001Also took no reportable action. And item three, consideration of readmission of expelled student, student case number 242502. In closed session, the governing board acted to not readmit a formally expelled student in case number 242502. The vote was unanimous, so we will do a roll call vote, or no? No vote. OK, fantastic. The vote was unanimous, 5-0. All right, roll call. Trustee Bell? Here. Trustee Ching? Here. Trustee Guzman? Here. President Landry? Here. Trustee Lehman? Here. Stand for the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, at this time, we're looking for an approval of the agenda. Is there a motion to approve? I move to approve the agenda as presented.
002Is there a second? I'll second that motion. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. All right, and this evening, our Spanish translation is language people online. All right, and we are going to move on to our student presentation from our students at Altamira Middle School. Welcome. There we go. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for having us here tonight. I imagine you could hear us patiently waiting out in the hallway. We've got an incredible group of student leaders here tonight to present to you. As you know, this is the first year of our unified middle school at Altamira. And we have four different groups that we're going to be presenting to you tonight. And these are different groups at school that all contribute to creating and building a positive school climate and community for our students. Obviously,
003they are all working very hard. And we have our. Avid we're going to be presenting on, our leadership group, our safe school ambassadors, or SSA, and our wellness youth council. So I get to speak a lot. So I'm going to be quiet. And I'm going to pass it off to our amazing student leaders who are here to present to you tonight. Hi, my name is Koby. And Avid stands for advancement via individual determination. Avid prepares students for a four-year college eligibility by strengthening. Organizational skills, note taking, and study skills. Hi, I'm Leo. And Avid students complete community service hours to help strengthen our bond within our community. And Avid raises students' awareness of the different aspects of four-year universities. Hi, I'm Amy. And this is some of our pictures from Avid in the past few
004years. Hello, my name is Maya Perez. In leadership at Altamira Middle School, we focus on developing student leadership skills during class activities, positive student engagement, and class discussions. And we're going to be presenting today. We demonstrate to our fellow students and teachers what it means to be safe, respectful, and responsible, while also having fun and keeping our school spirit high. Hi, my name is Jenny. And as student leaders of AMS, we aim to exhibit self-reliance, honesty, responsibility, clear communication, strong collaboration, positivity, courage, service, and empathy for our classmates' needs and wishes. And these are some of our pictures from some of our events. My name is Jacob. And I'm part of the state school ambassadors. The state school ambassadors. The program empowers students, leaders from diverse social groups to use nonviolent communication to intervene in
005harmful situations, providing a third option for students beyond being a bystander or telling on a peer. The program trains socially influential students to prevent and stop cyberbullying, bullying, and mistreatment in schools. Hi, I'm Molly. And students in the program contribute to a positive school culture in several ways, meeting during the year as a family group to support SSA members intervening in mistreatment. Modeling positive behavior, building connections, promoting inclusive activities, serving as liaisons, and changing social norms. And then the next slide is a picture from our training at the Hanna-Boy Center. Hi, my name is Eleanor. And we are representing the Wellness Youth Council. Program description and what students gain from the Wellness Youth Council are things such as we learn skills for managing stress, emotions, and friendships. We build confidence. We improve our skills by
006working as a team and practicing leadership. We improve communication skills and how to support our peers. We gain a better understanding of mental health, self-care, and available resources. We have the opportunity to make a positive impact on the school community. I'm Micah. And this is how the program helps create a positive school climate. We organize wellness activities such as awareness events. We promote inclusivity by offering mentorship and then by helping all peers feel seen, welcome, and feel comfortable. Thank you. And hopefully跟 през for both places snapped, welcomed, and supported. We represent student voice by sharing what our peers need what school staff. We model positive behavior and encourage healthy choices on campus. We help connect peers to the Wellness Center and other support services. My name is Savannah. And here's outcomes of our Wellness Youth
007Council. We are building community, building relationships, educating students, empowering students, Wellness Center input and feedback, and Wellness Center program and events. These are some exemplars. examples of the Wellness Youth Council in our classroom and some events we have hosted in the past. So we can get a round of applause for our amazing student leaders. So this is just some of the work that is happening at Altamira to build connections and community among our students. They, as always, students tend to lead the way, and so we're really impressed with the work they're doing, and thank you guys for having us here tonight and giving them the opportunity to be able to speak with you. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right, so we're going to go ahead and take like a one-minute break just to
008allow for those of you who came just for the presentation to go if you'd like, or if you'd like to stay, go ahead and stay. We're just going to take a one-minute pause. Okay, we are going to move on to our report, so at this time we'll ask for our VMTA to join us for their report. Good evening, members of the board, district leadership, colleagues, students, and families. If anything else, VMTA wants to begin tonight with celebration. Across our district, students, families, and educators have been building community, showcasing creativity, and lifting each other up during these past few weeks. At Sasserini, more than 60 families came out for a joyful and successful literacy night celebrating reading, connection, and family engagement. At Flowery, the community gathered for the wonderful Noche de Diciembre event, a tradition that
009highlights culture, joy, and the strength of bilingual education. At El Verano, staff and students are preparing for a beloved school-wide sing-along, bringing families and children together in the spirit of the season. At Altamira, students are participating in the 12 Days of Pack pause, focusing on kindness and community building, while Ms. Barajas, our science teacher, is working hard to fundraise to send 7th grade students to outdoor education, an unforgettable experience that expands learning beyond the classroom. And in remarkable news, Sonoma Valley High students, competed in the ATPI Fall Photography Contest, where 6,767 photos were submitted nationwide. Sonoma Valley was one of only two California schools to place in this national competition, earning recognition in six competitive categories. These events represent the core of our district, students learning, creating, and connecting with their school communities. BMTA is
010very proud of every one of them. In addition to celebrating the success of community and celebration, we must also address the important issues before us, and more importantly, you tonight. BMTA appreciates the board's thoughtful and transparent approach to the superintendent hiring process. Choosing a leader is one of the most significant decisions this board will make. Teachers remain hopeful in their expectation of a superintendent who values collaboration, demonstrates effective communication, and has creative, articulated strategies to recruit and retain highly qualified students. and has creative, articulated strategies to recruit and retain highly qualified students. While focusing on fiscal solvency, given our current standing. As the board reviews the FCMAT report and the first interim budget, BMTA encourages a mindset of problem solving, not alarm. The FCMAT report identifies risks, not directives. It shows where attention is needed.
011It does not tell us to cut programs, destabilize staffing, or reduce opportunities for students. With the recruitment and hopeful hire of a new superintendent, along with the planning of our next fiscal steps, we encourage the board to prioritize transparency when identifying reductions or savings, accuracy in enrollment and staffing data, early collaboration with labor partners so decisions are thoughtful, not rushed, protection of programs that keep the students engaged and connected, investment in employees, stability for teachers means stability for students. Finally, we want to reaffirm our commitment to strong public schools. Sonoma Valley Unified is the heart of our community. At a time when we are working to stabilize enrollment and strengthen finances, diverting students and resources to a new charter school would move us in the wrong direction. It would increase competition for declining enrollment, deepen
012fiscal challenges, galvanize the very inequities within Sonoma we are striving to mitigate, and strain programs our students rely on. The best path forward, the most stable, equitable, and sustainable, is the best path forward. The best path forward, the most stable, equitable, and sustainable, is the best path forward. The best path forward, the most stable, equitable, and sustainable, is the best path forward. The best path forward, the most stable, equitable, and sustainable, is the best path forward. The best path forward, the most stable, equitable, and sustainable, is the best path forward. The best path forward, the most stable, equitable, and sustainable, is the best path forward. The best path forward, the most stable, equitable, and sustainable, is the best path forward. The best path forward, the most stable, equitable, and sustainable, is the best path forward.
013The best path forward, the most stable, equitable, and sustainable, is the best path forward. The best path forward, the most stable, equitable, and sustainable, is the best path forward. The best path forward, the most stable, equitable, and sustainable, is the best path forward. The best path forward, the most stable, equitable, and sustainable, is the best path forward. The best path forward, the most stable, equitable, and sustainable, is the best path forward. we already have together vmta remains committed to working collaboratively with the board district leadership and our entire community to ensure sonoma valley unified remains strong sustainable and student-centered we believe in our students our educators and the future of public education in sonoma valley thank you for your time and dedication to our schools thank you csca good evening board of trustees staff community
014members my name is andrea dealy csca chapters 376 president tonight it is my pleasure to introduce john gray who will serve as the next president of our chapter beginning january 1. i want to express my appreciation to john for stepping forward and accepting the important role i would like to take a moment to express what an honor it has been to represent the 251 dedicated class of 2020 students who have served as the vice chancellor of school employees of Sonoma Valley Unified School District. Each month I have the privilege of sharing the many ways these employees contribute to and positively impact the students and the broader Sonoma Valley community. Finally I would like to thank the board for providing CSEA with time and opportunity to speak at these meetings. Your support and collaboration is truly
015valued. Thank you and I hope everyone has a safe and enjoyable holiday season. Thank you and welcome. Okay our student voice is not here. What is that? Were you trying to get someone? Oh oh you have to wait there's something for you. Okay so we are, we do not have a student voice here with us this evening so we now have our chief of police, Chief Cutting. Good evening board, trustees, superintendent. The student voice is in here. staff and community I'd like to begin with a quick item of education to parents as we've had as we head into the gift-giving season for the holidays over the Thanksgiving school vacation a student from the high school was injured when he collided with the side of a car while he was riding on an electronic scooter electric
016scooter the student was not following the rules of the road and was found to be at fault in the accident the in addition to minor physical injuries that the student suffered that event was traumatic for the students and the family of the student as we had to call them to meet their child in the emergency room in Napa we post about the incident on the Sonoma Police Department Facebook social media website which garnered a great deal of response is for that reason I'm hopeful that parents present tonight and watching on zoom will hear that there are several great resource websites to visit prior to purchasing or allowing your children to ride or have an electric scooter or bicycle the website cal bike org has many links with one specific link to the website and the
017link to the website is in the description of this video. that should be consulted for the lawful use of the scooters and bicycles the section under ebike classification I brought in several copies of that page which I'll leave behind and unfortunately it is only in English that I have available to me I am looking for one in Spanish which I'll provide to the district and the schools as well I've also met with our patrol team at Sonoma Police Department and have had communications with our partners at the California Highway Patrol for the unincorporated areas of the Sonoma Police Department. I'm going to be addressing some of the issues that we're facing with the police department in Sonoma Valley and we're going to be increasing enforcement on the unlawful use of those being operated in our
018area this will be focused on basic safety laws of youth under the age of 18 who are not wearing helmets and those who are not following the rules of the road like stopping at stop signs and we're going to ensure that that there are not youth riding electric conveyances that are not actually qualified as electric motorcycles which is what a lot of them are on they do require a driver's license to support youthful energy and riding a human powered bike when they're able to okay that was the positive here's the negative on the issues that have been directly related to our school our activity I wanted to report that on the last day of school before the Thanksgiving break Thursday the 21st as students were leaving campus a student was attacked and assaulted by two
019to three other students who were waiting for this for him near the intersection of First Street West and Millay Street the victim was able to fend off the attackers and avoid significant physical injury the attack was witnessed in a report to the school office and then to the Sonoma Police Department several videos were posted of the fight providing Sonoma Police Department with the identity of those involved in that attack this situation continued when the victim of the fight had his tires slashed at his residence later that afternoon Sonoma Police Department immediately began the investigation into the attack and were able to identify who the suspects of the fight were through the video that information was shared with the high school as the attack occurred as school was leaving for the day and the victim's student
020was traveling home for the day a time period that the high school still has authority over the student's conduct no arrests have been had been made prior to another incident which occurred on Saturday the 29th just before 8 p.m. at the at the initial assault victims residence four subjects entered his residence the visit the residence was occupied by an older by older and younger family members as this was a holiday weekend the subjects that entered the residence were bearing two firearms and the suspect the suspected firearms were pointed at the people in the residence and threats were yelled the suspects left the residence without causing any further physical injury no one was shot and left the residence we were contacted law enforcement and responded immediately we began a very thorough investigation into the situation we
021did take two juveniles into custody a few hours after and they were booked into the juvenile hall they were booked on charges of assault with a deadly weapon criminal threats and burglary there's also an underlying gang charge that is pending all of those charges are significant felonies on Friday December 5th this last week a third suspect was arrested and booked in a juvenile hall for the same incident on the 29th two of the three subjects arrested for the incident the 29th were also arrested by citation for the initial assault of the victim's student on the 21st these were all connected after the initial response by Sonoma County Sheriff's Office to the incident on the 29th we began being notified of a social media post that was made by one of the suspects and seen by
022many other students the image was of a firearm and a red bandana being pointed at the location believed to be intended as a threat to the same victim of both incidents we have requested charges for this posting as well if your kids or students bring this post to your attention you can speak with any deputy or high school administration and they can determine if is the same one as the one we initially observed all of these suspects in the above incident are juveniles and as such their names cannot be released to the public we also want to be sure to state that these are allegations of crime at this time and none of these incidents have been proven in court we bring this to the attention of the board and the school community as the
023evidence we have obtained in this case indicate gang involvement of the Norteño criminal street gang a subject that I have been speaking to to the board and community about during each board meeting. The high school, school district, Sonoma Police Department, and the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office are taking the victim's safety very, very seriously. The incident at the resident is part of an ongoing investigation by the Violent Crime Investigations Unit of the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office. If anyone has any information which they feel will be helpful to any of the involved students in this case, please notify Deputy Ed Esponda, who is our community resource officer, the Sonoma Police Department, Sonoma County Sheriff's Office, or the high school administration. They're very well aware of what's going on. That's that. Next incident. On Monday, December 8th, just
024before school let out for the day, law enforcement and Sonoma Valley Fire Department EMS responded to the high school for two freshman students who were having an unknown medical emergency. Emergencies, two. EMS identified that the medical emergency for both students was alcohol-related and students were taken to the emergency room for evaluation. Once the situation was identified as a medical emergency, law enforcement disengaged the situation. The EMS also identified that the high school administration was able to delay a 3-day visit to the high school. The students were also able to participate in a stay-at-home meeting with the school administration, allowing EMS and the school administration to handle. As you've heard me state several times during these meetings, the described incidents only involve a few students on one of the seven campuses of the school district with
025more than 3,000 students district-wide. Although all situations are being treated as serious, these do not reflect the overwhelming majority of the students that are excelling in academic sports, technology, and the club and organizations that support the student development. Your Sonoma schools are expected to have a number of students in the district who schools are still what I have found to be some of the safest in the county and I apologize for the length of that I hope to be able to come in here and just say nothing has happened on the campuses that's my preference but that is thank you I think we have order so are we allowed to ask any follow-up questions or now would be the time absolutely so I guess I have a question around this the gang-related report that you
026have given us I'd be just interested in your recommendations about what we should be doing to ensure that this doesn't become pervasive it sounds like maybe this is a one-off situation with these four individuals I don't know if you could expand on that I'm quite alarmed by hearing your report and I don't think I understand understood really in clarity about the social media post of the fire fire firearm with the with the bandana that part was not clear to me like was it a photograph of somebody being threatened with a weapon or it was just I I didn't quite follow it so sorry about that so let me address the last question first the last question was was it a photograph of a person it was a photograph of a location which was very specific
027to a person I can't say much more than that because of the case the is there anything that can be done to prevent this so we've been discussing and working with law enforcement the school the district we've been working on this problem since last year during the school year but we started to see a presence I'm not gonna say a reemergence because I think it's always been present the gang issues always been around in the Sonoma Valley and Sonoma County wide there is only one subset of any gang that's present in the Sonoma Valley there are other gangs that are present but they don't exist exist in a formal as a formal group. The Norteños have a subset the Sonoma Valley Norteños which are the only formal Sonoma Valley gang. Serranos are present but they
028we just don't see big numbers of them. There was you know obviously the Maxwell Park homicide many years back was the last time that we saw a formalized Serrano subset out in this area and since then it just hasn't materialized into an actual organization again. The Norteños that we have been seeing we've been working heavily with the school staff to try to reduce the gang footprint that they're making on the school campus and I think we've been very successful on campus to do that. This incident didn't take place on campus it was across the street. I think that goes a lot to the work that's been done between us and the district. And the schools to reduce that. You can't stop violence from happening at home. We can't take it. We can't stop what could
029potentially start on a campus. We can't stop it once it leaves that campus. Our reach is not strong enough nor is anyone else's. We are working to bring more awareness to the Sonoma Valley to families about gangs. We're working on it with a with a lot of the organizations you've heard me talk about it. We we met. We've had a lot of the leaders to try to come up with a program for families to have that awareness. That in and of itself won't fix the problem. We are as I said limiting this to a few people. It is not it's not a large I wouldn't even call this a problem as it relates to the school. I would say it's a it's a community based problem because it's gangs and gangs can be violent. We
