001I'm safe. You know, there's going to be a little bit of a warning there. You know, because if they're nervous, they're not. You like them? Yeah. It's three degrees in March in my country. It is kind of like boarding on Tuhacan. Well, do you know how hot it's going to be next week? I do. Next week's going to be hotter than our summertime event. I know. I mean, we'll get that hot, but like, I mean, March, we'll make it hot. Good evening. It is 6-01, and I'm calling to order the Sunnyvale School District regular board meeting on March. I see that all board members are present, so we can begin. This meeting is available in English and Spanish with the translator. Please give instructions on conversion services available Good evening. Buenas tardes. The Zoom interpretation
002feature will be used in this meeting for English and Spanish support. All participants on this call must select their language of preference by clicking the language when the host turns on the interpretation feature. This is found in the world icon located on your feature panel. Interpretation for this meeting will be conducted simultaneously. Thank you for your attention and collaboration. Buenas tardes. Se utilizará la función de interpretación de Zoom para soporte en inglés y español. Todos los participantes de esta llamada deben seleccionar su idioma de preferencia haciendo click en el idioma correspondiente cuando el anfitrión active la función de interpretación. Dicha función se encuentra en el panel de herramientas en el icono del globo terráqueo. El modo de interpretación para esta reunión será el simultáneo. Gracias por su atención y colaboración. Thank you, Angela, please note
003that a recording is being made at the direction of the board and the recording may capture sounds of those attending the meeting. We're on agenda item 3 if there's any approval of agenda, if there's any member of the public who would like to speak on the side, and which is solely about the agenda, please hand in a blue card in the room or raise your raise your hand online. Not seeing any comments is there a motion to approve the agenda. I move approval of the agenda as listed. Are there any questions or comments? I'll let Tabor say aye. I'm chair of both sides. I have found a motion by Trustee Maschineau, seconded by Trustee Watson. No opposition and abstentions. The motion passes 5-0. We're on agenda item four, public comment for closed session. If there
004are any comments pertaining to closed session items, please submit a blue card or use the raise hand feature online. Are there any public comments for this item? Thank you agenda item 5, the session, the time is now 603 PM and we'll now recess into closed session. We expect to return shortly after 630. This might here you can practice it over Who are you? So typically they sit in one or two seats. You pull the mic over and you can practice it. You want to go sit in the seat by yourself? Like what does it feel like to sit there? Yes, there's bars there, exactly. The Sunderland School District is located on the ancestral land of the Malikma and is peacefully honored and cared for this land for thousands of years. We recognize that every member
005of the Sunderland community continues to benefit the use and occupation of this land. We acknowledge our responsibility to learn from the wisdom of the Ohlone people and to consider how we might work to repair injustices and to move forward together in honorable ways. I did ask. I did ask. When I came to the other one, they were talking about the one they got in 2001. Standing on the shoulders of John, Mr. Rodham Hill, he came in right after the gold one. There's a lot of people who think that there's so much more to it. I've seen patients. Also, somebody said. Yeah. So I'm not comfortable with that. This is a little different. This is cool. It's a little different. I know, right? It's just crazy. It's just crazy. I was very, very inspired by your
006story. I was very, I was like, one thing that I thought was thinking about is like, I don't know. I was like, I feel like I'm in a problem. I see you. My, I'm like, I'm in a problem. Looks good. I saw the If you call me, I'll be there. So that's what I'm asking. This guy is going back. Absolutely. All of them. Oh, right. Good evening. The time is now 639, and I'm calling back to order the Sunnyvale School District. regular board meeting. As a reminder, if you require Spanish interpretation services online, please click on the world icon in the Zoom menu. We will need to reconvene to close session after agenda item 14, so we have no announcements at this time. We are on agenda item seven, and I'm proud to have some
007students here. If you are... I want to just note to all the students that are here, thank you so much for coming. After you do your speaking, can you please stay afterwards and we're going to do a picture with the board. Thank you. And so today we have from Ellis Elementary, two students. The first to do the flag salute, please. Okay. Good evening, Board President Shen Brewster, board members, Superintendent Dr. Crossweight. District cabinet members and Sunnyville school district community. I'm Stephanie Fisher, proud principal of Ellis elementary school. And we are honored to be part of tonight's board meeting. Joining to me, joining me today are actually three students. I have Cameron Bell, Mason Lynn, and Miranda Watame. Their interests are basketball, soccer, and singing. Miranda will be leading us through the flag salute. Please stand
008with me in allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Cameron and Mason will be reciting the land acknowledgement. Sunnibar School District is located on the ancestral and unceded land of the Mohegma Ohlone tribe, who have peacefully honored and cared for this land for thousands of years. We recognize that every member of the Sunnyvale community continues to benefit from the use and occupation of this land. We acknowledge our responsibility to learn from the wisdom of the Ohlone people and to consider how we might work to repair injustices and to move forward together in all new ways. Thank you. Thank you, Principal Fisher and Miranda and Cameron and Mason. Again, if you're able to stay,
009please do so we can get some pictures afterwards. We're moving on to nine reports. We will hear student reports, and we'll start off with Sunnyvale Middle School. I welcome you to the diocese. Thank you. Good evening, Board President, Minister, Trustees, Superintendent Crosway, and community. We are the student body representatives from Sunnyvale Middle School. We appreciate the chance to learn student voices. Tonight, we are excited to share some updates from our school. My name is Gail Koster, and I serve as student body president at Sunnyvale Middle. As our second trimester came to a close, Sunnyvale Middle saw a lot of exciting events from clubs. Our school's chess club held a tournament two weeks ago, creating a fun environment for students to meet new people who share similar interests. The club also had a chance to advertise
010their weekly meetings, advertising also in Spanish to find more interested students, regardless of language barrier. Several other clubs also went to competitions over the last month. These clubs included Vara UN, who was in the tournament, Science Bowl Math Club, both of which sent teams to competitions with other schools, and FBLA, participating in a regional event. One FBLA team from SMS won second place in sales presentation with a couple of individual students winning awards as well. In addition to all the fun events our school has to share about, the end of the second trimester also brought back a lot of memories for me and other students. For eighth-year-olds like me, who walked into middle school three years ago with 540 school days ahead of us, we are now down to just one trimester. The fact that
011we only have 60 days remaining at SMS is a surreal feeling that brings mixed emotions. Excitement for high school ahead of us, but also sadness to be leaving middle school as well as many of the friends we've made friends with over the last three years. It can be tough as we are zoned to two different high schools. Now Ellie will share more about some of the field trips and school-wide events that have been taking place at Sunnyvale Middle School. Good evening. My name is Ellie and I serve as secretary at Sunnyvale Middle School. Talking about our memories from middle school, our sixth grade had some really exciting experiences this month. One of the highlights was their field trip to the planetarium at De Anza College. Inside the dome, they explored the stars, planets, and galaxies.
012We also had two fun school-wide lunch events. hosted by Leadership Act Daily. During our Super Bowl lunch event, students made football shaped crafts and participated in fun act competitions. At our Lunar New Year lunch celebration, we had a chopsticks competition where students would compete with their friends to see who could get the most yummy things into a cup. The winners received red envelopes filled with chocolate, coins, and Spartan tickets, which made the event even more fun and fascinating. Another recent event that happened at our school was a high school musical drama performance. Our drama elective did a great job bringing out many students and families to showings. When I read Caleb's speech earlier, I thought back on my time in Senegal School District, and I realized that tomorrow will be the sixth year anniversary of
013COVID. Looking back, many things have changed. When we returned from the pandemic, I was in third grade and I was very shy. Something that helped was when Ms. Osuji, my third grade teacher, made class really inclusive. From then on, my teachers have helped me become more comfortable and confident around people. On behalf of all of Sunnifong Middle School, thank you so much for taking the time and interest to listen to our school's recent events and groups. Hello, I'm Ellie, and I'd like to welcome Columbia Middle School students, Griselle and Edgar, to come up for your report. community. My name is Rizal N. Dantura. I'm a student athlete and the seventh grade co-president of NGHS here at Columbia Middle School. NGHS, Osomono's National Junior Honor Society, is a club that recognizes the students at Kuwagin who
014do well in academics and behavior. Every trimester, each member needs to earn a Gold or Silver academic award from our school, get 10 volunteer hours, and attend meetings. Since MGHS is also about service to the community, every other Wednesday during lunch, we host recycling where students who are in the club go around picking up teachers' recycling bins. We also host trash pickups on Friday to help keep our campus clean. I'm also excited to be in front of the journalism class here at Columbia Middle School. In the journalism elective, students learn skills such as editing and writing. The students in this class also work together to film our Bulldog Broadcast, which is a radio broadcast that shows school-wide announcements every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The Bulldog Broadcast announces events such as sports games, dances, our school
015rules, as well as clubs and programs that have an on and off campus. The Bulldog Broadcast also occasionally features false kids, made by other school committees, such as NGHS for recycling, Student Cabinet for candy grams, and Leadership for Dances. As I've stated, the Bulldog Podcast announces four teams for sports teams. For the past few years that I've been at Columbia Middle School, I've played on the girls' volleyball team. Both times were an amazing experience where I got to learn about working together, adaptability, and how it feels to be a part of a team. Currently, Connie is in a sports sports season featuring boys' soccer and girls' basketball. The sports that the school provides gives students the opportunity to grow their character development and play a sport they love. Thank you for giving me the opportunity
016to talk about my life as a CMS student. Good afternoon, board members and San Diego community. My name is Edgar Martinez, and I'm a student at CMS and in journalism. Today I'll be talking about clubs, journalism, and some other classes. There are many clubs that a student like me and others... Some clubs are run by teachers, some by students under adult supervision, including a chess club, Magic the Gathering club, a K-pop club, and many others. In chess club, we play 1v1 chess matches with Mr. Duluth, who runs the chess club. In Magic the Gathering, we play a card game that's similar to Pokemon, but similar to UBL. Magic the Gathering is run by the school librarian, Mr. Salazar, and the technician, Mr. Daniel. um In K-pop club, we dance, hang out with friends, and Miss
017McDonough runs the K-pop club. In my first class in PE right now, we are in the track and field unit, and today in class we did the high jump. In math, we're learning about experiments in scientific notation. In journalism, we are learning editing skills, help record the broadcast every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and to do big projects that tend to take about two weeks. to complete and in science we are in a physics unit right now we're doing a lab of resounding of the spherical object and in social studies we are learning about the north and south society and comedy in ELA we are in a mini about artificial intelligence and how it affects our school thank you for letting me talk about CMS Thank you so much, Michelle and Edgar. At this point, I
018would like to welcome Miranda, Cameron, Mason, Caleb, Ellie, and stay up here, Michelle and Edgar, please, for a quick photo, if you don't mind, as well as the counselors that are here to support you. Thank you for coming out. You guys squeeze in. Students, front row. Squeeze in, guys. Three, two, one. One more. Five, four, three, two, one. Thank you. Thank you so much to our Sms and Cms students for coming out to be a report as well as my diligence and acknowledgement. It's so important to have your voices here. We're moving on to agenda item eight. The superintendent. Thank you. Good evening everyone and welcome. Very excited. and spring break is around the corner as well. And so today, let's go to the next slide. I'm very, very honored to celebrate Columbia Middle School.
019They're celebrating a historic achievement with three outstanding student athletes. I knew we have all three here tonight. Eighth grader, Mariana Streb, along with siblings, Mateo de los Santos in eighth grade, correct? As well as Zayla de los Santos, who's a sixth grader. They captured... Here it is, the Santa Clara County Wrestling Titles in December becoming the first trio of champions in the history of the program. So everyone, please have a big congratulations. I'd like to welcome the Albert County Wrestling Titles as well. Congratulations. How long have you been listening? Six months. And your sister just started? She's so excited. So cool. Coaches and coaches. You guys are in the center. Yeah, you're in the center. Three, two, one. One more. Three, two, one. There you go. Hello? Thank you. Stay, stay, stay. One more. One
020more. One more. One more. One more. One more. One more. One more. One more. One more. One more. Okay, we'll give it to a few. So once again, congratulations and again this accomplishment reflects a tremendous dedication, perseverance, school pride, right Bulldogs. We're incredibly proud of all three of you as well as your coaches and thank you families for supporting them as well. So appreciate all of your congratulations. You can go to the next slide please. This week, we also learned that Sunneville Middle School was recognized under the leadership of Principal Iwasaki, recognized as a 2026. California Distinguished School, one of the highest honors a public school can receive in the state of California, and the recognition reflects the dedication and hard work of our students, the dedicated staff and teachers, and the strong partnership with
021families in the Sunnyvale community. Sunnyvale Middle School earned this distinction in the Achievement Gap Closers, highlighting the school's success in accelerating academic progress for historic students. or maintain strong achievement for all students as well. So congratulations to everyone at Sunnyvale Middle School and of course, Sunnyvale School District as well. And let's go to the next slide. Future recognition proper recognition that are at war be as well and so on tonight's agenda we have an item to collaborate with the county office to address our arts hearing in Sunville school district so one of the things with prop 28 is I want to just provide some additional information here so this past three years ago we started receiving funds there's some rules so 80% of it must go to new staff and it cannot be used to
022compensate for employees who are already in the district, but it's for additional staff, again, dedicated for the arts. We have about 20% that can be used for things like material supplies and partnerships, and again, not more than 1% for admin. Let's go to the next slide. And so here are some funds, the history of the funds that we received over the last three years. And then we also are required to expend these funds, otherwise we do use these funds. So you can see the rows of 23, 24, 24, 25, etc. And so the balance for the 23, 24 funds, which must be expended by the end of the school year, are at zero. And then we have a balance of last year's funds. about $428,000 and we have until the following year to extend those
023funds. So staff's recommendation is for the board to approve to enter into a contract with the county office using the Prop 28 funds and this will allow us to develop a strategic arts plan so that we can develop a robust arts program here in our district and it also provides us the opportunity to include staff and community members in getting their input and determining how we respond move forward but also with using these funds here let's go the next slide and so the funds are allocated by school sites and you can see the actual dollar amounts per school one of the things that people need to know that we should be aware of is that these funds are not the same year to year they're contingent upon the enrollment of students And so as enrollment
024declines, the actual dollars will also decline. The other challenge for us is that the actual dollar amounts are not sufficient to hire like an additional staff per school. So we have to be creative and figure out ways to be able to collaborate and share the resources amongst various schools in order to provide the additional staff here in our districts. So this is again an item for your consideration this evening. Any questions at this time regarding this? So we are not giving back any funds and we will not have to as long as we spend our allocation on that fund? Yes, so at this time we are not interested in using any funds and so as you see in the previous slide again, two previous slides. So yes, we are not at risk of losing any
025funds. We've exhausted the funds for the previous two years, and so we have another year to expand to the last year. Thank you. And so we go to the next slide. I just want to give everybody an update on summer school. It's going to be a little different this year. I want to acknowledge our SAA president, Wendy Smith, for her input in supporting these efforts as well. But previously, we would have summer school starting July. And one of the things that I heard is that it makes it difficult for our staff to have a break and be able to come back. And then so, and it was more enrichment based. And so we want to increase the number of students that we're serving. We want to balance out enrichments with academics. And we want to
026be able to expand the number of students that we're serving, but also potentially the number of schools that we're serving. So this year, it'll be academic based. Like again, it'll be. within Richmond as well. And we're gonna start immediately after the week after the school year ends. So let's go to the next slide. And we will have also extended school year for students with an IEP. So here are the dates. So June 15th through the, what is it, July 10th. So a total of about 18 days over four weeks. We have confirmed Columbia Middle School as well as Ellis. And we are looking at expanding potentially to Vargas and or Bishop. as well. And again, the academic hours will be from about 8.30 to 12.30 with after-school support all the way through 5, 6 o'clock.
