School Board Meeting of Trustees 06-18-26

001Yeah roll call pledge of a roll call Michelle. Board President Bell. Present. Trustee Ching. Here. Trustee Guzman. Here. Trustee Landry. Here. Trustee Lehman. Here. Pledge of Allegiance. I have a approval of the agenda. I'd like to approve the agenda with a modification that we postpone the discussion of the campus flag practices. Discussion on whether. No, he has to call a second before we can have a second. Is there a second? Seeing none. that would then just die right motion dies great so then I will motion to approve the agenda as it stands all in favor can we have discussion so I just want to I don't want to support the discussion of the flag because we had a discussion at our last meeting we have a lot of things to cover I also feel that

002discussion of the flag school has already let out I think that we need to have this discussion when the public is actually paying attention to it and you know the teachers have left the students have left and i really think it's important to have this discussion when the public is here so i know that there's already a second on the table but i am not i'm not going to um vote in favor okay great all in favor no we're sorry if anyone else has any comments just give anybody anybody else have a comment seeing none do we uh so all in favor Aye. Aye. Aye. Great. How about all opposed? Sorry, all opposed. Sorry. Aye. Okay. Sorry, I apologize. I forget about that one all the time. Okay, Spanish language. Michelle? Language people online. So

003now we're going to go to public comment in the room. Five tickets. Number one, please. So I made a motion to remove item number 11 from the agenda but the motion died. There wasn't support for it. So there was a second motion that was put on the table to approve the agenda as presented and that received the majority vote four to one. Okay so number one for public comment. Welcome. Yes. Please state your name just in mind or please state. How many online? Okay. Okay, if anybody's online, can you please put your hand up so we can figure out how many online commenters for items on the agenda. If you could just hold for one second. We have one online. So five in the room and one online, so we'll keep it at three minutes.

004Does everybody agree with that? Yep. Have you got the clock ready, Michelle? Yep. Great. If you could just state your name and then welcome. Hi, I'm Deanna Glory and I watched the video from the June 11 meeting and would like to offer a few thoughts. First, our kids need to feel safe at school, period. If a flag helps students feel supported and safe, I believe that a flag can serve as a visible reminder when they walk into school each day that their community wants every student to feel that they belong. Young people need to feel that they belong in order to thrive. At the same time, if another student has questions or feels uncomfortable with that flag and brings those concerns to the school staff, I see that as an opportunity for conversation and education.

005Schools exist not only to teach academics, but also to foster understanding, respect, and empathy. Regarding the possibility of flying other flags, as this was about the pride flag, other flags, I wonder if the school board should dictate flags and when they fly. I personally believe they should not, that students should initiate requests for a flag that has special meaning to them. Then the board could consider those requests and work with the students to ensure... They serve a positive educational and or safety purpose and reflect the values of our community. Students could be required to organize fundraisers to help offset the cost of purchasing and maintaining those flags and demonstrating their commitment and engagement to their cause. I am available to help formulate the application and approval process personally. I just retired, so I have time.

006And then also, if I have time, there's a question that I'd like to answer that one of the panel... asked at the last meeting which is why is pride celebrated in june so it's celebrated in june to commemorate the multi-day protests of the lgbtq community against routine police raids at stonewall in new york back in 1969 and so that flag represents i'm going back to the pride flag but that flag represents represent safety to young LGBT youth. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Number two. Joseph Rose Iker boys hot springs regarding agenda item 11.11 I'm going to keep this short as I hope each of you had read the email I sent and hope you have read the many other emails with much the same perspective as mine in addition like I said in

007my email please listen to trustee Guzman's comments during the discussion Discussion of January 11th meeting he summed it up perfectly and should be listened to The fact that the pride flag has flown for years with no issue One person is responsible for all that we are going through right now and that person is David Bell One person had an objection to the pride flag stated to him and this is where we are When I hear Trustees Bell and Landry bemoaning the waste of time and money, I have to ask myself who really is responsible for this. And as I pointed out in both my email and comments during the discussion, we're hurtful and dismissive to the LGBT. btq plus students who stayed very late and listened to these comments when the same people espouse that

008they are looking at the bigger picture of student health and then dismiss the flag as merely a symbol they then hurt the students they say they care about with their words something is very wrong Like I said in my email, if the words could make me, a 75-year-old stepmom of an LGBTQ plus child, have to leave the room so I did not blurt something out, then I think about the effect of what it has on these students. It is as simple as letting the flag fly as it has for years, and if you must, please use Superintendent Sutter's thoughtful option number four. I do not think it would be hard to create a system to fly other flags on the pole with the school flag. Just let staff and school administration work with the students

009to create it. When the pride flag went up, it was simple, and it is some of you have created this issue, and perhaps it is time to admit it and step back and let those who truly understand what equity and inclusion is handle this. Thank you very much for listening. Great. Number three. David Eicher, I too sent you a letter. I won't read the whole thing, an email. But before that, actually, I agree with the first speaker that it could be a good idea for any individual flags, additional flags be flown, just to come before the trustees for you to approve of them. And I'm not sure in the last meeting why you really didn't discuss superintendents. recommendation which was basically you got the federal flag, the state flag, the pride flag flying with other

010symbolic flags, and the school flag flying with other flags. I mean that seems like a no-brainer but you seem to kind of go all around the subject without talking that. Supertense's presentation in option four said, quote, it reflects students' voices, directly addresses student desires of both visible support for LGBTQ students and fair opportunities for other groups. As I mentioned in my last... discussion comments last week that I was pretty disturbed by the fact that we have 27% of LGBTQ students in the survey that superintendents sort of put together had contemplated suicide and Another quote from the Trevor Project says, more than half of transgender and non-binary young people found their school to be gender affirming, and those who did reported lower rates of attempting suicide. So what better is gender affirming than the pride flag?

011Now I want to tell you about a young woman I know. She was gay and Latina. Her name was Angie. She came to my house often with my daughter and she committed suicide With more mental health services. She may be alive today Maybe the pride flag had flown at her high school She would be alive now. Thank you. Great. Thank you for your comment number four Good evening. My name is Lee Cavalier with Sonoma Schools Alliance tonight You are voting on the district budget and the LCAP The plan for how millions meant for our highest needs students gets spent. The plan is in front of you tonight is not the plan that was shown. In April, the district posted a version for the public to comment on. By the June hearing, the version had been

012substantially rewritten and no one on this dais has explained what changed or why. Public comment is supposed to be on the real plan. If we comment on one document and you adopt a different one, our input that was on the document no longer exists. Here's one example anyone can check. The version the public reviewed showed nothing spent last year on these high need programs. The version you are adopting tonight shows almost nine million dollars. A year has already ended, cannot show a blank in the draft and almost nine million in the final and have anyone call that a completed draft. So I'm asking you not to adopt this tonight. post the final plan, explain what changed, and give this community a real chance to comment on the document you intend to approve. And if you

013amend it again from the dais tonight, you will have proven my point because the public will have commented on yet another version we never saw. Now on the pride flag. Again, your own numbers. The district-owned surveys found that 27% of our LGBTQ high school students seriously considered suicide in the past year. That is more than one in four, and nearly seven times the rate of their classmates. Your own data also shows that only 42% of them feel safe at school. The flag on that campus is one of the few visible signs telling students they are safe here. It has flown for seven years. Trustee Ching has said that in all that time, she never received a single complaint about it. So understand what is being proposed tonight. You would be taking down something that, by

014her own account, drew not one complaint to create a problem where none existed. And the students who feel it most are the ones your very own survey says are already at the highest risk. If students' mental health is truly this board's priority, the flag stays up. Thank you. And I have something for you since you're the clerk. Number six. Five, sorry, five. Hi my name is Deanna and I'm a local resident who's lived here my whole life and a former student of Sonoma Valley High School. I'm now a parent of three children who all attend this district and my oldest will start the high school in the fall. I'm asking that you please not allow the pride flag to be flown at Sonoma Valley High School. I do not see the decision to take it

015down, I think it was by the superintendent, I'm not sure, I'm sorry, as a unilateral unfair decision like I've heard so many say. I see it as a person who was appointed to authority making a decision that he thought was best. There are other ways to communicate to the students that Sonoma Valley High School is a safe place where everyone is welcome and shows each other respect. As a single mother, I can't afford private school for my children, and my experience has been that my oldest daughter has been directly and negatively impacted by the districts allowing the LGBTQ agenda to be pushed in our district, starting as early as elementary school. Even though I'm empowered to teach my children a set of values and beliefs at home, I'm forced to send my children to a

016school where my daughter came home from the third grade to tell me that her teacher read her a book about being transgender, and now she thinks she is. This is indoctrination. And much different from my experience at Dunbar Elementary where we pledge allegiance to the flag every morning and the one nation that's indivisible under God. It seems to me that we both want the same things to protect our youth, especially those vulnerable to self-harm and suicide. So let's stand on that common ground together. I recently drove by the high school and noticed a series of flags in the main building that faces Broadway. This is... What people see as their first entering into our town and if I wasn't from here I might think this was a school that was only for the pride Community

017I didn't even see a flag a Sonoma Valley high school flag as many times as I saw The pride flag or any other flag for that matter If the pride flag be flown, then I humbly request to fly another flag right alongside it in every place it's put up that says Jesus Christ is Lord because it's God who gave us the rainbow as a sign of faithfulness to his people. And God himself is inclusive, meaning he loves all his children, who he created and like any parent has guidelines to safeguard his children. Now you may think this is not the place or the time for that kind of talk and that's why my response would be this is exactly why we must not fly the pride flag at Sonoma Valley High School. Thank you so

018much. Thank you. Number six. Do we have six? Oh great. Welcome. Good evening board members. My name is Nicholas Solis and I'm a rising junior at Sonoma Valley High School. To my knowledge earlier this year before Mr. Stutter took office as superintendent the SVHS pride flag was removed without any formal agreement nor discussion involving students, staff, and other board members. Since then many students have spoken up, met with district leadership, and have made very clear have made very clear that their voices want to be heard. What my main concern is here is not just the removal of the flag, but the fact that student input appears to be nonetheless ignored even after it has been specifically requested. We were told that our opinions mattered, we participated in the process, yet the only thing I see

019here is that our voices hold little value in the final decision. I'm not speaking as a member of the queer community here, I'm speaking as a heterosexual ally. as a son of a progressive family born in Mexico and as a Catholic. The pride flag is often misunderstood as a political statement. To many students, and myself as a first-gen immigrant, it represents something much simpler. Acceptance, not only for the LGBTQ plus community, but also for the greater fight for civil rights and peace across many non-queer communities. It shows and tells the people that are underrepresented that they belong here, that they are safe here, and that everybody is valued in the community. My faith teaches me that everybody is created with dignity and deserves compassion, as the Lord showed us during his time as a human.

020Whatever your personal beliefs may be, we can still choose respect and understanding. Supporting students does not mean that everybody has to agree with the issue, but we need to recognize that everybody has humanity. When students face bullying, isolation, and struggle with their identity as I did when I first immigrated, struggling with three languages, cultures, and lives, the ideologies of the pride flag and the things it represents matter the most even for non-queer individuals such as myself. That's why I come here to ask to you, the board members, to respect the generations of queer people and the underrepresented people who fought for their rights. that we now take for granted and recognize what the flag means to me and the members of the community. Thank you very much for your time. Good evening, members of the

021board. As a senior at SVHS who identifies as part of the LGBTQ community, I brought you my real-world experiences at the last meeting, and you turned that into the pride flag not solving the issues that students like me face. Although the pride flag doesn't directly protect students, it signals an inclusive environment, as my peer brought up. Trustee Landry brought up the point that maybe students who disagree with the pride flag did not respond to the survey that Dr. Sun... Sutter sent out to our teachers because they were scared of the repercussions. But I believe that if I can stand here as a queer person in front of you now advocating for the pride flag, my right to learn in an environment that protects me from unfair harassment, I don't understand how you could think it's

022easier for me to do this than someone who expresses anti-LGBTQ views. Is it really easier for me to face discrimination for my identity than to someone feel that their opinion on my right to exist is not accepted? I wanted to ask you that question. And I also want to remind you of a statistic that some of you dismissed at the last meeting, which is that 27% of the LGBTQ students at SVHS have considered suicide in the past year, as opposed to only 4% of non-LGBTQ students. That is almost one in three of us. Suicidality is not confined to the queer community, but I can tell you that it is this kind of controversy that creates this disparity. By taking the pride flag down, you're telling me that I don't belong. The pride flag signaled belonging

023for students like me, which is so important in a society that often excludes us. Please put aside your politics for one moment and listen to the students. Please support flying the pride flag year-round at SVHS with the inclusion of flags that are advocated for the students or by the students to the principal if such a situation even arises in the first place. And if you're so against the opportunity to fly other flags, then please keep the status quo of the pride flag flying on its own pole. I also wanted to mention that As far to my knowledge, you have not seen one student come up in front of the board and express that they do not want the pride flag to fly. And I believe that students and teachers should be the ones that are

024weighed most heavily in this discussion. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Online, Michelle? Okay, Joe, you have the mic. Three minutes. Go ahead, please. Are you able to hear me? Yes. Yes. Thank you. Good evening, board members and superintendent Sutter. I'll start off with, as a father of a high school kid, my son does not feel comfortable to bring up and discuss this topic because he feels like he would get bullied by the pride students, by the LTVGQ community. And so let's just make that clear that bullying goes two ways. So here are my three points. First, the pride flag is a political and ideological symbol created as part of a narrow advocacy movement. It carries no official government authority. The board should not grant any approval to this divisive political advocacy flag, whether on campus,

025flagpoles, or in the classroom where teachers have displayed these flags. Classrooms are places for learning, not biased ideological displays. You should also find it noteworthy that even our local Congressman Mike Thompson's statement in the last meeting framed this as a divisive, partisan topic. So let's keep schools neutral from divisive political advocacy. Second, the pride flag is a sexuality and gender ideology flag. This flag, while promoted as inclusive, is far from it. Our community includes people of many faiths, cultures, and personal beliefs. This flag does not represent every student, family, or staff member. This recent school-wide survey reflects this reality. This shows a divided community on the pride flag, and it is not a clear mandate for official display. We don't want a divided school setting. Third. The flags which represent the broadest possible inclusivity for

026all students and families are the U.S. and California flags. These flags stand for our shared civic identity. These are neutral, unifying symbols that belong on our flagpoles and in our schools. It's been identified that serious mental health challenges face some students. The pride flag is not a suicide prevention tool. Mental health services are. This deserves real meaningful solutions, including education, family engagement, and professional counseling support, not a symbolic flag that divides us. I urge the board to adopt a clear policy limiting official flag displays on flag poles in the classrooms to the U.S. flag, the California state flag, and the school flag. This keeps our schools neutral and focused on education for every student. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Anybody else online Michelle? Okay, Cindy. You've got the mic Hello Yep, we can hear you

027Can you guys hear me? Yes Thank you. First of all, I want to thank all of you for your thoughtful discussion that you've had on this issue of the pride flag. As I listened to your conversation the other night, what struck me most was not your disagreements, but your areas of agreement. I heard concern for student wellness. I heard concern for students who feel marginalized or excluded. I heard concerns for fairness, inclusion, and belonging, and about creating a policy that you were concerned could have unintended consequences. And I heard a shared commitment to ensuring that every student feels welcome, respected, and supported in our schools. These are not small things. They are the foundation of a healthy school community. I also appreciated hearing trustees acknowledge that different groups of students may face different challenges and

028that some students continue to struggle with belonging, safety, and acceptance, and that those concerns deserve our attention. What I heard far less agreement about was what a new flag policy should actually look like. Questions were raised about fairness, administration, future requests, legal considerations, and where the lines would be drawn. These are reasonable questions, but after listening to this discussion, I'm not convinced that they have clear answers. In fact, the discussion itself highlighted how difficult it's going to be to create a system that everyone considers fair. Which groups would qualify? Who would decide? What standards would be used? Would these decisions bring people together or create new disagreements? Which brings me back to a simple question. What problem are we trying to solve? The pride flag has been part of the culture of Sonoma Valley High

029School for years. It originated with students. It's existed without a formal board policy. And while people may disagree about its meaning, I've not heard evidence that the current practice itself. is causing a problem that requires a new policy, but for these two people who've spoken today. Meanwhile, the challenges that all of you have identified, student wellness, belonging, safety, and school climate, remain very real and deserve your continued focus. Sometimes good governance means creating a policy. Sometimes it means recognizing that a new policy is not necessary. I respectfully suggest that this may be one of those moments. Thank you for your time and your discussion and commitment to our students. Great. Thank you. Any more, Michelle, online? Okay. Before we approve the consent, I'd like to pull three items. I'd like to pull the La Luce

030Facilities Agreement, both the MOUs for the charter schools, and also the food services agreement. La Luce family news for the charter schools and the and the food services agreement No, we need to vote so I Know I went up for discussion so you can place them wherever you see fit president Bell Yeah, so I can make the motion I move to approve the consent calendar as presented excluding the La Luce facilities agreement the two MOUs for the Sonoma charter school the charter schools and the food services agreement Should we move them to the end then? Oh, sorry. Sorry second. Okay all in favor So one thing I was curious about was why are they on consent? Like the other MOU was not on consent. I agree with that. It's an interesting question. I don't know

031why. I mean, I have other things, but this is not probably the time to discuss it unless President Bell wants to discuss it now. Whatever you want to do. I'm easy. Do you guys want to? If we can solve the issue and then put it back on the consent agenda or not, do you want to address it? First, don't you have to take a vote? Well, I asked for. Oh, you're asking for discussion. Okay. I asked for discussion. Okay. Sorry. Before we took a vote, I just wanted to understand. So I think we're fine with putting them at the end of the agenda and just going through them then. I'm happy to do it. That's fine. Yeah. So all in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. We will officially move consent agendas 5, 6, 7, and 8

032to the end of the regular agenda. Is that good? Yep. Great. Thank you. So we've approved these now without, by moving them. So we're going to go to the regular agenda, 11.1, approval of the budget. Oh, did you want to address a public comment? Okay, great. So 11.1. The budget. Oh. So the presentation of the budget is... So our interim CBO, Chris Thomas, is going to do the presentation of the budget, but she is coming from Turok, so I would ask that we move this one a little bit later in the agenda so that we give her time to get here. Because we moved it up, she felt that she would be here between 5.30 and 6. We still need, she's going to need a little more time. So then let's just talk about Ann's

033items. Yeah. Great, let's do that. So these are hopefully, will go very quickly because they're just quick questions that the public and others have asked about. So do you want to, what do you want to take first? Five, La Luz. Okay, so the La Luz facilities agreement. So are we entering into this lease agreement under the, Civic Center Act. I'm kind of, the reason I asked this question is, well one of the things is I was under the impression that the district can only enter into lease agreements if we have fulfilled all of the requirements of the Naylor Act. Which it has to do with what the 7-eleven committee is doing so can anyone provide I mean any? Shed any light on that people have asked like have you been leasing? property of the school

034district in in compliance with What generally is required of school districts? I'd have to for that specific question I'd have to get do some looking into that I can say that this is an update like we already are in agreement with with a lose for Michelle do you know how many rooms it was? So we're adding rooms this this actually represents adding rooms you do we did walk on a correction because the square footage was calculated in right actually you could see that it was saying that each room was 8,000 square feet which is huge so we we added We walked on the new one, but this is an update. We have an existing lease. This was adding more rooms right? I understand that but I'm just concerned that maybe we overstepped our boundaries in

035terms of in order to lease property on our um which is different which i thought it was uncovered under the uh civic center act i thought that it had to go through the 7-eleven process to be able to lease property that's all i just i just want to make sure that we're in compliance because some people have mentioned this to to me so and so The other, just if you could clarify, it sounds like from the lease agreement though that La Luz has exclusive use of the classrooms 24-7. It's not just, like when we rent out facilities like the gym or a field, it's usually bound by hours. But it looks like when I read it, they don't have to share these facilities with other members of the community. Is that correct? That is correct,

036yeah. So, I mean, I would feel more comfortable if we could have legal, like, just opine and just say, like, this is perfectly fine. Okay. So, we could do that. I mean, we would need to bring this back then. We already are, as I have to see, I assume that our existing lease doesn't end. This was trying to update that by adding the rooms. So, we already are in agreement with them on the other rooms. So that's to your point and we can look into the legal aspects of that. Yeah, I just, I mean, usually what I understand is that if we're leasing property to any group that under the Naylor Act, then we have to actually. offer it to any other, to a public agency first. There's a whole sort of rank order of

037people that have access to it. So I just wanted, I was just curious. Somebody asked me this question in the public. Does the timing of not voting on this today cause problems for us? It appears that we would do we continue the existing lease for the existing rooms? We do but but the but the next meeting where we could bring this back Is in August and I and I think some of the programs that they're using are going to be We're intended to be starting before then is it is it possible to get a legal answer to this before the end of today? If we at break I could I could see we could I could see if we can get an opinion. I mean, I'm not I'm not opposed to having the lease agreement

038continue I just anyway I just feel like this is something this is a valid concern that we should understand the answer to you know I understand the question it's my just my issue is just logistics if we're if we can't bring it back before August and then I'll lose has to change their plans I don't I'm not a I'm not a proponent of that because it's generally an extension of the existing agreement just expanding it and so I think that I'm happy to approve this consent agenda item, but if our attorneys come back to us and say, oh, you can't approve that based on the Naylor Act, then we're going to have to revisit it, right? So I could make a motion to move forward with approving the agreement pending sort of a legal opinion.

