approved the Facility Master Plan that we would have three

105elementaries that would benefit from Measure C, and Rosedale is up first, and then Chapman and then Parkview. So as we issue more cash, then those schools will come on board. And this is less a question of clarification. I'm just really excited because with these resolutions, we'll get to see construction on both Rosedale and Citrus as well as the restrooms. And this is stuff that we and the community have been looking for for a long time. So I just want to say thank you to all of you and the community at large for making sure this actually happens. Are there any other questions or comments from the board? Well, I would just like to express my appreciation as a grandparent of a Rosedale student for the efforts of Beth Bradley, who was a co-chair for Yes

106on Measure C. And I'm just, I know, thank you so much. Yeah, the effort that the Rosedale... community especially put in is just an exemplar of how schools and communities ought to interact and we're really very grateful for you to make sure that happened. On that note are there any public comments on this one? Do we have a motion then? Oh, do we have a comment? Please. I'll motion. I'll second. All right motion by member Hayes, second by member Olsen. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? It is unanimous. Awesome. Thank you so much. And that brings us to our third and final one of these, I believe. This is 1683-25, a resolution authorizing issuance and sale of 2025 general obligation refunding bonds in aggregate principle not to exceed $30

107million to refinance outstanding general obligation bonds. Yes, so resolution 1683-25 is to refinance 30 million of old bonds at a lower interest rate to generate that tax savings to our constituents. We realize that by the board and moving forward with approving the other two bond sales that that will be a tax implication on property owners' tax rolls, but we do want to take advantage of any tax savings that we can at the same time to acknowledge their effort. Excellent. And do we have any questions of clarification or questions for staff on this one? Do we have any members of the public who wish to speak on this item? Do we have a motion associated with Resolution 1683-25? I'll move approval. I'll second it. All right. So we have approval by Member Konkin and a second

108by Member Lando. Any further debate? Not debate, but I do want to comment. I just want to second President Lando's... appreciation for making sure that we're doing these things for our taxpayers in our community. Definitely looking forward to all these getting off the ground. Any further discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? It is unanimous. Thank you all very much. Quick checking with the board. Are you guys okay to power through the rest of this? Okay. Thank you very much, Akiko. I appreciate your help, as always. And we are moving on to 9.2.8, a discussion action item regarding our second interim budget. Hi. One back. One back? I missed one. I get it. We're right there. I was so excited. Oh, it is there. It's at the bottom of this

109one. I just said. That's okay. 9.2.7. This is Resolution 1680-25 for Interfund Borrowing. That's the one. Okay. All right. This resolution comes to you once a year. So as a school district we run two programs that financially operate outside of the general fund. Those two programs are nutrition services and our state funded preschool. There's Ed code that says that all cash must be maintained a positive balance throughout the end of the year starting the third April or the third Monday in April. And so we put this in place just as a precautionary measure in case we run into a negative balance because there are timing issues sometimes with these grants so that we can borrow from the general fund. through the end of the year to make sure we maintain a positive balance. And then

110if there's any borrowing that happens, then we pay back interest to the general fund from those funds that borrowed the money. But we don't anticipate using it. This is more of a precautionary measure for the end of this year. So our check doesn't come. That's right. Excellent. And then this is one we do every year. Are there any questions? Anybody really excited about your fund borrowing out there? Want to talk about it? No, okay, then that case do we have a motion on motion to approve a second? All right motion by member Olson second by a member Hayes Any further debate from the board all those in favor, please signify by saying aye aye Any opposed it is unanimous. Thank you as I was saying We are on to 928, which is a discussion action

111item regarding the second interim budget. The item you've been waiting for. So we came to you in December to present first interim budget, if you recall. So tonight we're really going to highlight the differences between what we presented in December and where we are now. So let's get into it. Major assumptions, local control funding formula revenue is based on the state adopted budget and that was using a cost of living adjustment of 1.07%. That assumption has not changed. Funded average daily attendance will be based on prior year. At first interim, we are also basing funded ADA on prior year, so no big change there either. So unduplicated students identified in targeted subgroups through your average percentage is 56.81, resulting in new LCFF concentration funds. And this is where we're going to delve into this a