027And again, we will be offering ESY as well. Let's go to the next slide. And any questions on that as well? I do. I do. And how is the response for hiring? So we actually just put this information out recently. I don't have the numbers, but I can give you those numbers in the near future. Unless someone here may have an update, but we are encouraging our staff to help us out during the summer. I know it's not always easy. It's a sacrifice, but again, it's appreciated by our families and our students. So, oh, sorry, go ahead. No, just thank you. Okay, so sorry, my question was about the Stanford collaboration. Is that still happening? And then also if it is happening, how will the almost like soon to be student teachers be distributed? Yeah,
028I don't have the so we will be continued our collaboration partnership with Stanford However, they won't I don't have that information in terms of the entry that second question They are aware that we're starting off earlier the academic base in Richmond and we have We have our staff as well if there's an interest in supporting with Stanford Was it 1,200 last year students? We went up basically double. It was under, so. But we're hoping to double the amount of students that we're able to serve this year. I have a question. How will those students be, will they be invited? How will they be chosen? Yeah, we have a targeted list. We're going to have additional spaces available, but we are prioritizing students based on various factors and indicators. But what we should do is support
029more students. Any final questions or discussion? Are we still going to have, are we going to have, like last year we were able to have all of the other support amenities open, like the library and, I mean, they're not really amenities, they're just other supports to learning, like the library, having some, you know, transportation. Yeah, all the other services will still be available. Okay, thank you. And I want to note that although the second interim budget presentation is listed on the superintendent's report, that will be covered in item 12a. And the proposition 28 update also regards the contract that's coming up later, so that's 12e. So we won't talk about that as extensively at that point. Okay, we are moving on to board member reports. As a reminder, these reports are meant for the board
030to communicate district-related activities to the rest of the board. It's a great time to report back about committee or liaison assignments or upcoming events. If activities are expensive, they are often sent in to be included in the minutes of committee. Thank you. Trustee Watson, please. Sure. Everything on my mind is all about lunch brunch, which is Saturday. So I'm wondering if I could cherish for that. And it's everybody in the county, except for some of our errands, who's officiating at a wedding. So people dial in, which I found very unacceptable. And then we had to something over to have something come up on our calendar. But we have, you know, we have two congressmen. We have a couple of senators. To well, we have several senators and we have a silly numbers, Berman and. Attending
031so it's, it's just going to be like the Superbowl advocacy. So I really look forward to it. And it's just a closed event just for Sunnyvale or for sorry for Santa Clara County school boards, members and superintendents. So that's really big on my mind. I did also want to share with you that we met with, as part of the success committee, we met with Annette Tran, who's brand new. She's only been there 10 days. Human services manager at the city of San Diego. So Peggy was at that meeting as well. You know, it was great because it's really exciting to see that the city is stepping into this area and they were open to being with us. In terms of advocating for unhappiness students, and she seems to have a lot of experience, but she
032is going to be. All the McKinney mental coordinators from the 4 school districts that operate within sunnyville. So you'll be getting a. An email introducing you to the to this office, because I don't even though they attend the county meetings, they never like. Work together on what are we doing for setting those students? And this is all part of a homelessness master plan. It's rolling out where they really don't have a window into what's going on with families. It's mostly people who are out in the encampments or people that they're already providing services for. So they just don't have a window into our families. And so this is a way for them not to get left out of the plan. So I'll send in my report and. I'll go through my notes with Isabelle. Maybe
033we'll come up with a little facilities report for you as well. Okay, thanks. Thank you. I just wanted to briefly mention that we're in the conference. Like, it wasn't that long ago, but I was just like, oh, that's two weeks ago. Anyways, that was a great conference. And I just feel like we missed you, Ada. I know you had to work. But it was a great conference to get some good information. And I just appreciated being able to go there and have the learning that we had. I just want to say that I will miss being at the lunch brunch on Saturday because I went last year and it was really fun. But I'm working this Saturday, so I will miss it. I know how much work you put into it, Bridget, and I really
034appreciate everything that you do. I was talking to you on the phone the other day and you were rescheduling and moving things. She's amazing. Right now at Fairwood, we're working on our walk-on, and I've been busy getting t-shirt sponsors for the t-shirts for all the kids at school, and reaching out to our past sponsors and then looking for new sponsors as well. I'm also organizing the Goodwill Drive yard sale and a pop-up booth that we're having on Saturday, May 23rd. And I was invited, without my daughter knowing, to attend the Fairwood School Assembly because she was receiving an award. So it was kind of fun, and she was wondering why I was there. And that's it. Thank you. Well, it has been a busy couple of weeks. We've been working with the legislation action committee
035and help. No, we just kind of the poster so that. Well, we've been working with the legislation action committee to help in there with the legislation with the branch. And also putting together the new. set of four members for next year. Most of the work actually was for Riget. We've been coming to the facilities committee. As we just said, we're going to have a bigger presentation for that later on. And we have been very busy with the architects working on the steering committee for the updates in Cheruche and at the DO. Tomorrow evening is the CEPH, the Sunny Velocitation Foundation annual showcase in the evening. I've been working with that and helping them. But we use a reminder for the community to go. It's going to be at Ellis starting at 5 p.m. at 6
036p.m. tomorrow evening. And it's going to be great. We're going to see all the efforts that our team puts together every year and where the funds are going. And we're going to have an option for the... with some paintings of a great scientist, Pascal Lee, who is one of the leading scientists on everything related to Mars on this planet, pretty much. Then I went to CABE, that's the California... Association of Bilingual Schools last weekend and it was very interesting. One of the things that we went, we talked a lot about the project next year. and we got a lot of reports from things that have been happening federally. Things are not looking good at all. Before that, we were having issues getting enough money for IDEA for special ed. Now it's almost going to be
037new. They are also taking away... all the help or extra help for English learners and for bilingualism and everything related with well and a lot of things related with education in general so from the money that's coming from the federal government is going to be looking from bad to worse in the next well between this year and the next following years. Then we also had a look at how the economy is doing. Of course, I don't know if that look, which wasn't particularly good, was actually talking about what to do in a war economy or in a world war economy, which is not particularly uplifting, thinking about that we depend on our... property taxes in order to fund our schools. We are not an ADA school, so that's actually very important for us that the
038property taxes revenue gets higher for us to be able to pay our bills. Other than that, I've been working with CLSPA, the California Latino School Board Association. And with that, we have our next educational event. It's going to be online, so everybody can come. And it's going to be on the, one second. It's going to be March 24th at noon. And the event is called From Framework to Classroom, Preparing Districts for High-Quality Mathematic Instructions. And we're a little bit behind with our six annual lectures, so this is happening right now at the end of March, but there will be two that will be announced for April to catch up. And our annual unity is going to be on September from the 29th. Wait, no, this is July. September. September or August? August. No, that's why
039it wasn't Thursday. Okay. I have August. Yes, August from the 27th to the 30th. So from the Thursday to the Sunday. And it's going to be here in San Jose. And as usual, it's going to have a lot of... talks about education, educating English learners, a lot to do with the rights of the immigration community and Latinx advocacy for Latinx children, among others. So we invite everybody in the community, every educator, to our panel conference. Other than that, I will send my activities to Jesús. Thank you. I will also be sending in my activities, but there was a few that I wanted to highlight for us here. I trusted Rex in the way I attended the Federal Fiscal and Political Impacts of Student Mental Health and Wellness efforts in California. That was a webinar. There
040was some really interesting and very, there's some very innovative work there, but also funding. is available to support student mental health. So we got some follow-up information that I will be sending out to Dr. Crosway to share with the rest of you. I also conducted the Project Cornerstone parent workshop entitled Managing Stress and Fostering Resiliency. I'm just so impressed with all the workshops that Project Cornerstone puts on and excited to look at how we can expand into middle school and even maybe some of the staff. training options. Those are really wonderful. I also attended the Health and Wellness Committee. One interesting aspect was that they are trying to socialize components of the community schools model there and talk about which aspects maybe have traditionally been done by the members of the Health and Wellness Committee
041and might also be integrated into our community schools models as we go forward. I have visited a few school sites for the Hoffman validation. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say the names, but let me just say that there is really awesome early literacy happening, and they have very innovative models of schedules, like having five different elementary school schedules and having their intervention specialists go to each of those sites. throughout the school day. And so doing the master schedules in concert with each other and showing some really, really great growth. I've also been visiting the Environmental Education. programs at some of the county schools, so the Hester cluster and Darling cluster, where there's some medically fragile students, as well as some severe needs. And the way that they are integrating environmental education for those
042students that usually customarily had not had those experiences is really fantastic. And it was so uplifting to see. having everybody out there, their watering plants. They had, for the medically fragile students, there was, you know, my switches that they operated with just a twitch of the eye. And so those are really great ways to integrate technology and environmental education for all of our students in the county. And then finally, I want to mention that we've been doing board office hours. all the schools that we started the tour. So we've done two so far. Cumberland so far, I went with Trustee Watson. We had about 16 staff members, staff and teachers come. And then also went to Bishop with Trustee Woodridge-Beveridge. Again, a really great show. My name is Connie, staff and teachers. And the purpose
043of that is really just to be a successful and connect with the community. And those... of our staff that are closest to our students because here we seem very distant from students and it's just wonderful to be you know in community and hear from our educators there okay and with that we are moving on to the board report uh 9d from sunnyvale education association i see president smith is here Good evening, trustees and Dr. Crossway. My name is Wendy Smith, and I am the president of the Sunnyvale Education Association, the teachers union. I just want to take a moment to acknowledge the work that the board and the district leadership are doing to explore solutions to our current fiscal challenges, while still keeping the well-being of our staff and students at the center of those
044decisions. Budget gaps are never easy, and too often the quickest solutions ends up impacting jobs and the people who serve our students every day. That's why it's important to recognize when thoughtful options are being considered that aim to address financial realities without immediately turning to layoffs. One example of that is the early retirement incentive that is being considered tonight. Exploring voluntary options like this show a willingness to look for solutions that respect the careers and contributions of our educators while also helping the district manage its long-term fiscal responsibilities. I also want to acknowledge the ongoing collaboration between the district and SEA leadership. The regular monthly meetings we have have created space for transparency, for honest conversation, and for working through difficult issues together. That kind of collaboration matters, especially in challenging financial times. When we
045work together and communicate openly, we are far more likely to find solutions that support both the physical health of the district and the people who make our schools run. So on behalf of SEA, I want to thank the board and the district leadership for continuing to engage in that collaborative approach and for exploring options that prioritize stability for our educators and ultimately for our students. Thank you. Thank you, President Smith, for coming out. from the California School of Social Employees Association, which is I classified you in. Are there any representatives of CSEA wishing to speak? I have Gita with her hand raised, but I don't know if she's CSEA. Gita? Yeah. Okay. Moving on to 9F, Sunnyvale Education Foundation report. Are there any representatives of CSEA wishing to speak? Ms. Jansen. I mean, I'll try
046not to talk very long. Okay. Good evening, everyone. My name is Courtney Jansen, and I'm here tonight to talk about the Sunnyvale Education Foundation and my capacity as a program leader. I was going to start by inviting you all to our step showcase tomorrow night, but that has already been done. So I would say thank you for giving such a great overview. We would love for you to come. As you now know, it's 6 p.m. tomorrow, starting at Alice on the Dream. The event is free for everyone to come. We do ask to RSVP if you haven't to get on the great headcount, but super excited and hope to see you all there. I also want to think I've done this before, but just to reiterate a thank you to Jeremy and the rest of
047the district for helping us get the science camp Walker up and running. We have not been through. five or six schools I think maybe who have used it during the science camp and it's been great. Students are borrowing sleeping bags, jackets, shower shoes and so forth and the staff at each of the schools have been fantastic in getting that need collected working with us to get the supplies and getting them all returned. So thank you for giving us a space to provide that. It's been a very successful pilot year and we will be continuing it in future science camps, science camps, outdoor camps or whatever that need happens to be. I also wanted to highlight that we finished our call for the Beyond the Classroom grant. So I think we have come to you before
048and said that we were doing this for $25,000 as part of our special projects fund. So I wanted to share a few numbers from that. We got 45 applications in total, and we got at least one application from every single school, elementary and middle school in the district. So it was amazing participation. Super appreciate that. That obviously means we have a lot more applications than we can fund. So we were not able to fund everything. We tried to fund the things that we could and that qualified, but it was a really amazing reaction and support and engagement from the entire school district. And I thought I would highlight a couple of things. We got lots of applications from TK and preschool. So your TK and preschool teachers are super interested in being outside and beyond
049the classroom, which is amazing. We also got applications from other grades, although I would have personally loved to see more from the upper grades and the middle schools to get these kids outside more. We also got a lot of requests for sensory needs and items to support kids who have sensory needs support or have autism support, things like materials to provide calming corners, flexible seating, and so forth. Those did not fit within the category for the specific grant application, so we did not fund those as part of those, but I wanted to show that there was a very clear need. We had several applications with that, and Steph has noted that for discussion and collaboration in future years as well. And then I just wanted to highlight a few of the fun things that we
050will be funding. So we are funding tricycles at two schools and then these things called plasma cars in the third school, which are kind of like tricycles but not, so lots of outdoor time there. It did make us all wonder if there are tricycles at all the other TKs, so maybe we'll ask that question next year as well because it's super fun. We're funding field trips to a youth science institute and to Gilroy Gardens. We are getting a TK class in which a rain gear so they can go outside in the rain as someone from Wisconsin I feel like we can go outside without it, but we're super excited to get kids outdoors whatever they need to and we're gonna hope for rain next year so they can use them a lot. Another teacher is
051going to take her class to do art on the blacktop. So she requested an easel and materials, you know, paintbrushes, cups and so forth to take kids outside to do art, which I loved. We have another grade or another class who requested water testing materials. We got them a water testing kit and they can go test water in their local creek, I guess, and learn from that. Another school asked for materials to go bird watching on campus as part of the campus beautification week in April. So we're going to get binoculars, bird guides, things to build a bird kit and so forth, a bird house and so forth. There were lots of PE materials, particularly for lower grades, which we'll be supporting. And then CMS asked for... stuff to do in an outdoor learning studio.