039Okay, do I have a motion then on this one? I'll second. Sorry, second. I'll second. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Great. Number six, charter school memorandum. Yeah, Sonoma Charter. So my only... So my only my only question was why were these placed on the consent when we don't place the the MOUs of the other charter school MacArthur Park on consent like it just seems like anything having to do with the charter schools should not be on the consent calendar because it's not a routine this is not a routine approval number one and then also why is the liability requirement only two million dollars for um Sonoma Charter and Woodland Star but it's five million for for MacArthur Park those were the things I mean maybe the properties lend themselves to difference differences in insurance

040coverage but that those were the two things that kind of struck me when I looked at those agreements so um With the reason that we had places on consent was because it we've already approved these but there were clerical errors in them and so we had assumed that that it would be a consent item that didn't need a lot of discussion because we are fixing the clerical errors that were in contained in them, but they they were and they were approved on May 4th, but they were I didn't notice the clerical errors of them actually because they then nobody had pointed them out so sorry and we didn't notice them either so the in the clerical errors was that uh that there was an incorrect like the mou was was coming off of a template

041from another county and there was a place where an incorrect county was referenced so that was corrected And there was a typographical error that was saying that we didn't provide charter school with facilities. So those small changes, that's why we put it on consent was just because they were small errors. We could in the future make sure that they're actions, but we felt that they were consent-ish. Yeah, I mean, I would prefer like a memo saying that this is actually correction that the board didn't even catch. Like that's not something I actually saw myself. But it would be good for... you know staff to come back and just explain the the different requirements for insurance i mean so i'm i'm not opposed to approving it i just think that we just need additional information the

042way i think of the mous and i um come to think of it i might have compared the old mou i'm not sure now um because i had printed it out in may but anyway uh It seems like we should treat them equivalently. You know, it's all boilerplate language, and I noticed the difference, and I was trying to figure that out. So that's all, and I'm happy to also approve this. I mean, I would suggest a... A motion to approve it and subject to review of the insurance requirement if it's not equivalent tell us why and if it should be equivalent then that can be an amendment addendum to the document right you you you've already approved it. Oh, oh, okay. Can I can I. Yeah, you did it we signed the wrong document the

043ones that had had an error with the the insurance was the same that so there was a reference to another county in there, so there are 2 errors the 2 questions that there's a question I have is that. We tried to notify you by putting a description in it that this was one that you already, like in the description we said this was approved. Is there another way that you would like notification on something like this in the future? Okay, there was a lot in those last two meetings. The other thing I would say is... Yeah, and the other thing I would say is I do understand what is being said about the differences between the charters, and I think that's something for us to work for to get them unified. Each of those charters

044is an individual negotiation, and so when MacArthur Park was negotiated, it was negotiated between our legal and our former CBO with them, and it's a different team. Yes, we want them similar, and there's also an aspect of it being negotiated at that moment. So I understand about the individual negotiation, and each party is going to try to optimize and maximize whatever their goals are. However, if we aren't requiring sufficient liability insurance, we need to evaluate that. Agreed. So I don't. I don't know what direction that we need to take on this. We have to approve it. There's just a change. I'll make a motion to approve the Sonoma Charter MO. There are two of them. Oh, you're going to separate. I'll second. All in favor? Aye. I'll make a motion to approve the Woodland Star

045Charter School. Second. All in favor? Aye. So the last one I would like to wait until Chris Thomas gets here because it's kind of relevant to the budget discussion Yeah, yeah sure. She's texted me an ETA. Well, why don't we just get started? Yeah, so we'll go to 11 point to the L cap adoption so Can I speak to this now? Yeah. So it was raised in public comment about the different versions of the LCAP. The version of the LCAP that you all saw in May that was during the board study session shared by Associate Superintendent Dr. Casillas, she started at the beginning saying that that LCAP doesn't have correct budget information because the budget wasn't finished. We were in transition with our CBO. that version she didn't start the presentation identifying that the numbers

046were not accurate the version that you saw for the public hearing on the 11th and that was shared with the public and that was the opportunity for the public to review the lcap and make public comment on was shared the friday before the meeting and it has not changed that is the one that you're voting on today the one that was part of public comment and that was shared with the public and had given opportunity within that public hearing please so my question is isn't it typical and standard for all districts that the final numbers for the LCAP are presented in the first June meeting and then there's always a second June meeting that's when all boards are kind of presented with that information That it's unusual to get any of the data on the

047actual budget part of the LCAP before that June meeting. I mean, that has been my, I guess, that has been my experience in all the years sitting on the LCAP committee back in 2014. Yeah, that's been my experience as well. I think we also, because we were in transition, we had scheduled the study session. We wanted to try and get ahead, so we scheduled the study session in May when we didn't have those numbers, and I think there was confusion with some members of the public about the numbers that were presented, which were not accurate and were stated that were not accurate. But yes, my experience has been that it's June when we are able to get those final numbers. For that reason, I will make a motion to approve 11.2, the adoption of the

0482627 LCAP. Do you have a second? I'll second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Let's go to 11.3, local performance indicator self-reflection. Information item on. Yeah, so you all had a chance to review the indicator self-reflection, and this is... requirement a requirement of our district to reflect on the progress made in different areas of the LCAP so I will just give it to you if you have any questions about the reflection or anything you wanted to highlight anybody got a question comment I don't know I was wondering if you could sort of summarize what what came out of the self-reflection surveys here? Like, what do you think that they basically say? I mean, I had a hard time sort of assessing. Yeah. Like, are we doing well? Are people satisfied? Are they dissatisfied? Well, and

049I think... I mean, and some of this is self-reflection, so this is rating. I think that the actual presentations that you, like in the LCAP where there is assessment of how we've done on things is a bit more comprehensive. A couple of things that jumped out to me as I went through this, that, you know, we were looking a lot, the whole... Priority two was looking at our curriculum and our instructional materials and I think what we saw in here was consistent with with what was in the LCAP and what I presented about just visually what I was seeing as we are going through through classrooms and that as we got into it some of the things that were called out in this was looking in the elementary grades under priority area two was focused

050on the growing impact of seal and building thinking classrooms and math in the upper grades. I think that what did stand out to me was we have been giving a lot, we have been rightly so, giving a lot of attention to ELA, math not so much, and we can see that in our scores. We have made a priority to focus on literacy, so that may not change immediately, but we can see that that is going to be a next step for us. We do need to at some point shift into that because our scores show it and we can see in our self-reflection that we haven't been giving it as much attention. We I think that the what I saw was there were some areas in our family in parental involvement and family engagement that

051seemed to be some strong points where we put a lot of energy and and still have some areas to grow so Particularly it seemed like we are feeling strong about our efforts to reach out and connect with families We want to shift towards more two-way communication. We've been good at broadcasting, but how do we engage in dialogue? And the other piece was around providing professional learning to both teachers and principals about partnering with families. Like what is the training we're doing to increase the capacity of our staff to do that? That's an area of growth for that focus area. And we... Just giving you the high-level stuff. We did see it was interesting the one last thing that really jumped out to me was The youth truth data on school climate for priority six that

052we were seeing growth in elementary and we're seeing growth in high school in general I'm generalizing but that our our middle school we saw more some decreases that jumped out to me and that's in a year when we went from two separate schools into into one school And I think as a board, we've identified as part of that building trust. One of the things you called out specifically was the middle school and really building trust within that system. I think that was shown in that priority six that that data stood out. So those are kind of the highlight areas for me that really... I was looking into, I did see in the last priority seven, there was also mention about the challenges that we see at the high school with kids that are English learners

053or that special ed with the way a six period day locks them into not having as many options. That was coming up again in the self-reflection on that priority area. I just wanted to follow up on how we use the self-reflection tool for an action plan, especially like the one thing that did, you know, stand out to me also was this. I wasn't expecting the middle school to have such a significant decrease in their their sense of belonging at the school because anecdotally I heard other things. I heard that it was actually generally positive, but when I saw this, that means that there's a contradiction. So I was just curious, like we, I don't really remember going over this, this tool in the past, the self-reflection tool and how do we use it? Anyway, just

054thoughts on that. I think that this, as we get our new ed services team in place in July, like that will be, that is going to be some important work. How do we look at this, at this reflection tool? How do we look at the LCAP to really dial those into the priorities areas that we've identified? Really staying focused on those. And how do we be concrete about addressing some of these? Not just wishing that we, you know, hoping that we can increase it, but what are some actions we can take? this is clear for this item. Middle school, there has to be some actions about sense of belonging, which is the work that we're already working on. We actually met today with our branding group for the new middle school. So that's part of

055that effort. I guess I would just add on that same note of the middle school sense of belonging that the survey was done in January. So it was still pretty fresh, that transition. And middle school is tough enough as it is as you're entering that stage of life. So I would expect at least one year ahead to see some different results there. Yeah, it would it would be good to have the two-year benchmark I think supporting trustee Guzman on yeah, I mean it was a seven-point drop right you combine two middle schools into one from the sense of belonging and I think safety was a four-point drop so it's a great like let's let's hang on to the data from when that would be my recommendation hold on to the data from the years where

056we had them as two separate and let's let's use that as our benchmark that we know we want to get back to that level and above like I don't want to I don't want to come back next year and pat ourselves on the back because we beat this year's, this year's should be the floor, right? Like, let's go, let's set that benchmark. OK. I mean, I think that I went to the middle school graduation and the two valedictorians were sort of talking about resilience and sort of saying how difficult it was. But they overcame the merger, I think. So that was sort of a positive reflection at the end of the year. So I can't remember it verbatim, but it was memorable that that was the theme. I think one of the things that in

057terms of the board focus and priority on building trust is that the merger was also hard on the adults. Like we see all that, and we have to be honest about that, that the adults in the system, and hopefully as we work to bring them together, like that spreads. That's contagious. So I think that's another part of it as well. It's how we take care of the adults that are in that system as well as the students. Just add to in terms of building trust I think we have to be honest with ourselves with we're going to use things like youth truth and all these surveys that we're looking at all information not just some information or the percentages that are you know that seem to lean towards the highest I want to know how

058our families are feeling and if even one person has an opinion about something that's significant or a reflection on something that has happened or curriculum or whatever those are our families those are our students and i think part of the reason why there is a loss of or a sense of feeling like voices aren't being heard is because I've had people come to me directly and say, well, I don't even do those anymore because for years I filled those surveys out and my voices were never represented. And so I'm just curious, who are we putting in charge of doing that and continuing that process? Because we did approve to continue to use Youth Truth. so that is a data collection for us and so i'm just curious who's going to be and could the board

059be reviewing that i mean we as parents see it when it comes out so we know but eventually some of us aren't going to be parents when we're sitting on the board so how do we know when those surveys are going out and when can we review so that we are showing i mean if the families and kids are taking the time to to do the surveys we should do our due diligence to review Yeah, that'll be covered by Ed Services, and we're down one person, so we're going to be working in July to redistribute duties among the staff that are there. And when we get those results, that stuff that can be shared with the board, what the data says and some of the open-ended questions as well. So in the past, the board

060and I thought that the public had access to the results of the Youth Truth. So it's a pretty extensive. extensive data and I always, I have felt in the last six years on the board that we have not really leveraged that data and mined it for information to be able to take action. There's a lot of data. Now we have systems that can help us mine that data even more quickly. I remember having access, being able to go back to historically and then compare to the, but I tried to access it recently. I could not get access to it. So I just, I don't know what the policies are anymore. We were pretty transparent with the public. The public could pretty much access this data. Except maybe they couldn't access, I think they could even

061access comments, you know, when you have to actually accompany like a scale or ranking with actually comments. But anyway, it would be nice if someone could look into that and we could think about how do we leverage that data because there's so many parts that we're not using to inform our decision making. We can look at that and work with you on that. Okay, any more questions, discussion? Great. Should we move on to the Boys and Girls Club presentation? And welcome, and appreciate you guys coming. We were going to put this on the consent agenda, but we've decided that given the spend, we would love to hear from you guys directly, and welcome. Thank you. Sure, no problem. We're excited to be here and share with you what we're doing. My name is Danielle Asalino-Hodge.

062I'm the CEO of the Boys and Girls Club, and I also have two kids at Flowery. So again, thank you for the opportunity to present. We serve more than... Oh, sorry, can you go to the next slide? Thank you. We serve more than 2,000 children and teens annually in the Valley with approximately 650 kids we're serving every day. Our mission is to provide positive opportunities for young people, especially those who need us most, to learn, succeed, and discover their full potential. Our partnership with the district allows us to provide high-quality after-school, summer, and special programs that support students beyond their regular school day. These programs are funded through state expanded learning initiatives specifically designed to provide learning enrichment and youth development opportunities outside of school hours. The partnership keeps kids safe, supports working families, and

063helps students build the academic, social, and leadership skills they need to succeed. One thing I'm particularly proud of is that of our around 75 staff, over 70% of them were former club kids. They were students in the school district and came back to work for us to make an impact. Can you go to the next slide, please? Okay. It's a little small, but hopefully you can read it. We provide services at the elementary schools across the valley, as well as at our Maxwell Park Clubhouse. While district enrollment has declined over the years, we're seeing something a little bit different, and our enrollment is actually increasing, demonstrating that families are really relying on these after-school and non-school day programs. So even though our enrollment remained relatively stable this year, our wait list also increased by 35%,

064which is approximately 115 kids that were on the wait list to get services this year. That tells us that families continue to see value in our programs and, of course, that there's an expanding need. Can you go to the next slide, please? Attendance tells a similar story. Last year we exceeded the state's attendance targets at every program site, serving an average of 458 students each day. And those numbers reflect more than just participation. They also show that families rely on these services and that kids actually want to be there. This slide shows our current enrollment for this past school year with what we are proposing for the next school year. We would increase enrollment capacity from 555 students to 637 students creating opportunities for an additional 82 students to participate across our elementary school sites

065as well as Maxwell and our goal isn't to just serve more kids we also want to make sure we're maintaining the quality that we provide and appropriate staffing ratios. We serve kids at 1 to 10 for TK and K and 1 to 20 for first grade and up. Go to the next slide, Michelle. Thank you. Because we have community members, students, families, et cetera, in the room, we wanted to take a moment to explain how ACES and ELOP funding work together. ACES is After School Education and Safety, and it's been in place since 2002. It primarily supports after school programming for students in K through 8. This is the base level funding for the school sites. ELOP is the Expanded Learning Opportunities Program, which was established in 2021 as a part of California's investment in

066student success. It provides academic support, enrichment opportunities, and assistance for working families through before school, after school, summer, school break, and non-school day programming for TK through sixth, five different ages. These are both state funded programs with specific requirements for who can be served, when services can be provided, and then of course how the funds are used. Most importantly, both ACES and ELOP can only be used for services that occur outside of the regular school day and they're designed to work together. They allow us to serve more kids, expand access to younger children, and provide literacy, STEM, arts, athletics, and enrichment opportunities and extend programming and support for families. These state funds provide the foundation for our programs, but they don't cover everything that the programs do. Boys and Girls Club strengthens the investment through

067additional grants, private donations, and organizational resources we bring to support kids as well. I'm gonna hand it over to Don who's gonna go through the finances good evening everybody trustees dr. Sutter thank you for having us I'm Donna Amor and I'm the chief operating officer for the Boys and Girls Club Mike Danielle I also have a child in the district she's gonna be a junior next year at the high school Before I jump into some of the details on this slide, I do want to say that 100% of the funds that we get from ELOP and from ACES go to direct service to our kids. So it doesn't cover any of the overhead or like administrative costs for like myself or Danielle or human resources or resource development. It's right into direct service and programming

068for our kids. So our ACEs funding supports our TK through eighth grade after-school programming and all of our school sites and as Danielle mentioned this is the baseline funding for our school sites and the after-school programming there so again 100% of that five hundred and sixty five thousand dollars that we get for ACEs is going to direct service so it's covering staff and all of the program supplies for everything takes place after school at the school site. So Altamira, Alvarado, sorry, Suma Valley Middle School, Flowery, Alvarado, and Sasserini. The ACES funding is dedicated, as I mentioned, to direct services. It is part of a three-year contract with the California Department of Education. So there are three-year cycles for ACES, but it's been a long-term partnership between us and the school district. I don't even know

069when. Before my time, and I've been at the Boys and Girls Club for about 12 years, so that's before that. Turning to ELOP funding for the upcoming school year. These funds will support students attending the Maxwell Clubhouse while also expanding access to after school programming at both the clubhouse and after school site or our school sites. So as they mentioned, currently we have 115 students on our wait list. So with the ELOP funding, we'll be able to serve an additional 82 students next year. So bringing enrollment from 555 to 637 for the upcoming school year. While it won't eliminate the wait list, it does allow us to expand access and ensure that students have access to safe, enriching, and supportive out-of-school opportunities. And as you can see from the budget breakdown, 83% of the funds

070are allocated directly to staffing. This includes... our TK students at all of our sites, additional staff to reduce the wait list, and dedicated team members focused on mental health, literacy and arts, and STEM programming. And we've got 13% allocated to program supplies, facilities, and student operations. And then the remaining four supports our community partnerships who also play a role in the expanded learning and enrichment opportunities our kids are able to partake in. And JoJo actually is going to talk a little bit more about those partnerships and the programming. Alright, hi y'all. My name is Jojo. I don't have any kids in the district, but I am a former Snow Valley Unified student and former club kid. So before we dive into the specifics of just like the club day, I do want to make it

071a point to just talk about Boys and Girls Club has been obviously in the valley for quite some time now. And I think when you think about that, like anything else, there's typically, you know, a lot of growth within that time. And I just... I want to make it a point because I think the Boys and Girls Club you're seeing today is a lot different than maybe the Boys and Girls Club you had known in the past or that you maybe had a kid attend in the past. So I just want to put that out there. But we'll dive into this a little bit. As you see, just through our normal daily schedule, we're going to have three main components here. You're going to look at snack. power hour and programs. So for snack every

072day all the members that attend are either going to get a free snack or meal and so we actually serve over 60,000 snacks over an entire year to all of our members and as you guys know the importance of just free food for members and free food for students right you know that during the school day sometimes that's maybe the only meal they get. Well that's sometimes the same case after school. It may be the only meal that they get in the evening. So that's something we're really proud of as an organization and just glad that we can bring that to our members. Second, you have our power, which is essentially our homework hour. It's mixed between. reading and homework and so I think one of the key pieces about power hour is because we're