030are working hard to ensure that the ones who are responsible for this incident are held accountable. Through the courts for it. Beyond that I can't get into too much more about that incident and those subjects but I feel like these are kind of the leaders that we've been seeing on campus causing the issues. So we may be addressing the head of head of the problem through the unfortunate victimization of a great student and his family. Okay thank you. Any further questions? None at this time. All right thank you so much for your report. We will move on to our last report our acting superintendent Ms. Seif. Good evening President Landry, trustees, staff, members of the Sonoma Valley community. I'm pleased to share several important recognitions and update from across the district and I first want
031to thank Chief for everything that he's doing for the students in the district and the community here. So thank you. First I would like to extend our sincere appreciation to Andrea Dealey for her dedicated service as president of CSEA. Andrea has led with unwavering integrity, consistent positivity, and a deep commitment to advocating for and supporting her members. Her leadership has strengthened our district and we are grateful for the time, energy, and heart she has devoted to representing our classified professionals. Andrea you will be missed and John you have some big shoes to fill. But we look forward to working with you and we know we will continue our great collaborative working relationship. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Nice to meet you all. Dr. 모습-under 우리는 is in fact looking forward to prospective supportive leadership
032role relationship and we just have a little something for you Luckily Andrea will still be around so we're looking forward to not that you're counting but I'd also like to congratulate SVA just junior Austin Cheeseman on his selection of a northern regional director for the California Association of student Leaders leaders board Austin is an impressive impressive young man whose confident he has a very bright and successful future ahead of him. I'd also like to recognize the Sasserini Singers for their outstanding performance at the community tree lighting ceremony. Their enthusiasm and joyful spirit truly showcased the talent within our schools and brought pride to our district. We are incredibly proud of the students and the staff who support them. I'd also like to highlight the work of the school transition committee. This group exemplifies collaboration at
033its best. Members have come together, parents, teachers, staff, and administrators to generate thoughtful, creative, and supportive ideas to ensure that the upcoming school consolidation is as smooth and positive an experience as possible. Their commitment to problem solving, community building, sorry, and student centered planning has been exceptional and their ideas continue to strengthen our path forward. In the spirit of collaboration, our elementary schools have been able to provide the best support and resources for students who need that support. We have begun co-hosting evening events such as Sasserini's Literacy Night with more jointly planned activities on the way. These shared events are creating meaningful connections among families, staff, and students across the campuses. They are helping to build a more unified and cohesive district culture, one where we all come together as one Sonoma community. Thank you,
034as always, to our students, families, staff, and partners for incredible work happening throughout our district as we approach the end of the calendar year I want to wish our students families and staff and the entire community a joyful and restful winter break may the time be filled with peace connection and well-deserved rest thank you very much and with that we are going to move on to trustee reports do we have reports from any of our trustees at this time just reporting on the work that trustee Guzman and I have been doing with climate tech on the HVAC building automation solar panels etc so we've sort of been spending quite a bit of time narrowing and refining the scope of work of as to which facilities that were focused on and so currently climate tech is
035working on some now you know projects that are being done in the area of the climate tech sector and so in terms of projects that are being done in the area of the climate tech sector in terms of what we're looking at we're working on a lot of the work that's coming back to us on that and what we've sort of discovered is that we've got about 300 HVAC units of which about half of those are older than 20 years so the the scope as it currently stands between HVAC replacement solar panel you know repairs upgrades and some building automation I think the total sort of dollar is in about the 8 million dollar range and so I think that what one has to do is to move forward and to step up the road
036and I think that is something that to realize is that by doing all of this work, it's not necessarily going to save us a lot of money up front. What it's going to do is it's going to give us a controlled sort of expenditure plan in the future and sort of hold our costs down in the future and have a much more efficient campus in the future. You know, it's not like we can generate a ton of solar electricity to pay for it all. That's not going to happen. But, you know, this is money that's going to have to be spent regardless. So we can do it in a controlled way. And I think the building automation and the HVAC upgrades is going to provide us with long-term efficiencies as well as then the financing
037and the programmatic aspect of it is going to limit our expenses in the future and make us more efficient. So it's going to be an interesting project. Thank you. Trustee Jing? I just wanted to report back that I spent last week three days at the California School Boards Association Conference in Sacramento. And I just wanted to say how energized I was by just all of the innovations that are going on in California. It's a great way for boards and their superintendent to kind of learn about other districts outside of Sonoma Valley. I encourage us to go as a group next year. Missed you guys there. So anyway, that's all. Trustee Guzman? So we did briefly overlap at the conference. I was there for a new trustees session. And one of the key takeaways was that
038as long as I am the newest guy on the board, I can continue to leverage that. And so, yeah, I'm the new guy on the board still. And it was a pleasure to meet one of our CSBA colleagues who I believe is in the audience tonight. And she's here locally. And looking forward to connect with her more. And aside from that, I will also echo the thank you to Sasserini for hosting the family literacy night and making students from across the valley feel welcome. It was a great event and looking forward to more of them. Thank you. Thank you. Trustee Lehman? Nothing in regards to the school district. My wife and I are surviving the early stages of having a newborn. So I'm just happy to be here and awake. And contributing in any capacity
039that I can to the district. So thank you for bearing with me during this time. That's all. It's exciting. But, you know, it takes some energy. All right. And I would just like to report that the board has been committed to re-evaluating our discipline matrix in this district. And so that will be coming up on future agendas. And, you know, there's some legalities. There's some legalities around how it has to happen, specifically at school sites. The board has the final approval. But we are going to be focused on that this coming year. And it's a top priority for us. So stay tuned. And that I'd also like to say before we move on to public comments and reorganization. Thank you. This last year has been great acting as this board's president. It's been an honor.
040I adore each and every one of you. You're all great people. Thank you. And it's been a pleasure. I've got one more year left. I'm area one. If you are in area one, this is an election year. We need good people. People who are committed to kids. And I highly encourage you to reach out if you're out there. I'm happy to meet with you and talk with you and coach you through the year. It's a big responsibility. It's a four-year responsibility. But it's really important work. So with that. We will move on to communications to the board. We have a public comment opportunity. The board recognizes the value of public comment on educational issues and provides this time for members of the audience to address the board. So at this time, do we have any
041public comments in the room? At this time, it's on the agenda. Yes. Okay. And how about online? All right. Seeing none, we will move on to item 13. This is. Our annual organizational meeting. We do have a script. So bear with us. Let's see. Okay. So the governing board shall hold an annual organization meeting per Ed code 35143. In years that are not election years, the organizational meeting may take place on any date in December, but no later than December 20th. Ed code 35143. So at this time, we're going to go to our election of officers. So the board president appoints the superintendent to serve as chair. And vice president is elected. So I appoint acting superintendent Sipes as a chairperson pro tem until the new president is elected. So we're now looking for a
042nomination for board president. I'd like to say something first. I had an opportunity to do a little research coming into this and how other districts have done this in the past. I know our district has had at times a precedence of the vice president being nominated. I would say. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. And I think the organization has made a huge. Msh. Mch So I think that in my take, given the way the arm or other districts the way they've done this, they've actually asked the board to have more of an open conversation before throwing their nominee nominees out, and I think one of the important things would be. Well, having watch president Landry and the amount of time, and the commitment she's given to the district, I think it's
043made a difference. I, I truly believe the amount of hours you put in and your ability to connect with community members across the spectrum has has made that difference and it's it's a, it's a tall task. who here has the bandwidth and the time commitment to be able to fulfill that role in that capacity saying that my comment earlier about my report i'm i'm probably the the least likely person to have that i think additional time i would say i my preference would be to remain on the board as a trustee in a capacity less than the president i am open to other capacities i didn't see trustee bell do much as the uh as the clerk so if you would like to nominate me there i'm happy to be there but uh you don't
044realize i was all the signing i had to have surgery nah um so i just wanted to start the conversation with there i would prefer to remove myself from from that position and ask the board if there are folks here that feel like they have that time commitment um we could start there too so i would just like to know would president landry would you reconsider a , anyway i mean i'm on that's like you're gonna make me wanna cry but also i have to be realistic and i think that it's really important for you all to know that i have a senior who's about to graduate high school and the time that this takes outside of what you see um day to day i mean it's it's a it's a lot and And while
045I would love to say yes, I know that I have tiny people at home that would really appreciate it if I gave this opportunity to someone else during this really, really special time with my family in these next couple of months. But I'm honored, and I would love to. In any other circumstance, I would say yes. It has been an honor. I've learned so much, and there's still so much to learn and do. But I have no doubt that any one of you are going to do a fantastic job. So at this time, I would just like to say thank you, but I just don't think it's fair. I just don't think it's fair to my family, if I'm being honest. Somebody say something now, please. I would ask, does anyone else have, like, do
046you feel like you have the bandwidth to do this upcoming year for 2026? You know, I probably... I'm probably maybe the most likely to have the time to do it this next year. I mean, I don't know where Gerardo is. If you want to do it, you can do it. And Anne, I don't know if you want to do it for another year, but I'm happy to take it on for the year. You know, I've kind of learned a lot in the last 12 months, and Kat's done a great job, and I've got some big shoes to fill. But I'm... So, you know, unless... I don't want to arm wrestle anybody for it, but if... I can take it on if that would be the will of the board. Okay. Again, looking for nominations. Okay.
047So, it wouldn't be my first choice, because I feel like I still haven't recovered from being board president. As President... As President Landry said, it is a heavy lift. It requires a lot of time, and it's not... It's not just a day job. It's like a 24-7 job. I'm reluctant to take it on. I would... I mean, if the board really wanted me to do it, I would say the only constraint I have is that I wouldn't be able to... I wouldn't be able to preside over the part of January. I just would not really be available. I have a lot of conflicts going on with other work responsibilities. So, anyway, I'll just... I'll throw that out. I know it doesn't sound like anyone's running to do this job. Well, if that's the case, I'm
048happy to make a nomination for Trustee Bell to be president for the 25-26 school year. 20-26 school year. Yeah. Yeah, I'll second that nomination. I'd also, you know, as we sit here, just remember, like, no one here is paid to do this. I think that's a really relevant point. There are other districts. There are other districts of our financial size that do have compensation. I'm not saying I ran to be compensated. Actually, I don't think I want to be compensated in this role. I do think it could be worth considering at some point to compensate the president, though. The capacity... I don't know if it's an incentive or it's a rotation. It's just a thought. I think about my own work balance with this. To scale back work, to give that time here, that could
049be an option for the board. You know, when we're in a position financially to do that, I would just throw that out there. Maybe not, again, not all trustees, but maybe just the year you're president. And I've seen, I've had information shared with me that that type of schedule or setup is possible. And that may be the right, I think, commitment from the district to say, we know how important this position is and how vital it is to the success of our district, and we're willing to back it. So I'm not making a motion to do that today. I'm just saying I second on... And Trustee Bell as the board president for next year and a consideration at some point for a discussion around that. The only comment I'd like to make is that I
050do encourage... We never put this into our governance handbook or our bylaws, but I encourage anyone who's taking up the presidency really needs to actively also do, be committed to governance training. Obviously, we can't mandate it. But... So Kat and I are the only ones that have actually gone through the whole sort of masters and governance training and it's really helpful to really kind of do that and be committed to that. So I would just encourage everyone to do it obviously because we have three new board members who haven't done that. Okay. So we have a first and a second. Do you want to take a vote? Trustee Guzman? Aye. Trustee Ching? Aye. Trustee Landry? Aye. Trustee Lehman? Trustee Bell? Yeah. And then you have to read that out. Aye. Oh, sorry. So congratulations, Trustee
051Bell. Thank you. I'm sure we'll be spending a lot of time together. Yes, yes. What do I do? I read this? Lastly, oh, sorry. Oh, sorry. Now we're looking for a nomination for the board vice president. Anybody? Yeah, okay, great. Yep, I've got it. So we're looking for a nomination for the board vice president. So is anybody up for that job? Yes, please. Okay. So Mr. Lehman, would you be interested in continuing your role as vice president? Yes, I would. Okay. Well, then I'd like to nominate Mr. Lehman, Trustee Lehman, as vice president. I'll second that. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. I should have said the compensation thing for the vice president. A minute. Lastly, we're looking for a nomination for the board clerk. So anybody? I think. I nominate Trustee Guzman. I'll
052second that. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Can we have dinner? So it would be consent agenda. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do everything. We'll take a break at consent. Yeah. No, no, no. Oh, yeah. No, no, I'm just. Okay. So the next 13.2, setting the date, time, and place of the regular monthly meetings. Do I need to read this whole thing? Okay. Okay. So SVUSD. Board meetings are generally scheduled for the second Thursday of the month. Closed session begins at around 4.30 p.m. Open sessions begin around 6 p.m. Study sessions are also scheduled throughout the school year. Study sessions are intended to be deep discussions on a single topic. Study sessions are subject to change. Regular board meetings will be located at the Sonoma City Chambers, 177 First Street West, Sonoma, unless otherwise noted on
053the board meeting agenda. Study session board meetings are located at the SVUSD district offices, 17850, Railroad Ave, Sonoma, Zoom links to attend. The meeting virtually will be posted when the agenda is published. Good. I just had a question follow-up. So I just wanted to be clear that the January 27th meeting that is now a regular meeting on the calendar, is that for a study session or is that a mistake that it's in there? So I can speak to that. That was originally scheduled for a study session. We had moved our board governance. Meeting from October to we needed to move it because of all the things that were happening around the superintendent search and our time. And so it was we and so we've reached out to the consultants who had committed to working with
054us. And we asked them for their first available date. And that was the first available date. And I believe it got sent out in board communication. So that correct in talking, you know, that wasn't a board decision. We didn't vote on that. We just went ahead and asked the consultants when they had the next availability. So that was put on our schedules. That is not we've adjusted with our consultants. And I think we'll talk about that a little bit. Our announcement to the community, or at least the plan at this time after going through the process, will be to announce the superintendent if it's the will of the board at the February regular meeting. So we do not need another regular meeting. So if the board, if it's the will of the board to change
055the study, session on the 27th, we need to understand that we can't reschedule it because we need to talk to the consultants before rescheduling it. Like we have to be flexible with their schedule, more or less. So that's what that was about. Can I just ask for further clarification? Would the time still start at 430 or not? I was just curious that because because if it's it says regular meetings, I just wanted to know if the timing was exactly the same as stated. I don't recall. Michelle, do you remember? Before we scheduled the regular meeting, what our timing was? Was it five to seven? Is there you have a conflict at that time? No, I just. So I can make a motion that we approve the schedule as presented with the modification that the January,
056January 27th meeting will start at four o'clock instead of 430. It is a January 27th meeting. The clarification is that is not a regular board meeting anymore. It is a. Study session. Study session. OK. OK. So let's update. I don't know if the calendar has it listed today, but it should be updated that the 27th is a study session. OK. So we have a motion to approve 13 point. Well, let's just. That was the motion. That was the motion. Sorry, I need a second. Can I have. Can we have a discussion? Did everybody. Is that. Can we just confirming we're approving this. So has everyone had an opportunity to look at their schedule? It's page 32. Yes. OK. These are all second Thursdays. Except for the June meeting. Mm hmm. Is the ninth during. It's
057not. Nothing's during spring break. OK. Yep. So I'll. Need a second. I'll second that motion to approve. All in favor. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. You want to do the consent agenda or take a break? You still have the. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Sorry. 13.3. Selection of the school board representative to elect members of the Sonoma County Committee on School District Organization. Pursuant to Ed Code 35023 and 72403. The governing board of each school district and each community district shall annually at its initial meeting select one of its members to serve as the representative for purposes of Article 1 commencing with Section 4000 of Chapter 1 Part 3. The representative selected pursuant to this section shall have one vote for each member of the elected elected county committee. They meet once a year. The purpose of the
058annual meetings to re elect, re elect members to fill vacancies or expired terms on the Sonoma County Committee on School District. The chosen representative's job is not to serve on the county committee but only to elect members. I nominate Trustee Ging. I'll second the nomination. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay, so we'll take a 25-minute break. 10. 10? 5? Okay. Board will also discuss and consider approval of the superintendent ITL candidate profile. 10. Profile so welcome welcome Ron and Scott Thank You community, thank you the board of trustees. My name is Ronald Calloway I'm the retired superintendent of the Mark West School District just for the paper's sake So no index said I was in the West County superintendent Mark West so and it's my pleasure to be here with dr. Mahoney as your search
059consultants I just want to go over our timeline since we've been brought on on November 18th So we've reviewed stakeholder input to the community that Dr. Kruger had presented had reached out to the community. We presented that on November 18 Then on December 3rd, dr. Mahoney and myself Conducted a public meeting on zoom where we reached out to the community got input again from the community Dr. Mahoney after I'm done with my little piece on the timeline will present his scenario the criteria that we discussed in More detail on to on December 5th the superintendent Applications were closed and we then did some more research on each candidate We brought back all the candidates today in closed session the board in closed session Determined candidates to be interviewed which took place today and we have
060completed that task on starting tomorrow We will be reaching out to candidates who have been selected and also to candidates who will not be interviewed for the Sonoma Valley Unified School District Going forward we will do more research on each candidate as we look into their backgrounds. We will continue to look at Investigating to make sure we get the best candidate forward then this is a little bit wrong on January 10th and 11th Per the board direction tonight. We will conduct the interviews for the Super Bowl That's with some speakers from the University of Pennsylvania So on March 11th we will be giving the сердic The superintendent then after that we will do some more digging and we will also perhaps do a site visit to that individual district and finally on February 12th at
061a regular school board meeting we will bring forth a contract and approval for the next superintendent this must be done at a regular scheduled board meeting so I'm going to bring it over to Scott now to talk about the criteria Thanks Ryan Scott Mahoney, retired superintendent from the Waugh School District in Petaluma and the Ross School District in Marin County. I've been retired for 12 years, and during the past 12 years, I've done a lot of searches, 30 searches so far. I'm pleased to be here. I'm pleased to be working with this board. I was a little reluctant coming in after all the newspapers over the past 15 years about your board, but meeting with these guys, they're a pleasure to work with. So thank you for being so awesome. Really great. You've been desirable.