052So we're super excited. We will give you a formal list. We are going to have a check for the district to cover some of these fun stuff that's purchased and other ones on our own. But we just wanted to share all the fun things that are going on in the district that we were able to support as part of this grant. And I think that's all I have. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Ms. Janssen, for your recording and your leadership. We're on agenda item 10, public comments. If there are any members of the public wishing to make a public comment, please submit a blue card in the room or raise your arm when you're in this portion. The agenda provides an opportunity for members of the public to directly address the grant being
053brought on any item of interest to the public. However, provisions of the Brown Act Government Code 54954.2a and .3 preclude any action being taken on any item not appearing on the posted agenda. 10 minutes allocated to public testimony are 3 minutes per person and 20 minutes for public comments total. Speakers are asked but not required to give their name and affiliation so that no accurate record is reflected in the minutes. I have two blue cards in the room, but I suspect there might be another, so you would need to fill out a blue card, please. And how many are mine, please? Just one? All right, we will start off in the room with Ms. Johnson. Do you mind coming on up again? This one's not as prepared, sorry. Courtney Jansen is the parent of two
054kids who are in the Hingis program, and I have very scarring thoughts tonight, so I'm going to limit it to three things. First... Well, maybe I should have said this in second. Okay, whatever. Even tonight, we had a speaker talking about budget cuts for next year, and I know that that is a question on the mind of many parents, well, many, I guess, parents and staff members. My question is, or request is very specific that I would like you to please look very seriously at bringing back the school supply lists that happened in the fall. I understand the intention behind that. I think that was a great intention to try to make sure that this was able to support. students across the board and that there's no pressure for families to provide materials they cannot
055provide. However, I've talked to teachers who are having to spend their own money to provide things. And I know teachers do that anyhow, even though they shouldn't, but I would like to have them do that less. I've talked to parents who like to contribute to the classroom and thought that the school supply list was a great way to do that. And I'm worried that if budget cuts are coming, the funds that the district needs to provide those basic school supplies. means that something else isn't going to get funded. And we have a large community number of community people and parents who are willing to bring those school supplies to the district and contribute that way. I would rather see the district spend their money somewhere else. So please bring back school supplies or very seriously,
056or school supply lists are really concerned. The second thing I wanted to do, actually, this is from what I just talked about. I would love to see us get more ways to spend more time outside. You know, the staff obviously encouraged that and we have a lot of great ways to do it, but it was clear that. It makes sense for TK and preschool teachers to get their kids outside more. And even kindergarten, we got some in a little bit in first and second. But those upper grade teachers, for whatever reason, did not super engage, I will say. And not across the board, but I think that there should be a great push from the district to say, let's get kids outside more. We live in Sunnyvale, right? Sunny is in the name of our
057city. If kids in other parts of the country can be outdoors when it's like freezing weather, I think we can get our kids out more. I also might flip this up and didn't get this far, but we've had obviously an increase in behavioral intervention support. And I wonder, without looking into the data, if having kids outside and moving more would help. My younger child in particular, if he doesn't get to do movement, like, I mean, his teacher is amazing, but he's a big handful. And when he gets that, when he gets that movement, his total behavior changes. And so I would really like to see kids outside more. The 20 minutes of resource and the 20 minutes, again, that lunchtime is not sufficient, even if that may be the state or federal, whatever the rules
058are. And the last comment I was going to make was for Prop 28. I didn't have time to go through the numbers. Clearly, the district has not in the past prioritized this, so I'm super excited to see that it is being prioritized. Thank you for the update on the numbers. I'm very excited to see the upcoming collaboration with the county to build an arts program. This is an area that I'm interested in as a parent, that my kids are interested in, and so thank you for investing the time to do that, and I'm super excited to see where it goes and see what we can get done to start in the fall. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Jensen. Next on the board we have Ms. Heather Burns. Okay. Hello. My name is Heather
059Burns, and I'm a teacher at San Miguel. I'd like to thank the board for their time and consideration. I'm here today to speak because I'm very concerned regarding inconsistencies in our workplace violence prevention plan. In February, staff reported an ongoing issue with a neighbor who was acting in a manner that staff found hostile and threatening. Staff reported some backstory that there was an ongoing escalating issue with this individual, which included things such as racially mocking African-American staff members, sitting outside the classroom and looking through the window during the school day, watching children play in the playground from the park while smoking a cigarette. A staff member said that his mother approached them when they were coming to work and warned them that her adult son was suffering from mental illness and if he approached them
060and started being aggressive not to respond and to just walk away. We reported an incident which occurred where he started behaving erratically with a staff member and physically prevented them from parking their car in the parking lots to go to work and waiting for them to try to park and then blocking them. Staff shared that they were afraid and felt threatened. We asked for assistance and no measures appeared to have been taken rather than to tell a few staff members to call 911 if they felt threatened. The Workplace Violence Prevention Plan is supposed to contain effective means to alert employees of the presence, location, and nature of workplace violence emergencies. However, there's been no such notification and matters continue to escalate. Last week, an incident occurred where a neighbor was arguing with another neighbor and
061a San Miguel parent got caught up in that and the neighbor started directing verbal hostilities against the parent. The next day, when the parent came to pick up their child from school, the neighbors thought the parent out again, started directing verbal hostilities against them, and ended up exposing his backside to the parent. This time, public safety was called and four officers responded. Some teachers that I talked to reported that they had not heard anything from management regarding the incident, but only heard about it from their students. When following up on this incident, I asked to see the report. I was told that there was not gonna be a report by the district because they do not consider this after workplace violence because it was committed against a parent. I request that the district review the
062language of the California Labor Code section 6401.9, which defines workplace violence as any act of violence or threat of violence that occurs in the place of employment, and to amend the Sunnydale Workplace Violence Protection Plan to ensure that this is a safe place for everybody. This would put us in alignment with Strategic Plan Goal 1, that students experience inclusive and nurturing environments. and signature strategy 1.1 trusting relationships with students and families. I'd like to thank the district and the board for listening to me in this matter and I hope that we can change things to make our school safer everybody. Thank you. Thank you Ms. Williams. Do we have any other comments in the room? Okay just directly. Thanks, Peggy. My name is Jenny Parashatmar and I live in the Snail neighbourhood and I'm a
063member of the Neighbourhood Association. I've lived in many neighbourhoods since I came from Australia like 30 years ago and this one is so special. It's so friendly and so cooperative and consultative. We have the most active National Night Out and we have a lot of support from our council member, Richard Mellinger. I was wondering whether the former campus of the Spark School, which is on the Columbia School, could be turned into some kind of a preschool or early childhood education center. And so I floated the idea, and I've got a lot of parents and former teachers and educational consultants, all who said they'd love to be involved. And I'm wondering if... My proposal, or my idea, which is not just an idea I'm floating, is to sort of compete the Palo Alto Grand Old Childhood,
064TKO, Early Childhood Education. It's a co-op. And I love the idea of having parents involved and community members and grandparents like myself. And I just feel like we could also use the same premises for after school activities. So kids that do some sort of a program on the Columbia Park, some sporting activity or whatever, could use that. premises as a drop-off point and a snack place and during inclement weather they could use the classroom. Also the preschool family in Palo Alto, they have compulsory parenting classes in the evenings so that could be held there as well. And I was just urging the school district to trust the neighbourhood. to make this work with volunteers to help with different programs, lots of after-school possible programs using arts and crafts as well as sport. No particular request,
065just to support the idea and to help us inquire and get collaboration amongst the community and feedback from people who have small kids and would like to be part of it. That's it. Thank you. Hello, can you hear me? Yes. Okay, hi. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for the opportunity. My name is Geeta Kalakota. I am a parent of a third grader who receives special education in Sunnyvale School District. And I am also on the Sunnyvale Education Foundation Board. And I'm also... CAC representative to the Northwest SELPA from San Diego School District. And today I'm speaking on my own behalf. Recently, today in the board meeting, the board member reports, I heard that the existence of our facilities committee that is weighing in on the new construction that is about to happen at the Cherich's
066Elementary School. As a concerned parent, I've seen the construction that happened at Ellis. And during the construction, we have seen Ellis. how it was before the construction and I've seen how Ellis was after the construction and as a kid that was receiving occupational therapy services, I've seen how the occupational therapy room was. It was significantly reduced after the construction. I do not know if any consideration was put into to understand what kind of space needs occupational therapy needs would be like for a school of Ellis size, which is about 700 students in capacity. And it is reduced to like one sixth of its original size and is made to share with the speech therapist in the same small room. I'm really concerned that when our district is taking on new projects, I am concerned that.
067not enough attention is being paid to what exactly the special education needs will be. And I want to bring it to your attention that you should probably have a special ed member from the administration or an occupational therapist team weigh in on the space needs for this also. And also, in addition, I would like the district to think about sensory rooms as a necessity for our growing school district with the increased need for providing special education services to the students that are coming in with increased diagnosis and increased needs for these students. So as the facilities planning is happening, I urge the district to consider these needs. Thank you so much. Moving on to agenda item. Any item on the consent agenda is subject to review and discussion prior to being approved by the board.