073on school campuses it actually makes it really easy for us to work hand in hand with the teachers which is a really big positive for us especially when you're dealing you know you you have members that need that extra help and being able to talk with those teachers that you know have a little bit more time with them during the day And then lastly, we have our program portion of the day. And you see here, it's just kind of a small glimpse of some of the programs we offer. I'll touch on literacy here a little bit more, but one of my favorites out of that group there is Healthy Habits and Kids Cooking. Those are two programs that go hand in hand with each other. Essentially, Healthy Habits is about teaching kids about the importance

074of healthy foods and what healthy foods those are. And then it leads into kids cooking the second half of the year where they're actually getting to create these recipes. So one of my favorites for sure. And we get to taste what they make, which is always fun. And then if we can go to the next slide, please. So obviously, you know, one of our huge impacts here at the club is the academic impact. Touched on a little bit about with homework hour, but also want to talk about just our partnership with the district a little bit there I work closely with Amber Williams in the district for those that don't know she's a program. She's a coordinator of educational services there Her and I work really well together and one of the big focuses that

075we've been trying to create together is Trying to align kind of what's going on during the school day and what's going on after school One of those big focuses is literacy right now. And so For those aren't aware, we actually have an in-house literacy program at the Boys and Girls Club that we offer, and we utilize the Orrin Gilliam approach, so it's multi-sensory. And so what we're currently exploring is the opportunity to maybe integrate Amira, which for those that don't know, Amira is the online learning tool that is used during the school day. and allows you really to get like real in-time feedback on how members are learning and how they're reading. And so that is one of mine and Amber's goal is to somehow weave that into our literacy program after school to connect

076the two and essentially just give students the opportunity to continue what they're already doing in school to the Boys and Girls Club. And then if we could get the next slide, please. and then aside from that just want to touch on some of the other programs that we are able to offer through ELOP dollars for those that know so ELOP Obviously you can use it for many different things and you know getting kids off the waitlist and so forth But one of the big pieces that was asked of the district several years ago when that money came in which was you know How can you take what you're currently doing and improve and add to that? And so when that question was asked we looked outwards and brought in programming that was outside of ourselves

077One of my favorite in the list is our first tee program. So that's introductory golf lessons And we actually recently had our culminating event with our middle school group. So we had a group of about eight to ten middle school boys who had never played golf before. And as a lot of you probably know, there's a huge barrier to entry in golf when you think about the money and what it costs to play. And so these were all kids that had never played. And we were able to not only partner with First Tee, but we also got... partnership with the Sonoma golf course in town and had the kids practice for eight weeks. They hit the driving range. We would drive them over. That was a weekly thing and then at the end of those

078eight weeks they got to actually play the course which I mean if you saw the looks on their faces to be able to actually play that course and not a lot of people are able to play that course so for them to be able to do that that was definitely something fun to see. And then just a couple other things we do. We have music in place. This is a beginner. introductory music class and that's actually being implemented at summer school this current summer and so that you're gonna see 160 students out of the 310 that we have over summer actually get introduced to music and the great part about that is we have music in place at all of our sites during the school year I'm sorry not all of our sites about three

079sites out of our school year so This is giving those students who not aren't normally boys and girls club kids during the school year the opportunity to also get those classes over summer So really excited about that and then we have you know Lego robotics as I mentioned kids cooking and some other few offerings Yeah, and that's all through ELOP dollars. So And then lastly, we, some of you may have your kids in some of our athletic programs that we have at our Maxwell Clubhouse, but one of the biggest things was trying to figure out how we can implement that into after-school programming. And something we came up with was intramural leagues. And so essentially what this is, is obviously we're at every school campus or majority of the school campuses. And so we are,

080we would take a sport. For instance, a big one is always futsal for us at the club, and these kids will practice for eight weeks. They create a team at every individual site. After those eight weeks, they come over to our Maxwell Clubhouse, and they do one big tournament where they get to play other schools. So for them, it's like, oh, I get to represent Alvarado. I get to represent, you know, Flowery and so forth. And it really just gives those also an opportunity that maybe aren't on a structured team outside of school. So, yeah, one of my favorite things to watch as well. And then next slide please. I won't go over this list but these are just other ongoing initiatives that we are working with and the team at the district. So if

081you have any other questions. Yeah but other than that I will turn it over to Danielle. Okay we just wanted to say thank you and also I mean we couldn't be Boys and Girls Club without showing some kids so we're gonna play a quick little video. If it works. And we can also of course... I'm thankful for the Boys and Girls Club because they help me spend my time wisely. I'm grateful for the Boys and Girls Club for giving me fun and learning, giving me friends to play with, and helping me with my math and homework. I'm thankful for the Boys and Girls Club because they make me laugh and I feel safe around here. I'm thankful for the Boys and Girls Club for helping me meet new people. I'm thankful to be at... the

082Boys and Girls Club because they help me with my reading and math. I am thankful for teen services because it has given me the opportunity to run for Youth of the Year. My mom was not able to pick me up after school, so I am grateful to have a safe place to come after school. I'm grateful for teen services because they provide so many resources and opportunities to better my future. I am thankful for being at the club because they teach me good sportsmanship. I'm thankful for the Boys and Girls Club because the staff are nice. It's cute. Great, so I think we've probably got a few questions. I know I do, but I will start with Gerardo on my right. If you'd like to, if you have anything, comments, questions, please. So thank you

083for that presentation, and I'm really happy to hear that you'll be able to increase enrollment. Out of all the things we already heard, you omitted a few others. So the community fridge is incredible. You know, being able to provide fresh produce, pantry staples, dairy products. Just right there, you walk in, no questions asked. It's there. It's free. So thank you for providing that. I don't remember the exact name, but the Winter Fest, Winter Carnival, where kids can just come in and pick up some presents. That was fantastic. And then we did just hear an allusion to the Youth of the Year program, which is also incredible to recognize our youth. So thank you for all that. And, yeah, this isn't the same Boys and Girls Club as when I was a kid, and it's pretty

084incredible what it's transformed into. Thank you. That means a lot to us. Appreciate it. I was wondering, thank you also for the presentation and for just updating our knowledge about the Boys and Girls Club. Both my kids actually were in the ACES program at Flowery. JoJo, I was wondering, you had a bunch of, you had a list of different kind of programming that is happening. And the thing that caught my eye was something related to manhood. And I was wondering. Passport to Manhood. I wondered if you could actually first speak to that. I'm just curious what that is. I'm also curious, there was something for emotional support for girls. There's a girls program. Yeah. Smart Girls. Those are actually both Boys and Girls Club national programs. And these are Passport to Manhood and Smart Girls

085are essentially similar programs, just one for girls and one for boys. But the idea behind these programs is that it really teaches them how to make healthy decisions, cognitive decisions and just decisions as they grow up in terms of not falling for peer pressure and stuff. When I think about that program, for those that don't know, I used to directly work with the kids at one point. But I guess the best example I could give you is there used to be a program within that program that talked about life. taught them not to smoke cigarettes essentially at that point. And it was always a fun one. It was just like an idea where you'd have kids run in place, then they would take a straw. This is an older program. It's been updated since then.

086They would run, so it's not the same, but they would run in place for like a minute or two, whatever it was. They would then take a straw and try to breathe out of that straw. And then the idea was to bring it around and be like, you see like the effects they could have on your lungs and all these other things. So that's like an early version of Passport to Manhood when I originally started 12 years ago. But the idea is to have them make healthy choices as they grow up and as they move on from grade to grade. And that is just for, like, TK to, like, sixth grade? Or are we talking about this is, like, part of teen services? Yeah, so you're talking as soon as about, like, fourth, fifth grade

087and then middle school. And the way Boys and Girls Club does is they break it up depending on grade. So it will be, you know, it will make sense for every different group. So there's different versions of that as the kids grow and as they go from elementary to middle school to high school. And do they opt in? They do. They have a menu, and they get to choose what they're going to do. So it's not like every kid, every boy is going through Passport. No, no. I guess to just also give a little context is the way our programming works is we work on a... four-quarter system so essentially there's like a menu of programs and every week you know okay I'm going to this program on Monday and then on Tuesday it's a

088different program on Wednesday it's a different program and that will happen for eight weeks straight right so if the kid decides to do passport they'll do that every Tuesday right for eight weeks and then they could graduate to the next program that's similar to it but Yeah, just give you a little background. And then I just had a question about the literacy program. If you could kind of just maybe walk me through the day in the life of how the literacy actually happens during power hour. I mean, I remember power hour with my kids. How do you coordinate? Like literacy is like a very high priority right now in the district. We've kind of given marching orders to our superintendent, but yet. We're using Wonders curriculum. We have an instructional framework called SEAL. And then

089I do remember actually when a bunch of you actually went through OG training. So how are we coordinating? There's like OG, SEAL. How is that all happening at Power Hour? Yeah, well that's a great question. So one, our literacy program actually, it doesn't happen within Power Hour. It's its own separate program. So you're going to have your original Power Hour group, your program, because everybody goes through Power Hour, right? You've got to work on your homework. And then after that, if you look at the schedule during program time, that's when we would touch on literacy. so that's a separate program that's also something that all members right now we've we've adjusted it the last several years and kind of what it looks like we're focusing right now on the younger grades and part of that

090was you know in conversation with kind of what's going on at the district and to really trying to get them at that that that early stages and kind of get them going from there but we have a literacy director and so her main focus is getting all this information and then teaching our team of staff how to you know teach the these literacy components in these programs and so talking with Amber, you know, knowing that we already have this at Boys and Girls Club, that's where like the whole point of trying to get Amira integrated into this, you know, trying to make it one cohesive program from school to after school. So just so I can like visualize this, so do you have one person kind of leading like a literacy group and it's divided

091by abilities or is it one-on-one tutoring? I'm not quite visualizing. So it's by grades. So you will have your literacy director, so Natalie, our literacy director, she will teach all of our program assistants the program that they need to run with these members. They will then take their group of 20 students and they will teach, because we break all of our groups up by age already when you think of homework and when you think of programs. So you would have this one program assistant who's learned how to teach it through our literacy director. And she will take her group of 20 students for this hour and teach them through that. OK. My only suggestion is we should think about how do we coordinate better, whether we need to look at is this having impact, right,

092in terms of we don't want to do a scattershot like. Anyway, at some point, somehow the district and the Boys and Girls Club have to figure out how to measure, like, impact of the dollars that we're spending. And this is not a criticism at all. We are trying to, like, focus our efforts to get this right. So. Great. I have one question, one comment. Can we integrate the Amira instance per student and have access at the Boys and Girls Club of that Amira instance? So a student doesn't have two logins, right? They have a single login. That's the hope, and that's the goal, and that is the hope. That way it's just a continuation of their progress that they're making during the school day for the after school. My recommendation is whatever we need to

093do to make that happen. I don't know if there's some legal barriers or there's technology barriers, but that seems like a huge win for our students to be able to get access for them. And then the second one was a little while back I had a chance to visit the Boys and Girls Club. boy, like the proof is in the children's faces. I remember being there right before they arrived. And as soon as those doors flew open, like, wow, they were excited to be there. And I stood there and waited for like, I was like, the kids in the back must not be as excited, right? Like, no, they were just, they were just in the back of the bus or something. Like, it was just incredible. Every kid that came in was just. I

094stuck with me to this day. I'm just thinking like they're there. It's a true joy for them to be there. And like that's a great starting point for us. Let's let's capitalize on that for the best. Appreciate it. So thank you. Thanks for coming. So I would sort of second what Trustee Ching is saying is that we've got to have consistency of instruction throughout the whole district between the campuses, between our after school programs. We shouldn't be using Orton-Gillingham at Boys and Girls Club and something different at an elementary school. I don't see how that's beneficial to the kids. I may be wrong on that, but that's my initial sort of reaction to it. And particularly if we're doing math. you know help you know they're teaching long division in some method at the elementary

095school and then they go to the boys and girls club and someone's teaching long division in a different way nothing's more confusing for a kid from that perspective so i would encourage everybody kind of collaborates on that and so the second part is you know i hear wait list and i've got a bit of ptsd as it relates to the flowery fiasco with the wait list So, Flowery, there was a wait list, there wasn't a wait list, there was no room, there is room, so we voted to close Flowery, and then we undid that, and that was a mistake that we made, right? So, describe the wait list and how I get on it, how I get off it, and tell us what it would cost to eliminate the wait list. Yeah, so, and I'll

096let Don talk about cost here in a second, but in terms of how the wait list is generated, it's essentially through ELOP, you have a... two groups that you when you open registration you have your priority group right so that's the unduplicated students and they will get registration first which is you know your low income your free and reduced foster youth English learners no I get that English yeah so they essentially get to register first and I work alongside Amber with this and this whole process and you know more for regards to flowery they are typically the first school to fill up and sometimes it's before the general population then gets an opportunity to To register typically there's about a week to a week and a half gap between the two registrations between your unduplicated

097and your general population And then at that point we do in the past we do give the option for those that are on the way list at a site To attend our Maxwell Clubhouse, right? But we've gotten to the point where There's a wait list at every site. Then some of those go on to Maxwell. And then there's still kids on the wait list. And then there's a wait list at Maxwell. So we've just gone to the point where we just don't have any space left. Well, it's more so the funding to get the staff to get these kids off the wait list. But that's kind of how it works. You have one registration. You have your second registration. And within a couple weeks, we're full. So you're saying that there's, what was the number

098on the wait list? so 115 kids get on the waitlist but they never get to attend or participate in the Boys and Girls Club after school program yes unless certain students opt out yeah okay but yeah this past year we had a hundred and fifteen across all of our Boys and Girls Club sites okay get on board we can get um so that's why we have funding for this year to add four additional staff to get those 84 kids still leaves us with on there and in order to do that we would need to do more staff which would be so what so i'm trying to do the math in my head but that's what 85 just bullpuck is it a million bucks or is it 100 grand it's it's a it's every classroom is

099about 25 so it's a full So it's $100,000. So if we could find $100,000 and give it to you guys, there wouldn't be a wait list? Essentially, yes. Okay, great. That's the 85 to 115. Okay, great. It's an interesting question, and I'm always about trying to solve problems. Yeah. I mean, I think it's part of a discussion amongst ourselves if we really value the program. I hate to hear that 115 kids want to go and they can't because it's funding. And if it's 100 grand, is that something that we could find the budget for and would have the will to spend? I have no idea. I'd be a proponent of discussing it. So anyway, thank you. Thank you. We appreciate it. Yeah. So yeah, that was my two things. So thank you. Can you explain

100the is there I guess this is what's always been just a little confusing so the ELOP and the ACEs money on sites and then what happens after school at the club is not all of these things for the students it's different yeah there's a slide okay Probably the difference between ELOP and ACES. No, I think it's, she's asking if programming after school at the school sites is the same at Maxwell and then the answer is yes. Yes, okay, that's what I was curious about. Okay, so the students who, because you were saying that some of these students get to go to the club, are they still accessing the programs if they're not on site? Yes, it's one of the same programs, yes. And then another big piece about the Maxwell Clubhouse too is that we

101open about 30 minutes later. So it also gives those parents that need that extra 30 minutes opportunity, they'll opt in to go to Maxwell as opposed to being on their school site. Right. Open. Okay. And then, let's see, what other questions did I have? I agree with Trustee Ching that we have talked about doing just an analysis of our spending and our return on investment. I will say when I first came on the board, I was so, I had sticker shock to see how much money, and it was in the consent agenda, and there was no presentation. We had no... I mean, there was nothing, right? And then you guys do these amazing fundraisers where we're hearing you're doing amazing things. And it was like, we're just going to give more money. And it has

102come full circle in three years. And so to have a presentation like this and fully understand and see what our kids are accessing is. absolutely great but I would and in terms of literacy like I'd love to see I do love to hear that you're working with Amber there is a connection I don't know that that was or wasn't happening before but I know her as a person and I'm sure that connection is super helpful to the outcome of you know the educational outcome of what we want for our students so that's really great so thank you Amber's been fantastic to work communication in the program you want from us Yeah. Having these discussions and getting the community has brought us full circle in terms of the programming and what we're offering. Right. And as

103JoJo said, it's a different club than it was eight years ago. Yeah. And speaking with Amber, our goal is to get to the point where it doesn't feel like all of a sudden we're showing up and it's just all this new information that you never heard. We would love for you guys to know what's going on all the time at the club. And that is one of the focuses that we have to be able to bring and share this with the community. Thank you. Yeah. I have a few more follow-up questions. If we could go to, I think, slide 7, which I think it shows, like, the comparison between ELOP and ACES. Yeah, that one. That one. So I just, this is a question both for the superintendent and for the Boys and Girls Club.

104So of the ELOP funds. What is the greatest percentage of funds being spent on? Because it can be used for after-school programming. So part of that $900,000 is going to be used to ensure that we don't have that wait list, or some of the kids are going to get off that wait list. That's number one. But do we also provide before-school care? Is the Boys and Girls Club doing that? We don't now. The HUDN has just never been there. been asked yeah but like of the nine hundred thousand dollars can you just say like what are the top three things that it's going towards eighty-three percent of it is staffing No, but I mean what like is it for staffing for after school programs or is it is it summer school? How much is on

105summer programs? This particular budget, the 901, does not include the summer. This is just for the school year. Okay. And the 83% is direct staff for all of our after school programs. So it's everybody that's working with the kids day to day and running programs. So in other words, so basically the bulk of the ACEs funding, basically $1.6 million is for after-school programming generally. It's all after school. And that's about $20 per kid per day. Yeah, so essentially like, yes. and then you break it down by how it's like you know five dollars an hour yeah got it one thing i would add um we tried to get the numbers for you for tonight but we weren't able to but um our e-lap funding does we have some of our funding does fund some other

106programs that we have in the district not just right not all of that goes to boys and girls club there is a couple of the things that we are funding other after-school programs right okay so what i don't understand though with elop funding is It's based on student count, right, from the state. So why is it that there's a proportion of kids that there's obviously not enough ELAP funding to fund them for the after-school program because they're sitting on the wait list? I thought all of that was like per pupil, and we can get into this in the budget maybe, but I just don't understand. Like, it has always been allotted by per pupil. We have a certain number of kids in our district. So why isn't there enough money for ACEs, period? For ACEs

107or ELOP? Well, both, because they both, I mean, one covers a little bit, it covers six or seven and eight. Yeah. I can provide a little bit of detail. I haven't specifically looked at your after-school programs. A couple points of clarification. ACES, unless you have a supplemental grant, the ACES base grant, A, has to be spent every year. It's use it or lose it. And B, it's only for the regular school year. You can't use it for summer school. ELOP, on the other hand, you're required to offer at least 30 days of extended year programming. So just to clarify the two funding sources in particular. I was not able to do a deep dive into your ELOP program slash ACES. We can certainly do that in July and kind of take a look at where

108you have some flexibility. I know that there were some increases this year from the state, and that might provide you with the wherewithal to add. We also have to contemplate space and make sure that we're thinking about, you know, do we have space at this campus versus that campus? You actually can... say hey we've got room over here but then you have to provide transportation so there's some there's some nuances that we can take a look at so I don't know if there was specifically other questions but I just want to provide well if we have you know if you have demand of I'm just trying to think what our elementary school count is like around a thousand kids and all of them wanted I mean let's say theoretically all of them want to go

109to they need after school programming It sounds like the state doesn't provide ELOP funding based on students. No, ELOP is intended. Or not ELOP, but whatever pays for the after school, like ACEs. Right. So ELOP specifically is intended for your unduplicated population of students. That's specifically what it's intended for. And then other parents that don't qualify then pay on a sliding scale depending on their ability typically. So ELOP has never been intended to say every child that wants to go to after-school programming can go. It was specifically to say we want to support that unduplicated population of students and you're not required to serve all of them. You want to, you want to do what you can to make sure that you're able to do that. So, ACES is a little bit different and there's

110actually percentages of attendance that ACES has to qualify for. So, usually you enroll at this level because you have to meet a threshold of like 85% attendance, so every single day. Or at least on average. Yes. So so so it's a reimbursement model that they get or no, it's it's an entitlement model But you have attendance that you actually have to report so aces has very different requirements why the state did not in fact There's been talk about the state Merging the two and having it just one program, right? Not every district gets aces. We're fortunate here in Stonema Valley you do so Usually what we do from an accounting perspective is on the back end, parents and families don't know the difference. Sure. They don't know how they're funded. We take care of them

111on the back end. So we're just figuring out, okay, who qualifies for which funding source, and we do it that way. but it's a little bit more complicated because they're two very different programs in some ways from an accountability perspective. I mean, the ELOP funding, I believe, came out of the pandemic, and it was supposed to actually address the learning loss and enrichment that a certain population of kids were not receiving. And so I think we need to think more carefully about how are we getting results. because we're not we seem we're not getting results in school and so we're trying to shore that up but we also want to make sure that elop is also doing its part right because that was the whole intention of when when that law was passed so that's

112why there's such strong academic components that were added for elop and so they actually have to make sure that their program is meeting all of these various academic components right program and i know the boys and girls could As you said, eight years ago was very different than it is now because they had to adjust their programming in order to meet the requirements of ELOP. Right. And what I'm saying is we've got to make sure we're all rowing in the same direction. So it's not a criticism of anyone. It's just that that ELOP money was meant for a specific purpose, and we've got to make sure that it's doing what it was intended to. I think with respect to the questions around literacy and around making sure that we're doing the same program, that's something

113that we will work with. Boys and Girls Club will strengthen that partnership that they've already begun as our new team really comes back with a plan for how we're moving forward on that priority. If you could please clarify, I believe I heard something about parents paying on a sliding scale. Did I hear that? For which aspect? I guess my understanding was that the... The LLP requires that they provide some sort of sliding scale depending on... If I don't qualify for my unduplicated population and I have to... I'm a full-paying parent, I have to pay for it, then there is supposed to be some allowance for a sliding scale. That's my understanding. So we don't charge anyone, and we've looked into this as well, just as a method to see if we could serve more kids.