062Well, 29 people applied to be your superintendent, which is great. There's some very strong candidates. The board had a very difficult time selecting just six people to interview on the 10th, so it's going to be a tough choice. So what I'd like to talk about is the ideal candidate profile. We'll put that up. What that means is when Ron and I got here, there was a massive amount of input gathered from everybody in the district and the community. And if you saw it, it's like four pages of sentence after sentence after sentence. So we tried to distill that into something that your board could focus on during the interview and reference checking process. So we tried to distill it down into what we call professional qualifications, what you'd see on a resume, and personal attributes
063or the personality of the person. It turns out that most superintendents keep or lose their job not based on their qualifications but based on their personality. So if you think back, you might think that you've seen that once or twice. So as far as qualifications, the highlighted sections are, input that we received during our Zoom meeting. So one of the original qualifications the board agreed to was a California administrative services credential is desired. And the people we spoke with during the Zoom meeting said they would prefer that if desired, it wasn't there. So I just highlighted that. I didn't remove it. And then also at the Zoom meeting, people were concerned about the vagueness of these qualifications. Why are they so vague? If you look at them, they're not direct. And if you think about
064it, they're not direct. If you think about it, if they were more direct and you didn't have the is desired or would be a plus or would be great to see, you'd really eliminate the candidate pool. So, for example, if you were to say, we insist that the candidate be able to read, speak, and write Spanish, the candidate pool would be down to a handful. So we make those vague so we can get an ideal candidate pool drawing a lot of people and the board focus on during interviews who they think, based on your input, would be best fit for your district. And there are some candidates there that I can't wait to see who you guys, who you guys hire. There are some good ones there. So if you look at those qualifications, if
065anybody has any questions. Also in yellow there, somebody on the Zoom meeting said we specified to Brandon that we think the person should have an advanced degree like a doctorate. So I put that there just to honor the input from that Zoom meeting. Personal attributes, scroll on down. This is what we saw a lot of in your input that you gave to Brandon Krueger. You want somebody who's going to be here for a while. That's a tough one. The life expectancy of a superintendent now is about 2.8 years. And that's for a lot of reasons. One is if you, a superintendent has five bosses, right? So if all five bosses are on the same page with the superintendent, things work great. If three board members are not on the same page, it just takes three
066board members to get rid of a superintendent. Also, if you are in a small district and you're a superintendent, you can make a lot more money going up to a bigger district. So a lot of superintendents will start small. And then go up the food chain. So they're, you know, superintendents in Sacramento or San Francisco. So what you guys are looking for is someone who's going to be here and love you. Like Ron, how many years were you a superintendent? Eleven years? I was 19 years in my district. And there's a lot of examples in Sonoma County of long serving superintendents. Typically that means that we work well with all of you and we work well with the board. And it's great. It's a hard job at the beginning. It's like a marriage, right? So
067I'm coming in as a new person. I marry you. I have to get to know you. I have to get to know the board. We have to develop the relationship so we can move forward in a real positive way. So the board is really looking at that as looking for someone that's going to be really good for all of you. And Ron and I are going to try to help do that. So after the board interviews these candidates, they're going to decide on the top two or three that they think could be a good match for you and then invite back those people the second day. The first day there's about 18 questions. And the questions are being designed by input that you gave to ask those people that first day. The questions are all
068the same the first day. The second day the candidates are asked more individualized questions that come out of their interviews from the first day. So the board will meet about 7.30 on Saturday morning for an orientation. Interviews start at 8 o'clock. We'll finish about 5 o'clock and then we'll talk about the candidates, narrow it down to two or three, have dinner, and then write the questions for the next day. Come back the next day. About 8 o'clock in the morning and interview two or three in depth, another hour, hour and a half, really drilling down into those people, something that they might have said that didn't make sense the day before, drilling down to make sure did you mean that or finding out more about the people as individuals. When you think about it, an
069hour and a half and then another hour, so you're talking about two and a half hours and you're going to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in this person. So we have to get this right. So after the board decides the second day, we'll talk about the top candidate or top two candidates, and then Ron and I start doing reference check. So we'll call 15 references. The board will identify the people they want us to talk to. We don't pay attention to the letters in the packet or the people they want us to talk to. We tell them the types of people we want to talk to. So, for example, to the union people, we want to talk to the CSEA president where they're coming from and the teachers' union president. We want to talk
070to a special ed parent, regular ed parent, special ed teacher, regular ed teacher, a couple board members, community members, the foundation member. So that's a lot of people just to make sure that we're making the right decision on this person that we think we fall in love with. And then I hire a firm in Colorado called Nation Search and they do a criminal background check at the nation, state and local level. They do a Megan's Law check, a DMV check and a credit check. At the same time the board's working on a contract with the person and if all those come together then in February you'll have yourself a new superintendent. That's gonna work great, really confident. Any questions? Love him. Yeah, Ann. So our district hasn't done a site visit before. Could you kind
071of explain what that process looks like? You know, I think we encourage a site visit and what that means is all the board or two members or one, whoever it can go, can go to wherever that person is currently working and ask the same kinds of questions that we've been asking all along just as a final check just to make sure we're making the right decision. If it can't be in progress, the person, the person's coming from New York or Hawaii, we'll do it via Zoom. But it's something that you choose to do and you may make the decision that it's not necessary but it's a good final check just to make sure that your investment is gonna be a good one. Does that make sense? So some of these candidates are looking for confidentiality
072so how do we kind of go do a site visit if they haven't told their school? You're only doing the site visit on the final person. Okay. The final person. So that's been important. Okay. At that point, they've been informed their board about that. And so who are we going to, we're going to their site where they're at their school, so we're going to the high school campus and walking around or what are we doing? Yeah, if they're a high school principal, go there. If they're a superintendent, we go there and we'll talk to the business manager, board member, union person, just one final check. Sure. You were gonna say something? I was gonna say something. I have a follow-up to that. I mean, I'm trying to understand how this works. Where people are frank
073with you, like in the private sector, that would be like the most awkward thing to ever happen. And also, your HR would tell you, like, you don't say anything disparaging about anybody, right? Because you're gonna get a lawsuit slapped on you. So I was just curious, like, how do you know this is, you know, genuine? There's like a secret code between superintendents that we're honest with. There's a what? Secret code among superintendents. We're honest with each other. So I may come back to you and say, hey, I heard, this is not a go, that this would not work for you. And you'll say, well, who told you that? So a person who knows that person really well. And you'd have to make a judgment. Is Scott telling the truth? Is Ron telling the truth? We
074get the truth. The guy that we have do it, Tom Lawasser, he's the retired superintendent from the Dixie School District down Miller Valley, Miller Creek in Marin County. He does a really good job at digging out a lot of information. Well, you saw the notes I already gave you so far that Tom gave for the candidates so far. He's really good at digging to find out the truth. We're just reinforcing that. So we hire someone to do a site visit. We as a board don't go and do the site visit. No, you do. No, we do. We do, OK. So here's an example. So last year, a district in the county hired a superintendent who came from Humboldt County. So I drove two board members to Humboldt County to meet with people up there. We
075stopped on the way there and looked at the redwood trees. We had a nice lunch, went there and had a two hour meeting with those people, came back, and they said it was the best field trip they've ever had. OK. All right. So let's put that on the middle school for next year, Humboldt County, redwoods. That's helpful. I think, frankly, both of you gentlemen have been extremely professional throughout the process. I wanted to thank you for your time. You've educated us immensely and helped guide us to get to this point. I'm feeling really confident in our ability to narrow down the six candidates and hopefully select and find that perfect marriage. We're really confident it's going to go really well. Thank you. OK, great. Moving on. 15. 0.2. Information. 2020. Do we need to approve
07615.1, President Bell? It says consider approval, but it doesn't seem like we do. OK. OK. OK. 15.2. Yes. Good evening, Acting Superintendent Seifz. President Bell, congratulations. Board of Trustees and the Sonoma community, the dashboard data was released last month. In November. And so tonight, I'll share with you an overview of Sonoma Valley's dashboard performance. So the dashboard, a little bit of background. The dashboard was really created to give parents and the public a general understanding and a picture of what's happening at schools and districts and to shine a light on bright spots, positives, as well as really examine areas where there might be some disparities. And this was really developed as a result of the 2013 LCFS. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. ALCFF statute that brings into account a new
077level of accountability as regards to required metrics that are required by the ESSA, the Every Student Succeed Act. There are a few new elements of the dashboard for those of you that are familiar with the dashboard. So for this 20-25 school year, the science indicator now has a color. It has a color indicator that's attached only for information. It's not used for district level accountability. Our long term ELs, they're included as a student group. We have 14 student groups in regards to the equity report. They're not applicable for DA eligibility. DA is differentiated assistance for ELA or math, but scores of a red or orange on the LP, the English Learner Progress Indicator, may contribute to a district's DA eligibility. And finally, which is good news, College and Career Readiness, which is another indicator in
078the dashboard, now includes completion of AP courses with a C or better. Okay, so what does the dashboard include? The dashboard includes these 12 indicators. On your right side are the local indicators. Those are the five indicators that self-reported. District teams or DAC. We reviewed various services and surveys, various data, and we determined whether we were meeting, not meeting, or not meeting for two years. That's a dashboard rating. And this information was presented at our board meeting in June earlier this summer alongside our LCAP. So if you want more information around the local indicators, you could find the presentation from June. Tonight we're gonna talk about the state indicators, which are academic instruction, the LP, college career, grad rate, and the state's chronic absenteeism suspension rate and science. And these indicators are marked by a
079specific dial, like an odometer or a gas gauge. Red, which is the lowest performance, all the way to blue, which is the highest. So how are the color levels determined? California uses a five by five grid, or a five by five metrics that ranks the performance. On the left side you have the status, which is the current year. And the color levels are determined by the year, and the year's performance. You have very high down to very low. And the beauty of the dashboard is that it doesn't just look at a one time score, it looks at growth over time. So you look at year to year change, which is represented by the top column from decline significantly all the way to the increased significantly. And each of the indicators has a separate five by
080five grid. And each of the indicators that you're looking at. For an example, here is an ELA matrix. And we use, because we're a unified district, we use the ELA grades three to eight matrix. So using the color grid, you could see how it is, the performance levels on the left, as well as the decline, the points in which they determine if you're a green or a red or a very high or very low. In our example here, we have a three to eight grade, and we have a three to eight grade, and we have a three to eight grade, and we have a three to eight grade, and we have a three to eight grade. And in that example here, for ELA, we performed at 40.9 points from standard, below standard. That's a DFS,
081distance from standard. We declined by 10.8 points from last year's performance data. And so that intersection gives us the orange level on that grid. So that's how the colors are determined for each of the indicators. Is this an example matrix? So is this an example matrix? say is this an actual outcome or is this still just an example no this matrix is the matrix for ELA I'm giving you the example of ELA for us got it so this is this is actually what took place yes this is how we were determined to be orange okay yes further clarification it only includes grades three through eight it doesn't include high school is that correct it does include high school but the matrix that we're using as a unified school district is specific to this matrix so
082just just to paraphrase so in general across all grades third grade and above our students are performing forty point nine points below grade level whatever that corresponds to distance from standard and compared to last year we've actually done a lot of work on that and we've done a lot of work on that but we have not really actually seen a decline in in that growth that people have actually we do yeah we did decrease and a point of clarification the scores for ELA is for grades three through eight and grade 11 that's when they take the the Sbac the smarter balance assessment okay great questions trustee Guzman Oh so staying on this trying to figure out was really the thresholds to get you from one color to another. And if we start dead in the
083middle, medium performance for the following year, if you increase by just three points, you go up to a green. But if you decrease by the same three points, it drops you down. Actually, sorry. I think I was looking at a different area. Never mind. I read the chart a little differently when I was studying up very late at night. So basically, to be in green, you need to be at 10 points or greater year over year. Is that what you're trying to determine? Well, three is on the low bound. Sorry. I guess my understanding. Can you go to the previous slide? I think that's maybe what confused me. OK, here we go. So the center left one gets you to an orange. That's negative three points. From one year to the next. Yellow plus three
084gets you to green. So with the six point swing, you can go all the way from orange to green. This is a generic example just to show what a five by five grid looks like. If you go to the next slide where you see green, green, blue, blue, blue, green, green, green, green, blue, depending on the actual indicator, it might look different. It might be one green and four blue boxes across. So each of the indicators have a different color. This is separate metrics with different scales on the left for status and on the right for growth. It varies. That's I shared a technical guide of the metrics earlier today for you to peruse if you'd like to see the actual ways each indicator is being measured. Yes, Trustee Ching. So I think it would
085be helpful to clarify that there are scaled scores, and each of the scaled scores, there's like a range for each scaled score that actually corresponds to the colors. So anyway, it's pretty technical how they figure it out. And it happens to be the scaled scores, as I recall, differs by grade level. Yes. So anyway, I just wanted to point that out. Yes. That's why it's a little hard to do the prediction like you're trying to say, like if you increase by x points, that puts you in this. Yeah, it is a bit complicated. It is complicated. Like Trustee Ching mentioned, the achievement levels are categories into the four, level one, two, three, and four. And within those levels, there's a scaled score range by grade level. And the distance from standard is the minimum threshold
086you need to score to get a level three. And that's where they base the standard and the distance from. And sorry to interrupt, standard means grade level, like performing at grade level. Yes, standard at level three on the SBAC. OK. Next slide. So this is the dashboard overview for the district. You could see this on the main dashboard web page. That's available to the public. You could see the local indicators, the five local indicators where standard is met. And then you have the color dial for the seven other indicators. And we're going to take a deeper dive into that. OK. So the next slide represents the academic performance indicators, which includes ELA, math, English Learner Progress, which we shortened to the LP, English Learner Progress Indicator, and the College Career Indicator. If we take a
087look, we're going to use the College and Career Indicator as an example. So you could see the College Career Indicator is a green, which is an increase from last year. So you see the color dial. You could see the status where it shows that 49.3% of our students are prepared for college or career. And there was an increase of a 7.7 percentage points from last year. At the bottom of the guest card, you could see an equity report, which shows number of student groups within each of the levels. And for college and career, you see zero student groups. So you could see that there's a lot of students in the red, orange, and blue, three in the yellow, and three in the green. And we're going to go over that in a couple of slides.