068If necessary, any items may be removed for separate action. This public may address the board regarding any items on the consent agenda. If there are any comments pertaining to the consent agenda item, please raise, please hand in a blue card to the person or raise your hand online. Are there any public comments for this item 11? Sorry, I ran out of time. So I'm going to talk specifically about 11B2, the Lakewood Elementary School of State Modernization. I'm not going to talk about artificial search directly, I promise. In this, it talks about grade level appropriate play and interactive components, and you can approve the contract, it's fine. What I would love to see is reimagined playgrounds. What did I say? 11B2, the Lakewood Elementary School's playground modernization. It's great to see the investment in playground structures
069that our schools and kids have a place to play. It gets them outside, like I was just saying, but it feels very limited. And there are playgrounds in the Bay Area that I would love for us to emulate. So I took my kids, for example, to the Children's Museum of Cinema a couple weeks ago. um and is it going okay if i talk loudly i don't know um Okay, it's okay. I don't have two minutes to talk. It was really awesome. There was like massive amounts of free play. Kids were outside and the creativity that my kids and all the other kids around were able to create was fantastic and way more creative, I think, than you would get in a traditional playground that you see in schools today. Tunnel Tops up in the Presidio
070is another place that does very similar stuff. Oh, okay. Sorry. Thank you, Mr. Thank you. Where was I? Oh, so I took my kids to the Children's Museum in Sonoma. And they don't have a play structure like what you find here. They have lots of outdoor, amazing free play. And to watch the kids and the creativity and the interactions and the cooperation and the amount of time that they stay focused was remarkable. And you don't get that in the playgrounds that we have today. Other examples of places are Tunnel Tops up in the Presidio, which is all nature-based and organic. Well, maybe not organic. I'll give plant-based materials kind of things there with lots of logs and... rocks and things to slide down. It's super cool. The Cal Academy has an outdoor area whose name
071I'm blanking on at the moment. But I think there's an organization called San Francisco, I think it's Children in Nature. So there are people in the community looking at ways to really, like I said, reimagine playgrounds. And I'd like us to get into that so that as we continue to upgrade our playground equipment, we're not just replacing the same sort of play structures with play structures, but we're really looking at what do kids need to truly get that outdoors in nature, even though they're at our school. And I don't know how much time I have left, but I'll stop there. Thank you so much, Ms. Gansman. Board, is there a motion to approve the consent agenda items? We're going to do all MSM-Best, so we're going to do all 11A through 11E. And then if
072there's any items that you'd like to approve, please speak up. I think we have our tip for item B2, 11B2. Great. Thank you. Are there any other items that the board would like to call for further consideration? President May, we have an error, and I apologize for this, on the agenda. There's a duplicate, which is 11D4, the approval of NYU between National District and CSK. It's the same as D2. Okay. D2 and D4. We'll delete 11D4. Any other items to be put in separate consideration? And if not, I may have a motion to approve. I move approval of a consent agenda with the note of the two and four together and pulling that one item. Great. May I have a second? I'll second. Thank you. Okay. So first of all, let's vote on that. And
073then we will... And then we'll come back to 11 or me too. Is there any discussion or anything anyone would like to say about this motion that I had done the motion? I'm really excited about the Day Area Tenuring Association, that opportunity for our students. The understands can be embedded during the school day. We're starting with four schools. And I'm excited to see how that works. That's literally colored. Any other comments? I'm just getting ready to vote. Okay, so on the consent agenda, minus 11B2 and the duplicate 11B4. All those in favor? Aye. Are there any names? Chair votes aye. Um, upon motion by Trustee Mashinow, seconded by Trustee Watson, with one opposition, abstentions. The motion passes five to zero. Let's come back to consent agenda item, now called, um, 11-B-2, and the name of
074that is acceptance and award of the Lakewood Elementary School Playground Modernization and Exterior Canvas Paint Project. May I have a motion to approve for the sake of discussion? I second. Okay. I second, please. It's it. Okay. So is this one that we saw previously and this is coming back to us and we said to go to put it on consent or is this the 1st time we're seeing this. Question let me draw my memory. So, we've yes, we've seen and talked about this project. Previously, this is the actual acceptance of the, the big. or awarding the contractor that they bid the project. So yeah, we have, we've heard about this one previously and there were public comments at that time. If my memory is certainly correct. Well, I'll say when you look at the item,
075like it's not actually really redoing, it looks like much of the playground at all. It's just some knowledge, right? So it's saying like painting a metal fence. repaving a colored slurry oh it is installing some some play structures too so yeah i think that was only a thousand dollars that's more than that Oh, it's a million dollars. Yes. It's only a thousand dollars. It's crazy. Yeah. So I think that, so about this, my understanding is the Lakewood, my recollection of this, like from, from going over it with Isabel and then from what we talked about is the Lakewood playground is very. confined, the playground itself. And so most of this is going to be painting, but there were some like minor things that they were going to be able to do, but they can't really
076build on a large chunk of the playground. So they're going to redo the slurry and they're going to, they're basically, it's still pretty kind of barren. Not barren, but it's just a very simplified area because you can't they can't put anything on it So it doesn't really look like other playgrounds that we have But that said when Trustee Shen-Brewster and I went out to Lakewood one of the things that we or we were going around to all the TKs and one of the things that we heard was how much they would like like a sandbox or things that would facilitate some other kinds of plays. So I think and I know we still have to come back with paint colors because we're going to have a whole kind of master plan paint colors but I
077think that my feedback is is that I think this particular, my understanding is this particular playground is kind of a minimalist build for equipment and the focus is more on painting like tracks and activities on the playground. Yes. Is that true? Yeah, re-doing the slurry. To a gray. Yes. Is it gray or color? Well, and color, but not... I'm not sure if it's gray color or both, but it is not black. I can confirm that. Yeah, and so I think that... So just, like, but going forward, I just want to say, like, for the record, that I am very interested in creating some... alternative environments to what we have and also providing at least at every school area accessible playground features for our students who are in special education, who are in special day classes
078who may need that and I believe that Brant did tell us that there would be some sort of feature like at Ellis they have the musical play features like that but I would like to see how we can incorporate. items like that. Any other comments or discussion? I do want to add on. I would agree with in terms of the Lakewood playground because we were able to visit all the TK playgrounds and there were some that were just had far more enrichment opportunities than others. I'm not sure if you all remember I talked about like microdosing at risk because I've been attending the Greener School of Yard lecture series and I do think that this is a great opportunity to reimagine our playgrounds and play structures so that our students can have those kinds of
079opportunities to kind of there's like regulation, there's a lot of executive functioning possibilities, and just that micro dosing of risk meaning that they have opportunities to have some risky play but not hazardous play. This is a great opportunity for our students and I'd like to explore that more. And I just wonder, is there a committee to discuss what playgrounds look like or how does that work? Yeah, I think we discussed maybe bringing back the facilities master plan and some of the things that you guys are bringing up, maybe getting that into the facilities master plan and making that our standard going forward. So I think we've heard the interest from the community, from the board. I think that would probably be the next step to consider. I do want to add on, like, I'm not
080as excited about risk. Like, I really am not. I just am not. So that'll be fun to talk about. But I do, again, it's the bareness of the Lakewood Tiki area. I think they're trying to, that is specifically because they cannot put structures on it because of the site. There's a public utilities easement that constricts what we can do on that playground. So it's such a big area that blacktop so might we consider something like a track for the trikes and then tons of trikes and they already have tracks there but just something a little more creative in terms of providing enrichment that is embedded into the environment. So I'm curious to see more before the construction begins if that is possible. And I think that also things like sandboxes could be built in later
081as well and they're not heavy doses and not like a kitty litter festival i was going to say a sandbox actually i know a sand table that can be covered it's a different yeah so um there's one thing you guys mentioned uh director valentine and i um Dr. Valentine and I were discussing maybe a week or two ago. This is a week ago. This is the exact same thing. There's grant funds for TK, universal pre-kindergarten. So we were talking about this exact same thing. I think we've heard previously from the public and. In our listening tours with the TK teachers that this was an interest to explore. So we'll be bringing back some options for you guys to hear. I do think Lindsay Jacobson from Fairwood TK was saying something along the lines of like.
082That there are ways to do it that were cat-sick. Yeah, we'll see Okay, thanks. That's all I want to have. I'm comfortable approving the contract. Just with the clarity that we also want to be part of these conversations about the ground screening program. Okay, we have a motion by Josie Watson, second by Luvis Bonrich. Do we all those in favor say aye? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. on the motion pass, I vote aye. And the motion passes five to zero. We are moving on to the action items. That's agenda item 12. We start off with 12A, approval of the 2025-26 Second Interim Budget Report and the associated positive certification for submission to the Santa Clara County Superintendent Schools. Mr. Puffy, please, thank you. So we have a jam-packed agenda, so if it feels like I'm going
083a bit faster, forgive me. So next slide, please. I just wanted to open by saying that our budget is much more than numbers on a page. It represents a blueprint for our students and their future. Every number that you see is a teacher in a classroom, a book in a student's hand, and a safe space for our community. So next slide, please. Just wanted to start us off and ground us in the big picture. At the end of last year. Okay, Mr. Kami, may I interrupt for a moment? This slide that you're looking at, is this from the superintendent report? Because I don't see it listed on the agenda, posted on the agenda. Yes, I think it is. Okay, so anyone following along, if there's anyone listening at all, then go back to the superintendent
084report and it's listed there. It's in the item. There's a link in the item. Is this wrong? Okay. I'm sorry. Please continue. Okay. I see it at the bottom. Thank you. So just again, ground us in the big picture. When we ended last year, we saw that we were facing a structural deficit of roughly $11 million. We're not alone. Many school districts across the state are facing challenges as such. For us, Some of the contributing factors are the same across the state for us declining enrollment. So we lost nearly a thousand students since pre-pandemic. We have the expiration of one-time funds, rising cost of living, and cost in general up 50% over four years. And then combining that with a sharp downturn in our property tax growth from an average of 70.5% annually to about
0852%, which is about $6 million a year worth of 35 teacher positions. And so because of our... Ongoing expenses outpacing our ongoing revenue. The county office of ed requiring that we have a formal fiscal stabilization plan, but really it's something that we wanted to do anyway, just to be proactive. And ensure that we have stability moving forward. Thank you. Next slide, please. So just a reminder, the budget cycle is a 15-month cycle. We are in the second interim, about halfway through. Submit your check-in where we have actuals through seven of the 12 months in the year. Next slide. So a bit of an executive summary of our second interim financial status. We're recommending a positive certification. That means we can meet our obligations in this year and the next few years. However, it does not
086mean that the structural issue is completely solved. So we're stable today, but continued action is needed. Next slide, please. So a bit about the economy. The economy is like an ecosystem. There's certain factors and indicators that would create the conditions for growth, similar to the nutrients and water in the soil. So let's start with the labor market. When there's more people working, more spending happens. So we've seen unemployment slightly ticking up. Our growth domestic product is kind of like the nation's report card. That has slowed and become more volatile. Interest rates, so the cost of borrowing, which impacts the money supply, and growth and development. So we're seeing interest rates, the last three. Fed meetings, we saw cuts in interest rates. And then the more recent one from January, we saw a steady hold at
0873.5%. But we have a new Fed chair, Kevin Walsh, and there might be some political pressures to further cut rates. And that brings us to the war in Iran, which began less than two weeks ago. It's brought considerable amount of volatility and uncertainty. You see that in the stock market. The volatility index has reached levels that we haven't seen since April 2025 when there were the announcements of the liberation day tariffs. We also see it in the inflation, the cost of oil, jumping from $60 to $95 a barrel. And economists anticipate that that won't. be going down anytime soon. So all of that inflation trickles into every dollar we spend. Our contracts, our utilities, everything with our vendors, fuel, etc. In addition, the state has its own challenges dealing with the structural deficit of their
088own. But locally, the report is not all bad. We're seeing some some signs of resilience and a lot of it is being driven by the tech industry, Silicon Valley, which an AI investment, 70% of the nation's AI investments happen right here in Silicon Valley. Next slide, please. So a bit about our assumptions. This is in the first page of the budget book, this green book. And so I just wanted to call out a few of our revenue assumptions. So although we're seeing Although we're seeing some slowing in our revenue, we wanted to call out the assumptions baked into the budget. So you can see the revenue assumptions. You can see 1% increase to our property tax and what that equates to, which is about $1.1 million. Recent developments have us cautiously optimistic, and we'll talk
089a little bit about that on the next slide. All right, so this is an aerial view of the applied materials epic center construction, huge development in sunnyville $4,000,000. Project, but it's happening right on the district boundary line. So, the, if you look at the screen, the left side is the sunnyville district. The right side is. If you also take it to the next slide, please. This is the latest aerial view that we came to see. We are exploring if there potentially is part of that building on our side of that line. So that's something we're going to continue to pursue to just make sure that if there's any part of that project on our side that we collaborate with. Santa Clara, that's actually not it would be the 1st time that we have to do
090that. We have some shared property in a mobile home park. Next, that's just a view of kind of how close from the old building to the new building. It is next 5 weeks. So, more development in the area. So, he would pack their acquired Juniper Juniper networks and they actually. We saw an increase to our property tax roll growth because of it. Next slide. And then fortunate, they just acquired seven parcels from the tour of the surgical a few days ago. However, we are, again, optimistic, but we're... We're cautiously optimistic because many of these properties were sold within the last five, six years, and prop pay reductions are a risk. Next slide, please. One last development from Fortinet. They're going to transform a commercial real estate property into a... 136 new homes or they're attempting
091to and so that um is underway their request went went in to the city i think in january so we'll we'll keep watching these developments next slide please So I have a few new call-outs in the budget book in our assumptions. So I have call-outs for staffing assumptions. I have a call-out for the one-time, the key one-time fund use, and also the key ending fund balances. So I just wanted to call that out that they're in the budget book. Next slide, please. And this is... A similar graph that you guys have seen where just over the years we've seen declining enrollment and inclining or an increase in our staff. We talked about the escalating costs. I won't spend too much time on that. Next slide please. And we've also talked about the slowing property tax
092growth. This just I like to include this is not something we'll talk much about but it shows over time how we have changed in certain expenditure areas and In the last four years we have grown significantly. However, the majority of our cost goes to our Incredible staff next likely So this was just a call out for the one-time revenues and the one-time expenditures. The only one I wanted to point out today was we're the third and last installment to the Lakewood Library project. And so that, we're excited to see that one open pretty soon. But that is a one-time cost that will come out of the budget in the future. So our revenues and expenditures kind of culminate to a multi-year projection of, as you see on the page, and the takeaway here is we've
093made some considerable progress, but I like to take the budget out to that final year one quarter early. So we don't have to... We don't have to budget 28, 29 yet, but we have just to see a bit early what that might look like. Next slide. So ultimately, we close the gap of our deficit, make roughly in half. And next slide. Primarily by using attrition. So we've, next slide, please. We've closed the gap, but still. some work to remain. This was a call for some of our programs and initiatives and the two that I'll bring up are transportation. We've tripled our state revenue to transportation over the last two years just by correcting the accounting that goes into our transportation costs. So that's an additional $500,000 that we're generating on an ongoing basis. Then the
094last is our environmental impact and sustainability. Proud to report back. We have successfully engaged with the Fremont. Union High School District. Our middle schoolers will be a part of the Earth Day event. We've also fostered a connection between our middle school and middle school in Cupertino Miller Middle School. So we'll have some engagement between our students. Another one of our programs, just wanted to kind of highlight statewide, we've been seeing the needs growing in special education. So that was a slide there. Briefly touched on that next slide. Please. And then our expanded learning opportunities. So there's a proposal from the governor to increase the funding for this, which would be an increase of about 400,000 dollars for our history. Next, so that leads us to our fiscal stabilization plan. So, our plan is rooted in
095a student 1st. We're looking for structural solutions and the component of the plan that is yet to be determined. We plan to have transparency and engagement and follow the lead of Dr. Crossway and the board in terms of what that looks like. Next slide, please. And one more slide. And ultimately, again, through attrition, we have aligned our staff this year and captured about 26 positions. And with the increased certainty through the early retirement incentive, we forecast next year we will be able to capture about 30 positions through attrition. Next slide, please. So this just speaks to the work ahead. Basically, we've cut the deficit in half over one year, primarily by using attrition and thoughtful vacancy review. We have maybe a phase two that is still yet to come. And so we, you know, that
096work will need to be thoughtful. It will take time. But that is out in our future. Next slide, please. And so in summary, we're incredibly proud of the progress we've made. There's still some work to be done. But we understand that if we keep the approach of student first, be respectful of the great employees in our system, the ones that do the work, we will be able to fulfill our promise in the end. And with that, I will go to any questions or comments you have. Do we have any clarifications, clarifying questions before we move to public comments? Public comments for 12A. If there are any comments pertaining to action item 12A, please hand in a blue card or use the raise hand feature online. Are there any public comments from this item? None. Okay.