114Because this is going to get a little technical, but from my understanding, and you may definitely know more than me, but we are tier one when it comes to ELOP, not tier two, so it's the higher funding amount. And we're not allowed to charge families. I would, you know, if we heard otherwise, we could certainly talk about that with you all to see what makes the most sense. You can talk into the microphone so the public who's listening online can hear. Sure. Sorry about that. So we are tier one, meaning we get the higher dollar amount. And I could be wrong, but like I said, it's my understanding that we aren't allowed to charge families. And that's possible because most of the districts I've worked in are tier two. If you could talk into the

115microphone as well, slide over, so he's not going to come back in and yell at you. So because you get the higher funding source, that's absolutely possible. It's honestly, if you go to look at the website, it's really murky and it takes a lot of emails and a lot of phone calls to try and figure it out. We have neighboring school districts that seem to match our population who are able to charge or maybe they provide it at a different location. So we can certainly look into it more in partnership with Dr. Sutter. Yeah, so we don't charge anyone right now. We also have connections to our regional reps So the state actually provides our region with a representative from the CDE who can advise us and can let us know like hey, this is

116what you can or can't do. They live and breathe this every day, and so they can help us as we're designing a program or augmenting a program to better meet the needs of students here. So I know several of them, and they're really terrific to work with. So they can also help the district in kind of navigating that. So I guess the only thing I wanted to clarify was that for the regular academic school year after, school program it's at no cost to the parents but for the summer camp program there is a cost which is highly competitive relative to other camps. Yeah, the camp we provide on site at Flowery for the summer, we are not charging families for. That is all ELOP funded. For the camps that are happening at Maxwell, we are

117charging families. But we've already given out $100,000 of free camp this summer. So, I mean, you have to qualify, et cetera. But we're also trying to make sure. We really just don't want to turn kids away because they can't afford it. I just want to follow up on that. So at least 20 years ago, the Boys and Girls Club actually charged all families on a sliding scale. And even the parents who were kind of the who were lowest on the sort of ladder. And the philosophy back then was that everybody had to have skin in the game, you know, and had to contribute just a little bit, even if it was just six dollars a month or whatever. And so it's just interesting that things have kind of changed over time. Yeah. I mean, I

118for one would like to see if there's a consensus to give direction to staff to figure out what the actual cost would be to eliminate that wait list for the, you know, after school program for the school year. Is that, I mean, is that something that everybody would? To come back to us. To come back to us and say, and have a conversation to say it's going to be X and this is what would absolutely eliminate the wait list so that zero. and everybody has the opportunity to participate and then reiterate there's got to be coordination on the instructional between the two. That's super key to what we're doing. I would support that. I definitely would just like to know, can we close the gap? Does our budget allow us to do that? I also

119think that we ought to look at the other goals of ELOP, which is are we providing Are there, what's the demand for before school care? Because I've heard this from other parents. We're one of the few districts that's not doing it. I know Napa does it. And it was an issue for me as a parent. So I just think we ought to look at the, there's a word for all the different periods of, you know, that the ELOP money was meant for, like intercession and blah, blah, blah. Are we doing all those things? I have no idea. I don't really know. Okay. So to your point around intercession, yes. So, and you pointed out earlier, there needs to be 30 days of intercession. And so 20 of those days are happening at summer school, right?

120So that's currently taking place at the moment. The other 10 days are happening during spring break, during winter break, and during those emergency days that you're seeing throughout the school day. And so actually this coming year, we're going to actually be having more intercessions than the 30 that we need. And that's really just because of the need of our families. so the summer school that our teachers are providing is being paid for by ELOP funds that you guys are managing how does that work no I'm confused with summer school needs Sure, no, I mean I was just gonna talk about summer school in general and kind of how it's broken down how it works so if you're looking at summer school, right is Technically when parents look at it. It might say 830 to 530

121right the school teachers there with the students from 830 to 1230 and Then we are taking those that want to go to Boys and Girls Club for the remainder of the day from 1230 to 530 And so I think that's where that piece comes into. I don't know if you want So with the ELOP dollars, we were delegated $125,000 for this summer, and that covers our time from the time that we get the kids until 530. And so that's all of our staffing, program supplies, snacks, music in place. And then it's my understanding the other portion of the ELOP dollars are running your summer school, the school day in the morning. We wouldn't know that, but that's our understanding. So it would be good to understand. I just thought that was the total ELOP funds,

122$901,000 with a couple of programs at Alvarado, but obviously it's more than that, right? So it would be nice to see an ELOP. Aces total break it down financially not tonight I would just like to clarify that 30 days whether it's intersession or summer school is a nine-hour day so it doesn't mean that the Boys and Girls Club using teachers for the first four hours or whatnot and then we're making up the rest of the five hours using the Boys and Girls Club so that and that's that's acceptable that's totally reasonable Some school districts actually, because not all children or students want to or need to go to summer school per se, the more traditional summer school where I'm with the teacher and I'm getting intervention, I'm getting math support and English support and whatnot.

123And so a lot of times the Boys and Girls Club is they're running a nine-hour day and we're augmenting by pulling out kids to be with academic teachers, teachers providing more academic intervention. So there's lots of ways to structure it. And the way you're doing it is perfectly acceptable. So just so I understand what you're saying. So you could actually have certificated teachers who are pulling out kids and doing almost like one-on-one tutoring? Is that what you're saying? Well, small group instruction. I wouldn't say one-on-one, but small group. Okay, great. Well, thank you for that. I think we're going to take a quick break. And then we're going to... Oh, sorry. Oh, sorry, sorry. The approval. Do we want to just do that now so we can take care of that? Yeah, so you know

124that we're going to vote on it. Yeah, we'll take a break after that. So this is, which one? Sorry, I'm in the wrong place. So 11.5, yeah. So 11.5, approval of the boys and girls of. Sonoma Valley aces and ELOP MOUs for 26-27. Do I have a motion for that? I move to approve the Boys and Girls Club of Sonoma Valley aces and ELOP MOU. Oh great. A second? I'll second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. We'll take a 15 minute break and thank you. Yep. Just when we need it. We're back to item 11.1 the approval of the 26-27 budget. Who's going to, you're going to lead off, right? Absolutely. So this is going to look very similar to the PowerPoint you saw on the 11th, but I've added slides at the end to

125provide more detailed information. And then I've added notes here and there just to provide more context for some of the data that my colleague presented. So if you go to the next page, again, you know what the budget adoption report is. It's due by July 1st of each year. We are just now getting legislative approval on the state's budget, so we don't still have a state budget. We're waiting to see how that's going to pan out. And then you know what the standard account code structure, the software that we're required to use, which is very hard to read, which is why I provided some comparative spreadsheets. So this is the general fund revenues. It kind of just shows you unrestricted, restricted. I added a note here that says you can tell by this pie chart

126that we're basic aid district because for that high a percentage over 81% to be LCFF and when the state says LCFF they mean your LCFF revenues which is all of your local property taxes and any state aid that the district is receiving And we do receive state aid, by the way, and I'll show that to you in a few minutes. So I just wanted to point out, typically, you don't see the LCFF being like 81%. You know, it can range depending on the level of state and local that a district receives or the federal piece in particular. But it's probably closer to like 70%. Again, depends on the district. So here's your general fund expenditures. I think these are pretty straightforward. I didn't add any context or notes because it's basically showing you your unrestricted,

127your restricted, and then your total combined. So you see that total expenditures, that $73.6 million. If someone says, what's your district budget? $73.6 million. So it's referring to what are the total expenditures, not the total revenues. So if someone wants to know what your total budget is, at least at budget adoption, it's $73.6. And you'll hear me round a lot. I mean, I'm going to round up to the nearest $100,000 or round down, so I'm not going to give all of the specific details to the dollar or to the penny. So then this is just kind of your unrestricted revenue, comparing it. And you can see the LCFF sources are going down by $1.4 million. And that's in large part because, and I put a note there, that we're only assuming RDA at about 75%.

128So when I back out that percentage, then you see our LCFF sources drop. That's the main reason why. And then here's your unrestricted revenues. And you can see the difference. This is really comparing estimated actuals to the budget. And I added a note here that says the significant amount of reductions in certificate and classified is due to the closure of Presswood and the related staffing reductions that the district did. So you can see some pretty significant reductions in certificate and classified salaries. However, you don't see that in employee benefits, and there's a reason why. It's not that driven costs or employee benefits didn't go down. But the projection we're making for health and welfare medical in particular under CalPERS We're assuming a 5% increase and so when we apply that 5% increase which is assuming

129up to a 10% increase that effective January 1st, so half the year then you see it actually shows an increase, but that's in large part because of your health and welfare. We have no way to predict exactly where those CalPERS rates are going to come in, but because of the way we're structured, we have to assume that we're going to cover a majority of that increase. Are we able to ask questions as she's presented? Please. Could you go back to the slide? So what's confusing about this slide is that you have estimated actuals. for a budget for next year or is this last year's budget? This is 20 and the slide should have been clearer. Estimate actuals for right now. This year, 25-26 versus the budget year which is 27. So we had lower expenditures.

130No, we had higher expenditures than we thought. Do you know, because what I noticed also was I did look at What was the estimate at the second interim? I looked at the estimated ending fund balance Which was projected to be a lot higher like in the ten million dollar range not the eight million dollar range Which is what what it ended at so I'm wondering if you could speak to what were the things that? What were the areas of expenditures that kind of inflated the cost? Yeah, I can speak to it. I mean, a lot of it was the raises you gave. So remember, you gave raises in April, May. So we budgeted those raises. Because what we wanted to do is we went through the budget as quickly as we could, the current year

131budget, while we were developing next year's budget, because we wanted to present you with, here's a better projected ending fund balance. Because that gives you a better idea of your beginning fund balance for next year. So it gives you a more realistic picture of how you're going to look in 26-27 versus not doing that and you thinking you had a higher ending fund balance. But really when we budgeted all the raises and we went through things like your legal fees, we went through things like utilities. I think I mentioned at the last meeting. Utilities were higher. $250,000 higher. So not insignificant. But outside of salaries, like I did the math with the salaries, what other increases? So you think legal was higher than anticipated? I know legal was. Utilities were. I forget what else in

132a few weeks, but we definitely went through other contracts. We went through materials and supplies, and we tried to adjust for what we saw as. significant variances we didn't pay attention to $100 variances or $50 variances we looked at the bigger ticket items but that's why it changed the biggest portion of course were the raises and don't forget the one time so you gave one time $1,000 bonuses and when I looked at how we could charge those $1,000 we charged the teacher ones off to that one student support professional development block grant But everybody else we charged to the unrestricted. So that's the majority of those salary changes. And then utilities and some other things. I can't remember if I looked at your property and liability insurance. I know I did. I can't remember off

133the top of my head whether we made a change. But we did look at all of the areas where we had concerns that we really needed to adjust the budget. Again, feel free to stop me as I'm going along. It doesn't bother me at all. Capital outlay, I think I talked to you about starting to put in a capital outlay budget for equipment replacement. I think equipment replacement is something I've spoken to Jason about, and that may be an item we might want to bring back to you. Like, do we have an adequate equipment replacement budget? That's what I consider operationalized in the budget. By that I mean it's not using just a one-time grant to like fix a problem right now, but really operationalizing it in that, look, if we need to replace X

134number of computers, if we don't want computers to be more than five years old, staff computers, student computers, it doesn't matter. Like computers in general, you really, they have a shelf life of about five years to work effectively. Then you say, okay, how many computers do we have to replace over five years? One year might be 100 computers one year might be 200 computers. It doesn't matter five years is the thing so we have to replace 500 computers in five years the cost of that is this and then divide that by five and every year We have to spend this amount some years. We might spend more some years We might spend less and setting it basically a plan to where we're creating an account to where we can put money in every year So

135you don't have balloon payments or what I call or consider balloon payments So this is like a little bit of a start for that copiers is one of them. I mean if we can avoid paying debt service Why wouldn't we I mean, it's not like we have a cash flow problem necessarily so And then I talked about the 5% increase in medical So this was the contribution to other programs. So I just added a little bit of detail on the restricted total, that $150,000. So up in the top right-hand corner, you can see that breaks down. The majority of that is BITSA. And so you have a small program called, well, we've called it BITSA as an old term, Beginning Teacher Support. Now it's called Induction Program. and so we provide teachers with the opportunity

136to participate which means we pay their fees generally we pay their fees and maybe some sub or mentor time so that's the majority of it there's a little bit of Sonoma plein air and there's a tiny bit for elementary co-curricular so that that's how the $150,000 broke down I mean generally I think the district's doing a really good job Not having a lot of contributions to miscellaneous categorical programs. So that's that's a really positive thing So this is just a summary of your unrestricted fund balance or your reserves if you will and you can see again estimated actuals is this year Budget is budget year 527 and you can see you're improving it by you know a million dollars and That's in large part because of the hard decisions that you guys have made Can

137I just ask, I'm sorry on that, contributions. What was our special education budget the previous year? Do you have the comparison or not? You know, I haven't looked at that. Okay, no worries. I just wanted to know. Yeah, I mean, but it is a, it is. As Troy knows, we've had some conversation about it. And it is, I mean, the contribution that you're making is relatively significant given your size. And it does, I think, warrant taking a deeper dive. Every district is different. The needs are different. Your students, I mean. You know, it just depends on what's happening in this school district. But we should probably, and like I said, we've had conversations. I think Troy's doing a good job trying to manage. It has been in the $12 million range, so it's been kind

138of steady for the last few years. I mean, it was rising significantly. But if you think about $12 million. Like, can you, I, that baseline, don't we have additional contributions on top of the 12? That's the contribution. No, no, that's the, sorry, okay, that's the contribution. That's the total contribution, and of that 12 million, 12.2 is special education. I think it's pretty, it's been flat for the last three years around that. because there's not been a lot of, we've had That's like, you know think about it includes NP NPS and we've you know, we've kind of stabilized on that We've reduced a little but then a few come in and we're you know, so well the other big area honestly Placements the Sonoma County Office of Education so they used to charge about 40,000 per

139student. It's up to 175 I think so Yeah, I thought that might catch your attention. So probably six years ago, maybe seven years ago, if we had a student placed in a SCO program. So SCO operates, whether it's infant or preschool, ages 5 through 22, or the transition program, which is really your 18 to 22-year-old. And I think we have kids participating in that for SCO. Correct. The adult transition only. Right. So they used to charge roughly 40, 45,000 per placement per student. Now it's 175. So it has dramatically increased in large part because districts have pulled programs back. So the more their rates went up, the more districts pulled back, the more the rates went up because they lost economies of scale. So that's in part a struggle that, you know what I mean?

140Like we can't control how many students are in the transition program. Are we even large enough to offer a transition program? Probably not. So that also can drive our contribution, and their costs going up by more than double has had an impact for sure. I would say that I look back at the placements through SCO, and our costs in 25-26 came down dramatically. that was one area I was just starting to dive into and I actually think when we close the books will show savings there because I think it was budgeted at prior year levels and not necessarily adjusted for current year current year being 25 26 so but we did make adjustments for 26 27 other questions Other funds, the good news is they're all positive. I've got a slide on Fund 13, so

141we'll go into a little bit deeper dive on the cafeteria fund when we get to that slide. But all of your funds look like they're in a positive situation, which is what we need to see. The multi-projections show that you're in a solid fiscal position. I would say I did these with... not a lot of time and experience to really vet all of the Adjustments and the types of assumptions that might be more unique to Sonoma Valley I did assume 5% increases in health and welfare Year over year so we did budget that in I did not assume any further reductions and staffing So we built in basic things like the Cola as per the school services of California dartboard We did factor in CPI or the inflation of roughly 2%. So we're assuming our

142costs are going to go up by roughly 2%. So we did look at some of that stuff. One of the other things we did that actually further on we'll need to contemplate is We had educator effectiveness that went away you had to staff people charged to that grant We had to spend that by June 30th this year So we moved those over because they were not part of the reduction So we moved them over to the student support professional development block grant because it's a perfect perfect Match for that particular grant that will be something longer term that will not be sustainable. Is it a common practice not to include some sort of assumption on certificated and classified salary increases outside of step and column or in addition to? I've never seen that used. I've

143never used it as a practice because it creates an assumption, right? And so I don't want to be presumptuous about what the board might have on the table or what the union might expect. So typically I do not. We usually put in things that... So for example, when I worked at districts that were growing, so Sammerfell, we grew like 1,000 students over eight years. So I would build in four additional staff positions because I knew we were growing about 100 students a year and we were going to add. So in the other adjustment, I would build in growth or additional costs for growth because if you're going to show growth and revenues, you've got to show your costs too. So in this model, that's great to know, in this model, we're the two assumptions that...

