001This evening, we would like to ask everyone to speak at a clear and reasonable pace for our interpreters. Thank you. Pledge of Allegiance. I'd like to ask the student board members to lead us. States of America, and continue to republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Well done. Report of actions taken in closed session. In closed session, the board, upon motion of Trustee Land and seconded by Trustee Andrade Zuniga, moved to approve special education settlement number one with a vote of five to zero. In closed session, the board, upon motion of Trustee Jacobson and seconded by Trustee Chavez, moved to postpone the expulsion hearing of case 2526-3 with a vote of five to zero. In closed session, the Board, upon motion of Trustee Andrade Zuniga and
002seconded by Trustee Jacobson, move to approve the stipulated expulsion case 2526-4 with the vote of 5-0. Okay, adopt the agenda. The Board of Trustees may either adopt the agenda as presented or make a change to the agenda through a motion, second, and majority vote. The Brown Act prohibits any additions to the agenda without a 72-hour public notice for regularly scheduled board meetings. Staff is requesting to move the multilingual progress item V1 up and be presented after the consent agenda. That way we can get all the students on their way. So with that. So moved. I'll second that with those changes. Yeah. Okay. Any public comment on this item? Any raised hands? There's none. Okay. Any board comment? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Student board reps? Come on. Yeah. Thank you. Holy smoke. Okay. Recognitions. Is
003that right? That's right. Okay. Can I take this one on? I hope so. There you go. Okay. Good evening, everybody. Trustees, obviously, educators, students, and members of our community. Tonight, it is both an honor and a privilege to recognize someone whose name has become synonymous with service, integrity, and unwavering commitment to public education in the San Mateo Union High School District. And tonight, we're going to honor Mr. Robert H. Griffin. The Robert H. Griffin Leadership Award, which we will present in just a few moments, was created to honor individuals whose leadership exemplifies excellence, equity, and a deep commitment to student success. And it's fitting and deeply meaningful that this award bears Robert's name because it reflects not only his professional contributions, but also his personal story. Robert Griffin is a proud graduate of San Mateo
004High School, class of 1967. Did I get that right? There we go. Born, raised, and educated right here in San Mateo, his connection to this community is not symbolic. It is lived, sustained, and deeply rooted. This marking his 30th year as a board trustee, Robert continues to serve the community that helped shape him. A testament to his enduring belief in the power of public education to change lives. Since joining the San Mateo Union High School District Board of Trustees, Robert has been a steadfast and principled voice for student achievement, innovative programs, fiscal responsibility, and meaningful community engagement. For three decades, he has brought consistency in moments of change, wisdom in moments of challenge, and calm resolve when difficult decisions had to be made. Robert's leadership style, grounded in collaboration, accountability, and equity, has set a
005standard for educational leadership that few can match. He leads not for recognition, but out of responsibility. He listens deeply, asks thoughtful questions, and always centers his decisions on what is best for students, all students. This award, presented twice each year, recognizes district leaders who demonstrate excellence in their professional roles with a tangible impact on student learning and school culture. Leadership that inspires, motivates, and engages colleagues, students, and the community. And a steadfast commitment to equity by actively working to ensure fair, inclusive, and high-quality educational opportunities for every single student we serve. These are not abstract ideals for Mr. Griffin. They are principles he has lived by, modeled, and championed year after year. Mr. Griffin, your legacy is not only found in policies passed or programs launched, but in the culture of integrity, compassion, and responsibility
006you helped shape in this district. Generations of students have benefited and will continue to benefit from your vision, your advocacy, and your belief in them, even when they never knew your name. So on behalf of the San Mateo Union High School District and personally, thank you for your continuing years of extraordinary service, your leadership, and your unwavering commitment to our community. It is with deep gratitude and deep admiration that we honor you tonight as the namesake of this award. So please. join me in giving a round of applause 30 years 30 years thank you and don't i feel old You know, it's really not. I mean, yeah, I've been here 30 years and I've worked with a lot of boards, made my share of mistakes. I'm good at apologies, but really it's about the people
007that we're going to recognize, you know, and their accomplishments and the things that they have done for this district. I hope we get a lot of mileage out of that, but thank you. I appreciate the recognition. You're welcome. All right. So with that, let's move on tonight. I have the honor of presenting the inaugural Robert H. Griffin Leadership Award to Dr. Samia Shoman. If Samia could come up, please. Across every role she has held, teacher, district administrator, program founder, and now principal of the Bridge Academy, Dr. Shulman exemplifies excellence driven by vision, action, and heart. She is one of the rare educators who can say she created a school, not just a program, but a nationally recognized WASC-accredited model of newcomer education rooted in dignity, belonging, and hope. What began in 2016 as a small
008program for older multilingual learners has grown under her leadership into the Bridge Academy, a school guided by the values of Nlkesh, where students are seen, valued, and deeply supported. It is a place where safety, justice, and humanity guide every decision. Nominated by many colleagues across the district, Dr. Shoman's leadership is visible in her daily actions. She supports instruction in classrooms, removes barriers to graduation by building student schedules by hand, ensures students have food and wellness supports, and is often the first to arrive and the last to leave. Her students trust her, not simply as a principal, but as a source of safety, dignity, and unwavering belief. Her impact extends beyond her school site. Dr. Shoman has been instrumental in developing ethnic studies, expanding avid and multilingual learner supports, launching the Adelante Parent Conference and championing
009pathways that open doors for historically underserved students across our district. She leads with humility, courage, and love. She listens deeply, lifts every voice, and brings people together around a shared commitment to student well-being. Her colleagues describe her as the heart of Bridge Academy, a leader whose presence inspires hope, unity, and purpose. At the core of her work is an unshakable commitment to equity. She centers students who have too often been overlooked and builds systems that replace barriers with opportunity. She shows up for students not only in classrooms, but in moments of real life. in hospitals and courtrooms and times of crisis, always standing beside them and never above them. In every way, Dr. Samia Shoman embodies the legacy of Robert H. Griffin. She is a visionary who builds trust, what does not yet exist, a
010champion for justice, and a leader whose work transforms lives through the daily acts of care and conviction. Dr. Shoman, with Robert Griffin here to witness this moment, it is especially fitting to say your leadership carries forward the values he has given. this district and your work ensures that legacy will live on through the students and families you serve so for her extraordinary leadership profound humanity and lasting impact we are honored to recognize dr samia shoman as the inaugural recipient of the robert h griffin leadership award congratulations and thank you so much one more time there you go okay Good evening and thank you. I am extremely humbled and honored to be the recipient of an award named for Bob Griffin. Your service to our district has been incredible, inspiring, and is a reflection of the
011type of service to the community I aspire to emulate. To the board, cabinet, and everyone else in leadership here at 650 and beyond, thank you for your support, your patience, as I've learned, failed, navigated, gotten testy, and sometimes outright angry for trusting me to lead and understanding that at the heart of all of my work is students first. I started in this district in the 2004-05 school year, six years into my teaching career. I was hired at Hillsdale High School by Don Leidig, and I taught social sciences and coached soccer, and I had the great fortune to work for both Yvonne Hsu and Jeff Gilbert, educators who I have learned a tremendous amount from and continue to, and who I now get to call colleagues. I have learned so much. I have leaned on so
012many of my colleagues throughout the years. They've helped guide me, picked up the phone, or answered a text at whatever time. I'm pretty sure Bridge would never have a master schedule if it wasn't for Ashley Melton. And I owe thanks to all of the other administrators that have helped me figure out all the little things in between. In my classroom at Hillsdale, I had a huge banner on my wall that said, Change the World. This has always been the compass for my work. I traded classroom desks for tables and painted the words justice, hope, love, equality, and humanity on them. It's no coincidence that love, hope, and justice are three values that anchor Bridge. Two things that I've aspired to keep at the heart of my work through all of the roles I've had the
013privilege to serve and is to lead with and work through love and see every student in their full humanity. It's something that I've hoped for for myself and for my own children who are now part of this district that we are seen in our full humanity, especially in a world where some people have accepted our dehumanization. I appreciate being recognized for this award, but my ability to lead is because of the amazing and selfless educators I have the privilege and blessing to work with. From the avid coordinators and teachers who make college and career dreams come true, for our students of promise that need a little extra guidance, to our self and social empowerment teachers who are working with students whose assets need to be recognized and need a little extra help to navigate our
014educational systems. Our ethnic studies teachers who do incredible work to build strong classroom communities dedicated to students seeing themselves in their own full humanity. I've had the pleasure of working with ML teachers and staff, family engagement coordinators, ML specialists, bringing the first ML social worker to our district, all people who serve multiple roles for students, teachers, supporters, advocates, and more. And I have learned so much about service from them all. And of course, there is Bridge Academy, and I'm so excited to have our students here. Thank you. And staff. There are no words that would appropriately describe the phenomenal team I get to collaborate with every day and what they have brought to my life. Bridge is the fruition of a dream I had when I was 22 years old and wanted to create a
015school based on social justice. This started to come to life when I popped over to Nina Fincy's cubicle on the third floor of this building to say, I have an idea, but it kind of depends all on you. The educators I work with at Bridge and have worked at Bridge have created an educational space that students describe as a second home, a place where they have been able to thrive and learn and where they've grown as people. It's our mission at Bridge to graduate collaborators, communicators, and navigators, and in order to do that, we too have to be all of those things all of the time. There is no way I would be standing here if it was not for the Bridge staff who selflessly gives and passionately works to change lives in the world.
016Their grace and trust has allowed me to lead authentically, so thank you from the bottom of my heart. I want to thank my family, who's also here, because they often get the tired me, that just one second, I need to send one email. Can you help me with this project for our students? No, there's no way I can pick you up from school at 3.30 right now. And they understand, they support, and they love me through it all. So Faraz, Falistine, and Jihad, thank you, and I love you. My focus on service comes from my faith. The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said, the best of people are those that bring most benefit to the rest of mankind, and that God helps his righteous servant as long as his servant helps their fellow brother
017or sister. I'm able to carry all things because of this and the tradition of Palestinian Samud. Steadfastness, resilience through living, cultivating, caring, and continuing life as an act of resistance and dignity, something my parents and siblings have modeled for me throughout life. This is also something exemplified by the Bridge students and all of our students at the margins that I'm dedicated to serving the best I can. So thank you. Thank you to all of those who nominated me, those that have pushed me to be better, do better, and to those who have helped and supported me over the years for recognizing my efforts. I know there are many leaders across the district doing amazing work, so I am really humbled by this, and I'm dedicated to continue to do my best to uplift our mission
018to serve each and every one of our students. Dr. Shulman, why don't you have your family stand up? I know we have a lot on the agenda. If any of the board members would like to have a brief comment, this is your opportunity. Sure. I wanted to say congratulations to Samia. Samia was one of the first. Oh, thank you. Samia was one of the first people I met when I was elected. And she has taught me to continuously be an unapologetic, just part of myself that always shows up. She's fearless. And I just admire you so much for everything you do for the students every day, regardless. So thank you, Samia, for everything you do. Rusty Land. I just want to say a couple things. One, first about the award. Bob. I love the fact
019that you have this award of leadership for equity and leadership because we have so many people in this district who are amazing. And you have been here for so long and have such a long history. I'm very proud of the fact that this is happening. And I want to honor you because I know we joke around a lot. I know we do. But I'm very sincerely. I'm humbled to see this happening for you. And I hope this goes on for a very long time because you are a big part of San Mateo Union High School District. Samia, you are my teacher. You have been my teacher. You've taught me so many wonderful things. Everyone in this district is amazing leaders. And I'm so proud of all of you. And Samia, you just, I'm still going
020to need your help with so many different things anyway. We'll probably be calling you tomorrow. But equity is something that is so important in this district and has really been founded in the roots of this district. And it's something we fight for regularly. And nothing says that more than the epitome of what SOMIA does regularly. So thank you. Thank you for everything that you do for this district. Thank you. Sometimes I say I want to echo Trustee Land. This is definitely one of those times I want to echo Trustee Land. Trustee Griffin, you are amazing, and I'm so grateful that the district put together this award in your honor. And you look great for your age. I know some people talk about your age out there, but I wouldn't have believed you if you would
021have said you've been a trustee for 30 years. I would have said, did you start being a trustee when you were 15? Because, you know, but you've done so much for the district. Yeah. Just like. Superintendent Booker mentioned. So I am so happy that we have this award even going forward. And is it annual or twice a year by annual? Twice a year by annual. And Dr. Shulman, I just want to say a couple of words. I knew nothing about the Bridge Program until three years ago when I had the pleasure of touring, walking on campus a few times for the Bridge Program and also attending a couple of graduations for the Bridge. countless lives. There were dozens of students. Their lives are affected, impacted for the rest of their lives because of you and
022your leadership team on the bridge. And it's all because of your leadership. And I tear up when I think about the number of students that have been impacted that come here. They don't know where they're going to go. They don't know what they're going to learn. As soon as they step into your bridge program, now it's a bridge school, which is awesome. I feel like they're really taken care of. And I think that they feel that way too. And the love is there. And I just want to say congratulations on the award and you truly deserve it. Thank you. Thank you for letting me share. I'll add my congratulations and, you know, honor the leadership qualities that both Robert and Samia have demonstrated. Maybe Bob wasn't 15 when he started on the board, but I
023was about that age when he got on the board. So it's really impressive that you've given so much of your life to this district. And I wrote it in your card that this is a destination district. And a lot of that is because of the leadership and direction and vision that you have given to it. So it's really remarkable. And I'll just add to what Terry said that it was. Just a few years ago that we toured around the bridge, what was then the bridge program. And I'd never seen anything like it. The vision that she had to create that program and now turn it into a school and the level of, what's the word? I want to say care, but it's more than that. focus and devotion and shepherding that the students there receive
024in such a vulnerable and pivotal time in their lives is truly life-changing and inspirational. And I'm very, very grateful that we have her leadership and her vision here in our district. Okay, I just want to... Dr. Shulman, I remember... Back when you were, I hate to say, a young pup, you certainly didn't have almost grown children, you know, at the time at Hillsdale. I think you and the Hillsdale crew with Jeff Gilbert came up to make the presentation on smaller learning communities. And, you know, it was quite a group of standouts in there. And really... became the leadership here in the district. So you've had a great career. And anybody who has been to Bridge knows that your doctorate must be in multitasking because you absolutely, if you would go there. She is so busy.