112little bit more because this is where we did see a significant change from first interim. And salaries and benefits reflect position control as of February 10th. So this is just more updated personnel information as first interim was based on position control as of November 1st. Okay, so this is the slide for actual versus funded average daily attendance. Average daily attendance is how our local control funding formula is calculated and where we receive the bulk of our unrestricted dollars. So on this, the assumption for ADA really didn't shift much at all from first to second interim. You will see a jump in LCFF revenues, though. So this is due to what's on the next slide. All right, unduplicated pupil percentage consists of our students who are free reduced meal qualified, English learners, or foster youth. They

113can only be counted once. In order to receive concentration dollars, Chico Unified needs to be above 55% on that three-year average, which is the column on the right. At first interim, our estimate for current year UPP was much lower. So our three-year average at first interim was estimated at 54.02%. So that resulted in us estimating no concentration dollars. The good news is once the data team calculated the final UPP, and that happens in mid-January, We ended up much higher. So our three-year average is 56.81%, and that's $2.2 million in concentration dollars. So that's great news. And this is the dollars, the big picture. You can see, so the difference between first and second is the column on the right. So you can see our revenue projection increased by $3.1 million. And our change in expenditures

114only increased by a tiny bit, $112,000. So also our transfers and contributions decreased. So we had a net positive change there at the bottom. of 3.7 million. Cherise is going to go over these changes, the number changes, in more detail. So that's where we are. All righty, guys. So now we're going to break down the different categories. So as Marie mentioned, the biggest change that we had between when we came to you in December and the budget we're presenting tonight was really in our local control funding formula or LCFF funds. And as Marie mentioned, that was a large part of that was our unduplicated people percentage increasing. Our current year went up by about 8%, which changed our... three-year average by 2.8 percent. So as you can see when that unduplicated changes even in small

115percentages it actually gives us a lot of new revenue which is amazing. Yes. I was just curious on the slide that that showed the three percent average so by getting by reaching that 58.45 percent you know, the three-year average, you know, bumps back to the 22-23 school year. Is that correct? So how they use the three years and find the average of that amount, which is what then drives our current year unduplicated percentage. the three years that are being used are the 22, 23, 23, 24, and 24, 25. The average of those three years is what drives this year's unduplicated percentage. So it doesn't have any retroactive effect on the 22, 23, 23, 23. Yes. It's kind of a rolling three-year average that's used for a local control funding formula every year. Yes. And I

116just want to add in real quick on that slide. If you can go back. The great news about having 58% in the current year is then when we go into next year, we're going to take 54.35%, average it with 58.45%, and with next year. So when you have these high years, remember it's a three-year average, so it will help us in the current year, and it will help us in the two out years. Much like if you have a low percentage, it kind of negatively hits you in that year and the two out years. It's encouraging to see the current year at 58%, and we're working very closely with our Ed Services team to maintain that percentage in the years going ahead. And I always have to say this, because encouraging is not the word

117I love for this, only because what this number represents is students who need extra support. And it's frustrating as a district to be right on the bubble, but we have a lot of students who need support, and the state recognizes that. When you hear that 54%, it's like, oh, we have a bunch of students who need support, and we're just below the threshold to get the money for them. to support them in more useful, more robust ways. So on the one hand, yes, it's great to get this money, but I mean, the numbers going up is not a good thing in that, right, if that was at 100%, it would mean all of our students had extenuating circumstances that the state thought was worthy of extra support. So yay for the funding, but let's not,

118you know, forget what it means. Okay, and the other increase was in local revenue, and that's interest revenue. The county is still doing a great job of investing our funds, and so we bumped up the estimate by about $500,000. This pie chart shows on the unrestricted side how much our local control funding formula dollars drive our unrestricted funds. So you can see local control funding formula, which is driven by that average daily attendance or ADA, as well as unduplicated, drives that number. Coal is the other thing that largely impacts this. And so that's giving us a good amount of our unrestricted dollars. And then as Marie mentioned, on the expenditure side, we actually didn't have a huge change. So if you look at the bottom there where it says total expenditures, the difference is only