144let me just make sure i understand there is no growth in employee headcount here correct this is assuming our staff is the same yeah so i assumed um declines in enrollment but i did not assume any declines in staffing okay that's great to know there's i and then I forgot the second one. I can go back to it. But that's really helpful. Yes. I did not put in any assumptions for salary increases because I have no idea what that would look like. And again, I don't want to be presumptuous. And I did not assume any reductions or increases. Okay. Great. So what I'm kind of confused about then is Well, it would be helpful in the future if we could talk about what kind of formatting we need and what information. Like, it would be

145nice to have the assumptions on the same page as the budget. But when you go to the criteria and standards review, what was puzzling to me is that, you know, you do report out the kind of three-year assumptions for classified, certificated management. And, like, so for ‑‑ it looks like ‑‑ If you compare the current year, which is 25-26, to budget year, the three subsequent fiscal years, it looks like we're increasing classified staff by 40 FTE because it goes from 145 to 185. So I'm just wondering, like, and then it looks like we're going from 193 certificated staff to 189. So I'm just wondering, how did those assumptions play into that data? They didn't play into the multi- assumptions and so I'd have to look at the criterion stage 245 to 247 is kind of

146where all of that data lie you're looking at the back toward the standards and criteria yeah no the criterion standards but it's you're talking about on like page 26 and 27 Oh, yeah, I guess it starts on 25. That's the cost analysis of district labor agreement, certificated employees, non-management. And it gives you the FTE positions for all four years. So it's not like a form where you plug in that number and then it spits out in the SACS report the salaries based on that FTE? I think that... So I'm looking at the teachers and you can see how it doesn't change it goes from 193 to 189. Yeah so that's that's steady but the thing that caught my eye was classified. And it could literally be a typo on my part. Okay. Honestly I don't

147I'd have to look back at my more detail. Okay. But there's no building in of additional of additional FTE in the multi-year projections. Okay. It would be good for us to talk about we need better user-friendly, like, reports that has everything in one place because I'm assuming, I've been looking at the SACS report for like a decade or more. It's not easy. It's so not easy. And so having, like, bottom lines about what's our assumption around enrollment, all these different employee assumptions. assumptions about you know how we're gonna recognize revenue on the RDA so I mean all that stuff should just be somewhere I would tell you that normally in my narrative I provide way more detail assumptions for the multi projections and unfortunately I just ran out of time so it's not this is

148not yeah this is we totally understand we're just we just need to get to we've had so many different people touching this that there's so many different formats standards should be that there are more detailed assumptions in the narrative that kind of tie in. Like here's all of our revenue assumptions. Here's all of our expenditure assumptions. So it's a fair and absolutely fair observation that there wasn't a level of detail that I would have wanted to put in, frankly. So it should be there in the future. Trustee Ching, and this has come up from you and other members before. Have you seen reports? models that you of what you are describing uh you know maybe i'm i you know like i have a whole collection of other districts so i like one that comes to

149mind is maybe clovis but i'd have to go back and look at theirs you know so i don't know i mean you probably have recommendations i could show you as much as i've done in other districts that give a way greater level of detail so that's typically what i do again you know we had There was almost when I got here on May 5th There was almost nothing done on the budget So literally we analyzed the current year budget in the two to three days a week we had and then developed the entire budget reconciled position control based on all of the changes closing press would moving everybody around because those positions didn't go away or those people didn't go away they moved to other places so it was a complicated budget process I would

150say but it is an absolute fair observation that there wasn't detailed enough assumptions for the multiple projections so I would completely respect that can I can I just ask two other multi-year projection questions so So in the criterion standards, there were two things that we did not meet. One was, I think, other state revenue and then other, I'm sorry, other state revenue, books and supplies, and other operating expenditures. So what page of the criterion standards? Yeah, so I. At the bottom. So page, it looks like it's page 8-9. on the form 01CS. So just so this these questions are in the context of what historically this district has had a problem of basically expenditures growing at a faster rate than revenues. That has been a consistent reason of why we've been deficit spending for all

151these previous years like the last 10 years. So what I just want to get a handle on is are we are we realistically or have reasonable assumptions around our expense on the expenditure side. So one of the things that's interesting to me is that if you look at the multi-year, we're assuming in this current budget year, a 25 percent reduction in books and supplies. Is that reasonable? I don't know. We're assuming in the next year, a 2.56 percent reduction. I mean, I have, I can't say like, you know, historically, it's a lot less than we went that we spent in 2025. We spent like 3 million apparently. And, and then I'm going to just lump this in other, other expenditures, which has always been a problem for this district. So. So we're going from budget

152year, what I'm concerned about is this current budget year we're budgeting about $15 million for other expenditures. But then we're going to about $13 million projecting for the subsequent year. I just have seen our spending habits. So it's being reduced by 14%. Why? Okay, that's good. I mean and you'll see that only happens in year one. Yeah, it does only happen in year one. Just to clarify it just all of these variances are doing is they're looking at our trends and they're saying is the data outside of our trend our norm and then if it is that we have to explain why. This is very typical. I have seen this in almost every single district I've ever worked out in this year because what happens is we close the books over the summer and then

153in September we budget carryover. And in particular, we budget it on the categorical side or on the restricted side. And most of those budgeted carryover expenditures are, or should be, one time in nature. So like special ed doesn't have any carryover because we make such a big contribution, we only put in based on what we need based on how we've closed. So revenues plus or minus expense equals the contribution we make. So when it comes to the first year, 25-26, and then next year, 26-27, we're not budgeting any of that carryover that exists this year. We will budget that in September when we close the books. So it's very typical to see both materials and supplies and other operating expenditures drop. from the first year, the current year, to the budget year because of those

154categorical expenditures that are generally one time in nature. So we went through, we budgeted all of the categoricals and balanced the resources with the exception of 1.7 million. And that's really the answer to the question. Can you just give examples of what kind of categoricals you have carry over? Let's take lottery. 6,300 resource. Prop 20 lottery. It's restricted for this. We fully budget. So if we have, I'm just going to use some round numbers. These are hypothetical because I don't have a lottery budget memorized. I will be honest with you. If we have $500,000 in carryover and we're receiving $200,000 in revenue. We have 700,000 budget. I'm talking 25, 26, right? But next year, I'm only going to budget 200,000 because that's our revenue. I'm not going to budget the carryover because it's already budgeted

155this year. So I'm reducing that budget down by $500,000, and we're not giving the department or the school sites the opportunity to spend it until we know what this year's carryover is going to be. So when we close, if we have $300,000 worth of carryover, then we will budget that carryover in September. That would come out of a $4,000, which is the materials and supplies. So that's an example of one of the categoricals. ELOP is another perfect example. Quite often we're budgeting the full resource, but we're not studying the full resource So most districts did not fully implement ELOP in the first year because we got it like in April And so most districts were spending down that ELOP over less because we got that, I think, in 23, 24, 23. Is that like would

156be like the same thing with like ESSER funds? We weren't spending all of that like in the year that we received it because it was for like five years. Is that why you get that? Yeah. Educator effectiveness is another perfect example. We budget 100% in travel and conferences, but we're not spending 100%. So when we do the adopted budget, we're taking that out and then we put it back in the budget when we know what our carryover is for that particular resource. So it's very, very normal to see this type of variance in year one. Now, if you saw me dropping it in year two and year three by big percentages, you would absolutely have a right to say, well, what is happening? Does that answer your question? Yeah. Well, it's a really good question,

157but it is actually pretty typical to see at this point in the year. So the other variance that caught my eye was, so in this budget year, our contributions are at $14 million, which is kind of what they were last year. But then we see, you know, increases of, you know, 7% in the second year and, you know, marginal increase in the third year. So are we sure that this year it's not going to go over $14 million? I mean, these are simply projections based on a certain set of assumptions. Is it going to change? Absolutely. Because the data changes every day. And we did the best we could. So what we did is we said, okay, for our categorical funds or for a restricted side of the budget, here's our revenues. We start with

158our revenues. This is what we think our revenues are going to be. Backing out one-time revenues. For example, any one-time revenues we had associated with, I don't remember if UPK was a category, but there are some federal and state programs that we actually, their deferred revenue, they don't allow carryover. So we have to back out any carryover in revenues that are not going to continue on. So we do all our revenues first. This is how I do multi-projections. I start with our revenues. And then I take the salaries that are ongoing, and we assume step and column costs. And then if we know of any other adjustments, then we'll put those in, which we did not in this particular case. And then we look at what are our one-time expenditures that we can back out.

159Again, looking at those carryovers of lottery or carryovers of UPK that are not going to continue or whatever it is. And then we apply inflation. Let's assume a 2% inflation rate that costs are going to go up. And then when I get to the bottom, it's like, oh, we've got to increase our contribution by this amount of money in order to address all of those things. And so that's why the contribution went up more, if I recall correctly, in 27-28 than it did in 28-29. But that's literally my approach. Here's our revenues, adjusting for any prior year carryover that we need to back out, any one-time revenues we got this year that we're not going to get next year. And a good example of that would be the... students support and professional development block grant.

160We budgeted all that revenue this year. We're not going to get it next year. So we have five years to spend it, but we budgeted 100% of the revenues this year, so I have to back that out next year. And then we apply assumptions for the expenditure accounts. A lot of times I'm going to increase a little bit higher. in the 5,000 services because I know special education costs, whether it's non-public school placements or Sonoma County Office of Education placements or other types of special education contracts and non-public agencies, like if we have to contract for speech and language services or occupational therapy or physical therapy or adaptive PE contracts, I mean, nursing contracts. There's all sorts of special education contracts that we might have to, I assume, slightly bigger increases for those. And then

161that drives the increase that we need to see in the special education world. That's very helpful. Thank you. Shall I continue with the PowerPoint, or are there any other questions? Okay. Okay, so here's where I'm trying to get a little bit, give you a little bit more information on the reserves, because I know there was a whole question about the other commitments, the $1 million. So this is 2526, or 202526. And this is just... This is the components or the reserves and components of any fund balance that we're obligated to report certain things as certain types of components so Unspendable is where revolving cash lives. There's about ten thousand and then we have restricted So we had about a five billion dollar any fund balance and restricted that's for 2526 and by the way, that's

162highly unusual I usually have very little money in restricted because I'm budgeting it all. We can talk about that philosophy in a little bit. Other commitments is the resolution that you all passed committing a million dollars. And I've got some quotes on what the resolution says in a minute. That's under other commitments for 25-26. And then assigned slash other assignments. is where I placed and where it's appropriate to place any additional reserve for economic uncertainty, which in this case, my understanding is you have a target of 15%. I was able to add 2.5% and leave $7,800 available over all the reserves. And then there's your state required reserve of 3%. So you have a total ending fund balance of $5.2 million, and that's how it breaks down. So if you go on to the next

163slide, I just want to compare. Oh, I'm sorry, go back one more time. Can I just ask you a question on that slide? So we've got restricted funds at $5 million and other commitments, and that adds up to $6 million and $31,000. And so then the 2.5% would be of the reserve for economic uncertainty. Is that two and a half? What's the? So I put the percentage, the total reserve for economic uncertainty. Yeah, two and a half. And then the 3%. Including the 2.5% and the million. So including the 3%, the 2.5%, and the million breaks down to about 6.81%. Okay. So how do we – what numbers make up the 5,190,000 there? That's your restricted. So that is things like ELOP and lottery that we did not budget the whole resource. Okay. It's sitting

164in the – those are grants that come with strings attached. And I say it's highly unusual because – I have a different philosophy. I believe that it's important for various reasons. to budget an entire grant. So if I have lottery, I'll stick with my example, right? I have $500,000 in carryover. I'm getting $200,000 in revenue. I should be budgeting $700,000. So I have a zero ending fund balance. Why does that matter? It matters for a few reasons. Number one, my colleagues at Ed Services, if I don't budget it, they don't know they have it. Because it sits at the general ledger level in the ending fund balance, the restricted ending. And it's not accessible to anyone to actually plan, spend, understand they have. I went to one district one time when I first got there,

165and I said, when I closed the books, I said, you left $300,000. I went to the ed services gal, and I had no idea because I was new there. And I said. You had $300,000 you didn't spend in Title I. You're supposed to spend 85% whatever. And she nearly lost her stuff. And so I listened. And it's because she had no idea she had it. Because somebody wasn't budgeting the resources adequately. So it's important to budget what we have available to spend categorically so that the programmatic people, the program people, actually know this is what I have available to support these important programs. The second reason is, unless it's a multi-year grant like Educator Effectiveness, where we have five or six years to spend it and we want to plan that out and we want

166to map it out right, Title I funds that we receive this year are intended for students this year. They're intended to support students that we have in our district right now. And so generally speaking, if we're getting money in to support students, we want to be planning and using that money if we can, thoughtfully, you know, for this year. The third reason is it tells us if we did spend all our money, what our true reserve is, right? Because it's a percentage of your total expenditures. So if you've under budgeted your expenditures by $5 million. You're understating what your actual 3% is if you spent all that money. So there's a whole philosophy around it. It's not right or wrong. I'm just letting you know like there's... If we don't spend that money and it

167sits there, then the calculation of the reserve number is affected. Yeah. Can I go ahead? You can ask first. So two clarifications then. So you're talking about restricted. And normally when we're focused on the ending fund balance percentage, it's the unrestricted, correct? So two separate things, right? Yes, because the restricted you don't have a lot of control over. Because it has strings attached. So the state or feds tell you this is how you spend it. All right. And then my other question was, we had an explanation last week in terms of our restricted end fund balance dropping by roughly $3 million. And down to $1.7. So is that tied into what you're talking about right now? Or is that looking backwards in terms of, I think, one of the... Thoughts behind the driver there was

168that it was our community schools grant was was being spent down and that's possible I need to Have more time to dive into the details But basically as I went through and developed your budget if there was an amount of money here, I'm budgeting that and so You know, I don't have off the top of my head what the full $5 million was, which grants that it was tied to. It was tied to multiple. It's not just like one grant. And we can come back and share some of that with you for sure. Yeah, I mean, I think if we could get an explanation of the $5 million of restricted that we haven't spent and if we should have spent it. Well, I think what will happen is when we close the books, then in

169September we'll come back and tell you what your real restricted carryover is. Okay. And we can provide you with a breakdown by resource, like here's all the programs with their carryover. So we're happy to do that. But just to understand the numbers that you were just presenting, so we had an unrestricted balance of $5.19 million. That's what we're starting with. We had an unrestricted. I'm sorry, we had an unrestricted ending balance of $5.1 million and a restricted ending fund balance of another $5 million, which is a total of $10.22 million, right? So you add up the $5.19 with the $5.031, is that correct? And that would be the total. Yes, so I'm backing out the restricted. So that would be 13.8%. But in reality, if we were, I mean, I don't know what these categories

170of restricted monies are. So if we were actually spending them, if they were being required to spend, you know. If we were actually budgeting them. Yeah, then actually we were under-reserving what our state requirement is. Does that make sense to everyone? Yeah, so. planning on spending the the difference between the five million thirty one and then the one point seven five two again I can't okay yeah there's you know there's like 80 reason yeah yes okay I get it anyway that's something that we need to kind of clarify yeah we can come back in September and give you more detail around that for sure but go to the next slide then we'll look at 2627 So this is where, again, and this comes down to the whole committed versus other assignments, and we're going to

171talk a little bit more about that. So when I was doing the budget, you can see the restricted. And, again, this is how when I went through every single resource and we balanced it for the most part, we were left with $1.7 million. And I'm not even sure exactly which resource that is. We'd have to go in for multiple resources, that is. You can see we're able to actually put in 4% for the additional reserve for economic uncertainty. And we moved the committed down to other assignments because it ends up with a question. So it's going to end up with a question for the board. Because it depends on what you guys want to have. And if you want it to be under committed, you probably have to redo your resolution to provide more detail

172and information. And we're going to talk about that in a minute. So I moved it because when I read it, it said A, B, C, and D and reserve for economic uncertainty, which belongs under other assignments, not under other commitments. And like I said, we're going to take a deeper dive into that in a minute. And then you've got your state required 3%, and then your available, which is over all of those things. And the total of that is $8.3 million. That's your total ending fund balance. So let's go on to the next. I'm sorry, go back one more time. Sorry. So that means you now have reserved for economic uncertainty if you include the billion dollars at eight point three five So you've you've increased your overall by one point five four Just I

173wanted to like give you the numbers if in fact the million dollars is all for reserved for economic uncertainty So then here's the restricted and we just talked about this. So this is gonna sound redundant that federal programs Federal programs and some state programs do not allow any undefunded balance. So all of the federal programs, they're called deferred revenue. So if we have a grant of $100,000 and we receive $100,000 and we only spend $75,000, I can only recognize $75,000 in revenue. And the remaining $25,000, I move to deferred revenue. I defer that revenue and we budget it the following year. All of your federal programs. And some state programs also follow that guideline. So they literally do not allow it to be an ending fund balance. So you fully budget revenues, you fully budget

174expenditures, your ending fund balance is zero. And if you don't spend it all, you defer what you've received. State programs most allow carryover, ending fund balance carryover, and are intended to support students in this grant year. So like ACES. ACES is a grant that's actually use it or lose it. So it's intended for this year's students. If we get $1 million in and we only spend $800,000, we give $200,000 back. I don't think we have that as a problem here, but just for you to know. There are these grants where they are use it or lose it. ELOP is not one of those. ELOP, on the other hand, does allow carryover. But again, they're intended, for the most part, to be supporting the students in the year in which you're using them or you're receiving

175them. knowing that there's some planning and like hey we've got summer school happening in July so we want to make sure we have adequate carryover to do summer school for ELOP so you know I say that in that you know sometimes you have to look at it over an 18 month period but you don't want to be holding a bunch of money back for whatever reason There are exceptions, which is the multi-year grants. So like Educator Effectiveness is a perfect example. It was intended to be used over five or six years, and they wanted districts to come up with a plan, and so here's your $500,000, spend $100,000 every year supporting teacher development and growth, right? And so there are exceptions, and the Student Support and Professional Development Block Grant is one of those. You

176have four or five years to spend it. And so it's good to be thoughtful and have a plan, like this is how we're going to roll it out. And this is where we're typically working with ed services or student services, depending on who's in charge of the grant, to say, okay, what's the plan for these funds? Quite often we'll use an object, $43.99 or $50.99, where we do an unallocated. So revenues are this. All of our expenditures that we're planning on are this, plus this unallocated means our ending fund balance is zero, but we track that unallocated. That's one strategy. Most local grants have greater flexibility and so you know what I mean? Some are reimbursement grants but we have to file quarterly reports like CareerTech Ed, CTIG. You know we're having to file reports

177right now like this is what we spent, here's our matching funds, etc. So some of them are considered what we consider reimbursement grants. That just kind of quantifies restricted in general kind of how federal, state, and various local grants work. So here's the committed versus other assignments. So I did some research on this because most districts don't use committed, frankly, and I wanted to have a greater understanding. And so I downloaded some data and talked to the county office. So committed fund balance, the limitations are self-imposed by the LEA through a formal action, which you did through a resolution. That totally works. constraints can be modified or eliminated only through the same process by which they were so you'd have to literally approve or adopt another resolution changing like if you wanted it to be

178800,000 instead of a million or 1.2 million instead of a million you have to change it by resolution typically however they're used through they're used for stabilization stabilization arrangements which are more formal arrangements than like a reserve for economic uncertainty And the level of constraint must meet the criteria to be reported as committed and the circumstances must be specific and non-routine. And so when I read the resolution, there wasn't that level of specificity and some of it seemed pretty routine. Should identify and by specificity means should identify and describe in sufficient detail the circumstances in which the funds can be used. Like at what point, if you set aside this million dollars for these various things, how do we decide when we're going to use it for that thing? So, and then I put also

179here, no minimum fund balance policies do not meet the criteria for committed. And then I also gave you, here's what the current resolution states. I'm not quoting the whole resolution. That's why I have my dot, dot, dot there. Sonoma Valley Unified School District hereby commits a million dollars of the general fund and balance as of October 9th 2025 for future obligations educational programs facilities technology and reserve for economic uncertainties there was no and reserve but so I just quoted it as it was and I took out the section I didn't do the whole thing you guys have seen the resolution so that's what your resolution states if you wanted to remain in committed You probably have to have a much more formal process by how the funds can be used, what's the process for that,

180et cetera. Otherwise, it's perfectly acceptable to put it in other assignments. But that's why I moved it there, because in my mind, it fell under that category more than committed. So now I'll open it up to questions. What does that mean, minimum fund balance policies? do not meet the criteria to be reported as committed. What does that mean? So a lot of districts have policies that say we want to have 15% reserves. So by board policy, they establish that we're going to have this level of reserve. That does not meet the criteria for committed. Having a board policy that establishes that as your target or as your minimum would not qualify for committed. So you mean you can't set aside any committed funds towards whatever your policy is? You can do it under other assigned.