097Board, is there a motion to approve? I make a motion to approve to the approval of the 2025-2026 Secondary Employee Report and the associated positive certification submission to the Santa Clara County Superintendent of Schools. Do I have a second? Thank you. I have a discussion. I'll kick it off. Trustee Watson? So I just want to, I understand there's all the assumptions, but just to clarify, this is if everything goes the way, like there's not an additional... economic downturn, correct? Like this is just like steady as she goes. That's what this is. This is based on current conditions. Also, you know, as Mr. Coffey said at the start of the presentation, we don't know what's going to happen with the war and the other potential variables. But as of now, right, however, we have to just
098be mindful that we have to continue monitoring revenues. the economic, the economy, because if things were to change, we would need to come back to you with some different recommendations and easy to continue conversations as well. And then I just want to say how glad I am that the early retirement packages are in there because I think there seems like there was significant interest and it'll be a great savings for the district over the next several years. And even though we won't see all those savings right away, it will compound. And we've worked so hard to go out and ask the community to support us with the parcel tax. So I think everything that we can do that shows that we are working towards maintaining fiscal solvency is really great. And also, I think it
099would be like... I think all those people coming forward and saying that they were interested in early retirement, if we pulled that back, I would feel like that would be a bit of a betrayal of trust for them, you know, because they really put themselves out there and signaled like, yeah, I might retire early. So I think it's really good. We talked a lot about it beforehand, whether or not we were going to even offer it because of that reason. Considering that as well, so I'm, I'm very glad to see it in the plan. Because it was offered to employees. So. That's mailing card, but thank you also for all the wrong. Thank you. Are there any other comments or discussion? I think mine's just a funny comment. I mean, it's like a good news
100on a small thing. So it's sad for me, but good for the district. My grandma, oh, it's making me cry. I shouldn't have even sprung up. I thought I'd be okay. My grandparents' house just sold. They were the original owners from the 60s. So that's the sad thing for me, selfishly, because it's like them and the end of them. But the district is literally going to get like $15,000 this next year because of it. So we just increased our budget by $15,000. So there you go. I have a question. First of all, Mr. Coffey, thank you so much for the presentation and including all of the context that we didn't necessarily say out loud, but it's all in here, and I really appreciate that context and really beautiful images as well. I have a question
101about commercial property transfers. How does that money come to us? The 40 net one that they just took out. pieces from intuitive yeah so when a property is sold or um let's say a new construction happens the assessor's office goes out does an assessment and when it's right when it when they can value it they will put it into what they call the the roll grow um so it's as of january 1st There's corrections that happen kind of throughout the year, but everything that we're going to see for funding next year is based on this year, January 1st valuations. And so both the Hewlett-Packard and the, both Hewlett-Packard happened on July 2nd. So that's going to be in this coming year as well as the fortunate acquisitions. I do want to say I did look
102at all seven parcels and the values. I'm not certain and we'll continue to look at it, but there is a potential that if a Prop 8 request goes in, it could end up lowering or we could get a reduction from that. What do you mean by that? So let's say a property was sold five years ago for X dollars. And then, you know, it happened. We just saw that this purchase was, you know, about a week ago or two. There's potential that the new assessed value when the Prop 8 hits could be lowered. So the way it works is it will, all of those. The entire value will hit our rural, but there could be an appeal that goes to the county appeal forward. And when and if that was approved, we would just see
103a sharp decline in our rural growth for property taxes. Two more things. You mentioned. In looking at the transportation funding, by correcting accounting, we say $500,000. We generated. Generated $500,000. Okay. Are there other areas of correcting accounting that we might be looking at going forward? We're always looking. Yes, there's an answer to that. But that's part of what our charge is, to maximize every dollar that comes in, make sure that we're applying for grant opportunities. We just applied for additional ACES funding. And so every time there's an opportunity, we're looking to maximize. Okay, and there's one more thing I want to mention because I don't know if I'll ever get a chance to again in the agenda item. It's just that we always have a lot of food here in our schools. One county has
104some recovery programs. So if we're like meant sustainability and partnering with the high school district, this will be a good opportunity to also initiate those types of programs and teach our students about environmental stewardship. And then my last question is for Dr. Crosway. How are we planning to do messaging to the community to keep them advised of anything? So we actually are planning on sending out communication directly to all our staff, informing them of the physical stabilization plan, the budget, and some other next steps. And then send our message directly to all our communities as well, well, our families. And then thirdly is we're working on a website, a landing page that can be used for the future as a reference page and also for people in the community to find out what's going on
105with the budget and see the numbers and things like that as well. And related to that, there are some really beautiful one-pagers that have all these graphics that show our members in other districts. So I would encourage us to look at that. And, Jessie, do you have something nice in your hand? No, I was just saying you about the website. Okay, that's good. Okay. Any discussion before we go? Okay, all of those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? Okay, so I'm mentioned by Trustee Harris-Blemish and seconded by Trustee Perpetua. 12 ayes passes, 5-0. Thank you. Moving along to agenda item 12b, our second item, approval of the 2025-26 comprehensive school safety plans, CSSP, for all district schools. Dr. Croswick, can you fill this out, please? Mr. Croswick, I'm going to defer to Mr. Coffey
106on this one, too. Thank you. Yeah, so what you have before you is our recommendation that you approve the 2025-26 comprehensive school safety plans. So we basically go through a process between the district and the county to review the templates that go to all the school sites, the school administrators, then update the plans. They focus on emergency procedures, facilities, school climate. That is reviewed by the school site council. The law says that it has to be approved by school site council before March 1st, which we can safely say happened. The law also says that if we as a district do not adopt or approve the plans by October 15th, that it might spark an audit finding with the state. But in essence, this is just good practice or best practice for our sites to be
107proactive in the safety of our students. And so it's here for your review. Okay, any clarification before we move to public comments? Okay, for 12B, if there are any comments related to 12B, please hand in a blue card in person or raise your hand online. Are there any public comments here? Great. May I have a motion to approve? I move to approve the item. Do I have a second? I second. Okay, great. Discussion? Just to clarify the timing of this, so these are just approved now, and they are in effect until the next approval, like next March, is that correct? Correct. These will be captured in the 25-26 fiscal year or school year, and then there will be an updated one next year for your review roughly around the same time. Any other discussion or
108questions? Shall we close? All those in favor? Hi. Hi. Hi. I'm a motion by Trustee Watson, seconded by Trustee Pippa Spimeridge, the approval of 2526, Cambridge School Safety Plan 2350. We're moving on to agenda item 11, 12C, approval of resolution R2619 in the matter of the district adopting and approving the associate membership agreement joining the education technology and joint powers authority at TechJPA. Mr. Nishihara or Dr. Crosford, could you fill us in? Yes, I'll be speaking to this item before you is the resolution. There is no cost to join the EdTech JPA. It is, again, the item says it's a California-based coalition of public districts and agencies. Pretty big in Southern California. As you can see, the founding districts are currently down there. And it gives us leverage, especially regarding procurement and pricing for applications
109and software. And they're able to do the lift of trying to make sure that data privacy is in place having the California student data privacy agreements as well as vetting a lot of those pieces to help our very limited staff here in doing that work. So there is no cost. They would just provide us additional resources and connect us into the network. I'd like to thank Dr. Crossway for bringing this back to my attention and us joining the EdTech JPA. Are there any other comments? And for 12C, if there are any comments, please raise your hand or submit a look-out. Are there any comments by this item? No. Okay, may I have a motion to approve? I move approval of Resolution R2619 in the matter of district adopting and approving the associate membership agreement joining
110the Education Technology JPA. Okay, do I have a second? I second. Okay, any discussion or questions? Um, any questions? Are there other areas where we can partner? Um, science like this type of education technology where like. As a group, we'll have more leverage to do things. Yes, I think there's there's other specific like, in this case, we were partnering with many other districts in order to have more streamlined process to. get our ed tech, right? So are there other areas and maybe technology or other services where we might be able to partner and have more leverage as a collective? I understand. Yes. The GPA is a formal structure. It's helpful to have them join regarding the software piece. There are contracting other agencies that we can join to help streamline our purchasing process. I think
111Arthur has mentioned those before. And then something else that we're considering is the organization that I'm a part of, California IT and Education, they maintain a pretty robust privacy service piece to help not only for software components, but just help us ensure our data. So we will continue to look for those opportunities where we're not reinventing the wheel. We're joining other agencies together. And I think at this time, we need to do more with less, so let's join together. And so we're not recreating, especially for small districts like Sunnyvale. So great point. Yeah, on that point, I don't know that we necessarily even have to join a JPA. I think there's other things we can do, like for grants, applying with other districts. If we're too small of a district to apply for something ourselves,
112we don't qualify. We're just having that conversation with the human services manager down at the city hall. She was saying that San Jose qualifies for a lot of things that San Jose can't apply for. they're just applying for things with our cities and going forward. So we could do something similar. Yeah, that's a great point. I have one more question. What's the update on the review of all the tech and all the campuses and the recommendations for the district? It's still in process. This actually is a piece of that in the sense that once we approve the JPA will get that information that this kind of will get will get access to what those those software applications that they have. So that's kind of where it will converge for us to be able to identify
113the high leverage applications that are being used across the board here. And again, not a catalog of thousands, but we're trying to really kind of refine that. because we'll get a two-four with kind of the budget budgetary aspect but um yeah so that information is still being collected and coming because you can imagine there's just a number um but the jpa will help culminate that in the sense that once we once with your approval tonight we'll sign up and then we'll instantly get access to the resources they have and we'll start to kind of blend those two if that makes any sense Do you have any sense of, like, through teaching and learning, maybe this is more of a Dr. Crosby question, getting the right ed tech so that we can collect data so we
114can collaborate across sites? Was there any sense of, like, do multiples of that or just stick with one district? Yeah, so we're looking at multiples with school feedback and principal feedback. GPA. This will allow us to also, so instead of purchasing that single license for one school, And then going through that process, when you have multiple schools and you hit a certain threshold in terms of dollars, you're required to do some of these bidding processes, whether it be formal or informal. And this would help streamline those efforts. But to Mr. Bouchard's point earlier, it will also give us the benefit of what other districts have already researched and done and negotiated, aside from the actual bids. The student confidentiality and staff confidentiality is really... Major and for addition of our size we don't as we
115have the staff of the capacity of the time to be best over Okay, all those in favor for approval of resolution 12619, please say aye. Aye. With no abstentions or no opposition, it passes by, by motion by Trustee Maginot, seconded by Trustee for this plan, which passes 5-0. We are moving on to 12D, approve of participation of the Public Agency Retirement Services Parts. supplementary retirement plan for certificated non-management and classified non-management bargaining unit employees mr nishi har is this you again and just preface this yeah this is i want to thank mr mishara and mr preffy and all of you for your leadership because this is something that really required for us to be creative but also to think about like Moving forward, how do we support and respect the dignified manner of the staff
116that have dedicated many, many years here to Sunnyvale? And as you heard earlier, there's a lot of challenges in terms of budget, and it's not unique to Sunnyvale. This is happening all over the place, right? But moving forward, it took a lot of effort and really thoughtful consideration and a lot of... questions about how we can look for alternative ways and again do everything possible before we go straight to something like layoffs and so we just want to thank everybody for their support and this is something that we've engaged in conversations with our associations months in advance and although we didn't know what this could look like tonight you have for your consideration an agenda item That helps us address our budget and align our staffing to enrollment and needs, etc. But in a thoughtful
117way. And again, this is not the end all and this is the final solution, but it's really a good start and a really proactive way to right size some of our challenges across the room. I will now defer to Mr. Covey and Mr. Nishihara. I don't think I can add much to that. That was very well said. So I'm here for any questions you have. However, I just want to echo what Dr. Crossway said. I think behind your leadership, you have pushed us all to look for alternatives, to be creative, and bring the best options to you. And so what you have in front of you is for your... For your consideration to approve the PARS supplementary retirement plan for certificated non-management, classified non-management bargaining unit employees, there's a total of 31 of our staff
118members where they will be compensated 85% of their final salary. The projected savings is also an item. So the first year we'll see not only savings, but we also get more certainty. Without this, we have a lot less certainty. So that is something that is valuable. We also, like Dr. Crossway said, we value. the way that staff feel at the end of the day because none of this work is possible without them. So this is for your consideration and I'm here for any questions you may have. Okay, thank you so much for this. I think Jeremy. If you don't mind, I'll add that piece. I just want to add that in addition to the savings, this gives us flexibility in the sense of the vacancies being created and the opportunity to capture real savings by
119evaluating the position and maybe not filling, but also potentially reinventing some of the... positions to meet our upcoming challenges of what's happening. So we're excited to engage with those conversations with CSD and SEA. And then lastly, I'll just say you received updates along the way. This really was a joint collaboration between business service and HR. And so I'll just end with an anecdote that it was just fascinating to see in those. those the workshop meetings when they would all come together it was like this like this uh i don't know how to describe it like they were all old friends coming together and everyone was seeing who was here some of them worked together years ago um it was just a fascinating thing so um what um president smith said from sda was yeah it
120really is honoring this like cohort that's been dedicated to the services of students to the sunnyvale school district um any clarification for the comments If there were any comments from the public regarding action item 12D, please hand it over to Luke or to raise your hand online. Are there any comments? No. Okay. Before we are motioned to approve, I just really want to thank you all for your creativity and this compassionate, humane approach. And I'm looking forward to celebrating our retirees' trip this past. May I have a motion to approve? I move approval of participation in the Public Agency Retirement Services Supplementary Retirement Plan for Certificated Non-Management and Classified Non-Management Bargaining Unit Employees. Do I have a second? You second. Okay, any discussion or comments? I just have a question. For qualifications, what's the age?