119about $112,000, which when you think about it, it's less than 1%. It's actually less than 0.1% of our total expenditures. So we did a pretty good job of bringing expenditures to you when we came in December. And this chart shows the biggest thing here is it shows that Chico Unified's in the people business. So those four green pie slices, if you add all those up, it's the 89% that's at the bottom of the slide there. And the reason that we include special ed contribution is because a large part of our program is staffing. Okay, and then the last one I have for you before I hand it over to Jacqueline is just the transfers in, which has to do with our redevelopment agency funds. We use that to staff for our routine restricted maintenance account,

120which staffs our maintenance and operations department. So that helps with the contribution that we have to give. And then the developer fee admin support, that is 3% of our collected fees that we collect over the course of the year. Then when we go to contributions to restricted programs, we have two on that side. So the biggest one is our special ed contribution from the general fund, which is about $24 million. And the 59% of that program, what's that saying, is of our total expenditures for special ed, we contribute 59% from the general fund and restricted dollars to support that program. Routine restricted maintenance account for maintenance operations were required by Ed code to do 3% of our total general fund expenditures that came to about 6.4 million. Yes. Thank you. And thank you for the

121way this is laid out too. One of the comments, November, September, late last year, was about And the comment was not in the meeting. It was a letter to the editor type of comment. And the question was from the commenter, why don't you use that maintenance money to build and repair the schools? And it was several things. The amount we get isn't a lot. And if we didn't expend that $4 million, where would we be? getting money to really do the maintenance. Right. And one thing I want to bring your attention to, too, Eileen, is that top amount, the $4 million, that contributes to part of the maintenance and operations department. But really what we're contributing is that bottom 6.4. And so that goes to staffing all of our maintenance and operations department, our grounds,

122all of our plumbers, painters that we have across the district. as well as summer projects. So if we have major roof repairs that we, so we plan for all of that. Joe usually brings that to you in May. He'll have a summer work list. And that's all paid for out of that $6.4 million. So the facilities are in different funds, and that's all of the stuff that Julie comes to present on. But that $6.4 million goes really fast when you take it into consideration. It just, just want to reassure. our citizens, that we are doing everything possible to extend the life of the schools we have. We're not being careless. We love them. We go put lots of bubble gum on them. Thank you. Yes, you're welcome. So this time of the year, it's really

123important to start looking at your multi-year projection. The current school year, we present this budget to kind of update where we think we may land for the year, but it's really important to start looking at the two out years. So when we look out at 25, 26, and 26, 27, there's some pretty significant revenue jumps. That's that first line. I am anticipating that we will continue to get those concentration dollars going forward. as well as the state of California COLA applied, or cost of living adjustment applied to our attendance funding. So for next year right now, it's scheduled at 2.43%, and the following year it's pretty significant, so we'll see if it actually materializes, but it's at 3.52%. Expenditures are kind of laying, I would say, relatively flat going into 25-26 at this point. We

124do see an increase in 26-27 related to some one-time funding that is eliminated at that point, of which the general fund would then incur those costs. So here's kind of the narrative, as I know it's a lot of words, related to the major assumptions. So I just want to point out a few. We are looking at really, really, really small decreases in enrollment that hopefully won't materialize. But when we look at trends and we look at cohorts and we look at our charter influence of students coming to us in 6th and 9th grade, we're looking at 35 students down for next year district-wide and 43 the following year. The next bullet on there is COLA. The other piece I do want to point out is the third bullet from the bottom is our transitional kindergarten.

125So part of our growth the last several years in Chico Unified is related to the age being bumped up for age-eligible transitional kindergartners. That age stops this next year, so full implementation in 25-26. So we are anticipating another class related to that and an additional three classes related to the ratio change. So they are changing it from 12 students to one adult down to 10 students to one adult. So we will staff 20 to two adults in those classrooms. We are anticipating three additional special ed classrooms next year related to students who have been identified as well as matriculation from elementary into junior high. A small increase in occupational therapy full-time equivalents. And then hopefully just one additional classroom in 26-27. We're trying to see those cohorts kind of level out. So we do, as

126I alluded to, we do have some one-time money. So these are some grants that are one-time in nature and their respective expiration date. So some of these grants do have positions in them. So that is something the administration is always looking at and how do we move positions from one-time money into ongoing. That's always a challenge but a great opportunity at the same time. So as we look forward to budgets in the future years, we'll take into account that we do have positions in one-time money. This is our cash flow. The good news is it's, yes. Just for clarification for anybody that might be listening that might not know what you mean by there's positions in those one-time funds, it means that there are people who are currently working for the district in a funding