181So it's versus committed versus other assignments. There's like a clear distinction. I'm not sure I'm getting what the clear distinction is. Yeah, what I remember was that we, I mean, please correct me if I'm wrong, I thought we committed that money because we wanted it to be used for some kind of economic shock, right, that we didn't have control over. But it could not be used for routine deficit spending. Funny way to say it. I mean, that's what a lot of districts do, but they put it under other assigned. It's still an assignment. It pulls it out of the available, right? If you go back a slide or two, please. Thank you. Right there. So see how there's that available slash unappropriated? Second, third. Is that where I would go? No, no, no. If you

182didn't have it under other assigned, let's say I took that million dollars out. you're available unappropriated would go up $1 million. You'd be $1,420,000. So you're setting it aside, whether it's in other commitments or other assignments. It's still a formal, the board has taken action to set it aside, but you can do it less formally. You don't have to do that through resolution. You can do it through the budget process. Or by board policy. So what's the resolution of this? The resolution is for us to pass another resolution that undoes the first resolution? I think it's to receive direction because if you really want it to be under committed, then yes, you probably have to adopt a new resolution. If you want it to be as it is in the resolution, which is... Slash reserved

183for economic uncertainty then I think leaving and under other assignments is is Legally acceptable so you can do nothing and leave it under other assignments if you want it under other commitments Then you probably would have to take a little bit more formal action to say Here's the process by which we can spend it on those things You just have a higher level of specificity. So do you know what other districts who have committed funds like this for a specific purpose is basically what you're saying. You have to be very specific about you can use this only for buying math books or something. It's really intended for stabilization agreements. or stabilization, which are very foreign. And we can bring you more information if you have information. Yeah, I think we should just kind of let

184Jason kind of look into this and make a recommendation. And then, you know, working in conjunction with you, and then we can kind of revisit this, because I don't think we're going to resolve anything on it tonight. And I just want to explain why I moved it. Yeah, great. So let's, if everybody's okay with that, I think that's the way we should go. So we'll move on to the next one. Thank you. Okay, Cafeteria Fund 13. So I wanted to just provide some context for this particular fund. We're obligated to account for the USDA program, the National Food Service Program, and the Cafeteria Fund. You can also operate it as... Oh my gosh, my brain's going blank. As an enterprise fund, 61, but that's a whole separate conversation. You don't want to go there. But

185fund 13 is where we account for it. So you can see federal about $1.2 billion. I think this year we have budget of $1.23. State is almost equal to federal and that's the universal meals piece because it's continuing for next year I actually think these revenues could go up because we're hoping for an increase in the state universal meals reimbursement rate And then local is generally interest earnings. It could be some You know a lot of the high schools offer a la carte items and kids pay for it It would be some a la carte, but mostly interest And then you can see your total expenditures, 2.5, that's mostly in staff and food. So you're buying food product to do whatever. I don't know the food service program enough to know if we're contracting out

186for vending services or if we're cooking our own meals. But that's generally what your expenditures are. And then indirect cost is $77,000. Now, you are not charging indirect cost in the current year. That's not a best practice. In order, you know, good cost accounting basically tells us to know what the cost of operating the program is, you charge indirect. And food service has its own indirect rate that we can charge against. It's basically a way for the cafeteria to find to say, okay, we have to, HR has to hire people and business has to pay all the bills and, you know, there's other, maintenance has to maintain the ovens and maintain the stuff. And that's really what indirect cost is in a nutshell. You can see the projected beginning fund balance was $222,000. The projected

187ending fund balance is $52,000. And that's generally because we gave raises. I think that there's probably still quite a bit of analysis to do to see how, with the closure of Presswood, how all the staffing is going to kind of fully. fully vet with vacancies, et cetera. But that's generally how the program works right now, kind of in a nutshell, so summary. And just as a note, ending fund balance is allowed with the cafeteria fund. It caps out at six months' worth of operating expenditures. So if our total budget is $2.6 million, let's call it $2.4 million, which means we're spending $2 million a month roughly, right? So our ending fund balance, six times $2 million would be, you know, that's what our ending fund balance would be capped at, six months' worth of expenses.

188We're not even close to that, so we don't have to worry about that. But that's generally your cafeteria fund. And if you have specific questions, I'm happy to answer. Well, I have specific questions about the cafeteria fund. I mean, I thought that in the summary, I'm just see if I can pull it up. Isn't that cafeteria fund running a deficit, right? I mean, we have we're in a negative. So you can see the total revenues are 2.4 and the total expense is 2.6. So you're right. It is running a deficit. So my understanding was this was a self-funded operation of the district that always broke even. Thank you. Always broke even. Operated in the black. Yeah, operated in the black. So what's happening? Are we not doing it? Do you have any thoughts about what's

189happening? This seems unusual, but... I think that we need to do more information or do a deeper dive in the revenue piece. The revenues could be understated. I had asked Adam for some revenue projections. I don't think he was able to get those in time for me to finish the budget. So I kind of did my own revenue projections. So I think that it's probably a combination of, and again, I think the universal meals rate is going to go up anyway. So as we're closing, we'll have a better idea of what our actual revenues are for this year, and we can project out next year more accurately once we're getting into July. But we also gave raises, and so that's probably a piece of it. And inflation is going up, and so the cost of

190food and... And also the 5% medical. So we applied that same assumption that medical is going up 5%. So all of those costs hit this budget as well. So I think that it's probably a pretty conservative budget. So my guess is that deficit will come down. Can I veer into my question for the consent calendar or not? Because it's related to this conversation. Okay, never mind. I don't have to make a motion about it, but I'd be curious if, you know, we have two memorandum, or we have two agreements with two charter schools for providing food services, and apparently there's going to be no fiscal impact to the district. But I'm just wondering, with this running a current deficit for Fund 13, should we be alarmed about this or concerned about it? I mean, I

191don't know. I mean, we... I think that there's more work to be done to really validate. We could request that you look into Fund 13 as it relates to that specific question on the deficit and come back to us and kind of figure it out. Yes, absolutely. I mean, yes, it's concerning that there's deficit spending. Absolutely. The question is, you know... Is there wiggle room in what we budgeted, both from, we did, like I said, there was a lot of shifting sand when it came to positions, and there still may be some vacancies that could have, should have, would have been closed based on the school closure that we need to do more analysis on. So my guess is that this is kind of a worst-case scenario, but that would just be my guess. Okay.

192Okay, so this is an action item, right? No, we're still working. Oh, sorry. Is that the last slide? Oh, the last one. Is that the last one? Yeah. Oh, no, there's an equipment. Yes, so there was a question about the equipment lease purchase agreement, which is with Webster Public Finance Corp. This came on my radar very, very late when it was pretty much done with the budget. I have done some research into it and one of the things I realized is the first payments don't come due until 27-28 so it doesn't impact 26-27 anyway, so I'm just giving you some high-level summary detail of what that purchase agreement is so It's for various improvements and new equipment in support of the solar PV and HVAC at various schools and other equipment I didn't list it

193all out here the first payment Comes July 1st 27 and it's every July and January. So there's two payments a year The final payment is in July 1st of 41, so it's about a 14-year debt service, and the last payment is about $108,000. So I would say next steps are we need to contemplate this debt service for sure for 27-28. We will include it in first interim, but we also need to analyze the utility savings because... the debt service is going to be offset, at least in part, by the savings and the utility budget. So I need to have a better understanding of what that's going to look like. I'll probably reach out to, oh, I can't think of their name off the top of my head. Ashley. Ashley. Ashley Lowe. I'm trying to say

194climate tech, but that's not right. Climate tech. I knew it was something tech. I'll probably reach out to Climatech just to set up a meeting and understand their analysis to see what those utility savings they're estimating to be. Because we don't want to put the debt in without putting in the savings to really understand the impact on the budget. And then in addition to that, I talked to Jason. I mean, we really should try to look at are there other options, possible funding options, like capital facilities funds that we can use to support some of this debt. I don't know if there are or aren't, but I think it warrants taking a look at. So as a follow-up to that, so is the debt service for 27 and 28 already incorporated into the multi-year projection?

195It is not. No. Okay. So it's not. Or the savings and utilities. Yeah. Okay. So my request is. I would love to have the district provide the actual payment schedule and the terms of the loan because that was not filled in in the final agreement. So we didn't receive that because it had to be inked anyway. So it would be nice to see what that is. I don't know what the interest rate is, so I'd like to just see that. It's part of the terms of the agreement. Yeah, I pulled it. I analyzed the exhibit when I left. We have that. The other question on the solar initiative is that we need to look into hiring a vendor to do annual monthly maintenance on the panels to make sure that we're maintaining them correctly. Per

196the manufacturer's specifications, we're cleaning them at the correct intervals. Yeah, we should look into that because my understanding is we are doing some of that. My understanding is we already have a cleaning schedule. Right, but I'm saying maintenance, repairs, etc., things like that. So that's definitely something that we've got to, you know, we're spending a decent amount of money on this stuff, so we need to maintain it correctly. so that would be the idea they should be cleaned twice a year and hopefully somebody's monitoring the inverters because yeah and we now with the new inverters we should it's all very easy to monitor apparently so yeah okay so that's the budget in a nutshell um if there's any other questions i'm happy to try to answer I have one more question which has to do

197with the narrative memo that was included as part of the budget. So in the last paragraph on page one, it says currently the MYP assume flat and continued enrollment of, and then it has a number 147. So that's a typo. I don't know what that is. And then it says it goes on to say that lower COLA creates ongoing deficit spending in the budget year and subsequent fiscal years. I wasn't sure, like, where is that actually showing up? I didn't see it. Yeah, I think it's just an error. Okay. And then also, if you could clarify, if you could just clarify, the narrative also states the projected in lieu tax transfer for the new charter is $2.2 million, but I think in the table it says $2.4. Which one is correct in the budget table?

198It's whatever is in the table. Okay. The table is correct. I think it's $2.3, but, you know, are you rounding or, you know, I might be rounding down, you might be rounding up, but yes. My memory is it's about $2.3. Okay. I move to approve the proposed budget for 2026-27. I'll second. All in favor? Aye. Yeah, please. And thank you very much, Chris. Yeah, let's go 10.8 and then we'll have a break. Unless you got your questions answered. Yeah, I think I did. Yeah, we have to approve it. Okay, so do I have a motion on 10.8? But should we give direction to staff like she's going to investigate the cafeteria fund? Okay, so all right. I'll approve item 10.8, the food service MOU. I'll second. All in favor? Aye. Take a 10-minute break. Five-minute

199break. Five-minute break. six and a half minutes all right fine six and a half for the 26-27 school year okay thank you um trustees i know that there's been a lot of conversation um in the past few months about seal and about its place in the district and moving forward with it i have been working with uh the new cabinet coming in and particularly with dr sanchez mosley about developing our plan and i just want to be very clear that that continuing with SEAL next year is part of our major plan. There's a couple of reasons why that is. One is that this program represents strategies that our kids need. The kids that are in our class, they need these strategies. And I just visited the summer school having it flowery yesterday and looking at

200when teachers are given time and feeling more comfortable with it, the effect of it was very noticeable. So it has some promise. The other thing is that that as I was visiting I shared with you all this was one of the few evidence of coherence within our elementary system that we saw and so this is a bit of the foundation that we're looking as a team to build on for first instruction strategies that every student will get that we have some continuity and lastly we part of our plan is we want to bring in one more one more coach so that we have a coach at each school that will be not only seal but also literacy coaching so we're bridging into our focus specifically on literacy because while seal will is supportive of literacy

201in this new year's program begins to bridge with reading The actual focus on teaching kids to read, this is not it. There's another piece we need to bring in, and we're going to need coaches for that. And we want one assigned to each school so that they can really dig in and help us make progress on that. This updated contract represents discussions we've had with VMTA to talk with them and work with them on a training schedule that will provide the professional development and the collaboration and the planning that they need, but in a way that also manages workload and the constraints that we kept hearing about time. It is a time-intensive process, and so we're going to continue working with VMTA on that, but this does represent conversations and partnership with them about it.

202how to bring it forward so my recommendation is that we approve this contract for next year so that we can continue forward with this program anybody got comments questions question um not necessarily pertaining to the contract but seal and then also talking about the elop money how i recall when we were talking about this originally and there was a conversation with miss williams i think and correct me if I'm wrong but there's some way that if there's there was something with summer school and seal and us being able to provide financial support through the ELOP do you remember that yes I think so so I I went so I just visited summer school at flower we have Summer school at Flowery, I want to say we have 300 kids or something like that. It's a

203lot of kids that are there. I went there and I'm like, oh my gosh, we have so many kids here. And what we're doing is in the morning, the teachers are working in partnerships, like two teachers with a group of kids with a class, and they're focused on implementing SEAL strategies. So they're getting good time to plan, they're having someone they're working with, so not only are they giving really intense instruction that I was able to go and observe and it was on point. but they're also getting more comfort and understanding of how to deliver these strategies. Because part of the challenge with the requirements of it was it was all of this time and it was new stuff. So is how do you balance all of the time it takes to learn it and

204implement it while you're in the middle of doing everything else that's required. So I think that's what you're talking about because I'm assuming, I'm making an assumption that the funding for that morning summer school is also the ELOP part of the nine hours. Okay. Yeah, so I think that's a connection. So great, I'm happy that you're making the recommendation, but what I would like to hear about is how are we going to measure effectiveness and how often, and so what's the sort of that component of this? Because doing this is wonderful, but if we're not measuring and figuring out if there's progress being made, then it's... we'll never know and I don't want to be sitting here in two years going, well, you know, the SEAL program is not as blah, blah, blah and we're

205going to do something else, right? Yeah. So. No, that makes sense and I think that when we come back to the study session around superintendent's evaluations, that should be brought into that and I'll be able to come back with direct suggestions on how I think that we should measure the impact of this towards our instruction and towards student achievement and towards our focus areas, those three focus areas. Yeah. So just on that point, do we, what was my point now about success metrics? So, but just to be clear that we shouldn't be expecting, this is an instructional framework that we're adopting. It is not a literacy program. So what I worry about is that there's expectations on this board that we're going to see improvement in literacy scores. But I just think we have to

206temper what our expectations are. I mean. I'm not saying we. we should be overly optimistic. I'm saying we've got to measure what we're doing. And if we don't, we'd have no idea of its effectiveness. And so I'm just saying that whatever we're doing, we've got to measure and we've got to have an honest conversation on a regular basis. What is the success of what we're implementing, be it SEAL or be it the other, you know, the literacy curriculum, et cetera, and whatever it is. I'm okay with following the lead and taking your recommendation. I'll go back to Mississippi, they test every two weeks. And so that's obviously unusual relative to what we do, but they've seen results. And so the reason why, because they obviously look at it every two weeks and they say, well,

207how successful have we been doing in the last two weeks? Have we seen improvement or whatever it is? That's all I'm saying that we should be focused on. I agree with both of you and trustee Ching you're right this is not the solution to our literacy like that's another component that we're going to be bringing but and I also agree that that as this is an investment so when we come back to look at that superintendent's evaluation I'll want to be coming back and being really clear about What are the impacts of this? How will we see the evidence of this making a difference in our classrooms and in our students and in their achievements? So I'll be coming back with that specific, with some very specific metrics so that we can see whether it's

208moving the needle as we're expecting it will. In the specific ways that this is designed to, not necessarily as... raising all reading scores. I mean the trustees received a joint letter that was signed by several teachers from Alvarado and they raised a lot of I think legitimate concerns and one of the concerns you touched upon a little bit was how time intensive this instructional framework is and I'm wondering particularly the part that struck me and made sense was that you know they said that the the required work require it requires them to take all of the the unit lesson plans like say from wonders and to convert it all into this instructional framework and if each teacher is doing that i mean i don't know how many lessons there are in an entire year that's

209like a very heavy lift And it seems to me that we have to find a solution to that. And I'm not going to provide what the solution is. But what I want to avoid is variation in the classroom. We talked about how that's an issue, right? So if you have how many elementary teachers, 21 elementary teachers, three developing the third grade unit, and every single one is different, anyway, I think that's a legitimate. that's a legitimate concern and I'm just wondering do you have any thoughts about this or? Yeah, no, they are legitimate concerns. I think my first thought is that the first solution is to be working with our teachers about what those solutions are. So I've already met with some of the teachers that sent letters to all of us about this and

210we talked about what the challenges are and I was at summer school yesterday and talking with the teachers and they had some really good insights about what this summer school. arrangement that we have is such a great opportunity for us to look at it in a different way. And they asked to schedule a meeting with me tomorrow, but I'm not going to be here. So they've scheduled a meeting with Dr. Sanchez-Moseley for next week to talk about, hey, we're seeing some great things in the summer school arrangement, which we can't teach two teachers in one classroom, but what parts can we replicate? So working with the teachers about how we replicate that. Working with the MTA, we already moved two of the PD days into our district-wide PDAs, so they don't miss two less days

211missing time with students. So just looking for even sometimes it's the little solutions that can make a big difference, and it all stems from being in conversation together because we all want things that work for our kids. So I think that we're going the right direction, and we have more work to do to find those solutions. And just in terms of the total cost of the program, so it was interesting to me that, well, the cost here is $166,000, but on the last consent agenda it was different. So I wonder what that. Yeah, that's why I was mentioning we're bringing back a new one because what we had done was we had tried to say. We had tried to stretch out the K-2 to instead of finishing up next year, the K-2 instead of finishing

212up next year, we're going to stretch it over two years. Right. And after talking with the MTA and thinking about how we need to start moving into early literacy focus, those are at odds with each other. So we actually... just talked about finishing up K-2 in one year next year so that went up because it's more days but now that allows us to finish up and start turning our attention to working together on on early literacy what does that instruction look like like springboarding from this right into into that piece yeah so we just have to be clear amongst ourselves that the true what the true cost is it's not just the training right it's like three SEAL coaches full-time and the and the release days It's just like half a million dollars. The one

213thing that we do see is that the SEAL coaches, they're not just going to be SEAL coaches. We're transitioning that to where they're going to be working, like shifting their focus. Yes, they're going to help with SEAL, but then we need a very intentional shift towards literacy support and literacy practices. Because that's where we do need to go. And you look at models that are successful. They have literacy coaches in those models. So shifting in that direction, I think, is the long-term place that we need to be headed. Any other questions? So this is an action item. So I have a motion. Motion to approve 11.6, our SEAL literacy program. Second. I'll second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. So 11.7, the SIPSAs. So there were a lot of SIPSAs. I went through as many as

214I could as well, and if you have any questions, I will try to be prepared to answer them. I'll start. So this was my bedtime reading last night. I'm sorry. But I guess there's one question and one request. I'll start with the request. Is it possible in the process of producing these plans to bring them forward to us? Earlier in the spring. Mm-hmm. Yes. Okay. Yes, that is possible. Okay, that would be appreciated because it certainly has a lot of overlap with the LCAP You know at least the two years two springs. I've been on the board We've had an LCAP study session and in April prior to the actual public hearing Yes, so it would just be really informative to be able to look at these plans as part of that same process instead

215of just kind of being lumped in here at the end. So thank you. My other question request is to Director Knox. If you could please elaborate a little bit on what we see in these plans regarding students with disabilities and what's on tap for the fall in terms of continuing on with MTSS. Thank you, Trustee Guzman. So, yes, I think what we're excited about our continued implementation of our MTSS as a system throughout the school district. So there is uniformity, accountability, and continuity. Last year we spent a year with all of our site. lead teams in getting a shared understanding of what the procedures of MTSS are, multi-tiered system of support. And we all recognize that tier one instruction in the general education classroom is where we're going to get the most bang for our

216buck. So when we're talking about SEAL, for example, at the elementary level, I think the fact that there's going to be a consistent through line from all three of our elementary schools, we're gonna see that common thread of instruction is gonna be beneficial because our kids are gonna be engaged, they're gonna be on task, and that's where we want to see the results taking place. On top of that, when we have our grade level team teachers talking amongst each other in collaboration, determining what students are making progress and what where students need extra support I think that's where the implementation of MTSS is really going to be instrumental We're going to have tools, new tools in place with our ARIES SIS system, which will help us identify early warning indicators where students are having difficulties,

217whether it be chronic absenteeism or they're falling behind in their grades. There's going to be systems in place that we're going to monitor and capture early on to provide those Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions. On top of that, you know, we're monitoring our students with IEPs. Currently, our district average is at 20%. We want to ensure that students are accessing general education as well as their supports through their IEP. we're gonna continue to ensure that students if you know identify students if they are so we suspect you know there is a students with disabilities we're gonna continue to assess and if they do qualify for special education we are gonna ensure that every student gets what what they need so I think there's next year I think the fact that we're implementing seal in

218support with Aries to ensure that our MTSS supports our monitor throughout. President Bell, you talked about Mississippi monitoring every two weeks. We're going to be looking at ways to have regular progress monitoring. That's part of what MTSS is. And it's going to be a process, but we're moving in that direction. I don't know if that answers your question. No, that's great. Thanks for elaborating. So one of my kind of things that I've been pondering about is we go over lots of interventions at the secondary level and just trying to figure out. how we can provide the foundational supports at the primary level so we don't have to do these interventions later on. And so if the Tier 1 interventions through MTSS is a primary way we can do that at the primary. primary, primary, at

219the elementary level, then, yeah, I'm absolutely in support of that. And I'm excited to see the implementation continue because, yeah, it's just philosophically, I just believe we need to start from the very beginning from TK and not be trying to catch up once they're already eighth, ninth, tenth, and beyond. So that was just my two cents. Thank you. Thank you. No, no questions. I looked at El Verano's in more detail. They've made a lot of progress this year, and I think it's a good thing. I think their top three focuses for the school do align with our LCAP and what we're trying to accomplish as a school district. So I don't have – it's going to be in the execution. I think everything that's written there is the right focus for them closing the gap.