088You'll also see a comparison to the state of California data that's below the yellow line. This slide shows the academic engagement data, which represents chronic absenteeism and graduation rate. As you could see, the chronic absenteeism, we continue to decrease. Since 2023, it was 25.4%. And now this year for 2025, it's 17.5%. This is great news. And compared to the state, we're right on par. Graduation rate did decline. We were anticipating this because the class of 2025 had, or the class of 2024 was the last graduating class to meet the 180 graduation requirements. That was from COVID. And so the class of 2025 and beyond will now have to meet the 220. So that's a lot of credit graduation requirements. But if you compare it to the state, so we're at 90%, the state's at 87.8%.
089So we're still above the state in terms of the graduation rates. There's also conditions in climate, which is suspension rate. And looking at the data, again, from 2023, we continue to see a decline in suspension rate. In 2023, we were at 4.6%. So this year, we're at 2.9%. So that's also great news. And we're also including the science indicator, which is just for informational purposes. But it's good to see the data. Here is a multi-year comparison of, yes. Can I just ask a question on the previous slide, please? So the suspension rate, do we have a statistic that counts the number of suspension hearings versus where we are suspending a student versus not suspending a student? Because I mean, it's easy to sort of say, well, we won't suspend as many students, so the number
090looks better. But how many actual hearings or incidences where a suspension could or may be warranted? Do we track that? We have that in our own internal student information system database. That is not represented here in the dashboard. The dashboard only indicates students who are suspended at least one day during the school year. But the real stat from me, I think, is, well, from my perspective, would be how many incidences that are being considered for suspension. Because if that number's up or down, that's the real number versus, OK, do we suspend or not? Yeah, you're looking to quantify behavioral issues. And it sounds like we don't have a count on behavioral issues. This is just the outcome of suspension or not. You're right. I see what you're saying. That's reported to the state. We do
091have internal, like I mentioned, we have internal records. And we have our MTSS site leadership teams. That do look at discipline referrals. And so we're monitoring that as well. So we have systems for monitoring that data. Do we have any charts or graphs to kind of measure how that's been going over the last period of time? Not today. We could share with you probably at a later time some referral data. It'd be interesting to hear the total number of referrals over time, if they're up or down. Yes. OK. Going to move on to the multi-year comparison. So this is. OK. So we have four years of data, starting with pre-COVID 2019, and then for the past three years. And you can see we've pretty much maintained our performance within yellow or orange. College and career
092did increase from orange to green. As I mentioned, chronic absenteeism maintains the same at yellow. And the suspension rate is also at green. The next slide also compares district data to our neighboring districts. So we have Santa. Rosa, Cotati, Rona Park, Windsor, Petaluma, and St. Helena. And you could just see from a quick glance, we don't have the actual numbers in here, but from the quick glance of the color levels, we're pretty much on par with our neighboring districts in terms of our performance. OK. Next slide. And as I mentioned earlier, as part of the state's accountability, equity is at the heart of the accountability system. And it really identifies performance gaps. And so the state has a full report of performance gaps across different student groups through these equity reports. And they're available for
093every single indicator. We're required, or the state's required, to look at 14 student groups that are outlined here at the table, as well as at the bottom of the table, as we don't have data for the student groups, or the student groups are not significant enough to warrant a score. So you could see where we have strengths across student groups, challenges and those disparities and when i go when i mentioned the three student groups in yellow in college and career and three in the green you could see the three yellows are english learner long-term el and students with disabilities and then in the green are students who are socially economically disadvantaged hispanic and white so that's the equity report and i'm going to talk a little bit about the impact of why this is important
094in a bit let's take a look at all the schools um so in the next few slides has the base baseball cards lack of a better word for each of the indicators uh for each of the levels so you could see in el verano they increased in english language arts by six points and in science flowery increase in english language arts suspension rate and science and i know it says decline but we want to see the decline in suspension and chronic absenteeism. Presswood, when you take a look at Presswood, they did decline in chronic absenteeism, and they declined in suspension rates. And Sasserini had increases in math. They had a decline in chronic absenteeism and an increase of 2.3 points in science. Altamira had gains in math. They moved to actually orange with an increase
095of 15.7 points. And then at Sonoma Valley High School, they did increase in their LP, the English Learner Progress Indicator, by 4.3, as well as their college and career indicator by 7.8 points. So as we take a look at those individual schools, there's a lot of bright spots to celebrate. We could highlight the growth. We could highlight the gains that we're seeing amongst our schools across our district. As I mentioned, Flowery and Presswood did decrease in suspension, with Flowery actually moving from orange to blue on their dials, and Presswood moved from orange to green. So you could see where some of these gains are in all of these indicators across our schools. So we want to be able to celebrate and lift up some of the good work that's happening in our classrooms. So what
096do all of these colors mean and the scores? So California is accountable. California is accountable. California is accountable. California is accountable. And the sustainability and continuous improvement system is really based on three tiers. There's general assistance that's provided to all districts. There's differentiated assistance. And there's intensive intervention. Sonoma Valley is eligible for differentiated assistance. That means that we have a student group who's in the lowest category or the lowest level, red or orange, in two or more of the priorities. And so we would receive support from SCO for two years, which we refer to as technical assistance. And Sonoma Valley Unified, it continues to be eligible for DA, but it's not the same eligibility from last year. So to clarify, in 2024, Sonoma Valley Unified was eligible for differentiated assistance based on three student groups.
097Our ELs, our long-term ELs, and our students with disabilities. In the areas of ELA, math, or CCI, NCCI, College and Career Indicator, they were in the red. They had red colors or red levels in two or more of those indicators. Good news is they no longer are red, they moved from orange or yellow, and they don't have two indicators where they're in the red. So we're no longer eligible for ELs, LTELs, and students with disabilities. What has shifted is our data, in regards to our students who are identified as socially economically disadvantaged and that's due to their low performance in math and chronic absenteeism as you could see they have two reds in two of those indicators and then we also include ela as that's included in the academic indicator and they're orange i'm going
098to pause right there before i move on questions there do you need to go back um yeah i have a ton of questions i think i think listen the overarching theme here is this is where the intention and focus of everyone sitting in this room needs to be like we clearly have plenty of gaps in our district that need addressing i don't think you you know how to eat an elephant one bite at a time like we need to have very prescriptive focused um actions and owners to address that and i think that's a really important thing to do and i think that's a really important thing to do and i think that's a really important thing to do and i think that's a really important thing to do and i think that's a really
099important thing to do and i think address some of this remind me so where on this do i see that the socioeconomically disadvantaged students are eligible for da so socially economic disadvantaged students they have if you go back to the other side any of the charts that had that group listed out um back to the equity report so they weren't okay yes so the one two three four they're the fourth row socially economically disadvantaged students are eligible for da so socially economic disadvantaged students are eligible for da so socially economically disadvantaged disadvantaged so you see a red under chronic absenteeism and a red in math and because there's two reds for that yes i got i didn't see that on this slide because there was a lot the second thing i'll call out is i'm
100highly concerned about our elementary schools particularly with english language learner every one of them as far as i could see was quite underperforming um if you go back one there's just not an example in our district today however at the middle school and high school level we're getting a different outcome like it actually it looks like we're either in yellow i think um at altamira and then the high school i think was yellow too so and yep uh i guess it's not not at creekside but at sonoma valley where we're at least yellow like what is the difference i would love to understand what is happening at those two levels that's not happening at the elementary school level so that's a question we can come back and answer but like that's an area i think
101we we know we've struggled at and it's it's really clear it's called out at the elementary school level here so trustee layman i just wanted to make sure are you talking about english language learners or english language arts for the high school so on this i understand the third chart in the third not the first the third so it is english i'm saying english learner progress is the way it's labeled here yeah this one yeah yeah if you look at all the elementary schools it's red and red or really red in in a number of cases president bell may i be recognized because i want to make a statement so the other thing i want to call out just to piggyback on what trustee layman was saying when i went through each of the schools
102to look at the individual dfs distance from standard for our english language learners i mean they're almost double double below the state average so for example if you look at the comparison of you know the the state average for uh let's see what it is generally if i can see what the number is like our english language learners are it looks like there's six so you aggregate the ball but you can go by grade if you want to but in general they are 60.6 points below standard right the state overall uh i don't know what that is because i don't have it in front of me but for english language arts you know 8.1 points uh below standard is what where the state is at and our english language learners are so below that i
103don't know how many standard deviations 60 points is but we have a five alarm crisis here and i think that this is probably not the place to discuss it but we need to i want to just understand what the what's happening with ELD and you know maybe we have to revisit that as another topic but it was huge this is a huge issue and I feel like we've been screwing around it for a long time yeah maybe we went through this whole thing where hundreds of people gave us input on which elementary schools to close and listen there's a lot of big decisions we have to make as a district financially there's a lot like this is where the rubber meets the road and our kids our kids need help our English our English learner
104progress is poor and it needs help and it needs to be addressed at the elementary school level I'm just calling it out I'm not gonna be able to fix it but I think we should have we it is a five alarm alert on this this particular category it stands out amongst all the categories it really does like every other category we have I think a varying degree of success this one's this one's not yeah I agree I'm sorry I'm upset I'm like I it was the first time I've seen this yeah as a board member so it's just it's it is it needs to be called out well I guess what's frustrating is like I was gonna go back to the comparison but we can stay here first and just talk specifically I mean you
105look at all of the schools aside from flowery and Alvarano how to deke and creekside other than those there was a huge decline in our english language arts in general as well mm-hmm and so I mean especially for the high school I mean to drop 27 points I mean this is like yeah this is a really big deal and so I feel like that's actually important for the local government I'm not the only reason why this is so hard. these reports although we want to multi-year comparison celebrate the good things because we should celebrate the good things this also brings to light the things that need work and what i struggle with especially with with with everything with their um surveys that we put out it's like oh but in comparison to the state we're
106doing okay well we're actually not like this is not and i think i was going to have you go back to the uh county all the different of the school yeah or the one right before yeah perhaps uh no this one district comparison yeah i'm just like no we're not like i just i want to be a cheerleader but we have to face the reality and we shouldn't ever accept this and i feel like in the last three years that i've sat here and we've looked at this there's always been significant you know five alarm something deficits yes and so you know whether it be math english language learner or language english language arts whatever it is you know five alarm something we deficits yes and so you know whether it be math english language
107you know how can we i mean i guess this is a question i have how can we as a board support whatever it is that we need to support to make a change because in three years i don't feel like i've done that so what can we do sitting here to support whomever we need to support to make a change so that we are celebrating even more and that's a genuine question michelle can you take us to the last slide please and i do want to know when you think about english learner performance when you take a look at the data it's a little bit of nuance because once students reclassify and that's the goal of our students in our multilingual learner program is to provide them with eld instructions that they do reclassify right
108and so more students do reclassify and we want to reclassify them before they get to middle and high school so they could have an elective otherwise they will be taking an eld class as part of their school day so once they're reclassified they're no longer part of the the the group right the the denominator of the calculation yes thanks trustee Guzman so on that same topic of English learner progress is the metric here it's it's not going by point it's it's just saying making progress or not and and so the point is that to summarize at all of our elementary school campuses the majority of the English learners are not making progress from one assessment period to the next the majority are not making progress that's that's the takeaway from this data I think we
109could take a look at other benchmark assessments that we have and star like such a star and and see some growth areas but yes according to this they are not making progress and in a manner in which we want them to be right and then to trustee Ching's point we're we're comparing to a baseline standard of grade level cross categories and grade level to me is it's okay it's mediocre it's average and that's not what we aspire to like we need to really raise the bar on the rigor and not like before so far below mediocrity that's not even where we want to be but we've got a long ways to go so I I guess I'm gonna go ahead and wrap up here and I'll see you guys in the next session. Thank you
110for the questions of what do we need to do to get there please so you know I've been thinking about this quite a lot and so what we you know we can't continue to do the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome and so from my perspective I've given this a lot of thought and so until there's a consequence to our bad performance as a school district then we're not going to change anything significantly and so if we just continue hoping each year old you know next year with whatever we're doing but until we put an actual consequence in place and in my mind we need to talk about and examine third grade retention and say if a student doesn't meet the standard in the third grade in English language arts
111then they don't automatically get promoted to the fourth grade and we need to have significant intervention at that third grade level to identify those kids that are struggling early on in that year with the full understanding of everybody involved, the district office, parents, the board, that if the student does not achieve the minimum standard they won't go to the fourth grade. And I think if we offered an intensive summer program for English language arts and said if you successfully complete that, if you didn't complete the work and the level of learning needed to go to the fourth grade, but until we put a gate in place that says there's a consequence to not for us in total not performing, everybody, then we're just going to continue this. There'll be another presentation next year, oh, we're
112up, you know, the suspension. Like suspension is one of these subjective things, right? And so we're celebrating that less suspensions, but that's not, that's just someone deciding if the kid gets suspended or not. It's not a learning. It's not a learning. It's not a learning measure. It's not, you know, so it's not, I mean, to celebrate that we've improved on that is, you know, I guess it's good, but we need to have a consequence to not, for the kids not performing and our job of not teaching them properly. So I don't know how, you know, if anybody's interested in having a discussion on that, but until, you know, it's an interesting question. So I'll just finish up this last slide. And so we recognize that we need to do better and we strive working in
113partnership with our educators that we have to improve the experience of our students in order to improve outcomes. And we ask for the support by continuing to invest in the professional learning of our educators. We are now going K through five for seals or brought our early academic language, which really addresses oral and academic language and discourse of our multilingual learners. And we know if we get it right for our multilingual learners, everybody benefits. So we have all of our teachers K through five engaged in cycles of learning around standards based instruction, and that's the Matic base. And that really addresses the academic rigor and high levels of expectation through reading, writing and thinking math grade six through 12 continues to engage in building thinking classrooms. In fact, our middle school team will be going
114to St. Helena next week. And our El Verano team is also working with the county. On building thinking classrooms and building thinking classrooms is a strategy of specific practices to engage collaboration and problem solving and vertical learning. We've invested this year specifically on multi tiered systems of supports where every school site has a representative of site leaders and teachers coming together collaboratively to take a look at data. And coordinator Williams is just starting a committee with math elementary math educators to take a look at the math framework as we're now engaging in a textbook adoption process for the upcoming year. So that is some work that we're looking at in hopes to impact math instruction. We continue to support multilingual supports. Our secondary teams and teachers are working on elevation strategies. And this year we