127stream that will expire correspondingly with the dates on the screen. Thank you for that clarification. And on a somewhat similar note, Are these grants, they appear to be mostly from the state. Do we know if any of them come directly from the federal level? All of these are state funds. These are all state funding? Yes. Thank you. So this is our cash flow. We obviously need cash in the bank to pay our bills and pay our staff. Pretty similar pattern you see every year. You'll see a spike in December. You'll see a spike in April, and that corresponds with the property taxes that the school district receives from the county. The one change, as you will see on that red dotted line there, for the current year, the June drops off, and that's because in

128statute with the state-approved budget in the current year, instead of paying us June 30, they're going to pay us... sometime in July. And so we will get that payment in July. It will count towards 24-25, but we'll just actually receive the cash at a later date. But we do have a health cash balance to be able to weather that one-month deferral. So the interim budget does require that we self-certify, and I'm happy to say another green positive 24-25 second interim budget, and that means that we can meet all of our obligations in the current year and the subsequent two years. So being that it's March, we are continuing to watch the governor's congressional meetings as they go through these next couple months. The governor will come out in mid-May with what's called a May revision

129or May revise. That will basically have his new policies that he wants to get through after he's had negotiations with the state legislature. We are seeing a little bit of softening in the estimated COLA. Right now there's one more data point. that comes at the end of April that will be used to incorporate what that percentage is, so we'll know what that is in May. We're looking at enrollment. I'm working with John and a couple principals right now to get their staffing dialed in for next year so we have the right staff and we hire the right staff if applicable. And then Tina and her team are working on the LCAP and having community outreach meetings and getting feedback for services related to Chico Unified. And then wrapping that all together, and then Cherise, Marie,

130and I will be back in June with our estimated original budget for 25-26. Thank you. I have a quick question in that I didn't see anything about the restricted side of the budget in here. We don't typically focus on it because it's self-contained, essentially, and if it's not, then it would get a contribution. So the only two programs that receive a contribution, as Charisse alluded to, are special education and our maintenance department. And do we have federal funds coming in? Yes, we do have federal funds coming in. Our two largest federal funds are Title I, and we do get federal special ed funds related to the IDEA legislation at the federal level. And are we... developing anything like, you know, doomsday scenario type plans just in case that funding gets interrupted in the future? At

131this point in time, the guidance has been that we will be continuing to receive that. Should there be a case where all of a sudden that funding is pulled, that's where having a healthy reserve will be able to continue that staffing for a period of time, hopefully until things get either renegotiated at the federal level or we have to make a decision locally of which we'd come to the board. Thank you. Are there any other questions of clarification for staff? And please. No, I just wanted to tell everyone how lovely it is to have something so readable and so well explained. This is, it's just nice. Thank you. It's true. I think we're a little spoiled. I get so used to seeing this that I forget to say thank you very much to you and

132your team both for keeping us afloat and for explaining to all of us so clearly exactly how you do it. Yeah, this doesn't necessarily happen in every district. I just want you to know that. I hear you. Does anyone from the public want to talk about the second interim budget? Seeing none, do we have a motion associated with this topic? I will motion to approve. I'll second that motion. I'm afraid Member Konkin got it in there first. She didn't have her mic on. We have a motion by Member Olsen and a second by Member Konkin. All those... Sorry, any further discussion? All right. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? It is unanimous. Thanks team before you go we are items from the floor and we have a speaker who? Didn't

133get a chance to speak items from the floor at the beginning of the meeting Hey, I'm so sorry we have one minute. We have one person who signed up with a card. It's okay Okay, Beth Bradley. I'm a mother of an eight-year-old son and a six-year-old daughter, and I'm here because I have some serious concerns about Chromebooks. A couple weeks ago, while there was a substitute teacher in my eight-year-old's class, a classmate taught him how to fake his birth date so he could create a profile on a site in which you have to be 13 years old to make a profile. Why is a site for a 13-year-old's even accessible to my eight-year-old? Since then, my wife, Carson, and I, who some of you have met, have taken a deep dive into Chromebooks. And that