220for English language learners, overall literacy. I think those are the right things. So let's continue that focus. And I know we just announced today our new principal for that school. And that is exciting. Someone with, I think, a perfect background that fits that community. Someone who's bilingual, bicultural. I mean, the reception that I've heard is all positive. I know my focus is a little on El Verano in this comment. But I think it's a good thing. I think it's... our attention is where it needs to be and i look forward to seeing the outcomes that the that group our teachers and staff can drive there next school year i was looking at the high school i looked at all of them and i was going to call out alvarado just because i think it is

221really important for us to talk about the positive when it's there and there's definitely been some amazing achievements there i was a little concerned just because and i know this is slightly outside of the scope of the board but we've talked about this idea and we talk about it directly relates to students of this problem that we have with our behavior matrix and one of the things the strategies at the high school is goal three which is engage engagement connection belonging and wellness and it refers directly to the results from the january uh 2026 i believe youth truth survey so a lot of the a lot of the ways that are talked about, like the metrics and the indicators that they're going to use. don't really address they kind of dance around this idea that

222we have the systematic problem throughout the district where there's not a clear and consistent behavior expectation and so we talk about these systematic problems that we have one of the things we're addressing is students who have come to us more recently honestly talking about how they feel with how they identify at school and not feeling safe and not feeling comfortable. We're talking about students who have thoughts of suicide. All of these things are very important. But the underlying factor is that they're coming on campus and not feeling comfortable. They're not feeling safe. Like, that's what we're hearing. So. We're not setting a standard and we don't have a consistent expectation of how we're treating people. And then it seems as if, and I mean, we've all been together and seen it in situations where we

223can't talk about publicly, where we're dealing with different situations of students coming to us who have to leave the district for certain things, right? And so I just feel like I was a little disappointed not to see a focus on that. It's more focused on trying to connect and communicate and do all these things, which I honestly feel like the district does a good job of. The communication over the last three years to families has increased significantly, and that's progress. But it always seems to be a consistent goal to try and reach, and I just feel like we dance around the actual issue, that the expectation of what it means to be a Sonoma Valley Unified School District student. when you walk on our campuses is very inconsistent across our campuses and our behavior matrix

224leaves it up to whomever is in charge their discretion to determine the consequences and then they come to us and so I was just a little bummed to not see that be a priority because I do feel like the belonging the wellness all of these things that we're talking about come down to the adults setting the expectations for the students and they're being followed through But other than that, I think that, you know, the SPSOs look really great. And the high school is making great progress. This isn't, you know, this isn't a bash to the high school. I was just slightly disappointed because I think that we've talked about it enough and I was kind of expecting to see something of that sort. I appreciate that and I know actually we earlier talked about the

225LCAP reflection and that was one thing that I that I didn't know in the LCAP reflection that I didn't bring forward was that we in that it talked about the board's interest in revisiting the discipline matrix and having those conversations I understand what you're saying I think like in general the CIPSA should reflect what we've identified in the LCAP so I don't believe if I am understanding right I don't believe that's really should be started in the SPSA. I think that we need that at the district issue like first we need to define it in the LCAP and the SPSA should follow suit. So what you're describing I think needs to be addressed first in the LCAP. No, it would, but I'm saying like what you're talking about, about this common district-wide, like a way

226that we're, like the expectations and the way that kids are interacting and behaving, it being district-wide, that starts at the LCAP at the district level, and then principals enact it. It wouldn't be something I'd expect a principal to veer, you know, to organize themselves when it's not already in the LCAP. So I think we have a first, an obligation to do what you're talking about at the district level in the LCAP. then help our principals bring that to life in their SPSAs on their site. Does that make sense? So not at all disagreeing with that but just saying I think we should prioritize that at the district level first. For next year? It's in the reflection and I know as a board you've asked to revisit the District 1 matrix and I think that's going

227to be a start of discussions that you have that help then inform our LCAP as we're going into our next next year we're doing a whole new cycle, right? Yeah. And just one other point, I think just using the Youth Truth data is kind of what we're missing. a huge portion of our students, right? We've talked about it where our families have all said that, not all, some families have come to me, many have said, you know, how do you use this data? And Trustee Ching was talking about the accessibility years ago, and now we don't really make it accessible. And it's really, I think, hard when people are being honest in those youth truth surveys to not feel like their concerns or their suggestions are being recognized or even... brought up for discussion and

228if that's the only way that we're i mean that's the only piece that i saw in there was the youth truth survey then we have to just know as a district that one those surveys i've taken them as a parent they can be very leading which is unfortunate and additionally not everyone is participating and so we're missing portions of our school community so it'd be interesting to see how we could capture them and that information I just wanted to follow up on a couple of points that Trustee Landry mentioned so one of them was With respect to the Youth Truth surveys, I'm not even sure now whether administrators actually get to see what the individual comments are of parents. Maybe they did before, but it's not something that it's not part of a report, and

229you can definitely... the district could figure out a way how to mine that data and just categorize it, you know, so that you don't have to read. So after a couple of years, like when I took it, I stopped writing my own. You know, it's like you can add your additional comment. You stop because you're like, God, I wonder if they read my comment from last year. Because no one seemed to recognize it. And I thought it was a pretty important problem. So I think you train people like to stop actually making comments, number one. And then coming back to the LCAP. I'm much more cynical than all of you because I've been in it for so long that it always has felt like a compliance, total compliance. The actions are all immutable. The goals

230never made sense to me. One specifically that you triggered and thought of, there's always like, okay, we want to improve belonging and make the school safe. And not ever once in there was it ever talked about the fact that the board took action to codify an agreement between the police department and the district. And that has really, I think, Officer Ed's relationship with kids have actually changed things from when I first started. And thinking about all the discipline issues that we have had. He alone has single-handedly helped that campus so much. And yet, it's not mentioned anywhere in the LCAP. So, it was just you just triggered that thought when you were saying that. And so on the youth truth, I dropped it into Claude. All the comments I said translate and summarize. And in

231a couple of minutes, it spat out these great summaries that were really easy to digest in one or two pages. and I shared them with Jason and I said this is something that we should be using to discuss with principals, with teachers, to everybody. Everybody should see this data who's involved in this because it's all relevant information. And if you can summarize it and not have to read through the hundreds of comments, it generally gives you a pretty good sense as to what it is and then you can read it as you need to. But I don't know why, if we're not using that data and having direct conversations and principals and staff and everybody, then it's a waste of time doing it. How did you download the data? I couldn't access it. I just...

232I think... Do you want to circulate the summary? I'd love to see the summary. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'll send it to you. Send it through David. Yeah, I will. Yeah, yeah. I started out by copying and pasting and da, da, da, da, and then I just put the whole sheet in and it just did it all. It's a really big file and you could dump all of it, the longitudinal data and just ask it to say, summarize what areas have been improving, what areas haven't. The one thing with that data was that we... We went in, my office went in and we redacted anything that was personalized information about any staff or any individual students, you know, so before we shared that. So we can look at how next year we leverage that data a

233little bit better to inform the board, to inform our community, inform our staff. But the public-facing part of that data is already de-identified, as I remember. I remember accessing it, and it was totally de-identified. So I don't know. My login doesn't work anymore. I'll look into it. I think it was that if a student named a particular teacher and said, you know, something about that, I think it de-identifies. Yeah, so the individual comments about an individual naming someone or saying that, you know, whatever it is. So I think the data itself is de-identified, but then if someone who's doing it identifies someone, that's the second part of the anonymizing of the whole thing. Well, and I feel like that just brings up a bigger issue. We can't just be using percentages and not using data.

234Like, that's shady. Well, if we're not, if we're only going to take, because we have percentages, right? So LCAP has percentages in it. So for instance, if you go into the SIPSAs for the high school specifically, I was just looking at it, it talks about, so that area number two, how they're going to improve the overall feeling at school. And it's going to increase Youth Truth data from January. 2026, I believe is when it said by a 10% or whatever percentage. So we're using the feelings of the person we're taking percentages out of the youth truth, but we're not taking the time. I'm not saying we're not, I'm saying it sounds as if we're all, we're only using percentages and not actually using data. I mean, I feel like if we. read what people were

235saying, if they're taking the time to say things, the answers would be or some solutions could be in what people are expressing to us. Does that make sense? Yeah, I think, but I think there's conflating of two ideas. So I do think individual feedback matters and taking what those specific, categorizing those specific categories of, you know, satisfaction, dissatisfaction is super important. I think what also happens in the LCAP generally across the board, not just for, let's say, feelings of safety, it says, well, we want to see that percentage among the total population increase by some X percent, like it's 10%. I mean, that's typical of every category in the LCAP. My objection to it is that oftentimes the target number or the growth number is nothing we've ever experienced historically like we've never had a

23610 increase in in in sbac scores in math so why would we put something that we've never achieved before or 25 or whatever i don't know if 10 is even realistic but but so i i get your point okay great so this is an action item if we've beaten this horse to death enough that we could do i have a motion Yeah, I move to approve the SIP says for 20 26 27 All in favor aye aye Moving on to 11.8 Day change yes So we are proposing that we change the date In December 10th, 2026, regular scheduled meeting to be rescheduled for December 17th. Yeah, we have to. It's a legal thing. It has to do with a 15-day period beginning the second Friday in December following the election. Election of new trustees. Yeah.

237So my question is, is that the date in which the new trustees take an oath? That's the oath, that's the date. And that is also the reorganization of the board. Okay. So I'm fine with it. I make a motion to approve the recommended change to December 17th. I'll second. All in favor? Aye. Oh, but what else is there? Do we need him? We got him. He what? Oh, let's wait for him. Here he is. Sorry, I didn't even see him. Very stealthy. Great. All right. Moving on to 11.9, resolution regarding one-time bonus. Okay, so this resolution, we have approved one-time bonuses for our classified staff and our certificated staff, and this resolution also honors our administrative staff in a similar way so matching what we've offered to our other employees to recognize the work of

238our administrators for this last school year I make a motion to approve second I'll second all in favor aye 11.10 weather advisory safety compliance okay so this is a brand new board policy that we've been working on and we were using templates that we got from Sonoma County as well. Sonoma County Office of Education and this is really about weather safety. I don't know how to say the name Yahushua's Law. It's based on there was a student who died, I think a 12-year-old student at one of the schools through heat exhaustion like in a public activity. So this is all a policy and guidelines about when we make decisions for the safety of children with regards to heat, cold, air quality. Like we remember smoke days when we had really bad smoke days and everyone

239was wondering when do we say it's an inside day, all of those things. So this is a board policy and very concrete guidelines for how we determine to make decisions about students and their activities so that they can remain safe and healthy. Yeah, so one question, I had two questions. One is, who's... Where do you find are these real-time? Indicators about making the calls, you know the orange the moderate the red the magenta like do you go to a website? To give you guidance. Yeah, so on most of these we tried to put the most of them have the tool listed underneath So if you look at heat risk thresholds We're looking at those are the different monitors that things that we would monitor You know, I know that we When we looked, there was,

240if you look at the next one, Section 4 was air quality. I remember we did a lot with air quality in 2008, 19. 17 and 19. 17 and 19, exactly. So we've identified the ones that we want to be using, which is airnow.gov, Purple Air Network, and other, the BAAQMD. so we're trying to identify what are the what are the measures that we're using uh based first on sco on sco's recommendation and you get an alert so that you can even start looking like on a day today like you would you check the air quality you know would you would you check the temperature probably not so you kind of need an automated almost like like whatever that alert that we all have for for fires and there's a part of this michelle when did

241we get when did we receive this it was very It was in May. So this is brand new, and I think we're still going to be working out some of the kinks on, like, we have a plan, and some parts of this plan we're going to have to adjust because we haven't had one before. So my second question is, our practice in the district is to have a first read and then a second read. So are we changing that process, or is this just for this policy? Do we need it by a certain date? Is that what's going on? We need this one by July 1. Our practice, our understanding from the board's direction was for all of the board policies, we're going to start bringing them for first read. For other ones, we're going

242to bring for first read and possible action so that you as a board can do a first read and then give us direction for adjustments. Or if you like it the first read, we get it done and have it off. I think you suggested that. We were recommending this one to approve the policy, and if you need us to bring it back with any changes, we'd be happy to, but it would keep us in compliance, and then we can make any adjustments as well in the meantime and bring it back again in August if there's changes you'd like tested. Are students not allowed to use protective lip balm today? It does. I saw that too. Why? I don't know. It was like... It's number four. Number four under Sun Safety. It's one case to encourage

243and assist students. They shall be allowed to. Shall be allowed to. Are we not allowing lip balm right now? We will make sure that they're allowed to. Okay. I think that there's probably... What? There's probably... There could be some teachers or some schools that have specific rules, and so the policy is probably to make sure that nobody's making a... Yes. Okay. Yeah. Okay. i'll make a motion um policy 51 41.75 weather safety i second all in favor aye aye so point of order president bell so we have exceeded our uh nine o'clock uh ending time so are we gonna make a motion or do you want a motion or what where does the board stand I'd like to make a motion. I don't really want to have a significant discussion on the item. I'd like

244to propose a direction to staff. I don't think we need to debate the merits of what we, to rehash what we discussed last week. I called for this agenda item to try to find a resolution and give direction to staff. Before you start talking, we have to extend the meeting. Okay, great. So how do you feel about that? So then we up it up again. Okay, so I move that we continue the meeting as per our board bylaw 9322 that we extend the meeting to 920. I'll second. All in favor? Aye. Is that really the policy number? That is amazing. It should have been board policy 9.00. That would have been good. Or military time, 21.00. So, yeah, so from my perspective, I'm willing to propose to give direction to staff. You know, I don't

245want to go rehash all of the issues. I think we all agree that it's a divisive issue and, you know, the odds have been, you know, a five to zero consensus is probably going to be impossible. I also recognize that we don't really, it's going to be very difficult to craft a specific policy that addresses specific flags. And I would be willing to propose a sort of a simplistic process that, you know, if we, to say that we would fly the pride flag for the month of June or the last 30 days of school. And then if any other groups, you know, student groups, student-led groups would like to have recognition on the flagpole, then they could submit a letter or application or some sort of simple letter to say this is the group, this

246is the reason why, and this is the support we have, and then the board can consider it. And that would be the sort of the extent of an addendum or a resolution to modify the existing flag policy to... address the current situation it's a version of option three so the refer just i'll do a quick reminder four options one is status quo two is only the three flags status option three was rotating which is essentially what date what uh trustee bell is saying maybe slight and then four was designated with a potential for uh you know shared recognition that that was the option for the shared recognition one yeah and i and i recognize the difficulty of of having a specific policy that addresses all of it so over time and and so the reality

247is is today with the the pride flag flying there's going to be very few groups that want to come and say hey we would like representation because of the the fact that it's been so contentious to discuss this issue to to discuss actually not flying it permanently and so with with the policy of flying it in june then it would then give the ability for other groups to say, hey, look, come to us as a board to propose what their flag and representation would be, and we could evaluate on an as-received basis. I didn't really hear direction, so I heard a proposal. Yeah, I guess, well, the direction here would be, if I'm hearing you correctly, is to put to a vote option three, a rotating flagpole. Yeah, to prepare language and, you know, language

248for the next meeting, you know, a future meeting based on those principles and then bring it. And if it passes, it passes. If it fails, it fails. And so, you know, to have to, we don't really want to continuously discuss this. I think, well I don't, I've made my view on this thing very clear and this is what I'm looking for and if it fails, it fails and so then we can move on if it fails. Well, I'm not ready to make a vote. I would like to continue to discuss it. I don't think I've actually digested everything that occurred at the last meeting. And there was so much prep going into this meeting. I'm really not prepared to give any. First of all, I want to say, like, I think I agree with Trustee

249Lehman's statement at the last meeting that this is on us. It's not on staff. That we need to decide. We shouldn't give them any work. They have marching orders. This is not one of the priority focus. And so I need some time to sort of digest this. I also have legal questions and I don't know if, you know, how I can get some of my legal questions answered. And I would. Disagree a little bit in terms of that this would be on us. I really have seen this as an operational matter that this came from an individual site without any top-down that this was I guess just to restate my from last week. It was an organic process that The student led They provided their input, their request, and it was granted by the site

250admin. And I would imagine there's a similar process for other requests that are student-led, not related at all to flags, just whatever else they may want on campus, if it's a banner, if it's a celebration. And in that time, at least to my knowledge, there has been no other. student request specific to displaying another flag. And likewise, to my knowledge, there hasn't been a student request to remove the flag. And this whole time, it's just been self-contained there on the site. And I just don't see this as elevating to our level in terms of what we're doing on a normal basis. But if it is, if we are bringing it upon ourselves to enact this as a policy, I would at least like to ask Dr. Sutter to elaborate a little bit on recommended option

251four. That was something we did not really address directly. I felt there was room there in that option that kind of touched on what a lot of us were discussing and had concerns about of how this would actually happen logistically. And that's where, again, I would turn this back operationally for the superintendent and site admin to develop the AR to work out those logistics. We are creating this additional work by making this an issue when it wasn't. And so I would... My direction would be to develop the AR and to present us with those logistical matters. I don't care to be dictating which flag specifically flies for how long. My last point at the moment is just that it's incredibly disingenuous to limit the Pride flag to June when nobody's on campus. Whatever we land

252on, if that's on a rotating basis, if that's what's landed on, it just can't be when nobody's on campus. It's got to be when students are there. I still support year round permanent displaying of that. So my recommendation would be to follow the superintendents, but I would like to hear a little bit more. Thank you. Before we bring the superintendent, I'd like to make a comment. And so I'm proposing just to clarify the last 30 days of school, not just June, because of obviously the timing issue. So that, to clarify. Yeah, I'm just saying June or the last 30 days. I'll share two things as I've thought about this that I didn't share last week. Theme number one is we operate as a school forever with no flag. And then in 2019, since then for

253seven years, we operated as a school with only one flag. I don't love either of those answers. I think we did the right thing by asking Dr. Sutter to go to our students and gather intel for the first time ever. No one had ever done that to my knowledge. I love that if it was truly organic seven years ago, then great. I think I'm trying to take the student survey data and there are three things that came out of it. that we need to solve for. Inclusion matters. Many students were neutral. I guess we don't need to solve for that. I'm not really sure what that means. Well, I'm saying I know what it means, but I'm not certain I know what action I would take. And then the third one was fairness, which was