025She can be in one room doing something. A student walks by and needs some help. She will hand off the first student, go attend to the second student, be talking to an administrator, talking to a board member and accomplishing all this. And if there's something that's really a need from the student, she'll drop the board member. There's no question in terms of her priorities. You're absolutely a committed, dedicated, loving, caring person. You're the embodiment of what public education should be. I appreciate you. Your stance on equity and justice, I think, is really important in today's world. And it's always good seeing you at Target. How's that? Thank you. Dr. Booker. We'll move on. We're going to do some more recognition. This is a lot of fun. Tonight, we are so excited to recognize and congratulate
026some of our 2025 Fall Athletic Championship teams, athletes, and coaches. Unfortunately, because of finals and things like that and scheduling, we're going to do some teams now, some individuals now, and then we'll have some other teams and individuals come back in January when scheduling permits. With that said, I'd like to start by inviting Burlingame High School Stella Newman and her coaches Carly Burrow and Tom Geraghty to the podium. Stella is the Burlingame High School Cross Country Division III Champion. Congratulations. Yeah. Yeah. Hi, everybody. So I was designated to talk about our lovely Stella here. She is qualified for state four years in a row, which I would consider. Thank you. Like I did it, which is magic. And you would have no idea that she's gone through so much recovery and perseverance. And so we're
027very, very proud of you and the leader that you are and have become. It's been so fun to watch. And we're so excited to see, you know. What are you doing track? Am I right? Yeah. And beyond my head. Yes. Yes. Congratulations. Really? Thank you. We're going to do pictures afterward. Let me get through each one. So next we've got a coach, Larry Capel Mills high school won the boys division team division for cross country championship. Come on up. Yes. And if you have any student athletes, have them come on up too. There you go. Dr. Larry Powell, I've been coaching at Mills for longer than you've probably been around. We kind of grew a team starting four years ago. We have what, one? to three seniors, four seniors. Here we've got a couple of
028juniors. We've got a sophomore, an up-and-coming freshman. So we've built a program that's actually very strong. And they ended up winning the CCS in their division. They went to state, finished 11th against... schools are really number two three and four in the country they actually did fairly well so uh not just their athletic prowess that impresses me uh this is a group that when we talk about leadership this is a group of the future leaders right here they're all stellar students i i heard the grapevine that one of them just got admitted to mit oh no i didn't So I think we're going to see a lot more of that out of this group. It's a tremendous group. It's been my joy to actually be affiliated with these guys. I love each one of these
029guys. And hopefully I will forever. I wish them the best. And it's a nice experience to have them win CCS. And I've noticed that our golf team is here, which probably now. Designates Mills as the athletic powerhouse. There you go. Congratulations. All right. And with that, we've got coach Ron Perez, the Mills girls golf PAL championship. Come on up. Good evening parents. Yes. Faculty. This is the first time for us. I've been coaching as a seasonal coach for Mills for approximately 15 years. These young ladies that stand before you. Really quite an accomplishment for a sport of golf. It has come up quite fast. Besides Tiger Woods, Michelle Weave, those outstanding names, but these young ladies have taken it to another level. A couple of first things that happened for this team is first time
030shooting a score below 200 at a 197 as a team net score. First time. having a three girls medal in the top 10 MPALs. First time, well, let me mention the names also. Angelina, our team captain, was a medalist. Christina Chen, her sister, a medalist. And I mean her, a medalist also. Freshman. It was an awesome job. They did really well. We qualified for CCS. We did pretty good there. We did have an individual who came in at third and qualified for state. Oh, excuse me, NorCal. NorCal, we had to go through NorCal first. Quite a challenging course up in the hills. But she did really well. Out of 99 players, she placed 24th. Which, of course, this is the first time for Mills to have any of those things happen. So we're quite honored
031to be here. I do want to recognize personally our team captain and our four seniors, first of all. Angelina Chen, Katie Chung, Madison Capulli, Kylie Tsang. And then we have our sophomore, Christina Chen. and our up and coming, Loneette, she shoots lights out as a freshman, basically like a one handicap and it's unbelievable to watch. So again, I'd like to thank you all for having us here to recognize us and hope to continue the trend. Thank you. Congratulations. All right, before I invite the board to come in the bullpen here and we're going to take pictures with the teams, I also want to congratulate Aragon Girls Volleyball and San Mateo High School Flag Football teams who are both CCS champions. champions, but again, because of scheduling conflicts, they weren't able to attend tonight. We're going
032to have them come to the January 22nd board meeting so we can recognize them publicly there too. So if the board could join me in the bullpen, let's start with Stella Newman. And then we'll take a picture. Yes. And Stella, come on up here. Some coaches, some parents. Yeah, why not? Parents. Probably broke everywhere. Come on in. Squish, squish, squish. In the middle. And we're going to look at, we're going to get Sarah in there. Wait, look here first, you guys. Who's it? We got it. Congrats. Thank you. Board, stay here. We're going to bring up the boys cross-country championship from Mills. Come on up. All right. Coaches, Pam, jump in. There's a picture. For sure. Yeah, I don't know. We got a really squishy. If you're tall, then yeah. Okay, ready? Right here. One,
033two. Other photo? Great. Congratulations. All right. I'm switching. um I'm playing it right now. Exactly. Yeah. Before he committed. Great. Yeah. That was gracious. Yeah. There's a lot. Yeah. But you guys. Okay. We're going to move on to item L and reorganize the board based on the rotation. I'm going to ask the superintendent to. to walk us through this process, please. Per board policy BB9100, the term of the president, vice president, and clerk of the board shall be one year in length, commencing with the annual organization meeting of the board, which takes place on or after the second Friday of December of each year. It goes on to read that the office of the president, vice president, and clerk shall rotate each year at the organizational meeting with the vice president becoming president. the clerk
034becoming the vice president, and the next highest person on the rotation list becoming clerk. We will also appoint a secretary to the board and authorize signatures if necessary. So, Trustee Griffin, you can lead this by entertaining a motion, and then we can get a second and a vote. Okay, is there a motion? I'll start with the president. It's a slate because of the rotation. Okay. I'm glad somebody knew that. Thank you. Thank you. This is my last official act and I dropped it in the sand. Okay. Is there a motion for the rotation, the slate of officers? I move to approve the slate of officers. Is there a second? Second. Okay. We've got a motion and a second. Any discussion by the board? Well, let's just be clear. So Terry's vice president. No, no. Terry's.
035Well, Terry's vice president moving to president. Thank you. Sorry. Terry's the current vice president moving to president. Jennifer is the clerk right now who will go to vice president, and I'm the highest on the list to be next. I'll be clerk, correct? Well, you can't wait to be president. Oh, no. I'll settle for clerk, and I'll be very happy. Okay. All I have to do is sign stuff. Now we've got clarity to the issue. Are there any public comments? There are none. No raised hands? There are none. There is a raised hand, but it's not on Zoom, unfortunately, so you can't. So there was a hand over in the... Nope. Okay. Got the motion. And a second. All in favor of the slate? Trustee Griffin, I will abstain. Okay. Thank you. All in favor? Aye.
036Aye. Then we have one extension. So we've got four ayes and one abstention. And I gladly turn the meeting over to President Chavez. Point of order. You need to appoint someone to the district. I'd like to appoint Superintendent Booker to be Secretary of the Board. Okay. We have anybody else to? The Reorganization Committee. I'll second. Okay. All in favor? Aye. And what was that last thing? The other one is to be a county board reorganization. Anybody interested? I'm interested. I haven't done it in a long time. Then I would make a motion to appoint Trustee Lant for that. To the county board of reorganization committee. I'll second that. Okay. It's one meeting. Sure. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Okay. Passes five to zero. Congratulations. Great. Okay. Thank you. Just bear with me. I haven't done
037this in a few years. But this is a great group, so I know that you guys are very gracious if I make a mistake. Okay, so in the agenda, we're on agenda item M, regular reports, so report from the superintendent. Thank you very much. So this is such an exciting time of the year, especially with all these recognitions and everything, especially as we're crossing the finish line of the first semester. I just want to congratulate all the students for all their hard work, final exams, wrapping up the school year, athletics, balancing everything they have to balance. Same thing with all of our educators across the district. Thank you so much for such a wonderful first semester in. moving us along and progressing our academic and social emotional goals that we have for our students. Absolutely
038could not do this without our educators. And I also want to thank our community. This is an absolute village moment for us. We do not educate our students alone. And so I'm grateful, enormously grateful for all the support as we're wrapping up this first semester. Moving on, I want to wish everyone A happy Hanukkah to all those who are celebrating. Merry Christmas as well, and happy Kwanzaa. It's a time for faith and family and friendship and connections and grace, and I'm really, really looking forward to doing and participating in all those things as we enter the winter break. I also want to acknowledge, continue to acknowledge... some outstanding educators our december golden apple awards this month we awarded the golden apple to a certificated and classified educator as we typically do ann marie montani a
039special education teacher and mtss coordinator at mills high schools this month's certificated golden apple award winner she's been with the district for seven years and her principal Pam Duszynski said of her, it is with great pride that I nominate Anne Marie for the Golden Apple Award. Her exemplary energy and wavering dedication and transformative leadership have made an extraordinary impact on Mills and on the lives of our students and staff. Anne Marie brings her full self to work each and every day, serving simultaneously as an instructional coach, an MTSS coordinator, an algebra co-teacher, an ILT member, and a case manager. She wears... Each of these hats with purpose and passion and a level of professionalism that elevates everyone around her. A core value that drives her practice is joy, joy in learning, joy in service, and
040joy in building a school community where every student and staff member feels valued. And then additionally, Janice Fuentes is an executive student, an executive assistant in student services. And she is also this month's classified Golden Apple recipient. And she's been with the district for three years. Her former supervisor, director of mental health and wellness, April Torres, said of her, Janice has been a true leader and a cornerstone of our mental health and wellness team. She made. the role her own going beyond the job description to care for the team, serve as a trusted confidant and ensure that our programs ran smoothly. Her professionalism, compassion and initiative raised the standard for what this position could be. And her steady presence has been a source of strength for us all. She's recently stepped into a well-deserved new
041role as executive assistant in student services, a testament to her talent, dedication and commitment to growth. She embodies the very spirit of the Golden Apple Award, and we are deeply grateful for the lasting impact she's made, not only in what she has accomplished, but for the way she inspired all of us along the way. So big congratulations to both of them. I really look forward, as we come back after the winter break, to sharing with the board and the community a comprehensive report on our first semester highlights. Our last day of the semester is tomorrow. And students will be back on January 6th to start the spring semester. Hey, everyone, be safe. Happy New Year. Be safe. Be safe. Be safe. Students, make good choices over the winter break. And we look forward to seeing
042everyone back in January. Thank you. Thank you. Is there a report for the District Teachers Association? Yeah. Okay, great. Thank you. Good evening, President Chavez and members of the board and district cabinet. First, I want to congratulate all of our student athletes tonight. Some amazing accomplishments and looking forward to seeing more of them in January. It is the end of the semester and we are we are wrapping up. I wanted to be there tonight, but I'm still grading finals. We're in the homestretch and looking forward to a well-deserved and restful break. First, Bob, you know, when I first heard about this award, I couldn't think of a better way to. as Christine Land said, I think this is really something that should go on forever and recognize, you know, how, what contribution you've had to
043the district and the impact that you've had. And I think it's really important. And I always really respect from the Teachers Association that you've always said that the teachers or the educators of the district are kind of the conscience of the district and, you know, being able to have some reflection and always having an open door to reach out and hear from all of us. And I can't really say too much more about Samia. then has already been said. I actually started writing a few things when I first knew that she was going to get the award. And I'll just share a couple of personal sentences that I wrote, you know, because so much has been said. You know, Sammy is an educator, an advocate, and a role model for her students, a leader, an
044innovator, a motivator, and a collaborator in our district, a parent, a coach. a contributor and an activist in our community. Samia's many successes and achievements are not the result of handouts or convenience of opportunity. Rather, it's her steadfastness for the student community that she serves. I can't think of a better recipient for the inaugural award for the Bob Griffin Award. And more importantly, on a personal, I shouldn't say more importantly, but on... I find myself really fortunate to call both Bob and Samia friends and professional colleagues in this district. And on a happier note, hopefully everybody's, again, looking forward to the holidays, and I want to wish everyone a restful break, and we'll see you in the new year. Thank you. Thank you. Next is our report from the CSEA Chapter 519. How about now?