115became intentional about progress monitoring for multilingual learners. It used to be the responsibility of the ELA or ELD teacher. Now we're ensuring that. History teachers science teachers even PE teachers has that collective ownership for students to make progress for our multilingual learners. We're expanding college and career opportunities. So this year we added the health care pathway of food nutrition and medical terminology. Next year we've partnered with Santa Rosa Junior College and we're adding psychology and intro to health care to support that pathway. Our school sites. And our district has supports for student attendance through the different tiers. We are making phone calls to parents were having meetings our office staff and community bilingual liaisons do proactive outreach to families. I know Alvarado the principal Han shared with me that she has organized a attendance team
116meeting with her school site and counselor to take a look at each student who has a high rate of chronic absenteeism. And also. We also make those personal phone calls so we we also have keeping kids in school. We have cost. Start an SST meeting so there are systems in place to really take a look at the whole child to really understand the reasons of attendance and effective systems we know have a culture of data use and that is something that we're beginning and actually we're we're now working with our principals and our teachers through MTSS to really take a look at data in order to make informed decisions. In terms of instructional next steps. So again we continue to partner with our educators and our leaders to really make that impact on student achievement
117and our kids are counting on us to get this right. So that's what we're committed to. Thank you for your support. President. I had a couple of. I wanted to point out one more thing in this presentation and thank you Dr. Casillas for this. I mean I want to. We need to spend more time. Talking about. The students because that's why we're here. I wanted to point out. What I noticed on the chronic absenteeism is you have anywhere between you know 13 to 20 percent absent chronic absenteeism in our elementary schools and so that what that says to me is that you have anywhere between you know one in seven to one in five students that are missing 10 percent. So that's. That's a lot of instruction is. So the way I think about that
118is like if we have 186 days of instruction that's like 18 or 19 days 18 of missing. So that's almost three weeks of school or more. How I mean how do. How can kids learn and do well if they're not in school and do we have do we have an understanding is this chronic absenteeism. We had a huge spike. I know it's come down since. I know it's come down since. The pandemic. We had a huge spike. It's it's it's plateauing or it's leveling out. Do we understand. But we're not back to pre pandemic levels. Do we understand what's driving it. Is it. Is it the fear of you know our English language language learners and deportation or what's going on like what don't we understand about this. So there is one thing of clarification
119I do want to make on the dashboard chronic absenteeism is for TK through eight. So. The principle is not included when you take a look at the dashboard indicators for chronic absenteeism data quest houses TK through 12 just for point of clarification. So without going without knowing all the individual stories you know we know that behind every data there's a heartbeat and every heartbeat there's a student with the story. When we speak with the principals and we talk to them about the chronic absenteeism they share with us. It's their our youngest learners are most vulnerable learners who are missing school are TK and kinders have a high rate of absences across our across our our schools. So that is one reason trustee Ching of why we have some increase. The chronic absenteeism at the elementary
120level. And is that because there's just there tends to be I think of like younger kids they get sick more often. And you know I just remember my kids was like a nonstop cold for the winter is that part of it or is there some other factor we don't know. That could be there could be other factors that we don't know you know we're making an assumption. That it's TKK that they're ill they're sick. And we the parents don't want them to be exposed. To other students. It could be family circumstances. It could be other health issues. It could be parents are traveling. There's other different situations. And that's why we have our staff. And we're trying to get them to come to school. And the staff. At the schools really taking a look and
121understanding the whole child in the picture through cost meetings. Community school liaisons making the specific outreach. And you know we're entering the holiday season. And I think if we take a look at some historical data we've seen that sometimes in January we have a high rate of absences. For our families that do travel for an extended period of time. The other observation I had was that Creekside has a seventy four point six percent. absenteeism that was that was a follow-up that dr. Casillas sent to us and so I think I want to bring this back to the board which is that we really need to talk about alternative education if 74% of the kids are chronically absent from Creekside we definitely it's something that we need to address I don't know how we address it
122but I think that we should ask staff to bring back you know more a more detailed look at that because it's not working and I don't want to say Creekside has the high rate of chronic absenteeism it's a result of students attend continuation school because they might have attendance issues so they are already entering with a high rate of absences there might already have SARB contracts in place and you know Creekside is designed to be a small school to support their individual pathways towards graduation but yes we do need to recognize and take a look at our the experience of our students at Creekside as a whole I mean if we want to give them access to opportunity and prosperity after post school it's not helpful for them to be for 74% of them to
123be absent more than you know whatever 20 days a year yes and so I think the question of how could we have a larger conversation about the continuation school the offering of the school and the learning the experience if students are engaged they'll attend so how do we create a school environment where it's engaging where they want to attend while also addressing their social-emotional needs their well-being and even their college and career dreams so that's something that's worthy of larger conversation and one last comment I'll have is that I don't think it's the role of the board president Bell for us to come up with solutions for how to address this our role is to set policy and to shine a light on some of the issues I don't feel like we should be saying
124we should ask staff to research and bring to us what the solutions are as a board but we're not deciding you know third grade retention high school retention you know carrot and stick I mean I feel like that is the that is a responsibility of staff but certainly looking at what our educational best practices that are out there do we have statistics or can look at it because it's a chronic absenteeism is 10% or greater do we is there kids that are missing 20% of school yes and more okay we were looking yesterday at one of the schools I think a student had 48 I'm looking at director Bell Beal 48% another student had 30% and you know the principals have the students on their radar and they're not looking at the school and they're
125not looking at the radar they they knew their stories they knew their situations and were able to articulate what's happening what's not happening the family circumstances but we do have just a few number of students that have greater than 10 and and if we take out the TK and kinders what does it do to the stats for the rest of the kids cuz I mean TK if you you know you've got a kid in transitional kindergarten it's pretty easy to keep the kid home for a day cuz hey they don't go or whatever it is I mean and took kinder as well so looking more at first and beyond what are those if you're saying that a large portion of the statistics are coming from TK and kinder can we take those out and look
126at the data on the rest of them is that helpful we could do our best to recalculate the data yes I just be interested to see that if it really has a significant impact our MTSS site teams actually are taking take a look at it by grade level and that's part has been part of the conversation where we're noticing this pattern yeah so we have that we do have that date we actually do have that from the last MTSS session I'm just curious to going back to the TK and greater than I mean the percentages how many students does that like how many kids is that do we know 100 in TK don't we with over 20% absenteeism is that what we're saying we don't have that number I'm just right we can get the
127number the reason why I'm bringing this up is it's a very expensive program that we afford for us to have 80 percent of our students having chronic absenteeism Right the reason why I'm bringing this up is it's a very expensive program that we afford I I mean I don't want to be disrespectful there are circumstances but that's also something that we need to talk so if we want to be respectful like there are our circumstances but that's also something that we need to talk about as a district because if it's not if this if it's not if the circumstances are just not attending that's not a good enough reason in my opinion I mean as a nothing in the school district I mean we have students in we have their own kind effort right but
128we have a number of parts the numbers are not present that's one part that doesn't get the value of of that exchange in that segment if we want to know what it isn't there are other circumstances but we're spending a lot of money for a program that seems to be you know yeah voluntary maybe not as respected as we would hope it would be and it's not reaching the goals we are in it's it's in place because we see value in it but there's only value when students attend so I I would love to see the data around that and track it because I mean we I know we can't get rid of it but we've talked about reducing the day to half day and things like that to reduce the cost and I think
129that's something we need to consider for sure okay we're good Oh trustee Goodman Thank You president Bell just one final thought on a previous topic and then a follow-up question in terms of the rigor it's really it's we know what students are capable of and it's it's amazing and it's just giving them that opportunity and I mean I've seen it year after year some of the just incredible talent that comes out of our Valley and so also when I say rigor it's it's to push them to excellence because they are capable of it all all of our students are and and yeah I just I don't want to see us just settling is the point in terms of the last slide here on the screen expanding college and career opportunities so what I would caution
130against is diminishing returns in that my perception is that over the last couple decades we have expanded those college and career opportunities over and over again which is great to a certain point I was really excited about the engineering pathway that was in Institute at the high school at least a decade ago I think had so much promise but it was just so challenging to get a program that caliber off the ground and maintain it was really resource intensive and there were a number of problems that have faced and and so here we have the new health pathway and so we need to make sure that they are provided with sufficient resources to keep it going that that's not just this initial push and then three from me on to self-oncé on about Monte прикado
131having these kind of years out then it just kind of fizzles away so if there could be a focus on what we have already and you know building on that as opposed to just kind of adding on and on and on so that's that's just I guess the thoughts on that particular topic because we do have some some pretty incredible programs in place already thank you thank you okay thank you very much Dr. Casillas moving on 15.3 FICMAT team fiscal health risk who's presenting that oh Jeff do I need to read this whole thing so in July 2025 the SCOW and the fiscal and FICMAT entered into an agreement for FICMAT to conduct a FICMAT fiscal health risk analysis of the SVUSD the agreement stated that FICMAT would perform the following an analysis of the
132Hessen-USD stage three analysis and FICMAT would meet with the Council to provide horror drinks and other rapidly changing medical products for the use of to conduct a FICMAT fiscal health maintenance management you should visit the SIEGE short общемand Rockford factors for health risk analysis and identify specific risk rating for fiscal insolvency and then to present the final report to the district's governing board at a public meeting. So that's today. All right. Good evening. Good evening. Can you hear me? Yep. Okay. Thank you. Board of Trustees, Superintendent, staff and community. I appreciate you having me this evening. My name is Jeff Potter. I'm with FCMAT, the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team. Before I go any further, let me just warn you that I have a bit of an unstable connection here. I'm at a high
133rise in downtown Bakersfield and I am beholden to hotel Wi-Fi right now. So if my connection is in any way unstable, I apologize. I'll hope for the best here. For those who may be unaware, FCMAT is a program funded by state appropriation through the Kern County Superintendent of Schools, which is where I am right now. We're effectively a government agency, no different than the school district. And we provide, for those who aren't familiar with us, we provide fiscal and operational assistance to local educational agencies throughout California and only in California. This evening, I'll be presenting, as mentioned, the report called a Fiscal Health Risk Analysis or an FHRA. This was a study, as mentioned, that occurred at the school district as a result of the Sonoma County Office of Education requesting that FCMAT conduct this
134FHRA of the school district due to some fiscal concerns that they had following the second interim reporting period earlier this year, this calendar year. As you may recall, the district self-certified as qualified at the second interim. report and the county's concerns centered on the district's multi-year projection where the district projected at that time that it would be unable to meet the required minimum reserve for economic uncertainties in all three years of the multi-year projection. FCMAT subsequently used the district's 25-26 adopted budget and the multi-year projection which is included with the adopted budget as the basis for our review. Important to mention here too that this study occurred at no cost to the school district. This was paid for by the Sonoma County Office of Education. The scope of this... Just real quick. Yes please. President
135Bell, I understand the purpose of this. The purpose of this was built and requested prior to I think our first intervention. And I think that's what we're going to be doing in our report which is coming next. I mean I guess the question is how relevant is this exercise going to be and is it worth reviewing still with the new kind of like financial outlook that we're going to review after this. I'm genuinely asking are we wasting our time with this or is this is there value in reviewing this and I guess I would ask our you know acting superintendent Sifes as well like do you know what the is being read out here is it relevant? Is it not relevant knowing what what we have now for the report like I don't want to
136go through this whole exercise and say, ''oh, we've got new numbers it's not relevant''? I'm genuinely asking. The scope by important here. So, would you like to comment the? I'm just trying to understand is this information going to align with the new forecast we have and it's not like were we've so many important things to do here that relate to children like if this isn't relevant like I hate to say it. But if it's not relevant like I'm wondering if we should review it. Well, thank you for that, videomaker. that as a premise uh jeff thank you for being here i know we may not be able to see each other for context go itself has a ficmat report from approximately two years ago we refer to it it's it's highly relevant to us i
137i think uh ficmat is the most trusted partner in in the entire state when it comes to kind of objective analysis of both financials but also kind of trends and practices within a school district so and jeff is one of the foremost exports at ficmat so i i think there is uh certainly relevant information in this document i think the information that the board will hear at first interim is also relevant i think uh both both things can exist uh kind of in parallel and have elements of relevance so uh and listen i'm i'm i'm trying to be cognizant of our our focus here if that's the case like then let's jump into it if it's i'm looking at it now if it's still relevant with the current you know what we're going to review
138next is the you know financial projections like then let's jump into the analysis let's let's see what's relevant well i think um i think the data that jeff um based the financial part of it on was prior to closing the year and having the increases in taxes so our financial outlook has changed significantly um i think some of the questions that are asked are just possibly you know could this be a risk and i don't know that we have to go into each one line by line as i expressed a concern with the board i'm not comfortable with all of the responses because i don't think they're all factual or accurate but i think you know hearing um what some of his concerns are i i think could be relevant i mean there's always room
139for improvement but i i disagree with the risk level and i think um the analysis of the financials is is irrelevant like you say we've we've moved forward and we're in a better position yeah and thank you for that work so maybe we do go through then the like what those district risks are the summary here maybe we maybe we i know that's probably what um yeah let's start let's start there and and then we can go kind of go from there and i know i'm kind of dictating to you mr potter what you do for a living so i apologize it's just there's a lot of information that's come about in the last week for us that's quite different to what we've been working with over the past you know couple years so it's
140it's in my mind there's some systemic things that we've worked to address and i'm just i'll turn the mic over to you at this point okay thank you um so a couple things on that number one it's not uncommon uh for us to uh for uh for us to you know conduct an fhra the study and report writing that's involved for an additional uh a reporting period to occur um which in this case actually if we were to do this same job today i mean today we would still use the exact same report that we used and the reason is because i know today or probably this evening you're you're approving the first interim report the first interview report has not yet been reviewed by the county office so we wouldn't at ficmat even though
141no, you have an updated financial. The county has yet to do their statutory review. The other reason is because we don't use the unaudited actuals for an FHRA because it has no forward-looking document included in it. It is strictly a backwards-looking document. It does not include a multi-year projection. So we wouldn't be able to use either the adopted, or sorry, the unaudited actual, or the first interim report if I did it today. So just know that we would still be using the same report that we use, which was the adopted budget. So keep that in mind. It's also not uncommon for districts to complete an FHRA themselves and come up with a different score than we tabulate. And that's okay, too. It's understandable. Districts have more information than we have. We don't do a deep
142dive on all of these questions. We do more of a cursory review. This wasn't, you know, like an external or annual external audit. This was a review of 140 yes or no questions that span 20 factors in the FHRA. And the tool itself is a little bit more complicated than the actual FHRA. So we don't do a deep dive on all of this in the FHRA. Just a MU time. So fcmat.org. In summary, the tool itself, if anyone is interested, is available directly on our Web site. The exact same tool that we used for this process with Sonoma Valley Unified. And if you are interested in seeing it or seeing how we scored other districts over the years, all of that is right on our Web site. Again, we're a government agency, so all reports