121Can you get any closer to that? For qualifications, what's the age? Because it says specific age and service requirement. Can you just tell me more about that, please? I can. So the requirements align with the standard STRS or PERS retirement requirements. So for STRS and certificate employees, it would be age 55 with five years of district service or age 50 with 30 years of district service. And then for classified employees, it would be age 50 with five years of district service. And to qualify, you also have to be above half-time employee. Thank you. I haven't heard of any other districts in this area that have undergone this process or recommendation to be heard of any. There are. There are districts. I will say, and I haven't been here for an extended period of time, but
122I don't believe Sunnyvale has considered this. And, you know, I just want to tip my hat to Dr. Crossway because he has experience that he brings with him. And so this was an idea that he generated. And so it's good to see it kind of come to this point. Thank you. And finally, can you speak a little bit to the administrative costs for this that you have factored into the recommendation? Yes. So it is 85% of the final pay, or salary, excuse me. And we would be paying that to the, paying it into the plan over a five-year period. However, the savings pays for, it pays for itself as well as generating savings to help our deficit. I guess my question was more about what's the cost to administer this program. Oh, great. Another great
123question. So the original proposal from the agency was 4.5% of the total cost, so it would be roughly... 2.8, 2.9 million dollars, I believe. So it was originally 4.5% of that. However, I negotiated it down to 3.5%. So it's 3.5% of the final payment for the 31 employees. Thank you. Are we ready to go? Yes, please. Is this going to be something that we will offer next year or the year after? Yeah, we would not be able to offer this consecutively because it wouldn't make financial sense. This is something that can be explored and considered about every four or five years, maybe every six years. And then the other thing is that it also depends on the qualifications, right? So the age of our employees. And so if we have certain employees who are taking
124it this year, we may have less for who would be qualified. in the near future if that helps thank you okay i'm ready to vote um in favor of approving the participation on the pars supplementary retirement can you say aye aye chair votes aye as well and this passes five to zero Okay, round 12E, approve the Memorandum of Understanding, MOU, between Santa Clara County Office of Education and Sunnyvale School District for the Arts Education Planning Sessions. Dr. Crosby, can you fill this in? Yes, so this is an item for your consideration to enter into an agreement with the county office to develop a strategic plan inclusive of our staff, our community, parents. so that it's clear in terms of what our expectations are we have some pure goals and metrics moving forward and this allows
125us to use also our prop 28 funds for these efforts and the goal is to try to have at least two meetings before the end of this year and then finish up the strategic plan by you know like mid-fall or something of 2026 as well Are there any comments regarding the section item 12E, Southeast, Blue Card Impression, and Race Year online panels? Do we have any public comments on this item? No. Okay. Board to move. Motion to approve. E? Yes, 12E. I move to approve the Memorandum of Understanding with the Santa Clara County of Education and Sunnyvale School District for the Arts Education Planning Sessions. And a second. Thank you. Okay, and discussion. One second. So for the process, will it be like, will there be two meetings you're thinking like? Community meetings like will
126they be are you thinking there would be like sort of near the same time frame? So like one would be during the daytime. Maybe one would be an evening Or are you gonna have like multi-lingual like when you say two meetings? Is it like kind of two around the same time or are you thinking like two sets of meetings? Yeah, two sets of meetings. Okay. Yes and then um What I was thinking was Would these be sort of like kind of town hall, open community events that we could attend? Or are they more like focused, inviting, like where we really have to be more careful of what we're listening to? Yeah, I think these would be actually specific committee meetings. And the committee can also entertain and should consider. gathering input from the community at
127large as well, which could happen through a town hall or other means. So this is saying you're going to form a committee, but you will all... Because I feel like with this it would be really nice to have wider input, you know, multilingual input. different age level and like I just and even for even if you are having something where you're saying we're going to talk about middle school things the elementary parents their kids are headed there and they're going to want to go so like you have to invite everybody to all of them you know so I think there's I think there's a lot of interest so I'm excited we're doing the plan and then my other question would be like what is what is your idea for a board check-in along the way
128Yes, the board members can take turns coming into the meetings. We can provide updates. We can also do public updates at a public board meeting as well. I think that would be good. I think we'd all like to hear what's going on. I'm sure people would like to take turns pushing in, but I think it would be really good to have it on record as part of it. Thank you. Can you talk a little bit about just at this point, what are we thinking in terms of the composition of the planning committee? Well, we want to have different voices in the community and we want to be intentional about identifying some of our staff members who are correctly involved with the arts, but also being inclusive and reaching out and edging some of our community
129members as well. And to your point earlier about making sure that it's representative of our demographics that we're serving in the community as well. Okay, any other comments or discussion? So if someone's interested in serving on a committee, is there a limit in your mind to a committee size? Does it have to be a small group? Or let's say somebody says, I really want to do it. Can you fit one more chair in the room? We can fit one more chair. Yeah, OK. So how would people go about expressing interest? I mean, I know a lot of times these are like people are kind of invited in as well by principals and by teaching and learning. whatever, but I mean how are you thinking if someone is just passionate about this and really wants to
130be in the room, who would they contact? We're going to reach out to the entire community, right, and inform them of if there's an interest, invite them, and we could do it in different ways as well. But we don't have a limit in terms of... restricting how many people can participate. Ultimately, I mean, a working committee might be different from like a town hall where people want to contribute and give input or have somebody answer questions. But for right now, it's pretty open. And the person... from the county office, Sophia, she's supported multiple districts in our county develop their strategic plans and every plan is different, it's unique to that community. And so there are some plans that are pretty lengthy and there are some plans that are a few pages, but those plans are
131developed organically within the community based on their needs and goals, expectations and resources. Thank you. So may I suggest that we partner with the foundation heavily because this has been an area of advocacy and funding for years. Yes, absolutely. You're all welcome to join us. Okay. And then what about timing in terms of, so this is developing that comprehensive arts program that they have been talking about way before I joined. So what are we talking, what are we thinking in terms of like beginning instruction with students? Well, we're hoping, and again, I can't speak for the committee, the Grinnell Committee yet, but... My thought is I'm wondering if within the first two meetings we can start identifying some key indicators or goals and start talking about can we start using some of these funds to
132purchase some of the supplies, equipment, etc. But really, we want to give the community the time and the support they need to really flesh out their ideas and develop a long-term vision about how do we support the arts moving forward. And then separately, is making sure that we're allocating additional funds for the arts because the prop 28 funds support this these efforts but it's not going to cover all of everything that we think we want to do as well any further discussion or comments well and i think maybe as part of the discussion like as part of that seeking additional funding it could be we could maybe have a team consider grant writing efforts um looping in like what does it mean for PTA or the F Foundation to contribute like you know in terms
133of like equipment or things like that. Yes, I mean once we have a clear vision about what we want to do the guns and everything else, I like it. We're also going to engage and participate in it. with philanthropy and other who want to support these efforts and we can expand campaigns to ask the community also how to support. Okay, I'm excited. Are we ready to vote? Yeah, all those in favour say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Okay, aye as well. So we have approved. The memorandum of understanding between Santa Fe County Office of Education and the City of San Diego School District for Arts Education Planning, motion by Trustee Hujo, seconded by Trustee Maginot, passed by 0. We are on our last action item, 12F, resolution R2521, and the matter is not the last. It
134is not the last one. There are two more. Okay. Those fall into like a different kind of category for me because they're like discussion. But okay. This is not the last one. The third to last one. 12S approved resolution 2521 in the matter of recognizing March 2026 as Women's History Month. Yeah, so we have five incredible leaders here on our school board. And so this is a resolution to honor the Maine women whose leadership, resilience, and contributions have shaped not only our nation, but our community here in Syracuse as well. So, great consideration. Okay, if there are any comments pertaining to this section item, please hand in a blue card or raise your hand online. Any public comments for this item? None. Okay, I have a motion to approve the resolution. I move to approve
135resolution R2521 in the matter of recognizing March 2026 as Women's History Month. Okay, do I have a second? Discussion? Comments? My mom saw this on Facebook and she said, oh, I love your pictures. I love how they arranged it. It was so nice. She's like, I haven't seen that before from your district. I'm like, oh, I know. It's different. So anyway, I think it's not just because my mom saw it in the out-of-state, but also I really appreciate that we're doing it. I look forward to more solutions and more commissions for authors. Thanks. Anybody else want to say something? Okay, I agree. Thank you so much for highlighting us here. the celebrations in the district. We have not done this before as far as I was paying attention, so I appreciate that. And I just
136want to say thank you to the rest of the board. I feel like we are cohesive and I really enjoyed working with each of you and just knowing each of you. So thank you. Are we ready to vote? Okay. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Anyone against? Okay. All right. So, uh, by the way, we have a resolution 2521 in recognition of this. Okay. Moving on to 12 G discuss and vote on CSP, a delegate assembly is necessary. Dr. Can you speak to this item? maybe uh that's the best question it's mostly just ours speaking to the sign up there's some people that are um that want to contribute to cspa by um going forward in delegate assembly and we need to choose four people to move forward as a board um because if
137there are any comments pertaining to this action item please raise your hand or blue card room is there anybody there i have one okay yes please Thank you. Are you on, Geeta? Oh, yes. I am sorry. I raised my hand to kind of congratulate the board for the amazing work that they did. But I think I don't have that opportunity now because it's past the time. So I'm so sorry. Thank you. We take your appreciation. Okay. So, Roy, do we have a motion to approve? I think for this item since it is kind of discussed, I would suggest that we talk about the people come up with our slate and then make a motion. I think we need to have a motion in order to have that discussion. So just like a standing post-former motion.
138I can make a motion. I'd like to make a motion to approve Trustee Pivas-Farmich as one of our... Then we can proceed forward. Do we have a second? Okay. We're going to now have discussion. Okay. So my suggestion for this is we can discuss, but also I was thinking that we could have a roll call vote so everybody can kind of voice your thoughts. What do y'all think? So that we just stop or the each of us. So the role call, though, as I have been watching other board meetings, goes every of the candidates is listed. And then we go through and say, I or nay or I assume say yes or pass for each of the candidates before we discuss. That would be OK. So, I mean, I would like to discuss first because
139I think. Because I also would like to talk about who we're not voting for, who's on there, because that's important for thinking about who we would vote for. Do you know what I mean? The delegates who are on there, because... In my thinking, I think it's just important that we talk about each person a little bit because they're all pretty great. May I suggest, since we all have different degrees of familiarity with everybody, that we do a World Cup vote and then we'll have the discussion too. If Bridget, Trustee Watson, I think you have a lot more context around people's past example. all of you about past contributions and so that can be part of i know we can kind of call it an advocacy or something and then i move towards a slate motion
140if that would can someone help me find i know when i was going through the agenda i had the list but i'm what page is it all like or i just i can't find the list of the people so someone can help me yeah or i'll just look at it well i'm on it i'll share it we're good okay So I'm just gonna so Evelyn do you know any of these people or did you like you do you listen to the speeches? I didn't hear the speeches but I know Isabel, Jessica. So there's Isabel from the Sunridge and there's Jessica Spicer from the county office. There's Derek Graski from Mount Pleasant. There is Elizabeth Holliday from Campbell High School. And Carol Prozanka is a writing candidate. I think there's some kind of thing that you
141go through. And then... I'm doing a job in your head. Job in your head. So if you're okay, could we conduct the roll call? And then proceed with the further discussion? Whatever you want to do. Okay. Dr. Prozanka, can I do that first? All right. So... So calling the names and every person is going to say something. Yeah, because if you're not sure, you don't have to vote for them either way. And then afterwards, we're going to talk to everybody. You can't vote for more than four people, but I think it's fine to vote less for less than four people. Yeah. Ms. Watson. Oh, wait, no, you're going to call out the name. You're going to call out. You just want my four? Okay, my four. Yeah, that's fine. Okay, so I'll do Isabel, Jessica,
142Elizabeth, Halliday, and Carol. That's not good. I would say the two that, I mean, so Isabel and Jessica, I would say for sure. And then the others, like I don't, I mean, I don't have strong feelings, so I don't have a strong. Okay. Isabel and Jessica. Can you turn the microphone on, please? Oh, sorry. Isabel and Jessica for sure. And, you know, I was looking them up. And Liz would be my third, and then Carol. Yes, well, thank you for your confidence. I will have actually the same slate, well, myself. Jessica, Elizabeth, and Carol. Okay, so I agree. So this will be an easy slate to approve. So I think at this point, since we have 1, we have a motion here may have a key amend your motion to include. The other three people.