045Hello. Good evening, everyone. Madam President, board members. Mr. Griffin, congratulations on having the award named after you. I want to thank Randall Booker for including me in part of the selection committee. It was really great to be involved in that. I remember when I first got hired here, the board meeting where they introduced people to there, I actually went to that board meeting. That was back in 2004. And I introduced myself to you. I'm sure you don't remember that, but I did because I was a new guy, and you were just really polite to me, and so I really appreciate that. And you've always been really kind ever since. And so it was really nice that I got to be involved in that. And then the people who were nominated, what wonderful people we have
046working at this school district. I mean, I'm an electrician, so I'm not in the classroom, but the people that we have that were nominated, a lot of them were here tonight. some wonderful people and you are so deserving. And I didn't know your name. I've seen you around school. She's awesome. She's always smiling. She's so, and then when I saw her today, I'm like, that's the person who got the reward? Oh, that's so wonderful. So it's nice to know that nice people do nice things and then get rewarded for them. Here, here. Congratulations. Here, here. This is the time of year where it's nice that good things happen and good people. So I'm Dale Brewer, the president of CSEA Chapter 519. And while everyone's last day is tomorrow, we will still be here next week
047and through the vacation. So make sure that everything's going good for you when you get back. But just want to say thank you to the district for a good year. We got through everything. And I know next year is going to be a little rough with negotiations and money's tight and all those things. But the important thing is that we always work together. You know, we are a good family and it's days like this and nights like this where we come together and we realize that it's electricians, it's teachers, it's students, it's awesome parents that are here. We are all just a giant family. And so CSEA is very proud to be part of that family. And we look forward to a wonderful year next year. So thank you all very much. God bless. Thank
048you. Next is a report from the San Mateo Adult School Teachers Association. None tonight. Okay, thank you. And thank you for our school board members being here. So next is the report from the school board representatives. Hi everyone, my name is Audrey Sim and I am a senior at Burlingame High School. I'm really grateful to be here representing the students in the district. I am an active participant in our district and community. I'm in the American Cancer Society Club at Burlingame where we fundraise for cancer. I was the teen of impact for the American Heart Association and I volunteer in the emergency department. And I also wanted to quickly speak about the event on December 2nd that a lot of the student board council members went to for the California schools. School Boards Association Conference,
049which was a really cool opportunity to hone our skills as youth leaders. We got to learn from mentors and other student board council members from all over California and learn about what their board is like and the different dynamics that we have. And it was overall a super invaluable and worthwhile experience. And I'm really thankful to have had the opportunity to go. And yeah. Good evening, everyone. My name is Sarah Joseph, and I'm a senior at Hillsdale High School. I'm really grateful to be representing the students in this district. Throughout high school, I've really strived to create a positive effect on my community, whether it be in school or out of school. Currently, I volunteer a lot, but the Mills Peninsula Medical Center, I volunteer in the emergency department along with Audrey. and I also
050am a part of the science presentations and research for kids club at my school in which we host science fairs at local elementary schools. I pride myself in what I can do for others and just staying involved in general and being a student trustee of the San Mateo Union High School District has allowed me to continue doing so. So I'm super duper grateful for this opportunity. I've learned the impact that student voices can have in shaping our school communities and making it a better place for everyone. I'd also like to share a few updates from my own school, Hillsdale. Recently, the drama department put on the musical Into the Woods, which was a huge hit. The cast and crew worked very, very hard after school at rehearsals to put on such an enjoyable performance. In
051our athletics, our varsity girls basketball team remains undefeated with the win over the Gators in the Steve Geromone Invitational hosted by Notre Dame Belmont with a 4-0 win. And our varsity boys soccer team secured a 3-0 win over Willow Glen this past weekend, so I'm super proud of our athletics. I'd also like to take a moment to acknowledge how inspiring it was to see so many other student trustees from all over California that are so committed to taking action and advocating for issues they care about at the California School Boards Association Conference in San Mateo this past month, as Audrey mentioned. Thank you very much for your time and your endless support to create a better student experience in our district. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, next is governing board comments. Let's start with Mr.
052Bob Griffin. Okay, I did get to the same CSBA conference. I think we all were in attendance. And it was enjoyable, although it was real cold. It was like the foggy, cold Sacramento. Yes, it was. I focused a lot. on the new laws that are coming about, a lot of the pending litigation. You know, one of the sessions is dealt with the cell phones. And we've got to, you know, we've got to get a policy in place here on cell phones. And, you know, we've had a number of court cases which has caused us to... amend our regs and policies. And so I wanted to understand, because some of them are still evolving. So I found it, you know, it's not nearly as close to the classroom, but I think it's going to actually... potentially
053take up a lot of the board time. So anyway, and the other thing, Craig, you had a Forrest Gump moment there. If anybody recalls the reflecting pool and they pulled the pin on the PA system when Forrest Gump was talking and nobody heard what he said. So all those kind words, nobody heard it, buddy. But anyway, thank you. I appreciate the thought. Admit the speech. We did hear some of it. We did hear some of it. Most of it. Yeah. Thank you for that. And then Trustee Jacobson. Oh, thank you. Yes, the CSBA conference was really enlightening this year. I attended sessions about legislation, about budget, about policy updates, AI, math. Just so many good topics that were available to us. Oh, CTE. I learned a lot. So I'm excited to, you know, apply that
054as we go forward with our agenda items through the year. I spent some time volunteering at the Hillsdale Peace Pantry. doing deliveries on Friday mornings, Friday morning, and the Sunday night dinner. And Brett Stevenson, who kind of runs the show over there, wanted to, you know, just really express his gratitude to the board for approving the Sunday night dinner. It was great. He showed me the the grocery bags and from me Rancho market and how the foods that are chosen are culturally responsive and, and foods that the families know how to prepare and are familiar with. And the families just are, are so grateful. They're just so grateful. Um, last Friday we had, uh, the Hillsdale, um, peace pantry put on a volunteer. Thank you breakfast. Um, And it was great to be there and
055just kind of get to know better many of the volunteers who come and show up week after week. And a lot of the families that we serve had donated food for the breakfast, homemade pupusas and things like that. So the families really are so appreciative. It's a wonderful program, something that really brings the community together. And I'm so grateful for the people in our community who show up week after week to do that work. Our student board rep mentioned this, the Spark Club. And last week there was a knowledge fair at Meadow Heights Elementary School where I have my son goes and the Spark Club was there doing their demonstrations. I don't think I talked to you, but were you there? Okay, there were many Hillsdale students and all of them were very engaging, warm,
056inviting. They had wonderful demonstrations and it was just great to see them represented at the Meadow Heights Knowledge Fair. And lastly, I attended the Cell Phone Policy Task Force meeting. And I won't give any spoilers, but I was just really impressed with the breadth of the group. There's students, parents, teachers, me, a board member. So it was well represented. And what was. Very positive was that there was a pretty clear consensus that came out of that meeting about as we were kind of finalizing what the policy would look like. So I'm looking forward to that presentation next month. Also on that topic, I read the article, the editorial piece in the San Mateo Daily Journal by one of our students from Burlingame, Josie Whetton. It's called Why I Like Phone Pockets. So it's great to
057know, great to hear a student's perspective on that. And, you know, that surprisingly, a lot of students are. are on board with the phone restrictions and find that it really does help with their learning. So that's all for me. Thank you. Thank you. Trustee Lynn? Thank you. First, I did also attend CSBA. As a delegate, I had to start really early. So did you, Terry. But one of the great things about the leadership of CSBA, the California School Board Association, is the direction in which they're going to go into. They're really emphasizing the gap of the achievement gap and the opportunity gap that we have in our state. And they know that we need to be held accountable. And that's something that we all hold to all our documents and all the things that we
058talk about here with LCAP. But they're also now looking at making the legislators and the state of California responsible, which is a unique thing because. Right now, they don't take themselves responsible. They always just put it back on us. And they need to look at themselves and say, hey, we have to make sure things are happening. We need to provide services for kids that are not making it and districts that aren't making it to close the gap. And so I think this new focus for CSBA through the Delegate Assembly is really going to be a strong force that's really going to direct our policy in the future, at least at the state level. So I'm really looking forward to that. Now to change gears to our district, I have to say that I love being
059at this meeting because being a principal, any administrator in the room right now knows that they're just pulling out their hair, just trying to get through till tomorrow. And that's basically me. And I haven't been able to really reflect on anything. It's just job, job, job, get it done, get it done, right? I see nods in the audience so they know exactly what I'm talking about. But today, and I really want to thank the leaders in the audience and the people in the audience and our CSEA rep said it so well. We're a family. It's teachers. It's, you know, it's students. It's admin. It's leaders. It's all the classified staff. It's us up here. Bob, just everything that I heard tonight. Bob, having a leadership award in your name just really embodies the importance of
060what we do as a board. And you've been here for over 30 years, and that's amazing. And it's great to see that acknowledgement. Samia, just to be able to be the first one to be nominated and win tells me so much about this award already. I'm very proud that this is going to be in existence for a very long time. And I know Craig was saying that even right when he got cut off. That's what he was talking about. But just looking into the audience, just the administrators and the students and all you guys, it's great to be here. I finally got in the spirit of the holiday spirit and I'm excited. And it's just thank you guys. But I'm also honored to be part of this organization. We are on the forefront. We are
061doing so many wonderful things. I know Trustee Jacobson was talking about the things that we did for SNAP. recipients and helping our community. We want to help the most vulnerable and we do that in so many different ways. And I'm so proud of us because there are districts out there who are not doing it, who are not looking to try to help their most vulnerable students in the ways that they really can. They're not digging deep. They're trying in the regular ways and that's that, but they're not trying something outside the box like we are in so many different, and I'm so proud of us. I do want to acknowledge some high school, a Burlingame high school students who are volunteering at Burlingame Intermediate School to tutor. Again, you're outreaching, students are outreaching to all
062of the community and they're helping us out on Tuesdays when they get out early, they head right over to BIS and tutor our students who are really struggling. So I'm really proud that that's getting started this year. So again, I'm just beaming with spirit right now about just for our community and thank you for getting me in this position right now. Thank you. Trustee Andrade Zuniga? Yes. Sorry about that. Okay. Yes. So I'm going to start with the land acknowledgement that was written by some students from Cabochino many years ago, I guess now. Our community acknowledges that all of our campuses lie on the ancestral homeland of the Ramay Chisholone. The Ramaytush are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco peninsula whose land was stolen from them and whose native language was lost because of
063Spanish colonization. As settlers on the stolen land of the peninsula, we should be alongside the Ramaytush, remembering and honoring their ancestors and relatives. We thank the First People, the Ramaytush Ohlone, for taking care of the land we use now for education and activities. Our responsibility of caring for the earth is unique and personal to each of us, but should be rooted in allyship with the Ramaytush Ohlone so we can work together to protect and preserve the land for future generations. I too attended the CSBA conference, the California School Board Association conference, and... I attended some of the also some of the legislation breakout sessions, but I also attended some that pertain to governance for our boards. And for the most part, I think we as board members should continue to encourage each other to grow
064and to join these meetings, to take the master's in governance, to do these trainings, because ultimately we are responsible for making. decisions for this district that will affect our young people or students. So in keeping that in mind, board governance is really important. And the way that we work together. I also was able to watch the panels for one for the superintendent of education here in California. There were a few candidates or four or five candidates that were on the panel. It was very interesting, some a little concerning, but for the most part, it was interesting because those are the people that are going to drive the policies for education in the state. So it's important for us to know who those people are that are leading our districts in California. I want to also
065piggyback on what Trustee Land was saying about our district. I'm so proud of this district. I'm so grateful for this district and what we do for our students. I am a mother of some alumni, and I see what was given to my family, and I see how that keeps going on in other generations. From attending the Bay University holiday, I went yesterday and... What's really heartwarming about our special education programs is that it's unique. It's none like any other. Our district provides so much, and not just inclusion to be inclusive, but to be, to... Think of people with disabilities as also as part of the community to give our students that disability pride and pride in themselves and the tools that they need to succeed into adulthood. I was really proud of just that whole
066program and watching the students interact with each other, with their teachers and the parents, how much they help and how much they love that program. So thank you, Cappuccino, for hosting. I also attended the San Mateo County School Board Association quarterly meeting. I'm the vice president. And we also talked about the legislation, just like Trustee Land was saying. It's really important to stay involved and also to see that our delegates are going to be super important in making these decisions for our districts. I want to say thank you to our educators for protecting our students right now. Many of our students are experiencing a lot of fear, anxiety, hunger, housing insecurity, all kinds of things. And so thank you to our parent engagement coordinators, to our teachers, to our programs like the one with the...