254the space for other school groups. So I'm like, I want to solve for those. And so I'm trying not to be dogmatic about this issue. And I would ask our community not to be dogmatic on this issue. And I'd ask the board to try to not be dogmatic of like, got to stand by one thing. I'm immovable. I'm not willing to find a solution. And I want to find a solution. I've had people ask me, where do you stand? And I'm a bit annoyed that the community has some of the reaction of some of the community. And like, I stand for finding solutions based on the intel that I'm given. And so the intel I'm given is got to make people groups feel included. especially with the problem of bullying at our school or harassment

255or marginalization like that is it that's a theme here like we got us all for that and the other one I don't again the neutral one I'm not sure what actions I would take and so I'm trying to find a proposal I think options three and four are the only two options on here that actually had kind of trying to coalesce around a solution that I thought was solving for those the feedback we're getting from students and I really care that we got to keep it on the feedback I'm staring at my computer screen because this is the this is the data from students and these are this is what's listed on page I think it's five And so that's where I'm at. I'm trying to get us to a place where we're listening to

256our students and we're solving for their needs. And options three and four, both are an attempt to do that. If we don't think that's enough and we need to do more work, great. But I would be willing to even say to staff, like, put those two options in front of us. Let's throw one and two out because they're the extreme of the four. or they're on the poor ends of the four. And let's have a debate and get feedback over the next eight weeks if we need to come to a decision. If we deem we can get to a decision. If we can't, then we can't. But that's where I'm at. I would support that. I also think it's important to, since we're talking about youth truth data, to go back and look because we've

257sat here and looked at data. We've talked about marginalized students in the LCAP before. I know there's been information presented to us on LGBTQ students on our high school campus and never before have I seen 27% considering suicide. Yet the flag has flown for the last... seven years so if that number is increasing and that flag is flying and i know there's a lot of people in the community who are saying i'm using this as an excuse i genuinely cannot believe that we're going to sit here and tell these students that that flag is solving the problem we are the adults in the room that is not solving the problem if that number is increasing The problem is not being solved. And we're going to sit here and let something that is polarizing. Mike Thompson

258came, his staff came and said it. We all know this is polarizing. We've seen what this has done to our community. Let this divide us. And I don't understand why it's offensive to fly the flag. in June or disingenuous. I understand that kids are not on campus, but that's why in the last meeting I genuinely asked why June, because I didn't want to be disrespectful making a recommendation to not do it during that month, and I wanted to understand. So saying that it's disingenuous is, you know, we didn't choose that. There was something that happened. in history that made that month significant to this group of people. So I just want to clarify that that wasn't meant to. And also there was a time when we were in school more than halfway through June. It

259wasn't until last year that we were graduating in May on Memorial Day. So I'm in support of that. I just think as a board, this has This is it is it's divisive. It's polarizing I I don't understand why we wouldn't want to take a month and do exactly and I don't remember which one of you said it but it was beautiful it was educate celebrate and honor and Actually help our kids understand I mean I can guarantee you if you walked on that campus and asked many of those students Why June they probably wouldn't know but how great for them to be able to understand that Right? And so the purpose of having a rotating flag, if we're really going to get into the business of flags, when we have so much other stuff we

260should be concerned about, should be to honor, to educate, and to celebrate. So yeah, bring it back. Bring three and four back for August. I'm not okay with those two options. I mean, I want to have a broader discussion about what does what do we accomplish by having a rotating flag and how is that actually going to work? So I'm not opposed to having kids fly other flags if they want to in conjunction with the with the pride flag. Could you somebody actually, Dr. Sutter, can you I thought that either you said it or somebody said that we have the ability to fly four flags on each of the flagpoles. Is that correct? Or did I hear that incorrectly? I'd have to look at our flagpoles. I know that that for sure. I know that

261neighboring districts are. Like in Petaluma right now, they're talking about flying four flags at the same time because I think it's California, United States, the pride flag, and the Juneteenth flag for the month of June. So many of the other districts, when I shared that there are other districts that are flying multiple flags, most of the schools have one flagpole. I think having four flagpoles is unique. Most of the time when they're talking about multiple flags, it's on one pole. So we do have the ability to fight more than one flag on a pole. So, I mean, I think the only way I would consider rotating other flags is, one, I think it definitely has to be initiated by kids. And the rotation schedule, I mean, it seems like you could put up to eight

262flags on at least the flagpole, which the pride flag is flying, and also the school flag. So you could have eight flags total. And if we're going to do rotating flags... It should be initiated by kids and the rotation should just be determined by how many flags there are. And maybe you don't even need to rotate flags because if you can put eight flags up at the same time, maybe that's all their interest there is. I don't know. I mean, I would be okay with a policy like that. But the other thing is. Like can the school district can we ban certain flags like I wouldn't be okay if the kids wanted to say propose that they wanted to fly the Ku Klux Klan flag or the Confederate flag or the I don't know name

263other flag that maybe we don't want to see. I mean, do we have to ban flags also? So anyway I'm okay with kids flying whatever flags that they want, but I don't want to dictate the timing of it, the rotation of it, and we probably can put up eight flags at the same time because I don't think you can fly them. I think you're supposed to reserve, right, the U.S. flag for its own pole and the California flag for its own. Or it just needs to be at the top position? It has to be in the language that is coming out of, I think it's coming out of Ed Code probably, but it has the primary position. Oh, primary position. So that's why on one pole it's always on the top. It should be higher

264than the other poles if it's multiple poles. Is the U.S. flag at the, so they're all different heights, the poles? The first two poles, they don't look like it to me. Prominent. It only says prominent. It doesn't define what that is. And just to remember, we don't know why there was, I mean, four flagpoles are there. We don't have to fly four flags. There are schools with policies very close to us that have two flags, California flag and the U.S. flag. They don't even fly their school flag. They're not in the business of flags. I'm just saying. That happens around here. And you know what? I looked into it. Those school campuses do have GSA clubs, and there is other ways to support those students. Just like there's other ways you have FFA and all

265these other organizations and groups we talk about. I mean, that stops the problem right there. I'm not saying I'm voting for that. I'm just saying there are districts that do that and still have ways to support students. All right. Yeah. So we either need to end the conversation here. I do think it's important we end. I've made my stand. I think we've at least got a number of trustees that are saying, like, we have eight weeks between now and the next one. There will be plenty of input. Again, we don't have to make a decision if we don't want. But I do think if I'm looking at the options, if we do think an option, we want to consider an option, like put it in front of us and let us do it or not.

266Or say, we're not going to do it. Let it die. Yeah. I would support that. Let's bring options. I would hate to have this go for months. It's either we put it on or we don't. And I would hate for this to go for months and have our community just like toiling over the topic. That's the most annoying part. Now, if we think we need more data from students, that would be the only thing I propose. But we had 500 plus students give us this data. And again, the data that's the most concerning is we need to get bullying, marginalization, harassment taken care of at the school. Like that is the priority. The flag thing, yeah, like, obviously, there's a whole bunch of different input from students on that. And I think, you know, give

267us an option to vote on it. I mean, just to say, you know, 30% of our kids think we should fly more than one flag, right? And so for us to ignore 30% of the students surveyed who agree that there shouldn't be just single representation on the flag, I think is not a good thing. To say that when the flag went up in 2019 was a student-led initiative, which absolutely it was, but it was a very small number of students, and the reciprocal opportunity wasn't offered to any other group. I was a parent of two high school kids in 2019. I heard nothing about it. So it wasn't as if it was widely disseminated, hey, we're thinking about doing this, we're talking about this. It just sort of went, it was in a very... It

268was done in a very small group of students with the principal and there wasn't widespread discussion. So I think if there had been widespread discussion and the offer would have been made to other student groups, they may have been interested and they would have said, hey, yeah, that's a good idea. We would like to be represented. Anyway. So I support your proposal to staff. Great. Me too. Options three and four in front of us at the next earliest convenience. What does that mean exactly options three and four I mean we have options three and four in front of us right now You want it you want to just bring back the raw options without no we would give direction to staff to create an Addendum or an AR as it relates to that to represent

269both of those options And then we can decide as a board and debate which one we would like to go I just I think then then I don't think we should put this on staff and I think that there should be a subcommittee of the board that works on it so I don't I just I but if you want to weigh in Dr. Sutter I think I think that Typically speaking, like the board sets policy and staff develops the AR. And so like when we bring ARs for our first read is to get input. But if you were doing a subcommittee that was developing an AR that you wanted to vote on, I would think that you might want to consider doing it as a resolution probably. But this is a, so we have a

270policy currently that's not really consistent, right, with the AR? Oh, we have a practice. It seems like the policy and the AR have to be consistent. And then there's the practice part of it. So I don't, my interpretation of our situation is that our policy talks about observances. It doesn't direct flags. The AR does talk about flags. It talks about the flying of the two flags. And it's silent on others. So we're not, we're not. out of alignment with policy. We haven't violated it. The policy doesn't say you can fly it, and it doesn't say you can't fly it. It says just you will fly these two, and this one will be the preeminent one. So we're not out of compliance in any way at this moment, if I'm understanding your question correctly. But I

271think that if... probably the way you might want one way that we could go for example we just saw a changes in neighboring Petaluma around there they they're doing that they've done that by resolution because that's the board's the board's lane of resolving as a board this is what we want to have happen at the high school so that might be a one way to to go forward with that the AR the AR is is especially because specifically we've been talking about the high school. So in other words, if you change the AR, is this going to apply to all campuses or can you restrict in the AR? This only applies to the high school campus. We could. We could. Yeah. I would actually like to have a legal opinion on one is that can

272you just restrict it to one campus only? And then two, can you actually ban? Because I'm not interested in entertaining flags that are offensive and are against the mission of the school. I'm fine if the kids really do sincerely want to put up other flags, but if they are going to be petitioning for... the Confederate flag, I'm not okay with the North Republic flag. What was your first? The first one is, can you actually set ARs that you can distinguish and say, you can fly these flags on this campus, but only these flags on that campus? Because that's exactly what would be happening, right? You'd say it's okay to fly the pride flag or the FFA flag at the high school, but it's not okay to fly it at the elementary schools. Is that legally

273permissible? Will somebody file a lawsuit? I will look into that. And then the other one was about restricting flags. Banning flags that are offensive. And really when you get down to if you're directing us to come up with the operationalization of this. It may not be a matter of restricting. It may be a matter of stating what are the ways. Like if we're saying it's for school clubs, groups, teams, like we could be in the way we're saying what it does capture, that it could rule out the kind of flags that we don't want to entertain. So there might be a way to navigate that as well. I mean, I do think we have to also address the other burning question, which is, do we have a responsibility? Do we have an affirmative obligation to

274protect, you know, and combat racism, sexism, discrimination generally in our community? It's clear that there are groups of kids who feel marginalized on our campuses. And what are we doing about it? And I still feel like the flag is such a small, gesture of acknowledging that we have all walks of life on our campuses and we should but there's obviously not agreement on that but we we still have to address that and that is not being addressed with what we're doing and in fact you know I'm just worried that the kids will see this as an insult because we're actually physically taking down the pride flag. In the same thing that Sonoma County Office of Education does we're doing this we would be we would be doing the same thing as our City Council I

275mean, I don't it's I think it's also important to recognize the voices that are coming to us and talking and speaking up. And these are students, these are families. We have to hear everyone, whether we agree with them or not. And so this is a, in my opinion, it's a good balance and it's an opportunity to educate, to honor and to celebrate, especially when our community is celebrating. I mean, that's a wonderful thing to have that support. There's so much going on in our community in the month of June to celebrate, honor, educate. I don't see that as a negative. I see that as a positive. I don't see us on our campus educating and honoring these students. And what we're doing is we're forcing everyone to just be okay with it without giving them

276an opportunity to learn and be educated. And that's what we've done. And we have families coming to us telling us that. And then we have certain families of other marginalized groups who say that they don't want their students coming because this flag offends them. I'm not saying I agree with that. But this is a public education. We're a federally funded institution. And we have to provide a place for everyone to feel comfortable and safe. And if you don't agree with me, then that's very unfortunate that we can't see all students as being important. But I think it's important to recognize there are certain families who are not comfortable with this and don't want this in their children's classroom year-round. And this is an opportunity for us to say as a board, we honor these students,

277these families, those who identify under this flag. We want to help educate and celebrate. But this isn't something we're going to do year-round because this is public education. And this is a place for everybody. So what happens in the case where only one other group wants to fly a flag, and so you end up having two flags? Are you saying you're not going to fly both flags year-round because you have capacity to fly eight flags? How is that going to work? Well, the fact is right now we can't fly any other flags because the minute you discuss the flag and taking it down, then... The outcry has been obviously reflective of the reaction from the students that want to fly the flag. So it's essentially flying that single flag today is chilling anybody else who

278would come and say, hey, we would like to fly our flag. I don't think so. There's a capacity to fly other flags. So if there are only two flags, let's say there are two other groups, two other clubs that want to fly their flag. So that means there's three flags in addition to the school flag. Those three flags can be flown all year round, right? That's how I'm seeing how the policy would work. That is one option. That's an option. Yeah, for sure. if you want to discuss that. I don't necessarily agree with that because if you only, then what's going to have to happen is that then whose flag is on top and whose flag is where and all that sort of stuff. We get into this whole discussion of the logistics of it.

279Just rotate it. That's what the rotational wall is. Top to bottom, bottom to top. I mean, why does it matter? I mean, if it matters to the kids, okay. But I'm just saying, like, as adults, why are we talking? I mean, it's like if you can fly eight flags, let's wait until there's a ninth flag that wants to be flown, and then that can be a problem. Yeah, okay. Let me, I'm just, I'm going to share a quote from a kid. I didn't plan on doing this tonight, and I'm not going to name the kid, but I'll just share a quote from a kid who was bullied at our school. And he says, he or she says, the flag is cool. But it doesn't change the behavior of the kids who are bullies. And that's

280the real problem. And I think about that as like, how do we solve that? The flag obviously isn't the solution. It's part of a broader set of solutions that we need. We are arguing about the wrong thing. I actually do think when you raise a flag, you take a flag down, like there's moments of opportunity, education. There's a reason we have, I would assume there's a reason we have Black History Month and we have the different themes because it gives you that moment to talk about that topic. And I do think we need to create a space where we're talking about topics. I don't know what the other topics are for the kids that are bullied at schools. I actually don't even know if that kid identifies as LGBTQ+. I don't know. But I know

281that that kid has been bullied. I don't know why. The person hasn't been given space maybe to speak up on why they're bullied. We've got to get to what is going on at our school and figure it out. This has been a great starting point, a launch point for it. But if we don't know what the other 70% of the kids in the survey are neutral or 30% that want to talk about something else, let's go find out. Let's go find out what they want. And I do think if we just stick with the status quo, we're never going to find out. And I'm not OK with that. And given the reaction to discussing this flag, I don't think there's going to be a whole lot of student groups that are going to come out

282and say, tomorrow, yeah, we want to fly our flag because of how contentious this whole issue has been. So if the flag, we fly the pride flag in June or the last month of school, and then other groups eventually will say, you know, we as a board, should we, you know, should we use the flag to educate? And September is Suicide Awareness Month. So should we as a board come together and say, we're going to use the fourth flagpole to educate our kids and to acknowledge the suicide for all kids and to then use that month? to educate on is suicide awareness, right? That's how, and then what, you know, you say you rotate these flags, but what about, you know, veterans, military, you know, holidays, things like that. That's the sort of purpose of

283the fourth and rotating flagpole is for all of that. I mean, I don't think that was the intention of the flag. I mean, we do have civics class. If the kids really want to fly a veterans flag or a POW flag, I think they should decide. But I don't think that we should decide that. One thing. Just that I would encourage you as a board is I appreciate that you were able to listen to student voice coming back. And if we're talking, however we move forward, if we're talking about other flags, centering students in that, like if we want those flags to be meaningful, if we're picking those flags from here, it's not going to be as meaningful as if we engage students in identifying what they want to come forward and what they want

284to focus on. Coming back to, I'm already hearing from students in the little time that I've been here, you keep asking us about our opinion and then you don't listen to us. So that's something we also need to make sure, however you move forward, that centering students in that process because they're young adults. This isn't elementary school. They have thoughts and they have ideas. So how do we engage them with whichever way you as a board decide to go? I mean, would you recommend us, we did a couple years ago some student focus groups, and I'm just wondering if that would be helpful for us to pair up and do these not public focus groups but private focus groups with, you know, kids. I mean, that's also, if we want to focus the conversation around

285what kids are thinking, those are pretty powerful exercises that we conducted. I think that if you would want some more input from students, then that would be a great way. And you could think, I know there's been talk about making sure you're getting a good survey of students that have different views, because we saw that on the survey. So how do you get focus groups with students that represent that breadth? I think that... Tonight I'm hearing a lot of discussion about like how would we do the rotation and how many flags. I think that is not something that you need to decide here. You need to decide the big picture of how you want to go forward and then give us direction on where that is and we can come back with ideas of how

286to make that work. You know, with how do we choose it and what does that look like? That's the details that I don't think you as a board need to. be mired down with. You need to be figuring out like what's the direction that we want to go as a group and then us working with the site to figure out the details. Okay, so then we're agreeing on direction to sort of create two options for policy to discuss, which is option three and option four. Is that right? Yeah. Okay, great. Okay, so I heard that I heard Option three and option four, I also heard information from legal about how that affects multiple schools and around restriction of other flags, getting that information. And if the board's okay with this, I probably will, within each

287of those options, maybe have sub-options, and it could be this way or that way, give you some of the choice points as our staff sees that they can come forward, if that makes sense. Okay. Well, I guess my closing remarks would just to be really prioritizing that student voice. That really should come first and foremost. And what I've heard loud and clear is that it symbolizes acceptance. It symbolizes belonging and safety. And the flag by itself is not going to solve all the issues we have on campus. Absolutely not. But what I keep hearing from the folks who come and speak to us or by email, is that that helps them just that little bit want to come to campus and feel safe and want to learn. And that by deliberately taking it down, they

288feel attacked. And they no longer feel safe on campus by that action. And so anyways, if we could please just emphasize when you bring it back the voices that we've already heard. I don't necessarily think we need to go through a whole new focus group process because we've already heard quite a bit of input. I will not be in attendance in person. What's the date? August 13. And what I noticed wasn't on the August 13 agenda was The approval of the Prop 28 expenditures, is that going to show up or not? We're looking into it right now. That should have been brought forward, I think, in either last meeting or this meeting, and it was not brought forward. So we're going to look and see if we have the ability to bring it back in

289August or if we need to have it done before the end of this month, and we'll let the board know if we need to take other action to make sure that that gets approved so everything's okay with our Prop 28 funds. And then, so I also noticed on this that we're having a governance, board governance workshop in our meeting, or did I not see that regular? So originally, I think months ago, as Michelle and I were talking, we originally were planning that this meeting was going to be on governance, but now there's a lot of items on it. Yeah. So I think I'll work with President Bell and see like how do we navigate that? Do we look at adding a separate study? Because that was going to be on superintendent evaluation. It was going

290to be the next study session that we had. So see whether it makes sense to embed it within this or if we need to find another date for a study session in the fall. Because we also did not do our board self-evaluation, which usually happens before the August meeting. So I know we approved a board governance calendar. And so that's not on here. So we have to figure out how we're going to address that. So anyway. I'll work with President Bell and then maybe talk with each of you about possible solutions. And we'll try and figure out how to agendize those things. Okay. Item 13, public comment for items not on the agenda. Anybody in the room? Yeah, items not on the agenda. I'm very dismissed. I just want to say this. It is a

291comment, yes. I want to bring up the flag being taken down. So this is a topic that is on the agenda, and so... No, I'm sorry, but so... Okay, this is 2026. Culture wars do not need to exist here. You brought that up. Okay, the American flag was brought at half-staff in this city for Charlie Kirk and that the students saw that they saw that and I just you know, I just need you to understand that this is a special issue. I know. The Future Farmers of America flag is not an identity flag. It's not a flag that's just going to be there. Okay. So we're at the coolest meeting adjourned. Yeah, that's fine. Yep. Thank you. It was a fascinating experience to listen to you guys.