143go on our Web site. Our Web site is super easy to find. It's for this report was me obviously my colleague andrea ward and you'll notice in the report lionel martinez he's a technical writer at our home offices here in bakersfield the report the compilation of the report is a result of documentation that the district provides to us that we request as well as our interviews of the district staff members that includes district leadership we visited the district conducted our field work and and i always say this too because of the timing it's always possible no matter how quickly these reports can be turned around it's always possible that some of the concerns if there are concerns in any fhr report that they're either resolved or in the process of being resolved before we have
144an opportunity to even address the board so and that's not uncommon as well and and it's a good thing i mean especially where there's low hanging fruit if the district sees some easy wins in some of the areas that we identified as needing improvement those can be quick and easy uh items to to check off and improve um i'll also point out that our review focused um like i said primarily on the 25 26 adopted budget we're aware that the district closed the books which is also you know not uncommon to end with and we're also aware that the district has a very low number of specific fund balance fund balance and funding funds so we have a healthy fund balance a healthier ending fund balance healthier reserves that's great but we didn't take the
145um unaudited actuals and stop what we're doing and start over we continue through this process again we don't typically use the unaudited actuals for an entire fhra it may be used for components of it but not for the entire process because it has no forward-looking document across reporting periods and some of the questions may change but there are also questions especially those that may appear year after year those are really the the areas that a district should focus on if there is a temporary change in say leadership or even the district's ending fund balance I think it's more significant to a district when it's a persistent problem and you can tell from the questions which ones may be persistent I'll get into the report I just want to make sure I usually I often forget
146I'm sorry does somebody have a question you have to forgive me I can't see no that's okay and I think there's a bit of a delay I was just going to see if we could dive into what's relevant to the district at this time instead of the sure yeah great may I thank the staff or should I skip that let's just let's just get to the to the cut to the chase if we could please to the score the score in the report is 38.6 that would indicate a moderate financial risk however there are some questions that qualify as what we call material weaknesses those when those questions are not considered as material weaknesses those when those questions are not considered as material weaknesses those when those questions are not considered as material weaknesses receive
147an answer of no it elevates the district risk usually from moderate to high I can speak more about that at the end of the presentation it's also completely explained in the report itself but it's also important to note that a lot of these questions all of the questions are weighted some questions are considered more important than others in identifying potential risk and so not all the questions are treated the same way and so not all the questions are treated the same way and so not all the questions are treated the same way uh that being said I don't recommend focusing on any single question um we don't always have access to all the necessary information that a district would have to answer every question with absolute certainty so and it's also possible that the answers
148to some questions may have changed since our study occurred so there are some judgment calls in any FHRA report that we make in fact where we can't make any judgment calls in any FHRA report that we make in fact where we can't verify a question we'll typically answer no even though the district may have additional information that could satisfy a question um we often don't have that aren't in you know it hasn't been uploaded uh to our server maybe we don't get that information through the interview process and so we answer no but you'll notice that wherever we answer no in the report we explain why and so what i would do if i were you is look through the report see wherever we answered no and see if the issue that we're identifying has
149already been resolved if it hasn't that's something that you can use in that report it's already been resolved great you can check it off and move on as i mentioned in the report summary uh the primary areas of improvement for the district include deficit spending and the restoration of the general fund balance and the district's reserves and the district's reserves and the district's reserves and the district's reserves and the district's reserves and i understand that may have improved at this point but i would encourage the district even if it has to remain vigilant proactive in in balancing the budget um you know at the time uh of our field work the district lacked a formal board approved plan to restore the reserves you may have that now and if you do that's great so you
150can dismiss that but at the time of our field work that didn't exist we had some um reference to to reductions that needed to be made on the myp but we lacked any like i said any kind of a formal approval a board resolution a plan of any kind uh that had been adopted that would restore the reserve uh some other areas in the report that you'll notice is that the district has not yet adopted the district has not yet adopted um i think it might be troublesome to provide such an unveiling as there were regular закончions on the ida proposal so ai só mejor la do ii tiroflógrilo no act to make it still legal the university she has uh signed with us had an hour uh back in late september of which the
151region has so far been think of giving any kind ofmia chances um to receive any type or program or instruction posted by the university as a look at theiquan giant duringNotice had uh um maybe a larger number of no responses position control district leadership which has been unstable especially for the superintendents position over the course of the past 10 years so that isn't something for instance that is specific to this report that has been an issue for this district for the better part of a decade and of course declining enrollment and the resulting decline in student attendance which are obviously important�a city team um these are perhaps somewhat of if u need some obviously important drivers of district revenues. We're aware that enrollment is only eroding slightly. Can I make a point of clarification there?
152Declining enrollments are not a driver for revenue for us, correct? Oh, because you're a basic, thank you for saying, wow, that was a thank you. Yes. I think the summary that you've provided here in front of us, I don't think anyone here is surprised by any of the findings. I know I'm not surprised. I think it is what we've been talking about for the better part of a couple years and attempting to address. I mean, the only thing I'm, you know, reading through here is the one highlight is that, you know, on 15.3, the district ensures the duties following, you know, interviews indicated that payroll staff have access to add or modify employee records. And employee payments, like that's the kind of the one thing I read through this that is probably a risk, right?
153I mean, yeah, okay. So is it? And that falls under the position control. Yeah, right, right. Yeah, yeah. But so. Well, maybe. Oh, no, it's not position control. It's internal control. Internal control, fraud protection. That's what I meant. Yeah. I mean, so, I mean, Mr. Potter, like, what's the one thing that you've taken away from this report that we should. Make a change. Like, what's the most important thing? Restore your reserves. Okay, great. So we got that one. Yeah. Okay, number two. Let's see here. What would be the second one? Stop definitely. Yeah, assuming you restore the reserves. I mean, along those same lines, obviously, an improvement in the district's ending fund balance. Right. You know, the adoption of a plan proactively to make sure that the MYP is balanced. And, of course, deficits. And,
154you know, I'm aware that many districts are deficit spending. And in some instances, controlled deficit spending can be okay if you have a large ending fund balance. But to the extent that the district ever, whether it's now or ever, doesn't have a balanced budget, I would encourage you to proactively put a plan together sooner rather than later to restore that. Okay. Can I ask a question? I have two follow up questions related to that. In the report, one is around contributions and the other one is around reserve levels. So the analysis stated that the board lacks a plan to eliminate or reduce or control contributions from its unrestricted general fund. And so I know that we have a problem. So in 2021, our contributions were 11.6 million. And they have increased by 35 percent currently
155in this new budget year. It's 2526. Our contributions. Our contributions are now 15.7 million. Which is about 27 percent of the unrestricted budget. So what I'd like to know is what is FICMAT's, what are the best practices that FICMAT recommends to address contributions? If that's like a key piece of, you know, getting, managing that. Because it's definitely been growing over time as our enrollment has been declining. How do we? How do we do that? How do we come up with a plan or what does a best practice plan look like? Well, so for most school districts, and it's certainly true for you as well. One of the biggest, if not the largest contribution across all school districts is special ed. Special ed is an area that really requires, I'm sure you know this, really careful
156planning and review. Because, you know, we all know that special ed as a program is underfunded. Heavily underfunded, both statewide and nationwide. And so if the district, any district doesn't have a good handle on its special ed expenditures, isn't controlling costs, looking at ways for cost savings. Well, you know, obviously still trying to honor an IEP, but a district, you know, if it doesn't have a handle on special ed costs and they continue to spiral. That is putting. You know, increasing pressure on the general fund, it many districts and it yours too. So what I would encourage you to do is if you're, if you're not already looking at special ed costs, that's probably the single biggest area where a contribution is necessary from the unrestricted general fund. So, yeah, that's your lowest hanging fruit.
157Although I know it isn't necessarily something that you can easily just snap your fingers and reduce special ed expenditures. I understand that. But that's primarily where the contribution is. I mean, where do you like to see it at? Like, what's the target amount? You know, given the district, our budget size. I mean, is there like a, a best practice standard that we should be aiming for? I mean, you see so many districts. Like us, so, you know, I'm it's like, it's 15Million. You know, 26% of our unrestricted revenues. Where. Where do you like to see it? Where do you like to see that? Yeah. So, uh, you'll notice there's a section, the very last section in the report is a special ed section, and we actually run some metrics in that section on, you know,
158and I'm talking specifically about special head here. But again, that's gonna be a largest, the lion's share of your, uh, contribution. But in that section, you'll notice that we gauge we, we, we look at whether or not the district. Is spending more or less. Um, in that area than, than statewide averages and even countywide averages. And so there is a metric included in, in, in the report. If you look for it, um. As far as contributions, that's there isn't really a standard for contributions. And I think part of the reason for that is districts. Um, very widely in the amount of contributions that they have. And what they are for, and some of that even could be local programs that a district runs in. So, um, what the contributions are 1, you know, special ed
159is easy to compare. Because it's at every school district, but there's other programs, especially local programs that may not be at every school district. So we can't compare those statewide. So to give you a number on. Well, here's what the contributions should be. Um, really has to also consider what are all the programs, restricted programs, other funds that the district is running in order to understand whether or not some of those may be too high. So I don't have a number off the top of my head to say a contribution should be below 20% or 30%. Unfortunately, it isn't that simple for most districts. Okay. Any more questions for Mr. Potter? Okay, great. Well, thank you, Mr. Potter. I appreciate the presentation. Thank you. And moving on to 15, what's what? 15.5. Oh, sorry, 15.4,
160the first interim report and analysis. Is that, that's you? Ms. Sifes, please, let's hear it. Just so, just so you all know too, the FICMAT report will be on the webpage along with my response to it. So go ahead, Michelle. So executive summary for our unrestricted funds here. Our total revenues were 60 million. Our total expenditures are 43. We're showing a net increase of 1.4 million and an ending fund balance of 6.283710. The unrestricted general fund shows a net increase resulting in an ending fund balance of 8.58%. The biggest change from the adopted budget was we estimated our revenue based on the P2 property taxes that we had. And as you know, we ended the year $1.7 million more than what we had projected. And so we typically estimate our property taxes to go up
161by 3.5%. And we'd already received a 3.1% at the end of the year. And then an additional 3% this year. So our property taxes were actually quite significantly higher than they had originally been projected. And again, I think it's important to note that we build our budget based on the information that we know at the time. And so we had the assessed values at P2 and the, we actually just got the certified roles for this year around November the 20th. So go ahead, Michelle. Here is our summary of our revenues. Again, property taxes to make up the bulk of it at 96%. Other state revenues are 1.5. Local revenues are 0.6 million and we don't receive any federal revenue on our unrestricted funds. Go ahead, Michelle. Our expenditures, 41% are for 60, certificated salaries, employee
162benefits are 29%. And then our total budget is at 17%. Classified salaries are at 17%. Services are 10. Books and supplies are at 3. Our, um, salaries and benefits for the unrestricted general fund make up 87% of our total budget. Go ahead. Our restricted revenues, um, uh, 13.8 million. Expenditures are 29 million. So we're, um, spending down some of the, um, fund balance that we have on, um, uh, well, actually, that's showing a deficit that is, um, a little bit higher than what we expected. Um, so we're, um, we're a little bit lower than what we expected. But, um, so we're certainly going to get a little bit more of a, uh, substantial amount of revenue. Well, actually, that's showing a deficit of $15.9 million, which is covered by the contributions. So as Trustee Ching
163said, we're contributing $15.6 million, and that goes to primarily special ed at, I think it's $13 million, and then we have to contribute 3% of our expenditures to routine restricted maintenance. So on the restricted, we have $8.6 in other state, other local is $2.7, and federal is $1.8 million. Go ahead. Again, I addressed the contributions, $13.1 million is special ed, $2.3 million is routine restricted maintenance, and $140,000 is for other funds. That includes a large portion of that is our, what do you call BITSA here? The? Induction programs, I think $75,000 where we pay for new teacher induction, and the rest of it are some co-curricular for middle and elementary schools primarily. Go ahead. So this is a summary of restricted and unrestricted. General funds shows an increase of $1.4 million. Restricted, we're spending down
164some of the reserves, so we're spending a decrease of $217,000. Total net increase or decrease is $1.2 million for restricted and unrestricted. Go ahead. Our ending fund balance in unrestricted is 6.3 million, and our restricted is 5.8 million. Total fund balance of $12 million, and we do meet our reserve balances. And then this is just a summary slide. Go ahead. Summary slide of total restricted and unrestricted. $7.3 million. 76% is personnel costs 24% is other operating costs okay questions did anyone bring the confetti I mean like it's kind of wild first time we've had a balanced budget in a long time and there's no deficit spending in the multi-year projection and no deficit spending in the multi-year projections not gonna make the headlines but damn good work I know part of it it was we
165have higher expected revenue which is making up some of the gap but it's also the tough decisions we made as a district in the community right over the last couple years that put us in a position where all the board members sitting up here made a commitment that we would get to a balanced budget this year and we got some help but we also put ourselves in a position to take advantage of that help and we're able to build up our reserves for the future so when we have an eight million dollar facilities upgrade you know we we can start planning for that like we weren't able to plan for that three or four years ago and we can start to do things in our district that are gonna help for the future now in
166the future so I mean it's it's an incredible position to be in and I know there's a ruckus crowd in here tonight celebrating it but hopefully that news gets out and like it means that we're doing we're moving the district in the right direction that's I mean I I maybe I've that's how I feel I'm curious how the rest of the board feels but it's it's quite exciting and yeah maybe some confetti next next board meeting the increase in revenues definitely helped and I think working with a board who is very cognizant of what needs to be done and making the hard decisions I mean we've made significant cuts in right-sizing the district and as long as we continue making those good decisions I think we won't have an issue with thick mud anymore I
167mean that the trade-off is like you make the cuts in in some of those positions now we're in a position to address the real issues which is we want better outcomes for our children like that's the real issue nothing else matters like that is the issue we're here to solve we've we had a right size our district we had to balance the budget we needed funding available to do it now we go attack the problem or the opportunity and our kids will get a better educational outcome from it so I mean it's it's a really good place to be in we're not fully out of the water because these are only projections we have to meet you know we have to be cognizant of how we spend that money but I guess I don't have
168any questions I'm sorry everybody good federal revenues and what what are the risks or what what how are we feeling about actually receiving the federal revenues that we've actually projected because there's been a lot of talk in the news at CSPA everybody was talking about it so I'm just curious if you have any insight on that or what's the overall impact? What's our contingency plan? Because I've heard a lot of different things about whether the federal government is going to like actually deliver. From what we're being told that they are going to deliver and I think there was I think Title II and Title III was at risk for some cuts, but Title I, which is the bulk of our federal revenue wasn't going to be cut, so I don't have a great concern about
169not getting that money now. Okay. And then the second question I have is related to one of the standards and criteria at the end of the, let me see if I can find that. It's my page 289 and it's related to I think it's maybe page 17. I just wanted to follow up on the. Okay. The supplemental early retirement program in the fund, fund 01, I guess that's the general fund. Can you just remind me that this $896,000 liability, is that the PARS retirement program that we approved? Yes. So just refresh my memory how that means that we have an outstanding liability of almost of $900,000. Right. That program was promised to pay for itself. But where does that show up in like what line item or functional, is that in the 5,000s? And we