067food pantries and the Sunday dinners and all of that, it just shows that we are a community and that we're going to stick up and support and show up for the most vulnerable and for folks that just need some extra support. With that said, there was a student that I met at the newcomer holiday lunch. And he was telling me he's from Guatemala, my family's from Guatemala. And so I felt connected to this student. And he was telling me about his journey here, how he was nine years old and basically swimming across the Rio Grande. He told me about what it was like to be detained by... border patrol and what it was like to be sent to a family that he had no idea who they were and then what he's doing now in
068high school and how he's helping his his fellow students as well it reminded me of so many other journeys that I've heard about and then it just brought home what what our students are experiencing what our families are experiencing so Lastly, I wanted to, I didn't get a chance to thank Trustee Griffin for his award. I, you know, sometimes I get really mad at you, but you've taught me so much. Like I learned, I've learned a lot from you. You're a great mentor and you're always super even keel. You love your community. Before I was running for the school board, we met for coffee. And you were one of the reasons why I was so inspired to run. You show up, you're present, you're knowledgeable, but your history is so interesting. I would love to
069like sit down with you more and listen to your stories. You are one of those people that have made this district what it is. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Well, I think there's a benefit to going last because I can chime in off of what others have already said. So I really appreciate what my colleagues have said. I'll share a couple of things. I was also at the CSBA, California School Board Association, annual conference. As you've already heard, it was in Sacramento. It was very cold. And I was also there for two days before the conference for the delegate assembly. So I want to echo what Trustee Lance said, is that the achievement gap. exists across the state, the entire state of California. And it's been, we're taking it very seriously. It's been
070this way for decades and we want to see some movement. So putting this forward and shining a bright light on it for our policymakers, I think is really important. And I'm just so happy that we're shining a light on it because we try to, every school district wants to close the achievement gap. Every trustee in California wants all of our students to be successful. But if we work together as an entire state, you know, we have about 1,000 public school districts, and everybody, we work together with our policymakers, we really need more support to close the achievement gap. So I was really happy to hear that, and I'm ready to roll up my sleeves and dive into that along with my other colleagues. Another thing I want to share was... Last Thursday and Friday, I
071had the pleasure of attending the Winter Concert at Cappuccino. Thursday, I'm going to say that I have to look at my notes because I don't want to mess this up. Thursday was the string orchestra, the chamber singers, and the chamber orchestra. Amazing. Friday night was the jazz band, percussion ensemble, and symphonic band. And both nights were just amazing. The students were amazing. Parents were right there supporting. I bought some raffle tickets both nights. I didn't win, but that's okay. I wanted others to win, but I wanted to contribute to that and also donation. I think next month I'm going to wear one of my shirts. I have a shirt now that says... cappuccino band alumni. Neither of my daughters were in the band. They pursued sports, but I really love hearing good music. So it
072was awesome. I also want to mention that our district is a family and I've heard everybody mention that tonight. I wanted to mention that I attended a recent city council reorganization in one of our cities for the mayor and vice mayor. They were sworn in and this doesn't always happen, but Sometimes it happens. The outgoing mayor announced some folks from the audience, and I was surprised that I wasn't expecting to be mentioned. And afterwards, a district employee came up to me and told me that, you know, she's a bus driver. And immediately we gave each other a hug. And we just met right then and there. And already we felt that bond being part of this amazing district. So I just wanted to echo how we really are a family. The entire district. Everyone's an
073educator. And I think it's just amazing. And I also thought maybe I want to be a bus driver because it sounds exciting. And we're entrusting our students with these bus drivers. And they take it very seriously. And it is, I mean, yeah, it's a really important job. So all of the jobs in the district are important. I also wanted to mention that I attended the San Mateo California School Board Association meeting. last week with Trustee Andrade Zuniga and that's it's really important we're network we're networking with other trustees within our county and we're working together um and also as as I already mentioned we had legislative updates so those are really important meetings and I want to make sure that all trustees in our county are aware of those meetings they happen every quarter we're
074having another meeting actually next month so um That's my report. And I wanted to say one more thing. I'm very, very happy that our student council board members came. And Ms. Aquino attended part of the CSB as well and attended that with the students. And I think there was 12 or 13 students that attended, right? Amazing. So I'm just so grateful that you guys attended and learned a lot and had that opportunity to network with other students. Thank you. Can I just add to that? For next year, we really should all get together. I felt really bad that we didn't get to see the student board members because they did their thing and we did our thing. And, you know, it'd be nice to connect. I would love to just be, I'm so proud of
075them. And I would just love to see them up there because it's something we missed. Some of that is a product of scheduling because they were scheduled the day before. Right. So, but it would be great to connect. So I just think that's something to keep the family together. Kind of thing, you know? Anyway. That could be my fault a little bit, trusty Lynn. Ms. Aquino texted me when they arrived, but we were in the middle of voting on something. I know. It's a delegate. Yeah. But we do want to make sure we connect. Exactly. Because it's awesome, yeah. One quick comment that I was going to let somebody else mention, but Superintendent Booker, I hate to say, made a really outstanding presentation with Lou Lozano. And he actually, he was talking. Yeah, I mean,
076you know, I... Hold on. Actually, and hate to say, wow, way to build a guy up. But I mean, it really was a strong presentation. And... really showed, you know, your skill in leadership and really gave the, I think. a flavor of Sam and tail and how, how you lead, lead here and, and avert crisis and keep us all marching, keep the trains running on time, keep us all marching in the same direction and help our students achieve. Anyway, I got compliments from other board boards saying, wow, your superintendent really gave me some important information. And I learned a lot. You should be doing the Masters of Governance class. Yeah. And he's funny and entertaining too. Wow. Look at all these compliments. Piling it up. Okay. Happy holidays. Here we go. And also the Robert
077Griffin Award was, you did a great job presenting that as well. Yeah. Okay. We'll move along. Thank you everybody for the board comments. Okay. So next we're going to public comments. If you are joining us in person and wish to make a comment about an agenda item or during public comment section at the beginning of an agenda item, please fill out the request to address the board form and submit to the secretary. That's the blue form. This form should be given to the secretary before the agenda item begins. If you are joining us virtually, use the raised hand feature on Zoom to be recognized. When invited to do so, your camera must be on before you are called upon to make a public comment. We will call on you to begin your comment once we
078have promoted you into the meeting. If your camera is not operational, please email your comments to the Board of Trustees at board at smus. I'm sorry, smuhsd.org. Please note that comments are limited to three minutes. The board president may increase or decrease this time allotted for public comments, depending on the topic and number of persons wishing to be heard. I will call on in-person comments first. I know we have one. Do we have any more? Okay. So in-person comments first. Ms. Aisha, I'm sorry, Afaf? Sorry. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. I hope you're all doing well. My name is Aisha Faf, and I'm a junior at Mills High School, and I was actually a student board council member last year, so it's nice to be back and see you all again. Today,
079I'm going to be talking based off of the California Youth Climate Policy Program, which I'm a member of. And so this program encourages students to get involved in climate activism through policy. So they help us notice immense problems or issues based on climate change in our communities. And I'd first like to start off by thanking you all for passing all of the policies based on climate activism within our district, which has been so much better than a couple of the districts that my friends go to. So thank you so much for that. However, personally, I've noticed an imperative issue of increasing pollution and waste within our communities and globally, because around the world, two... billion tons of waste is produced per year. And in the United States alone, an average person produces 4.9 pounds of
080waste per day, and only 30% of that gets composted or recycled. So these numbers really show us how much we're letting into landfills. And when a lot of this waste goes into landfills, a lot of it isn't biodegradable, which then harms our environment even more. However, to sort of combat this issue on a smaller scale within my own school community at Mills, I'm hoping to initiate a project called the Earth Day Swap, where students will be able to bring in items they no longer need, like small electronics, books, or supplies, and then they can swap it with other people who may use those items. Therefore, we're reducing the amount of waste that's entering our landfills, and we are reusing and upcycling. I hope to implement this project at my own school first and learn from
081that experience and hopefully encourage other schools to implement projects that are similar to this. Thank you all so much for supporting student voice and student-led initiatives. And I hope you all have a good night. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Great comment. Sakina, are there any raised hands on Zoom? There are none. Okay, thank you. Okay. Now we are in O, agenda item O, communications to the board of trustees. None this evening. Okay. Next, we move to consent. Do any of the trustees wish to pull an item for discussion? Okay. Is there a motion for? Make a motion to approve the consent agenda. Okay. We have a motion and a second. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Student board reps? Aye. Okay. Thank you. Okay. The motion passes five to zero. And I think
082there was an item moved. Is that correct? Multilingual learner. I'm sorry. Multilingual learner progress. Okay. Okay. Thanks. Sorry. Dr. Kempke, am I handing it to you? Sure. Very excited to introduce our multilingual team headed by Ms. Joanna Fite, who's going to present some progress for our multilingual learners. I know she has some students here, so we're going to start with them to make sure that they have time to get home. So I'll pass it over to you. Thank you. Good evening, members of the board and the cabinet and students. I am happy to be here again to provide some updates on our multilingual learner programs. As Dr. Kempke said, we're going to start with our students. Here we go. because they have finals tomorrow. So we have a few students here tonight. Then we'll do
083the data and talk about some more of the bright spots and some of the programs that we continue to do to improve student success. So the first student from Bridge was not able to be here tonight, but she did make a quick video for us. So I'm gonna start by playing that one. Hello, my name is Yolani Sanchez. I am a 12th grade at Bridge Academy. I am from Honduras. I am part of the school leadership team. We make announcements, plan events with teachers like a celebration, dancing and field trips. We also promote activities. One of my favorite activities is welcoming to the new students, help them feel comfortable. I include at the school, we encourage in the case, this is all of us outside of the classroom because it promotes respect and responsibility. I
084got involved in leadership because I want to give my time to the school. Becoming a leader was an opportunity to give and also opportunity to learn new skills and that will help me in my future. I want to say thank you to the staff at Bridge Academy and the street for the support. Great, thank you. I did forget to mention that the focus of the students we picked for the panel is around leadership skills that they've had or positions at their school site and what helped them become leaders. So our next three students are here in person. I want to invite them up, and they're going to read through their answers to the questions that are up on the slide. Good evening. My name is Shirley Tikun. Currently, I am in 12th grade, and I
085am a member of Houston High School. And I am originally from Guatemala, but I came to the United States when I was 12 years old. Hi, my name is Iriana Linare. I'm a senior at San Mateo High School, and I'm from Venezuela. I have been in the United States for two years. Hi, my name is Jose Luis Capos. I'm senior at Capuchino High School and I was born in Caragua. I have been in the United States for two years. I've been a leader at my school by helping my classmates. Right now I am part of the leadership team and a representative of the Manila House, which is the elder students. This has been important to me since I was in Manila for my freshman year in high school. And as a representative, me and my
086group of two organized events. was at the beginning of the year in August we organized a movie night for them as a welcome back to school and then which we give them pizza, chips and all the stuff and then this activity was really successful because they like it and it was just for them to have fun and spend time with their friends and doing this kind of activities helped us to try to involve them a little bit more in school activities and we We try to encourage them to feel more comfortable with other people that don't speak the same language as them. And we are also planning to do another activity for them once we get back from our break, which we will be doing some activities during lunch, like games, painting rocks, et cetera.
087And we will be having a day just for them to do activities during advisory. for them to just have fun and to start a new semester. Okay, I have not specifically been the leader of the program, but I was a manager of the volleyball team that is like a leader of a system. And my experience in this team was good, and it helped me to improve in English, specifically to communicate in science. My companion and coach do not speak Spanish. I learned many things, like how to use the points table. their positions, how to socialize and meet students from other schools, and how to keep that equipment in order. I became a leader by gaining the trust of my classmates and teachers. I am a math DA and I'm tutoring a new student so they
088can take IB math next year. I was also selected to be the ML group president and treasurer this year. I have run all our monthly events like our movie nights, pumpkin decorations, Thanksgiving, pop-up and giving houses making. I became a leader at my school because I enjoy helping people and being a leader gave me the opportunity to build confidence, develop new skills, and set out my comfort zone when something is new for me and to spend time with people from different cultures. I became the leader of the team because at first I was a player and it went well. To my performance and positive in the test, I became manager so I want to adventure out of the Spanish-speaking only community to new people. I learned how things and tried to practice more English by
089taking this step. I was able to learn more about the local culture and at the same time, the new friends I made become interested about mine. I became a leader because I want to help a new lesser and everyone who is not born in the United States. My transition to high school was challenging at first because I didn't know many people at all. My parents helped my transition by reminding me to stay organized and focus on balance. My friends also influenced me to join cheer in my sophomore year. because they knew I liked it and that I loved to dance. After I made the cheer team, I wanted to join other things like community service, which I did on my junior year, which was Peace Pantry, which I did during summer as well. And every
090Friday in... I also joined leadership this year. But to do this, I knew it was more about me and that I had to encourage myself to do it before I regret it that I never did it. Thank you. My main influence on my transition to high school and becoming a part of my community were Mr. Uquidez, who helped me to know all about information on high school sports. My parents and friends, because they helped me to support me when I was not selected to the team as a player. And also, my main influence was my determination and my way of being. Despite no being selected at the beginning, I continued to work hard. Thank you. Mr. Castillo was my main influence for my transition to high school. The ML Club events helped me feel part
091of the community, and I enjoy being part of them. I have made a lot of friends here at Cappuccino. They can help me with my transition to high school. They made the school fun and made me want to come every day. Thank you so much, students. I know you've taken quite a few weeks to prepare for this. We practiced and you practiced even more. And thank you for your families that are here. And I hope you have good luck in your finals and a good break. Thank you. Thank you, Natalie. You were all amazing. Thank you. All right, so I'm going to move on and report a little bit about our progress in our data. I'm excited to share that we've had actually quite a few increases in our California dashboard data. So that's exciting
092to see. And what you'll see throughout the slides is that while we have made progress, we still have some areas where we need some improvement. But hey, we are headed in the right direction right now. So that's great to be able to say that tonight. For our enrollment, you know, we have had a decrease in the number of newcomers that have been coming into the district. Last year at this time, I reported that we were at about 45%, almost 45% of our newcomers were newcomers, and this year we're at about 39%. Our enrollment at each of the school sites continues to be approximately the same. It's just the shift in the long-term population increasing and the newcomer population decreasing. But overall, enrollment continues to be about approximately the same at most of the sites. This
093next slide talks a little bit about the placement of our students. And in the chart to the left, students placed after the start of the year, these are all the students that have come in since the first day of school. And what you'll see in this chart is that we've had about 39 students. And at this time last year, we had about 89 students that had come in. So again, this is impacting the newcomer population that's coming into the district and into the United States. On the right hand side, we have our bridge transfer process that Sammy and I work together on. And so far this semester, we've transferred a total of 18 students through this referral process and the comprehensive sites that they came from. Anytime that they're transferred, they actually have the option.