143Oh, wait, did I make the motion? Okay, I'm going to make a friendly amendment to include Chastie as about who was one of them, Jessica Spicer, Elizabeth Holliday, and Carol Krosanka as our slate to move forward. May I have a, oh, actually, Chastel National, can you make that? Do you second that as well? Yeah, I can second, but I do have a question before we go. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We can discuss that. Yeah. Okay. So like I said, I don't have strong things, so I'm totally fine supporting that, but I do know Jodi and like Jodi. So I just would like for those like. Like, for those of you guys who have said not her, I'm just curious your reasoning why not her over the other two. Again, I'm fine. I just want to. Yeah,
144I really like Jodi. I really like her. Like, in terms of, like, she's just given tons of service to the organization. And actually. Jessica and Jody and Carol are all past presidents of SCC SBA. So the reason why I was thinking of going with Elizabeth, Elizabeth holiday and Carol instead of Jody is because already, if you look at geographically how the other trustees are distributed. Teresa Castellanos is from the south side and so is the county appointed person, Maimona Esvaldorta. But Naomi and Charlie are also on the north side. And we're putting forward a couple more north side people, Isabel and Jessica. And so I just felt like with four people, if we're putting forward a slate that's going to reflect a balance across the county, that putting forward... five would be a lot and
145Elizabeth and Carol would be the only people on the west side out of the whole slate so that's my reasoning I really like all these people I think they're really well qualified and they have great speeches and they're interested in serving and it's a great gig but I feel like it's important to vote for the west I don't know if they'll make it through because Carol's you know I don't know what happened administratively where she didn't get on the ballot But her board definitely approved her. So it's just, it seems like every year it happens for somebody. It doesn't quite make it through the fax machine. So, you know, anyways, so congratulations, Isabel, for being on the ballot. It's apparently a huge deal. Thank you to the SSD team. So anyway, so that was sort
146of my thinking was that I feel really strongly about recommending Isabella and Jessica and so the third north person I would just pass. But Jodi may very well still get on it because she's an incumbent and she's been doing it for all these years. Any other comments or reasoning? I can speak too. I don't know Jodi very well. I've met her just once, but I have heard fantastic things about her leadership through the years. I recently met Lizzie and just in the... In the kind of context of leadership development, she's kind of a newer leader in some way. I'd love to give her that chance. And if somebody, like going forward, I'd love to get somebody to give me a chance if this is ever something I desire. So I like that idea of building
147the bench of leaders within our county. Yeah, and Elizabeth is on the slate right now to be the treasurer for SCC SBA. So she's kind of in that officer team role. It's less intensive than being a vice president or being a ledger action chair, but it's still like in that service area. So I feel like she'll, you know, if she makes it through, she'll be good. Any other discussion or comments? Are we ready to vote? Okay, so our slate is, um, Estelle Hibbles-Farmich, Jessica Spicer, Elizabeth Halliday, and also Carol Kusumka. All those in favor say aye. Anyone opposed? Okay, um, so those are the four moving forward, and that's the Spicer. Let us continue. We are on. Is this the last one? Yes. Yes. Okay. Discussion item 13. Action item. Action item. Oh, I have
148something wrong. Okay. This is the last action item. Action item. Okay. So it's a discuss what? I'm sorry. We're on. 12-H. 12-H. Okay, here we go. Discuss about necessary for a Santa Clara County committee. Dr. Krause, can you say something? I can say something if you'd like me to. This is where I finally get to do my thing. It doesn't even happen every year. I don't know. This is finally my thing. This is your job. A few years ago, we spent way too much time trying to figure out what it even was. Okay, so this is like literally my job is after we vote tonight. I'm signing a paper and he's turning it in. But this is the so this committee, the main thing that they do is when there is a potential like redistricting,
149like not. like a district right is like there's a there's a new parcel it's like actually it fits better at this district and not that district that is the main thing they do they do technically like like when we went to trustee areas they do i think kind of do a final approval but like they don't really get that involved that kind of stuff anyway so this is uh they're just readers they did talk to me about how like oh it's so interesting yeah i mean so it's like technically they have it but kind of like the things some of the things that we vote on we just more just are like Information about anyway, so this is the committee. Who makes those decisions so it's just a slate for us to vote just like
150we did on G. We only have 1 person, right? No, so there's. I guess. Well, yeah, I mean, I mean, we don't have to even vote. I mean, so there's only 1 area where there's 2 people. We're technically we vote for all the districts. I think so. Yeah, so we vote so we either. Yes, I don't know which one of these. Well, that's interesting. So, yeah, so, like, technically, right? So if you're on the. That 1st attachment, and then you go to page 3. So, like district 1 has no candidate district 2. there are 2 candidates that will need to decide between the 2 district 3 has 1 candidate district 5 has 1 candidate. So, like, technically we don't like, if we, for some reason, we're like, oh, we don't want 1 of those. We
151could just not. Vote on the 3 or 5, but I, I would say that we should vote for them. I'm kind of deferring to you. Sure. If there are anybody online in the room that would like to speak to 12H, please raise your hand or hand in the blue card. Are there any public comments for this item? Do we have a motion? I can make a motion. Okay. I move that we would vote for Michael Gallagher, District 2. I might pronounce those names wrong. Jai Sri Navasan, District 3, and Denise Ramon Herrera, District 5. Do I have a second? I'll second. So yeah, so really the only discussion, I assume we're going to put a checkbox to vote for District 3 and 5, right? Unless someone has a reason not to vote for one of
152them. I think they're in covenants. I think so when I read it. So yeah, so is everyone good with Michael Gallagher? For those who aren't familiar, that is our former superintendent. When I saw his name, I was pretty sure it was him, but I texted him and said, is that you on there? Before I read through them, because on the next document, it has all of their information. So is there anybody, like, would you rather go for the other person? I mean, she seemed like she would be great too. I just. Since I know Dr. Gallagher and I think he would be actually really great in this space and be thoughtful. Yeah, I think that this like so the one there have been a couple of things that have come to this group that have
153been a little challenging like the There was a developer who bought a property that was partially in Los Gatos School District and partially in King Green School District and knew it when they bought it and then developed it and then came to this committee and said, it's one community and people on the other side of the street will be in this other district. And really it was about property value because one district was perceived as being a better district. And it was just, you know, Cameron School District is just, you know, they have open enrollment. I don't know what you call it, but they're constantly getting people from outside. They're trying to attract people from outside their district to come to their district because they have such declining enrollment. And they're strapped for money. And
154the board president at the time had gone into that. meeting and just beg them not to do this. You're taking away this revenue that we're just desperate for. Please don't do it. And the committee did it anyway. So I feel like, you know, I feel like, I feel like Mike would be fair about these things. He'd be practical and fair. And I feel like he would, he knows about going to trustee areas and what to look for in terms of red flags because he won't throw it with us. So I think. I think it would be fair. I think he would be fine. Any last comments or discussion? I'm going to respectfully disagree and I would like to move forward with Luciana Dominguez. I apologize Mike if you're listening right now it's not personal but
155I do see again in terms of leadership development moving forward with the women and knowing that trustee areas or redistricting type of decisions often disempower certain groups I feel like Louisiana's contribution in the San Diego, or sorry, the South Carolina Foundation and her statement that acknowledging that these type of decisions require a careful balance of legal rigor, equity analysis, and community trust. That's those are words that speak to me personally and so for that reason I would prefer to advance Luciana and again apologies to Dr. Gallagher I have a lot of regard for you. But this is that's just want to express that. Are we ready to move? Any further discussion? What do you think Isabel? I will just hold a mic. We'd like to go with Patty's suggestion and going with the female and
156going with Lisana D'Avudis. Okay, is there further discussion or anything? I'm not changing my thing, but I just want to share with you Peggy that I actually thought about that a little bit. I thought about that idea as well and it was a part of my, I want to acknowledge that I thought about that too and I value that piece, but at the end of the day, I would still choose my goal. Appreciate your saying that. Anything further, Chelsea, you want to? You know, I actually thought that we were only voting on our area, so I did not research her very much. So she's on the Silicon Valley ECHO Nation. Yeah. Her documentation is on page eight. Yeah, 79 of the attachment, if you have that open. Okay. Can I just have a minute to
157read? Yeah. I would say the one thing when I read through hers. The one thing I was like, does she understand the role of this super well because she seemed to be talking more about trustee areas and that's Technically they vote on something that's not actually like The bigger bulk of what they're doing is not about trustee areas. So when I saw that piece, I was a little bit like, does she actually fully understand the role? Because I was, like I said about Peggy, like I was looking at it like, oh, she brings these other assets. Can you expand a little bit about what the role is more than trustee areas? Because that's one of my exposures is like when the high school district went to trustee areas. I know it went to this committee,
158but what other? I think from my understanding, the biggest thing that they do is. the district like district boundaries like that is the bigger role that they have and that's the important because really like the trusting things are happening at like the difference right different districts within the district yeah that's really the bulk of that is really happening within districts right and there's their vote is more of a stamp of approval from what i understand yeah yeah the bigger bulk of what they really do and this is what Bridget was referring to is what a district boundary, right? So when there is a new parcel or maybe other things come into play, like, and I just, and I just think Dr. Gallagher has a really good understanding of that space just in concept, just generally,
159right? And he knows the county from the two places has worked. So, yeah, so that's kind of, when I was thinking through it, that was kind of what, I mean, it's partially also, I know him and I like, right there's that but then that was kind of my thinking between the two yeah I will note that she does also have experience like a director of District 6 in the Open Space Authority. And so she has served in government's capacity as well as, you know, in the Zocum Valley Ed Foundation, which is very focused on equity and educational justice. And so I feel like she would be given enough information within those meetings to make a decision. And again, honoring the minority women voice here. is what's driving my comments and my decision. Again, no shame
160on Dr. Gallup. Yeah, I'm really liking her resume. I really like her. So, okay, I will change my vote for her. It's women's history, but sorry, Mike. Okay, well, so we have a motion. Someone has to do a move. I know, but do you want to just table that motion instead of, how do we do that? Well, it doesn't mean so we can we not vote on the motion? So we have a motion. I withdraw my motion. Okay, we have another motion, a fresh motion, if anyone has, I can make it since it was my thing. Okay, so I'd like to move forward with Okay, any further discussion or comments, anything else? Okay, can all those in favor say aye? Aye. Anyone against? Okay, so we have three to two and so the motion passes
161to proceed with those three people as our votes. Okay, finally we are moving on to, are we out of action items? 13, discussion items. 13A, discuss board bylaw 9150 student board members. Dr. Croswick, you may speak into this item. So before you is an opportunity to discuss. The possibility of student board members, and so what we have for you as a reference is the CSBA language, but it can be tailored to our school districts as well. And so this is an opportunity for the school district to give us direction if this is an interest in terms of how you would like us to proceed in identifying or having a process to identify select students to serve on the diets as well. And again, this is a free reservation. Okay, great. If there's any further comments,
162I do have one blue card already. Please have a blue card or raise your hand online. Any other public comments by the side of your seats? One in the room? Okay, great. So let's start off in the room with Maestro Pabrile Aguilar. Thank you so much. Oh, I don't know if this is on. Oh, yeah, that's right. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much. Looks like this one is working. Thank you so much. Good evening. The board, I really want to commend you on Women's Month because it's not often that you see a board of people who are so prolifically productive and just so caring and make it all look easy when you do that. So I'm here with you. Congratulations on electing a representative who is going to be doing that at their
163county level. So I commend you for that as well. I would like to also appreciate that you're considering bringing onto the board the student voice. When I was in this room about 10 years ago during my graduate work, I kept looking around and thinking, this is a lot of real estate. Where are the students? And then looking at the board every now and then, saying, where are the students? Thinking I should have done my thesis on bringing student voice instead of how to educate them home. That was an actual thing back then before we had a pandemic. I know, I was thinking about that. So now I am thinking about this. I think I should start by introducing myself. I am my second regular teacher. This card here to my students says that I do
164work for the San Diego School District. I am also serving in the capacity as a trustee on the Fremont Unified School Board, but today I am here just as a person wondering about where are the students and where is their voice? So in terms of what you are going to be considering today, I'd like to just ask that you think about how to bring in more than one student. One student is great. And preferably seek out the voices who have not yet been heard because people who are in leadership, students who are in leadership, they are going to be in leadership. They are going to continue to be in leadership. And yet we are going to be talking about these marginalized voices who we don't invite in because of... language competence from our perspective because
165it might need additional accommodations and so this is the time to consider who do we really want to listen to because leadership will always be there to tell us how they're doing. And then I really want you to think what you've already said in your resolution or in today's. Compensating students. We tell people their time is valuable when we really put forth the effort to demonstrate that financially. And so this is a great opportunity for financial literacy for our students who may not have yet had that opportunity. Maybe they've sold lemonade. Maybe they've done something else. But to serve and be compensated for that. is a message about true inclusion and about how we really care to offer students an elevation of their voice. And I know you do. I'm just advocating for that because
166I've always asked where are the students and how are we doing listening to them. So I hope you consider that. Thank you. Thank you, Nyastra. We have one more comment online. Hello, can you hear me? Absolutely. Wonderful. Hello, Superintendents, Trustees. I'm Danny Choi. I am a teacher, parent, and trustee of Fremont Union High School District School Board, but I am speaking on my own behalf. Thank you for considering this issue of adding student representation to the Board of Trustees and Governance. Not only is it important to provide students the opportunity to partake in civic discussion and public leadership. It's also a more important message than ever in these times where democracy is under great threat and giving students a chance to show them that their voice matters and that they can make a difference through
167these actions is incredibly important. I would also, if possible, I don't know if this is within the scope of this, encourage the inclusion of multiple student board members, as well as the inclusion of students from historically underrepresented groups. Traditionally, the Profile of the student who applies for student board representation tends to come from a very certain kind of hyper achieving niche. And while these students are amazing and will have opportunities to thrive in life. I think it's also important to provide this access for equity to other students who would otherwise perhaps feel less inclined to speak up publicly and provide their voice to the table. Thank you very much. Before we have further discussion, so this is just discussion. There's no action taken at this point, but it's to provide guidance to the district. I
168want to underscore my desire to also include... students that have not yet had leadership opportunities historically underrepresented, perhaps prioritizing those students that we have focused on in terms of achievements. And I'd also suggest that we do a mental pulse, like do a rotation perhaps every trimester of students. Just the thought that I've been to is just like maybe to her middle school. I'd like to continue board reports from the elementary students. So perhaps one that is. from the student leadership already and the one that is appointed with thoughtfulness. We can talk about that. And then rotating so that there is more opportunities for students to have that leadership opportunity and the civic engagement. I love what Mr. Choi said about the defense of our democracy. It begins with our students and our children. So those