134one website is just the tip of the iceberg. Our elementary students in the district seem to have the same access settings as our high school students. Google, YouTube, YouTube Shorts, which is YouTube's version of TikTok, absolute rubbish in my personal opinion. Current news, trending results, a webcam, predictive text, email, and games. While there are some basic controls in place, how could they be strong enough for the world wide web? They are not strong enough for this mom and many others. In this day and age, when parents are trying to minimize screen time, when science is telling us to limit screen time in young brains, our schools seem to be handing out Chromebooks to our youngest students with what I perceive as little regard for the potential dangers that lie within. These devices are a distraction.

135during free time, rainy day recess, after school program, and during class. I'm asking you for proof that Chromebooks are safe for our children. Are they improving our primary math scores? Literacy? Has grammar improved? How about improving functional, social, and emotional skills? How about their mental health? And what about our at-risk student population, the ones that go home and don't have structure, the ones that have free reign to truly explore the interwebs? And it is a web because it's a tangling mess. How are these 8 to 11-year-olds benefiting from Chromebooks at home? How are we protecting them? Last year, when the school handed our seven-year-old his Chromebook, we trusted that they were vetted and safe. Fast forward to today, after several weeks, multiple emails and meetings, we do not believe they are. Elementary school is meant

136to tackle the basics, reading, writing, math, learning the rules, being respectful, and creating good habits. We acknowledge that small doses of intentional tech education might be useful. But I implore you, let's take a hard, honest look at Chromebooks. Do we have proper controls in place? Are they age appropriate? Have we adequately educated parents and teachers about their role? Are we creating good habits, setting an appropriate precedent? Let's triple check that we are doing what's best for all students. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being gracious, sir. Please. Thanks for having me, and good evening. My name is Ian Moore. I'm with UBO Business Services, formerly known as Ray Morgan Company. We are your current provider of MFPs, multifunction printers, and I just wanted to speak today, and I apologize, first of all, for not

137submitting a speaker card, and I also just want to thank Jacqueline and Rocio and John for putting together the RFP. We actually planned not to speak today as we came in second on the scoring matrix, but after receiving a call from my technician, I promised him that I would come and at least make an effort to potentially change your minds, and the reason is is because... you know he has done such a phenomenal job here at the district we pulled some data prior to us actually submitting the RFP and he had not a single negative response which is pretty fantastic pretty amazing over five year period not have a single negative response on your service that he has provided and so I just wanted to bring a couple things to to the table for the

138board You know, we scored 20 points lower on the scoring matrix against our competitor, Global, who are fantastic individuals and previous workers, co-workers with me at UBO, Ray Morgan Company. But one of the things that was not taken into account during the... bid process is the local impact. And whether it's for this bid or maybe other bids, I guess I'm here to make a request of the board today that that would be something that would be included moving forward, which is what is the community impact of the bids that you are accepting? In UBO's case, we are actually headquartered in Chico, California. That is unfortunately not the case for the... current winner of this duplicating program. And so the funds, when you choose UBO, circulate back through Butte County. We have over 50 families that

139are represented at our headquarters that are all here locally. The owners who are still active shareholders in UBO, who were previous owners of Ray Morgan Company, do things such as raising millions of dollars, and not all this is public knowledge, but they made millions of dollars buyout of or the transfer as we did with UBO as we merged and they actually took a lot of those proceeds and submitted that to Paradise, submitted that to the local community. We have over 10 members who had their houses burned down then they helped rebuild that and so today's a request that we look at more than just the matrix, that we look at the partnerships that we're building in the community, that we look at the employees that are serviced by Chico Unified. and the families ultimately that

140are represented by UBO. And so I just want to really thank you for your time. Once again, it was not our intention to necessarily speak today, but I promised my technician. And I hope that either for this bid or for future ones, the partnership of being local will be considered. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. Do we have any requests from board members to agendize items? We're not on the agenda. So do we have a motion to adjourn? I dare you to make it. I'm all for it. Okay. I'll second that. All those in favor of adjourning, say aye. Aye. We are adjourned. Thank you all very much. Have a wonderful day.