094We have them come visit with their family and then they make a choice of which school they would like to be at. And then in this next placement slide, this is about our consult and referral process. This has to do with students who are exiting the newcomer program. And so what this shows is that when there is a student of concern, based on teacher and counselor feedback, we will... Review the student file and make decisions on if they can stay in the newcomer program sometimes it's a request of due partial and so in the last two years we've had 87 total students who have been approved for a change in placement and 2024-25 there were five students who were not approved. I was actually looking at those students right now and one of them's at
095peninsula and succeeding a couple are at bridge and a couple other ones have graduated from our district and then for this school year there's only been two students who have not been approved and frequently what the reasons those students haven't been approved is because when looking at their files, there's something else going on that maybe they need to have an SST and have a 504 and a RIP, and it's not necessarily a language barrier. So our grad rate for both subsets of our multilingual learners increased. And so we saw a 6.8 increase in our English learners and a 2.9% for our long-term English learners. And we are in the green, which is a great data point to be able to talk about. Specific highlights or bright spots are for five of our schools, we saw
096major increase in the graduation rate. And then there's a few schools that we still either saw it maintaining or declining. And it'll be important for us to look at those students just to see what were the potential reasons that caused like this decline for some of them. And I also hope that with this year, we're starting plan six, the graduation plan that the board approved last year. So we're hopefully we'll continue to see an increase in our graduation rates for our multilingual learners. Our academic indicators are also pretty good this year. In math, for example, we have seen an increase for all our English learners and our long-term English learners. For English and science, we've seen... some increase and then some that maintained or declined as you can see this is one of the examples
097where while we have made some progress we still have a little further to go because while all students are in the green or orange level the our multilingual learners still remain in the orange or the red but again we've made progress and that's the first step And for our college and career indicator, we have again seen an increase for both our English learners and our long-term English learners, which is just wonderful to see happening. Again, like just so many areas of increase compared to last year. For our reclassification rates, we also saw an increase. We had 17.5% that were reclassified over the last year. And part of the reclassification is them making progress on the ELPAC, which is called the English Learner Progress Indicator. And overall, the district saw an increase in that rate. And
098on the right-hand side for 24-25, you'll see the schools with green. Stars by them are ones that increased. I wanna point out Cappuccino that had a really huge increase in their rate, like congratulations to them. And then the three red ones, we had a slight decrease and it'll be interesting to look at possible reasons for the decrease that might be related to different designated ELD and CLA courses and also just what kind of curriculum might be being used. plus other factors that could be impacting it. Bridge for the first time is on here, including the other slides where we see Bridge for the first time with their grad rate, et cetera. And I did reach out to a few teachers to get some teacher perspective on what is working well that could be contributing to
099the growth we just spoke to and what are some areas of additional support. Many teachers were unable to come due to it being the night before finals and the night before break. But I do want to... bring Ruby up. She has joined us tonight from Hillsdale High School to report a little bit about these questions. Wow, this is my first time at a board meeting. I'm so excited. Good evening board members. Thank you for making time for this important conversation and more importantly for being willing to listen. The students we're discussing tonight are some of the most vulnerable in our district but they're also some of the most resilient, capable, and asset-rich students that we serve. I want to begin by naming that while I have the privilege of teaching multilingual learners during the summer
100and teaching standard classes with integrated ML students during the school year, I do not consider myself the sole expert in this work. Many of my colleagues across the district bring years of deep expertise, lived experience, and daily practice supporting ML students. So rather than speaking only from my own perspective, I reached out to them. And tonight I am here to echo our collective voice. Tonight I want to talk about what is working and where we need more support. What is working? So also want to acknowledge that all our sites have different structures. We all run our schools differently. But across classroom sites and programs, there was strong alignment around what is positively contributing to ML student growth. First and foremost, people matter. Our multilingual learners thrive when they are supported by caring, dedicated educators, teachers,
101advisors at Hillsdale, and instructional assistants who see students for who they are, recognize their assets, and create space for them to be their full selves. Flexibility, patience, and giving students time to articulate themselves in English are not extras, they are foundational. Strong instructional practices are also making a difference. In effective ML classrooms, we see scaffolded instruction and structured discussion routines, explicit academic language development, bilingual supports, translanguaging being normalized as a strength, not a deficit. These culturally responsive environments foster belonging, confidence, and engagement, all of which directly support language acquisition and academic growth. Another critical structure that is working well is the ML teacher advisor role. specifically seen at Hillsdale due to our smaller learning communities. Advisors provide consistency, trust, and social-emotional stability for students navigating not just a new language, but a new school system
102and a new country. Finally, smaller class sizes and strong instructional assistants were repeatedly named as essential. Our IAs are invaluable and they're also overextended and undercompensated. Their impact on student learning is profound and many educators believe their pay and staffing levels should reflect that value. Now where we need more support. At the same time, significant barriers are limiting sustained progress, and these are systemic, not individual. When students do transition, support is often inconsistent. Teachers identified a need for explicit foundational reading instruction, co-planning time for standard program teachers receiving ML students, clear communication systems among ML staff. counselors, advisors, and content teachers. Content teachers also need more models of differentiation across ML levels. Many ML classrooms or many classrooms can include level one, two, and three students simultaneously. And without coaching and content, sorry, and without
103coaching, modeling, and collaboration time, this expectation becomes unsustainable. This is one that I want to put a lot of emphasis on. There are also concerns about identifying ML students who may have learning disabilities. Teachers need better tools and systems to distinguish between language acquisition challenges and learning related needs so students receive appropriate services. Lastly, our ML students are not the problem, rather they're an asset. They're a joy, a welcome addition to our community. The system surrounding them needs some strengthening. If we invest in teacher capacity, instructional assistance, flexible policies, family partnerships, and coherent transitions, we're not lowering expectations, we're finally aligning them with reality. Thank you again for listening and for your continued commitment to the success and dignity of our multilingual learners. Thank you. Thank you, Ruby. You did great. Quick little story. I
104was Ruby's teacher, so was Samia. I was her advisor at Hillsdale High School. So we know her very well and very proud of who she's become. I will say she was kind of a pain in my butt as her advisor. And she has become amazing, like an amazing teacher. She is a... returning a teacher to ML summer school as well. So really excited to see her growth as well. And thank you again for being here. So the next section, we're just going to continue to talk about a little bit of the bright spots related to the teacher support that we provide and from also hearing from our ML social worker. So I'd like to invite up Lisa Mejia-Sandoval. Hello, board members. This is my first time actually presenting for the board. So I'm super excited
105to be able to do this. And thank you to you all for being here and to be able to listen to an awesome opportunity that we're going to have to be able to highlight the bright spots here in our MLP program. So use this little. We have a special little video for you guys to watch. These are some highlights from our students during the summertime. And it was such a pleasure to be able to work summer school this past summer and enjoy just different activities that we got to do with the students. So you're going to get to hear a little bit about their experience. The teachers, I liked how they teach. The truth is it was an experience that I will never forget and I would like to repeat the truth again. Hello, what
106I liked most about the summer school was how they taught me to explain English, express myself, the games, mathematics, everything was very nice. Well, I liked the summer school because they support us in everything. They care about us and we are safe in our homes. They give us snacks and everything. They are very good people. Thank you. Hello, I'm Emanuel. And I'm Sofía. And what we liked the most about the summer school was the learning they gave us. Meet different people, experience different things. The teachers were very fun, understanding. And the way to get to the students was very good, since they had English and mathematics classes. I mean, when we need like to go to the main office or to the wellness office, they were always open with us. They were able to speak
107to us. And there were a lot of services that we could enjoy in this four weeks of summer school. And I'm really thankful about this program and all the teachers. Among us. Thank you guys. I liked Summer School because I had a very good teacher, I liked the new friendships I made, I liked the atmosphere and I liked the majority of the things we did. Well, really, what I liked the most about Summer School is that I could learn more English, also meet more people and socialize more. Also, the teachers were good, I met good people and well, nothing cool, I really liked Summer School. So that was just a glimpse of just like what summer school looked like. And then it also had some pictures related to some of the events that we've had
108throughout the school year. So again, my name is Lisa Mejia Sandoval. I'm the ML school social worker at San Mateo and Cappuccino. I'm really excited to be here to be able to present and highlight some of these amazing things that we've been doing so far. And so just to briefly talk about the different partnerships as my role that I have here in the district is really to be able to connect and make partnerships with all these partners that you see here. We couldn't list all of them, but we do have quite a few partners that we work alongside to be able to provide the services that we can for our families and students. Definitely being able to. make sure that we meet their needs as well. And so the first one here that you see
109is our Medi-Cal. So Medi-Cal is something that we definitely try to connect our families to, especially during the times that we're living in, we have to be able to make sure that they are able to get connected to our health coverage unit here in the county. Recently, we've been able to have four different clinics. at four different school sites. So we got one at Bridge Academy, San Mateo High, Hillsdale, and Cappuccino. Recently had one this past Tuesday at Cappuccino. And all over these four school sites, we were able to serve over 60 families and get them reapplied again for Medi-Cal or renewing and applying for Medi-Cal. which is great, a great initiative that the Human Services Agency of County was able to come in and provide those services for our families. CORA is another one
110of our partners and we're able to be able to work with them together to be able to support our families and students with parent workshops solely based on abuse within either partners or whatnot. And so providing that support for our students at the school sites is very helpful to be able to learn about healthy relationships and boundaries. And then we've been able to connect with El Centro de Libertad. So El Centro de Libertad has been helping us to be able to work with our students on substance prevention and provide workshops related to substance prevention for our families as well. And so recently we finished a 10-week program that El Centro provided at San Mateo High for 10 of our students. And then continuing to build those partnerships with them, providing those parent workshops. Again, you
111know, it's... Really working together and being able to build that partnership so we could provide these services at the different school sites One of our other agencies that we provided we've been able to connect with and they've been able to provide services for our families as faith in action faith in action has been one of our biggest assets this this year especially and due to all the unfortunate things that we're seeing with our families and students. The president time that we have of they've been able to support us with the court hearings that our children have been having with their families and so attending those court hearings with them providing us legal services to the families as well and being able to connect with them. It doesn't matter what time it is and be able
112to let them know what's going on with this family and getting them connected to those services. So they've been amazing, really supportive to our district as well. And then, again, our core agencies that we have here in the county, Samaritan House, we have the Community Resource Center in South San Francisco that has been providing food resources, clothing, and housing necessities for our families. And that is another big partnership that we've had with them, especially when... The times that we're dealing with now too, you know, and this has been a great partnership that we've been able to sustain throughout the years. Alcove is another one of our partners, definitely referring families for mental health support. and being able to take some field trips over to their site so our students are able to check out the
113site and see what, you know, where it's located and what's happening in there and stuff. And so we've had several students attend these field trips and want to go back. And then we have a great organization that we've connected and partnered with, Assistance League School Bill Program. They've been providing resources with clothing and backpacks, school supplies, and teen mom baskets, which are amazing for our teen moms. Receiving this gift of basket with full items for their baby has been such a blessing. I could go on and on with all the partners that we work alongside. And I'm just so thankful to be able to have these partners that we work with and build that bridge with them and be able to come together and connect regarding the different barriers that we're seeing in our community.