170pay that out on an annual basis? Correct. And just, I can't quite remember how PARS actually works, but I didn't, can you just explain how the liability works on this? So we agreed to pay, one of them I think was for five years and one of them was for three years, a certain percentage of their salaries. And so they bill us $369,000 a year and they pay out their annuities. And we have one year left on the first plan that was done and two years left on the last one that was done. And so the way that it was marketed or presented to the board was that we would pay out this annuity because we would have the upfront savings of incentivizing people to actually retire. And I don't remember the specifics of how many
171people actually took it. Do we know roughly what the savings are versus this payout? Yeah, because the savings were calculated in the analysis and I can share that again with you. But so it's, if you're going to have to replace a teacher who took the payout, then you were going to have savings from assuming you were going to hire a teacher with less experience. Right. Yeah. So based on the analysis, we were going to save, it wasn't a significant amount of money, but we were going to save. I know that the last year it wasn't a significant amount of money. I'd have to pull it to see exactly how much it was. All right. But I can share it with you. I'll follow up with you. I just am trying to refresh my memory around
172that because we have another item coming up to discuss, to discuss early retirement. But okay. Thank you. All right, everyone. Good morning. Is everybody good? Moving on. You have your present. Oh, sorry. Oh, it's an action item. So do I have a motion to approve 15.4, the first interim analysis? I'll make a motion to approve 15.4. Second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. He said aye. Okay. Moving on. 15.5. And it's an action item. of a one-time early bonus MOU between Sonoma Valley Unified School District and the CSEA chapter 376 in the Valley of the Moon Teachers Association here to present good evening President Bell members of the board community and acting superintendent Sifes so kind of a good intro into this next item this is very different from doing something that is
173PARS related and what we would like to do is we've negotiated with both our CSEA and VMTA partners and offer a one-time $15,000 if they notice us there is a little bit of a mistake the MOUs say January 23rd and it is January 23rd so the cover sheet is not correct it is January 23rd because if they notice us ahead of time it's a little bit of a mistake and they're not going to be able to get us through it's a one-time cost to the district and with our classified we were kind of figuring depending on how many people take it it's it will definitely save us and it will also help us keep some of our current employees it will as we're eliminating positions if we know early we will not have to notice
174them and go through because we will have positions for them so that's what we're attempting to do and you know kind of incentivize them in the sense that if I give them a little bit of time just for giving us an early tell and letting us know they can really notify us anytime even into June we've gotten notices in July so it just helps with the whole process that we know we're going to be going into reductions due to the school consolidation just to clarify you just have to have 20 years of service but that doesn't mean that you have to be eligible for retirement because you could be you could have 20 years of service but not be eligible to retire is that correct? It's really, really complex and complicated with STRS. Yeah, I
175mean, you can be eligible at 55, depending on how many years you've been. So it's very complicated. CalPERS, again, it's, you know, people want to get as close to the age of 65 because then they can, you know, get their medical benefits, their Medicare. So it's pretty complex. It's like a very personalized decision for everybody. But we really wanted to just acknowledge the dedication and service to our district with having it be 20 years. And as a follow-up to that, is the district also obligating itself, if you're not 65, are we also paying for health care benefits? Because in some cases, I think we've done that in the past. So that's other contract language? Well, that's the Medigap in both contract languages that we will offer the Medigap for five years. So if you're 60
176and you want to retire and you're not eligible for Medicare, you can get, you know, district provided for five years. But it's only for the employee. And they would be paying us. Now, on the STRS end, they do have to retire to be able to get that Medigap because it's actually billed through STRS. That's another complicated financial situation. But, yeah. So really our goal here is... To incentivize that early tell. People may know and, you know, look at that and make that decision to help us attract and retain. And also, you know, kind of better plan for what we know is coming with our reductions. I think her art. Thank you. So the 20 years, that's any position at any site. And somebody could have started here, moved away, and come back. As long as
177it's... As long as it's... As long as it's... As long as it's... As long as it's... As long as it's... As long as it's... As long as it's... As long as it's... As long as it's... As long as it's... As long as it's... As long as it's... As long as it's... As long as it's... As long as it's... Lifetime accumulative 20 years? We don't have... I don't see as we've got anybody that's left. But, yeah. 20 years of service. So if they left for two years and came back. And I do also want to say we do have some classified that may only be working like a 0.5 a few hours a day. And so that would be prorated. But most of our certificated staff, I think almost everybody with one or... With the exception
178of one or two, they are at a 1.0. They're working full time. I'll make a motion to approve 15.5. Second the motion all those in favor aye great thank you member the move for the seal certification okay so we are respectfully requesting that you approve this memorandum of understanding which would provide a $750 stipend for teachers who complete the seal training and certification last year our k2 teachers started it and then this year our third through fifth grade teachers have started so seal as you heard with Dr. Casillas presentation it stands for a sobrieto early academic language and it's a high quality professional development that supports student language acquisition implementing seal is a significant three-year commitment on the behalf of our educators and in the first year alone teachers spend either you know six to
179eight full days out of the classroom and they invest substantial time in planning collaboration and developing these original instructional units rather than using something that's just pre-packaged out of the box materials or curriculum the stipend does recognize the additional workload required to attend the training create the unit's collaborate with colleagues and implement the seal instructional strategies we feel like this is a fair and reasonable investment that honors teachers professionalism it strengthens our districts work to improve instruction for all students especially our english learners and those who need it. who benefit from language rich environments and I do want to say that this is this is like we have funding for this it is for professional development and we would like to be able to offer and we've also negotiated with VMTA for several months now
180as to work through this so we appreciate that you're considering this request and I welcome any questions Trustee Guzman two questions the six day PD days are those already allocated throughout the year or is this in addition to other PD yes so last year kindergarten K2 K2 correct K2 was six days and this year it's third through fifth and they were already scheduled before the start of this school year so I believe they've done have they already done four or yeah okay so if someone goes through this training do they still have the opportunity to take additional development in other areas yes yeah this is in addition to you know what our two days one in October and one day in February plus our after-school Wednesdays are yes they would so this is part of
181their instructional days so that's why they were pulling them out of the classroom and providing a sub so okay and then is this a lifetime certification or is there after a certain number of years they have to become recertified so it's it is sort of like a lifetime certification and we do have capacity within our districts to we've got instructional coaches our ed services team everybody really on board helping to support and you know collaborate and work together the thing that's really really kind of like I would say precious and really special about this is releasing teachers together and when you can get everybody to other learning the same thing you comment has a great opportunity for me to get me, everyone to follow along with what Ruben had said, I was going to have
182to actually visit that facility eventually when we're leaving next summer collaborating, working through the challenges, it's really, really powerful, and we can ensure everybody is getting the same PD. We were visiting Flowery last week and saw in the classrooms, and teachers using these practices, and students, and the academic rigor and language, it's really, in a short amount of time, to see it happening is really wonderful to see. I'll make a motion to approve. 15.6. Second. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Oh, sorry. I just want, well, I have a question because I didn't get it answered, but so are we, because this is a three-year program, does the stipend apply every year, so for the three years, or is it a one-time stipend? I have a hard, and I also would like to know, what
183do you think the downside risk of, in terms of approving this? Because I feel like, we're setting a precedent of, for every professional development training, then we should really, like, pay everybody a stipend, if you're a high school teacher, if you're doing, so this is what one of my concerns are. Anyway, I just wanted to ask what you think about this. So we do work with VMTA, and we do already have negotiated stipends, like we're going to have a math pilot, so that is already in there, and we can not agree to it. We can always say no. We just felt like, you know, doing this district-wide in our elementary, and the amount of time, and you know, it's a lot for them to be working together, and creating these units, that it just, you
184know, seems it was appropriate. So I'm not really concerned, like, about that being precedent setting, and that every, you know, training or everything, we're gonna be paying for that, yeah. I mean, my just general concern is that, there just doesn't seem to be buy-in, so we're trying to incentivize teachers with financial rewards. I don't know, I can't really support it now. I'd be happy to put it on pause, and think about it, and bring it back, but today, if we're gonna vote on it, I won't be able to vote in favor of it. I have a question, really quick. So you said you went to Flowery. I don't recall, so I apologize if we talked about this, but I do know that when we did a tour, actually, of Flowery, in one of the classes,
185the principal mentioned that what was happening was part of the SEAL training. So did the teachers, were there teachers specifically from Flowery that went and did this training? So, yeah, it's all of them, and we've been able to go on these instructional walks, and that's one of the things that principals are highlighting, and we were in a classroom at Sasserini in kindergarten, too, and it's very evident. And, you know, our K-2 are further along, because they're now in their year two. So, yeah, just. Yeah. People, you know, teachers embracing it, and going with it, and, you know, being excited about it. All elementary teachers are doing it? Well. But our 3-5 have had the four days, so they're just, like, four months in. I guess I was just, I'm just curious, because of, if we
186went back and looked at the data that we saw, Flowery was one of the schools, when I was talking about the English language development, that had an increase. So I was just, you know, I want to support what's working, and if this incentivizes our educators, and compensates them for time to go learn, and collaborate, and be together, and get excited about something that we believe is going to make progress, then I definitely want to support it. At any point in time, like you said, this is, we can not agree, right? And so we're not tied to this, but this is moving forward. I think it's progress, so I'm going to support it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
187Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I think all of the schools are implementing it. It's just Flowery has implemented it with more fidelity, I think. And I think that's really one of the reasons that their scores did increase some. But all of the schools are beginning to implement it, and I think it's going to make a difference. And like Ms. Evenson said, I don't think that this is, it's not setting a precedence for all PD moving forward. takes quite a bit of prep and planning, especially in the beginning. And you know what we're currently investing in? I don't remember the numbers from last year, but like overall, like every teacher we're having to cover like six to eight release days, right, with substitutes. And then
188the actual program training, right, and the materials. Yeah. And that would be a question for Ed Services, but yes, that is correct, the cost of the substitutes. So for the costs, we do have costs for the contracts. The first year was $123,000, and the second year is $137,000. And then we have substitutes, so we have 49 educators participating in the training, so we have those subs. That's about $20,000. And then instructional materials, we're bringing in rich, culturally responsive and inclusive books that are engaging as well as interactive, what do we call it, play, dramatic books. Play materials. Mm-hmm. The estimated cost so far has been $360,000. Which is also restricted funds that can... Yeah, that's specific to professional development. Is that coming from a grant? It's educator effectiveness dollars, so it is restricted specifically to
189professional development, which we need to spend by the end of June. Okay, so we have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. No. Thank you. Opposed? All those opposed? One. Aye. One. 15.7, discussion and possible action. Second read of BP and AR 513, absences and excuses. Good evening, everyone. Jillian Beale, Director of Educational Services. We're just bringing back the absences and excuses for any further discussion and possible action. So we had quite a bit of discussion earlier on chronic absences. We're going to talk about chronic absenteeism and it seems like this policy is really more just trying to define what is excused, what's not excused. Is this the place to address chronic absenteeism or is that elsewhere? Yes. So this policy is really just taking the new updates that they
190did to education code and making sure that our policy is aligning with it. So anything that came out new over the past couple of years since we've updated it is now going to be included. And so it doesn't add anything additional outside of education code. But this isn't the place for chronic absenteeism. That's other policies? It might come up. I mean, it's a different policy, yes. Okay. Got it. Thank you. I just am disappointed that we're not going to formally address school sponsored athletic events and other things explicitly in this. So I just wanted to mention that. We looked into it and checked in with legal. And so because those events are not absences, the recommendation was not to include them in absences and excuses because they're not technically considered an absence, whether it was
191excused or unexcused. The recommendation was to really look at our procedures and our protocols and make sure that that was communicated in our student handbooks. So how is that? Because it's not equitably or equally applied in our high schools. So how is that? I mean, it's not a policy that we're going to be able to apply to our high schools. It's not a policy that we're going to be able to apply to our high schools. So how is that? I mean, it's not a policy that we're going to be able to apply to our high schools. So how is that? I mean, it's not a policy that we're going to be able to apply to our high schools. It's not a policy that we're going to be able to apply to our high schools. It's
192like left to the discretion of teachers. And I think then you don't get an . So it should say activity for anything that is school sponsored. And so that's where we really need to look at what we have in place and make sure that that is being utilized across the board because anything that is school sponsored like that should be marked as activity, which is a present code. Okay. So I agree. And I think that there is definitely. Okay. equity issue and there's a lot left up to discretion I had a personal experience with an athlete who had ten what they are absences and a teacher decided to put down missed many classes or missing missing multiple classes as a comment I had to go back I started with the ad then I went to
193our attendance and every single absence was a baseball absence it just so happens and this is why I really think it's so important that we look at our master schedule because English is the last every single day that they get out for anyways my experience is it's not equitable I had to have a meeting we had to have it changed I wasn't going to settle for that and so I'm just being I don't often talk about personal experiences but I know this one all too well and I don't know how many other parents are paying attention and realize that that like that's also that's not okay that's not an intentional absence that's and and it is an absence and it's missing instructional time which the students are responsible for going in and making up I'll
194acknowledge that for sure but that's a statement on a document that lives with kids so you know you don't have colleges looking to be like oh let me look at their attendance and see were they sick where they flip it and they didn't want to attend so I agree I don't I don't think that this addresses the real issues and I feel like as a board we often time historically just rubber stamp things and this is where we make a difference so I do think it needs to be addressed and I you know I don't I don't I'm not legal but I don't agree that it's not an absence it is an absence and so somehow some way we have to figure out a way to ensure that these our athletes are are not being
195penalized for being athletes so I'm not sure where to do that but we can add a definition for for this and add it and bring it back next to say that school sponsored events is not counted as an absence so we just call it out in there and bring it back next month I mean that would make the most sense just to it's a simple addition to one of these yeah moving on to fifteen point eight discussion and possible action for administration from the board that's okay thank you thank you for that great question and we do have a couple more questions and then we'll go to our next item that was put in that we we have been discussing for a while in terms of the way we have managed the county district assets
196finances we are going to go to our last item here which is the state's property management policy and that's now being updated by the district assets management board so if you are a member of the state and you have them recorded in state documents we would first read VP and AR 3400 management second paragraph down under internal controls I'll read it off board members and district employees involved in the making of contracts on behalf of the district board members making of contracts on behalf of the district other than superintendent what when does that occur what's your question again like I mean I understand approving contracts that are brought before us but in terms of the actual making of them the board should never be making a contract it should always be staff presenting a contract