169are just some initial thoughts that I'm having. Are you saying four board members? Yeah. for board members up here at the time. And oh, one more thing is that I wouldn't want them staying here until 930, so we could prioritize the topics that are particularly relevant to them, like, and reorder the agenda so that we have their voice, for example, like for what a playground might look like, or in terms of academic achievement, if they're looking at some data. That's my thoughts so that they're not here at 930. So, um, this one just a former who was former chanel, he attended a session at CS at CSP is a seat on student board members. And, you know, I've been following this for a while. I actually think I personally think that we should have two
170student board members. But I think it would still be nice to hear from the elementary school students like more as a report. But as far as being a student board member, I think that's appropriate for one from each middle school. And I've talked to a number of high schools and districts and students who are part of it. And, you know, this one. district had a system where it was set up because they were a unified district. They had, it sounds so cool because they had the high schools. basically their student government met, convened once a month. Like they met for themselves. Then they met with just the high schools. And then they had another meeting quarterly where they met, they ran the whole meeting for the elementary schools, student leaderships. And so, and then they
171had amongst themselves, amongst their high school governing body. They ran elections for student board members out of that. So it was just a larger pool of kids. Then I talked to someone else in a smaller school district, and they said, you know, we would never have an election, a student body election for that position because it would always be the same kids. It would be the popular kids. You know, kids are already. really engaged already doing other stuff anyway like so like let there be a school president and you know executive team and a student student body government but have the student board position be something that is selected through criteria of is established by the district and then something Chris Norwood who does consulting for CSBA shared with me is he said you know
172the first year you do it with the same two kids like it takes them a while to warm up So it's, you don't want to, like, I would say like not to change them out on the trimester because it takes a while for that person to grow and develop. But by, by the end of the year, the board members figure out how to respond to the students. The administrators figure out more like how to respond to the students, like what their needs are and interests are and build up by within a couple of years, it's the more robust role where it might start off as, feeling more performative because they're not as completely engaged from day one, but that it builds into something. And all these kids who come up here, even the little kids
173who are doing the, you know, doing the Pledge of Allegiance and other stuff, I mean, the kids who are in their own... who are coming up for different things. And even over the years when we used to have school presentations and they'd come up, I think your daughter was up here, right? For the sport or something. She'd come with like a Capico friendly thing. She'd gone to Mark Berman's stuff. Yeah, I thought they were here for a little. Anyway, I think the kids who've come up in the past and presented, like I really. I think they do think about what we're talking about. I think maybe there would be some things where we would invite or maybe, you know, there's another way to get those student body leaderships to participate in ideas about things like
174we're doing something with student nutrition or the music program or whatever. Like there'll be transportation. There'll be things that they want to weigh in on. But I really feel like having two. two board members with an agreement that we would do mentorship that there would be some something in it for them in that way whether it was monetary i don't know if we're legally allowed to pay kids under a certain age i don't know how that works um because i know my kids had to have work permits and i do the high school district i don't know how young you can pay them but i think uh you know some sort of something that makes it really positive for them um in addition to just getting to be at the meeting would be great. Like
175it's because it's more than a title. Like what are we really developing here, you know? So I'm just very excited about the opportunity and maybe the district could come back with a couple different models that they might want to, that we could talk about again. Like I don't have a clear idea in my mind exactly what it should be, but I'd be interested in that. Do you want to kind of go down that line? Yes, please. Okay. Okay. Maybe I'll start with thoughts on how does it mean listening, and then maybe I'll share what I thought before, but I don't know. Okay. So I'm actually going to go off the last kind of thing that Bridget said is like, what, when she said something about like, what, and sorry, I'm mostly looking that way. I
176always flip back. That's okay. Don't worry about it. No, no, no. Table. The piece of like, what is the purpose, right? So when Bridget said that, I was like, okay, that actually like, what our purpose is would actually change how I would want to do it. Right. So like, um, so when you said that a little bit, I mean, think about like, if our purpose is to train somebody to be a leader, then I think I would lean more towards what Bridget was describing of two people who were there for a full year to really learn. So if that's like our purpose, then I would, I would actually probably support that. But my initial thought before coming here tonight was. partially kind of, I think, similar to Peggy's of, and I think maybe, Guriel, did
177you send a response where you had, like, said one of the options was, like, multiple people? I don't know. I think that's what the idea I first thought about was that. So I think I like that idea, and I think it's because, again, I'm pretty flexible and open on how, like, I don't have strong feelings, so I'm kind of will probably generally just support whatever the rest of the board wants to do. But I do personally, I think, like the idea of having it rotate because I think for me, and again, like both are valuable, so building leadership is valuable, but I think for me, I like the idea of hearing from a variety of students, like to have them come for a little bit. And it does build a little bit of leadership, not
178to the extent like what Bridget was describing, but it would be a little bit. So I think my general. like initial would be, I like that idea of rotating. So we get more students and maybe we start like when Bridget was talking, I was like, maybe we start with that. And with like, if we can't get them to engage within that time period, maybe we do need to switch together, but maybe we try it because it would be cool to get a variety of people. Like, anyway, I'm open. My brain just always goes into planning. And again, like initial, like when you said four people, that felt like too many, but I'm getting like, I'm not opposed. Nothing anyone has said, I'm like, oh my gosh, that's a horrible idea. And then the last thing
179I just, the thing that I was thinking about the most is, I don't like to repeat it because it's basically what Pat and Dan said. And I think that you mentioned it too. To me, what is most important is getting the voices of the people, which I think that's probably true for most of us, but getting the voices of the students that we don't regularly hear from. So I think of everything, that's what I, numbers, whatever, that's what I care most about. is hearing more from students that we don't as often. And I would just add that if I had to have three on the dais, that I would have the third person be a newcomer. That it would be a reserve seat for a newcomer. Oh, and I agree with that. I don't think
180it should be like a student vote thing. I think that more like an application and a criteria. More on that line. Trustee Pappetta? So I feel like we should have at least two. And I understand Bridget's comment about having them sit for a year because they have to learn and everything. But I would rather have them rotate so that way other students can have a chance also to be on the dais and to have their voices heard. Like everyone said about the popular kids, right? But what about the kids that are shy and they want to make their voices heard, but they don't know how or where to start? And I was thinking about applications as well as just... you know, peers or teachers nominating students so that way they could feel like, oh, I'm
181special. They feel like I have something special to share. And so, you know, it might boost their confidence and for them to apply and just have a chance to be up here. you know, for them to be compensated is good. I also read on here about providing learning opportunities like workshops. I'm just wondering the cost of that and how would we pay for that? Where the funding would come to pay for the student to compensate? And then where do we get the money to you know, how to go to workshops and how long are the workshops. And yeah, those are my initial thoughts. Thanks. Well, I like, well, definitely like the idea of representation of the kids over here. I think we've been talking about this for a while and I'm happy that it's going
182to start happening. About what kind of student will be, I'm open to suggestions. I will certainly like the idea of groups not represented normally on these kind of activities. Of course, the choice of which student is going to be complicated. And what I was thinking is if we have a rotation coming through the dias every meeting or once a month, whatever, we're going to do it and it gets to be a big population, I don't think we're going to be able to take them all, for example, to AAC. So I see that as a challenge, but I would like it to be rotating and have a group. I don't know if we rotate one for every school or something like that. So we have 10 kids over the year coming. But if that happens... So
183you're saying including elementary kids, not just the middle school kids? Yeah, that could be. Or, well, if we do middle school only, then rotating also to have a bigger representation, that would be good. But if we rotate, maybe we can figure out the training instead of going all the way to AC. And, well, it's going to be a great experience, although a big commitment for the kid. Maybe we can actually do a webinar or something with CSBA in the same class online for all of them. But yeah, I'm open to any smart idea about this. And what I want is representation from the kids who we don't normally hear from as a learning opportunity, listening from their voices. And then making, I suppose, our meetings also going to have to change a little bit. For
184example, they are probably, I suppose, not going to be able to get into the closed session meetings. That's one of the things. The other thing, maybe they don't have to stay here until very late. So we're going to have the items where we need their voice heard at the beginning. So we just need to adjust to whatever the choice is. We just have to have personal items that we want them to be aware of and we want to hear their voices. My sunny brain has one more. Yeah, please. Just as, right, like, I can't remember what people, but just as people were saying stuff. I think it was, yeah, both of you guys about the... So I think if we do the multiple, I think it doesn't really make sense to go to CSBA. So
185my brain started thinking about like, we could just essentially create, we could go reach out, but I'm like, it would be really cool if we just created essentially our own like mini, like two hour curriculum. And then we could just rotate through it. Right. So two of us, like every new trimester, like we would have this kind of sort of curriculum. We'd use them as CSBA stuff. And then we would just send two of us. that trimester could also be the mentors and we would do a two-hour training with them and build them up anyway so I got all excited they were talking about like my brain so I'd be like this could be really cool yeah well I have a suggestion because I was thinking maybe instead of by trimester because that's more like
186aligned with the grading period maybe like the August to mid-year would be a good rotation and then after the winter break because that's also kind of like when there's like a lot of culminating celebrations like in December like right before the break and then at the end of the year there's some celebrations and like You know, I'm not suggesting that like there's there's tons of like training and onboarding like how to be a board member. I think that it's, you know, like when I've gone to the county board of education meetings, the student board members are only there for the first hour of the meeting, really. So they're there for the first study session and then they're dismissed. And if they're not able to come to the meeting. They're on Zoom, right? So they're always
187there. But it's just for that one hour and they do plan their board meetings around it. And I would say like, you know, when I was thinking about the middle school students. You know, middle school students, we're doing everything we can to prepare them for high school and give them that confidence for high school. The elementary students, like my thought is maybe they wouldn't necessarily be board members, but they could be, they could come in and give a presentation. They could present to us. They could be a part of something, but being a board member. a student board member is a special role. And I think that they have, I think CSBA has a summer institute and they have something at AEC. So, you know, we could, we could look into that for them as
188well. So I just, I guess I'm, I'm thinking that, you know, we don't want to burn them out. We do want to give lots of people opportunity. If we get feedback from the kids, like this is way too long. We can't, you know, like. I can't do it for more than 10 weeks. Don't make me come. You know, like, I get it. We could do trimesters, but just a thought. But I am open to rotation and whatever, and I do think we could create something that's new to us. Any further comments? I'm going to add some comments and then I'll just summarize what we've said here in terms of direction. So when we have student board members, I'm thinking middle school, there is more to being a board member than what happens here on the
189dais. And so what I've seen at the high school district, Fremont Union, is that Amy Tang is the student representative right now. And she's just really amazing in taking initiative. Like she's like, I'm interested in special ed classrooms. So she's really in charge of them all. And I love that aspect of leadership development for our youth. It's just like. kind of like that permission to explore and pursue passions and to learn about other students. So I think there's a lot of opportunity there. And also, I don't know, the last time a Fremont board member was at the high school district, so we can prepare them to be board members at the high school district. I am liking the idea of rotation, and after Trustee Watson mentioned maybe like semester tech, like... HAHA maybe that would
190be more appropriate, especially given like there's a lot of turnover at the trimester point. I like the idea of compensation. I guess we can ask the district to come back with any findings about whether or not that's legal. At the very least we can provide them snacks. They would, or dinner, right? And I think they'll still be having their student board reports. We can, you know, But some, you know, just, it'll be great to hear from them as well, what they want to say, just like we do. And I do expect to continue having like a rotation of the elementary students, having reports, but not as board members. At the CABE conference recently, I know that trustee, Ivy Law Archive, and trustee capacity accompanied 15 different students to that conference, and that's amazing. So there
191are a lot of leadership opportunities, and that was just in SF. So maybe if there's something more local that would be financially, that would make more sense, but I do also like this idea of bringing in some kind of leadership development or training. support here and of us being mentors to those students. So those are general thoughts, and I think we will be asking the district to bring some recommendations or that they're exploring. I do like also the idea of having designated seats based on criteria that I think they've kind of expressed some of that. We want to have diversity of race, of socioeconomics, of newcomers, and, you know, just consider all the voices that aren't always heard in the room. And for me, I'm envisioning like two. student board members. Maybe on the wings
192here, and sorry, Mr. Nishihara, Mr. Caffey, if that knocks you out, but that does, like, it'd be in the back over there. Because that's a model that the high school district follows, and I think Dr. Valentine would welcome your stuff. You may come up and do your presentations and everything, and of course, you're still an important part of our- But there's also- Yeah, I know, like two and two is what I'm thinking, so. I think the rest of us don't really have an idea. Do we all want one from each school? I'm open to the district coming up with some ideas. So let's hear what the pros and cons are. What do you think? The possibility of two or four. Yeah, was there any other direction that you would like from us, Dr. Trashway? Thank
193you. Thank you so much for bringing this forward as well. Yes, Mr. Cuffee. May I? In San Jose Unified, they have student board members as alternates. So they might swap, you know, they might come in one meeting or whatnot. So that's just other opportunities than I did. I think that's great in case they're participating in other activities or, you know. Yeah. They're on their way to go to the band. Yeah. Any other final thoughts here? Okay. So, board, we do need to convene to close session. So that's session item five. And then we'll be returning whenever we're done. And that's about everything. So the time is now 943. And we're going to be convening to close session. Thank you. We were doing a pretty good clip for Ben. No, we don't. Thank you. Thank you,
194Angela. Thank you, Desmond. Appreciate you guys. Middle Eastern style. And it's okay to report those meetings, the governor's meeting. And that's at 10 a.m., right? We're at 10 to 1 for the one after. The time is now 10 o'clock and we are returning. Closed session. We have the following actions to report out. 5A, consideration of student expulsion, Ed Code 4891AC. The board has, in closed session, the board accepted a stipulated agreement regarding the expulsion of student 134177 and approved the suspension of expulsion under the terms and conditions outlined in the agreement. During its recently completed closed session, the board voted to approve the appointment of Kristen Brett as the interim principal of Cherry Chase Elementary School. The vote was unanimous. And finally, during its recent complete session, the board voted to approve the appointment of
195Nicole Fiala as the interim principal of San Miguel Elementary School. The vote was unanimous. I don't think I said the vote was on CNN. This was the first report out. Okay, so we are on agenda item 14, future meetings and adjournments. So the next meetings I'll announce are all in this room, Thursday, March 26th, 2026. At 6 p.m., we have a regular board meeting. The next day, Friday, March 27th, 2026, at 10 a.m., there is a governance board meeting. As a reminder, people may attend in person, but it will not be offered online nor recorded. as a governance meeting and then on Monday, April 6th at 6 p.m. That's Monday night. We have a special board meeting and that will be a report out about Arrenda and findings and next steps. That one starts at
1966, right? 6 p.m. Yes. Okay. And with that, the time is 10.14 and we are saying goodbye. Thank you. Thank you.