114And so just to highlight that, we have a few pictures here. As you can see here, this is the picture of El Centro de Libertad to the left, where we were able to have the teen substance leadership group at San Mateo recently. And so students were super. involved and wanting to get to learn more and be able to be a part of this community, which they feel very much so part of. We have here our CAP newcomer group, which I was able to co-facilitate with Mr. Leon, the wellness counselor there. And that, again, was an amazing outreach. And then we have our assistance league, some of the teen basket. As you could see, we have the teen baskets that are provided for our teen moms here. And then again, community and network meetings. So this
115is something that we meet quarterly, and we definitely want to be able to build that bridge amongst our partners. And so we meet on a quarterly basis to be able to talk about the different barriers and supports that they could provide for our families. And then we have a picture of our Medi-Cal Clinic at Bridge Academy. And then the different school sites that we've been able to provide the medical clinics to. And this is just another highlight of our MLP resource fair that we had last year, which was an amazing turnout. Thanks to you all for also showing up at the event. And then we have the Alco field trip. So recently, Cappuccino, Sal, thank you, Sal, for coordinating that. We were able to attend this field trip. with the students at Cappuccino. And then
116we have our newcomer group at San Mateo High being able to just be in community, learn about each other, learn about the struggles and barriers that we're facing. And it's been such a great honor to be able to do that group as well. We got to take the kids to the Giants game last year, which was great too. They had such an experience. A lot of them are unfortunately cannot. or don't have the capacity to be able to attend these types of games. And we were able to take them there. Thanks to our ML coordinator too. And then we have our summer school picture there. And again, our community network meeting that we just had recently at the district office this month. So these are some of the highlights. I want to thank our MLP
117team for also being a part of these efforts. Thank you to Joanna. for always striving for the best for us and making it happen for us. So thank you for that. And I want to also highlight and thank Stephanie Wozniak at San Mateo High for the video. She helped out with that video too. And everybody here who's here, it's late, but you guys are here to support us. So thank you. And thank you to all for listening. Good evening, members of the cabinet, trustees, President Chavez, Char. Thank you for having me. I'm Nicole Ellens-Martin. I'm the Multilingual Learner Programs Coordinator, and I have the privilege of working a lot with the teachers, especially teachers in our newcomer program, our CLA teachers, Community and Literacy in Action, which is our designated ELD course that is in
118the standard program. And so up here, briefly, just these Tables are showing some of the different trainings and professional learning that we have been able to engage in together throughout the fall semester. Our newcomer teachers, our CLA teachers have been able to do quite a bit of collaboration, some training days. Some of our external providers who have been able to come in to help us with our assessment platforms and learning how to run them to best support our students and engage in some. really personalized individual learning as well. We're doing a pilot for an ELPAC prep program. We've been able to do like I said, some collaborative work days around our curriculum, some of which we started using last year and some of which is new this year, such as our designated ELD curriculum and
119our phonics program. So it's been really exciting to be able to get together in these collaborative moments. And we've also been able to do quite a bit of observations. We've also been able to take part in the PD and MTSS coordinator meetings and leadership team to work with our leaders and coordinators on the campus so they can hopefully bring strategies and routines. and modeling back to their sites for all of the different professional learning meetings that they may have as the sites as well. And I'd also like to acknowledge the work that we've been able to do in collaboration with the ML teacher support coaches who are working with 47 teachers across the sites, as you can see there, and the different PLCs as part of the fellowship program. And you'll be hearing a lot
120more from them in the spring at a future meeting. These are a huge plethora of quotes from teachers in various capacities from the work that we've been doing. But in some, many of them are very pleased with how authentic and relevant and enjoyable the curriculum is for the students, that they can really relate and feel very engaged with it as they're also learning all of the domains and working on all the communicative domains in English. And also a huge... appreciation for the collaboration time and being able to work together and figure out strategies and ways that across the entire district all of the teachers especially in the newcomer program and designated eld and cla are able to make things happen for students so thank you very much All right, so just one final bright spot,
121a quick little video. This student was in the first graduating class from Bridge Academy. She went to the cosmetology school at CSM, passed her exam, and now works at a salon in downtown San Mateo. Hello, this is Lili Ramirez, and I'm recording this lovely little video to share with you what Bridge means to me. Bridge is not only an English school. It is a safe place. It is family. It helps immigrant students to feel supported while learning English. Bridge has the best teachers in the world. They truly care about their students. They show their love and passion every single day. For me, coming to Bridge after moving from my country was and is one of the best things that happened in my life. I'm really thankful with everyone that is making this real. They remind
122us we're not alone. Thank you very much for tonight. Thank you. I'm going to open up for board members to have any comments or questions. I have a question. When you identify students that have learning disabilities, How do you approach that with them? And if there is resistance, like say from them or from their families, or they just don't understand like why or who. where they're going, what is that process like? Well, it's a process that's followed with, usually starts with a student success team meeting with several members of the site. And through those student success team meetings, they will determine if they, the school psychologist will participate as well and then determine if further testing is needed. And then that goes, it's the special ed department that's running those assessments to then determine if
123there is a disability or not. With the ML students, I have not heard yet of students or families being resistant to it. I think one of the things that... Was mentioned by Ruby also is that sometimes when they're Recent arrivals in the United States. There's a confusion of like is this a language proficiency thing or is it a disability and That's why I was mentioning earlier around placement. It's really important to look at their historical Pieces to see if there's an ongoing lack of increase or growth in areas that might be Symbolizing that there could be something else besides language. Thank you Any comments? Questions? I'll go. So first, thank you very much. I think it was a great report. I really got some good insights into our schools. And I think you highlighted some
124of the positives, but also where we have some concerns and we need to go. I think for me, long-term English learners is our biggest concern because most of those in the dashboard were red. And so really trying to figure out, and that's, again, nothing unique to California, but what can we do differently? And maybe we can be the disruptors and really make some change. Kudos. I do want to comment on a lot was in Spanish. Almost all of our multilingual learners were in Spanish tonight. What are we doing for our students? So at BIS, we have a whole influx of Turkish students. We have a whole influx of Portuguese students. I'm wondering if you're seeing the same at the different schools for multilingual, for newcomers, you know, multilingual learners at ELPAC 1 level, 2 level.
125And what are we doing? differently. I mean, so I'm curious as to what's going on there. Yeah, so I think, you know, we do have at Burlingame High School in particular, we have a larger population of Turkish students and Capuchino and Burlingame Portuguese speaking students. And, you know, it's been It's the same type of supports that we use in the classrooms with all of the students. It's interesting because sometimes those are the students who opt out of a newcomer program. And possibly, given what we've seen with the students coming in, we're seeing more and more students who are... coming from other countries than our Spanish-speaking Latin American countries. So I do expect that we will continue to see an increase in those newcomer students. In addition, in the slide, we have a lot of students
126who are coming in as newcomers, but they test fluent. But yeah, we do, and all the students do participate in summer school as well. And one of the things that it is hard, I imagine, for the students is that there are not as many of their language speakers, right? So they are amongst a lot of Spanish-speaking students. And sometimes I hear like, oh, I learned more Spanish than I learned English, you know? And so that's something that we continue to work with teachers on around the use of Spanish and particularly our MLIAs. because helping them translate or explaining things in Spanish isn't always the solution. It's providing a different way to access the curriculum. Well, and just a final comment on that, just language acquisition. I mean, regardless of Spanish, regardless of what the multilingual
127languages are, English language acquisition is important, and how are we going to promote that? Yeah, absolutely. I've heard some mixed reviews about the Pathways curriculum from teachers and that, you know, some of it's useful, some of it's not. Sometimes they need or want other books or novels or storybooks to use instead. Is there a way to provide that for them if they need additional resources? Absolutely. I mean, for one, each of the sites receives a certain amount of money from Title I and Title III budgets to buy supplemental materials. And I'd say that, you know, with any curriculum that we've brought in, the expectation is not that they only use the curriculum because that would also be a little... boring to students so we ask that like they actually bring in projects and other pieces
128that they might have used before to enhance the curriculum but yeah all of the sites have a budget that they can buy supplemental materials and if they need more they usually ask me and we can usually figure it out i don't know if you wanted to add anything yeah Thank you for the presentation. You know, I really found hearing from the students be really enjoyable. I mean, it takes a lot of guts on their part. The other thing, hearing the detail on the supports for the support, you know, the professional development and all that's going in there and all we're doing with support services and seeing the activities so that, you know, they're just not just drill, drill, drill. So, I mean, it kind of gives them a fuller. opportunity to learn and interact. And
129so it's a good presentation. There are good things going on. There's still some hard work to do. Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah, I wanted to echo what everybody said already that thank you for the presentation and hearing the students. speak both in person and in the video. I mean, it's really moving and we really see the positive movement forward. I was going to mention something here regarding the graduation rate. to see the positive movement forward for the increased graduation rate, as well as the college and career indicators moving forward and the site growths. This is great information. And of course, there's room for growth, but highlighting the positive movement forward. I mean, that's what we all like to see. I just had one question. Thank you for mentioning all the teacher perspective. Everyone did such a
130great job. What I remember hearing was areas that we need additional support, coaching, modeling, collaboration time. And what can we do to help? I know that identifying it is key and then making sure that there's time for the coaching, modeling and the collaboration time. What can we do as a district to help foster that or allow that time to occur? I mean, I think, you know, as some people, many people mentioned, each of the structures at the schools are very different in terms of collaboration. We, of course, have our PLC time on Wednesdays and Fridays. and many frequently that's not enough right it's such a short amount of time and i also think that this is the first year with the plc the standard program plc and we're seeing already some great practices and hearing
131from teachers that that's really been a benefit we have one of our toasts actually go and model an entire class for a teacher. And so hoping that like teachers hearing the benefit of this since they volunteered or applied to go to it, that that'll expand the interest in the second year of the TOSAs to have more teachers participate in that kind of professional learning. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other comments from the board? I want to thank everybody for your presentation. It's amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you. Ms. Aquino, are there any public comments? No? Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you again. Okay. We're going to move on to special reports and appearances. Then tonight. Okay. Same with construction. Same with construction. Okay, great. Okay. We're moving on to division of
132human resources, the personnel consent agenda. Yes, we have for the consent agenda. We have personal actions in three categories of MOUs. The first category is several MOUs for CSCA employees who are temporarily reducing their work schedules for either professional or personal reasons. An MOU with the Felton Institute for Suicide Prevention Practices. They'll partner with the district and an MOU for the bridge teacher, the art therapy teacher. thank you okay is there a motion uh i moved to approve the consent agenda second okay are there any comments no okay um there's no discussion so um how do we vote how do you oh i'm sorry i was gonna say mr kino are there any public comments now hey let's do a roll call vote please i'm sorry not a roll call on paper just all yeah
133it's okay Hi. All in favor? Okay, yeah. I don't know why I said roll call vote. Sorry about that, guys and ladies. Okay, next is Division of Human Resources. Yes, first item is the Personnel Actions Addendum. We do have a recognition. Suzanne Barba, a world language teacher at San Mateo High School, submitted her retirement effective January 5th after 24 and a half years in the district. So good. Is there a motion? I'll move to approve. Second. All in favor? Aye. Public comment? Oh, yes. Ms. Aquino, any public comments? No? Okay. Thank you for that. Okay. Division of Human Resources, item number two? Yes. The item number two is the... Tentative agreement with the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees that some highlights include a 2.5% salary increase. For benefits, the district will cover
134using the difference card for full-time employees, probably for part-time. There'll be a $1,000 payment to help with the medical insurance deductible. We included some longevity language to increase the stipends and add 15 to 20, 25-year. segments. And then other miscellaneous items include FMLA language, reproductive loss leave, personal leave, and then we agreed to a work from home MOU with the unit and also brought in our behavioral behavior program manager into the ASME unit. So we recommend approval of the tenant agreement. Thank you, Dr. Black. Any questions or comments from the board? If no questions or comments, I move to approve. Okay. Is there any public comment? No. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Carrie's back to zero. Trustee Chavez, can I just make a comment real quick? Absolutely. I just want to thank our district negotiating
135team, the AFSCME negotiating team. It's a big deal. You read in the paper and in the press a lot right now about how bargaining is going so south. How many sticks? Yeah. Finishing up with AFSCME and concluding the 24, all of our bargaining groups are completed. I think bargaining was fair. I think it was tough. as it should be, but I'm so grateful, incredibly grateful for our team here on the district side, but also the teams for AFSCME and Adult Ed and DTA and CSCA. It's a lot of hard work on their part too in working with their constituents. And so I just don't want that to go unnoticed. and or be taken for granted how much work really goes into negotiations and how really awful it can turn into for a district on all
136sides when it goes south. So when it's good, you know, we we rah rah cheer about it because it's it is really good and it helps morale. So thanks. Thank you for that. Thank you for the comment. OK, next is Division of Student Services. Dr. Black. Yes, we have four inter-district student transfer appeals. The committee recommends the denial of these four inter-district transfer appeals. Are there any questions from the board? I have a question about earlier in closed session, we heard about one of the inter-district transfers that was attached to another one, like their siblings. Would there be a way of postponing that vote until we vote on the other one as well, so we can vote on those together? Just that one particular case. That's a great question. Was that from today's closed session?
137Because I thought that would be for January's meeting. Yeah, the one from earlier. Okay. One moment. Are there any other comments? Ms. Aquino, are there any public comments? No? Okay. Thank you. Okay, so one of the concerns we have is that if we postpone, then that student stays on for the first month of the second semester. Let's say at that January 22nd, then you vote to deny the intra-district transfer. that's being done within the first few weeks of this, that can be very disruptive. Or let's say you approve it, or it can become very disruptive. That's why we like to do these things at the semester break. Am I categorizing that correctly or communicating that correctly? So to Trustee Andrade Zuniga's question, can it be done? Yes. you're in charge. You can do it with
138emotion in the second. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it because I think it gets disruptive for the student. So I'm trying to answer your question, but also provide recommendation. Well, then what happens to that sibling? Because they're going to be, that one's going to be voted on in January, right? So wouldn't it be the same thing? Given the, well, as you know, from all of our talks, this has been a long process with the family. I think they can see what's coming. We've went over very clearly with them many different issues, many months. And this was delayed. This one that we're going to have in January 22nd was delayed for a reason that wasn't anticipated, but it's not, it didn't sway the decision. So we think that if we have the one tonight, we're going to
139work with the family. And they can keep the one student in for a couple weeks of the new semester. But, you know, we'll show them what we assume will happen in January and then what the outcome would be for a student that starts a couple weeks at one school and has to transfer into another school. So we hope we can, you know, work with the parent and have the best situation for both of the students. I'm not too clear on that. So what you're saying is we can vote whatever we vote today on this one. So one's going to either stay or go. And then the other one is going to stay until they have to go. But their go might be later. It's a parent choice. It's not necessarily they would be able to.