197right so that's what I'm questioning is is there's this phrase in here of board members involved in the making of contracts well we are involved in the negotiation of contracts I'm making is an interesting term but we are whether it's the think of the cell tower you know I don't know I think that's different I think that well at least the way I see it I think that's the way I see it I think that's the way I am interpreting it and I we should get maybe legal to opine on this and give us a definition but there have been instances in the past where trustees go out and try to negotiate contracts unbeknownst to the district or the other trustees let's just put it that way I mean it seems like it's very straightforward
198that you would not do that that would be out of acting out of your authority but let's say this has happened in our district in the past I mean this is what I'm interpreting it as you've got to read the first paragraph and it's this is part of the the internal controls and fraud prevention right so it expects the members board members employees to maintaining a business relationship with this act with integrity and due diligence to in dealings involving the district's asset and fiscal resources I believe this is a very important part of this but I want to be clear on this you know it's not going to be a contract that is going to be approved by the district it's a contract that is going to be approved by the district and board members
199and district employees involved in the making of contracts on behalf of the district shall comply with the district's conflict of interest policy as specified in that so this is just saying that if a board member is going to do it it's got to comply with the district's conflict of interest policy so it would sort of then default to saying a single board member can't go conflict of interest right is that is that I think that answers the question and this was drafted by CSBA legal so legal did a point on it so yep I'd make a motion to approve 15.8 every second first read okay okay so we're gonna are we gonna bring it back with changes because if we're not gonna change anything I mean we can bring it back I'll rescind my motion
200that was 3400 you're doing board policy 3100 okay point nine fifteen point nine discussion of possible action first read BP 3100 budget so so yes we were going to have a budget workshop in October and it was the board's desire that we established a budget workshop in October and it was the board's desire that we established a budget workshop in October and it was the board's desire that we established a fund balance reserve greater than three percent and so we didn't have that that workshop so since we're presenting first interim I thought this was the ideal time to be able to bring forth this policy in addition to setting the reserve the reserve limit it also addresses some the public hearings for the LCAP and the LCFF equity multiplier but the main change is that
201we're going to have to do a budget review of the budget and the LCFF equity multiplier but the main change is that we're going to have to do a budget review of the budget and this policy is to establish a reserve balance of 10% moving up to 17% and that was just an arbitrary number that we've thrown out before of 10% so subject to discussion I'm not sure it's arbitrary I think we've had in the past year folks give us directions in the anywhere from 10 to 17 I mean healthy districts that are basic aid it's they said it's pretty common to be you know you know 15% or greater that we're going to have to do a budget review and that we're going to have to do a budget review and that we're so
202I mean that was yeah even yeah even North 20 or North so I think it's a I think that's the data input that I have I would if anyone else has information on a different percentage then I think we could discuss that and I'd be open to hearing feedback from others on different percentage targets if people have them I mean I'm definitely comfortable with 17 I feel like it has definitely been recommended this falls in line with just more of the work that we're trying to do to get to those reserves this is accountability this is its accountability beyond the board it's an understanding in this district that we're all collectively working for fiscal solvency and we're making a statement saying it's not just a yes or no on certain things it's we have a
203reserve fund balance of 17% we are trying to meet and we're going to do the work to get to that goal and I think that there's a professionalism to that I think that not having that goal has been a big struggle in the district in the past and so a collective understanding that this is the vision and I think we owe it to the community and ourselves to have that to work towards I think we're setting ourselves up for a future of success and having that and hopefully there'll be a point where that can potentially even increase and we're in a really great place right but I'm I'm prepared to pass this today you at least I'm prepared to vote yes to to pass this so we heard earlier we're in the eight point something
204percent reserve range so the 10% as a minimum is on the horizon and and that's great yeah I'll make some confetti tonight Tressie Lehman in terms of getting to the 17 then do we need any language of like an annual escalator so it's not anticipated it's just gonna jump from one year to the next but that we're we continue to build towards it as we have it do we need that language so how does it work structurally in terms of we've got an 8% reserve now and if we say the minimum you know the minimum reserve requirement is fifteen percent or seventeen percent then if we haven't met that in a particular year then what happens yeah there's no teeth in this there's no right You could write teeth into it where, hey, you, I
205don't know, I don't know how you do that. But I think it. You penalize yourself. You penalize yourself. Because, I mean, you know, this is the. So I think jumping from where we are today to get to 17%, it has to be sort of over a time period. And so I think that we would, you know, set an immediate goal or a goal within the next fiscal year to have a, call it a 10% requirement in my mind. And then over the next three years then get to the 17 or some other number. Wouldn't that, I mean, wouldn't that make the most sense? Or how do you, or to, or. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, my view on this is you could write the best policy here. If you don't have five people on
206the board working towards it, it's worthless. Like we ruined a $10 million surplus. I say not we, but people did prior to us. And it's like. And what was that? Does anybody remember what that percentage was of the budget at the time? That. 10 million surplus. That would have been probably 20% or more because the budget was probably. I felt like it, but. Yeah. I would definitely say it's similar to what like Trustee Guzman said about school. It's like, do you want to be in the green? Okay, we can say 10% and that can be like baseline and we're, you know. Or we can shoot for the stars with no penalty and know that the decisions that we're making, like we, that gives us a responsibility and accountability. And I don't know, and no disrespect
207to any trustees, but I don't know that there's five people that have sat up here and been that committed. And I think moving forward, it sets a precedence. Like I said, this is an election year. You need responsibility and accountability on the board just as much as you need it out in the, you know, in the schools and in this district office. And we are, I mean, this is one of our three jobs, right, is fiscal solvency. And I think that this. Makes a statement. And there's no punishment if we don't get there. But if we have a goal, then a target, then we know when we're making decisions what we need to do. Yeah, just remember like in every year, like literally if you don't contribute one year, your percentage will go down because
208more than likely your expenditures went up. So we have to think about like you need to be contributing every single year to this, to your reserve. Right. And there can't be a year where you don't. You don't balance a budget. Now I get a pandemic can hit and something wild can happen. And that that is the time where you deficit spend and you try to put a stop gap in place. But for the majority of it, like you need to hold the hold the fund at a minimum with a balanced budget or you need to contribute from a surplus about your budget should be positive every year if you're running the district correctly and you're putting away that money to make investments in the future. So, yeah. And I'm not disputing the number. I'm just
209I'm just discussing how we get there. Yeah. And what the teeth are in this language. And so do we just say we we say we all agree on 17 percent, but we don't put any language as to when we get there. You know, I don't know how the sort of mechanics of that work. Your policy is a living document and like this one hasn't been updated since 2018. So you're going to say 17 and then in 2030, you know. So. Yeah. I think. I think if you have a target, it's just like, you know, you want to see a three percent growth in, you know, test scores. So it's a target and you work towards it. I think it's also important as we're making these big decisions ahead of us. I mean, we still have
210a 711 committee that's convenient. You know what I mean? I think we need some I think we need something to keep us on track to keep us realistic about the decisions we're going to be making as the as the, you know, district is moving forward and consolidating and all of that. And so. So I think that that's the other thing, too. I think that that's something that we can do. And I think it gets to the point where we can start to think about it. And I think that that's important, because we don't want to see the the kind of you know, we're. We're thinking about. We're thinking about the best possible outcome. Or we're looking at what we're looking at. So. We're looking at what we're looking at. percent with the target of 17
211or is that okay I'm good with that no so I I have been wanting to discuss this for a while and I think what my idea has been is always to have like figure out what the risk based reserve balance should be by looking at historical volatility right because that's the whole point of having the reserve is to anticipate like what's the what's the black swan event basically so I I don't know I need to put more time and if you want me to come up with a number I mean I started looking at this and then we didn't really there wasn't a lot of nobody seemed that interested in it but just looking back to like 2018-19 we had a balance of 10.4 million dollars that was 22% of our unrestricted revenue I'm not
212saying that's the right number it took us like six years to basically draw that down below 3% so we should have some time frame in there we're not gonna get over you know we don't want to just say look we're cutting off all spending until we like hit the 17% mark like I think that is totally unrealistic and so I wouldn't go for that I want to think about what the timing should be all I'm saying is this policy is only as good as the commitment of this group to the government and to enforce it on ourselves we have a policy that went at 9 o'clock right we don't enforce it but we had a policy and what I'm saying is like I think we need to get this approved past if we want to
213come back and do more analysis and do a you know mathematic formula and where we think it needs to be I'm all for it we can put it back on the agenda I think we've waited too long to have anything in place and I think you know perfect the enemy of good I think this is good ten percent and seventeen great if we want to get more you know I think more analytical about it and come up with something else in the future I also support that but I would say tonight I'd like this past going into the next you know calendar year knowing we actually have something in place and we're all working towards it that working towards it is gonna matter more than the policy in my mind I mean what about just
214having starting with ten percent as being a compromise and then coming back and revising it after we have a chance to look at it because we're not gonna get to yeah I that's what I would prefer because I don't know if seventeen is the right number and I feel like we're why are we rushing into it because we have a we have a practice where we do a first read we have a chance to kind of mull over and then we bring it back but if you I would be willing to compromise by starting out at the ten percent level and then reconsidering it well it's not a compromise because that is the minimum that we're happier before us is the ten percent so minimum it's a compromise for me to remove the seventeen percent
215target so I guess my request for bringing this back is is if we can get like a multi-year kind of tearing up but what that would look like to get us to the seventeen or if there's a recommendation to that it's really nineteen twenty but whatever it might be of how we can spread that out because you know but I guess the intent for this to be a one-year jump I guess I'm just gonna since I was I've been honest tonight about I just I feel like it's just we have we need something you guys we have such big decisions and we've gotten to a place where we're at eight percent and I don't think seventeen is just a made-up number like I feel like I hear what trust teaching is saying and I respect
216it and I'd like to do that work and get to that place but that could take a long time in this board historic does things like this and we need to know we need we're gonna we've got we've got a lot of decisions you guys we've got a charter decision we've got a 7-11 committee decision we have all these decisions and we need to sit here as a board and take control of our fiscal solvency and say this is our goal I'm not saying we need to say how we're gonna do it tonight this is very loose but what it is is it's setting a precedence and a standard for us to uphold the integrity of the work that we've done that staff has done that this entire community has committed to and been a
217part of and then put us in the right direction moving forward we haven't had anything like this before so I would be more than happy to revisit it and in a couple of months after doing that kind of work that trustee Ching is talking about and looking at it and figuring it out but again to trustee layman's point when he first started talking this is a number that wasn't made up you this has been recommended to us by professionals who have come so 17 is not unrealistic and I think once we make these big decisions and we get to the other side of you know maybe in June we can say okay this is what we're looking at after these decisions have been made is it realistic to think that we can get to 17%
218in five years in two years what does it look like what do our projections look like and maybe we can talk about that in June but we need something because if we don't have something then we don't have a foundation and for the first time since I've been on this board in three years this feels like a foundation so I don't want to undo the work we've done so I've said it three times I'm prepared to support it can I suggest an alternate compromise is we just add language it says in a target reserve of 17% within three years and so we've put a sort of a timeframe on on it a target And so then we can come back and revisit at any time, but at least we're now, because the challenge is the
21917% is within what time frame? But if we say within three years of the date of this board policy, or what is it, an AR or what? Policy. Policy. Then it's roughly 2% increase a year over the next three years. It just gives us sort of more clarity on a way to do it. So that would be my suggestion to get this done tonight. And then by June, could we also agree to work between now and then to figure out and see what we can come up with? And when we do the budget and everything in June, we can revisit this? But at least for the next six months while we're making these decisions, we know. We've got the 10%, and then we're going to head to 17 over three years. That makes sense to
220me. Okay. I have a question for our superintendent. So I just wanted to get around. I have a rough idea of what number, what is that reserve? What does 17% look like? And I want to make sure I'm doing the math correctly. So it would be 17% on the unrestricted general fund, which I'm looking at the SACS report, which is around $60 million. Is that correct? So it's a percentage of your total expenditure, so restricted and unrestricted. Inrestricted and unrestricted. Right. So that's the way. That's how they calculate fund balance. So it's restricted and unrestricted expenditures. Okay. Well, so it would be off of 70-something, 73 million. Right. Something like that. But I thought 8% was the unassigned. I'm kind of confused. Your unrestricted fund balance is a percentage of total expenditures. Right. So it's
221not just. What's. It's not your total fund balance is inclusive. Yeah. So. I'm sorry. Can you say that one more time? Because I'm tired. No. It's 10 o'clock. So the way they calculate your fund balance in the unrestricted general fund is a percentage of your total fund balance divided by your remaining, by your available, your total expenditures divided by your fund balance. So that's how you get your unrestricted. Okay. So if we. So it would be about 12 million. If you take 17% of that 17%. It's a. It's a. It's a. It's a. It's about that 72 number. You get about 12.4 million. Okay. I got 13. And that's going to grow over time. Right. And so. So to get to. Is it from 6 million to 12 million or. I'm sorry. What's the. What's
222the projected. Yeah. The balance. The new fund balance. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So that. So that. So that means that we're going to. If you want to do. I don't know if that the timeframe is right. I don't know if I can agree to it because what you're saying is that you want to double the current. Results. reserve balance in three years, which would mean adding over $2 million a year to it. I think that's too steep. I want to look at that more carefully. So I'd be more willing to go with what Trustee Landry is suggesting, which is keep it a little open-ended and then revisit it in six months. That's what I... We'll take the three years. Let's do that. Let's just leave it. Then we leave it as is. We leave it as
223is. Okay. With an agreement to bring it back, President Bell and Acting Superintendent Seif... Then I'll make the motion then to leave it as is and approve Agenda Item 15.9, the BP 3100. I'll second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Public comment. Okay. 16. Board recognizes... This is the value of public comment. Do I need to say that? No. Public comment on items not on the agenda. Right. We have one. We have one. Welcome. I can hear Lee. Well, it's very fortuitous what you people have been talking about this evening, and it's nice to see that so much of your attention is being put on the financial health of this district, because it ties into what I wanted to say tonight. Good evening. My name, as you know, is Lee Cavalier. I'm
224going to be speaking at the next meeting of the board at the time of the meeting. There are three reasons the proposed MacArthur Charter would be a detriment to our district. First, Sonoma Valley Unified School District has just closed two elementary schools and one middle school because of declining enrollment, which is predicted to continue. Approving a new charter would now further drain resources from a district just starting to get their heads above water. Second, if the petition is approved, the district would have to close a union school and replace it with a non-union school. We have two non-union schools already that would make it three. That means eliminating union jobs and weakening the workforce our students depend on. Third, and very importantly, charter schools typically cannot provide the full range of services required for high
225needs ESN students, including self-contained classrooms, intensive behavioral support, one-to-one aids, and programs for medically fragile students. Those students will be pushed back to the district schools in order to get the services they need. A charter solves none of our problems. It compounds all of them. This board has said tonight, I heard several times, its priority is fiscal responsibility and long-term solvency. Approving this charter. doesn't make sense for this district and would have us go back and would have us be going backwards to where you know the finance finances were a struggle so that's all I wanted to say thank you thank you for your comments any online Michelle no okay with that this meeting is adjourned at 9 46 p.m. thank you record you need to work on that trustee because nine o'clock