140But I think we'll have the discussion with them. And yeah. So in other words, if you vote tonight to deny the inter-district transfer, right, we're going to have a conversation with that parent and say, I'm going to be frank, listen, the board's going to vote in January, on January 22nd. It's likely that the same result will happen. Do you want to move your student now? Yeah. You want to move both now? Now, the parent can say no. That's all you needed to say. I get that. And the child would stay. I'm confused about what was going on. That's right. And I understand. I think if we do, you know, if they are denied the one tonight, it's going to make that case. Yeah. And they might do what's easiest for the family. Correct. Okay. If
141there's no other discussion, I move to approve the transfers or the denials. Sorry. Thank you. Second. Okay. All in favor. I'm sorry, I'm going to be a no voter. Okay. I'm going to abstain. So we have three, the vote passes three yeses, one no, and one abstention. Did I get that right? Okay. Great. The abstention was me. Thank you. And who seconded the motion? Sorry, that went real quick. Thank you. It did go quick, yeah. Okay. All right. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Next is a division of instructional services. Item number two, course outlines, new business pathway. Thank you. All right. Brian Simmons is going to come up here and just introduce this one. It's two year, four course sequence. We are approving these courses. They're duly aligned, enrolled with Skyline. That's right. Stole
142my thunder, but that's it. Yeah, that's basically it. I make emotion. Take the time as you walked up. Walk faster. I'll walk faster next time. Show up just for that. No, no, no, not just that. But yeah, these are entrepreneurial classes. So yeah, there's a long description in the board memo. I just had a quick question just to clarify. So if a student completes all four classes, the whole pathway, would they then get four college credit courses? They get 12 units, yeah. Oh, okay. Three units per course. This is great. I'm really happy to see this. Thank you. I'll make a motion to approve the course of study. I'll second. Okay, great. Course outline, sorry. Course outline. Any other comments from the board? Well, you know, I really, I'm going to vote for it, but
143I'm concerned having slaved away in a small business. I don't know how you can turn it into a science and understand all the complexities and the issues, but we certainly will give it a good try. I think the college is actually driving, you know, a lot of the programs. So I hope they have. This is one of those classes that. I hope while they're teaching the theory of it, which really doesn't exist, you know, in the real world out there, that they'll put a good dose of reality and how things actually work in the, you know, in the real world for small businesses. So. It's true. Thank you for that. Ms. Aquino, are there any public comments? No. Okay. We already have a first and a second. So all in favor. Aye. The motion carries
144five to zero. Thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, well, this is what we've all been waiting for. He's already at the podium. Division of Business Services. I don't see anybody waiting, but all right. Okay, we're up. At first, I just really want to thank the team that I get to work for, the dream team, YL, Vanessa, and Christina. I've said it a lot, but I mean it. They do 99.9% of the work. And then I just get to get up here and talk for a few minutes. So thank you so much to them. I'm very lucky. We're in December, which means it's first interim time. No offense to second interim, but first interim is where it's at. I think we get more information at first interim than second interim. We have the final
145enrollment. We have final assessed value and property tax numbers. We have final staffing and placement of those staff. Usually we have a settlement. We just passed the last one tonight, which has been included in the first interim. And we have the actual close from the prior year that we do in September. So tonight we'll go through the key themes and takeaways. We'll go over the budget calendar, significant changes since our budget adoption in June, go over the key budget assumptions, look at the actual numbers in the first interim financial report, look at multi-year projection, make our recommendation for the certification of the first interim financial report. And then we'll end with our discussion as we have at almost all things over the last few years around the step down of one time expenditures. And then
146we end with the future considerations or what keeps Yancey up at night. In terms of key themes and takeaways, we continue to deal with the long-term impact of the one-time COVID and other funding from primarily the state at this point and the related commitments in positions funded by those one-time state grants. We still have continued negative pressure from state-mandated pension rates. The increases have have plateaued on the STRS side. We still see those on the PRS side, but we still see the pressure of those. We are in a strong financial position to face those changes, though. We'll go over the state economy and its budget issues. We'll talk about the impact of federal budget cuts. Our general fund, the impacts aren't significant. primarily in Title III, but we do see those, as we talked about
147in the budget study session in adult education. And then speaking of negative pressures, the cost of health and welfare and our contributions to that continue to put pressure on the district. In terms of the budget calendar, as we noted, we're at the first interim, which captures all the actual activity through October 31st of this year and then is adopted by the trustees in December. The significant changes since budget adoption, we saw some secured taxes being higher. We were just under 4% at budget adoption. The final is 4.72%, which helped us in our settlements with our labor partners. We also saw unsecured and RDA a little bit higher. It's important to note secured taxes and RDA, that's an ongoing amount. So that's good in terms of ongoing. Unsecured, on the other hand, that's a one-time, that's
148business property. And so we consider that a one-time increase. In terms of staffing, we noted we have the actual enrollment and staffing along with the placement. We've also included the costs of our negotiation settlements, both one time and ongoing within the first interim. One thing I will note, though, is because our health and welfare benefits are on a calendar year instead of a fiscal year, you only see about one half of the impact of the health and welfare portion of the settlement in 25-26. You'll see the other half of that in the multi-year projection, 26, 27 and onward. In terms of one-time commitments, we have about $1.1 million in site carryover. And while it wasn't a big decrease, I will give credit to our sites for spending down some of that money last year. And
149then we've talked about it, but we also have now included the new grant from the state one-time funding of the ever so wonderfully named Student Support and Professional Development Block Grant. But I think the key there is this is the funding area for the district and the board's investment in the Empower San Mateo program. So that's why that's an important grant. In terms of the budget assumptions, I'm just going to hit a couple. As I noted earlier, the assessed valuation has gone up by 4.72%, which is healthy, but it is lower for the third straight year. It was lower than the year before. So we're seeing a little bit of stagnating growth. As you can see in the out years, we've used a 3.5% projection. It's important. to also link that with when you see
150salary increases or labor negotiations. While we've included that 3.5% AV growth in there, we have not included the salary increases, potential salary increases in the out years since we haven't yet negotiated with our labor partners. In terms of our first interim Just a quick look, and we'll get into detail in the next slide. But the change from the adopted budget to the first interim, the primary cause of that change actually is the carryover of some one-time funds that we've talked about a lot. In terms of our multi-year projections and a detail of the 25-26 first interim, as always, I want to note it's important to look at the unrestricted side of the budget. Spend 95% of your time there. We're seeing pretty much a balanced budget in 25-26 and 26-27. And as there are two
151years of 3.5% growth with no... related salary increases. You do see a surplus in year three, but that will be updated as we get into negotiations with our labor partners and have our updated enrollment projections in the early spring. In terms of certification from the first interim financial report, staff is very happy to recommend a positive certification that we can meet our financial obligations in the current and two subsequent years. All right. I'm going to switch a little bit out of the first interim and go into the step down of one-time expenditures. You've been seeing this slide for a little over a year now in terms of where we are in the step down. Where we are is in the fall. We've been gathering information. We had a long meeting with our principals. and discussed
152it with them. We held the budget study session with the board in November. And we, as always, are continuing to explore additional funding opportunities. And based on those discussions, I would like to note that this is similar to the slides that you've seen over the last year, but it has been updated with those discussions with the principals. So now the total FTE scheduled for sunsetting on June 30th of 2026 has moved to 8.7. But in order for us to adjust to that down, The staff is currently working on identifying $250,000 in other budget solutions in order to support the items removed from the step-down of one-time expenditures. More information on that will be coming in January and February to the board. Can I just ask on this one? What was the original? 10.2. 10.2. I
153just wanted to remember. So to 8.7 and that's 250 will offset that. Correct. Just sorry, to be clear, 10.2 was the last one you saw. Originally, I believe it was 11.2 and we received some additional. funding that we were able to cut that number to 10.2. And now we've brought it down to 8.7. I appreciate the work. Yeah. Because it does make some changes in a good way. Can you tell us what was, what positions were preserved? Yeah. So it's actually makes sense that we're talking about that tonight because the multilingual learner social worker position 1.0, the principles really. identified that as a high leverage position supporting one of the groups that we're looking to support the most. And then around the mental health and wellness, a 0.5 FTE. was there. So two of the
154areas that I know the board supports, but for in terms of our process, really where the principals, you know, supported, especially that the multilingual learner social worker. In terms of future consideration, or as I call it, what keeps Yancey up at night, we're monitoring our property tax growth. You know, we do it almost daily. We're looking at the phasing out of one-time funding. I think our work around the step-down talks about that. And then, obviously, same thing with the step-down of positions funded by one-time revenue. On the negotiations, I noted there are no increases included in the MYP. It's my hope and expectation that there will be increases. When those are negotiated, we will add those to our budget and multi-year projections. We continue to monitor the state mandated pension rates as the stock market
155has been fairly strong this year. The PERS rate isn't projected to increase, but that is a very volatile number. And I expect that I will be coming to you with a different number, whether up or down in terms of the PERS rate. enrollment. You'll see in probably February the enrollment and capacity recommendations for next year. So we're working with our partner power school on that. We monitor interest rates as a basic aid district. That obviously impacts home sales. Looking at special educations needs and costs, although I do want to give credit to Dr. Hooks and the special education department. They've been doing a really great job monitoring their budget and more just getting us information in a really timely manner. So I want to say thank you. Thanks to them. And then federal education funding.
156I hit on it a little bit earlier, but. We are a little bit insulated, more insulated than a lot of districts are from the federal education funding. The real impact is around in our general fund around our title three funding, which is approximately one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. But adult education, as noted, is looking at potentially up to a 12% reduction in their overall money with the planned elimination of the WIOA funds, which the adult school relies on for program. With that, I'm happy to open it up to questions. That's a good report. Thank you. Thank your team. They're the people that turn the wrenches. Get it right. So, uh, you know, yeah, press the buttons and stuff. So, you know, the thing that I really like about that and it's worked and give
157you and the superintendent credit is this, uh, what was it? The, um, soft landing, you know, on the one-time funds. And I think that's really benefited us from a financial stewardship perspective and, you know, and certainly from employee morale and just our district in general. So I do like that. I think we just got to watch. You know, and this is pretty much we get to the end. It's like, well, we got to watch because there's always stuff. And, you know, it can change in a moment. And things are, you know, not quite rosy. I was trying to find, and I didn't do it. There was an article today on school finance reform. I don't know if it was. The Daily, it was either the Daily Journal, maybe it was the editor, was on the
158front page, or it was the New York Times. And I'm not sure, I can't tell which one it was. But, you know, it was saying that the legislature might want to tinker with funding here in the state, doing stuff like doubling the... the basic aid, you know, not the basic aid, but the pure pupil for, for Title IXs and some other, some other tricks to try to level the playing field for funding. Had you seen any of that? I didn't see an article today. I know there was a report that came out a little bit ago around. community funded or basic aid school districts. You see that every few years. I don't see a lot of traction in that. I do see traction at the state level in terms of, you know, really doubling down
159on their current priorities. But. I think it's the I didn't talk much about the state because we're not overly reliant on the state, but the state's going to be going into some really interesting political negotiations because overall, the prop 98 side, the educational side of the budget, the guarantee is pretty strong on. on the state funded district side. But there is a ton of negative pressure on the remainder of the budget. So 40% of the budget is the education side of the budget. The other 60% is looking at potentially some pretty significant cuts. And a lot of times when that kind of thing happens, the state can come up with a lot of schemes and ways to tinker or mess with the Prop 98 guarantee and to try to get a little bit of breathing
160room on the non-98 side of the budget. So it'll be really interesting to see where that goes over the next six months. And especially we're in an election year next year. And so that's always especially interesting to see what they're going to do at the state level. Yeah. Thank you so much for the presentation. Because things keep you up at night, they don't keep me up at night. And I have a lot of trust in your team. So thank you. No, I have that. Thank you. I have a ton of trust in the team. So that lets me sleep. It keeps me up, but then when I sleep, I don't wake up. I did have a question that came up at my CSBA conference in one of my workshops. And this trustee from another district
161was recommending setting up a Section 115 trust. Are you familiar with this? Is that around like other post-employment benefits? Yeah. Yeah. So you could do, I don't know if that's a quick answer, but I was going to request maybe you do a weekly about that. I can actually, I'm happy to give. Our overall OPEB or other post-employment benefits, depending on if you're looking at just that, for a district our size, our liability is actually incredibly low. We have a three and a half million-ish other post-employment benefit actuarial liability. Thank you, Will. So in terms of we're talking less than one and a half percent of our overall budget. So, yeah, we're lucky. There's there's some districts that have astronomical. Yeah. OPEB, you know, like Fresno Unified does a couple of other large district. It really
162impacts. We're really able to spend today's dollars on today's kids, today's employees. There are a lot of districts who aren't as. And I would say lucky, but it's not really luck. It's the decisions made by this board and the previous boards to, you know, focus the money on today's kids and today's employees. Good. Glad to hear that. Thank you. Yeah. For all you people who don't read the Daily Journal, it's on the front page of today's journal. School funding reform comes with large costs, public policy. Better read it. Well, that will be what will keep me up tonight, mom. I'm not going to read it till tomorrow. Yeah, right. It's true. I wanted to say, did you want? I want to say thank you for the presentation and for your entire staff who works really
163hard on it. I just had one comment. I think I might have heard this at the AEC regarding funding, although it wouldn't probably be more beneficial to those that aren't basic aid, but something about instead of connecting funding to ADA, they were going to push to have it connected to attendance. So I don't know if you could speak to that. But again, I don't think that would affect us too much because we're basically. Yeah, it wouldn't it wouldn't impact. Sorry, it wouldn't significantly impact us. There's some things like lottery, a few other things, our special education funding through our SELPA that are directly related to the ADA. Yeah, there is there is been there's been more of a push to look back to an enrollment based funding formula. What it really does is, as with
164a lot of funding changes, unless you're going to put more money into the system, it creates winners and losers. And so folks with really good ADA, like really good attendance rates, would actually potentially suffer under that. And folks with worse attendance rates would benefit from going to an enrollment-based model. But there's a lot of pluses and negatives. Thank you for that. Are there any other comments? Are there any public comments? Ms. Aquino? No? Okay. Okay, if there are no other comments, I'm looking for a motion to approve the positive certification. So, second. All in favor? Aye. That passes 5-0. Thank you. Thank you. You're still up there for item number two. That is, yeah, no worries. So we have James Marta from James Marta and Company, our district auditors here to present our June 30th,
1652025 audit report and results. And I believe he's coming. I'm online. Can you hear me? Yep. We can hear you, James. Very good. I know you've got a long meeting tonight. I have a number of slides and what I'll do is there's a, I'll kind of condense some of this, but we'll still have time for you asking any questions. You know, your audit is 85 pages. Your staff sent us over 400 documents to look at. An audit is a really a critical look at your organization because it's public funds, but I'm here to report on it. So if we'll just go to the next page. Okay, so team members, I'm the partner on this. Michael Manduclo is the manager and John Munoz is the supervisor. But we had six people on your engagement. It's got
166a lot of components. Next slide. So this slide I'm actually going to focus on so we don't have to focus on it as many others. The highlights of the audit, it's an unmodified opinion. So unmodified opinions, the highest level that we give. So auditors don't say in our letter, good job. We say unmodified opinion. And so that's, we give a report on internal controls. There's no reportable items. We comment on what specialists that you use in forming your financials. and you have a pension and an OPEB actuary. So those actuarial numbers, we use that information to help set the valuations. We look at... key performance measures in the financials. The biggest thing that we look at is how you recognize revenue. And that's one of the areas that we focus the audit on. And then
167the management override of controls. We did not have any instances of noncompliance or with laws or regulations. And we did not identify any potential fraud or illegal acts. And there was no significant issues discussed with them. I think the biggest change this year over the prior year is you had a sale of property and we did help looking at those calculations and verify the calculations of those sales and the recording of that. So from that, we're actually going to move through some other slides quickly. So we'll move to the next slide. We have to talk about responsibilities on the financial. So we'll move to the next slide. The scope is not just the audit of the financials, but state compliance, specialized disclosures, and then we also have to do federal compliance and then report on
168control. Next slide. Communication, those charged with governance, we have to make sure that we meet professional obligations for this communication. Next slide. And management is responsible for the financials. So you look at this report and say, that's the auditor's report. Well, just the letters are. The rest of the financial statement is the responsibility of your management team. We express an opinion on that information. Next slide. So we work closely with them. We start this audit actually in the spring and we do a lot of interim work and all the way through the summer and then we work on the year-end figure. So most of the spring work is testing controls, testing compliance. And then we try to be a resource throughout the year for any questions. Next slide. So the scope includes all the government
169major funds and the activities and it includes the pension information in the OPEB. Next slide. No issues here. Next slide. We do look at accounting policies and are you following them? We didn't have any issues with that. Next slide. Audit is more than just checking to make sure that we match up to invoices and things. We do look at your systems and controls. We look at your IT controls. We look at how are you following management's best management guidance and also look for if there's any override of those controls. We did not have any issues. Next slide. We have to maintain independence. So the only other service we provide is actually helping with preparation of the report. Next slide. So this box here is really designed to indicate that we do look at the organization
170in many facets. And we do look for material weaknesses and significant issues. We didn't have any. Next slide. So now we're going to move on to the next after this and talk about the financial audit. Move to the next slide. Next slide. As I said, so the opinion is the first thing that the board should understand that you have an unmodified opinion. The next slide. Management prepares a management discussion analysis. And even if you're not a financial person, that is a really good place for you to understand what happened during the year. Did the financial position strengthen or did it weaken? reasons why. Sometimes you could get money in one year and then spend it in another. So it doesn't mean that the performance is bad. Sometimes it's when you allocate money or you spend
171money. And I think Yancey has discussed that. Next slide. Okay, so this is kind of an overall comparison. These are all your funds together and all your debt. So it shows from an organizational position. And the best way to run the district is really on the fund side and the actual driving expenses and such. But this shows you did have your assets strengthened during the year. And principally, I think that's because of the sale of the property, your liabilities. went down because you're kind of the natural payoff of as debt matures. And then your net position actually strengthened from a negative to a positive. And I'll talk about that negative a little bit further down. Next slide. So these are those numbers. And so you see the assets strengthen. And we just saw these graphically,
172so we don't have to dwell on it. Next slide. And so this is showing your net position. So how much is net invested in capital assets? And so before you kind of had some debt in excess of capital assets because your assets were depreciating faster than you were paying off the debt the way it was set up. And but what I think is important is this little table I have down below. We don't have this table and you don't see this in many entities, but it shows your total debt down there of nine hundred and seventy three million dollars, almost a billion. and this is his bonded debt, et cetera. But you only have to fund 239 million of that. And I think this was really important for me to point out that the other
173debt, the general obligation bonds, the accreted bonds, and that 866 is on your financials. And it actually makes you look like you're not in a strong position, but you don't have to pay that off. That's paid by the homeowners. And so- you're not going to have to come up with funding for that. So that's, you should thank the community for that. And that's how you got your schools. You reflected on the books and you helped account for the payment, but it comes from homeowner taxes. And Nancy, did you have anything to add to that point? No, I just think that's an important reason we a lot of times talk about the SACS reporting and some of the... All right. the state level reporting as opposed to some of the gap reporting because there is this
174difference. But it's a really important difference in terms of how you look at it. But I think that net pension liability is the one thing that, you know, hopefully over the next 25 years that we can pay that down. We're going to put that in the bucket of things that keep Yancey up at night. Next slide. Hold on, James. Oh, okay. I just want to clarify just when it says you must fund, it's really not really you must fund. It's just you have the risk that you must fund. Like, for example, what is this compensated absences? People might take the absences. That means you don't really have to fund it, but you have the risk if people don't take the absence and retire, for example. So you might have to cash people who they have
175balances in the books. So you really don't have really to pay the 7.3 million, but you have the liability that you possibly pay those funds. So you might, the 161 million. Pension liability, as Mr. Hawkins mentioned. Possibly you have the liability to pay them, but you might go as pay as you go forever and you don't have to pay those amounts. So I just wanted to, it's not really must fund, but you are, you're having the risk to pay them, but you don't really have to pay them. So thank you. All right. Back to you, James. All right. So, so move on to the next slide. So this is a statement of activity. So once again, these are all the finances together. It shows the revenues heightened. One of the drivers, of course, is the
176property tax, but you sold some property. And so that's kind of a one-time extraordinary item. And so one-time money should be kept as capital because it's really difficult to spend one-time money on ongoing expenses as Yancey had talked about. And then your expenses, although your expenses show lower here on your regular SACS report, they're not. And the reason is this has to do with some deferred inflows and outflows, some pension things. So this is just government. This is a gap basis. Please follow for budgeting your fund basis. Next slide. So these are kind of all those numbers together. And this does represent the gap base. So as I said, it might show lower instruction cost here, but that's really driven by some of the pension adjustments. And that can actually skew it. So the fund
177financial statements are going to be better for managing your district. Next slide. So if you look at it, this is really your mostly it's a LCFF sources 214 million, but most of that is coming from your taxes and stuff, not too much from state aid. And your federal revenue is only 2%, so a very small, small amount. It's smaller than most of our other districts, but you are really fortunate to have the resources of your community and the taxes that a lot of other communities don't have. So although you have... some smaller in some other areas, you benefit by a very strong tax base. Next slide. If you look at this, if you add up certificate salaries and calcified salaries and employee benefits, most of your costs are salaries and benefits. And so that means
178that that's a driver of your cost. And when you have to take reductions, it's hard not to hit those accounts eventually. And so that's the reality of this pie chart here. Next slide. So this is kind of Yancey's projection, kind of that projection and showing year over year. You see that we're looking at a little bit of a decrease for the next year, and that's why you guys are being proactive. I really appreciate what Yancey is doing. I see I've worked in this industry over 35 years and. The districts that take the long view and do this moderately, that's good governance. And I see that in what he's been doing and what you guys are doing in your board. And you are going to be looking at some projected decreases. This was preliminary, and I
179know he has some newer numbers now. But you are contemplating this, and you're taking measured action. And so once again, I think that's a good governance. Next slide. So this kind of shows where your ADA had strength in and it's kind of flattening or it could be eroding. What I see, and we do work in Washington, Oregon, and California in different aspects, is we've been seeing a general erosion of ADA. And so your just being flat is actually more favorable than most schools. Most schools have been seeing a lot of erosion and really looking at closing schools or condensing, especially in a lot of the metropolitan areas. So you have a more stable profile than most schools that I've seen. Next slide. So as I said, we have letters in the back of the report,
180and they basically say no reportable matters. So that's what you want to see. Next slide. We really want to thank your whole management team, Yancey, Wahil, but especially Vanessa and Christina. They bore the brunt of the audit and were very responsive. And we really did have a really good result of the audit this year as far as back and forth. And we really want to thank them a lot. And with that, are there any questions? any questions go ahead you know that's not a question it's a statement you know the gasby for all you people that follow even though what the gasby stands for you know they're undertaking a study of pension liability reporting uh as part of their their agenda is likely to change You know, they survey people and then they're going to
181come back and figure out maybe perhaps an easier way, maybe perhaps a more accurate way, or maybe the users aren't really using that information. So stay tuned. Yeah, I'm very interested to see where that goes. I bet you are. Thank you for the report. Yep. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for the reunion. I wanted to, I want to thank Mr. Marta and our staff for all your work with the audit. I know it's a lot of work, so I wanted to thank you. Thank you. No, I just wanted to thank James and his entire team. They've been an absolute pleasure to work with. And, you know, I was, I was on the phone with James a couple hours ago and he noted. You know, you can always give me a call anytime, any questions, any
182means it, because I do, and I appreciate it. So thank you. Are there any questions? Okay. So if there's no more board comments or questions, I'd like to ask someone to make a motion to accept the audit. So moved. Second. Okay. All in favor? Aye. And that passes five to zero. Thank you. Lastly, we, well, not lastly, but under board operations, CSB delegate assembly nomination. Earlier this year, I was appointed to finish a trustee's remaining term for the delegate assembly. That term is coming to an end shortly. I would like to ask for nomination to keep a seat on the delegate assembly for our region five. So I'm looking for a nomination. So FYI, because, so clarification, I still have another year. Right. You're up. So I have another year, so I'm not up. Right.
183You're not up. That's it. Thanks for that clarification. I needed that clarification. I knew it was your question. Yes. So just for people to know, what... What are the duties and what are the responsibilities of a delegate? Oh, that's a great, I think Greg can chime in, please chime in too. But so we have two delegate assembly meetings. One is in May and the other one is in June, two days before immediately preceding the AEC. So you mean December then? Yeah. Oh, what did I say? June. Oh my gosh. See how tired I am. One in May and one in December. One in December to the two days. And usually the delegate assembly, just to add on, is a leadership body. that really gives input to the state organization, which is CSBA, onto policy, you
184know, the annual, all the trainings, all the development. So basically we just have in those meetings, we just basically talk about what is our platform going to be? What are some, so it helps guide the organization. It helps the policy. In a loose way. I wouldn't say we have a lot of power, but. At least we have some influence in direction in which we want to, what we need to focus on. That's right. And there's committees that you can be participating in as well too. And so our, our County has we're region five. So region five, a San Francisco, they have three seats. Region five B is San Mateo County. And we have seven seats. Great has a seat for one more year. They are two year seats. So next month or the following month,
185every school district of San Mateo County will receive a slate where you're voting. And so, but. To get on that slate, I would need a nomination from our board to try to keep my seat for two more years. I will nominate you or make a motion to nominate you. I'll second. Okay, thank you. Motion and a second. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Thank you. And then are there any future board agenda items? That's the next item we have on the agenda, future board agenda items. From previous meeting, we have the special ed study session and AI. Yeah, you can see on the board planning agenda in my weekly tomorrow where AI is placed as a study session. I think Trustee Andrade Zuniga and I are going to discuss a little further about intentions around special
186ed so we can figure out where best to place that. Thank you. Any other items for future board agenda? That's late. Okay, so it is. Okay, it's 10.07 and I am adjourning the meeting. Thank you.